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When Michael Bloomberg entered the 2020 race, some declared his $60bn fortune an asset for taking on Donald Trump, who once claimed he was going to self-fund his own campaign.

Trump and his party raised a record-shattering nearly half a billion dollars in disclosed donations last year a number that does not include the hundreds of millions in dark money non-profit groups will spend on social media and TV ads.

How did we end up with such a broken system where billionaires can openly or anonymously spend millions to distort election results in our representative democracy?

Charles Koch whose mega-corporation Koch Industries is running a PR campaign with the tagline We made that helped make that, or rather helped break that.

Newly uncovered documents reveal Trump and Bloomberg owe thanks in part to Koch for the power to tap their enormous personal fortunes to run for office.

Koch claimed in 2014 that it was only in the past decade that I realized the need to also engage in the political process. The truth is he got involved in elections and trying to overcome election laws 45 years ago.

Archives show that Koch funding for the Libertarian party helped subsidize the legal effort that resulted in the infamous Buckley v Valeo decision, which equated spending money with free speech.

Buckley also created a loophole that allowed David Koch to self-fund his campaign for vice-president in 1980, establishing perhaps one of the most extreme examples of privilege in politics today: most Americans cant afford to max out in campaign contributions, but a couple of billionaire white guys have what amounts to a supreme court-divined right to spend an unlimited amount on their own elections.

The big money of a tiny few is swamping the voices of most Americans

Until now, however, few people outside the Koch inner circle knew it was really Charles who was bankrolling that political party and its attacks on federal election laws, before Davids failed run.

After Buckley, the FEC gave the Libertarian party an advisory opinion to allow Koch to give the party 25 times the limit Congress had adopted. Koch then bundled money with his family to become that political partys biggest donor, giving it an amount that seems small now but was big then and was the start of something bigger.

Two years later, he pledged to match at least $50,000 raised by the party (despite the $25,000 limit). The year after that, he was one of the largest donors helping to fund lawsuits attacking federal campaign laws.

Buckley litigation also laid the foundation for the discredited Citizens United decision.

Since that ruling in 2010, American elections have been conducted like the Koch-funded Libertarian wishlist circa 1976: the uber-rich have virtually no real limits on how much they can spend to influence the outcome of our elections because they can deploy non-profits to escape donation and disclosure rules applicable to candidates, political parties, and Pacs.

As a result, non-profit groups collectively spent more than all candidates in 28 congressional midterm races, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. The $2.6bn in independent expenditures in 2018 also exceeded spending by both political parties combined.

And, just days ago, Kochs operatives announced their biggest election effort ever for 2020. Koch spending down the ballot will help buoy Trump, without naming him, as it did in the 2016 Senate races.

Kochs use of secret billionaires cash to secure the Senate and states is not new. To win in 2016, Koch planned to amass and spend $889m Koch Industries even bought the URL: 889million.com.

The new reality is that billionaire-funded dark money groups, like the ones run by Charles Kochs network with its sophisticated voter databases, can operate like a shadow political party but they are more powerful, unbound by donation limits and disclosure rules that govern parties.

And because personnel is policy, this means Koch often gets the policies and judges he wants. Despite Charless public posture of disdain for the president, Trump policy is largely Kochs. When Charles Koch decided that Trump represented a once-in-a-generation chance to change the tax code to slash taxes for the richest few, Koch got it.

The same goes for Koch helping to pack the supreme court, which Charles flagged as another top priority for his network of billionaires.

Koch has touted the help of Leonard Leo, who sits at the helm of a dark money operation that has spent more than $250m to change the makeup of the federal and state courts through the secretive funding of groups like the Judicial Crisis Network. Leo recently bragged to donors that America is on the precipice of a revolution to roll back nearly a century of legal precedents.

If successful that revolution would mark a return to the robber-baron era of limited democratic control over corporations, which Koch fueled in innumerable ways. But with the devastating climate changes under way, more is at stake than the chains he and Leo want to put on the power of American democracy.

We are in a continuing constitutional crisis, where the big money of a tiny few is swamping the voices of most Americans. And Charles Koch helped make that.

Lisa Graves is the former chief counsel for nominations on the US Senate judiciary committee and is the founder of the new watchdog group True North Research, where she manages the new clearinghouse website about Charles Koch, KochDocs.org

Link:
Love the billionaire bucks flooding US 2020 elections? Thank Charles Koch - The Guardian

It won't get much media attention, but there was a Republican presidential caucus in Iowa tonight, too, and it was as dramatic as it was predictable: President Donald Trump absolutely clobbered primary opponents Bill Weld and Joe Walsh.

The most persistently unpopular president since the end of World War II was at a Castro-like 97 percent of the vote with 79 percent of precincts reporting, while Weld and Walsh were at 1.3 percent and 1.2 percent, respectively. This race has never been close, but man, that's not close.

Weld, a former Republican National Convention keynoter and twice-elected governor of Massachusetts who ran in 2016 as the vice presidential nominee of the Libertarian Party, stressed in his closing argument to Iowa voters his limited-government bonafides.

"I'm running to offer the opportunity to elect a president who actually believes in the principles of limited government, free and fair markets, and economic opportunity for all. Principles that, until recently, were the trademarks of a great political party," Weld wrote. "I don't believe trillion-dollar deficits are okay. I believe in markets, not trade wars.We believe in the Rule of Law, and that it applies to everyone, including the President. We believe the Constitution means what it says, rather than scoffing at its limits on the power of presidents and the federal government. And we believe the purpose of foreign policy and our military is to make us safer."

Walsh, who served one term in the House from nearby Illinois as a Tea Partier and then transitioned to (and then out of) conservative talk radio, has been emphasizing the president's poor character, though he also foregrounds issues such as free trade, spending cuts, gun rights, and criminal justice reform. "If you want four more years of a president who wakes up every morning and makes every day about himself," Walsh said in Ankeny, Iowa today, "then vote for Donald Trump." The crowd booed him out of the room.

There is no demonstrated market for limited-government opposition to Trump within the modern GOP. Trump's approval rating among Republicans, as measured every couple of weeks by Gallup, has not dipped below 87 percent since December 2018. He's been up by more than 80 percentage points among GOP primary voters in national polls for most of the race.

The fundraising numbers for the challengers are, if anything, even worse. Fourth quarter campaign finance results were announced at the end of January, and they were brutal: $411,000 for Weld, $245,000 for Walsh, $45.98 million for Trump. Add the $72.3 million raised in the last three months of 2019 by the Republican National Committeewhich, remember, effected an unprecedented merger with the Trump campaign in December 2018plus a couple of other big-money operations, and the incumbent is outraising the competition combined by a ratio of more than 230 to 1.

Weld and Walsh combined failed to raise as much in the 4th quarter as Steve Bullock, John Delaney, Michael Bennet, Marianne Williamson, Deval Patrick, Beto O'Rourke, and several other Democratic presidential candidates, many of whom have dropped out.

Worse even still, the ankle-biters have been spending what funds they raise, which means that the results they produced tonight, and whatever they gin up in New Hampshire next week, represent something close to maximum effort. Weld had just $37,000 in the bank at the end of 2019, Walsh just under $10,000, compared to Trump's war chest of $195 million. And the Trump-run GOP has been canceling primaries across the country.

Weld is more competitive in New Hampshire, where he owns one home and is close to his base of operations in Boston. He is hoping for a Pat Buchanan-style 1992 surprise, but runs the risk of having a 1972 Pete McCloskey loss as a best-case scenario.

Read the rest here:
Donald Trump Stomps Bill Weld and Joe Walsh in Iowa - Reason

Progress has been made on many important issues and we have before us a significant number of points of convergence, said the head of the UN Support Mission in Libya, UNSMIL. Is this complete? Certainly not, and that is why we are still working on refining our basic draft and on bridging the gap on a few points of divergencethat still exist between the two delegations.

The talks in the Swiss city form part of a renewed international push for peace in the oil-rich North African country.

In early January, Russian and Turkish Presidents Vladmir Putin and Recep Tayyip Erdogan secured a truce agreement between the UN-recognized Government of National Accord (GNA) and the self-styled Libyan National Army (LNA) - led by commander Khalifa Haftar, who laid siege to Tripoli last April.

Although the truce had been accepted by both sides, Mr. Salam noted earlier in the week that an international arms embargo on Libya has been broken incessantly since 2011, with evidence of increasing foreign interference in the form of weapons and fighters.

During these talks, the negotiators would be certainly helped by more calm on the fronts and by the absence of any act - provocative act - on the military side, the UN official said on Thursday, in reference to ongoing clashes.

While remaining positive about the meetings this week, which precedes separate discussions on the economic aspects of the ceasefire, due to begin on 9 February in Cairo, with political talks on 26 February - also at the UN in Geneva - Mr Salam spoke frankly about the number of difficult issues facing both delegations.

What do you do with the heavy weaponry? How (best) to allow the internally displaced persons to go back to their homes? How to re-civilianize the areas that have been basically a theatre of war? How do you deal with the armed groups, the monitoring of the ceasefire; who should monitor the ceasefire?

Although the ongoing ceasefire talks have not taken place face-to-face so far, this is the least of Mr. Salam concerns, he insisted.

I didnt come to Geneva for a photo opportunity of two people shaking hands, thats not my objective. My goal is to reach an agreement. And if it turns out that it is easier to do this by shuttling between the two (delegations), I have no problem with that. The important thing is the agreement.

UNSMIL on Thursday condemned the destruction of theZawit Bin Issa Sufi shrine,in the city of Sirte, which reportedly took place on Tuesday,as well asthe reported arrest ofa number of Sufis in Sirte.

According to some news reports, the destruction was carried out by members of an armed group who partly demolished the building, reportedly founded in 1930. Sufism is a branch of Islam, rooting in mysticism.

In a statement, theMission recalledthat "the incidents appear to violate the right to freedom of religion or belief and the rightnot to be subjected to arbitrary arrest and detention.

"The destruction of religious shrines is also prohibited by international humanitarian law, and intentional attacks on religious monuments constitute war crimes. UNSMIL calls on the authorities, in control of the city of Sirte,to investigate and bring the perpetrators to justice."

Link:
'Convergence' over lasting Libya ceasefire, as negotiator urges against 'provocative' acts - UN News

In Abu Grein, on Libyas frontline, the militiamens scars read like a rollcall of the wars that have roiled the country since the fall of Muammar Gaddafi in 2011. One of the fighters, a truck driver named Muhammad, removes his cap to reveal a balding pate etched with shrapnel gashes. From Daish, he says, referring to a 2016 battle he fought against Islamic State in the Libyan city of Sirte.

Now, he says, yet another foe has captured Sirte: rebel militias under the command of a 76-year-old aspiring strongman named Khalifa Haftar. Last Sunday, these militias attacked Muhammad and his men, killing 11 of them, ignoring a shaky truce in a long-running war that started last April with a blitz on the Libyan capital by Haftars forces.

Far from the quick victory Haftar promised, it has been a drawn-out slog that has left more than 2,000 dead

A former army general under Gaddafi who defected in the 1980s and became a CIA asset, Haftar launched his invasion of Tripoli after years of war in eastern Libya, where he built up power. In attacking the weak, internationally recognised Government of National Accord (GNA) in the capital, he claimed he was going to unify the country and put an end to militias. To be sure, the GNA has been unpopular due to its administrative ineptitude and deference to corrupt militias. But a promising UN-brokered process was underway to replace that government and address the militia menace before Haftars offensive scuttled it.

An abiding quest for power has fuelled Haftars rise. When I met him in 2014, he told me even then of his plans to invade Tripoli, promising to eliminate Islamists of all shades through imprisonment, exile or death. In pursuing his ambitions, he has deployed brutal tactics. In 2015, his allied militias in Benghazi admitted to me that they had carried out summary executions and stoked tribal divisions. One of his lieutenants faces a standing arrest warrant for war crimes; Haftar responded to this by promoting him.

The war he launched in Tripoli has caused misgivings among his supporters. Far from the quick victory he promised, it has been a drawn-out slog that has left more than 2,000 dead, including hundreds of civilians, and displaced hundreds of thousands. Most alarmingly, the conflict has drawn in outside powers who have sustained it with hi-tech weaponry all in contravention of a UN arms embargo.

On Haftars side is a bloc of authoritarian and anti-Islamist Arab states: the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia. The Emirates role has been especially destructive its drones and fixed-wing aircraft have conducted hundreds of strikes, according to the United Nations, causing scores of civilian deaths. French support is also key. Driven by a misplaced zeal for Haftars virtues as a counterterrorist and stabiliser, Paris has been sending him clandestine military aid for several years.

Added to this are the hundreds of Russian mercenaries who arrived at the Tripoli front last September, helping Haftar break the stalemate. While Moscow is not firmly wedded to the general, its strategy seems to be to egg him on and then reel him in, in order to shape a settlement to its liking. But that has not gone entirely to plan; last month, he walked out of a ceasefire meeting convened by Moscow.

On the other side is Turkey, whose Islamist-led government has long been at odds with the Emirati-led bloc. Not long after Haftars attack, Turkey dispatched armed drones of its own to the GNA and in recent weeks it has sent thousands of Syrian mercenaries, along with Turkish intelligence personnel, air defence systems and artillery. But this came at a cost: Turkeys president, Recep Tayyip Erdoan, is providing this new round of aid only after signing an accord with the GNA that enables Turkey to extend its exclusive economic zone in the eastern Mediterranean.

A much-hyped international summit hosted by the German government took place earlier this month, but it failed to formalise a ceasefire Haftar effectively spurned the talks. And indeed, in recent days, emboldened by the increased flow of Emirati arms, he has effectively restarted the war, bombing Tripolis airport and civilian areas and blockading oil ports, which has caused production to drop dramatically and worsened the misery of Libyans. Its part of a creeping escalation that could embroil the capital in even more bloodshed.

Averting this catastrophe demands a greater role from the one power that might be able to rein in Haftar. Haftar will not accept a ceasefire unless America twists his ear, a GNA commander told me. That may well be right. Washington needs to jettison its tacit and sometimes explicit support for Haftar, epitomised in a phone call in April 2019 by Donald Trump to the general endorsing his attack on Tripoli.

While that enthusiasm has somewhat cooled because of Haftars alliance with the Russians, theres still more that the US can do, especially in areas where Washington has unique leverage. These include halting Haftars illegal effort to unilaterally sell oil on the global market, getting the Emirates to stop arming his forces, and backing a UN security council ceasefire resolution that would include strong provisions against embargo violators and human rights abusers.

In the meantime, its Libyans who suffer: from the constant fear of shelling or air strikes, 16-hour blackouts and the sense that their fates are being decided from abroad. Libyas like a cake, the mayor of Yefren, a town in Libyas western mountains, told me last month. Everybody wants a bite.

Frederic Wehrey is a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and author of The Burning Shores: Inside the Battle for the New Libya

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Libyas bloodshed will continue unless foreign powers stop backing Khalifa Haftar - The Guardian

Italian anti-organised crime and special operations police units have seized a freighter and are investigating whether it was used for arms smuggling after a sailor offered information on the role he said the ship played in the illegal arms trade between Turkey and Libya, Italian newspaper Il Secolo XIX reported.

The Lebanese-registered BANA had stopped at the port of Messina in Genoa, northwest Italy, for technical checks when the 25-year-old sailor took images showing weapons that he said he had taken in the ships cargo hold, the newspaper said.

Turkey is the main backer of Libyas U.N.-recognised Government of National Accord, and its shipments of armoured vehicles and drones have helped the Tripoli-based government withstand an offensive launched last April by the eastern-based Libyan National Army (LNA).

Ankara signed a military memorandum agreeing to the deployment of Turkish troops to support Tripoli in November, and both the LNAs attacks and Turkish support have escalated since then.

The French aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle spotted the BANA in late January headed toward Tripoli under escort by a Turkish frigate.

The United Nations imposed an arms embargo on Libya, which has seen a string of internal conflicts since its former dictator, Muammar Gadaffi, was overthrown in 2011.

Egypt has long accused Turkey of breaking the embargo, but the Egyptian-backed LNA has also received military support from Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Russia, according to reports.

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Italy seizes freighter accused of smuggling Turkish arms to Libya - Ahval