Dicey Doug Ducey, the man hired by Koch Industries to manage their Southwest subsidiary formerly known as the state of Arizona (h/t Charles Piece), now known as “Kochtopia,” shamelessly appointed Kirk Adams, a confessed “Kochtopus” operative as his chief of staff this week.
What’s next, a staff position for Sean Noble, the “Kochtopus” money laundering bag man as well? Or does that not pay him well enough?
The Arizona Republic glosses over the details in Ducey taps former House speaker to lead staff:
During his time in the Legislature, Kirk Adams was a prime sponsor of legislation that included a wide-ranging package of business tax cuts corporate welfare tax giveaways. Those reductions are still phasing in.
That would be the same corporate welfare tax giveaways that have produced the current $52o million budget deficit this year, and an estimated $1 billion deficit next year. Brewer fails to meet balanced-budget promise: “Arizona faces a $520 million budget shortfall for this fiscal year and a $1 billion shortfall next fiscal year on a $9 billion budget.”
Long-time readers will remember that I dubbed Kirk Adams during his tenure as Speaker of the House “Captain Kool-Aid” because he was a true believer in faith based supply-side “trickle down” GOP economics, just like Dicey Doug Ducey. The GOP’s double dose of poison to kill Arizona.
Adams and Ducey worked together [anti-Prop. 204] to defeat an education sales tax in 2012. While Ducey led the campaign against the measure, Adams was president of a political non-profit corporation, Americans for Responsible Leadership, that funneled nearly $1 million of money from undisclosed donors into the effort to crater the tax.
The money was widely believed to have come from the Koch brothers’ network through consultant Sean Noble.
Oh, this corrupt politician was far dirtier than that. I posted at length about Americans for Responsible Leadership’s activities in California at the time. Here is just a brief refresher. Americans for Responsible Leadership – a Koch brothers ‘dark money’ front group:
Americans for Responsible Leadership’s $11 million went to the Small Business Action Committee PAC two weeks ago.
That group opposes California’s Proposition 30, a measure being pushed by Gov. Jerry Brown to impose a temporary income tax hike on those earning more than $250,000 a year along with a quarter-cent sales tax. It also supports Proposition 32 to ban corporate and labor donations to candidates.
* * *
Papers filed with the Arizona Corporation Commission list Robert Graham and Eric Wnuck as incorporators.
Graham owns RG Capital, a Scottsdale-based investment advisory firm. [He is currently chairman of the Arizona Republican Party.]
Wnuck was an unsuccessful candidate for Congress.
State Treasurer Doug Ducey, who is heading the anti-204 effort, said the current board also includes Kirk Adams, the former speaker of the Arizona House and, like Wnuck, an unsuccessful congressional candidate.
Ducey dismissed questions of whether Arizona voters are entitled to know who provided the $750,000 to his campaign. He said all he and the voters need to know is that the cash came from Americans for Responsible Leadership.
“If you want more detailed information beyond that, that really is a question for Americans for Responsible Leadership,” Ducey said.
The California Fair Political Practices Commission was not as cavalier and dismissive as was Dicey Doug Ducey:
Americans for Responsible Leadership, the Arizona non-profit corporation that made an anonymous $11 million donation to a California campaign committee, today sent a letter declaring itself to be the intermediary and not the true source of the contribution. It identified the true source of the contribution as Americans for Job Security, through a second intermediary, The Center to Protect Patient Rights. Under California law, the failure to disclose this initially was campaign money laundering. At $11 million, this is the largest contribution ever disclosed as campaign money laundering in California history.
And in an enforcement action by the FPPC:
Americans for Responsible Leadership and Center to Protect Patients Rights. On October 17, 2013, the Fair Political Practices Commission (“Commission”), in closed session, approved a civil settlement for the FPPC case Americans for Responsible Leadership (ARL) and Center to Protect Patient’s Rights (CPPR), imposing a penalty in the amount of $1,000,000 for two counts (only one count applicable to ARL) of making a contribution in the name of another to the Small Business Action Committee (SBAC) and to the California Future Fund (CFF). Following the Commission’s approval, the Enforcement Division contacted SBAC and CFF and requested that they disgorge the contributions received, to the General Fund of the State of California, pursuant to Government Code section 85701. On January 24, 2014, the Enforcement Division entered into stipulated civil judgments, with SBAC and CFF for full payment of the required disgorgement. Additionally, the FPPC received a payment of $300,000 from SBAC towards their obligation. As required by law, the funds will be turned over to the General Fund of the State of California in connection with this matter.
More recently, Adams founded Prosper Inc., another “Kochtopus” front group that got money from Arizona Public Service Co. and other Carbon Monopoly dark money contributors to fight net- metering and solar energy policies. I posted about this at length as well. A sampling, ‘Kochtopus’ dark money and Arizona solar energy.
Dicey Doug Ducey is turning Arizona into “Kochtopia.” Hiring a money laundering conduit for the “Kochtopus” as his chief of staff is an inauspicious beginning for Dicey Doug Ducey, and is confirmation that he is lacking any moral character and judgment.
Where is The Republic’s Laurie Roberts clutching her pearls over the obscenity of it all after she tried to claim dark money campaign financing as her issue during the campaign? Or is it that now a Republican is governor, everything is copacetic?
The hub of “Kochtopus” organizations operates in the state of Maricopa, and has been allowed to engage in political corruption without fear of the feckless GOP-friendly political media in Arizona. I have said for years that the “Kochtopus” needs to be torn up by its roots and the ground salted so that it can never grow back again.
It’s time that Arizonans start rooting out the GOP culture of corruption in Arizona.
Right now we have one political party, the Republicans, that have gone all in with the oligarchy. They are going to do everything they can to achieve total power, including changing the electoral college rules in several states. On the other hand, we have a faux party, the Democrats, that don’t have a clue. The Kochs of the world know what they want, which is to not pay taxes and to not get regulated. What do Democrats want? Hard to say.
I had heard about this earlier in the week, but you have added more details that make it even more depressing.
Was Kirk Adams Speaker of the House when SB 1070 and HB 2281 (MAS) were passed?
It is mind-boggling the enormous details that the mainstream media leave out of their reports. As far as I know, the original Graham/Adams money laundering story was not reported by any mainstream Arizona media outlet– only here.
I agree with AZTerritory.
The people of arizona voted for him. You better figure out why or wait for the hispanic vote to overwhelm them, assuming the democratic party of arizona hasn’t discouraged them by running rich old white men on their ego trips!
These guys do make the Russian oligarchs look like rank pikers by comparison.