Real Koch Facts

Kochs’ Employee Admits Lifting Oil Export Ban Would Be Good For Business

December 15, 2015

Charles and David Koch have been fighting the oil export ban since as early as 1975, when Charles sent a political fundraising letter criticizing the ban. Five years later, the cause was incorporated to David Koch’s 1980 vice presidential platform.

Now, thanks to Koch allies in Congress, new developments could have the ban lifted as early as this week. Charles and David don’t seem likely to get everything they want though, as the compromise legislation will likely also include provisions to boost the renewables industry — a concession the oil billionaires adamantly oppose because it threatens their bottom line.

In interviews, Charles and David make the disingenuous claim that lifting the oil export ban wouldn’t benefit them personally, and that their lobbying efforts are purely ideological. But that’s nonsense and Koch Supply & Trading’s chief information officer, Rob Short, as much as admitted it last week in an interview with […]

VOL. 2: What You Need To Know About The Kochs & Their Puppet Candidates

December 15, 2015

VOL. 2: What You Need To Know About The Kochs & Their Puppet Candidates

Tonight the GOP field will be on Sheldon Adelson’s stage but he’s not the only special interest billionaire they’re trying to win over. For months, every Republican candidate has pandered to Charles and David Koch, hoping to win a piece of the nearly $900 million the Koch network has promised to spend in 2016 propping up candidates who back their self-enriching agenda.

Ahead of the debate tonight where each Republican candidate will tout how they are really the candidate that will be best for the Kochs, Bridge Project is launching the second volume of a new resource that uses opinion and opposition research to outline how to push back against the Kochs, their agenda, and their puppet candidates.

Click here for this month’s Real Koch Facts

Stay tuned for a new update each month on how […]

LIBRE Says Latinos Better Off Economically, Pushes Policies That Would Reverse Progress

December 11, 2015

Despite the Kochs’ regular criticism of the Obama economy, a policy analyst for the LIBRE Initiative reported that Hispanics are doing significantly better economically today than they have in the past.

According to a blog on the LIBRE site by Payton Alexander,

These days, a Thanksgiving dinner for 10 costs just over 4 hours of work for the median Hispanic earner, which is 22% less than it did 28 years ago. This is good news, and represents a significant decrease in the amount of time that has to be spent at the office or on the job – and more time with friends and family for the holidays — for Hispanic workers across America
…
While the median worker out of the total population only has to work 3 hours and 45 minutes for the same meal, that gap has been narrowing since 2011, and that is a positive sign.

The counter-intuitive move by the […]

“He Can’t Be Bought”: Trump Has The Kochs’ GOP In A Bind

December 11, 2015

Unafraid to tout his several-billion-or-so dollars net worth, Donald Trump takes any opportunity he can get to remind voters how much money he has and how successful he is. Sure, it’s his massive ego, but it’s also essential to his appeal among GOP primary voters: Trump’s the guy who “can’t be bought.”

Donald Trump takes any chance he can get to remind voters that he, unlike the rest of his primary opponents, isn’t bought-and-paid for by billionaires — and he’s getting through to them: “He doesn’t owe anybody anything,” a Trump supporter told GOP pollster Frank Luntz at a focus group this week. “He’s not a special interest,” said another, according to NPR.

The perception of Trump as untouchable presents a challenge for his GOP opponents. Voters aren’t eager to support someone they see as beholden to and controlled by billionaire donors like the Koch brothers.

Bridge Project saw that very phenomenon with voters’ responses during the […]

Cruz Chairs Climate Change Denial Hearing To Curry Favor With The Kochs

December 9, 2015

This afternoon, Ted Cruz will chair a Senate hearing questioning the existence of climate change. There aren’t many people still in Ted Cruz’s camp promoting climate change denial, but the list does include two people Cruz is trying to win over: Charles & David Koch.

Cruz has been wooing the Koch network for years in hopes they’ll get behind him and his opening remarks are sure to sound like something Koch cronies would have written themselves.

The Kochs’ climate change denial isn’t ideological — it’s about protecting the profit margins of their pollutant-expelling business interests.

The numbers speak for themselves. According to a University of Massachusetts Amherst study:

Climate change policy could negatively affect Koch Industries’ earnings — the University of Massachusetts Amherst’s Political Economy Research Institute found that Koch Industries ranked among the top 30 companies for CO2 emissions in the United States in 2011.

The Kochs have funneled millions of dollars to […]

Reminder: Kochs’ Criminal Justice Reform Push Is Entirely Self-Serving

December 7, 2015

Again this week, the Koch brothers’ criminal justice PR stunt is on center stage. Their apparent do-gooder spirit when it comes to criminal justice reform is in reality, self-serving.

According to the New York Times, Mark Holden, the face of the Kochs’ criminal justice campaign, was able to win some good will from the Obama administration through the Kochs’ focus on the “ban the box” initiative. The campaign hopes to help ex-convicts gain employment, by ending employers’ requirement to report criminal records on their job applications.

But unsurprisingly, the Kochs’ support of banning the box is entirely self-serving. The Kochs would benefit from a ban on the box: Koch Industries has more than a few serious infractions on its rap sheet, amassing multiple felonies, more than $90 million in fines and settlements for environmental violations, and lawsuits from workplace accidents that resulted in death or serious injury. The Kochs want to ban […]

Koch-Funded ALEC Joins Koch-AFP Anti-Solar Power Campaign

December 7, 2015

A merican Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), the subversive Koch-funded organization that promotes the two brothers’ selfish policy agenda at the state and local level, is back at it.

The climate-change-denial-promoting group’s latest cause du jour has it championing one of the Kochs’ favorite causes: the fight against solar power and renewables.

Charles and David have for years used Americans for Prosperity to wage an anti-renewables war across the country, most notably in Florida and North Carolina, where the anti-regulations warrior brothers are, yes, fighting for more regulations on solar energy technology.

The Kochs’ hypocritical anti-renewables efforts have earned them criticism from a Florida newspaper editorial board and even pushback from one of the Tea Party’s most prominent activists earliest organizers.

Undeterred by public outcry as ever, the Kochs are getting some backup from, well, themselves — or ALEC, anyway. A newly-adopted ALEC resolution endorses and seeks to legally entrench the Kochs’ plan to suppress the […]

Deal or No Deal For The Kochs: Oil Export Ban Edition

December 4, 2015

It’s crunch time for funding the government and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is attempting to broker a deal with Senate Democrats that could get the oil export ban lifted — a top priority item for the Koch brothers going all the way back to 1975.

Ending the oil export ban has been on the Kochs’ to-do list since 1975 when Charles Koch heavily criticized the ban in a fundraising letter, writing that President Ford and other Republicans “were no better allies in the fight for free enterprise than the Democratic Party.” It was even part of David Koch’s 1980 vice presidential platform.

While the Kochs are desperate to finally check the oil export ban off and cash in, the billionaire brothers aren’t willing to budge on making any compromises.

In exchange for lifting the ban on oil exports, Democrats have proposed ideas for compromise, including “extending clean-energy tax benefits.” According […]

The Koch-Engineered Ex-Im Fight, Exposed

December 3, 2015

In “Banking On Obstruction,” a report released by Bridge Project on the eve of the expiration of the Export-Import Bank’s charter in July, we detailed Charles and David’s hypocritical, million-dollar effort to block the Ex-Im Bank’s reauthorization. We’ve covered developments in the Ex-Im standoff since then, including hypocritical Koch attacks on businesses forced to outsource jobs as a result of the expiration, and a major setback for the Kochs in the form of a successful discharge petition to vote on reauthorization legislation in the House of Representatives. The House ended up passing the bill, but Koch-crony Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell stepped in to protect the Kochs’ priorities, blocking Senate consideration of the measure.

Today, though, brings the Koch’s biggest Ex-Im setback yet. On a 359-65 bipartisan vote, the House of Representatives passed a $305 billion, 10-year highway bill that includes a provision to reauthorize the Ex-Im Bank. The Senate still needs to pass […]

With A Slate Of Koch Puppet Senators, National Rs Praise Trump: “He Can’t Be Bought”

December 3, 2015

In the bombastic NRSC memo that surfaced yesterday, national Republicans admitted that Donald Trump continues to be popular because “he can’t be bought” by billionaire special interest donors.

National Republicans even encourage their candidates to advance Trump’s traits, but there lies a big problem for the GOP — each and every one of their Senate incumbents and candidates is bought by the billionaire Koch brothers. Trump himself has mocked candidates who seek Koch backing as “puppets” and research shows when voters learn candidates are backed by the Kochs, it’s an immediate turnoff

The Kochs have put millions behind their puppet candidates — and plan to spend even more in 2016 — to ensure that those who do their bidding for them remain in the U.S. Senate. And the Kochs have made it crystal clear — they “expect something in return.

NEW HAMPSHIRE: : Already this cycle, the Koch brothers have spent […]