Real Koch Facts

The Kochs are Funding An Extreme Libertarian Project in New Hampshire

March 10, 2015

The Koch brothers have been involved with Libertarian causes for decades, ever since David Koch discovered a campaign finance loophole that would allow him to donate unlimited sums of money to a political candidate, so long as he was on the ticket. So he bought himself a $2 million spot on the Libertarian party’s 1980 ticket as the VP candidate, running on a platform of extreme deregulation, which would benefit Koch Industries and further line the brothers’ pockets. Fast forward to 2015, and the brothers are sponsoring a bizarre Libertarian movement in New Hampshire aimed at taking over and demolishing the state government.

The Free State Project‘s goal is to move 20,000 libertarians to the state and effectively overrun the state government and possibly even secede from the United States. Despite its extreme rhetoric, the Free State Project has deep connections to the Koch brothers. The New Hampshire chapter of Americans for Prosperity, the […]

Maryland’s DOT nominee is pushing Koch products

March 4, 2015

Maryland Governor Larry Hogan owes the Kochs big time for supporting his campaign. Now he is paying them back by installing their pawns in his administration. Pete Rahn is the latest Koch crony that has been dispatched to work in a newly minted GOP administration. Governor Hogan nominated Rahn to lead the state’s Department of Transportation.

Rahn suffered a bruising confirmation hearing that had to be postponed because legislators had too many questions about his many connections to the billionaire Koch brothers. At the hearing, Maryland legislators raised questions about a highway project in New Mexico, where Rahn was previously DOT chief. The widening of NM-44, a 118-mile, $420 million project that Rahn oversaw in New Mexico, was the most expensive highway project in the state’s history and included a huge and unusual contract to Koch Industries: a 20-year, $62 million contract for roadway […]

The Koch Sponsored Director of the Congressional Budget Office

March 3, 2015

The Koch brothers poured millions into the GOP campaign treasure chest in the 2014 midterms. And now, the newly elected GOP majority is repaying their investors by installing Koch cronies in posts across Capitol Hill. Last week, the Republicans appointed Koch ally, Keith Hall, to serve as the director of Congressional Budget Office. In theory, the Congressional Budget Director analyzes the economic impact of congressional proposals absent any ideological bent. But if you check out Hall’s record, his Koch-funded bias is all too clear.

Prior to his appointment, Hall worked as a Senior Research Fellow at the Mercatus Institute, which is one of the dozens of free-market, anti-regulatory policy shops that the Kochs have bankrolled. The Mercatus Institute has churned out reports arguing for the privatization of Social Security; fingering public employee unions for causing state budget crises; attempting to debunk climate science; and […]

Veto gives Kochs a temporary setback in their potential profit from KXL pipeline

March 2, 2015

This week, President Obama used his veto power for only the 3rd time to strike down a law authorizing the Keystone XL pipeline. This controversial project would allow a Canadian company to send tar sands crude oil through the United States to Gulf Coast oil refineries, thereby continuing our commitment to a dirty fuel source while only creating few permanent jobs and exposing us to environmental risks, including oil spills.

The Keystone pipeline is clearly a legislative priority for the Koch brothers, as evidenced by Koch-back groups including Americans for Prosperity and their state affiliates issuing a myriad of press releases, letters, and calls for action in favor of the project. After investing $290 million through the 2014 election, it’s no wonder that the new GOP-controlled Congress acted immediately to please their benefactors by voting on legislation that would bypass the permitting process and fast-track the pipeline. The GOP leadership is continuing to do […]

AFP & Walker teaming up again to attack workers’ rights in Wisconsin

February 27, 2015

Another day, another Governor Scott Walker and Koch brothers’ scheme to further their extreme agenda and harm working families in the Badger State. This week, the Wisconsin state legislature is ramming through legislation that would make the state a right-to-work state, a measure that will pass both chambers and that Governor Walker has pledged to sign into law.

According to the Center for Media and Democracy, the bill is taken word-for-word from American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a group that counts Koch Industries as a key member. This is not the first time Governor Walker has pushed legislation from the Koch-funded group. Governor Walker has used his governorship to sign a litany of ALEC bills into law, including anti-consumer tort reform provisions, restrictive voter ID laws, voucher and virtual school expansions, the privatization of the state’s economic development functions, and more. Now that the ALEC-inspired right-to-work legislation is before the Wisconsin legislature, the Kochs’ political arm, […]

NYT Reveals New Front In The Koch Brothers’ Climate Denialism Campaign

When Republican climate deniers in Congress are citing the few remaining scientists who are skeptical about man-made climate change, there is no name they are more fond of throwing out than Dr. Wei-Hock Soon. Well, this weekend, the New York Times revealed that Dr. Soon “appears to have violated ethical guidelines of the journals that published his work” by accepting mountains of money from organizations with a vested interest in protecting the fossil fuel industry. He even referred to his work scientific papers as “deliverables” in exchanges with his funders.

One of Dr. Soon’s major financiers was the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation, forking over a whopping $230,000 to the GOP’s beloved climate skeptic. That’s Charles G. Koch of the infamous Koch brothers, of course, who never miss an opportunity to protect their petrochemical empire.

Consider what we already knew about the Koch brothers. They have funneled millions of dollars to climate […]

Unhappy 35th Anniversary to the Kochs & Campaign Finance Laws

February 20, 2015

It’s a milestone anniversary for the Koch brothers. 2015 marks 35 years that the billionaire brothers have been attacking campaign finance laws, and to mark the occasion, they’ve made an appropriately bold gesture: hiring a former FEC commissioner and longtime opponent of campaign finance enforcement as counsel. Last week, Donald McGahn testified at an FEC hearing on behalf of Freedom Partners Chamber of Commerce — aka the Kochs’ “secret bank” — and provided written comments encouraging the FEC not to enhance disclosure requirements for the group and others like it.

The unhappy relationship between the Kochs and campaign finance laws dates back to David Koch’s 1980 run for vice president on a Libertarian Party platform that sought to “abolish the FEC and all limits on campaign spending.” Now, on the cusp of an election cycle where the Koch network has pledged to spend upwards of a billion dollars supporting candidates who […]

The Koch Brothers’ War On State Colleges

February 20, 2015

A Huffington Post story last week shed light on the Koch brothers and their cronies’ newest frontier for attack: state colleges.

In North Carolina, Koch consigliere Art Pope’s well-documented influence cannot be overstated, Over the past decade, Pope, the wealthy owner of a chain of dollar stores, has poured $40 million into manipulating American politics and using his fortune to control the legislative agenda in North Carolina. In 2010, Pope underwrote the Tea Party takeover of the North Carolina state legislature. According to an analysis by the Institute for Southern Studies, of the twenty-two legislative races targeted by Pope in 2010, the Republicans won eighteen. Democrats in North Carolina were outspent and upended. “It led to Republicans controlling both chambers of the legislature for the first time in more than 100 years.

Pope is at the center of Koch world and he has […]

New Walker Appointee Teamed Up With AFP To Support Solar Energy Cost Hikes

February 19, 2015

This week, Bloomberg Politics dubbed Scott Walker the “King of Kochworld.” The article chronicled his deep and long-established ties to the Koch brothers’ network and their support for the ultra-conservative makeover he’s given the state of Wisconsin. It’s a love affair that could pay big dividends for Walker, as he looks to become the beneficiary of a large chunk of the eye-popping $889 million they’ve promised to spend this cycle.

Well, Walker is living up to his regal title. This week, his administration announced a number positional of shakeups, including the appointment of a gentleman named Scott Neitzel to run Wisconsin’s Department of Administration. According to the Wisconsin DOA website, their ultimate goal is to “offer Wisconsin residents the most efficient, highest-quality state government services possible.”

But in Neitzel’s previous role, as an executive at Madison Gas and Electric, he was hardly fighting for his new constituents. Instead, Madison Gas and Electric was teaming up with Americans For Prosperity, fighting to protect profits for Big Oil and petrochemical companies like Koch Industries at the expense of solar energy users. The coalition was pushing for legislation to hike fees and increase regulations on customers who produced their own solar power.

From personnel moves to policy pushes, Scott Walker’s motives are clear — the only constituents he’s looking out for are the ones he reigns over in Kochworld.

AFP pulls out all the stops to keep 200,000 Tennesseans uninsured

February 6, 2015

If you’ve been following the ongoing political battles over Medicaid expansion in Republican-controlled states across the country, then you know that the Koch brothers’ chief political arm, Americans for Prosperity, has been a vocal opponent of expanding Medicaid coverage in states like North Carolina. Their effort to block Medicaid coverage for hundreds of thousands of uninsured is bad enough on face, but even worse is the sheer glee with which AFP has heralded the defeat of Medicaid expansion proposals. In North Carolina, the state AFP chapter offered Governor McCrory their “congratulations” for signing a bill blocking Medicaid expansion into law, and now this week in Tennessee, that state’s chapter has declared it a “victory” that 200,000 Tennesseans will remain uninsured.

NBC News has a must-read rundown of AFP’s “aggressive” effort to make Republican Governor Bill Haslam’s widely popular Medicaid expansion proposal, Insure TN, politically unpalatable […]