After Life of Incalculable Harm, Billionaire Climate Denialist and Right-Wing Villain David Koch Dead at 79. The War Against Solar Energy. The trolling of Elon Musk: how US conservatives are attacking green tech. He is the charismatic Silicon Valley entrepreneur who believes his many companies - including the electric car manufacturer Tesla Motors, solar power firm Solar City, and SpaceX, which makes reusable space rockets – can help resist man-made climate change.
South African-born Elon Musk is a billionaire green evangelist, a bete noire of the fossil fuels industry who talks about colonising Mars and believes it may be possible that we’re living in a computer simulation. But having been feted by the Obama administration, he now faces an extraordinary barrage of attacks from rightwing thinktanks, lobbyists, websites and commentators. How the Koch brothers built the most powerful rightwing group you've never heard of. The cries of “Shame!
Shame! Shame!” Rang throughout the marbled walls of the Wisconsin state assembly chamber. Disgusted Democratic politicians, some of whom had been up for over 60 hours by this point, punctuated their chants by throwing papers – and even drinks – at their Republican counterparts. Police officers had to be summoned to physically restrain one Democratic representative yelling “Cowards!” The source of this confrontation, in the early hours of February 2011, was an unprecedented push by Wisconsin Republicans, led by the state’s newly elected Republican governor, Scott Walker, to slash the union rights held by most public workers. What billionaires want: the secret influence of America’s 100 richest.
If we judge US billionaires by their most prominent fellows, they may seem to be a rather attractive bunch: ideologically diverse (perhaps even tending center-left), frank in speaking out about their political views, and generous in philanthropic giving for the common good – not to mention useful for the goods and jobs they have helped produce.
The very top titans – Warren Buffett, Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates – have all taken left-of-center stands on various issues, and Buffett and Gates are paragons of philanthropy. The former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg is known for his advocacy of gun control, gay rights, and environmental protection. George Soros (protector of human rights around the world) and Tom Steyer (focused on young people and environmental issues) have been major donors to the Democrats. In recent years, investigative journalists have also brought to public attention Charles and David Koch, mega-donors to ultra-conservative causes.
Unfortunately, this picture is misleading. Oil giant Koch Industries try to stop the attempt to expand the electric vehicle federal tax credit - Electrek. With a new Republican-backed effort to expand the electric vehicle federal tax credit, the Koch brothers are urging senators to vote against it – putting their political donation dollars at work.
The situation around the federal tax credit for EVs is weirder than ever right now. As Tesla hit the threshold to initiate the phase-out, there are two different legislative efforts to change it. Earlier this month, a Republican senator introduced a new bill to end the $7,500 federal tax credit for electric cars and tax them even more instead. But a few days later, another Republican senator proposed a new bill to remove the federal tax credit cap for EVs and expand it to 2022.
Billionaires v teachers: the Koch brothers' plan to starve public education. Arizona has become the hotbed for an experiment rightwing activists hope will redefine America’s schools – an experiment that has pitched the conservative billionaires the Koch brothers and Donald Trump’s controversial education secretary, Betsy DeVos, against teachers’ unions, teachers and parents.
Trump turns against 'total joke' Koch brothers after North Dakota snub. After the Kochs said they would not back the Republican in a key Senate race, Donald Trump duly took aim at the conservative billionaire brothers, calling them “globalists” and a “total joke” with a “highly overrated” political network.
The midterm elections, in which many analysts expect a “blue wave” to place the House and possibly the Senate under Democratic control, are less than 100 days away. Republicans across the US will be alarmed by such loud shots in a fight between a president hugely popular with party members and Charles and David Koch, the libertarian industrialists who have poured money into achieving rightwing legislative priorities. The Koch network said on Monday it would not support congressman Kevin Cramer in his attempt to unseat the Democrat Heidi Heitkamp in North Dakota, a state that voted heavily for Trump in 2016. “I made them richer. Their network is highly overrated, I have beaten them at every turn. Two Koch Insiders Are Creating a New Office Inside the FCC - TYT Network. Federal Communication Commission Chairman Ajit Pai at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), February, 2018.
Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images. Conservatives Mobilize Grass-Roots Activists To Promote Trump Judges. "Everything that we're doing is really pointing to the future of the Supreme Court," said the vice president of strategy at Americans for Prosperity.
The U.S. Supreme Court building is shown in Washington, D.C., on June 25, 2017. J. David Ake/AP hide caption. Fears grow as rightwing billionaires battle to erode US union rights. A 20-year campaign by rightwing billionaire donors to undermine trade unions and strike a blow at the progressive movement in Americacomes to a climax on Monday, in a hearing at the US supreme court.
The nine justices of the nation’s highest court will hear arguments in Janus V AFSCME, a case that has the potential to strip unions of a major source of income. Should the court rule against the public sector unions – as many fear it will – they stand to suffer a decline in their 7.2 million-strong membership, and with it the withering of their political strength. Koch Brothers, Behind Tea Party Wave, Face Democrats' Rising Tide In 2018. Tea Party activists hold a rally on Capitol Hill in 2010.
That grassroots movement, with backing from the Koch political network, helped Republicans win back the House in the 2010 midterms. In 2018, the Koch network is on defense against Democratic gains. Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images hide caption toggle caption. Koch Network Plans to Spend $400 Million in U.S. Midterm Cycle. The conservative political network led by billionaires Charles and David Koch plans to spend close to $400 million on policy and politics during the two-year election cycle that culminates with November’s midterm elections, a roughly 60 percent increase over 2015-16.
That will include as much as $20 million in 2018 to sell to voters the Republican tax cuts signed in December by President Donald Trump, about the same amount Koch-affiliated groups spent on promoting the legislation in 2017, officials with the Koch network said Saturday. Scott Pruitt Is Carrying Out His E.P.A. Agenda in Secret, Critics Say - The New York Times. Together with a small group of political appointees, many with backgrounds, like his, in Oklahoma politics, and with advice from industry lobbyists, Mr.
Pruitt has taken aim at an agency whose policies have been developed and enforced by thousands of the E.P.A.’s career scientists and policy experts, many of whom work in the same building. “There’s a feeling of paranoia in the agency — employees feel like there’s been a hostile takeover and the guy in charge is treating them like enemies,” said Christopher Sellers, an expert in environmental history at Stony Brook University, who this spring conducted an interview survey with about 40 E.P.A. employees. Such tensions are not unusual in federal agencies when an election leads to a change in the party in control of the White House.
But they seem particularly bitter at the E.P.A. Inside the Koch Brothers' Toxic Empire - Rolling Stone. The enormity of the Koch fortune is no mystery. Brothers Charles and David are each worth more than $40 billion. The Ideologues Who Want to Destroy Democracy to Save Capitalism. The Ideologues Who Want to Destroy [...] James Buchanan flashes a smile at a news conference in 1986 at George Mason University after it was announced that he is the winner of the Nobel Memorial Prize in economic science. (Photo by Don Emmert/AFP/Getty Images) All the Bad News You Need to Know About ALEC Agenda. Photo Credit: Ken Durden / Shutterstock.com This post originally appeared at Exposed by CMD. Denver’s massive Blue Bear will be peering in the windows as US Education Secretary Betsy DeVos headlines the 44th American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) Annual Meeting being held at the Colorado Convention Center’s Hyatt Regency Hotel July 19-21.
The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America. Charles Koch, 79, in his office at Koch Industries in Wichita, Kansas, on July 29, 2015. In the Withdrawal from the Paris Climate Agreement, the Koch Brothers’ Campaign Becomes Overt. If there was any lingering doubt that a tiny clique of fossil-fuel barons has captured America’s energy and environmental policies, it was dispelled last week, when the Trump Administration withdrew from the Paris climate accord. Surveys showed that a majority of Americans in literally every state wanted to remain within the agreement, and news reports established that the heads of many of the country’s most successful and iconic Fortune 100 companies, from Disney to General Electric, did, too. Guess Who’s Backing Scott Pruitt To Head The EPA? The Koch Brothers. - BillMoyers.com. Oklahoma Attorney General and President-elect Donald Trump's nominee to head the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Scott Pruitt, meets with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), on Capitol Hill January 6, 2017 in Washington, DC.
(Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images) Koch Dark-Money Operative Is Trump's Liaison to Congress - BillMoyers.com. Activists hold a protest near the Manhattan apartment of billionaire and Republican financier David Koch on June 5, 2014 in New York City. Koch brothers freak out in response to Rolling Stone expose. David Koch, not holding up well under scrutiny. Three New Ways the Koch Brothers Are Screwing America. Five Myths About the Koch Brothers — And Why It Matters To Set Them Straight - BillMoyers.com. David Koch listens to Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney addressing the "Defending The American Dream Summit" organized by Americans for Prosperity in Washington, DC on November 4, 2011.
(NICHOLAS KAMM/AFP/Getty Images) United States of ALEC. BILL MOYERS: Welcome, to a story that's been unfolding for more than 30 years but has gone largely untold. A CMD Special Report on ALEC's Funding and Spending. Money Men Say, Voters Move Over, It's Not Your Election! - BillMoyers.com. David Koch gives a thumbs-up to Republican presidential candidate and former Godfather's Pizza CEO Herman Cain during the Defending the American Dream Summit at the Washington Convention Center November 4, 2011 in Washington, DC. 'Hidden History' Of Koch Brothers Traces Their Childhood And Political Rise. Koch's Dark Money and what it funds. Father of Koch Brothers Helped Build Nazi Oil Refinery, Book Says. Morning Reads: New Details on the Kochs' Dark Money ATM, Contemplating a US-Russia Alliance, Who Relies on Wall St. Most?
'Dark Cloud' of ALEC Converges at Annual Corporate-Political Lovefest. ALEC Exposed.