in politics can democracy survive special interest campaign spending we're going to take a look at that on this edition of politicking. i the public taking on larry king and on today's show a square nominated filmmaker called deal his new documentary is citizen koch it investigates the money behind the tea party traces the impact of unlimited election spending by corporations and billionaires it's a controversial look at private donors version's the voting public and call joins us from new york what was the impetus for citizen cope. well you know larry i guess after president obama was elected one thing that we all

observed i think was a was an outpouring there was the rise of the tea party and the public discourse around the most important issues that affect us every single day had turned ugly you know i mean that's the time we need a lot more larry king's out there but instead we're getting a lot of this fox news stuff and we might my partner and i t.l.'s and we're interested investigating where all this betrayal was coming from you know they didn't even give the president a chance you know you just get on with a that you co-produced with michael moore's fahrenheit nine one nine eleven bowling for columbine capitalism a love story how come michael was involved in this is seems right up his alley. yeah it is right up his alley boy i wish that you know. michael's only one person he does so much good around here. this is a film that we made and we've gotten quite a bit of support i have to say from michael moore he played it his film festival

he's been he's been giving us a lot of support along the way and really strongly believes that this is an important issue of the day and something that people should pay attention to in fact people are paying attention to it if you think about it it's one of the main issues that unites people on the left and on the right people think there's too much money being spent on elections why did you call it was. well here's the thing you know. the citizens united decision was handed down in january of two thousand and ten and that decision made it a lot easier for corporations and then as we later learned also billionaires are the wealthiest americans to spend money on elections corporations could now spend money out of their out of their general treasuries through super pacs and same thing applied to billionaires and a lot of these political non-profits like the koch backed and koch funded americans for prosperity so you know we felt like there's so much emphasis with this election

spending on shaping the message and shaping the way we understand issues and. sending a message to candidates that if they step out of line they're either going to face money spent against them or they're not going to get any support at all and so you know it in a way it was a bit of a call back to the film citizen kane which is all about shaping a message you know i'd have to say that the the the the antagonists in citizen kane ended up being a bit more of a sympathetic character at the end of that film than at the end of our film. but it's playing with the whole idea of private you know private interests versus. public citizens it was also the great book citizen hearst about william randolph hearst who dominated things through the media yeah before we get into the culture and everything let's we'll show you now a clip from citizen called. high and what i voted far is

not what i think people like. her or. what are you looking at i could never retire unions are the only competition republicans have lost the unions it's over aren't very happy just being millionaires today really had to be good zillionaires. don't cross our border. i think another question. to ask had to. listen. they don't care about you because you don't brain which. is looks like a great documentary called but i would fairly say that if the koch brothers walked down the street in any big street in new york or l.a.

anyway no one would recognize or explain who the koch brothers are. well david and charles koch or billionaire industrialist they inherited their fortune from their father fred koch who made a lot of money in the fossil fuel industry. they refine a lot of a lot of fossil fuels they transport fossil fuels but they've also diversified their interest so much that while we don't know who we may not recognize the koch brothers we know their products because you know it's in everything that we consume every single day they happen to own for example the largest paper company with georgia pacific and brawny paper towels and all of those products are owned by this private corporation called koch industries and the reason the we took a look at them is they've also over the last several decades really gotten good at deploying money into the political process in very creative ways so you don't always know who's spending the money who is shaping the message and who's

influencing the politicians that we elect. you know and i just to further answer your your previous question about about who citizen koch is you know to our mind somebody like governor scott walker in the state of wisconsin who was elected with massive support from david and charles koch and stayed in office with a lot of spending that was made possible by the citizens united decision well governor walker is a public official but he could be citizen koch as well. the only two of the four brothers are directly involved in this right. well there are two brothers who are particularly active in the political world in you know the thing that the note about how they how they spend their money is up to this year they've like to do it very much in the dark they do it secretly and one thing that the citizens united supreme court decision said is that disclosure is important but that's up to congress to regulate how campaign spending is disclosed and they left

open a loophole and that's spending money through these dark money organizations like the americans for prosperity which was founded by david and charles koch these groups can spend money politically around elections but they don't have to disclose who their donors are and they also don't have to adhere to the same rigorous disclosure campaign spending disclosure laws to for example to say we spent this much money on this election so it takes a long time to really sort out and figure out who's spending the money around elections and the elections are gone and we don't really know whose interest those politicians are serving many think that was one of the worst decisions of supreme court history the thought of the fred was one of the founding members of the john birch society which was a really what group which is no most extinct but he once said that the colored man looms large in the communists plan to take over america does race play any part in

the cold brothers campaigns. well. let me answer it this way i think that race has played a big role in the public discourse and in the in the rise of the tea party we hear a lot of coded language about after president obama was elected about taking our country back which begs the question back from whom and so i do believe that there is a lot of racially motivated. dialogue and attacks on president obama now that's not to say that he's not above reproach for what he actually does but i i feel like these organizations on the right and on the extreme right that are backing the tea party member the koch brothers or the big bank wrong large part the tea party they've been involved with this since its inception and so i think that there are some parallels to draw between the john birch society and

the modern day tea party and as one of the reasons why we highlight that quote in fact we open our film citizen koch with that quote from the older quote elder koch because we wanted to draw that line it's very similar what's happening and i think the reason that the people are exploiting race these days is that it's something the right has long been successful at is exploiting people's fears in order to get them to do what they want and so when you ask why is that working class you know in a lot of elderly white americans are flocking to the tea party and lobbying for causes that are against their own personal best interests i think that playing that race card has been one of the keys to building that kind of support one of the positive things about the tea party is they're opposed to. the country was founded on compromise was a republican other democracy based on. the broadly one wants to go back to the beginning and seems out of whack with the beginnings. nevertheless are the koch

brothers really does the only other the only big financiers on the right absolutely and just be clear our film citizen koch it's untitled citizen koch and it deals with some of the political operations of the koch brothers but there are people on both sides who are exploiting these loopholes in very sinister ways and i've the reason i use the word sinister is i think it really undermines the intent of our democracy that people are empowered to create their own lives and to elect the people that represent their interests and so the citizens united decision in a whole series of supreme court decisions and its aftermath have made it easier for people on both sides to spend money and it takes away the voice of the rest of us is there a liberal tell them apart. well you know i think every every spending group is

a little bit different you know the right in the tea party likes to point their finger at george soros and and tom styer and you know look the amount of money that's being spent the amount of dark money being spent in particular by by folks on the far right eclipses the money being spent by the democrats or by sympathizers to the democrats so you know while there are a lot of people who do this i think that the folks merit a special look they deployed four hundred million dollars into the into the last round of elections in two thousand and twelve and a lot of that was their own money and most of that money was spent in the dark and so you know that's more than than individual super pacs spent and super pacs at least you know spending the money so i think i think the koch's definitely need to be put under the under the microscope a bit more and we tried to do that with this film you mentioned start or get the governor was gone it's a very anti union governor wisconsin they helped get him elected they tried to

recall him and they saved his recall he's up for reelection this fall he's got a tough race with. mary burglars a former state commerce secretary latest polls is very tight what do you hear. you know i hear they're running neck and neck and and one thing that's happening right now in wisconsin that's of interest is governor walker is now under criminal investigation for his collusion with dark money political groups so it'll be interesting to see how how how that investigation and south and if that has any impact at all. on this year's election and you know scott walker apparently has designs on higher office and has some support within the republican party to perhaps participate as a candidate in the twenty sixteen presidential race the documentary is called we'll

be back with filmmaker paul deal after these we're.

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lucky brightness to lift search tree limb and i were think the church. on our report splitter. instantly. lifts me and mother in law. on marriage in the financial world. to cease to comments cannot stop it is a terribly take no demand to credit is not going to get any better in life there are good and there are but clear.

remind you that you know i'm told i'm just reminding you all for your very kind of oh yes i'm a disabled veteran i can't get up and running a light mortgage payment is levon hundred a month here these people down about a star is not responding quickly so i can't even go to mcdonald's and eat they've broken faith with the people that was a clip from citizen called the documentary that takes a look at american democracy and the fracturing of the republican body we're talking with the man behind that film called deal he's with us from new york to talk about why working people vote with the right wing which seems against their interests why do you think they do. well you know i

it's really it's really hard to say but let me let me let me answer that a different way because one of the things that surprised us when we went to wisconsin in two thousand and eleven after governor walker attacked the union bargaining rights for public employees we always suspected that that campaign spending was a trans partisan issue but when we got on the ground there we realize that governor walker had invoked not just the wrath of the usual suspects right of the of the liberal union wing of the democratic party but he kicked the hornet's nest in a lot of his own supporters people who actually voted for him lifelong republicans were fed up and they started to understand that their party has been corrupted by big money coming in from out of state and so one thing the you'll learn in our film is you get very close to three of these lifelong republicans you know a prison guard a v.a.

nurse a teacher a anti-abortion activist people who are committed to their party for certain reasons but understand that they don't feel like they're not being represented well and they point right to people like the koch brothers in lay the responsibility on them for having corrupted their party. you know it's a little bit more about wisconsin one of the things that scott walker did in attacking the unions is it wasn't just a showdown between between labor and management it was a political strategy designed to take the money the support that organized labor is able to give to scott walker's opponents out of the equation entirely because big labor you know they aggregate the money of a lot of smaller donors of these working people and they spend that money some of that money politically and so if you take that money out of the equation entirely then the republicans are the only show in town. you said did you once say that you

were addicted to glenn beck. i did. my wife never lets me forget it. well i thought it was really fascinating you know in two thousand and two thousand and eleven. that this network fox network rose you know in the ratings and became the highest the most watched twenty four hour news show and a news news network and you know i thought it was interesting to it was a way to find out what the folks on the right are really thinking and what their strategies are we like to tell our you know people that we watch fox news so that they don't have to the idea being you know we got some real interesting nuggets. that we included in film like karl rove spelling out exactly that strategy on fox

news about why it's important to take organized labor out for political reasons for the for the financial reasons. with the other side say though the mainstream media leans left and mainstream media has a lot of power and that counterbalances the coax. they would say that you know what would i would say that. well i would say that the mainstream media is not strategically deploying hundreds of millions of dollars in the political process to influence the outcome of elections to the benefit of their bottom line and that's what's so cynical about this you know it's not really an ideologically driven agenda and if it is isn't it convenient that it just happens to serve the cokes bottom line you know so in wisconsin nowadays there's very little in force and of environmental regulations

and it just happens to be that the koch's own three paper factories an oil pipeline a number of polluting industries in the state of wisconsin and you know the heat is off so. you know there haven't been any fines and environmental fines in the last four years in wisconsin so it's you know i think there's a big difference there is financing all gave the ok to say michael bloomberg finance always campaigns. he did he did and maybe that's the. you know maybe that's the second best thing the public financing of elections because can a person corrupt themselves larry i don't know if you think the public cares about this a recent survey by the pew research center indicated people haven't paid any attention real attention to supreme court rulings on campaign finance.

yeah i think people care deeply about it because there's also been polls over the last few years that has shown that it crosses party lines the democrats and republicans you know i think the one to the last one that i saw was eighty nine percent of americans believe that there needs to be moves to reduce the influence of billionaires in the political process to regulate campaign spending. you know it may not be the first issue that people point to it's not a very sexy issue but it really gets at the fabric it depend whatever it is you care about larry it matters the way that people can spend money to influence public policy is going to make a difference to you and it should you know it's about the water we drink it's about the air we breathe it's about the products that we consume. you know the government is important and government needs to be able to function well and in the way that it's played out over the last few years is

a lot of this money has been geared towards reducing the power of government to regulate and so i'm on the record now i'm pro government regulation is that all good citizen called. i am watching my republican party implode it's made me question whether or not they truly represent what i believe in. tea party republicans are not the same thing. oh my brother charles and i provided the funds to start. there on his away. response it's a good example would be people over how would. how much you can put into wisconsin just over ten million dollars which scott is zero for this. largely unknown consequence of citizens united is it is unleashed money that our disclosure

laws are not equipped to reveal any chance we'll ever get to be a complete red state where you can really do to help. help riders on refineries that specialize in some of the worst types of oil there extraordinary well chosen david koch from the largest donor to governor bush you cannot even buy a democratic congressman for twenty five hundred republican congressmen seemed more one hundred forty thousand forces not the point of it is to find a way to spend money in elections without telling anyone we want my vision. well that's a good question because we talk about the tea party and how relevant it is it obviously has some strength in local elections congressional elections do you think you can elect a president. i think we're going to see in two thousand and sixteen there are people who will argue right now that the tea party has already pushed the republican party so far to the right that they've been forced to mainstream

republicans or have adopted a tea party agenda so we'll have to see who who who floats to the top in two thousand and sixteen but it's going to be really hard to say is it going to be michele bachmann who so closely identify with the tea party movement i doubt it well what i mean is can the tea party elect a president. well what i'm saying is is. they can rally voters support but one of the reason one of the ways that this money they spend including the money it's the same money that backs the tea party they get spent on elections one of the ways that this impacts elections is it narrows it pushes candidates off of their own agenda to adopt another agenda because they don't want to face that big money juggernaut. and so you know we may very well elect somebody who appears to be a mainstream republican but they've been forced to adopt a tea party agenda so you know i don't know we'll see it'll be interesting to watch

one and are you based on all you know in doing these documentaries i would gather you're pessimistic about this country. i am not pessimistic it's interesting but if i were pessimistic i don't know if i'd be if i'd have the energy to wage these battles because it's not easy to get these films made. one of the things that we learned in making citizen coke is even though there is so much money being spent and it feels very hopeless it feels like you know there are all these efforts to take away the vote from individual people what i take what i take heart in is knowing that the reason people want to spend so much money to make it harder for your vote to matter is because your vote matters it's that one moment when everybody is equals when they pull that curtain closed in the voting booth and decide who they want to vote for and you know i think we saw that despite all the money that was spent

a lot of the dark money spent on the presidential election in two thousand and twelve it was the get out the vote effort it was the it was the boots on the ground the real citizen engagement with democracy that determine the outcome of the last presidential election and so in a way you know i feel i feel confident that if people get involved in it people participate that the people will win what we want to keep a look take away from this film. i want them to take away just that you know that the principles of our democracy matter that the rights that we have matter and that the freedoms that we enjoy in matter and that they can do something about it that they need to stand up and they need to fight for it you know we can't just roll over and hand over our voting rights for example which is happening in dozens of states around the country is where the right is trying to limit the electorate by by requiring these voter i.d. laws or by passing voter i.d.

laws. you know there's some states like in california that are passing new disclosure laws around campaign spending that make it impossible for these dark money groups to spend money without revealing who's behind them and so you know i want people to engage i want people to feel proud of the country that they live in and want to support it by participating. in so much and just to see it love what i've seen so far thank all deal for more information check out citizen cold dot com and for my viewers out there i want to hear from you what do you think about this topic and this documentary join the conversation on my facebook page. so. i.

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