Search Results for: koch

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: July 27, 2022 ~ Mainstream media has been abuzz over the past two days that Marc Short, the Chief of Staff to former Vice President Mike Pence, has testified under subpoena before a grand jury convened by the U.S. Department of Justice, which has now broadened its investigation of the January 6 attack on the Capitol to the masterminds. But is that really the headline? We think the real headline is that Marc Short was previously an executive at the fossil fuels conglomerate Koch Industries, a private company run by billionaire Charles Koch who has been setting up political front groups for four decades. Short went on to become President of a Koch-related dark money group called Freedom Partners from 2011 to 2016. Freedom Partners plowed hundreds of millions of dollars into political operations in an effort to put fossil fuel friendly pawns in Congress … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: July 1, 2022 ~ Imagine a country that allows a private fossil fuels conglomerate (or its billionaire boss, Charles Koch, the 17th richest person in the world according to Forbes) to get away with the following: Meet secretly with big political donors twice a year to plot a coordinated strategy to put their chosen people in public office; Meet at his private club with a sitting Supreme Court justice who will then rule on key legislation that benefits his interests; Fund an organization that then sluices money to the wife of the Supreme Court Justice; Run a highly sophisticated voter registration database, data mining and get-out-the-vote operation called i360, in order to pack Congress with people who will pursue an antiregulatory agenda; Install dozens of its lawyers and operatives into the highest offices of the federal government; Run a sprawling, opaque trading operation that could … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: June 28, 2022 ~ In September 1999 the U.S. Department of Justice filed racketeering charges against the major tobacco companies and two of their front groups. The court filings in that case carefully pieced together a half century of conspiratorial conduct and lies that gravely harmed the health of the American people, while lining the pockets of the tobacco industry, its lawyers and its paid shills. The January 6 Select House Committee has that same, once-in-a-lifetime power in its hands. But that window of opportunity will close soon. The January 6 Committee can connect all the dots of the attempted coup leading to the doorstep of Charles Koch and expose his four decades of establishing front groups to shill for the fossil fuels industry and anti-climate change groups, or it can present a false and narrow view that this was all about the ego and … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: March 28, 2022 ~ The Washington Post’s Bob Woodward and Bob Costa of CBS News have unleashed a fury of renewed interest in the work of the House Select Committee investigating the January 6 attack on the Capitol. Last Thursday, Woodward and Costa set off a political firestorm when they released the contents of emails that Ginni Thomas, wife of the sitting Supreme Court Justice, Clarence Thomas, had sent to President Donald Trump’s Chief of Staff, Mark Meadows, in 2020, urging him to overturn the Biden election win and attempting to steer his efforts in that regard. A total of 29 emails were obtained by Woodward and Costa, with the bulk of the emails occurring in just the month of November 2020, raising questions as to how many more emails are still out there from Thomas to the White House from December 1, 2020 through … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: March 18, 2022 ~ On March 8, Wall Street On Parade reported that despite announcements by British Petroleum (BP), Shell and ExxonMobil that they were cutting business ties to Russia in response to Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine, another oil conglomerate, Koch Industries, remained silent. Koch Industries is the privately-owned cash cow that has fueled the infamous “Koch Brothers” creepy intrusions into every nook and cranny of American politics, using labyrinthine layers of well-financed front groups. The oldest brother, Charles Koch, whose personal wealth is estimated at $53 billion according to Forbes, remains at the helm of Koch Industries and a sprawling political power base. David Koch died in 2019. Koch front groups also played a pivotal role in the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021 in an effort to keep Russian President Vladimir Putin’s admirer, Donald Trump, in the White House. See: … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: March 8, 2022 ~ British Petroleum (BP), Shell, ExxonMobil and Norwegian oil and gas producer, Equinor, have all released statements indicating they are severing business ties with Russia in response to its invasion of Ukraine. But billionaire oil baron Charles Koch, who has sat at the helm of Koch Industries for more than half a century, has been unusually quiet about his plans for his sprawling Russian operations. According to Koch Industries, one of the largest private corporations in the world, three of its companies operate in Russia: Molex, a manufacturer of semi-conductors, printed circuits, fiber optics and a multitude of other electrical components; Koch Engineered Solutions, which makes process and pollution control equipment; and Guardian Industries, a glass and auto parts manufacturer. Another unit of Koch Industries, Koch Supply and Trading, has a history of trading Russian oil. Guardian Industries’ division, Guardian Glass, has … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: March 15, 2021 ~ Last Wednesday, March 10, a Subcommittee of the Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing of critical importance to every American on the growing tsunami of dark money that is corrupting the U.S court system, up to, and including, the U.S. Supreme Court. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), who has written extensively on the corrupting influence of dark money on American democracy, chairs that Subcommittee on Federal Courts, Oversight, Agency Action and Federal Rights. One would have thought that every major print and broadcast news outlet would have covered that hearing. Instead, the silence was deafening and smacked of censorship. The one peep that was heard from a major news outlet was a snarky attack on Whitehouse himself on the day of the hearing by the corporatized, right-wing Editorial Board of the Wall Street Journal, part of the Rupert Murdoch empire. The “Editorial … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: March 9, 2021 ~ Front groups with long-term histories of funding from billionaire Charles Koch and his related entities have taken a keen interest in Congressional hearings into the manipulative trading action in the shares of GameStop, a struggling brick-and-mortar video game retailer. The Cato Institute maneuvered a seat for itself at a House Financial Services Committee hearing on the matter in February and the Mercatus Center will have a seat at today’s Senate Banking Committee hearing. Shares of GameStop soared from $18.84 on December 31 of last year to an intraday high of $483 on January 28 – an unprecedented run of 2,465 percent in four weeks. The stock price then quickly plunged and is now making a second comeback rally, closing yesterday up 41.21 percent at $194.50. Behind the scenes of this wild trading action has been a decidedly perverse trading model. … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: March 8, 2021~ We’re starting to see a pattern. When the House Financial Services Committee held its February 18 hearing on the wild, manipulative trading patterns in shares of GameStop, a right-wing front group funded with Koch money sent a surprise witness to testify. The front group was the Cato Institute, which was secretly owned by Charles and David Koch and a handful of men through much of its history. Tomorrow, the Senate Banking Committee will hold its own hearing on the GameStop matter and one of the five witnesses called to testify hails from another bastion of Koch money, influence and dubious history. The witness we’re referring to is Andrew (Andy) Vollmer, a Senior Affiliated Scholar with the Mercatus Center. It’s a safe bet this witness wasn’t invited by the Chair of the Committee, Sherrod Brown, a Democrat from Ohio, but was invited by … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: March 2, 2021 ~ The Senate Banking Committee will convene today to conduct confirmation hearings for President Joe Biden’s nominees to fill two key Wall Street watchdog posts: Gary Gensler to Chair the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and Rohit Chopra as Director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). As a result of Democrats taking control of the Senate, Sherrod Brown, a Democrat from Ohio, is the new Chair of the Senate Banking Committee. Curiously, however, the prior Republican Chair of the Senate Banking Committee, the mild-mannered Mike Crapo of Idaho, is not the Ranking Member of the Committee. He has been replaced by a man far more likely to engage in aggressive Koch-speak, Republican Senator Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania. (Toomey was all set to become the new Chair of the Senate Banking Committee but then things went south in Georgia and Democrats picked … Continue reading →