Early this week, I helped a few friends organize a Climate Heroes moneybomb - a one day fundraiser to reward those candidates who speak out on the need to confront the climate crisis. Sunday evening, I wrote a DailyKos post on why we need Climate Heroes to break the climate silence. Tuesday, I emailed, tweeted, and donated. The response was much better than I expected - we raised over $125,000 from over 200 people.
Then things got weird.
Monday evening, I received an email at a semi-private email address not linked to any of my online accounts. It read in full:
Saw your post, I sent around an email to my co-workers at Koch (yes, that Koch). A memo went out about it I snapped a shot b/c I am not "authorized" to see it: https://bit.ly/....
This is an email address I set up using a fake name because I don't want to lose my job over this.
And here's the memo linked in the email:
Koch's coercive, heavy-handed tactics have made the news, as Mike Elk has reported. The corporatese/legalese rings true-ish. And the memo makes a certain kind of sense.
But is the memo legitimate? It's dated October 15, 2010 instead of October 15, 2012. I showed it to a person familiar with Koch matters who spotted other discrepancies, which I won't identify here.
A technical friend confirmed that the webmail address was created solely for the purpose of emailing me and did not otherwise exist.
I asked the sender to provide some information to authenticate him/herself. So far, crickets.
And I started wondering why a Koch employee would send a Soros-funded, soshalizt, Kenyan, Muslim, hydrocarbon-denying DailyKos diary to everyone within the Koch email system where presumably the sender would be easily tracked.
If it's a fake, I'm left wondering who, and why anyone would go through such trouble. The memo feeds into a developing meme of rightwing employers dictating votes and speech to their serfs employees, so it could be used to generate significant leftwing outrage. Is this an elaborate James O'Keeffe-style prank? Is this an effort to embarrass DailyKos? Is someone really bothered by the idea of money being raised for Climate Heroes?
Don't boo, vote!
Don't speculate, donate!