Secretive Foundation’s Blueprint for Spreading Right-Wing Ideology
Documents Reveal a Powerful, Secretive [...] North Carolina millionaire and political operative Art Pope, who received $1.5 million from the Bradley Foundation for two conservative groups he founded. (Photo by Ted Richardson/For The Washington Post via Getty Images)
It Looks Like the Kochs' Dream of a Right-Wing Constitutional Convention Has Been Roadblocked
Photo Credit: DonkeyHotey / Flickr Creative Commons This year's legislative season saw a strong push in the states from right-wing groups, bankrolled by the Koch brothers and other ultra-conservative billionaires, hoping to convene a national constitutional convention in order to inject rigid fiscal constraints into our country's founding document. Advocates of a federal "balanced budget amendment" (BBA) picked up two more states, Wyoming and Arizona, in their drive to win the 34 resolutions needed to bypass Congress and convene a convention to propose changes to the U.S. Constitution. That momentum, however, was blunted by surprisingly successful campaigns to rescind convention calls in three states, New Mexico, Maryland, and Nevada. As a result, BBA proponents now claim 27 states in their column, down from 28 at the beginning of the year.
It's Official: How the Koch Brothers Killed Trump’s Job Plan
It’s Official: How the Koch [...] This post originally appeared at Alternet. As the 100-day mark of Donald Trump’s embattled presidency approaches, it’s official: the self-proclaimed champion of America’s forgotten workers has no jobs plan. In announcing his new tax plan, President Trump quietly abandoned his biggest legislative initiative aimed at creating American jobs, and postponed again his ambitious but vague trillion-dollar infrastructure jobs program. Trump’s problem is translating his rhetoric into reality.
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. (Photo by Nikki Kahn/The Washington Post via Getty Images) Author Nancy MacLean has unearthed a stealth ideologue of the American right. Her book, Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America, tells the story of one James McGill Buchanan, a Southern political scientist and father of “public choice economics.” MacLean details how this little-known figure has had a massive impact on the ideology of the far right. None other than Charles Koch looked to MacLean’s theories for inspiration.
alec-meeting-denver-conservatives?akid=15891.2675170
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. Other big names speaking at the event include Trump defender-in-chief Newt Gingrich, Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta, Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke, Republican pollster Frank Luntz and local megadonor and light beer magnate Peter Coors, who chairs the right-wing Coors Foundation.
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)
Why the Scariest Nuclear Threat May Be Coming from Inside the White House
On the morning after the election, November 9, 2016, the people who ran the U.S. Department of Energy turned up in their offices and waited. They had cleared 30 desks and freed up 30 parking spaces. They didn’t know exactly how many people they’d host that day, but whoever won the election would surely be sending a small army into the Department of Energy, and every other federal agency.
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 electoral influence of the Koch brothers is similarly well-chronicled. The Kochs are our homegrown oligarchs; they've cornered the market on Republican politics and are nakedly attempting to buy Congress and the White House. Their political network helped finance the Tea Party and powers today's GOP. Koch-affiliated organizations raised some $400 million during the 2012 election, and aim to spend another $290 million to elect Republicans in this year's midterms.
Koch Brothers’ Operatives Fill Top White House Positions, Ethics Forms Reveal
If the billionaire Koch brothers turn to the White House for favors, they will see many familiar faces. Newly disclosed ethics forms reveal that a significant number of senior Trump staffers were previously employed by the sprawling network of hard-right and libertarian advocacy groups financed and controlled by Charles and David Koch, the conservative duo hyper-focused on entrenching Republican power, eliminating taxes, and slashing environmental and labor regulations. Some of the relationships were well-known.
Who’s Backing Scott Pruitt To Head The EPA? The Koch Brothers.
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) This post originally appeared at The Huffington Post.
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 Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
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. By Alex Kotch Two recent employees from key groups financially supported by billionaire industrialists Charles and David Koch are creating a new office within the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) that will provide economic data and analysis relating to FCC policy initiatives. The office could provide FCC Chairman Ajit Pai with analytical justification for slashing regulations.
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.
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.
