Real Koch Facts

Would You Believe Tom Cotton’s Spokesman Is Going To Work For The Kochs?

January 8, 2015

There were few 2014 candidates whose love for the Koch brothers was more transparent than Tom Cotton. During his senate campaign, Cotton infamously skipped out on Arkansas’s iconic Pink Tomato Festival to pal around with the Koch brothers and their closest billionaire friends at a secretive Southern California retreat.

At said summit, Cotton heaped praise on the Kochs and their network for boosting him, specifically praising Americans for Prosperity-Arkansas for playing a “critical role” in buoying the Republican Party within the state. Cotton has been in lock-step with AFP throughout his time in Congress — notably he was the only member of the Arkansas congressional delegation to oppose the Farm Bill, which is crucial to the state’s economy. In return for his strict adherence to the Koch agenda, AFP poured huge amounts of money into dishonest attack ads against Cotton’s opponent.

Well, with […]

The Koch brothers want you to think they’re being noble

January 7, 2015

Today, Charles Koch co-authored a Politico piece titled “The Overcriminalization of America.” For the Koch brothers, it’s just the latest move in their most recent political pet project, having spent the last few months touting criminal justice reform. With around 2.4 million people incarcerated in the United States, including a disproportionate number of minorities, that seems like a noble mission, right?

It would be, if only their motivations weren’t so dishonorable. The Koch brothers’ “come to Jesus” moment didn’t arise over the problems they saw with the criminal justice system; it came after Koch Industries and employees came under scrutiny from law enforcement in the course of their work. They didn’t like the scrutiny, and they’ve been donating hundreds of thousands of dollars every year since 2004 to reform the criminal justice system. Supporting groups like this was simply a business decision for them, not a moral one.

The Koch brothers claim they aren’t trying to make this a political issue and that this […]

Koch-Crony Joni hires Koch-Crony Lisa Goeas as her chief of staff

December 17, 2014

Question of the day: How many Koch-Cronies can you fit into one U.S. Senate office?

Answer: At least two (for now).

On Tuesday, incoming U.S. senator and Koch-Crony Joni Ernst hired Lisa Goeas, the vice president for political and grassroots operations at Koch-backed NFIB, to be her chief of staff.

NFIB stands for the National Federation of Independent Businesses and claims to represent America’s small businesses, but in reality, it’s about anything but small businesses. Regular readers of Real Koch Facts know that NFIB is Just another Koch-backed group working to push its anti-working family agenda like pushing for tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans.

Here’s how it works: The Kochs fund a group that claims to support small businesses. The group endorses Koch candidates. The candidates then claim they’re endorsed by the small business community, and if they win election, they push Koch-friendly legislation through and hurt working […]

Has anyone seen $1.6 million? Could’ve sworn I left it in my jacket pocket…

December 11, 2014

When it comes to political spending, there are shady outside groups, and then there’s Koch brothers’ operations.

The Center to Protect Patient Rights (CPPR) is a Koch brothers organization that has been described as “the linchpin in one of the most complex networks of dark money in the country.” By virtue of its non-profit status, CPPR is exempt from any requirement to disclose its donors. In turn, it is able to function as an ATM for Koch-linked organizations, funneling tens of millions of dollars from anonymous wealthy donors to a smorgasbord of high-powered conservative groups.

In essence, Center to Protect Patient Rights is campaign money laundering apparatus. Actually, not just in essence — California recently fined CPPR $1 million for what they explicitly deemed “campaign money laundering,” a violation of state campaign finance law.

But there’s more. This week, CPPR was at the center of a new revelation that […]

AFP Continues Fight Against Health Care Access For Low-Income Americans, Kids, People With Disabilities

December 11, 2014

The Koch brothers’ heartless crusade to block Medicaid expansion and deny health care access to low-income Americans just keeps rolling on. Monday, Americans For Prosperity-North Carolina director, Donald Bryson, and AFP policy analyst, Akash Chougule, penned an op-ed calling on Gov. McCrory to ignore renewed pressure to expand Medicaid.

In the op-ed, Americans For Prosperity’s callousness is on full display. Not only does AFP find the costs of Medicaid expansion to North Carolina taxpayers unacceptable (even though studies show it would save the state billions), but they have trouble even conceiving that there would be any merit at all in providing an affordable health insurance option to working North Carolinians:

And what would we be paying for? Nothing that should comfort taxpayers. Potentially crowding out funding for roads and schools for the return on investment we would receive from Medicaid expansion would be ludicrous.

Their utter lack of empathy is almost as breathtaking as […]

Kochs’ Decades-Long Effort To Take Over GOP Comes To Fruition — With Unchecked Power In Tow

December 10, 2014

“The Koch operations are the most important nonparty political players in the U.S. today, and no one else is even close.”

That’s the harrowing POLITICO quote we woke up to this week. It sums up an article about the Kochs’ ongoing effort to stuff millions upon millions of dollars into a major data operation to cook up political profiles about the vast majority of the country’s citizens.

The effort, POLITICO says, gives the Kochs’ political outfit “all the earmarks of a national party.” It’s not the first time they’ve been described that way, but it’s probably the most telling evidence yet that the Kochs’ 30+ year effort to take over the GOP has come to fruition.

There’s more than a few problems here. The Kochs gobbled up their new data operation in the best way they know – they bought it. Then another one of their arms invested in it.

And then, after buying the company […]

Governor-Elect Doug Ducey Hires Koch Lackey As Chief Of Staff

December 10, 2014

Throughout Doug Ducey’s gubernatorial campaign in Arizona, his ties to the self-interested Koch brothers were often in the spotlight. Ducey was caught on a recording at the Kochs’ secretive billionaires’ retreat in California pleading for their money. He even had Governor Chris Christie jump in at a joint event and rush to the Kochs’ defense on behalf of Ducey.

Well, his newly announced selection of Kirk Adams as chief of staff illuminates just how deeply he is connected to the Koch brothers and their powerful network. So who is Kirk Adams?

As the Los Angeles Times put it, Kirk Adams one of the “early architects of the Koch network of nonprofits.” That description comes in article about Adams and fellow Arizona Koch crony, Sean Noble, coordinating the activities of two shady “pro-business” groups that spent heavily during the 2012 elections to fight against increased education funding in California. The group […]

Koch Agenda + State Legislatures = A World That Only Suits The Kochs

November 25, 2014

Over the past six months, we’ve told you all about the Koch brothers’ extreme, self-serving agenda designed to hurt the middle class and make the Kochs even richer. They’ve turned North Carolina and Wisconsin into Tea Party utopias.They’ve taken over the Republican Party and set the agenda. They’ve tried to indoctrinate children with their anti-government, climate change-denying beliefs. And now the oil tycoons are trying to kill alternative energy at the state level so we stay addicted to their oil.

In 2009, the Koch brothers “threw their full weight behind defeating” legislation to address climate change – and they won. Now they’ve set their sights on the states: they’re trying to repeal state laws that require utilities to get more of their energy from alternative sources like wind and solar.

How are they doing this? Through yet another Koch-funded group that tries to move […]

Chris Christie’s Board Again Rejects Windmill Plan, Receives Praise From AFP

November 24, 2014

The third time isn’t always the charm. For a third time, Chris Christie’s Board of Public Utilities has rejected a proposal to build windmills near Atlantic City in order to generate renewable energy. It turns out that the infinite checkbooks of the Koch brothers are more charming than the proverbial ‘third time.’

Immediately after Christie’s Board of Public Utilities once again shot down the promising project, the Koch brothers’ Americans For Prosperity issued a press release praising the energy regulators for their decision. In said press release, they do their best to dress the energy plan up in scary clothes, applauding the BPU for “rejecting this misguided offshore wind scheme.” Amazingly, later in the release, they point out that New Jersey’s job market continues to be lackluster, losing 4,500 jobs in October, while disregarding the renewable energy jobs this project would create.

AFP’s crusade against alternative energy forms is […]

Creating the next generation of climate change deniers

We’ve previously reported on the Kochs’ attempts to indoctrinate America’s children with their anti-government, anti-science educational curriculum, and their latest attempt is just as outrageous.

The battle over public school textbooks in Texas has been in the news for months because of several controversial and factually inaccurate details included in the proposed textbooks. Early versions were riddled with errors, and some even went as far as lying to students about the science behind and causes of climate change. And where did this pseudo-science come from?

If you guessed the Koch brothers, you win!

The Koch-funded Heartland Institute, a self-described “nonprofit research organization,” is in reality a conservative advocacy group known to deny the human causes of climate change (just like the Koch brothers!).

In one passage submitted by Heartland, which was written by its non-scientist employees, students:

are told that scientists “do not agree on what is causing the [climate] change;”
are told […]