[EL] Adelson

[Jeff Hauser]

Here's an excerpt from the New Yorker--can you tell me which federal
investigations didn't actually occur?

"In the mid-nineties, the Justice Department filed two lawsuits against
Koch Industries, claiming that it was responsible for more than three
hundred oil spills, which had released an estimated three million gallons
of oil into lakes and rivers. The penalty was potentially as high as two
hundred and fourteen million dollars*. *In a settlement, Koch Industries
paid a record thirty-million-dollar civil fine, and agreed to spend five
million dollars on environmental projects.

In 1999, a jury found Koch Industries guilty of negligence and malice in
the deaths of two Texas teen-agers in an explosion that resulted from a
leaky underground butane pipeline. (In 2001, the company paid an
undisclosed settlement.) And in the final months of the Clinton Presidency
the Justice Department levelled a ninety-seven-count indictment against the
company, for covering up the discharge of ninety-one tons of benzene, a
carcinogen, from its refinery in Corpus Christi, Texas. The company was
liable for three hundred and fifty million dollars in fines, and four Koch
employees faced up to thirty-five years in prison. The Koch Petroleum Group
eventually pleaded guilty to one criminal charge of covering up
environmental violations, including the falsification of documents, and
paid a twenty-million-dollar fine. David Uhlmann, a career prosecutor who,
at the time, headed the environmental-crimes section at the Justice
Department, described the suit as “one of the most significant cases ever
brought under the Clean Air Act.” He added, “Environmental crimes are
almost always motivated by economics and arrogance, and in the Koch case
there was a healthy dose of both.”

Read more
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/08/30/100830fa_fact_mayer#ixzz1rpSzkqfk


On Thu, Apr 12, 2012 at 7:56 AM, Lowenstein, Daniel <lowenstein at law.ucla.edu
> wrote:

>        So far as I can tell, the Koch Brothers have been the target of one
> of the largest scale and pernicious smear campaigns in American history.
>
>             Best,
>
>             Daniel H. Lowenstein
>             Director, Center for the Liberal Arts and Free Institutions
> (CLAFI)
>             UCLA Law School
>             405 Hilgard
>             Los Angeles, California 90095-1476
>             310-825-5148
>
>
> ________________________________
> From: Jeff Hauser [jeffhauser at gmail.com]
> Sent: Thursday, April 12, 2012 4:15 AM
> To: Lowenstein, Daniel
> Cc: Volokh, Eugene; law-election at uci.edu
> Subject: Re: [EL] Adelson
>
> Daniel, are you being serious? Fine, consider substituting the Koch
> Brothers, who have had to settle a variety of past investigations and may
> have one (or more) ongoing now as well:
> http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/envoy/bloomberg-investigation-alleges-koch-subsidiaries-paid-bribes-sold-190408559.html
>
> And Adelson went big without Newt in the race in 2008 and may well hit
> $100M in 2012 post-Newt.
>
> On Thu, Apr 12, 2012 at 12:21 AM, Lowenstein, Daniel <
> lowenstein at law.ucla.edu<mailto:lowenstein at law.ucla.edu>> wrote:
>      What does it suggest when a group of election law specialists spend a
> day debating abuses that might possibly arise from large contributions to a
> presidential candidate by an individual who might be the subject of a
> federal investigation, without noting that the candidate in question will
> not be elected president and never had more than the most remote prospect
> of being elected president?
>
>        My answer is, it suggests a discipline preoccupied with
> abstractions and too often out of touch with political reality.
>
>            Best,
>
>            Daniel H. Lowenstein
>            Director, Center for the Liberal Arts and Free Institutions
> (CLAFI)
>            UCLA Law School
>            405 Hilgard
>            Los Angeles, California 90095-1476
>             310-825-5148<tel:310-825-5148>
>
>
>
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>
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