Real Koch Facts

Kelly Ayotte Reaps Rewards For Siding With The Kochs While New Hampshire Pays The Price

October 5, 2015

All eyes are on the New Hampshire Senate race today as Kelly Ayotte’s chances continue to rapidly decline.

And with her campaign in free fall who is Ayotte likely to call first for help? Her billionaire friends, Charles and David Koch.

In the Senate, Ayotte has built a record that shows who she puts first — special interest billionaires like the Koch brothers.

Ayotte has eagerly done what’s best for the billionaire brothers including opposing raising the minimum wage, protecting tens of billions of dollars in special tax breaks for big oil companies, voting to roll back Wall Street reform, and more.

And while New Hampshire families aren’t better off, Kelly Ayotte is reaping the benefits of toeing the Koch line.

Already this cycle, the Koch brothers have spent $1.2 million propping up Ayotte because they know she’ll continue to do their bidding in the U.S. Senate.

And over […]

Koch-Think: VW Pollution & Fraud OK; Subsequent Deaths, A “Rounding Error”

October 5, 2015

Volkswagen recently admitted deliberate fraud in cheating engine emissions tests for — according to the latest reports — the better part of ten years. Fraud, that — according to the International Council on Clean Transportation — resulted in emissions of “smog-forming nitrogen oxides at 15 to 35 times higher than the US legal limit,” Vox reports.

What’s the upshot? More from Vox:

Using these figures, the extra pollution from Volkswagen’s US cars can be expected to lead to an additional 5 to 27 premature deaths per year. If we extrapolated worldwide to all 11 million vehicles, that would come to somewhere between 74 and 404 premature deaths each year.

Appalling though that is, the car manufacturer’s found an apologist and defender in general director at the Koch-financed (naturally) Mercatus Center, Tyler Cowen.

The professor penned a recent opinion for the New York Times, in which he unabashedly excuses not just the pollution and […]

Carly Jumps On To The Kochs’ “Short List”

October 5, 2015

The Kochs are on the prowl for a candidate who will push their self-enriching agenda without abandon and a new report reveals that Carly Fiorina is “drawing the notice of the billionaire Koch brothers.”

Fiorina made her first 2016 foray into Kochworld when she appeared alongside the Kochs other candidates at their “exclusive summit of rich donors at an oceanfront luxury resort in August.” And she’s been on the Koch radar ever since.

Reuters reports that Fiorina’s recent performances on the campaign trail have “prompted industrialists Charles and David Koch to take a ‘serious look.’”

It’s easy to see why Fiorina would get the Koch nod of approval, her business record of putting profits ahead of all else by outsourcing and firing workers, is on par with the billionaire brothers’ philosophy of putting their bottom line fist.

If the Kochs pick Fiorina to spend a piece of the $900 million they’ve promised […]

NEW REPORT: Koch Rush In The Silver State

October 2, 2015

It’s not just presidential candidates who are putting in more time in Nevada. As the Silver State’s political capital increases, so does the Koch brothers’ interest in investing. The billionaire brothers have long appeared to have money to burn, and what better place to strike it rich (again) than the home of Las Vegas? After all, the Kochs were never going to sit back and let Sheldon Adelson have all the fun — it’s not in their nature.

Today, Bridge Project is releasing a new report entitiled, “Koch Rush In The Silver State,” a deep dive into the Koch brothers’ efforts to gain political control of Nevada. The combined draw of natural resources and favorable tax policies brought Koch Industries to the state. Now, just as they’ve done in states across the country, the Kochs are using their massive wealth to rig Nevada in their favor.

Through the State Policy Network’s Nevada […]

LIBRE Embraces Romney Call To Raise Taxes on Latino Working Families

September 30, 2015

In the past, we’ve called the LIBRE Initiative a Koch-backed Latino-outreach propaganda machine with little regard for the actual interests of the Hispanic community.

It still is.

LIBRE’s lack of genuine concern and conviction was put on public display last week, when LIBRE’s executive director, Daniel Garza, jumped to defend Jeb Bush in the wake of his Mitt Romney-esque “we should not have a multicultural society” moment. Garza defended Bush’s call for assimilation, doubling-down on the notion that immigrants should “embrace American ideals and put them first,” as he put it. So much for the preservation and celebration of cultural heritage.

We saw more of the same from Garza in July, who refused to outright denounce Donald Trump and the GOP field’s offensive, anti-immigrant rhetoric, only daring to say, “It’s a distraction, a major distraction.”

Evidently defending Jeb’s offensive comments weren’t enough and when LIBRE spokeswoman Rachel Campos-Duffy appeared on The O’Reilly Factor, she echoed Mitt […]

Kochs Eagerly Endorse Ed Gillespie 25 Months Early

September 29, 2015

Just minutes after the news leaked that Ed Gillespie plans to run for Virginia governor in 2017, one of the first people to throw their support behind the former DC shadow lobbyist was unsurprisingly the leader of the Koch brothers’ front group Americans for Prosperity.

Gillespie has said he won’t make a formal announcement for at least a year but the Kochs are eager to get behind him because they know if he’s elected governor he’ll work to advance the Kochs’ agenda — an agenda that’s good for billionaires like the Kochs’ but hurts Virginia’s middle class.

The Kochs have already said they’ll spend nearly $900 million to buy the White House and keep the U.S. Senate in 2016, and there’s no telling how much they’ll spend to prop up Ed Gillespie so that he’ll push the billionaire brothers’ agenda forward.

New Survey: Majority Of Republicans Believe In Climate Change. Charles Koch: Shrug

September 29, 2015

The Koch brothers, aka the world’s leading climate-deniers, regularly use their political influence and wealth to push bunk science against climate change. Most of the conservative politicians they fund do the same, but a new poll released yesterday shows that the rest of their party may be moving on. A survey conducted in late August shows that more than half of Republicans “believe the world’s climate is changing and that mankind plays some role in the change,” the New York Times reported yesterday.

According to the New York Times:

The results echo a number of other recent surveys concluding that despite the talk of many of the party’s candidates, a significant number of Republicans and independent voters are inclined to support candidates who would back some form of climate action. It may also point to a problem facing Republicans seeking their party’s presidential nomination: The activists who crowd […]

Who’s On The Kochs’ Shortlist For Speaker? Kevin McCarthy.

September 29, 2015

Whoever is elected to the next class of House Republican leadership will no doubt have to pass the litmus test administered by Charles and David Koch and commit to pushing their self-enriching agenda that’s good for billionaires like the Kochs and bad for middle class families across the country.

As Kevin McCarthy emerges as the top contender to be the next Speaker of the House, he’s no doubt positioned himself to be a Koch favorite to lead House Republicans.

The Kochs have been with McCarthy since his first campaign for Congress and contributed over $55,000 to his campaigns over the course of his career. And on issue after issue — from pushing deauthorization of the Ex-Im Bank to lifting the oil export ban, opposing Wall Street Reform, blocking environmental regulations, and more — McCarthy has been fully supportive of the Koch agenda.

While the GOP leadership infighting is likely far from over — […]

Kochs Spend More Money In Missouri, Still Losing On Right-To-Work For Less

September 28, 2015

A few weeks ago, despite massive spending efforts by the Kochs, Missouri legislators did not overturn Governor Jay Nixon’s veto of a right-to-work bill. Now the Kochs are attempting to sway the tides again by — you guessed it — spending more money. Americans for Prosperity (AFP) announced an ad buy today against Republican Rep. Kathie Conway.

According to AFP’s website,

Beginning on Monday, September 28, 2015 Missourians who live in the St. Louis area can expect to see new TV ads calling on Rep. Conway to support Right-to-Work. The spot points out the fact that Representative Conway did not represent her district and instead voted for special interests by protecting union bosses. The TV ad buy will be supported with radio, print and digital advertising, as well as mailers sent to her constituents.

However, AFP’s attempt to force out Republicans who don’t fall in line may be a lost cause this […]

Koch’s LIBRE Jumps To Defend Jeb, Jeb Creates “Free Stuff” Conundrum For The Kochs

September 25, 2015

With the Koch’s chosen candidate dropping out of the race earlier this week, the billionaire brothers are sure to be taking a new look at the Republican field and judging each of the remaining candidates by how willing they are to push the Kochs’ self-enriching agenda — could the Koch’s candidate be Jeb Bush?

But with Jeb! struggling, the brothers’ political network is being forced to scramble to save his campaign.

Earlier in the week Jeb took serious flak for “riding in the Trumpian slipstream” in arguing, “We should not have a multicultural society.” And in an effort to lend Jeb a helping hand, the head of the Kochs’ Latino outreach front group, LIBRE, defended that Jeb’s comments “were not a gaffe” in a TIME op-ed.

It’s not a surprise that LIBRE is first in line to defend Jeb — Jeb’s own staffer in charge of Hispanic outreach was […]