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Virginia Foxx doles out campaign cash to Pope family crony

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 North Carolina Republican Congresswoman Virginia Foxx is known to have associations with prominent right-wing reactionary figures such as Americans for Prosperity (AfP), the American Legislative Council (ALEC) and the Art Pope Family. 

 Of particular concern is Foxx’s tight relationship with the Pope family and whether this rapport has resulted in a violation of federal campaign finance rules.  The facts below certainly merit investigation.

Meet the Popes

The Popes are a real life, but humorless, North Carolinian version of the Beverly Hillbillies.  The difference:  the Popes are more nightmare than sitcom and they use their vast financial empire to craft devastating economic and public policies.  Patriarch, papa Art Pope Sr. made his fortune by starting Variety Wholesalers, a string of low-end discount stores mainly located in debilitated target areas where the median household income is $40,000 or less and where a minimum 25 percent of the population living within five miles (http://www.artpopeexposed.com) of the chain stores is African-American.  Variety Wholesalers is not simply relegated toNorth Carolina, but boasts roughly 400 stores scattered throughout the southeasternU.S. 

Pope also gives money, lots of it, to the National Republican State Leadership Committee (NRSLC) and many other right wing organizations. NRSLC are the authors of the GOP-REDMAP project aimed at winning over state legislatures in time for redistricting.  This is all part of the imposition of a New Jim Crow, the Great Re-segregation of the American South as Ari Berman  detailed in in The Nation.   So far, the REDMAP project has been widely successful and has led to new political mappings that serve to re-segregate politics, while at the same time consolidating GOP power. 

Pope is a director and board chair of his family foundation, the Pope Foundation, which has steered millions to conservative think tanks in North Carolina and nationally.  They have worked closely with the  Koch Brothers network to manufacture doubt about global warming, including through  Pope’s own John Locke Foundation where he sits on the board of directors (http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Art_Pope_).

An investigation by Facing South / Institute for Southern Studies into the Pope dynasty also found that Pope has close ties to the national directors of the Koch-founded political advocacy group Americans for Prosperity (AfP).  Pope himself  is also member of the board of directors of the John Locke Foundation, the Atlas Economic Research Foundation, and the North Carolina Retail Merchants Association (http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Art_Pope).

The Popes channel other proceeds from their cut-rate retail empire to the William J. Pope Foundation, which then works as a tributary, funding a variety of uncompromising public policy institutes, including, but not limited to, Pope Civitas, Real Jobs North Carolina, and thePopeCenter for Higher Education. 

In reality, Pope supplies 90 percent of the income for leading right-wing groups inNorth Carolina.  The Pope dynasty’s giving to reactionary causes over the years has been estimated at $40 million dollars (http://www.opensecrets.org/news/2011/10/art-pope-political-influence.html). With Citizens United now the law of the land, we may never know the true amount that Pope bellies up, or to whom.

The Pope family empire is truly a household affair.  James “Art” Pope, his sister Amanda Joyce Pope and their mother Joyce W. Pope all sit on the Board of the William J. Pope FoundationThe Pope Foundation  is just another in a long line of Pope’s reactionary capitalist think tanks (much like ALEC) dedicated to, among other things, gutting public funding for higher education in favor of privatization. 

To add insult to injury, in 2009,  Pope scion 23-year-old Joyce Pope was appointed the Koch  Associate at the John Locke Foundation.  It’s a revolving door of tribal incest, right wing nepotism and virulent activism.

Enter GOP Representative Virginia Foxx

Not surprisingly, GOP Representative Virginia Foxx sits on the board of directors of the Pope Center for Higher Education. According to records compiled by the web-site opensecrets.org, in 2012, the Virginia Foxx’ re-election campaign made a payment of $1,947 to Joyce Pope.  Whether this payment was made to Joyce W. Pope, Amanda Joyce Pope, or scion Joyce Pope is uncertain (http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/expend.php?cycle=2012&cid=N00026166&type=I).  For what purpose the paltry sum was tendered has also not been disclosed. 

Regardless of which “Joyce” received the cash payment from Foxx, Virginia Foxx’s association with the Pope family suggests chummy cronyism and possible fraud.

Even worse, if Foxx is actually receiving remuneration to sit on the board of the Pope Center for Higher Education, then one can only wonder out loud if the $1,947 might be a kickback to Foxx’s benefactors, among them the for-profit college and university sector.  The shadow factory of non-disclosure and boarded up transparency means we may never know.

What we do know is that Foxx is on record declaring that for-profit colleges do “a better job of being mindful about efficiency and effectiveness than their nonprofit peers.” Maybe that’s because among the top 20 financial contributors to Foxx in the 2011-2012 cycle are the Association of Private Sector Colleges/Universities, the Apollo Group (owner of the University of Phoenix), and Corinthian Colleges (http://truth-out.org/index.php?option=com_k2&view=item&id=5898:congresswoman-accepts-money-tied-to-forprofit-colleges-then-touts-schools-efficiency).

Summary

 As reported in Truthout, Foxx is part of an insidious corporate gaggle of lap dancing politicians that include members of both the Republican and Democratic Party (http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/8589-bipartisan-political-elite-implicated-in-for-profit-education-fraud).  It seems a few well-placed Wall Street dollars in the garter belts of power by the for-profit college corporations helps to ensure favorable legislation for the ‘educational industry’.  This then translates into rising shareholder prices, more pay-outs to the political finger puppets that assure favorable deregulation or regulation and the cycle thus repeats itself to the detriment of citizens and the democracy designed to serve them. 

 


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