Real Koch Facts: Oregon

The Kochs go Missing in Oregon

May 21, 2015

Americans for Prosperity, the Koch brothers’ political arm, has inexplicably abandoned their post in Oregon. According to the Institute for Research & Education on Human Rights, AFP national has said “ the organization no longer maintains a chapter in that state.”

AFP has been active in numerous cities across Oregon since 2007, even before the Tea Party movement sprung into existence. One possible explanation is that the surplus of local and nationally linked Tea Party groups pushed AFP Oregon out of business. Another possible reason is that some of the local chapters went off the rails when they began to plunge into conspiracy theories about Islamophobia and Agenda 21.

References to the AFP Oregon chapter have been completely scrubbed from AFP’s national website. AFP declined to comment on what relationship exists between the national and local chapters or why the Oregon chapter had been deserted. This is a victory for Oregonians […]

Koch Industries’ Plant Closure Will Leave Most Workers Unemployed

May 11, 2015

Most of the workers at a shuttering Georgia-Pacific plant are facing unemployment at the end of the year due to Koch Industries most recent cuts. Koch subsidiary, Georgia-Pacific, announced the closure of its Dixie Plant in Parchment, Michigan on Friday. The Kochs’ move is a devastating loss to the city as it was the last remaining paper producer in the town nick-named “Paper City” for the many paper companies it once was home to. Parchment Mayor Rob Heasley said he was shocked by the move since he believed the plant was doing well.

The impending closure is a stark reminder — while the Koch brothers gear up to spend nearly $900 million picking a conservative Republican and try to buy the White House, they have a long history of destroying livelihoods and families. The historic closing is just the Kochs’ latest maneuver to increase Georgia-Pacific’s profits. In Michigan, the Kochs’ Americans for Prosperity is

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: Wehby And The Koch Brothers – Not For Oregon

October 30, 2014

While Oregon Republican Senate candidate Monica Wehby briefly appeared to be a potential bright spot for the Republican Party, that moment quickly passed, although not for any lack of effort (money) by the Koch brothers to keep it alive.

The billionaire Koch brothers have spent around $1 million running attack ads against Wehby’s opponent. Wehby received further Koch support when she was endorsed by the Koch-funded National Federation of Independent Businesses, a group that claims to advocate on behalf of small businesses but in reality supports policies that aid big corporations like Koch Industries. Wehby also raked in thousands in personal donations from the Koch family to her campaign, and Tim Phillips, the president of the Kochs’ Americans For Prosperity, offered praise for her campaign at the Koch network’s secretive billionaires retreat this summer.

For the Kochs, Monica Wehby is essentially their ideal candidate. She has opposed efforts to raise the minimum wage, opposed environmental standards from […]

REPORT — Outrage in Oregon: How The Koch Brothers’ Quest For Profit Wrought Havoc On A Mill Town

October 23, 2014

The Koch brothers have shown time and time again that everything they do is motivated by self-interest. Be it the politicians they support, the policies they lobby for, or the business practices they engage in, their ultimate goal is to continue to build their massive fortune, no matter the consequences.

For a microcosm, look no further than Oregon, where the billionaire brothers’ business empire, Koch Industries, has had a profoundly negative impact on the state. While Georgia Pacific, a subsidiary of Koch Industries, has a slew of plants throughout the state, the most quintessential example of their utter disregard for the well-being of the state centers on Georgia Pacific’s Wauna Mill in Clatskanie.

In 2004, Georgia Pacific was granted a massive tax exemption on Wauna Mill under the condition that they fulfill a promise to create a certain number of jobs at the mill site. The plant was the largest taxpayer in […]

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: