Real Koch Facts

Americans for Prosperity’s Tim Phillips appears on C-SPAN, gets the story wrong as usual

August 12, 2014

On C-SPAN’s Newsmakers this past Sunday, Tim Phillips, president of the Koch brothers’ political arm, Americans for Prosperity, gave the kind of interview you’d expect – one that plays fast and loose with the facts, pays tribute to his backers, and shows just how deluded Phillips and the Koch brothers truly are.

During the interview, Phillips characterized AFP’s work as simply opposing bad policies, but failed to mention that his backers have been pushing their extreme, self-serving agenda for over 30 years. Phillips also suggested that “most Americans… don’t have any sense of who David and Charles Koch are,” but he’s wrong – the Kochs are becoming a liability for the candidates they back.

That’s because voters are recognizing that AFP is essentially the third-largest political party in the country. The group plans to spend over $125 million in dark money this cycle to buy the Senate so Tim Phillips and the Kochs can see their extreme […]

“Moderate” Bruce Rauner really just another Koch lackey

August 11, 2014

Need proof that Illinois gubernatorial candidate Bruce Rauner is no moderate? Look no further than the billionaire’s “charitable” giving to see where his true priorities lie: as has been recently exposed, Rauner “has given more than $2 million to extreme right-wing causes and groups associate with the Tea Party and the billionaire Koch brothers.”

This is the same Bruce Rauner who likes to tout his “everyman” credentials by wearing an $18 watch and driving an old camper van, while also spent $100,000 on a single parking spot at a Chicago condo building and bragging about his status among the wealthiest .01% in the country. Over the past 10 years, Rauner’s given millions to Koch-backed groups and other extreme right-wing groups that want to move the state and the country backwards on the minimum wage, Social Security, Medicare, abortion, marriage equality, climate change, and the environment.

Here’s a sample of Rauner’s extreme priorities:

He’s on record saying that […]

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 […]

Koch-Crony Joni’s Cavalry Is Coming!

July 8, 2014

This weekend, the Des Moines Register reported on the Koch brothers’ Americans For Prosperity ramping up its operations in Iowa. Or as Joni Ernst would put it, YAY!!

Joni Ernst has already expressed her gratitude for the opportunity to attend a Koch seminar as well as to Americans for Prosperity for running attack ads against Bruce Braley. So how ever will she thank the Koch brothers for deploying their troops on the ground across the Hawkeye State? Well, she is starting by fighting for the same anti-middle class agenda.

Ernst and AFP have both supported cutting taxes for the wealthy and for corporations, shifting more of the tax burden to working families. They’ve both supported privatizing social security and slashing Medicare. Ernst has even come out against the existence of the federal minimum wage, putting her in lock-step with the Koch plan to eliminate it.

For Koch-Crony Joni and AFP, it’s ‘you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours.’ And if they win, nobody has the backs of working families in Iowa.

Background after the jump.

Rick Scott And The Koch Brothers Sitting In A Tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G

It’s a marriage made in heaven.

The idea of raising the minimum wage makes Rick Scott cringe. The Kochs and Americans for Prosperity want to get rid of the minimum wage altogether. Rick Scott won’t expand Medicaid for over 750,000 Floridians and 40,000 veterans. AFP has fought against Medicaid expansion across the country. Rick Scott won’t accept climate science. The Kochs have long funded climate change denial groups.

So of course Americans for Prosperity is lending their support to Rick Scott. It was love at first sight!

AFP Fights 4-Cent Tax Increase To Fund Infrastructure in NH

July 3, 2014

Gov. Maggie Hassan recently signed into effect a tiny 4-cent/gallon increase in New Hampshire’s gas tax in order to provide crucial infrastructure funding for the state. Even the VP of the Associated General Contractors of New Hampshire praised the small increase, calling it “very realistic” and “a great tool for contractors and for planning purposes,” and pointed out that New Hampshire still has the lowest gas tax in New England.

In return for a tax increase that will have a yearly cost to motorists of about $16/vehicle, the state will be able to continue funding highway improvements and pay off borrowed money for an interstate expansion.

So who could oppose this commonsense deal which will cost New Hampshirites next to nothing? Why the Koch brothers’ national powerhouse political group, Americans for Prosperity, of course. Never ones to miss an opportunity to oppose government spending, no matter how small or how […]

Good news everybody, the Kochs are invested in your well-being!

July 1, 2014

Well, more precisely, they are invested in convincing you that your well-being is tied to unrestricted free enterprise.

The Charles Koch Institute just launched its “Well-Being Initiative” purportedly to “advance our understanding of the meaning, foundations, and drivers of human flourishing.” But there is little doubt about the real motives for the new endeavor.

The board of advisers is stacked with libertarians, including Arthur Brooks, the president of the American Enterprise Institute, who has written extensively on this topic. According to Slate, some of that work was previously featured on the Charles Koch Institute’s website. Brooks has written on the link between free enterprise and well-being, and in doing so, argued broadly for shrinking government, stressing that many programs that aid working class families do not necessarily increase happiness.

As the Slate piece points out, this sentiment is right in line with a memo from the Kochs’ Americans for […]

Restricting Women’s and Workers’ Rights: For the Kochs, Not Just a Hobby

June 30, 2014

This morning, the Supreme Court handed down two controversial decisions on Hobby Lobby v. Burwell and Harris v. Quinn that deal significant blows to women’s access to birth control and workers’ rights, respectively. The two issues may seem unrelated, but both decisions represent an extreme right wing agenda that is increasingly acting against the best interests of the middle class and working families. Both of these dangerous decisions have already elicited support from groups closely allied with the Koch brothers and their self-serving agenda.

In its Hobby Lobby decision, the Supreme Court ruled that “closely held” for-profit companies don’t have to comply with the Affordable Care Act requirement that employer-sponsored insurance plans cover birth control if it is perceived to interfere with the company’s religious beliefs. Shortly after the decision was handed down, Ilya Shapiro, editor in chief of the the Koch-founded CATO Institute’s Supreme Court Review heralded the decision, bizarrely claiming that “nobody has been denied access […]

This Week in Real Koch Facts

June 13, 2014

It’s another lovely week in Kochland, as the Koch brothers announced their plan to drop another $30 million into buying midterm elections to push their self-serving agenda and a Koch Industries subsidiary twice released toxic chemicals into the Florida air. Meanwhile, in Michigan Terri Lynn Land gushed over the Kochs and their unlimited campaign spending, Thom Tillis took Koch marching orders, and we explored AFP’s inability to tell the truth and their interesting definition of fairness (spoiler: they want working families to pay more taxes). We also took a stroll down memory lane to the 1970s, when Charles Koch initiated his master plan to undermine and undercut government.

Check it out after the jump.

Kochs To Throw Another $30 Million Behind Their Self-Serving Agenda

Photo Credit: Ervins Strauhmanis

The Kochs’ self-interested spending spree continues, with no end in sight. Politico reported this morning that the Kochs’ political umbrella group Freedom Partners is reserving $30 MILLION worth of airtime for this fall in seven states with Senate races. This is of course on top of the $125 million Americans for Prosperity has already announced it plans to spend this cycle, all to buy elections for the Kochs’ extreme conservative candidates of choice who they can trust to drive their self-serving agenda.

The worst part is not the spending, it’s that the Kochs are using their massive wealth to inundate voters around the country with false, misleading, and bogus information. Thus far, of the twelve fact-checks PolitiFact has done on Americans for Prosperity, not a single one has been rated even “mostly true.” They’ve tried to play off out-of-state actors as concerned constituents. They told the sad story of a sick woman forced to buy a new unaffordable health care plan…only to have it revealed that the woman would actually save over $1000. Ad after ad has been proven false or misleading. They’ll say anything to advance the Koch agenda–to abolish the minimum wage, slash medicare, dismantle social security, strip environmental protections, and generally roll back and undermine government, all to keep growing their massive oil profits.

So it’s important for voters to keep this in mind. Over the next five months, when your TV is overtaken by scary political ads telling you that Candidate X will destroy your life as you know it, there’s a good chance it’s paid for by the Koch brothers in an effort to drive their self-serving agenda. And if it is, you should add a mental disclaimer: This advertisement is aimed at further enriching the billionaire Koch brothers and is unlikely to be based on reality.

Background research after the jump.

AFP Opposes Proposal for Wealthy to Pay Their Fair Share

Photo Credit: 401kcalculator.org

From ensuring tax breaks for Big Oil, to eliminating campaign finance laws or opposing minimum wage increases, Americans for Prosperity never hesitates to advocate for policies that line the pockets of the Koch brothers and AFP’s other ultra-wealthy backers. It follows that AFP reflexively opposes any proposals that dare to suggest that the super-rich pay their fair share of taxes. AFP has come out in support for lower taxes for the wealthy over a dozen times.

The latest addition to AFP’s oeuvre of legislative alerts rails against the “Fair Share Tax,” natch. (If “Fair Share Tax” doesn’t ring a bell, perhaps its alias does: the Buffett Rule, so named after the billionaire investor Warren Buffett who suggested that his marginal tax rate should be raised to at least match that paid by his staff, including his secretary).

AFP urges legislators to reject the fair share tax provision currently before […]

AFP Has A Lying Problem

June 9, 2014

Last week, Brad Woodhouse penned an op-ed for CNN as part of our ongoing efforts to expose the truth about the self-serving agenda of the Koch Brothers and their political groups, like Americans for Prosperity. Apparently AFP didn’t like that, because today, CNN published a rebuttal from their president, Tim Phillips. Phillips, claims that really AFP’s work is all about fighting for policies “that would give every American the best shot at a better life.” It remains unclear how shifting a greater tax burden onto working families, slashing Medicare and Social Security, and abolishing the minimum wage would help “give every American the best shot at a better life.” But there is even more concrete dishonesty in Phillips’ op-ed:

Look no further than Obamacare for proof. It has been nothing but a burden on hard-working American families. The country deserves to hear their stories. For months, we’ve worked with middle-class families […]

AFP Is Incensed That Billionaires Pay Higher Income Taxes Than Working Families

The Kochs’ Americans for Prosperity has a funny definition of fairness. As in they find it patently unfair that billionaires should be burdened a higher income tax rate than working families.

In their tax reform document, AFP bemoans that one reason people support a progressive income tax in part “based on a theory of fairness–which can include the desire to make the wealthy pay more due to the nebulous concept of their ‘ability to pay’ more.” In AFP’s fantasy land, apparently the only impediment to a minimum wage worker buying groceries for the week is the “nebulous concept of her ability to pay” for them.

AFP goes on to lament that a progressive tax code “removes individuals in lower brackets from the reality of the cost” of anti-poverty programs. Naturally, they conclude that a flat tax system, which would drastically cut taxes for the wealthy and shift more of the tax burden onto working families, is the only way to escape “the moral problems and economic inefficiencies” of the current system.

In short, the Kochs and AFP’s definition of economic inequality is that billionaires pay higher taxes than people living paycheck-to-paycheck.

View supporting research after the jump.

AFP President To Obama: Stop Protecting Medicare And Social Security

Photo Credit: Pedro Ribeiro Simões

Brad Woodhouse, President of American Bridge

Last week, Tim Phillips, president of the Koch-funded group Americans for Prosperity, penned an op-ed for Forbes entitled “The Non-Existent Era of Austerity.” In his piece, under the familiar guise of faux fiscal responsibility, Phillips assailed President Obama for his “addiction” to protecting programs like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid from massive cuts. Or as AFP calls massive cuts, “reforms” that would “save” the programs.

Make no mistake–the goal of Americans for Prosperity, which has already promised to spend $125 million supporting extreme conservatives in the midterm elections, is not save Social Security or Medicare. Their agenda is exactly the same as the one the Koch brothers have been pushing for over 30 years: Slash Medicare, dismantle social security, and undermine government as a whole in the process. It’s a self-serving agenda that centers on making the rich even richer at the expense of working families.

Their history speaks for itself: AFP has supported Paul Ryan’s budgets, including one that the Wall Street Journal said would “essentially end Medicare.” David Koch’s 1980 Libertarian ticket called social security “the most serious threat to the future stability of our society next to nuclear war.” They’ve supported huge tax cuts for the wealthy, while calling for abolishing the minimum wage.

AFP and the Kochs don’t want to save programs that are crucial to the middle class. They want to destroy them.

View supporting research after the jump.

DUI: Democracy Under the Influence (of Koch)

The Koch brothers have been trying to abolish campaign finance laws for more than three decades. In 1980, David Koch discovered a loophole that allowed him to contribute unlimited funds to a campaign if he was on the ticket. So he wrote to the Libertarian Party, bought a spot as their VP nominee, contributed over $2 million of his own money, and ran on a ticket that advocated for abolishing campaign finance laws (among others, like the minimum wage).

Fast forward 30+ years and the Kochs’ dream of overrunning democracy with unbridled political spending has essentially been realized. Their extensive network of dark money organizations reaches far and deep – like the Koch-funded Americans for Prosperity, which has already promised to spend $125 million to buy midterm elections for extreme Republican candidates that will push the Kochs’ self-serving agenda. It’s the same agenda that they’ve been pushing for decades–abolishing the minimum wage, slashing Medicare, removing environmental protections, and dismantling Social Security.

Check out our new video above and learn more about the Kochs’ influence.

Supporting research after the jump

NEW Web Ad: A 30 Year Agenda

David Koch ran for Vice President on the 1980 Libertarian ticket with Ed Clark — a nod Koch earned after promising to contribute some of his personal fortune to the campaign. Their ticket’s platform was beyond radical and self-serving, calling for abolishing all minimum wage laws, slashing Medicare, removing environmental protections, and dismantling Social Security, which they referred to as “the most serious threat to the future stability of our society next to the threat of nuclear war.” More than 30 years later, the Koch agenda has barely budged, and Koch-funded groups like Americans for Prosperity and the candidates they support fall in lockstep with many of these extreme positions.

Today American Bridge is launching a new online ad on the Kochs’ extreme, thirty year agenda.

View accompanying research after the jump.

The Kochs’ 30+ Year Extreme, Self-Serving Agenda

Over the past forty years, one thing about the Kochs has not changed: their willingness to spend their fortune to drive their extreme, self-serving agenda.

Whether it’s the $125 million their organization Americans for Prosperity has committed to spend in this year’s mid-term elections or the massive funds they spent on David Koch’s 1980 Libertarian campaign for Vice President, the Kochs are committed to seeing through their self-serving agenda.

In 1980, that agenda involved attacking Social Security and the minimum wage, and defending tax breaks for big oil.

The 1980 Koch-Clark campaign called Social Security “the most serious threat to the future stability of our society next to the threat of nuclear war” and called for phasing out the program, in addition to proposing to abolish ALL minimum wage laws. What’s more, the 1980 Koch-Clark ticket proposed cutting capital gains tax rates in half and eliminating the “windfall profits” tax on oil companies.

These revelations came from previously unreleased primary source documents discovered by American Bridge.

Read more about the Kochs' self-serving agenda after the jump.

If the Koch brothers win, we lose.

Meet the real Koch brothers, the secretive billionaires willing to spend millions to drive their self-serving agenda at the expense of working families.

The organizations funded by the Kochs – like Americans for Prosperity – and the extreme conservative candidates they support reveal their true agenda: supporting tax cuts for the wealthy, weakening Medicare, and eliminating the minimum wage.

Get the truth about the Koch agenda and how it’s impacted your state.

The Koch Brothers in Wisconsin

Photo Credit: Emily Mills

Before the 2010 elections, Wisconsin was a relatively progressive state, focused on improving and investing in education and protecting workers’ rights. But that year, conservative groups like the Kochs’ American for Prosperity spent millions to elect a massive wave of Republicans in both the state House and in the governor’s mansion.

In the four years since Governor Scott Walker and the state legislature took office, they have supported and passed an extreme right-wing agenda. Working together, they have made it harder to vote, attacked public workers’ rights and made public parks and the areas around school less safe by allowing concealed weapons.

The legislature and Governor Walker have also slashed the education budget by $800 million, while at the same time giving huge tax breaks to the wealthy. With no surprise, the governor and his extreme conservative allies also passed a law severely limiting a woman’s right to make her own health care decisions by requiring medically unnecessary ultrasounds. And now, they are working to block raising the minimum wage for the hard working people of Wisconsin.

The Wisconsin chapter of American for Prosperity has already put up $10 million toward supporting Walker’s extreme Tea Party agenda; what will they attack next?

View full research brief after the jump.