Salon.com > David Koch

Koch brothers helped derail climate change with lawmaker pledge

Mon, 01 Jul 2013 16:18:00 +0000

A new two-year study by the Investigative Reporting Workshop at American University demonstrates how the Koch brothers have helped to derail climate change legislation. The conservative group Americans for Prosperity, which the Kochs bankroll, pushed lawmakers to sign a pledge not to vote for “legislation relating to climate change that includes a net increase in government revenue.”

From the study:

[I]n 2011 and 2012, Koch Industries Public Sector LLC, the lobbying arm of Koch Industries, advocated for the Energy Tax Prevention Act, which would have rolled back the Supreme Court’s ruling that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) could regulate greenhouse gases. The bill was sponsored by Rep. Fred Upton, R-Mich., and co-signed by 92 Republicans (and three Democrats), 61 of whom signed an anti-climate tax “pledge.” An economist with the American Council for Capital Formation — a nonprofit group that receives Koch money — testified about that same bill before the House Energy and Commerce Committee. Margo Thorning told members of the House in February 2011 that regulation of greenhouse gas emissions “makes little economic or environmental sense,” according to her testimony.

Koch Brothers doubling down on political involvement

Wed, 01 May 2013 13:37:00 +0000

Despite the overall failure of conservative Super PACS to sway the 2012 elections their way, the Koch Brothers are planning to double down on their efforts in the next election cycle.

The New York Times reports on the Kochs' recent conference in Palm Springs, Calif., during which the Kochs reportedly discussed strategy for the next election cycle:

They have not yet decided whether to intervene in Republican primaries, people involved in the discussions say. But the brothers want their network to play a bigger role in cultivating and promoting Republican candidates who hew to their vision of conservatism, emphasizing smaller government and deregulation more than immigration and social issues. They are also seeking closer control over groups within their network, purging or downgrading those that did not deliver last year and expanding financing for those that performed well.

Also in attendance at the conference were Republican superstars like Dr. Ben Carson, Nikki Haley, Ted Cruz, Rand Paul and John Kasich, the Times reports.

Koch brothers donated big to ALEC, Heartland Institute

Fri, 01 Feb 2013 17:37:00 +0000

Tax filings obtained by the Center For Public Integrity show that the billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch donated a combined $24 million to various conservative organizations and think tanks in 2011, through the four foundations that they run.

From CPI:

A $4.5 million grant to the George Mason University Foundation makes up nearly 15 percent of the university foundation’s revenue for 2011. The school is the largest recipient of Koch foundation money since 1985, and it houses several free-market and libertarian research centers including the Institute for Humane Studies, which received $3.7 million from the Koch foundations.

The D.C.-based American Legislative Exchange Council received $150,000 to help finance its activities, including meetings where corporate representatives draft model legislation with state legislators. The Koch brothers have decades-long connections with ALEC, which gave the brothers the Adam Smith Free Enterprise Award in 1994.

Among the other groups the Koch brothers donated to were the Heartland Institute, the climate change-skeptical think tank, which received $25,000; the Federalist Society, which got $260,000; and the Ayn Rand Institute, which took in $100,000.

Charity isn’t always praiseworthy

Fri, 21 Sep 2012 21:20:00 +0000

As Salon noted earlier this week, 11 more billionaires joined Warren Buffett and Bill Gates' Giving Pledge, making a promise to donate half or more of their fortunes to charity.

The initiative has received broad praise in the media, but little focus has gone into the pledge's consequences. Light digging into the details, however, shows the pledge to be a very open-ended promise indeed.

First, there is nothing binding in the pledge, described on its website as a "moral commitment to give, not a legal contract." No doubt the public and social pressure could shame someone with a spare half-billion to follow through, but where this money goes is another question entirely. Giving Pledge guidelines note:

The pledge asks only that the individual give the majority of their wealth to philanthropic causes or charitable organizations after their death … Each person who takes the Giving Pledge makes an individual decision about which particular causes or organizations they wish to support.

Kansas gets even crazier

Thu, 16 Aug 2012 11:45:00 +0000

Aug. 7 was a very good night for people who want to drive safe abortion out of Kansas. Republican primary voters ousted relative moderates from the state Senate, laying the groundwork for Gov. Sam Brownback to push through his right-wing agenda, both economic and social.

The former got more attention. The election was evidence of "America's grass-roots voter rebellion," in the words of the Wall Street Journal opinion page, or it was, in the words of one ousted state senator, an example of Kansas-based Koch Industries, which threw a lot of money at the race, being "just a terrible, terrible citizen as far as I'm concerned."

But it was also about abortion, in a state that is arguably more obsessed with it than any other. And abortion foes want proper credit.

Koch group’s $25 million buy

Wed, 08 Aug 2012 20:00:00 +0000

Americans for Prosperity, the libertarian grass-roots organizing shop founded and chaired by David Koch, is buying $25 million worth of ads targeting President Obama, it announced yesterday. The campaign is, of course, “the latest example of how independent political groups funded by a small number of wealthy donors are shaping the presidential campaign in key swing states,” as the New York Times notes, but it’s interesting for two other more important reasons as well.

First, despite organizing massive Tea Party rallies pushing policy goals closely in line with those of the GOP, AFP has always tried to maintain a veneer of nonpartisanship. Unlike other outside groups, the group has never run ads that expressly call for the election or defeat of any candidate, but rather only “issue ads” that attack or support candidates for adopting policies AFP supports. But no longer. In the new campaign, $6.7 million will go to expressly advocate the defeat of President Obama. On a conference call with reporters yesterday, AFP president Tim Phillips said, “We’ve always stayed away from express advocacy. But given the president’s disastrous record, we felt this was necessary.”

Crashing David Koch’s party

Mon, 09 Jul 2012 12:16:00 +0000

Looking down Southampton's Main Street with a squint, you could mistake it for a twee small-town American main street; a Rockwellian idyll with Star-Spangled Banners hanging from small clapboard shops. Let your eyes focus, though, and you'll notice the cars lining the street -- the Lamborghini, next to the vintage Mercedes, next to the Jaguar. Or you'll notice that the local boutiques are Michael Kors and Helmut Lang stores and that the real estate shop is a Corcoran office touting waterfront compounds for $25 million in the window. This, of course, is Main Street for the One Percent.

On Sunday, Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney swept through the Hamptons to attend three fundraisers at the private homes of the rich and richer-still. At a fundraising event held at the Southhampton summer house of oil billionaire and money-in-politics poster boy David Koch, suggested donations were $75,000 a couple -- nothing outrageous for political giving, Hamptons-style (relied upon in recent years by Democrats and Republicans alike). But this Sunday, something not seen in local memory also took a day trip to the Hamptons: a protest, about 200 strong, which ventured to Koch's beachfront backyard.

The Kochs’ very bad week

Tue, 03 Apr 2012 11:00:00 +0000

Were there a way for a few billion clams to wipe a week off the calendar, one imagines that Charles and David Koch, the multibillionaire principals of Koch Industries, would like to see the final week of March 2012 vaporized, at least in the public mind. For the Kochs, it was a week of bad news: a new documentary about their political activity and corporate negligence was making a splash -- on the same day a story broke announcing an FBI investigation of two Wisconsin groups tied to Americans for Prosperity, the political ground organization they founded and fund. (Full disclosure: AlterNet is a supporter of the documentary, "Koch Brothers Exposed," and I appear in the film.)

You should care that the Kochs are seizing Cato

Mon, 05 Mar 2012 20:59:00 +0000

Charles and David Koch, of the famous anti-Obama billionaire Koch brothers, are attempting a sort of hostile takeover of the Cato Institute, one of the most prominent and independent arms of the D.C.-based American libertarian movement. Charles Koch co-founded Cato in the 1970s, but, as Dave Weigel explains, he left the think tank in 1991. David has been a minority partner since then, but the Kochs have largely left Cato to fund its libertarian research while they focused on polluting and evil cackling and other Koch-ish activities.

The Kochs have sued for the right to buy the shares in Cato held by the widow of co-founder William Niskanen. Their aim is basically to make Cato into another arm of their explicitly partisan messaging machine, along with Americans for Prosperity. To that end, they have already attempted to install some ridiculous Republican Party hacks on Cato's board of directors -- hacks like John "Hind Rocket" Hinderacker, the attorney and "Powerline" blogger with no history of support for "liberty" to speak of. Current Cato people are upset. Some have preemptively resigned, even. (Well, announced an intention to resign upon the completion of the Koch takeover, anyway.)

Wisconsin’s Scott Walker tries to shed anti-union label

Tue, 28 Feb 2012 16:30:00 +0000

This month David Koch gave away the game. In a rare interview with the Palm Beach Herald, the notorious right-wing financier declared that a defeat of Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker in his upcoming recall election would spell doom for conservatives’ efforts to hamstring the labor movement. “If the unions win the recall,” Koch told the Herald’s Stacey Singer, “there will be no stopping union power.” As a literal statement, that’s not true at all. But Koch’s rhetoric communicates much more than the feel-good ads his cash is funding.

None of this season’s union-busting governors is more identified with David Koch than Scott Walker. Their connection was cemented by a phone call they didn’t share: In the middle of last winter’s Wisconsin capitol occupation, journalist Ian Murphy posed as Koch in a 20-minute conversation with Walker. Walker compared his anti-union hardball to Ronald Reagan breaking the air traffic controllers’ union and the Soviet Union. He acknowledged he’d considered planting provocateurs in union crowds. The fake Koch promised “once you crush these bastards I’ll fly you out to Cali and really show you a good time.” Walker replied, “That would be outstanding.”