By Pam Martens: May 24, 2013  For five solid years, the highs and lows of JPMorgan’s Chairman and CEO, Jamie Dimon, have been splashed across the headlines of the business press. First he was the Wall Street hero who came through the 2008 financial crisis unscathed. He sprinkled the phrase “fortress balance sheet” throughout his media interviews. He lectured Washington against over-regulating big banks (despite the fact they had just collapsed the largest economy in the world). He called international plans to require more bank capital reserves “anti-American.” He was the reigning King of Wall Street and he relished the limelight.  And then, in an instant, the King’s crown was tarnished. His glib tongue uttered the immortal words “tempest in a teapot” over outsized bets by his derivatives traders in London, only to have to eat back that phrase, letter by letter, billion by billion in reported losses over the … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: May 23, 2013  There are IRS scandals and then there are IRS Scandals – with a capital S. Last year, we reported on the capital S kind. For decades, billionaires Charles and David Koch had secretly owned shares giving them 50 percent ownership of the Cato Institute – a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization subsidized by the taxpayer — while pushing a deregulatory agenda for big business. Today, Cato is functioning as a megaphone to spin the current flap over the IRS to advance its agenda.  Before the news broke in 2012 of the Kochs’ ownership in Cato, most of America believed that nonprofits could not be owned by individuals and were required under the law to have a freely elected Board of Directors. (Charles Koch had found a loophole in the law in Kansas where Cato was originally formed.) The Internal Revenue Service warns that charitable organizations like the … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: May 22, 2013  On February 25, 2013, James Hepburn, writing at Daily Kos, made the emphatic assertion in a headline that “Big Tobacco Had Nothing to Do With Tea Party Formation.” That is likely to be the one headline that will haunt Mr. Hepburn to his grave.  I decided to follow in the treacherous footsteps of the IRS and engaged in that unforgiveable sin: I targeted the “tea party” as a key word search at the legacy tobacco document archive.  Resting quietly in the archive is full blown proof that Big Tobacco directly created multiple Tea Parties in 1994 as push back against a planned increase in the Federal Excise Tax (FET) on cigarettes.   In fact, Big Tobacco not only created the Tea Party, it has promoted it over decades, pumped millions into marketing it, and pulled it out of its magic hat every time it needed … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: May 21, 2013  Yesterday, DBA Press and the Center for Media and Democracy released a stunning report showing how counter terrorism units and the Department of Homeland Security gathered intelligence on the Occupy Wall Street movement for the benefit of the very corporations targeted by the protesters.  Titled, Dissent or Terror: How the Nation’s Counter Terrorism Apparatus, In Partnership with Corporate America, Turned on Occupy Wall Street, the year-long investigation is based on the collection of thousands of pages of records obtained from counter terrorism and law enforcement agencies. One of the revelations of the report is that Koch Industries, as well as billionaire Charles Koch and his son, Chase Koch, hired off-duty Wichita, Kansas police officers that served as their own private security force at the company and their personal residences in mid February 2012.  According to the report: “These dates coincide with Occupy Wichita’s  ‘Occupy … Continue reading →

 By Pam Martens: May 20, 2013 The Justice Department is investigating the investigators of the Tea Party at the IRS while leaving a 29-year criminal conspiracy against the American people by the Tea Party cabal untouched. That’s not surprising, given that the U.S. Attorney General, Eric Holder, and the former head of his criminal division, Lanny Breuer, came from the law firm Covington and Burling which played a seminal role in the conspiracy. On February 8 of this year, the peer-reviewed health professionals’ journal, Tobacco Control, published an exhaustive study of the roots of the Tea Party dating back to the 1980s.  Researched and written by Amanda Fallin, Rachel Grana and Stanton A. Glantz, the study was funded by the National Institute of Health (NIH) and titled ‘To Quarterback Behind the Scenes, Third Party Efforts’: The Tobacco Industry and the Tea Party. The authors explain how Citizens for a Sound … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: May 17, 2013 To rational folks, the real scandal at the IRS is that corporate front groups – who want to bust unions, pollute the water and air with impunity, and kill Social Security in order to eliminate the corporate match of the Social Security tax – are allowed to register with the IRS as social welfare organizations, receive tax-exempt status, and then funnel tens of millions of dollars into political attack ads in order to elect candidates sympathetic to their corporate deregulatory agenda. These so-called social welfare organizations are allowed to do all this while drawing a black curtain around the names of their corporate donors. On April 9, 2013, the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) filed a petition with the IRS that mapped out the real scandal taking place at the IRS – the scandal that right wing media don’t … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: May 16, 2013  The President Obama of 2013 who is feigning outrage over the IRS adding extra scrutiny to nonprofit applications being filed with the words Tea Party in their title is not the same man who singled out Americans for Prosperity in a speech in 2010. Americans for Prosperity was founded and funded by billionaires Charles and David Koch, who have funneled money into politics through front groups for over four decades to advance their corporate deregulatory agenda that powers their profits and personal wealth. The Kochs are majority owners of Koch Industries, one of the largest private corporations in the world. (According to Forbes, the brothers’ wealth has almost doubled in just three years to $34 billion each – while 46 million Americans without lobbyists and clever tax attorneys live below the poverty level, including one in five children.)  Americans for Prosperity is a front for creating Tea … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: May 15, 2013  We now know that the U.S. Department of Justice spied for two months on over 100 Associated Press reporters, secretly obtaining their work, home and cell phone records showing the phone numbers of their sources. The records covered phone calls made in April and May 2012 in AP bureaus in New York City, Washington, D.C., Hartford, Connecticut and the House of Representatives. No advance notification was given to the Associated Press.  Yesterday, the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press issued a stern critique of the Justice Department action, writing:  “The scope of this action calls into question the very integrity of Department of Justice policies toward the press and its ability to balance, on its own, its police powers against the First Amendment rights of the news media and the public’s interest in reporting on all manner of government conduct.”  Gary Pruitt, President … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: May 14, 2013  For years now, journalists have been doing the heavy lifting in investigations of Charles and David Koch using their billionaire status to fund faux grassroots groups to push their far right agenda on the country —  an agenda that effectively boils down to deregulation of corporations to the detriment of the working class, the environment and wealth equality in America. It’s about time the IRS investigated.  According to the 2013 Forbes List, Charles and David Koch are each worth $34 billion. Their wealth derives from Koch Industries, a private global conglomerate with a presence in over 60 countries. The company’s business interests include oil, refining, pipelines, paper products, chemicals, fertilizer and trading. Because the company is not publicly traded, despite the Koch brothers’ stated devotion to free markets, we have no idea what goes on in the sprawling Koch enterprises because they are not … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: May 13, 2013  Did you just find out your 401(k) is leaking 8 percent in a hodgepodge of Wall Street management fees, transactions costs, sales commissions, and marketing schemes. Maybe you did the math and realized your account value, without your new additions, is still where it was in 2007. Or did you just check BrightScope and find out that your 401(k) is so abysmal that you’ll need 18 additional years of work to make up for the $215,500 in lost retirement savings. Or maybe you tuned in to the April 23 Frontline documentary on PBS to learn that it is quite possible for Wall Street to gobble up two-thirds of your retirement savings in your 401(k) while keeping you in the dark for the next 50 years. If so, there’s no reason to seethe in silence. The U.S. Department of Labor wants to hear from you … Continue reading →