Koch Bros. - They're The Evil Thing

Koch Bros. - They're The Evil Thing
Parody of "I'd Like To Teach The World To Sing" - the classic Coke commercial from the early 70's, targeting the billionaire brothers David and Charles Koch. Yes, they have power, and they literally have money to burn. But remember, the Koch Brothers wasted $400 million dollars of their own fortune trying but failing to defeat President Obama's re-election in 2012, and trying but failing to defeat the Affordable Care Act. Since April 25, 2014), the video has been shared over 44,000 times! It's going viral! Thanks, everyone!

A Minister From Thom Tillis’ State Tells Us What To Expect After The Election Results

To say I’m disappointed with the outcome of the U.S. mid-term elections is to massively understate the emotion connected to my understanding of what the results mean.

I do believe there is much to be learned from this mid-term election.

The most significant lesson is that in the US we are well past the tipping point: money is voice and power. We’ve been steadily on our way to that point, but we’ve finally arrived at our destination.

Congratulations?

You only need to look at the early polls in my home state, North Carolina, to see the real and devastating impact. Early on in the Senate race between Kay Hagan and Thom Tillis, when the public “debate” was still focusing somewhat on what they stood for and their accomplishments in office, Hagan seemed to be the likely winner. With the draconian laws passed under Tillis’ leadership in the N.C. House of Representatives it is easy to understand why.

Enter the Koch brothers, or more specifically their money.

DIRTY POLITICS: Koch-Allied Group Urges Young Voters to Support Weed Candidate

Thom Tillis

A Republican group connected to the billionaire Koch brothers is making a last-ditch effort to push the GOP Senate candidate in North Carolina across the finish line by urging young voters to get behind the marijuana-supporting libertarian in the race.

The American Future Fund, which is running the online ad campaign, touts third-party contender Sean Haugh as the only one in the Senate contest who supports legalizing marijuana and opposes war.

The move aims to siphon liberal support from Democratic Sen. Kay Hagan, who is locked in one of the country's tightest Senate races again Republican challenger Thom Tillis. (The ad might also persuade conservatives, many of whom generally wouldn't support the ads' message, to stop supporting Haugh.)

It appears to have been launched in secret. The group's website and Twitter feed, which contain news releases about other ad campaigns, does not mention the efforts to help Haugh. 

A spokesman for the group says the digital buy is for $225,000, and the group could increase the buy later. The ad appeared to one reporter while watching Hulu, and the group has built a makeshift website that includes several different online spots.

The content of the ads is likely to get as much attention as the campaign itself: In one, it features a young woman who says Hagan "doesn't share our values" because she supports war and opposes legalizing marijuana.

"Vote Sean Haugh," she says. "He supports our progressive values. Pro-legalization, pro-environment. More weed, less war."

The spot finishes with an image of a single cannabis leaf. Another ad features a young man wearing a shirt with a picture of Bob Marley smoking a joint.

Haugh, who still works as a pizza delivery-man while running for the Senate seat, has received a lot of coverage for drawing an unusually large amount of support for an underfunded candidacy. Interestingly though, his presence is seen as a bigger problem for the Republican Tillis, who has trialed in most public surveys of the race.

AFF appears to be trying to make Haugh a dilemma for Hagan as well, although it's unclear how effective a digital ad campaign will be in a race that has already featured more than $100 million in TV ad buys alone.

7 disturbing facts about the Koch brothers’ civil rights history

Charles and David Koch are notorious for amassing a business empire well-known for destroying the environment and hijacking the political process to ram their privatization and business agenda on the country. But what is equally egregious about their political activities are their efforts to dismantle years of civil rights progress. The Bridge Project, a non-profit organization devoted to “opposing the conservative movement’s extremem ideology and exposing its dishonest tactics,” recently released a 16-page report on the Koch brothers’ funding of groups that have been accused of suppressing minority voter turnout, destroying unions (particularly in Wisconsin) and attempting to get rid of Social Security.

Here are seven jaw-droppers from the report:

1. Kochs’ union-busting efforts hurt African American mobility.

Though unions have been known to increase the economic mobility of African-American workers, Koch-funded organizations have been very active in destroying anything that’s left of them. Koch-backed organizations like Americans for Prosperity, the Cato Institute, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, and the Reason Foundation have long viewed public sector unions with disdain. In 2011, collective bargaining was ended in Wisconsin after the state legislature passed Act 10.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court upheld the passage of the law earlier this year, after unions in the state filed a lawsuit, claiming the law violated workers’ right to free assembly and equal protection. The Koch-backed entities helped finance Gov. Scott Walker’s election campaign—the most profile political leader in the state to lead anti-union efforts.

2. Koch brothers’ secret billionaire summit hosts known racist.

According to the Nation, the Koch brothers hosted a secret summit on June 16 at the St. Regis Monarch Bay resort, in Dana Point, Calif. Besides a number of notable Republican politicians in attendance, one of the most controversial men giving “dinner remarks” was Charles Murray, a co-author of The Bell Curve, a book which argued that blacks and Latinos have lower IQs than Asians and whites.

Koch brothers freak out in response to Rolling Stone expose

Tim Dickinson's fantastic expose of the Koch brothers in the latest issue of Rolling Stone has gotten plenty of attention. For very good reason: it's a well-sourced, deep dive into the very toxic—literally toxic—business that earned the Kochs enough money to buy up an entire political party. That and the wrongful death judgement, six felony and numerous misdemeanor convictions, the tens of millions of dollars in fines, and the trading with Iran are all included in the story, well worth your time.

No one has given it more attention, it seems, than the notoriously thin-skinned Kochs. In typical Koch fashion, they don't argue the facts of Dickinson's story. They attack Dickinson,who responds here. Here's the nut of his detailed response.

Koch, in particular, takes umbrage with my reporting practices. 

For the record: In the weeks prior to publication, beginning September 4th, Rolling Stone attempted to engage Koch Industries in a robust discussion of the issues raised in our reporting. Rolling Stone requested to interview CEO Charles Koch about his company's philosophy of Market Based Management; Ilia Bouchouev, who heads Koch's derivatives trading operations, about the company's trading practices; and top Koch lawyer Mark Holden about the company's significant legal and regulatory history. 

The requests to speak to Charles Koch and Bouchouev were simply ignored. Ultimately, only Holden responded on the record, only via e-mail and only after Holden baselessly insinuated that I had been given an "opposition research" document dump from the liberal activist David Brock. (This is false.) From my perspective as a reporter, Koch Industries is the most hostile and paranoid organization I've ever engaged with—and I've reported on Fox News. In a breach of ethics, Koch has also chosen to publish email correspondence characterizing the content of a telephone conversation that was, by Koch's own insistence, strictly off the record. […] 

[I]n the main, the Koch responses attempt to re-litigate closed cases — incidents where judges, juries, and, in one case, a Senate Select Committee, have already had a final say. They only muddy waters that have been clarified by a considered legal process.

Dickinson then provides an exhaustive, 14-point taken down of each of the Kochs' complaints about his story, including every instance in which the Kochs do not actually dispute the facts that he has reported, but attempt to obfuscate them and whine about that fact that he reported them. They also don't acknowledge that Dickinson attempted to give them the opportunity to talk to him about his story while reporting, but they refused.

The Kochs clearly do not stand up well to close scrutiny, and clearly are not prepared for it. For some reason, probably because they're richer than god, they seem to assume that they should be able to swoop into our political system and attempt to buy it without being subject to close examination. That attitude, along with their long history of abusing people, the environment, and the political system, is doing them no favors. They've made themselves the subject of this election, and if Democrats hold the Senate, it will largely be because the Kochs have made themselves such good enemies.

Six Reasons Why Today’s Libertarian Movement Is Not At All Pro-Gay

Thanks to a New York Times Magazine article by Robert Draper, there’s been a lot of buzz lately about the libertarian tidal wave that’s allegedly poised to wash over the American landscape. Draper argues that young people are much more accepting of the libertarian get-rid-of-all-government argument and that Rand Paul is set to harness that energy all the way to the White House.

Except for this inconvenient fact: Polls show that young voters are the one segment of the population that actually favors more government and is most inclined to vote Democratic.

Draper does some fancy dancing around the topic of marriage equality, suggesting that support of it is somehow a sign of libertarian tendencies. In fact, there’s every reason to believe that the libertarian movement, at least as it is currently constituted, is not only not pro-gay, but actively hostile to LGBT issues. Here are six reasons that prove it.

1. Rand Paul. Let’s start with the standard-bearer for libertarianism, Sen. Rand Paul. Paul would have you believe that’s a moderate, when in fact he’s as homophobic as they come. He has repeatedly come out against marriage equality, going so far as to suggest that the Supreme Court ruling striking down DOMA would open the way to marriage with animals. Paul told Draper that the GOP can’t “completely flip” on gay marriage. To which we say, why not? If you’re wrong, why wouldn’t you change? In Paul’s case, it’s because he doesn’t think opposition to marriage equality is wrong.

2. The role of the Christian right. The relationship between the religious right and the libertarian movement is tighter than you think. Brian Brown of the National Organization for Marriage says that his group’s opposition to marriage equality “is actually a libertarian argument.” Anti-gay theocrats like David Barton exert great influence in the world of constitutional conservatives (a self-identification libertarians prefer). “To the extent it has a mass base, it’s likely as much or more among conservative Christian soldiers who despise government so long as they don’t control it as among dope-smoking free-loving free-thinking anti-interventionist Reason readers,”columnist Ed Kilgore notes perceptively. (Reason is the magazine published by the libertarian Cato Institute.)

3. A philosophy that is conveniently homophobic. A lot of libertarians object to the government recognizing your relationship on philosophical grounds. One of the most revealing moments in Draper’s article is an exchange with Mollie Z. Hemingway, a senior editor at The Federalist. Hemingway thinks that the government has to be in the marriage business because the heterosexual relationship is “ordered to producing children.” But the government shouldn’t extend those rights to same-sex couples. Hemingway thinks that those folks “should be free to organize their own lifestyle,” as if your committed relationship was the same as taking up RV-ing.

4. Less government = less protection. If you really want to get government out of the way, that means it should be less involved (if at all) in protecting workers against discrimination, people with HIV from untested treatments or shielding LGBT students from bullies. Amazingly, the vast majority of people espousing these views don’t happen to fall into any of these categories to explain to us why these protections are superfluous from the victim’s perspective.

5. Religious liberty. Here’s where the libertarian argument is most often employed to ill purpose. The argument: the government should allow people to serve whomever they want, without fear of legal restrictions. If bakers want to refuse to bake wedding cakes for gay couples, fine. What better way to protect your freedom to discriminate than by passing laws to do so. Of course, a true libertarian would argue that people should be able to do as they please, but that more law is exactly the wrong answer. But more commonly the religious liberty argument is used to unite conservative evangelicals and libertarians. 

6. The funders are hypocrites. The Koch brothers (Charles and David) are the biggest funders of the libertarian movement. They help underwrite the Cato Institute, the libertarian think tank, and have spent tens of millions of dollars promoting libertarian causes that happen to coincide with their financial interests (such as killing climate change legislation). David Koch has said “I believe in gay marriage.” Nowhere is that reflected in the candidates given money by the organizations with financial ties to the brothers. Instead, those organizations are donating to Tea Party groups or offering ad support for mouth-breathing House Republicans who will stop anything LGBT in its tracks. And then, of course, there’s Peter Thiel, the gay billionaire who funded presidential quest of Ron Paul, Rand’s even crazier father, a campaign which came with a long list of homophobic attendants.

Now, there is a spirited debate within the libertarian ranks as to many of these issues. Many libertarians are very supportive of the LGBT community and suspicious of the religious right. They are more interested getting government out of the way, whatever the consequences might be. But the libertarian movement that is capturing political attention today is much more a pick-and-choose type of philosophy: easy to agree with principles when they support what you want, and easy to discard them when they don’t.

In too many ways, it’s morphing into a different brand of anti-gay conservatism, when one is already far more than enough.

HYPOCRITES: Anti-Obamacare Koch Brothers Received $1.4 MILLION in Obamacare Subsidies!

The Associated Press (AP) is reporting Koch Industries, the evil corporation headed by Tea Party founders and funders Charles and David Koch, two of the most high-profile opponents of President Obama and his reform of healthcare, has benefitted from $1.4 million in subsidies – from the Affordable Care Act (ACA).

According to thinkprogress.org, the subsidies are from a $5 billion ACA program designed to help businesses provide coverage to those employees who are over 55 but not yet eligible for Medicare. Koch Industries, the business empire of the two brothers, applied for ACA subsidies in August 2010, along with a host of other business and industries who, while publicly opposing any change to the law, were never going to miss out on the chance to secure millions of dollars in government subsidies.

As noted by thinkprogress.org 

“The Early Retiree provision resembles one passed by Republicans in 2003, which gave subsidies to employers who offered drug coverage to their retirees before the Medicare Part D program went into effect in 2006. As the New York Times explained, the goal then was the same as it is today, ‘to discourage those employers from terminating those programs, which would have saddled the government and seniors with higher costs’.”

This is not the first example of Republican hypocrisy over the Affordable Care Act. Paul Ryan has requested ACA funds for his congressional district in Wisconsin, despite having voted for its repeal on over 30 separate occasions. In a cross-party venture, Republican congressmen Vance McAllister worked alongside senators David Vitter (R) and Mary Landrieu (D) to lobby the Obama Administration to keep a healthcare enrolment call-centre in their state of Louisiana open beyond the coverage period in order to preserve over 600 jobs. Texas Governor Rick Perry (R) has even publicly encouraged families in his state to sign up for coverage in the federal exchange in an effort to save the state money.

Finally Someone Admits GOP is a Bunch of Koch Whores

In a rare moment of honesty, Chris Christie spoke the truth about what the Republican Party stands for at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) today. Christie told the  audience Republicans need to have a positive message as he proclaimed:

We have to start talking about what we’re for and not continuing to rail against what we’re against is because of one simple reason, our ideas are better than their ideas.

And according to Chris Christie, what are Republicans for? They are for the Koch brothers. Christie blasted Democrats and defended the Koch brothers by stating:

What they’re for in Washington, D.C. is to have the leader of the Senate Democrats stand up and rail against two American entrepreneurs (the Koch brothers) who have built a business, created jobs and created wealth…Harry Reid should get back to work and stop picking on great Americans.

Chris Christie has a message for Democrats. Stop picking on the Koch Brothers. Yes, the heroic Governor of New Jersey has come to the rescue of the most vulnerable Americans, Charles and David Koch. The beleaguered billionaires need the government to stand up for them against these bullying attacks from the commoners and from that mean Harry Reid. So without a second thought, Chris Christie voiced in his own words what Democrats have been saying for quite some time. The Republican Party is now little more than an entire political party devoted to making the lives of Charles and David Koch better while giving the rest of the nation the shaft.

Chris Christie’s simple straightforward admission of the Republican Party’s priorities should serve as a reminder to the rest of America who the conservative movement represents. No matter how well they wrap their policies in populist or patriotic rhetoric the Republican Party has decided that its job is to fight for the Koch brothers and protect them from the rest of the American people. Chris Christie said so much at CPAC. We appreciate the Governor of New Jersey’s  brief but heartfelt moment of candor. Now we have his words on record.

Harry Reid Calls Out the Koch Brothers: ‘They’re Trying to Buy the Country’

On Thursday, Harry Reid strongly criticized the Koch brothers’ and their corrupt political network,  saying the bothers are trying to “buy the country.”

The Senate Majority Leader was referring to the extensive political network the brothers are associated with. Reid claims that while many of these groups give the appearance of being social welfare groups, they are really pursuing political agendas. The Obama administration wishes to better regulate nonprofit groups who are supposed to be committed to social welfare. These 501(c)(4) groups may instead be advocating the agendas of certain political parties.

“The abuse here is not the administration’s enforcing the law, but folks like the Koch brothers pretending to be social welfare organizations,” Reid said.

 “Because of a United States Supreme Court decisions called Citizens United, there’s been some really untoward stuff going on in the political world,” Reid said. “We have two brothers who are actually trying to buy the country.”

The Koch brothers operate a network of nonprofit organizations: the Center for Shared Services, Aegis Strategic, and Freedom Partners. In 2012, the Koch network raised more than $400 million to assail Obama in the 2012 elections, and other groups in the Koch network have spent $25 million bashing Obamacare.

Big Money to GOP: Stop Screwing With the Economy…or We’ll Stop Funding Your Campaigns

Uh oh. The Republican Party has two masters, wealthy contributors and Jesus.

Since Jesus cast the moneychangers out of the temple, it’s the folks with the deep pockets who are upset.

The government shut down has immediate affects, and can be especially brutal on the most vulnerable. The long-term damage is too horrific to contemplate.

The shutdown, combined with default if the debt ceiling isn’t resolved, could play havoc with the markets and the people on Wall Street.

Uh oh again. Forget the fallen military. This is serious.

The Brothers Koch have already distanced themselves publicly from the shutdown. In spite of their previous support, they are smart enough to separate their name from an action with the cuddle factor of a porcupine with Ebola.

Some politicians, shut ‘er down, are trying to fundraise on the fact that they brought government to its knees. But such events don’t bring in the big money.

There are many who realize that with an approval rating of 5%, trying to raise dollars now is unseemly. Even for politicians.

Even the most conservative Members of Congress often travel outside their districts, to places like New York City and Los Angeles, to generate the kind of money they need for re-election.

Currently, there is a blurred narrative about who is to blame for the mess and dysfunction. Some media and citizens blame both parties, albeit disproportionately toward the GOP.

But the big guys with the fat wallets, they know what is going on.

Ryan, Cantor 'secretly spoke' at Koch brothers' event - A.K.A. Ryan, Cantor suck Koch

Charles and David Koch made considerable investments in the 2012 elections, and as the dust settled, they didn't have much to show for their investments.

Several months later, however, the Koch brothers aren't exactly scaling back their political efforts.

Rep. Paul Ryan, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor and New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez secretly spoke to wealthy donors at the Koch brothers' recently concluded summer gathering on the outskirts of Albuquerque.
The 2012 vice presidential candidate and No. 2 House Republican are return participants to the twice-annual seminar.... A spokesman for Cantor's office declined to comment, while Ryan's office did not immediately respond to questions.

As the Politico report explained, Koch Industries periodically hosts these "invitation-only seminars" under "extremely tight security." The brothers' powerful allies attend so they can hear from "Republican elected officials, conservative dignitaries and leaders of right-leaning groups backed by the Kochs' network," which Republican players attend to connect with donors and make the Kochs happy.

Ryan, Cantor, and Martinez are hardly unique -- previous attendees include governors (Christie, Perry, McDonnell), senators (Cornyn, DeMint), notable Republican media personalities (Limbaugh, Beck), and even sitting Supreme Court justices (Scalia, Thomas).

And while conservatives are certainly free to get together like this, I can't help but wonder why all the secrecy is necessary. Neither Ryan nor Cantor were willing to talk about the appearance, before or after attending, and when a reporter from the NBC affiliate in Albuquerque tried to cover the event where the New Mexico governor was speaking, he was turned away at a checkpoint -- a mile from the resort.

If the Koch brothers want to give the public the impression that something untoward is going behind closed doors with leading Republican policymakers, this is certainly the way to do it.

Bernie Sanders Goes off on Charles Koch