Real Koch Facts

The Kochs’ tax plan gives new meaning to #treatyoself

If it’s a day that ends in ‘y,’ you can bet the Koch brothers and their political entity, Americans for Prosperity, are looking for opportunities to alter the tax code in order to further line their own pockets. Most recently, AFP and other ultra-conservative groups have been urging lawmakers to support bonus depreciation, which in addition to being a key tenet of AFP’s tax reform proposal, is what the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities deems “fiscally irresponsible” policy.

In addition to this relatively obscure provision, AFP’s tax reform manifesto includes numerous other changes that would tilt the tax code in favor of the super rich at the expense of working class Americans. According to CBPP, the plan includes a massive cut to the tax rates on corporations’ foreign profits and on the income tax paid by top earners, repeal of the estate tax and […]

AFP Defends Unpatriotic Business Practice As Symptom Of Unfair Corporate Tax Rate

July 21, 2014

The Koch brothers are always fighting for the people. And by people, in this case, of course they mean big companies who reincorporate overseas to avoid paying U.S. taxes.

The Koch brothers and their political groups like Americans For Prosperity are constantly pontificating about the necessity to slash taxes and overhaul the current tax code. But as we’ve shown time and time again, their goal isn’t so much to help people like you as it is to help people like them. They support plans that would amount to massive tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, while shifting greater tax burden to working families.

Well, they’re at it again. In the midst of an ongoing economic recovery from the worst recession since the Great Depression, with too many working families still struggling to get by, what is the biggest concern for the Kochs and AFP? Perhaps it’s expanding […]

AFP plans to spend over $125 million on midterms

Earlier this year, Americans for Prosperity made waves when it came out that the organization — the political arm of the Koch brothers — plans to spend $125 million influencing this fall’s midterm elections. Turns out this huge sum, unprecedented for a private group in a midterm election, is actually an underestimate, according to AFP’s President Tim Phillips.

Phillips told the Washington Post that the report pegging AFP’s spending at $125 million “understates the actual amount they will spend” on the midterms. Although he does not specify how much exactly of an understatement it is, Phillips notes that in addition to heavy spending on political ads (which are notoriously misleading), voters can expect AFP to have an expanded on-the-ground presence in several states, like Louisiana. According to Phillips, the group will also continue to interfere with local ballot initiatives, like the

North Carolina Film Tax Incentives: The Kochs Strike Back

July 18, 2014

The outfit that brought you NC Film Tax Incentives: Thom Tillis’ Epic Flip-Flop last month is already out with a sequel and it’s even more packed with hypocrisy than the original. Americans for Prosperity, political arm of the billionaire Koch brothers, released a statement yesterday urging North Carolina lawmakers to oppose the extension of tax credits for the successful film and television industry in the state, building on a June ad campaign railing against the program.

AFP’s vocal opposition to the incentives managed to woo House Speaker Thom Tillis, so it’s hardly surprising that the group continues to clamor over the program. What is noteworthy about the latest statement is AFP’s insistence that the tax program be discontinued in favor of “improving educational options in the state.” AFP suggests that the funding for tax incentives instead be applied to a taxpayer-funded program that […]

More Koch Money, Please! Sincerely, Greg Abbott

Texas Attorney General and gubernatorial candidate Greg Abbott has a good thing going on with the Kochs. As we previously wrote, much to the delight of the Kochs, Abbott actually acted to limit standards for public chemical disclosure even in the wake of the deadly explosion in West, Texas.

And Wayne Slater of Dallas Morning News reported that the move came after massive contributions from the fertilizer industry who stands to benefit from the relaxed chemical rules. Donations that included $75,000 from the Kochs, including $25,000 from Charles Koch’s son, Chase, who heads the fertilizer division of Koch Industries.

The Kochs have proven time and time again that they really don’t care about how people’s safety is affected by the work of their oil conglomerate, so long as they are maximizing profits. In fact, according to Daniel Shulman’s book, Sons of Wichita, a former Koch Industries […]

Koch Industries expands its business to… indoctrination?

Last week, we examined Generation Opportunity, the Kochs’ efforts to indoctrinate college students using keg parties and creepy carnivals. Turns out, for the past several years, the family — led by Charles G. Koch — has been endeavoring to start this process even earlier, with high school students. According an exhaustive report from the Huffington Post, since 2009, the Kochs and their allies have been using a program called Youth Entrepreneurs to “impart Koch’s radical free-market ideology to teenagers.” The report estimates that the initiative reached about 1,000 Kansas and Missouri students last school year.

Where Generation Opportunity’s gambit is creepy and ridiculous, the strategy and execution of Youth Entrepreneurs is subversive and unsettling. The classes are seemingly similar to a high school business course, but teachers receive training at Koch Industries’ headquarters, use class materials created by Koch-funded think tanks and are even required […]

Tell Me More About Education, Guy Who Wants To End All Federal Funding For Education

July 16, 2014

As part of the Koch brothers new “well-being initiative,” which is nothing more than another apparatus to push their self-serving anti-government agenda, The Charles Koch Institute is hosting an education forum in Nashville.

The Koch brothers hosting a forum on education is ironic at best and offensive at worst. Consider that Koch-supported governors and budgets have already wreaked havoc, gutting education funding in states like Wisconsin and North Carolina. But slashing funding is only one step toward their ultimate goal…

When David Koch ran for vice president in 1980, his Libertarian ticket called for abolishing the Department of Education and ending ALL federal funding for education.

So this is the Kochs view of how to increase “well-being” — by eliminating federal funding for education. It’s all part of their self-serving crusade against government that would privatize everything from education to social security and eliminate environmental regulations that keep our air safe to breathe and our water safe to drink.

The Koch agenda is bad for the well-being of working families, and we don’t need a new initiative or an education forum to figure that much out.

Background after the jump.

David Koch calls AFP’s misleading ads “quite true”

July 14, 2014

Today’s Kansas City Star features a rare interview with one of the typically reclusive Koch brothers, David. The piece primarily focuses on the many institutions and edifices that bear his name, but in a noteworthy passage at the end of the article, David discusses the barrage of TV ads coming from the Kochs’ political arm, Americans for Prosperity.

David lauds AFP’s ads criticizing the Affordable Care Act, glowing that “these ads are very well done” and that the campaign is “really quite informative and… quite true.” PolitiFact would beg to differ with David’s assessment of AFP’s anti-ACA ads, having rated the claims in several of these spots to be false. What’s more, David specifically praises the ads’ demonstration of “real people who have real medical problems,” yet the ads in Alaska, Louisiana and Colorado all used paid actors.

The gravity […]

The Kochs want to make Colorado the next North Carolina

July 11, 2014

Earlier we had a rundown of Americans for Prosperity’s new, hypocritical ads attacking a trio of Colorado State Senators for their support of a [Republican-sponsored!] bill establishing health care exchanges. Slate’s Dave Weigel has two words for why the billionaire Koch brothers’ political arm is going after these Colorado legislators, months out from Election Day: North Carolina.

Weigel recaps AFP’s return on investment in North Carolina in 2012, including the ability to shut Democrats out of the redistricting process and, subsequently, Republican control of both chambers of the state legislature and the governor’s mansion. Ultra-conservatives Speaker Thom Tillis and Governor Pat McCrory have since been able to run the table, ramming through extreme policies like tax breaks for the wealthy and severe cuts to education funding in the state. A report earlier this year from Bridge Project has more details on the Koch-approved agenda that their cronies […]

The Kochs Engage In Self-Parody

July 11, 2014

They say people who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones. Well the Koch brothers live in a glass mansion and they’re launching boulders.

Get a load of this: the Koch brothers are attacking League of Conservation Voters, claiming they’re a “partisan activist group that does not disclose its donors.” Seriously. Yes, those Kochs; the ones who plan to spend $500 million to buy midterm elections for Republicans through their various dark money political entities.

It’s not surprising that the Koch brothers are especially irritable when people hold their favorite son, Scott Brown, accountable. Everyone is overly protective of their own. But this line of attack is beyond parody.

The Kochs go on to assail LCV’s ad for representing them as self-interested, out-of-state oil billionaires who have fought to protect oil tax breaks. But if the shoe fits…This comes from the Center for […]

The Kochs’ tax plan gives new meaning to #treatyoself

AFP plans to spend *over* $125 million on midterms

More Koch Money, Please! Sincerely, Greg Abbott

Koch Industries expands its business to… indoctrination?

AFP plans to spend over $125 million on midterms