Real Koch Facts: Colorado

NEW REPORT: The Kochs’ Rocky Mountain High

August 31, 2015

David and Charles Koch are turning states across the country into their own political playgrounds, using their billions to influence policy to suit their business and personal needs, and Colorado, where they own an Aspen mansion, is one of the most prolific examples. Together with their network of dark money groups, the Koch brothers are fighting to impose policies that fit their agenda while hurting middle-class Colorado families.

Today, Bridge Project is releasing a new report titled, “The Kochs’ Rocky Mountain High,” a comprehensive look at the impact of the Kochs’ operations in Colorado.

The Kochs treat Colorado as a personal, political, and business playground, but the games they play challenge the ability of Coloradans to govern their own state, put at risk the livelihoods of the state’s residents, and jeopardize the natural beauty that defines Colorado.

The report delves into:

The Kochs’ private donor retreats in Aspen and Vail, where they discussed the “threat” of unions, climate regulations, […]

The Kochs’ “Millennial” Group Is Attacking Social Security

August 10, 2016

Over the last week, the Kochs’ millennial-outreach front group has placed generic anti-Social Security op-eds in newspapers across the country, including in Colorado, Missouri, Florida,Oklahoma, and Mississippi.

Written by the group’s policy director, David Barnes, the op-ed approaches the group’s anti-Social Security agenda with fearmongering pessimism, claiming that:

“Social Security’s math no longer works”;
“Millennials are out of luck”;
“This is a full brown crisis”; and, last but not least,
“Social Security is an unsustainable relic of a bygone era that threatens to take us down with it.”

Beyond the op-ed campaign, the Koch group has similarly exposed its mission to destroy Social Security by promoting grassroots campaigns “petitioning” and “tabl[ing]” for “#liberty and #SocialSecurityReform.”

Previously, the group’s resorted to violent imagery to fearmonger over the supposed Social Security “crisis,” tweeting out the image of a a young professional being held up with a gun to […]

Kochs Sow Chaos In States to Protect Their Puppet Senators

May 17, 2016

In states across the country, the Koch brothers invest heavily in lobbying to assert their influence on policy agenda and electing their cadre of Koch-aligned politicians. Along with that, they fund a network of front groups who do their bidding–all to serve their bottom line: their corporate profits.

The foundation they’ve laid in each state has propped up puppet politicians in Congress. Despite any talk of the brothers pulling back their holdin US politics–the Kochs will continue to protect the senators they’ve helped to put in place. Already, Rob Portman, Kelly Ayotte, Ron Johnson, and Joe Heck have all benefited from millions of dollars in attack ads against their opponents. And they’re previewing how they’re going to help the former Club for Growth president, Pat Toomey too.

The damage the Kochs have done in states already help them […]

AFP Celebrates Pushing The Kochs’ Self-Enriching Agenda At The Colorado State Capitol

February 4, 2016

The Koch brothers’ primary political front group, Americans for Prosperity, declared today “AFP-Colorado Legislative Day at the Colorado State Capitol,” promoting what it called it’s “6 for ’16 Public Policy Agenda representing the interests of taxpayers and promoting success for working families across the state.” A look at AFP’s agenda, though, makes it obvious that their agenda isn’t at all about working families in Colorado— It’s designed to use Colorado as a pawn to realize the Koch brothers’ national agenda to bolster their bottom line without regard for what’s best for working people and middle class families.

The Kochs’ disregard for Colorado’s best interests in favor of their own is clearest right at the top of their agenda with the declaration that their #1 priority is ensuring that Colorado budgets continue to be held hostage by the unworkable TABOR policy. Since AFP launched in 2004, the Kochs have been pushing […]

Kochs’ AFP TABOR Petition Will Hurt Colorado

January 7, 2016

In Colorado, the Kochs’ political longarm is yet again pushing their agenda that is good for the Kochs but bad for everyday Coloradans.

More than happy to sacrifice funding for essential programs like public education and health care if it means a smaller government, the Americans for Prosperity’s Colorado chapter is on the attack against Governor Hickenlooper’s proposed budget that projects increased revenues.

In 1992, Colorado passed the Taypayer Bill of Rights (TABOR) — a program that the Kochs and far right have loved for years. TABOR includes a provision that says that “state and local governments cannot … spend revenue collected under existing tax rates if revenues grow faster than the rate of inflation and population growth, without voter approval.”

The TABOR law has caused issues for state budgeting in the past. Impacted by the recession and wildfires, voters approved a temporary change in 2005 to the law that suspended the revenue […]

In An Off-Year Election, The Kochs Remain As Invested As Ever

November 3, 2015

It’s Election Day 2015 — and the Kochs have a lot of money on the line. It may be an off-year election, but Charles and David Koch are as invested as ever. Though they downplay the extent of their influence and impact of their machinations, up and down the ticket — from Colorado and Utah, to Kentucky, Mississippi, and Virginia — Charles and David Koch are using sizable investments and politically-weaponized front groups to influence electoral outcomes and advance their selfish agenda.

The Kochs get a lot attention — deservedly — for their massive investments in congressional, gubernatorial, and presidential elections, but they aren’t afraid to get local, either. The Koch’s Americans for Prosperity dropped big money in Jefferson County, Colorado, turning the school board election into “a money-soaked proxy war.” In Douglas County, CO, AFP’s spent more than $130,000. And over in Utah, AFP’s been lobbying hard against a gas tax ballot initiative.

Back East, […]

Closing Argument: Kochs Fight To Save Candidate Cronies In Critical Election

October 30, 2014

The midterms are around the corner and the Koch brothers and their vast political network have gone to unprecedented lengths to elect extreme Tea Party candidates who support their self-serving agenda. The Kochs have bought and paid for these candidates (both senate and gubernatorial), and are clearly hoping for an Election night wave to secure support for their anti-working families agenda.

Unparalleled Spending

The billionaire brothers began their dirty campaign early this cycle. By January of 2014, the Kochs’ chief political arm, Americans For Prosperity (AFP), had already poured $22 million in dark money into TV ads smearing Democratic senators up for reelection. AFP did not stop there. They have continued to spend so heavily on television ads, which range from misleading to patently false, that AFP has accounted for one out of every sixteen Senate ads this cycle as of August 2014.

But Americans For Prosperity’s spending is just one cog […]

Closing Argument: Koch Crony Cory Gardner Counting On Kochs to Drag Him Across The Finish

October 30, 2014

In Colorado, Republicans have pinned their hopes on Koch-crony Cory Gardner, a classic supporter of the Kochs’ self-serving agenda. What does that agenda look like in Gardner’s case? More of the same policies the Kochs have been working toward for years, benefitting wealthy special interests at the expense of working families and the middle class.

On issue after issue, Gardner has stood in line with the Koch agenda. Charles Koch has opposed the minimum wage entirely and David Koch ran for VP on a ticket that called for abolishing it. Their primary political entity AFP identified opposition to raising the minimum wage as a key vote multiple years in a row. Cory Gardner said he opposed raising the federal minimum wage. On equal pay for women, Koch Industries lobbied against the Paycheck Fairness Act, which would help women fight back against instances of pay discrimination. Cory Gardner voted against […]

Koch-backed NFIB endorses GOP Senate candidates

The National Federation of Independent Businesses (NFIB) desperately wants you to believe it has the interests of small business owners at heart, as do the eleven GOP Senate candidates the group has endorsed in this fall’s midterm elections. In reality, the group’s biggest patrons are the oil baron Koch brothers and it is firmly in favor of tax cuts that would benefit the wealthy substantially while benefiting the vast majority of small business owners not at all.

NFIB has been issuing endorsements throughout the midterm cycle on behalf of extreme Conservative candidates like Joni Ernst and Terri Lynn Land. The most recent Senate candidate to receive the NFIB’s endorsement is none other than Koch bro Scott Brown, who in 2011 gushed to David Koch that “your support during the election, it meant a ton. It made a difference and I can certainly use it again.” Not […]

Even non-attending Koch cronies get shout out at secret donor conference

August 27, 2014

As revealed by new reporting from The Nation and Huffington Post, GOP Senate candidates Mitch McConnell, Joni Ernst, Tom Cotton and Cory Gardner all had their chance to kiss the ring at the Koch brothers’ secretive donor conference earlier this year. Luckily for some of their compatriots, in-person attendance to pander to the high-rolling “seminar” attendees wasn’t a prerequisite for receiving shout-outs from the presidents of Americans for Prosperity and Freedom Partners, two key organizations in the Kochs’ political network.

From East to West, AFP president Tim Phillips and Freedom Partners president Marc Short highlighted the Senate campaigns of Virginia’s Ed Gillespie, North Carolina’s Thom Tillis, Louisiana’s Bill Cassidy, Minnesota’s Mike McFadden and Oregon’s Monica Wehby, illustrating that two of the Kochs’ top operatives consider all of these candidates to be exemplary of the anti-working class agenda the billionaires are pushing in this fall’s midterm elections. Put simply, all of these candidates are carrying water for the Kochs, AFP and Freedom Partners, or else Phillips and Short wouldn’t have sung their praises to the Kochs’ network of mysterious donors. Phillips told donors at the event that North Carolina’s Tillis offers “the best opportunity” and that McFadden is “a good candidate,” while Wehby is “running a strong campaign” despite being in “a tough blue state.” In extolling the virtues of Gillespie and Cassidy, Phillips and Short noted that Virginia is a “key state for us” and that energy issues (near and dear to Koch Industries’ heart, of course) represent a “key battleground” in Louisiana.

With the Freedom Partners network committing to spend $500 million in this midterm cycle, including AFP’s pledge to pour over $125 million into the election, these new revelations shed light on which candidates the billionaire Koch brothers view as a sound investment. More on Phillips’ and Short’s’ comments lauding key Senate candidates after the jump: