Meet the Billionaire Brothers Funding the Right-Wing War on Obama

Southpaw · December 13th, 2009, 05:09 AM

They are most definitely off of my Holiday Greeting Card list. Grave robbing elitist sons of unwed mother.

Quote:

Meet the Billionaire Brothers Funding the Right-Wing War on Obama

Think Progress. Posted December 9, 2009.

They're the 9th richest people in America and they're pushing hard to upend President Obama's progressive agenda.

by Faiz Shakir, Amanda Terkel, Matt Corley, Benjamin Armbruster, Zaid Jilani, Lee Fang, and Alex Seitz-Wald

Billionaire brothers David and Charles Koch are the wealthiest, and perhaps most effective, opponents of President Obama's progressive agenda. They have been looming in the background of every major domestic policy dispute this year. Ranked as the 9th richest men in America, the Koch brothers sit at the helm of Koch Industries, a massive privately owned conglomerate of manufacturing, oil, gas, and timber interests. They are best known for their wealth, as well as for their generous contributions to the arts, cancer research, and the Smithsonian Institute. But David and Charles are also responsible for a vicious attack campaign aimed directly at obstructing and killing progressive reform. Over the years, millions of dollars in Koch money has flowed to various right-wing think tanks, front groups, and publications. At the dawn of the Obama presidency, Koch groups quickly maneuvered to try to stop his first piece of signature legislation: the stimulus. The Koch-funded group "No Stimulus" launched television and radio ads deriding the recovery package as simply "pork" spending. The Cato Institute -- founded by Charles -- as well as other Koch-funded think tanks like the Heritage Foundation, produced a blizzard of reports distorting the stimulus and calling for a return to Bush-style tax cuts to combat the recession. As their fronts were battling the stimulus, David's Americans for Prosperity (AFP) spent the opening months of the Obama presidency placing calls and helping to organize the very first "tea party" protests. AFP, founded in 1984 by David and managed day to day by the astroturf lobbyist Tim Phillips, has spent much of the year mobilizing "tea party" opposition to health reform, clean energy legislation, and financial regulations.

STOPPING CLEAN ENERGY: David Koch presents himself as a champion of science. Next year, because of his donations, a wing of the Smithsonian will be named after him. Nevertheless, Koch has done more to undermine the public's understanding of climate change science than any other person in America. The Competitive Enterprise Institute, funded in part by Koch foundations, has waged an underhanded campaign to falsely charge that a set of hacked e-mails somehow unravels the scientific consensus that global warming is occurring. Koch finances the "Hot Air" tour, a nationwide roadshow using a balloon to depict climate change science as "hot air." Despite the brothers' extravagant wealth, Koch's Americans for Prosperity has run populist ads mocking environmentalists as spoiled brats more concerned about their "three homes and five cars" than about economic conditions. In addition to its efforts to misinform the public, Koch Industries has spent nearly $9 million dollars so far on direct lobbying, much of it on climate change legislation. With a team of Koch-funded operatives going as far as attempting to crash the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen this week, the brothers may succeed in scuttling any prospect for addressing climate change.

STOPPING HEALTH REFORM: Much of the fierce opposition to health reform can be credited to Koch organizations. As the health care debate began, AFP created a front group, known as "Patients United," dedicated itself to attacking Democratic health care reform proposals. Patients United has blanketed the country with ads distorting various provisions of the health reform legislation, particularly the public option. Patients United even centered a media campaign around Shona Robertson-Holmes, claiming she had a brain tumor the Canadian system refused to treat. However, the Ottawa Citizen reported that Patients United has been exaggerating Holmes' case, and that she in fact had a benign cyst. In their quest to block health care reform, Koch-funded groups have fostered extremism. A speaker with the roving Patients United bus tour repeatedly compared health reform to the Holocaust while an eight-by-five foot banner at an AFP health care rally with Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) read, "National Socialist Health Care: Dachau, Germany" superimposed over corpses from a concentration camp. Although many were surprised at the level of anger AFP channeled into Democratic healthcare town halls in August, it wasn't the first time Koch groups have helped to hijack the health reform debate. Back in 1994, Americans for Prosperity, then known as Citizens for a Sound Economy, worked closely with then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich to bring mobs of angry men to health reform rallies with then-First Lady Hillary Clinton.

A LONG HISTORY OF STOPPING PROGRESS: The Koch brothers clearly have a financial stake in blocking reform. Koch Industry oil refineries are major carbon dioxide polluters, and George-Pacific, a Koch Industries timber subsidiary, is one of the largest contributors to the loss of carbon-sink capacity. According to the EPA, Koch Industries is responsible for over 300 oil spills in the U.S. and has leaked three million gallons of crude oil into fisheries and drinking waters. So there are clear business-related reasons why Koch would want to block regulatory enforcement, clean energy, labor, and other reforms. But part of their opposition stems from a long family tradition of funding conservative movements to shift the country to the far right. Fred Koch, father of Charles and David and the company's namesake, helped to found the John Birch Society in the late 1950s. The John Birch Society harnessed Cold War fears into hate against progressives, warning that President Kennedy, Civil Rights activists, and organized labor were in league with communists. By presenting progressive reform as a capitulation to the Soviet Union, Fred Koch and the other industrialists bankrolling the Birch Society were able to galvanize hundreds of thousands of middle class people into supporting their narrow agenda of cutting corporate taxes and avoiding consumer regulations.

Kolo · December 13th, 2009, 07:17 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by wallyburger

They are most definitely off of my Holiday Greeting Card list. Grave robbing elitist sons of unwed mother.

How could 7 writers have missed

KILLING KITTENS FOR PLEASURE

?

Divide Et Impera · September 28th, 2011, 01:48 PM

Bump. Props, wally....

LoyaltyisaCurse · September 28th, 2011, 02:14 PM

Bunch of Azzwipes tha tfamily.

jf-08 · September 29th, 2011, 07:38 AM

And this type of behavior is different from George Soros how?

Oh yeah, because it is on the right side it is automatically on the wrong side.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Soros

United States

In an interview with The Washington Post on November 11, 2003, Soros said that removing President George W. Bush from office was the "central focus of my life" and "a matter of life and death." He said he would sacrifice his entire fortune to defeat President Bush, "if someone guaranteed it."[53] Soros gave $3 million to the Center for American Progress, $2.5 million to MoveOn.org, and $20 million[54] to America Coming Together. These groups worked to support Democrats in the 2004 election. On September 28, 2004 he dedicated more money to the campaign and kicked off his own multi-state tour with a speech: Why We Must Not Re-elect President Bush[55] delivered at the National Press Club in Washington, DC. The online transcript to this speech received many hits after Dick Cheney accidentally referred to FactCheck.org as "factcheck.com" in the Vice Presidential debate, causing the owner of that domain to redirect all traffic to Soros's site.[56] Asked in 2006 about his statement in The Age of Fallibility that "the main obstacle to a stable and just world order is the United States", Soros responded that "it happens to coincide with the prevailing opinion in the world. And I think that's rather shocking for Americans to hear. The United States sets the agenda for the world. And the rest of the world has to respond to that agenda. By declaring a 'war on terror' after September 11, we set the wrong agenda for the world. [...] when you wage war, you inevitably create innocent victims."[57]

Soros was not a large donor to US political causes until the 2004 presidential election, but according to the Center for Responsive Politics, during the 2003–2004 election cycle, Soros donated $23,581,000 to various 527 groups dedicated to defeating President Bush. A 527 group is a type of American tax-exempt organization named after a section of the United States tax code, 26 U.S.C. § 527.

After Bush's re-election, Soros and other donors backed a new political fundraising group called Democracy Alliance, which supports progressive causes and the formation of a stronger progressive infrastructure in America.[58]

BigRedRage · September 29th, 2011, 07:53 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jf-08

And this type of behavior is different from George Soros how?

They just love to sling anti right propoganda as much as possible like anyone else following RvsB

Southpaw · September 29th, 2011, 09:31 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Divide Et Impera

Bump. Props, wally....

Perfect example of a " Fog Fact "

Quote:

Larry Beinhart: "Fog facts" are facts that have been published or are easily knowable, and yet have disappeared into the mist of undifferentiated bits of information. Facts do not exist in isolation. They exist in relationship to other things and in context, and they’re part of a picture. I’m not talking about "Ripley’s Believe it Or Not," you know, gosh, gee-whiz trivia here. I’m talking about things that matter. Now if you leave certain things out of the picture, you have a different picture. If I bring them back into the picture, what happens? Especially in these last five or six years, their picture has to radically change.

http://www.buzzflash.com/interviews/05/11/int05044.html

bankybruce · September 29th, 2011, 11:24 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jf-08

And this type of behavior is different from George Soros how?

Exactly, it happens on both sides and shows that money buys power and the monre money will buy even more power to the point that the middle class dissapears.....oh wait, that happened about 10 mintues ago.

40yearfan · September 29th, 2011, 12:32 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by bankybruce

Exactly, it happens on both sides and shows that money buys power and the monre money will buy even more power to the point that the middle class dissapears.....oh wait, that happened about 10 mintues ago.

Agree. The question is how do we change the system?

LVG · September 29th, 2011, 12:46 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by wallyburger

Perfect example of a " Fog Fact "

Larry Beinhart: "Fog facts" are facts that have been published or are easily knowable, and yet have disappeared into the mist of undifferentiated bits of information. Facts do not exist in isolation. They exist in relationship to other things and in context, and they’re part of a picture. I’m not talking about "Ripley’s Believe it Or Not," you know, gosh, gee-whiz trivia here. I’m talking about things that matter. Now if you leave certain things out of the picture, you have a different picture. If I bring them back into the picture, what happens? Especially in these last five or six years, their picture has to radically change.

Context and surroundings matter. Brilliant post.

conraddobler · September 29th, 2011, 12:47 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by 40yearfan

Agree. The question is how do we change the system?

I had a long post that wound around to complete gibberish, "I know, I know, what's new?"

Short answer is you don't change the system until the people change.

We have exactly the kind of government we deserve, and here comes Rugby......

Honestly though if the lions share of the people are going to keep falling for this dog and pony show, spy vs spy crap then we're hosed no matter what we do.

jf-08 · September 29th, 2011, 03:20 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by 40yearfan

Agree. The question is how do we change the system?

http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepu...on-system.html

Quote:

Arizona's elections are rigged and the Democrats and Republicans have no interest in fixing them.

Why should they? They rigged them.

Most of us (by which I mean - me) do nothing about this sorry situation except complain.

But a group of folks made up of moderate Democrats and moderate Republicans (Yes, they actually exist.) have decided to change things.

...

Read more: http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepu...#ixzz1ZO21DEVd

Divide Et Impera · October 2nd, 2011, 08:16 PM

I mean, this is no Jeremiah Wright scandal, but maybe we should dedicate just a little bit o' time to this:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-1...ran-sales.html

Quote:

In May 2008, a unit of Koch Industries Inc., one of the world’s largest privately held companies, sent Ludmila Egorova-Farines, its newly hired compliance officer and ethics manager, to investigate the management of a subsidiary in Arles in southern France. In less than a week, she discovered that the company had paid bribes to win contracts.

“I uncovered the practices within a few days,” Egorova- Farines says. “They were not hidden at all.”

She immediately notified her supervisors in the U.S. A week later, Wichita, Kansas-based Koch Industries dispatched an investigative team to look into her findings, Bloomberg Markets magazine reports in its November issue.

By September of that year, the researchers had found evidence of improper payments to secure contracts in six countries dating back to 2002, authorized by the business director of the company’s Koch-Glitsch affiliate in France.

“Those activities constitute violations of criminal law,” Koch Industries wrote in a Dec. 8, 2008, letter giving details of its findings. The letter was made public in a civil court ruling in France in September 2010; the document has never before been reported by the media.

Louis · October 3rd, 2011, 06:21 AM

Quote:

Koch Industries — in addition to being involved in improper payments to win business in Africa, India and the Middle East — has sold millions of dollars of petrochemical equipment to Iran, a country the U.S. identifies as a sponsor of global terrorism.

Internal company documents show that the company made those sales through foreign subsidiaries, thwarting a U.S. trade ban. Koch Industries units have also rigged prices with competitors, lied to regulators and repeatedly run afoul of environmental regulations, resulting in five criminal convictions since 1999 in the U.S. and Canada.

http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2011/10...e_part_of.html

mattyboy · October 3rd, 2011, 06:23 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by conraddobler

I had a long post that wound around to complete gibberish, "I know, I know, what's new?"

Short answer is you don't change the system until the people change.

We have exactly the kind of government we deserve, and here comes Rugby......

Honestly though if the lions share of the people are going to keep falling for this dog and pony show, spy vs spy crap then we're hosed no matter what we do.

I thought that either you or LVG had some good points about abolishing the personification of corporations (i.e. limit the constitutional protections of corporations).