Real Koch Facts: Colorado

BREAKING: Newly Released Evidence Shows Kochs Back Candidates Who Share Their Extreme, Self-Serving Agenda

August 27, 2014

What do Joni Ernst, Tom Cotton, Cory Gardner, and Mitch McConnell all have in common? They all share key aspects of the Kochs’ extreme, self-serving, anti-working families agenda.

New reporting tonight by The Nation and Huffington Post on audio from a secretive Koch donor conference – where Ernst, Gardner, Cotton, and McConnell all spoke – demonstrates these candidates’ gratitude for the Kochs’ support, and the extent to which they share the extreme Koch agenda.

Whether opposing an increase in the minimum wage (or opposing a federal minimum wage entirely), supporting efforts that would voucherize Medicare, opposing legislative attempts to remedy pay discrimination, or opposing (even “philosophically”) policies that would directly assist those they seek to serve (e.g., the Farm Bill in Arkansas and Renewable Fuel Standards in Iowa), Koch-backed candidates are putting their Koch-backed agenda first above all else.

Supporting research after the jump.

Beauprez stumps for the Koch brothers in Denver

July 30, 2014

With their billions coming from the fossil fuel industry, the Koch brothers’ opposition to environmental regulations is both predictable and well-documented. Yesterday, Americans for Prosperity Colorado, the Kochs’ political arm in the state, held a rally in Denver opposing the Environmental Protection Agency’s proposed power plant emissions regulations that protect children and families from health problems like asthma.

AFP Colorado was joined at the rally by former Congressman and candidate for governor, Bob Beauprez. Singing from the Koch song sheet, Beauprez criticized these common sense protections for families while lauding companies like Koch industries. Exactly what AFP and the Kochs — whose company is ranked 14th in the country in air pollution — want to hear.

The Koch brothers and AFP are aiming to elevate Beauprez, in service of their mission to push Colorado to the far right. For his part, Beauprez’s […]

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 […]

AFP Takes Its Traveling Circus Of Misleading Ads To Colorado

The Kochs’ Americans for Prosperity continues to blaze an impressive trail in shamelessly misleading attack ads. Their newest endeavor, like many of their others, is an attempt to tie lawmakers to Obamacare and smear the new law. But this one is different.

AFP is buying television ads to go after three Democratic state senators for supporting a bipartisan bill that allowed Colorado to establish its own health care exchanges. The bill was championed by then House Majority Leader Amy Stephens, a Republican.

According to the Denver Post, Stephens’ said that the business community was influential in her decision to sponsor, and went on to explain that her reasoning was that “if [Obamacare] is going to be in place, we needed to make it as pro-market and as free-market as possible.”

AFP’s ads conveniently left out that the bill was championed by a Republican in an effort to […]

The Republican Agenda, As Dictated By The Koch Brothers

June 20, 2014

Super-secretive, well-guarded rooms at a Koch brothers’ billionaires retreat–this is where the Republican agenda is being hatched these days.

Last weekend, the Kochs and their wealthiest friends rented out an entire luxury resort complex in Laguna Beach. Because where else are you supposed to hold your brainstorming session on how to best spend hundreds of millions of dollars to buy elections?

But as detailed by The Nation, it wasn’t just dark money donors palling around at the conference. Guess who else made an appearance? Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, presidential hopeful Marco Rubio, key Senate candidates, Cory Gardner and Tom Cotton, and influential conservative congressman, Jim Jordan.

There is much ado these days about the jockeying for power between the Tea Party and the Republican establishment. But the reality is, in today’s GOP, the Koch brothers are the ones calling the shots.