The video by Brave New Films about the Wake schools controversy is creating it own tussle. The video says Americans for Prosperity, led nationally by the billionaire Koch brothers, spent “hundreds of thousands of dollars” to promote resegregation and elect a conservative school board in 2009. Dallas Woodhouse, head of the NC chapter of Americans for Prosperity, says these claims are “bald-faced lies.” He says AFP didn’t spend a dime on direct political contributions or for nasty, “electioneering” attack ads, like those it sponsored in 2010 legislative races. However, as Sue Sturgis of the Institute for Southern Studies points out, AFP has been working for years to undermine public education in Wake County and its leaders brag that it deserves partial credit for helping anti-busing parents organize and fan discontent.
The video would be much stronger if it (1) acknowledged the genuine frustrations of parents over student reassignments, year after year, as the school system struggled to keep up with Wake’s incredible growth – ironically caused in part by the school system’s superior reputation; (2) described the investment of Raleigh retailer Art Pope in the multi-year crusade against public education, rather than ignore him for a national smackdown of the Koch brothers; and (3) linked that investment to the manipulation of grassroots dissent into enough momentum to elect ultra-conservatives in Republican-leaning districts to the school board.
Pope’s $15,000 donation to the Wake County Republican Party for the school board election in 2009 is well known, and rather limited, but his investment of $2.2 million through the Pope Foundation to Americans for Prosperity in the past six years seems to have escaped the Brave New Films producers. That’s a lot of money; no wonder Pope is one of the five national board members of AFP. It’s hard to know how much of this money came back to the North Carolina chapter, but it’s significant to see the two periods when Pope’s donations spiked: His foundation gave $425,000 from May through September 2006 when AFP-NC led a fevered, but unsuccessful campaign to defeat a Wake County school bond, and it gave $500,000 in June 2009 as the school board election was getting underway. Following the money, a line repeated in the video, would suggest that the real power behind AFP in North Carolina is not Dallas Woodhouse or the Koch brothers; it’s Art Pope.
Well, at least you try to get some facts straight, unlike the hack film makers. But Bob Hall, as someone who appears to know lots about irs law and campaign funding should know
that Americans for Prosperity (C-4) and the Americans for Prosperity Foundation are separate organizations.
Under Federal Law and Irs regulations that “$2.2 million through the Pope Foundation (C-3 charitable foundation) can’t go to “Americans for Prosperity” it must go to the Americans for Prosperity Foundation (also c-3) and could not be used to support or defeat legislation/bonds referendum. It also can’t be used to electioneering communications. (that is a c-4 purpose and can not be done with c-3 dollars.
Same with the c-3 money from foundation in 2009.
Bottom line, it is not legal or possible for the C-3 Pope Foundation to give money to c-4 AFP. The duties of defeating a bond referendum would have to be c-4 money
Apparantly there is nothing valid to this story. Why in the world are we so overly concerned with the Koch Brothers? Why is American Industry demonized by Democracy NC? We need to be promoting our industry to get people to work. Everything that I’ve seen from the Koch Brothers is positive.
Look at the insidious damage from George Soros and his sneaky influence on the press. Everything that I see coming out of George Soros is destructive to our way of life. Why isn’t Democracy NC paying any attention to him? Oh, unless Soros contributes to Democracy NC, that is the only reason I could think of.
Dallas Woodhous is head of the Americans for the Prosperous, and in my view does what his masters tell him. The fiction that the AFP and AFP Foundation are seperate is a legal fiction, not unlike the personhood of corporations. Face it, NC legislature was purchased straight up in 2010 by some very wealthy people, including the Kochs, Art Pope (who runs AFP), Eschelman and Luddy.
As for the crossover of monies from one entity to another, I strongly suspect that is easily arranged since all the same players are in the same box together. The accuracy of the video which so stings Woodhouse is apparent to anyone who has followed the whole thing and its arguments. The 2009 elections were bought! The Kochs and Pope, as well as as the Republican Rightwing contingent in the legislature want among other things, to close public schools and go to a system of vouchers for private schools and home schooling with zero accountability for the results. If you dont know the results, how can you complain. As for outputs from the Popes, the Locke Foundation and Civitas, in its several manifestations, are simply propaganda mills, very effective ones from what I read. But, they are simply that, nothing more despite their academic trappings and titles. And, most North Carolinians do not understand that, which Pope and friends are counting on.
Glad to see Woodhouse and his buddies squealing like stuck pigs. They need to be taken down a whole bunch of notches. They dont care about good government, only what return on investment they can return to Pope, Eschelman and the Kochs.