Tuesday, August 12, 2014

vc sTAR Passion is strong as Cowboys host Raiders for practice in Oxnard Raiders' appearance at training camp brings Bob Buttitta 8:51 PM, Aug 12, 2014 cowboys Chuck Kirman OXNARD, Calif. - The "Black Hole," the nickname given to the Oakland Raiders' crazed fan base, arrived in Oxnard on Tuesday to support their team during the first of two practice sessions between the Raiders and the Dallas Cowboys. Tuesday's workout marked a homecoming of sorts for the Silver and Black. From 1985 through 2005, Oakland used the River Ridge facility as its training camp home. But unlike back then, when Raiders owner Al Davis used to put black tape on the fences around the field to prevent anyone from watching, fans of both teams engulfed both sides of the practice facility, watching their respective team battle on the field for roughly two hours. The attendance at the River Ridge fields was 8,326. A long line of cars filled with both Cowboys and Raiders fans stretched down Ventura Road more than two


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Passion is strong as Cowboys host Raiders for practice in Oxnard

Raiders' appearance at training camp brings

Bob Buttitta
8:51 PM, Aug 12, 2014
Chuck Kirman

OXNARD, Calif. - The "Black Hole," the nickname given to the Oakland Raiders' crazed fan base, arrived in Oxnard on Tuesday to support their team during the first of two practice sessions between the Raiders and the Dallas Cowboys.

Tuesday's workout marked a homecoming of sorts for the Silver and Black. From 1985 through 2005, Oakland used the River Ridge facility as its training camp home.

But unlike back then, when Raiders owner Al Davis used to put black tape on the fences around the field to prevent anyone from watching, fans of both teams engulfed both sides of the practice facility, watching their respective team battle on the field for roughly two hours.

The attendance at the River Ridge fields was 8,326.

A long line of cars filled with both Cowboys and Raiders fans stretched down Ventura Road more than two hours before the parking lot was scheduled to open at noon.

The stands on both sides of the field were filled close to two hours before the start of practice. The two fan bases were kept separated as much as possible, with Raiders fans lining up on the field closest to River Ridge Golf Course. Cowboys fans got the "home" stands closest to the parking lot and concession stands.

At about 3:30, the buses carrying the Raiders players pulled into the parking area, drawing wild cheers from the Oakland fans. Looking like a high school football team showing up to an away game, the Raiders players walked off the bus in full gear, carrying their helmets and shoulder pads.

As they hit the field, chants of "Welcome Back," and "Bring Them Back," showered down from the Raiders Nation.

As the teams warmed up, the two fan bases took turns berating the other team. It was perfect foreshadowing for a practice that featured plenty of hitting, most of it before, but some after the whistle.

For the first hour, the two teams worked on separate fields, but finally the fans got what they were looking for. The Raiders offense squared off against the Cowboys defense on the field in front of the Raiders fans.

Cowboys fans were treated to their offense taking on the Raiders defense.

The two teams were relatively behaved for the first half of the team sessions.

For much of their session, the Raiders offense had good success moving the ball against the Cowboys defense.

Oakland quarterbacks Matt Schaub and Derek Carr both looked sharp in both 11-on-11 drills and later in the seven-on-seven competition. Raiders running back Latavius Murray broke off several nice runs.

Cowboys rookie cornerback Terrance Mitchell celebrated after making several nice plays, later bringing taunts from the Raiders fans every time a player caught a ball in front of him. Mitchell, who has drawn praise from Cowboys head coach Jason Garrett, played right along, adding to the atmosphere.

During a competition between the Cowboys defense linemen and Raiders offensive linemen, Dallas defensive tackle Davon Coleman and Oakland offensive tackle Austin Howard exchanged a few blows after a heated competition.

Not long after that, during the second 11-on-11 session, Cowboys cornerback Mo Claiborne picked up and slammed down Oakland tight end Mychal Rivera near the sideline next to the Raiders fans.

Rivera took exception to the hit and went after Claiborne. Within seconds, players from both teams were pushing and shoving. The scrum eventually pushed up against the fence where fans were standing, leading one Raiders fan to get involved by swinging a souvenir helmet that slammed into the helmet of Dallas cornerback B.W. Webb.

Webb took a swing at the fan.

"I thought it was another player, but then I realized it was a fan," Webb said after practice. "I said, 'Did you just hit me with a helmet?' Just a crazy Raider fan I guess. You always get in little brawls on the field, but nothing usually breaks out into the fans.

"Thank God I still had my helmet on. We tried to keep things down, but once you get out here, the emotions get going and you start flying around and it happens. It's football."

A few minutes later, a smaller fight broke out between the Cowboys offense and Raiders defense, bringing a quick end to the session.

After the practice ended, Raiders fans ran in unison to the Oakland players, who signed autographs.

Raiders fullback Marcel Reese gave props to the team's fans.

"It was basically training camp for another team's fans and they (the Raiders fans) outshowed them," Reese said. "The Cowboys have been here for years and years and they are going to be here for years more, but we come down here one time and we outshow them.

"The Raider Nation is about loyalty. It was exhilarating. We expected a gamelike atmosphere and it was. Everyone was out here to get after it and compete."

When asked if he was surprised by the large crowd out to support the Raiders, Cowboys quarterback Tony Romo said no.

"It's California. If they did not have fans out here, it would be strange," Romo said. "It made the atmosphere unique."

SCANDRICK SUSPENDED, SORRY

Following Monday's announcement that Cowboys cornerback Orlando Scandrick would be suspended for the first four games of the season after testing positive for a banned substance, he expressed his remorse during a meeting with the media.

Scandrick acknowledged that the suspension stems from testing positive for amphetamines, the result of recreational drug use during a vacation in Mexico.

"I made a bad decision," Scandrick said. "I'm responsible for what goes in my body. I know I'm responsible for what goes in my body. It's a very humbling experience.

"I'm very sorry. I apologize to the (Jerry) Jones family. I'm very sorry to my teammates. I'm very sorry to the fans of Cowboys nation and I'm very sorry to my family."

Sunday, July 27, 2014

LA Times Breaking News: Man dies after lightning strikes near Venice Beach


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Los Angeles Times
Breaking news

Man dies after lightning strikes near Venice Beach

Los Angeles Times | July 27, 2014 | 6:49 PM

An unidentified man in his 20s died Sunday afternoon after he was taken from Venice Beach -- the sight of a severe storm -- to Marina Del Rey Hospital for treatment, officials said.

An official with the Los Angeles County coroner's office said that he couldn't confirm the man was one of the 13 people struck by lightning because his agency had not yet received a body and has not determined an exact cause of death.

For the latest information go to www.latimes.com.

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Sunday, May 18, 2014

Quixotic ’80 Campaign Gave Birth to Kochs’ Powerful Network NY times

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The Libertarian Party’s 1980 presidential candidate, Ed Clark, center, with his running mate, David H. Koch.CreditRandy Rasmussen/Associated Press
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He backed the full legalization of abortion and the repeal of laws that criminalized drug use, prostitution and homosexuality. He attacked campaign donation limits and assailed the Republican star Ronald Reagan as a hypocrite who represented “no change whatsoever from Jimmy Carter and the Democrats.”
It was 1980, and the candidate was David H. Koch, a 40-year-old bachelor living in a rent-stabilized apartment in New York City. Mr. Koch, the vice-presidential nominee for the Libertarian Party, and his older brother Charles, one of the party’s leading funders, were mounting a long-shot assault on the fracturing American political establishment.
The Kochs had invested hundreds of thousands of dollars in the burgeoning libertarian movement. In the waning days of the 1970s, in the wake of Watergate, Vietnam and a counterculture challenging traditional social mores, they set out to test just how many Americans would embrace what was then a radical brand of politics.
It was the first and only bid for high office by a Koch family member. But much of what occurred in that quixotic campaign shaped what the Kochs have become today — a formidable political and ideological force determined to remake American politics, driven by opposition to government power and hostility to restrictions on money in campaigns.
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Mr. Koch said that the Libertarian Party was a “great concept,” but that Republicans have a great chance of success. CreditMark Lennihan/Associated Press
That election also handed the Kochs their first political setback, driving them to rethink their approach to libertarian ideas. Since then, they have built a powerful network of political nonprofit groups that is exempt from most campaign reporting requirements and contribution limits but will spend tens of millions of dollars to influence the 2014 election. They have exerted enormous influence on American politics, battling government regulation and casting doubt on the urgency of climate change. Instead of replacing the Republican Party, they have helped to profoundly reshape it.
“The 1980 campaign was instructive in helping them learn what ideas resonated,” said Robert A. Tappan, a Koch Industries spokesman, “and at the same time, giving them an understanding of the implications of the electoral political process.”
Business Meets Politics
The Kochs, heirs to a family oil refining and marketing business, were unlikely entrants in a presidential campaign.
Politics was a dangerous game for those in business, Charles Koch argued in a 1974 speech to libertarian thinkers and business leaders in Dallas. Subsidies and special treatment demanded by corporations had helped turn Americans against free enterprise. Business had colluded with the Nixon administration to design price controls and other “socialistic measures.”
The most effective response was not political action, Mr. Koch argued, but investment in pro-capitalist research and educational programs.
“The development of a well-financed cadre of sound proponents of the free enterprise philosophy is the most critical need facing us today,” he said, according to a copy of his speech in a Libertarian Party archive at the University of Virginia, one of thousands of documents reviewed by The New York Times for this article. The Times was alerted to the archive by American Bridge, a liberal political organization that has been critical of the Kochs.
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‘Anti-Capitalism and Business’

The speech was printed on pamphlets and preserved at the University of Virginia Library.
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By the end of 1974, Mr. Koch had helped found what would become the Cato Institute, today one of the country’s leading libertarian research institutions. He was joined in that effort by Ed Crane, chairman of the three-year-old Libertarian Party. The two men believed that libertarian ideas had to be more accessible to the average person if they were to change the country. Over dinners at Charles Koch’s house in Wichita, Kan., and in correspondence with both brothers and their mother, Mr. Crane worked to persuade the family that a vibrant party organization was critical to advancing that goal.
The family would become the Libertarian Party’s most important donors.
But their other consuming interest was business: Charles Koch, then in his first decade as president of Koch Industries, had aggressively expanded the firm’s holdings in oil refineries, petroleum products and commodities, while David Koch worked as an executive at the company’s engineering subsidiary.
As the brothers became more politically active, Koch Industries repeatedly butted against the federal government’s new energy regulations. One month before Charles Koch’s speech in Dallas, a federal audit found that Koch and two other companies had broken federal oil price controls. In 1975, a Koch subsidiary was cited for $10 million in overcharges on propane gas.
The family’s frustrations were captured in a fund-raising letter that Charles Koch wrote on behalf of the 1976 Libertarian presidential candidate, Roger MacBride, a co-creator of the “Little House on the Prairie” television series. Mr. Koch excoriated Presidents Richard M. Nixon and Gerald R. Ford for backing price controls, and attacked legislation to impose fuel economy standards as “one of the many demonstrations of the bankruptcy of the Republican alternative to Democratic interventionism.”
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‘Rocky Mountain Oilman’

Charles Koch wrote this letter in support of the 1976 Libertarian Party presidential candidate, Roger L. MacBride. Mr. MacBride appeared on the ballot in 32 states, but only drew 173,011 votes in the general election.
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New Financing Tool
The Supreme Court handed the Kochs an important weapon in a 1976 decision in Buckley v. Valeo. The court opened two loopholes in a two-year-old campaign finance law that had placed tight controls on what candidates, parties, and private individuals could spend on campaigns: A candidate could spend an unlimited amount of his or her money running for office, and an individual was free to spend an unlimited amount of money promoting candidates so long as the spending was not coordinated with them.
The next three years witnessed the birth of the Koch political apparatus. Charles Koch sought to recruit like-minded businessmen who would invest in the libertarian cause, an embryonic version of the Koch-supervised donor club that poured $400 million into the 2012 campaign.
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A campaign button for Mr. Clark and Mr. Koch's 1980 campaign. CreditLibertarian Party
The brothers and Mr. Crane saw other hopeful signs. In California’s 1978 state election, voters approved Proposition 13, sharply reducing property taxes, and gave Ed Clark, the Libertarian candidate for governor, 5 percent of the vote.
They also became closely involved in the party’s day-to-day operations. David encouraged party leaders to develop policies opposing President Carter’s energy proposals. Charles required detailed accounting of spending and chided party officials when they fell behind schedule on direct mail. But, within the family, Charles and David Koch’s political activities were becoming a point of contention.
Most of the family’s enormous wealth was vested in Koch Industries shares, which Charles Koch was determined to hold privately to avoid regulations over publicly traded companies. William Koch, David’s twin, felt that Charles, as the company’s chief executive, was not paying enough dividend income to the family, and complained of having to borrow money to buy a house.
“Charles was giving as much to the Libertarians as he was paying out in dividends,” William told The Times in a 1986 interview. “Pretty soon we would get the reputation that the company and the Kochs were crazy.”
Money and Passion
In March 1979, Mr. Clark declared that he would seek the Libertarian Party’s presidential nomination. A lawyer for Atlantic Richfield Corporation, he was the candidate many libertarians had been waiting for: polished, substantive and well spoken.
The goal was “to try to run somebody who looked like an actual politician, a normal person, not your typical ‘Star Trek’ convention wannabe like most party members were,” recalled Bruce Bartlett, a supply-side economics expert who volunteered as a speechwriter for the Clark campaign.
But a Clark presidential campaign needed money and a running mate. The Kochs could provide both. If one of the brothers joined the ticket, he could — thanks to the Buckley loophole — donate as much as he wanted to the campaign, finally giving the ticket enough cash to run ads and seek a ballot spot in all 50 states. David Koch announced his candidacy in August 1979.
The post-Watergate campaign finance law “makes my blood boil,” Mr. Koch wrote in a letter to party members. He had a simple proposal: “As the Vice-presidential nominee of the Libertarian Party I will contribute several hundred thousand dollars to the Presidential campaign committee in order to ensure that our ideas and our Presidential nominee receive as much media exposure as possible.”
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A Vice-Presidential Pitch

This is the second page in a two-page letter from David Koch offering his candidacy for Libertarian nomination for Vice President.
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In September 1979, some 2,000 Libertarians gathered at the Bonaventure Hotel in Los Angeles. Some had grown hostile to the Kochs, Mr. Crane or both, viewing them as controlling. Mr. Clark was accused of being a puppet of the Kochs — a charge that echoes today in attacks on the brothers that are a centerpiece of the Democrats’ 2014 campaign strategy.
On the convention’s second day, Mr. Clark addressed delegates to rebut the criticism. David Koch offered a chance “to expose the federal election laws as a sham,” he said. Charles Koch’s financial support of the party was “not evidence of a takeover, but rather of his commitment to libertarianism.”
The Clark-Koch ticket easily won the party’s support. Taking the stage with Mr. Clark on the final day of the convention, David Koch joked about his ambivalence.
“I feel if I practiced I’m liable to become a politician, and I have a lot of mixed feelings about that,” he told the crowd, according to an account published in The Libertarian Review. He denounced the “harassment” of Koch Industries and implored the activists to make the party “a force that will roll back the coercive force of government.”
Family Discord
David Koch became an enthusiastic campaigner. He spoke on college campuses, before groups of business executives and at rallies for grass-roots libertarian activists. The ticket drew particular notice in Alaska, where sentiment was rising against federal takeovers of land. All told, Mr. Koch campaigned in 27 states.
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Letters and other documents in a Libertarian Party archive at the University of Virginia shed light on Mr. Koch’s efforts in the 1980 presidential campaign.CreditDaniel Rosenbaum for The New York Times
“He liked it, and he thought he got a good response, so he did more and more of it as time went on,” Mr. Clark recalled in a telephone interview. Questions about the Kochs’ motives arose on the trail. A campaign document written to prepare Mr. Clark for tough questions from the press included a section on the ticket’s close ties to the oil and gas industry.
“Most of your campaign is financed by the oil-billionaire Koch family,” read the hypothetical question, which continued: “Wouldn’t a Clark administration simply be ‘Rule by Big Oil’?”
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Talking Points

Mr. Clark was given this list of questions he might be asked on the campaign trail about his relationship with the Koch
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Koch Industries’ clashes with the federal government were also intensifying. The Department of Energy continued to audit the company for violating federal oil price controls and overcharging retail energy customers.
In June 1980, The Wall Street Journal reported that Koch Industries had been subpoenaed as part of a federal criminal investigation into fraudulently obtained oil and gas leases in Wyoming and other Western states. That August, Koch Industries sued to block federal regulatorsfrom applying a rule that would have cut output at the firm’s lucrative Minnesota refinery.
In an energy policy speech that May in Portland, Ore., David Koch railed against what he saw as overregulation. Presidents Nixon and Carter had bequeathed an “Alice in Wonderland” energy policy, he argued, a mix of subsidies and price controls that had stymied market forces and caused high prices and shortages.
The campaign drew interest from many opinion writers and some local press coverage, but it struggled to be taken seriously by larger outlets. One of the most extensive stories about the campaign appeared in Ambassador, the in-flight magazine of Trans World Airlines.
David Koch ultimately contributed about $2.1 million, more than half the campaign budget. But the costs began to wear on his siblings, Mr. Koch recounted in an interview with New York magazine. In September 1980, at a rally in Los Angeles, Mr. Crane and Charles Koch shared an elevator with Melinda Pillsbury-Foster, a libertarian activist, who overheard Charles Koch grumbling that his brother was dipping into his investments to pay for the effort.
“Charles was horrified that David had actually had to spend capital instead of just some of the interest on some of his money,” said Ms. Pillsbury-Foster, who became a critic of the brothers’ involvement in the libertarian movement.
David Koch had no expectation of winning. “If we get 3 percent of the vote we’ll consider it a moral victory,” he told students on a visit to upstate New York.
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‘Free Up the Energy System’

The speech was given by David Koch at the Benson Hotel in Portland, Ore.
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But in November, Mr. Clark and Mr. Koch won 921,128 votes, more than any earlier Libertarian ticket but barely more than 1 percent. The breakout minor candidate that year was John Anderson, while Ronald Reagan built a coalition of social conservatives, foreign policy hawks, disaffected Democrats and traditional conservatives that dominated American politics for the next decade.
Discord within the family grew, and just before Thanksgiving, William Koch tried to seize control of the company in a boardroom coup. He accused Charles of mismanaging the firm and set in motion a bitter legal battle. The Clark-Koch campaign ended the year about $140,000 in debt.
“As a candidate, meeting only libertarians, it seemed to me that everyone was voting for us,” David Koch wrote in a letter to raise money to clear the party’s debts. “We all got a little too optimistic.”
Within a few years, a new faction won control of the Libertarian Party, and Charles and David Koch gradually withdrew.
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Debt Relief

This is the second page of a letter sent by David Koch asking for help in clearing the debt to the Clark campaign. The first line of the letter read, “I’m asking you to make a tough choice.”
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But the two brothers did not leave politics. In 1985, the Kochs and a new adviser, Richard Fink, formed Citizens for a Sound Economy, a free enterprise-oriented group that evolved into Americans for Prosperity, the organization today led by David Koch that is the centerpiece of the brothers’ political activity. This year, it will spend a reported $125 million on the midterm elections, most of it aimed at defeating Democrats.
They have also worked to fulfill Charles Koch’s vision for a “well financed cadre” of free market proponents, funding think tanks and pro-free market research, endowing professorships, and providing money for internships and scholarships. Between 2007 and 2012,according to one analysis, Koch family foundations contributed $30.5 million to 221 colleges and universities.
Today, the donor club overseen by the Kochs, known as Freedom Partners, generates hundreds of millions of dollars each election cycle. Since 1980, the Republican Party has moved closer to the Koch family’s views on government regulation. Its rising members now court the Kochs and like-minded donors at twice-yearly “seminars” that the brothers organize. In 2012, David Koch was a delegate to the Republican National Convention.
“I think the Republican Party has a great chance of being successful and that’s why I support it,” Mr. Koch told reporters at an American Prosperity reception in Tampa, Fla., that year. “The Libertarian Party is a great concept. I love the ideals, but it got too far off the deep end, and so I dropped out.”
Correction: May 17, 2014 
An earlier version of this article, when giving the vote total for the 1980 Libertarian Party ticket, misidentified the presidential candidate. It was Ed Clark, not Ed Crane.