NYT: Billionaire George Soros Financing Dems' Voter Rights Lawsuits

Billionaire philanthropist George Soros has agreed to spend as much as $5 million on Democrats' court battles against voting laws passed in recent years by Republican-controlled state governments such as in Ohio and Wisconsin.

"We hope to see these unfair laws, which often disproportionately affect the most vulnerable in our society, repealed," the Hungarian-born investor has said about the legal battles, describing himself as being "proud" of his involvement, reports The New York Times. 

Soros political adviser Michael Vachon said the billionaire has given $1 million so far this year to the liberal research super PAC American Bridge. 

Backers of Democrat presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, who has made the voting laws a cornerstone of her campaign, have been pushing Soros to commit millions of dollars to her super PAC.  Soros has not done that so far, the Times says.

The lawsuits against the states are being led by attorney Marc Elias, who is the Clinton campaign's general counsel, the newspaper reports. 

This is not Soros' first involvement in voting issues. His first major push in American politics included the America Coming Together voter-mobilization drive in 2004, in an effort to defeat President George W. Bush. 

The lawsuits include attacks on voter ID requirements, time restrictions on early voting that make it difficult to cast ballots on the weekend before Election Day, and rules nullifying ballots that are cast in wrong precincts. 

The Times reports that Soros was in contact with Elias in January 2014, while the attorney was exploring federal lawsuits before the midterms and before the 2016 cycle, said Vachon, Soros'  adviser, Michael Vachon. Elias himself refused comment Friday about the lawsuits' funding.

Soros is supporting lawsuits filed in Ohio and Wisconsin last month, and is helping finance a case Elias and other groups filed in North Carolina last year.

Clinton and Democrats argue that the states' voting laws affect poor, minority, and young voters, but Republicans say the new laws, enacted since 2010, serve as protection against election fraud. 

Via NewsMax

Continue Reading....

Teachers Union Determined to Purge Koch Brothers from College Campuses

The National Education Association’s mission to drive Charles and David Koch, the two wealthy philanthropist brothers from Kansas, into the sea is showing no signs of slowing down. According to its latest Labor Department filing, the nation’s biggest union gifted $150,000 (up from a mere $100,000 the year before) to the American Bridge, a leftist hit-PAC whose mission is to annihilate every politico whose politics run to the right of the late Joe Stalin. (Nothing new here: Over the years, NEA has lavished gifts on such leftist stalwarts as MALDEF, People for the American Way, Media Matters, ACORN, Al Sharpton’s National Action Network and Occupy Wall Street.)

The American Bridge’s latest gambit is to remove the Koch brothers’ influence from 250 campuses where they support educational initiatives in economics, philosophy, entrepreneurship, criminal justice and other disciplines. A recent case in point: Mississippi State will soon launch the Institute for Market Studies, which was made possible in part by a $365,000 grant from the Charles Koch Foundation. But before its launch, American Bridge filed an open-records request seeking emails between professors, and between the school’s faculty and the Koch foundation. This is nothing more than an intimidation tactic to discourage the faculty from participating in the venture.

Sadly the above is hardly an isolated incident. “UnKoch My Campus,” another group of NEA fellow travelers, is busy all over the country trying rid our schools of the dreaded brothers. From the NEA website,

Between 2005 and 2013, the billionaire Koch brothers spent at least $68 million on college and university campuses — to fund faculty, research and publications, and to spread their anti-worker gospel to generations of students.

Last week, NEA Higher Ed faculty and staff leaders sat down in a windowless room in Orlando, Fla., and pledged to shine a light on those Koch campus investments — as well as the pernicious effects of the broad ‘corporatization’ of public higher education.

‘This is about corporate interests trying to control higher education. The Koch brothers are just one of those interests,’ said Theresa Montano, president of NEA’s National Council for Higher Education, who called for greater transparency of where that money goes and what exactly it buys.

Via: California Political Review

Continue Reading....