Real Koch Facts: Wisconsin

AFP & Walker teaming up again to attack workers’ rights in Wisconsin

February 27, 2015

Another day, another Governor Scott Walker and Koch brothers’ scheme to further their extreme agenda and harm working families in the Badger State. This week, the Wisconsin state legislature is ramming through legislation that would make the state a right-to-work state, a measure that will pass both chambers and that Governor Walker has pledged to sign into law.

According to the Center for Media and Democracy, the bill is taken word-for-word from American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a group that counts Koch Industries as a key member. This is not the first time Governor Walker has pushed legislation from the Koch-funded group. Governor Walker has used his governorship to sign a litany of ALEC bills into law, including anti-consumer tort reform provisions, restrictive voter ID laws, voucher and virtual school expansions, the privatization of the state’s economic development functions, and more. Now that the ALEC-inspired right-to-work legislation is before the Wisconsin legislature, the Kochs’ political arm, […]

New Walker Appointee Teamed Up With AFP To Support Solar Energy Cost Hikes

February 19, 2015

This week, Bloomberg Politics dubbed Scott Walker the “King of Kochworld.” The article chronicled his deep and long-established ties to the Koch brothers’ network and their support for the ultra-conservative makeover he’s given the state of Wisconsin. It’s a love affair that could pay big dividends for Walker, as he looks to become the beneficiary of a large chunk of the eye-popping $889 million they’ve promised to spend this cycle.

Well, Walker is living up to his regal title. This week, his administration announced a number positional of shakeups, including the appointment of a gentleman named Scott Neitzel to run Wisconsin’s Department of Administration. According to the Wisconsin DOA website, their ultimate goal is to “offer Wisconsin residents the most efficient, highest-quality state government services possible.”

But in Neitzel’s previous role, as an executive at Madison Gas and Electric, he was hardly fighting for his new constituents. Instead, Madison Gas and Electric was teaming up with Americans For Prosperity, fighting to protect profits for Big Oil and petrochemical companies like Koch Industries at the expense of solar energy users. The coalition was pushing for legislation to hike fees and increase regulations on customers who produced their own solar power.

From personnel moves to policy pushes, Scott Walker’s motives are clear — the only constituents he’s looking out for are the ones he reigns over in Kochworld.

Walker’s Wisconsin budget proposal borrows from the Koch playbook

February 6, 2015

Earlier this week, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker released his two-year budget proposal and like you’d expect from any Koch disciple, it includes plenty of material inspired by the billionaire brothers and their political agenda. In particular, Walker’s budget proposal includes a plan to allow an unlimited amount of taxpayer-funded school vouchers for Wisconsin students, and a whopping $250,000 line item for a study on the supposed health impacts of wind energy, an alternative energy source that has long drawn the ire of the Kochs and their allies.

According to the Wisconsin State Journal, Walker’s budget proposal removes an existing cap on the number of students who can use school vouchers to attend private schools in the state. What’s more, “Walker would also start paying for the program with money that otherwise would go to public schools,” per the report. Diverting public school funds to pay for private education is […]

New report highlights same old Koch education scheme

November 20, 2014

In addition to myriad political entities and nonprofits, the Koch brothers’ network — or the “Kochtopus” — also comprises Koch-funded education initiatives designed to impart their extreme libertarian views on our nation’s young people. These initiatives — like Youth Entrepreneurs — wield influence in our schools the same way the Kochs do politically: by buying it. Standard operating procedure among the Kochtopus’ tentacles, but as a new report from Huffington Post highlights, it’s especially craven when you consider the Kochs’ open hostility toward public education, and the drastic education funding cuts that some of their favorite elected officials have presided over in North Carolina, Kansas and Wisconsin.

Huffington Post digs into the machinations of the Bill of Rights Institute (BRI), an organization that has received millions in funding from the Koch organizations that came together to launch BRI in 1999, including the Charles Koch Foundation and […]

Koch network likely to spend heavily for Wisconsin’s Ron Johnson

November 12, 2014

Just over a week has passed since the 2014 elections, so all eyes are now on the November 2016 elections, natch. Given that the Koch brothers and their allies spent heavily this cycle to help send their top cronies, like Iowa’s Joni Ernst and North Carolina’s Thom Tillis, to the Senate, it’s unsurprising that the Kochs’ 2016 spending plans are already being discussed. It’s especially unsurprising when you consider the battleground state in question: Wisconsin, where the Kochs and their political arm, Americans for Prosperity, have already spent millions to support Governor Scott Walker’s efforts to implement a far right agenda in the Badger state.

According to POLITICO, Wisconsin’s potentially vulnerable Tea Party Senator Ron Johnson’s bid for a second term would likely be aided by the deep-pocketed brothers. The report notes that Johnson is a “favorite of the Koch brothers’ donor network” and that Koch-affiliated operatives confirm the […]

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: A Second Term For Scott Walker Is A Second Term For The Kochs

October 30, 2014

The Koch brothers’ political arm, Americans for Prosperity, spent heavily in Wisconsin in 2010 to ensure that Scott Walker was one of the many extreme Conservative Republicans swept into office by that year’s Tea Party wave. Over the course of his first term as Governor, Walker and his allies have steered Wisconsin to the far right, cutting education spending by $800 million, working to block an increase to the state’s minimum wage and at the same time, giving massive tax breaks to the wealthy. Led by Walker, the state’s Republican legislature introduced an assault on collective bargaining rights that effectively cut public workers’ pay and destroyed their ability to negotiate over health coverage, safety, or sick leave.

When Walker’s extreme policies were at issue in the 2012 recall election, AFP spent $10 million promoting his — and the Kochs — political agenda. Walker’s current campaign for reelection has also benefited from Koch support, […]

AFP adds Wisconsin to its roadshow of misleading ads

October 17, 2014

To understand the relationship the Koch brothers’ political arm, Americans for Prosperity, has with the truth, you needn’t look any further than the group’s scorecard on PolitiFact. During this midterm cycle, the group has racked up a consistent stream of “mostly false” and “false” ratings for their claims in ads. A toddler taking a “true or false” quiz is more likely to get a “true” than this outfit, which has also employed paid actors to spout falsified stories about the Affordable Care Act.

The latest “mostly false” rating was issued in response to a misleading mailer AFP is circulating in Northern Wisconsin. According to the mailer, Republican Governor Scott Walker’s administration is responsible for the region’s mining economy “moving forward” and for more people “getting good, high-paying jobs.” Per PolitiFact, AFP’s citation for this claim is Senate Bill 1, a controversial bill partially written by a mining […]

Federal judge with ties to Kochs rules in Scott Walker’s favor

October 15, 2014

Enforcement of campaign finance laws in Scott Walker’s Wisconsin is the ultimate nursery tale gone bad, with the fox guarding the henhouse at every turn. Case in point: a federal judge with ties to the Koch brothers ruled yesterday that outside groups, like the many organizations receiving Koch funding, can legally coordinate on “issue advocacy” with political campaigns, like that of Koch favorite Governor Scott Walker.

Given that Walker faces an ongoing John Doe investigation into potential illegal coordination of efforts with outside groups during the 2012 recall election, it was hardly a surprise when his Attorney General, J.B. Van Hollen, declined to represent the state’s Government Accountability Board in a lawsuit challenging the coordination rule. The lawsuit was argued before U.S. District Judge Rudolph Randa, who issued an injunction yesterday overturning the Wisconsin state law banning coordination between political campaigns and “independent” political groups, provided that the groups […]

Tell Me More About Education, Guy Who Wants To End All Federal Funding For Education

July 16, 2014

As part of the Koch brothers new “well-being initiative,” which is nothing more than another apparatus to push their self-serving anti-government agenda, The Charles Koch Institute is hosting an education forum in Nashville.

The Koch brothers hosting a forum on education is ironic at best and offensive at worst. Consider that Koch-supported governors and budgets have already wreaked havoc, gutting education funding in states like Wisconsin and North Carolina. But slashing funding is only one step toward their ultimate goal…

When David Koch ran for vice president in 1980, his Libertarian ticket called for abolishing the Department of Education and ending ALL federal funding for education.

So this is the Kochs view of how to increase “well-being” — by eliminating federal funding for education. It’s all part of their self-serving crusade against government that would privatize everything from education to social security and eliminate environmental regulations that keep our air safe to breathe and our water safe to drink.

The Koch agenda is bad for the well-being of working families, and we don’t need a new initiative or an education forum to figure that much out.

Background after the jump.