Another Koch Front Group Debuts In NC - Kay Hagan for U.S. Senate. “60 Plus Is Backed By the Koch Brothers.”
[Huffington Post, 10/26/13] Freedom Partners, “An Outlet For The Ideas And Funds Of The Mysterious Koch Brothers” Gave 15.7 Million To The 60 Plus Association In 2012. “An Arlington, Va. -based conservative group, whose existence until now was unknown to almost everyone in politics, raised and spent $250 million in 2012 to shape political and policy debate nationwide. The group, Freedom Partners, and its president, Marc Short, serve as an outlet for the ideas and funds of the mysterious Koch brothers, cutting checks as large as $63 million to groups promoting conservative causes, according to an IRS document to be filed shortly. […] The 60 Plus Association, a free-market seniors group that also opposes Obamacare: $15.7 million.” Bill Koch is the latest executive to leave the coal business, saying it “has kind of died” Another executive has apparently decided to ditch the shrinking US coal mining industry: Bill Koch, who made billions selling petcoke and coal with his company Oxbow Carbon.
Energy and Environment News reports: “The coal business in the United States has kind of died,” Koch said during a phone interview Friday, “so we’re out of the coal business now.” Bill Koch is the younger brother of notorious oil billionaires Charles and David Koch, and while he has not played a major role in funding climate denial and right wing extremist groups like his brothers, he has used his wealth in other ways to try and protect his fossil fuel business from competition and health, labor, and environmental safeguards. Bill Koch’s role in funding attacks on the Cape Wind project was detailed in this 2010 report, and more recently he gave millions to super PACs in the 2012 elections to try to defeat President Obama, taking advantage of the controversial Citizens United Supreme Court ruling.
Richard Whiting. Koch CEO urges employees to read boss's op-ed. 1 hr ago | AmericanBankingNews.com Citigroup Inc.
Reiterates Buy Rating for Halliburton Company 's stock had its "buy" rating restated by equities researchers at Citigroup Inc. in a research report issued on Tuesday, Analyst Ratings News reports. Trending on the Topix Network 5 hrs ago | AmericanBankingNews.com Cabot Oil & Gas Co. They currently have a $42.00 price target on the stock. 9 hrs ago | Westport Now Tribute to Holocaust Victim Westport performer Suzanne Tanner debuts her production, "Beyond Me: A Song Cycle in the Key of Survival" in New York on Sunday. 13 hrs ago | The Globe and Mail Haunted by phantom ETF distributions One of his wife's exchange-traded funds, the iShares S&P/TSX Capped REIT Index ETF , declared a distribution of 68.2 cents per unit at the end of 2013 - its biggest distribution of the year by far. 17 hrs ago | Seeking Alpha Intel-Powered Set-Top Box Can Challenge Amazon Fire TV And Apple TV.
Monsanto and Koch Industries Team Up to End Your Right to Know. Friday, 04 April 2014 Koch Industries and Monsanto Team up to End Your Right to Know Koch-Backed Congressman to Introduce GE Labeling Preemption Bill“ An Unholy Alliance between ALEC Members Monsanto and Koch Industries” Apparently it wasn’t an April fool’s joke.
Three months after news outlets revealed the Grocery Manufacturers Association’s (GMA) plan to pursue federal legislation to block states from enacting “right to know” laws, they finally have a sponsor: Representative Mike Pompeo (R-KS). According to news reports, Congressman Pompeo plans to introduce legislation to prevent states from enacting laws requiring the labeling of genetically engineered (GE) food. “GMA’s selection of Congressman Pompeo as their champion shows how extreme the proposal really is,” said Colin O’Neil, director of government affairs for Center for Food Safety. The Brothers Koch quietly become largest tar-sands lease holders in Alberta. UPDATE: It looks like Steve Mufson and Juliet Eilperin, the authors of the Washington Post article upon which this post was based, are backing down on their claims — sort of.
The Koch brothers have leases on a confirmed 1.1 million acres of Alberta tar sands, and the article’s authors cite unnamed “industry sources we consider highly authoritative” who estimate that amount of land to be closer to two million acres. Mufson and Eilperin claim that if the latter figure is accurate, the Koch brothers are indeed the largest lease-holders in the region. However, Jonathan Adler, a columnist for the Washington Post, indicates that it’s possible that Canadian Natural Resources holds leases on 2.5 million acres of tar-sands land, which would exceed even the Kochs’ theoretical holdings. Can the Koch Brothers Force Voters to Take Republicans Seriously? Greg Sargent takes a look at the Democratic strategy of linking Republican senatorial candidates to the Koch brothers: As I noted the other day, this is all about creating a framework within which voters can be made to understand the actual policy agenda Republicans are campaigning on.
This is what the Bain attacks on Mitt Romney were all about: Dem focus groups showed voters simply didn’t believe Romney would cut entitlements (per the Paul Ryan plan) while cutting taxes on the rich. The Bain narrative made Romney’s actual priorities more comprehensible. The Koch attacks are designed to do something similar. Plus it's always good to have a bogeyman, isn't it?
But I agree with Sargent, and this is something that relates back to my posts earlier this week about the fact that middle-class voters don't perceive a big difference between the economic policies of Democrats and Republicans. But one of the mysteries of modern politics is that a lot of voters don't take this seriously.