Real Koch Facts: Florida

Republican Points to the Kochs’ Real Motives: “Prosperity for Yourself and Not Anyone Else”

April 3, 2015

One Republican, yes Republican, legislator in Florida is calling out the Kochs for trying to co-opt the Republican Party. Florida State Senator Nancy Detert (R-Venice) is exposing how the Koch brothers’ are manipulating their rubber-stamp legislators for their own self-serving agenda.

“You’re all on the Koch brothers’ payroll. Good for you. I’m glad you’re all employed … I hope you’re getting paid a lot of money to show up to these meetings and say meaningless things. Obviously you’re for prosperity for yourself and not anyone else … You people serve absolutely no purpose.”

The hearing was on a film incentive bill Detert sponsored in hopes of drawing more movie makers to the state. Since its introduction, Americans for Prosperity have gone after Detert, sending out mailers against the senator and testifying at hearings.

It seems Detert has heard enough of the Koch brothers’ propaganda. She’s realized what we’ve been saying for years: the Kochs’ actions […]

Republican Calls out Americans for Prosperity for Deceptive Tactics

April 17, 2015

The Koch brothers might have an uprising on their hands. For the second time in less than a month, Republicans in the Florida state Senate have called out the state’s branch of Americans for Prosperity for their manipulative tactics.

In a subcommittee hearing addressing Medicaid expansion, state Sen. Rene Garcia said the Koch-funded group was sending out misleading mailers that “deceive the voters of my district.”

AFP lobbyist Melissa Fause responded by saying “maybe our intent didn’t come through in the mailers” because the state Senate was in fact “already engaging in a lot of amazing policies.”

At that, a second Republican state senator, Lizbeth Benacquisto, asked Fause, “would you mind sending a mailer to all of our constituents that you sent the original mailer to, suggesting we’re engaged in some ‘really amazing’ policy development and follow up on your comments here at this committee?’

It’s good to see that more Republicans are starting to […]

Kochs Attack Lawmakers Working to Expand Medicaid to 800,000 Floridians

March 30, 2015

The Koch brothers are campaigning against Florida state Senate President Andy Gardiner (R-Orlando) and 24 other senators who are working to expand Medicaid. Koch-backed Americans for Prosperity is sending mailers to Gardiner’s district and the districts of the other state senators who support the bill and has plans to ramp up its attack once the bill goes to the floor.

The expansion plan, known as the Florida Health Insurance Affordability Exchange program (FHIX), “includes conservative, free market guardrails that will control the cost and growth” of Medicaid in Florida, said Gardiner. In addition to the income requirements from the Affordable Care Act, FHIX has work and premium requirements:

30 hours a week for childless adults and 20 hours a week for parents of children under 18. Unemployed adults could qualify by spending that time searching for employment, participating in job-training activities or furthering their education. Disabled […]

Koch higher education grant comes with strings attached

March 19, 2015

The Charles Koch Foundation has signed on with Papa John’s founder John Schnatter to fund the John H. Schnatter Center for Free Enterprise at the University of Louisville, donating nearly $2 million to the program. So… what’s the catch?

The contract with U of L allows the donors to walk away at virtually any time, says Insider Louisville:

The contracts also allow Schnatter and the Charles Koch Foundation to pull their funding at any time if the center is not living up to its mission, which the contracts say is “to engage in research and teaching that explores the role of enterprise and entrepreneurship in advancing the well-being of society.”

According to the agreements, which were signed by U of L president James Ramsey on March 10, if the donors want to pull funding, they must “make a good faith effort to meet within sixty (60) days to discuss” the reasons with […]

Koch-backed governor forbids the Department of Environmental Protection from doing its job

March 10, 2015

Florida Governor Rick Scott has come up with a fool-proof plan for dealing with climate change: ignore the problem and hope it goes away.

According to officials at the agency, the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, ostensibly in charge of studying and preparing for the impacts of climate change, is reportedly forbidden from using the terms“climate change” and ”global warming.”

The ban went into effect after Scott took office in 2011. Although Scott denies that he was the one to issue the gag order, historically he has refused to acknowledge the reality of man-made climate change even after a group of Florida scientists sat him down and explained it to him.

Former DEP employees claim they were told never to use either of those terms “in any official communications, emails or reports,” because “we were not allowed to discuss anything that was not a true fact.”

This […]

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 […]

Rick Scott – The Special Interests Governor

October 30, 2014

The heated race for governor in the Sunshine State is just around the corner, and after throwing his fantrum on national television, Rick Scott needs something of a miracle to win reelection. Luckily for Scott, he’s got the support of the billionaire Koch brothers and their extensive political network: Koch Industries has made large contributions to Scott’s campaign, and the Kochs’ primary political arm, Americans For Prosperity, has put more than 40 paid staffers on the ground in the Sunshine State.

Scott’s ties to the Koch brothers go back a ways. In 2013, Scott spoke at Americans For Prosperity’s “Defending the American Dream Summit” in Orlando the very same week that he skipped his own three-day education summit, a stark juxtaposition of priorities that drew this rebuke from Tampa Bay Times:

“Unless he’s worried about his base or the lingering threat of a primary challenge, it baffles us that Scott – who […]

New documents reveal same-old Koch extortion-as-education scheme

September 16, 2014

Across the country, up and down the Republican ticket, the Koch brothers’ exorbitant campaign spending has helped the billionaire brothers ensure that GOP candidates support the self-serving Koch policy agenda on issues like environmental protections, the minimum wage and tax breaks for the wealthy. Whether it’s through the Young Entrepreneurs program for high schoolers, or the college-level Edvantage curriculum, the Kochs have used charitable donations to education in much the same way, wielding their influence to create programs that indoctrinate students with their extreme libertarian views. It’s therefore disappointing — but not surprising — that higher education institutions, once thought sacrosanct, have also been subject to the Kochs’ attempts to purchase influence.

New documents released by the Center for Public Integrity detail the negotiations that took place in 2007 between the Charles G. Koch Foundation and Florida State University’s economics department over a proposed Koch donation worth millions. The […]

Video: Rick Perry and Rick Scott Try To Out-Koch Each Other

The past two weeks have seen Rick Perry skip the formal reading of his felony charges to do an event with the Kochs’ AFP in New Hampshire, then explain that he was being indicted for bribery (he’s not, shouldn’t have skipped that arraignment), then return to Dallas for AFP’s “Defending the American Dream Summit.”

At the end of this Tour-de-Koch, the gaffe-prone governor sat down with Ed Morrissey of the conservative blog Hot Air, and further revealed the extent to which Republicans revere the Kochs and court their political support — they even brag about it, apparently.

Perry opens the interview joking about how Rick Scott is always trying to one-up him, saying “Rick Scott always tries to one-up me, so you know, he was the first to call me and say ‘hey, we got Americans for Prosperity, what’d you get?’”

This was in reference to the previous year’s summit, which […]

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!