By Kelleigh Nelson
When a government is dependent upon bankers for money, they and not the leaders of the government control the situation, since the hand that gives is above the hand that takes…Money has no motherland; financiers are without patriotism and without decency; their sole object is gain. Napoleon Bonaparte, 1815
Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction. Blaise Pascal, French mathematician
Only crime and the criminal, it is true, confront us with the perplexity of radical evil; but only the hypocrite is really rotten to the core. Hannah Arendt
Motivated mainly by ego, Mike Pence and his wife Karen craved the upper echelons of political power. Pence always looked to those with money and power who could advance his political goals. One of them was his good friend, David McIntosh, a well-known Trump hater who served as executive director of Vice President Dan Quayle‘s and Bush’s Council for Competitiveness. But McIntosh was only the beginning, the DeVos and Koch organizations were the financiers with serious money.
Club for Growth
McIntosh, the pro-amnesty president of Club for Growth (CFG), left his congressional seat to seek the governorship of Indiana in 2000 which opened the door for Pence to run for Indiana’s 6th district. McIntosh introduced Pence to the chairman of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Van Smith, who ran a manufacturing and real estate empire from headquarters in Muncie and could help fund Pence. After years of being on Indiana radio, Pence was well-known and Van Smith encouraged his run. Smith worked with Pence and even helped him achieve the gubernatorial nomination.
Vice Chairman of the Chamber of Commerce, Kelly Stanley was Pence’s fund raiser for his 2000 election to Congress. (As Lou Dobbs often stated, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce promotes globalism.)
In 2012, Pence scheduled a fund raiser with GOP Governor-elect Nikki Haley and she ultimately became Trump’s UN Ambassador. Haley collaborated closely with VP Pence during her tenure as Trump’s ambassador to the United Nations. As head of the transition team staffing the Trump Administration, Pence likely is largely responsible for NeverTrumper Haley gaining the sensitive and high-profile post when a South Carolina business friend asked Trump to appoint Haley so their more conservative Lt. Governor could take over. An indicator of the tight connection between Pence and Haley is that in their gubernatorial campaigns in Indiana and South Carolina, they shared the same principal campaign consultant, the young Georgian Nick Ayers.
The Club had been created with the aid of the Koch brothers’ political machine and advised about 1,500 donors, a number of whom were Wall Street investors. They sent checks to the organization.
CFG had financed Pence’s good friend Jeff Flake for his first term in Congress. Flake stated that every two weeks as much as $15K in checks arrived at his doorstep from people he didn’t know. This was when founder Stephen Moore was the president and was so disinterested in social issues that he banned the word “abortion” at club meetings. (Anti-gunner Pat Toomey succeeded Moore as president.)
After Pence appeared for inspection, he was selected to be one of ten newcomers favored by the club. Pence collected a bit more than $3,100 from a CFG account and an additional $62,400 in checks forwarded to him by the club. Others filled his coffers with more than $1 million. His list of contributors included Amway heir Dick DeVos and J. Patrick Rooney of the Golden Rule Financial insurance company.
Pence followed CFG’s open global markets and free trade agreements. After he spoke at the 2000 RNC for Bush/Cheney, Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert, now a convicted felon, pro-amnesty majority leader Dick Armey and Republican whip Tom Delay attended rallies in Indiana to boost Pence. Pence adopted Armey as a mentor.
Dick and Betsy DeVos
Pence was appealing to many organizations, but especially to the DeVos Family Foundation which was built on the Amway home products company by Dick’s father, Richard. Betsy’s father was Edgar Prince and her brother is Erik Prince, founder of the private military company Blackwater USA. Prince’s private military force had a $1 billion contract to provide services in Iraq. It billed the US taxpayers roughly $450K per year per man deployed in country, which was about six times the amount paid to an American soldier. Privatization in action…transferring government function to businesses.
Erik is the Vice President of The Prince Foundation founded by his parents, Edgar and Elsa Prince. They have donated millions of dollars to alleged American conservative Christian groups as Alliance Defense Fund, Council for National Policy, Family Research Council, Focus on the Family, Promise Keepers and American Family Association.
Betsy DeVos is known for her support for school choice, school voucher programs, and charter schools. Columnist Diane Kepus researched Betsy DeVos and knew she would be a disaster; her two articles on DeVos are well worth your time, Link and Link.
What most people don’t realize is that when one penny of federal tax dollars (which is given to the states) goes to support a religious, private, or home school child via choice or vouchers, all the federal regulations go with those funds.
In August of 1933, Dr. J. Gresham Machen, gave the speech, The Necessity of the Christian School. He was Professor of New Testament in Westminster Theological Seminary, Philadelphia, Pa. The lecture was given at the Educational Convention held in Chicago under the auspices of the National Union of Christian Schools. Here is a portion of what he said:
Every lover of human freedom ought to oppose with all his might the giving of Federal aid to the schools of this country; for Federal aid in the long run inevitably means Federal control, and Federal control means control by a centralized and irresponsible bureaucracy, and control by such a bureaucracy means the death of everything that might make this country great. Against this soul-killing collectivism in education, the Christian school, like the private school, stands as an emphatic protest.
Pence’s devoted financier, Betsy DeVos was nominated after Michelle Rhee was dropped. DeVos was lauded for Education Secretary by Jeb Bush as she sat on the board of his Foundation of Excellence in Education which promoted common core.
Diane Kepus’ fears were founded. Mike Pence played an important role in the confirmation of Betsy DeVos for Education Secretary. Amid protests from Democratic critics and teachers’ unions that DeVos, a billionaire charter school supporter with no public-school experience, was unqualified for the position, the Senate deadlocked in a 50-50 tie. Republican Senators Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska joined their Democratic colleagues in voting against DeVos. Normally we wouldn’t laud their votes, but this time they were right. On February 7, 2017, Vice President Pence cast the historic tie-breaking vote to confirm her, the first-time a vice president has been called on to break a tie in a cabinet nomination.
Betsy’s brother Erik Prince had long been a Pence backer. Betsy and Dick DeVos were impressed by Pence’s support for their pet project of charter schools. One wonders if Pence and DeVos back American tax-funded charters by Islamic Imam Fethullah Gulen, Rudolph Steiner’s Anthroposophical Waldorf Schools, massively growing in China, and Communist Chinese charter schools. Chinese investors are putting millions into Florida Chinese charters.
Pence compensated one of his expansive financiers with a cabinet position in the Trump administration…a job where she kept President Carter’s cabinet level Education Department as rotten as it has been since its creation. In 1867, President Andrew Johnson signed legislation creating the first Department of Education. Its main purpose was to collect information and statistics about the nation’s schools. By 1880 John Dewey was promoting his progressive education turning students into functional illiterates.
Koch Brother Organizations
For years, Pence has been a loyal political ally of the biggest GOP dark money donors. He is a major beneficiary of Koch family money. The Koch organizations did not endorse, nor did they fund Trump in 2016, but they love Pence. Charles Koch once likened the contest between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton to being asked to choose cancer or a heart attack.
A steady flow of Koch money has filled Pence’s campaign coffers and he has employed many former Koch staffers in his political offices. Koch Industries and Koch Enterprises became top donors during Pence’s Congressional career. Pence’s close friend, Kellyanne Conway is one of many people who has worked for both Pence and Koch-affiliated groups. As Governor of Indiana, Pence hired Koch Industry’s then-communications director, Matt Lloyd, to work for him. Lloyd was a longtime Pence staffer in Congress.
Pence’s long-time adviser and former chief of staff, Mark Short was president of Koch’s Freedom Partners Chamber of Commerce from 2011 to 2016. Short was previously a Senior Fellow at the Miller Center of Public Affairs, a CNN contributor, as well as Chief of Staff to Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison and the House Republican Conference.
Peter Navarro told us the truth about Marc Short. He said, “Marc Short, VP Pence’s Chief of Staff, worked with Pence in allowing the Big Steal to move forward – He’s “not a good guy.”
In June of 2017, 16 of 23 senior white house officials had ties to the Koch brothers, including Reince Priebus, Kellyanne Conway, Jeff Sessions, Mick Mulvaney, Rob Porter and Don McGahn. Even Treasury Secretary Mnuchin helped them out with a change in tax laws. The Trump administration was packed full of Koch operatives, brought in by their water boy, Mike Pence. Here is a shocking list of the Trump transition team Koch beneficiaries.
Heritage Foundation
In 1991, Pence became president of the Indiana Policy Review Foundation (IPRF), which is part of the State Policy Network. Link They are satellite affiliates of the Heritage Foundation whose goals and interests are similar to the Koch’s. The IPRF was a small group back when Pence was president, but in the years since it has amassed an enormous budget thanks in great part to the largess of the Koch network of donors.
Koch money massively funds the Federalist Society and they chose the list of names for Trump appointments to the Supreme Court. Link Heritage Foundation also provided a list of “conservative” names to Trump for Supreme Court Justices, and Heritage has received funding from organizations connected to the Koch brothers. In 2012, the Heritage Foundation received $650,000 from the Claude R. Lambe Foundation, which was one of the Koch Family Foundations before it closed in 2013. The Lambe Foundation contributed at least $4.8 million to the Heritage Foundation between 1998 and 2012.
Heritage Foundation is controlled-opposition, and has received funding from Koch’s Donors Trust and Donors Capital Fund, including $53,300 in 2010 and $69,850 in 2012. The Koch brothers have donated millions of dollars to Donors Trust through the Knowledge and Progress Fund.
Kochs are key funders of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and the State Policy Network (SPN). ALEC was founded by Heritage Foundation’s first president, Paul Weyrich. Stephen Moore, founder of Club for Growth is on the board of ALEC because like the Kochs, and ALEC, they are all promoting another constitutional convention that would ultimately destroy our 1787 Constitution.
Pence spoke at the ALEC meeting in Indianapolis in the summer of 2016 and met with the Kochs in Denver in 2017.
David Koch was on the board of Trustees of Rockefeller University. He was also on the board of Earth watch Institute, an environmental, sustainability, Agenda 21 group and the board of the globalist new age Aspen Institute formerly headed by now deceased new age environmentalist Maurice Strong. Strong was the driving force behind the birth and imposition of UN Agenda 21.
Stem-cell research is supported by the Kochs and David also signed onto an amicus brief for the supreme court supporting gay rights and gay marriage. Running as the Libertarian Party vice presidential candidate in 1980, David Koch backed a platform calling for the full legalization of abortion.
Heritage Foundation has acquired millions in funding by other pro-abortion advocates, besides the Koch Foundation. Richard Mellon Scaife donated over $30 million and took out a full-page WSJ ad in 2004 claiming Americans should be pleased to give tax dollars to Planned Parenthood.
Shelby and Kathryn Davis gave millions to Heritage. Kathryn was a longtime advocate of women’s rights through the League of Women’s Voters and Planned Parenthood, a committed environmentalist who also endorsed global education initiatives. Davis was a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a Wellesley College trustee for 18 years.
Mike Pence has now joined Heritage as a “distinguished visiting fellow.”
Koch Campaign for Amnesty
The billionaire Koch brothers campaign for amnesty and cheap labor shows they are open border, mass immigration, and mass amnesty despite opposition from the American people. Koch ads pushed amnesty by using the words of the D.C. political establishment, which is unified not only on mass immigration, but also on endless free trade, and foreign interventionism. House Speaker Paul Ryan was with them. Koch money even supported Andrew Cuomo as Governor of New York, who had publicly stated, “America has never been great.”
A campaign launched by Freedom Partners Chamber of Commerce, Americans for Prosperity and the LIBRE Initiative, all groups funded by Koch brothers, consisted of advertisements, lobbying efforts and grassroots organization. This was a multi-year, multi-million-dollar campaign to tout free trade and oppose Trump’s tariffs, and to defy our President’s goals.
In a January 2018 White House bi-partisan immigration meeting with Trump, Pence declined to support Trump’s plan to change the law so that immigration rules help Americans, and he instead touted a quick amnesty for ‘DACA’ illegals. Pence sided with his pro-immigration buddies Flake and Ryan rather than with President Trump.
Jeff Flake and other pro-amnesty Senators were there by invitation to urge the administration to cave to the big business lobby, which wants an expansive amnesty in which DACA illegal aliens are given work permits so that wages can be kept stagnant, rather than rising for Americans. All these pro-immigration Senators were brought into DACA discussions with Trump by Vice President Mike Pence, an ally of the pro-mass immigration, and pro-Constitutional Convention GOP mega-donors, the Koch brothers. Charles Koch is now attempting to get Republicans to work together with Democrats to get amnesty passed for the millions of illegal aliens in America.
And if you still think Koch organizations are conservative, the Charles Koch Foundation has partnered with Soros’s Open Society Foundations to launch a foreign policy think tank.
Conclusion
For all his piety, Pence doesn’t seem to be bothered by the devils who finance him.
© 2021 Kelleigh Nelson – All Rights Reserved
E-Mail Kelleigh Nelson: proverbs133@bellsouth.net
