Search Results for: koch

How Dangerous is the Charles Koch/Paul Ryan Ticket to Your Social Security

By Pam Martens: September 27, 2012 With Mitt Romney writing off 47 percent of voters, the Presidential race now comes down to the Koch brothers’ money and Paul Ryan’s ambitions.  According to the Republican political consultant, Roger Stone, David Koch played a key role in Ryan’s selection. Says Stone, “The selection was cemented at the July 22nd fundraiser Koch held for Romney at the former’s sumptuous Hamptons estate. Koch pledged $100 million more to C-4 and Super PAC efforts for Romney for Ryan’s selection.”  According to Forbes, the Kochs have budgeted to spend approximately $400 million in this election cycle, chump change to men worth $25 billion each according to the Forbes list of billionaires.   To understand the Koch motivation to get Paul Ryan a heartbeat away from the Presidency, it requires listening to this brief tape, featured at the libertarian Cato Institute web site.  On the tape you will first hear Herman … Continue reading

The Koch Method Versus Crony Capitalism

By Pam Martens: September 12, 2012 At first I thought someone had emailed me a piece from The Onion, the on-line satire magazine; Charles G. Koch lecturing Americans on business integrity and crony capitalism – what else could it be but satire?  So I went directly to the opinion pages of the Wall Street Journal last Sunday evening and there it was – a piece by Charles G. Koch titled “Corporate Cronyism Harms America,” — the equivalent of  Mitt Romney lecturing Americans on  compassionate pet care.  Koch puts forth the premise that when businesses collude with government and receive corporate welfare, we all lose.  But along the way in this argument, he makes a number of highly hypocritical comments.  Koch tells us that the role of business is to “act lawfully and with integrity.”  Should someone with Koch’s baggage dare to make that assertion, and in a newspaper owned by … Continue reading

Koch Footprints Lead to Secret Slush Fund to Keep Fear Alive

By Pam Martens: October 26, 2010 A secretive libertarian nonprofit with ties to Charles Koch bankrolled what was widely perceived to be a fear mongering effort to throw the Presidential election to Senator John McCain in 2008. Until now, where the money came from has been a hotly debated mystery. Seven weeks before the Presidential election of 2008, approximately 100 newspapers and magazines in the U.S., including the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Miami Herald, Philadelphia Inquirer, and St. Petersburg Times, distributed millions of DVDs of the documentary, “Obsession: Radical Islam’s War Against the West.” Altogether, including a separate direct mail campaign, 28 million DVDs flooded households in the swing voter states. The newspapers did not know who was funding this massive propaganda campaign and, apparently, did not care. They inserted the DVD in their Pulitzer properties with the casualness of throwing in a sample of suds free detergent. … Continue reading

The Koch Empire and Americans for Prosperity

By Pam Martens: October 19, 2010 Lily Tomlin said it best: “No matter how cynical you become, it’s never enough to keep up.” Despite two solid years of progressive media tracking the billionaire Koch brothers’ funding of right wing front groups, new details have emerged which show a more sophisticated and ominous network than previously understood. One of the key organizations funded by Koch money is Americans for Prosperity (AFP). While it has been widely documented and publicized that the group is orchestrating the Tea Party, AFP is also a veritable smorgasbord of other “grassroots” personalities. The AFP or the AFP Foundation have spawned the following identities: DefendingtheDream.org (August 27-28 D.C. summit for right wing strategizing and rally); SayNoCapandTrade.org (kill tax on production of greenhouse gases); NoInternetTakeover.com (attacks on the Federal Communications Commission); SickofSpending.com (“…how to recruit, educate, organize, and mobilize fed up Americans to stop the radical left-wing agenda…”); RegulationReality.com (“…educate … Continue reading

Resurrecting Ayn Rand: Hedge Fund Money Teams Up With Koch & BB&T

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: February 28, 2012 Gary Weiss, the Wall Street writer who was ahead of his time with his comprehensive chronicle of Wall Street corruption in 2006 (Wall Street Versus America) charts a bold new course this week with the release of Ayn Rand Nation: The Hidden Struggle for America’s Soul. Thanks to Weiss, the nation might just escape the next wave of Ayn Rand’s radical capitalism and student brainwashing by corporate money vultures fanning out across U.S. campuses. Thanks to the trail paved in Weiss’ book, we did some further digging into the money cartel financing this “spontaneous” outpouring of campus and Tea Party interest in Rand, whose work is regularly considered by top academics to be mediocre and simpleminded. This cartel has a striking similarity to the network of university economists set up by Big Tobacco in a money for hire scheme from 1983 … Continue reading

Secret Owners of Cato Institute Surface as Koch Brothers Move to Take Control

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: March 5, 2012 With the Koch brothers, it’s all about control. They reign over the largest private oil company in the U.S. with estimated revenues of $100 billion. They wield power over a sprawling network of nonprofit front groups with unbridled influence over everything from the Tea Party to economics professors at publicly funded universities. Forbes lists their personal wealth as $25 billion each. They own mansions in the toniest towns in America. And last week, in a decidedly Scrooge-esque maneuver, they filed a lawsuit against a widow who lost her husband to a stroke a mere four months ago over stock she inherited in the Cato Institute worth a measly $16.00. The lawsuit, filed in the District Court of Johnson County, Kansas (the State where Cato was incorporated and home to Charles Koch) has opened up a nasty can of worms. Unknown to … Continue reading

Kochtopus Game Plan for Cato Institute

By Pam Martens: March 12, 2012 The oil billionaire brothers, Charles and David Koch, are adept at planning ahead.  In 1984, the Kochs formed Citizens for a Sound Economy Foundation with Richard Fink and Jay Humphreys.  After CSE received too much publicity suggesting it was just a front for corporate interests,  the Koch brothers changed the foundation’s name to Americans for Prosperity in 2004.  By 2009, planning ahead for the midterm elections in 2010,  Koch money, through Americans for Prosperity, was sluicing through the  “grassroots” campaign called the Tea Party. Watch the video as David Koch stands before a crowd of Tea Party leaders (reporting to him on their progress) and explains how he and his brother, Charles, provided the start up funds and are so proud of the results. Now, in an effort to make good on their promise of launching the  “mother of all wars” to take the White House in the … Continue reading

Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” Is a Grotesque Giveaway to Fossil Fuel Billionaires While Adding $3.3 Trillion to Nation’s Debt

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: June 30, 2025 ~ Aren’t Republicans the candidates who got elected promising to bring down the spiraling U.S. debt and annual deficits? Yesterday, the national debt clocked in at $37 trillion as the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released a report showing that President Donald Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” would add $3.3 trillion to the national debt over the next decade. Donald Trump has been a master of Orwell’s reverse-speak throughout his life. So when he labels federal legislation “Beautiful” when it actually gives massive tax breaks to the wealthiest Americans while cutting critical food and health care benefits to the poor and middle class, Americans should finally accept that they have a clear window into the soul and sociopathy of multi-billionaire Donald Trump. Among the biggest winners, of course, is the fossil fuel industry and the political kingpin of that industry, Charles Koch, … Continue reading

Fossil Fuel Industry Could End Up Paying Tens of Billions for LA Wildfires and Deceiving the Public on Climate Change for Decades

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: January 24, 2025 ~ On October 21, 2020, during Donald Trump’s first term as President, former President Barack Obama delivered a speech at a Democratic campaign rally in Philadelphia. During the remarks, Obama got to the core of how the fossil fuel industry had shaped the Trump administration. He stated: “The Environmental Protection Agency, that’s supposed to protect our air and our water, is right now run by an energy lobbyist that gives polluters free reign to dump unlimited poison into our air and water… “The Interior Department, that’s supposed to protect our public lands and wild spaces, our wildlife and our wilderness. And right now, that’s run by an oil lobbyist who’s determined to sell them to the highest bidder.” During Trump’s first term, the fossil fuels industry and particularly Charles Koch, Chairman and CEO of the fossil fuels conglomerate, Koch Industries, were brazen in … Continue reading

It’s Being Called the Biggest Grift by a President in U.S. History: Trump and First Lady Launch their Own Crypto Coins

Trump, Pied Piper

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: January 22, 2025 ~ The crypto billionaires who played a major role in putting Donald Trump in the White House and defeating the reelection of honest Senators who had sat on the Senate Banking Committee, were celebrating their big wins at the Crypto Ball last Friday night at the gilded Mellon Auditorium just down the street from the White House, when they were blindsided by a Tweet from President-elect Donald Trump. The Tweet delivered the bombshell news that Trump – two days away from being sworn in as President of the United States — had just launched his own crypto coin: “My NEW Official Trump Meme is HERE! It’s time to celebrate everything we stand for: WINNING! Join my very special Trump Community. GET YOUR $TRUMP NOW. Go to http://gettrumpmemes.com — Have Fun!” Numerous attendees at the Ball thought this was such over-the-top grift, even for … Continue reading