Search Results for: koch

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: October 7, 2020 ~  Charles Koch is the billionaire owner of Koch Industries, one of the largest private companies in the world with vast interests in fossil fuels, refineries, chemicals, lumber, paper and glass manufacturing. A subsidiary of Koch Industries is Koch Supply and Trading, which engages in commodities trading on a scale rivaling the largest banks on Wall Street. Charles Koch also heads an operation variously known as the Koch Network or the Kochtopus, because its tentacles are strangling the life out of representative government in the United States. The operation hosts semiannual strategy sessions where obscenely rich Americans get together to jointly commit hundreds of millions of dollars to keep Congress and the Oval Office in the hands of fossil fuel-friendly candidates who have demonstrated an obedience to a deregulatory agenda. Koch Foundation money and two dark money groups, Donor’s Capital Fund … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: August 19, 2020 ~ The first thing you need to know about the right-wing Cato Institute is that it quietly began its life as the Charles Koch Foundation in 1974. The name was changed to the Cato Institute in 1977 according to the restated articles of incorporation. For decades, the Cato Institute enjoyed a taxpayer subsidy as a nonprofit while being secretly owned by a handful of men, two of whom were the fossil fuel billionaire brothers, Charles and David Koch – libertarians with a radical agenda. (David Koch died in August of last year.) The second thing to know about the Cato Institute is that over the past 35 years, Koch-related foundations have pumped more than $22 million into its coffers to help Cato get out its messaging of killing off the following: Social Security; federally-subsidized school lunches; the minimum wage; collective bargaining; … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: August 17, 2020 ~ Charles Koch is the Chairman and CEO of the fossil fuels giant, Koch Industries, ranked by ValueWalk as the second largest private corporation in America. Forbes puts his net worth at $45 billion. While Koch Industries has sprawling holdings in pipelines and refineries, in 2005 it bought the paper and lumber company, Georgia-Pacific. That Koch Industries’ division relies on the goodwill and trust of consumers in order to achieve billions of dollars in revenues for its Dixie disposable paper plates, bowls and cups; its Northern Quilted and Angel Soft bath tissue; its Brawny and Sparkle paper towels; and its Vanity Fair and Mardi Gras table napkins. The perception that Charles Koch, the man who has sat atop Koch Industries for more than half a century, is attempting to subvert the will of American voters on behalf of his fellow billionaires … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: August 14, 2020 ~ Since May, the nonprofit group funded with Koch’s fossil fuels money, Americans for Prosperity (AFP), has been mobilizing to defeat the House stimulus bill known as the HEROES Act. In a letter sent to members of Congress, AFP Chief Government Affairs Officer Brent Gardner wrote that AFP wants to see the bill killed and specifically mentions it does not want to see a bailout of the Postal Service. Today, Aaron Gordon at Vice is reporting that he’s gotten his hands on internal documents from the Postal Service which show that orders have come down from above to destroy approximately 500 mail sorting machines – which cost millions of dollars. Witnesses have told Gordon that they’ve seen the machines “destroyed or thrown in the dumpster.” Gordon’s latest report follows yesterday’s news that mail service has been slowed down in multiple parts … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: April 5, 2019 ~ President Donald Trump announced yesterday from the Oval Office that he is recommending Herman Cain for a seat on the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, calling him “a terrific person” and saying “I’ve told my folks that’s the man.” Cain was a presidential contender in the Republican Party in 2011 until sexual harassment charges derailed his bid. Trump’s announcement came just weeks after Trump proposed Stephen Moore for an additional open seat on the Fed. Both Cain and Moore have had close ties to Americans for Prosperity, a corporate front group tied to the Tea Party movement and created with money from the billionaire Koch brothers, Charles and David. The Koch brothers are majority owners of the fossil fuels conglomerate, Koch Industries. Scott Keyes, writing for Think Progress in 2011, reported that “Cain held an official position in the Koch-funded … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: March 28, 2019 ~ The Koch brothers funded front group, Americans for Prosperity (AFP), has decided to scrub Stephen Moore’s history from its web site now that Donald Trump has proposed Moore to sit on the powerful central bank of the United States, the Federal Reserve Board of Governors. Google caches of Moore’s extensive history with the organization now lead to error messages. But we know that Moore has been a featured speaker at Americans for Prosperity events around the country since at least 2009 because attendees have posted photos of him speaking at the events and there are also YouTube videos of his speeches. In one YouTube video where Moore spoke at an Americans for Prosperity event in Tulsa, Oklahoma on April 14, 2016, he called AFP “a great, great organization” and said “I’ve been doing a lot of events around the country … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: September 6, 2018 ~ Last evening the New York Times dropped a bombshell just in time to dominate cable news programming for the next six hours. A “senior official” currently working inside the Trump administration penned an anonymous OpEd which the Times posted on its website last evening and is running in its print edition today. The anonymous writer explains that President Donald Trump is unfit to govern and that there is a coup taking place in the Federal government by unelected men but Americans should be comforted because these are “unsung heroes” and they are the “adults in the room” — even though we can’t know their names. To borrow a phrase from Bob Woodward’s new book on Trump’s reign in the White House, welcome to crazytown. Parsing the phrasing in the OpEd, there is a clear pattern of right-wing ideology – the … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: September 5, 2018 ~ Koch Industries seems to have developed a secret sauce for winning elections. In January 2017 Time Magazine’s Philip Elliott reported that “In seven of the eight up-for-grabs U.S. Senate races last year, the Koch-backed candidate won. In all, Koch-backed candidates at all levels of races prevailed 96% of the time—a record any outside group would covet.” Now, despite polls showing Ohio Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown with a wide lead against his Republican challenger, U.S. Congressman Jim Renacci, there is reason to worry about what is going on in Ohio.  On April 21 The Australian published an intriguing news article by Michael Owen. It revealed that the South Australian Liberal party leader Steven Marshall (in reality a conservative party as opposed to how we think of liberals in the U.S.) had sent two of his key people to the U.S. state of … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: August 29, 2018 ~ Yesterday, President Donald Trump accused Google in a Tweet of rigging its search results to suppress the “voices of Conservatives.” That’s the same complaint that the secretive Charles Koch network of super wealthy political operatives have been attempting to address with media front groups for more than a decade. Trump now appears to be using his bully pulpit in an effort to legitimize those Koch-funded media outlets. The billionaire fossil fuels magnate, Charles Koch, has a lot of balls in the air right now and some are at risk of falling to earth with a thud. He’s currently in a battle to beat out the National Republican Committee (RNC) as the go-to guy for voter database, data mining and targeted social media ads in the midterms and all future elections. (See our report: Koch Industries Is Staffing Up with Voter … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: August 9, 2018 ~ As we have previously reported, there is indisputable documentation that Charles Koch, the fossil fuels billionaire who sits at the helm of Koch Industries, is in charge of the de-regulatory agenda in the Trump administration through a web of front groups. More proof came yesterday. Reuters announced that the Trump administration had “formally told” around 40 staff members of the Office of Financial Research (OFR) that “they will lose their jobs as part of a broader reorganization of the agency….” Reuters also reported that the agency’s budget has already been cut by 25 percent “to around $76 million.” Imagine having only $76 million to police an industry where just one of the big Wall Street banks, JPMorgan Chase, had profits of $8.32 billion in its last quarter. Charles Koch has long understood that if you can’t repeal the legislation that … Continue reading →