The rich have as much right to free speech as anyone else

Great takedown at Breitbart by Wynton Hall of Thomas B, Edsall's NYT op-ed trying to make it look like the Koch brothers are up to something sinister by putting their money where their mouths are:

Indeed, the left’s rush to deem corporate money in political thought as legally actionable is one progressives would do well to quash.

Case in point: progressive New York Times op-ed writer Thomas B. Edsall’s banal and one-sided screed against Karl Rove and the Koch Brothers, those reliable boogeymen of liberal nightmares. In a breathless Wednesday piece titled “Karl Rove, the Koch Brothers and the End of Political Transparency,” Edsall served up heaping doses of phony outrage over the perfectly legal practice of conservative 501 (c)(4) social welfare organizations receiving anonymous donations.

“The financial resources of the anonymous donors to Crossroads are striking, according to the organization’s 990 filing,” wrote Edsall. “Among the donors were 53 who contributed at least $1 million. Even more generously, one donor gave $22.5 million, another gave $18 million, and two gave $10 million each.” 

After dragging readers through a tedious gauntlet of 501 (c)(4) regulatory compliance verbiage, replete with percentages of allowable political activity, Edsall excitedly raises the specter that groups like Americans for Tax Reform may have engaged in two percent more political spending than is permissible before begrudgingly conceding: “I asked a number of experts in money and elections about the discrepancy and got conflicting answers.”

Furthermore, Edsall asserts that the “labyrinthine secrecy characteristic of the $400 million network of 17 interlocking advocacy groups that coexist under the aegis of the Koch brothers” has created a climate wherein “a kind of lawlessness prevails that is incompatible with the goals of democracy.”

Wowzers.

Yet nowhere in Edsall’s 2,300-word diatribe does he mention any of the myriad progressive 501 (c)(4) groups, such as Center for American Progress, or the “labyrinthine secrecy” that shrouded Big Labor’s $4.4 billion in political spending between 2005 and 2011.

Moreover, as Edsall himself noted in March, the 1958 N.A.A.C.P. v. Alabama and the 1995McIntyre v. Ohio Elections Commission rulings upheld anonymity as a legitimate means of political activism.

Hall winds up his piece with a reminder of possible unintended consequences of the bill the Freedom-Haters tried to push through the Senate.  Favorite venues for spouting their snark, such as SNL, could be on the chopping block.