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Climate Progress

T. Boone Pickens: ‘The Biggest Deterrent To An Energy Plan In America Is Koch Industries’

By Joe Romm on May 3, 2012 at 5:54 pm

Billionaire energy investor T. Boone Pickens has a bone to pick with the country’s leading pollutocrats.

Pickens said in an interview Wednesday with Yahoo’s Daily Ticker that Koch Industries, the company owned by Charles and David Koch, is the major stumbling block to a coherent U.S. energy policy:

“The biggest deterrent to an energy plan in America is Koch Industries,” the BP Capital founder tells Yahoo’s Aaron Task. “They do not want an energy plan for America because they have the cheapest natural gas price they’ve ever had, and they’re in the fertilizer business and they’re in the chemical business. So their margins are huge. And they do not want you to have an energy plan, because if you had a plan, then natural gas prices would come up.”

Watch it:

Back in October, a German state minister explained that the country could decarbonize with renewables because “We Don’t Have the … Koch Brothers.” He was referring to the Kochs’ lobbying for dirty fuels and against clean energy, and its spending on climate science disinformation, which exceeds that of ExxonMobil. As Business Insider explains:

The second-largest private company in the United States, Koch Industries has spent at least $5 million in lobbying in each of the past four years, and given at least $1,000,000 in seven of the last eight election cycles, according to data from OpenSecrets.

In 2008, the company spent nearly $18 million on lobbying for oil and gas interests alone, according to Open Secrets. They’ve already spent $2.3 million on oil and gas lobbying in 2012.

Pickens was referring to the Koch brothers’ Americans For Prosperity front group, which has been bashing Pickens’ beloved NAT GAS Act (HR 1380) to promote natural-gas vehicles (NGVs). Since the AFP campaign began, 14 House Republicans have withdrawn support for the legislation. Of course, we now know that NGVs are bad for the climate (see “Natural Gas Is A Bridge To Nowhere Absent A Carbon Price AND Strong Standards To Reduce Methane Leakage“). As EDF chief Fred Krupp put it, “I’m here to tell you today that every truck we switch to natural gas damages the atmosphere.”

Still, who can argue with Pickens’ central point? The men from Koch — and the groups, politicians, and  disinformation they fund — are now the Sith Lords of climate and clean energy inaction in the country.

Justice

Cato Senior Fellow: Koch Brothers Want To Take Over Cato Because ‘Cato Wasn’t Doing Enough To Defeat’ Obama

By Ian Millhiser on Mar 5, 2012 at 9:50 am

As ThinkProgress reported last week, energy barons Charles and David Koch recently filed a lawsuit attempting to seize majority control over the libertarian Cato Institute. According to Jerry Taylor, a senior fellow at Cato, this effort is part of a longstanding effort by the Kochs to transform Cato from a warehouse for radical libertarianism into something more purely concerned with electoral politics:

Last year, [the Kochs] used their shares to place two of their operatives – Kevin Gentry and Nancy Pfotenhauer – on our board against the wishes of every single board member save for David Koch. Last Thursday, they used their shares to force another four new board members on us (the most that their shares would allow at any given meeting); Charles Koch, Ted Olson (hired council for Koch Industries), Preston Marshall (the largest shareholder of Koch Industries save for Charles and David), and Andrew Napolitano (a frequent speaker at Koch-sponsored events). [...]

Why are they forcing out Cato board members, all strong, principled libertarians who have been heavily involved with Cato – financially and organizationally – for years? The answer was given in early November of last year when David Koch, Richard Fink (he of many Koch hats), and Kevin Gentry met with Cato board chairman Bob Levy. They told Bob that they intended to use their board majority to remove Ed Crane from Cato and transform our Institute into an intellectual ammo-shop for American for Prosperity and other allied (presumably, Koch-controlled) organizations. That statement of intent is certainly consistent with what we’ve been hearing from both Kevin Gentry and Nancy Pfotenauer. They’ve frequently complained during their short time on our board that Cato wasn’t doing enough to defeat President Obama in November and that we weren’t working closely enough with grass roots activists like those at AFP.

In its present incarnation, Cato combines a kind of Randian social Darwinism with several less extreme positions on issues such as defense and gay rights. Cato doesn’t just oppose Social Security and Medicare, it believes that they are unconstitutional. Yet Cato is also a genuine ally in the fight for marriage equality and it has at times been the most pacifistic major DC think tank. Among other things, Cato opposed the 1990 Gulf War.

Taylor is clearly concerned that Cato will abandon its commitment to a modest defense policy and potentially even its progressive views on gay rights if the Kochs take over. Koch-sponsored board member Nancy Pfotenauer is a former spokesperson for the McCain campaign who argued in support of both the Iraq War and Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell. Koch front man Kevin Gentry is a “social conservative activist.” The Kochs also tried and failed to install John Hinderaker on the Cato board, a right-wing blogger who supports the Patriot Act and the Iraq War and who once called George W. Bush “[a] man of extraordinary vision and brilliance approaching to genius.” If this is reflective of the Kochs’ vision for Cato, then they want Cato to be nothing more than a mouthpiece for the Republican Party.

If the Kochs truly are committed to transforming America’s top libertarian organization into the Campaign To Defeat The President, however, then Cato will need to moderate many of its more extreme positions on domestic policy. Jerry Taylor’s job as one of Cato’s top climate science deniers will no doubt be safe — as the Koch energy juggernaut is unlikely to cut back on an issue so near and dear to its bottom line — but Cato’s miserly view of the Constitution is wholly inconsistent with an effort to develop a winning electoral agenda for President Obama’s opponent and would have to be abandoned.

Even in 2010, when President Obama’s popularity was at its lowest ebb and America’s economic woes seemed to stretch on for years to come, candidates like Joe Miller (R-AK), Sharron Angle (R-NV), John Raese (R-WV) and Ken Buck (R-CO) — all of whom share the Cato view of the Constitution — were creamed at the polls, each of them significantly underperforming Republicans with less radical stances on the Constitution. Now, by contrast, President Obama’s polls are experiencing a sharp upturn, and our economy is likely to experience meaningful growth in 2012 absent an economic disaster in Europe. If the Cato constitutional vision was toxic in 2010, it will be downright deadly in 2012.

Update

Dave Weigel has a similar report on the consequences of the Koch takeover of Cato, except that his report attributes many of Taylor’s concerns to Cato president Ed Crane. According to Crane, the Kochs intend to transform Cato into, “a partisan adjunct to Americans for Prosperity, the activist GOP group they control.”

Climate Progress

Rep. Pompeo (R-Koch) Defends ‘Vilified’ Koch Brothers From ‘Nixonian’ Obama

By Guest Blogger on Feb 3, 2012 at 5:33 pm

Rep. Mike Pompeo (R-Koch)

After the Koch brothers secretly mobilized $100 million from fellow billionaires to unseat President Barack Obama last weekend, Rep. Mike Pompeo (R-KS) wrote an op-ed in Politico today accusing the Obama administration of harassing the co-owners of Koch Industries and Pompeo’s greatest contributors. Calling Charles and David Koch “U.S. citizens, taxpayers, entrepreneurs and employers,” Pompeo claimed that the administration is taking a “Nixonian approach to politics”:

Liberal blogs and publications have published countless slanted pieces on Koch Industries, heavy on innuendo and light on facts.

The Obama administration has long been criticized for maintaining a de facto “enemies list” of its perceived political opponents, whether they are respected Supreme Court justices, disfavored reporters or private citizens who just want to keep their own doctors. The Democrats’ obsession with the Kochs as a political target is, indeed, additional evidence of a truly Nixonian approach to politics.

That the Obama administration and its allies use private citizens as symbols to be attacked and vilified is unfair and deeply threatening to our civic life and the rule of law.

In fact, the Koch brothers have made themselves very public figures. After Charles Koch founded the Cato Institute in 1977, David Koch ran for vice president on the Libertarian ticket he bankrolled in 1980. In person and through their latest front group, the astroturf organization Americans for Prosperity, the Kochs have “attacked and vilified” the Obama administration to a level that approaches “obsession”:

Charles Koch: Obama Is ‘Greatest Assault On American Freedom.’ In his letter inviting fellow conservative millionaires and billionaires to a secret Palm Springs retreat in January 2011, Charles Koch accused President Obama of “the greatest assault on American freedom and prosperity in our lifetimes.” [ThinkProgress]

Charles Koch: Obama Is ‘Saddam Hussein.’ At another secret retreat in the fall of 2011, Charles Koch compared President Obama and the 2012 elections to Saddam Hussein and the Iraq War. “We have Saddam Hussein, this is the Mother of All Wars we’ve got in the next 18 months. For the life or death of this country.” [Mother Jones, 9/6/11]

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Media

The 1 Percent Solution: Koch Brothers Bankroll Right-Wing ThinkProgress Clone [UPDATED]

By Judd Legum on Jan 5, 2012 at 9:27 am

The Koch Brothers are worth $50 billion. They’ve bankrolled the Tea Party, the campaign against climate change science, and entire university departments to advance their right-wing agenda. The newest item on their shopping list: their own Center for American Progress.

This morning in Politico, Ben Smith breaks the news that the Koch Brothers and others on the right are launching a new organization explicitly modeled after ThinkProgress:

Impressed by the effectiveness of the liberal Center for American Progress, a group of conservative journalists and operatives are preparing to engage in their own sincerest form of flattery – launching an advocacy group with a similar name and mission but a very different target.

Part assault on CAP and part homage, the Center for American Freedom’s goal is to wage a well-funded assault on the Obama White House and the liberal domination of partisan online media.

Based in Washington, it will have an annual budget of “several million dollars,” according to its chairman, Michael Goldfarb, and will house a new conservative online news outlet, the Washington Free Beacon, edited by former Weekly Standard writer Matthew Continetti. It will also include a campaign-style war room led by two former chiefs of the Republican National Committee’s vaunted research operation.

The chairman, Michael Goldfarb — a former McCain spokesperson and the opinion editor for the Weekly Standard — was hired this year by the Koch Brothers to improve their image and advance their political agenda. (Officially, Goldfarb “declined to say” whether the Kochs were donors.)

Continetti, formerly of the Weekly Standard, recently wrote a gushing 8,000 word hagiography to the Kochs “blasting critics of Koch Industries and its billionaire owners.” In the article, Continetti did not mention that he received a fellowship backed, in part, by Koch money. He also did not mention that his fellow editor at the Weekly Standard, Goldfarb, was employed by the Kochs.

The new organization’s mimickry of ThinkProgress and CAP at times borders on comical. For example, Smith reports that “the new group’s mission statement, for instance, appears at points to be literally copied and pasted from CAP’s, with the word ‘freedom’ substituted for ‘progress.’”

Update

Koch has issued a statement denying “any involvement” with the Center for American freedom. The statement does not mention that the chairman of the new organization is on their payroll or the other connections detailed above. They also deny providing any funding to the group.

Health

ALEC Deems Kids Eating Rat Poison An ‘Acceptable Risk’

By Marie Diamond and Scott Keyes on Dec 6, 2011 at 2:49 pm

As ThinkProgress has been reporting for some time, the corporate front group American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) has been colluding with the billionaire Koch brothers to privatize government and eliminate environmental regulations that interfere with profits.

GOP legislators in many states have given ALEC free reign to write anti-health care reform and anti-environment legislation. Now, ALEC is fighting to kill Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) rules limiting the sale of rat poisons that pose a serious health threat to children and the ecosystem.

A top representative for the ultra-conservative group said kids eating rat poison is an “acceptable risk” that does not justify government intervention:

“There are certain levels of acceptable risk in society,” says Todd M. Wynn, director of the ALEC Energy, Environment, and Agriculture Task Force, in an interview about the EPA rules with the Heartland Institute’s Heartlander website. “And parents play an important role by weighing the potential risks and benefits of using a product.”

“Unfortunately, EPA expands its reach into the American economy more and more each and every year,” Wynn said. “This year it will be d-Con, but next year another useful product will be burdened by additional regulations or banned outright from the market.” [...]

Aaron Colangelo, an attorney for the NRDC…told the Center for Media and Democracy that “there is not an undue economic burden associated with reformulating these products,” pointing out that the rest of the industry had complied with the new rules without adverse economic impact. Additionally, he said, “the health care costs for treating these kids certainly outweigh the economic costs of reformulation.”

Wynn’s startling admission illustrates the extent to which ALEC is willing to sacrifice the health of Americans to advance their radical agenda. For decades, at least 12,000-15,000 children a year have become ill after accidentally touching or ingesting rat poison that’s spread in pellet form. Poisoned children experience internal bleeding, bloody urine, bleeding gums, and blood coming from their ears. Poor and minority children are disproportionately affected.

Exposure often occurs in settings outside parents’ control, and giving companies the option of voluntary adopting changes has done nothing to help. After thirteen years of studies, hearings, reports and legal battles, “the EPA announced in 2008 rodenticide manufacturers would have three years to adopt limits on the sale of the products.”

For years, ALEC has successfully killed these kind of regulations on environmental toxins and pollutants on behalf of corporations. At their annual conference in New Orleans this year, ALEC distributed a pamphlet titled “The Many Benefits Of Atmospheric CO2 Enrichment,” complete with pictures depicting happy wildlife and a healthy environment. Companies like Koch Industries, BP, WalMart, and others join forces to fund this little-known organization that works behind the scenes to fight the dirty battles that no corporation would want to be publicly associated with.

NEWS FLASH

Cain: ‘I Am The Koch Brothers’ Brother From Another Mother’ | Herman Cain may be the billionaire Koch brothers’ favorite presidential candidate, with strong ties between his campaign and the wealthy conservative patrons, and Cain hasn’t been shy about about showing his love for the pair. Today, at a conference sponsored by the Koch-backed group Americans for Prosperity, Cain declared to thunderous applause, “I am the Koch brothers’ brother from another mother.” He added, “And proud of it.” Watch it:

By Alex Seitz-Wald on Nov 4, 2011 at 2:42 pm

Economy

Romney’s Estate Tax Cut Would Save The Koch Brothers Up To $8.7 Billion Each

By Pat Garofalo on Nov 3, 2011 at 4:20 pm

Mitt Romney speaking at a Koch summit in previous years; David Koch speaking at his own gala

Tomorrow, 2012 GOP presidential hopeful Mitt Romney is slated to give a “major spending policy speech” at Americans For Prosperity’s Defending the American Dream Summit. Both the conference and AFP itself are funded by money from the billionaire Koch Brothers.

Romney has, of late, been trying to claim the economic plan he put forth is meant to aid the middle-class, not those in the Koch brothers’ tax bracket. “I want to focus on where the people are hurting the most, and that’s the middle class. I’m not worried about rich people. They are doing just fine,” Romney said at a GOP debate last month. Yesterday, he even tried to claim “I’m proposing no tax cuts for the rich.”

Leaving aside that Romney intends to extend the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, he has proposed a huge giveaway to the very rich by suggesting the complete elimination of the estate tax. Only the very richest households in the country ever have to pay the estate tax, since, right now, an estate must be worth more than $5 million (or $10 million for a couple) to pay any estate tax at all.

Currently, more than half of the estate tax is paid by the richest 0.1 percent of households. And according to a quick back-of-the-envelope calculation, the Koch brothers heirs’ would save a combined $17.4 billion in estate taxes thanks to Romney’s plan.

Each of the Koch brothers — Charles and David — is worth about $25 billion. They are each married, so they would receive an exemption on the first $10 million that they pass down, and then theirs heirs would pay a 35 percent tax, or $8.7 billion, on the rest of their vast fortunes.

Now, this is an exceedingly rough calculation, as it’s almost certain that the Koch’s have engaged in extensive estate planning and would pay nowhere near that amount. But 35 percent is the rate on the books, and Romney’s plan to eliminate the estate tax entirely would undeniably save the Kochs a boatload of money.

David Koch actually hosted one of the first fundraisers of Romney’s current bid for the White House, and according to the Romney campaign, the Kochs are the “financial engines of the Tea Party.” Though Romney claims to be “not worried” about the rich, the actual policies he’s proposed would do a lot to ensure that the Kochs’ never have to pay their fair share.

Politics

The Koch Brothers’ Connection To Herman Cain’s Campaign Finance Scandal

By Lee Fang on Nov 3, 2011 at 10:15 am

Tea Party billionaire David Koch, during an interview with ThinkProgress

Herman Cain’s presidential campaign has taken heat for relying on a private corporation to pay for a plethora of campaign services, potentially in violation of federal campaign finance law. According to documents obtained by Daniel Bice of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Cain chief of staff Mark Block set up a company called Prosperity USA and used it to pay for “tens of thousands of dollars in [campaign] expenses for such items as iPads, chartered flights and travel to Iowa and Las Vegas.”

In the New York Times today, another look at the documents obtained by Bice shows that the corporation is financially linked to Americans for Prosperity, the Tea Party group financed by the billionaire petrochemical brothers David and Charles Koch. Prosperity USA might even still owe money to the Koch groups:

The internal documents appear to show that Prosperity USA received money from or was owed money by several conservative groups, including Americans for Prosperity chapters in Florida and Oklahoma. One amount, $5,000, includes the memo line “Herman Cain attended at request of AFP.”

Mr. Cain headlined an Americans for Prosperity Oklahoma event in October 2010.

The group also paid for Mr. Block to fly to Washington to meet with David Koch and Tim Phillips, the president of Americans for Prosperity.

At the CNN Las Vegas debate last month, ThinkProgress attempted to ask Block about his ties to the Koch brothers. Block, who headed the Wisconsin chapter of Americans for Prosperity through the 2010 election cycle, refused to speak with us. “I know you guys, no comment,” said Block, apparently referencing ThinkProgress’ work in first reporting the Koch network’s role in helping to organize the Tea Party and our subsequent investigations into the Koch’s business and political empire.

As Scott Keyes first detailed for ThinkProgress, Cain has long served as a loyal ally of the Koch network. Cain attends the secret Koch fundraising meetings, regularly speaks at Koch events, and relies heavily on the Koch network of political operatives. In an interview with Keyes from earlier this year, Cain sung the Koch brothers’ praises, calling the pair “patriots.” “I’m very proud of the relationship that I have with the Koch Brothers,” he told CNN last month. Given the alleged financing of the Cain presidential campaign by Koch groups like Americans for Prosperity, the feeling appears to be mutual.

Climate Progress

The 1% Strike Back: Koch-Funded Americans for Prosperity Run New Solyndra TV Ad, Hilariously Lamenting “Political Favors”

By Stephen Lacey on Nov 2, 2011 at 11:48 am

“The Kochs are on a whole different level. There’s no one else who has spent this much money. The sheer dimension of it is what sets them apart. They have a pattern of lawbreaking, political manipulation, and obfuscation. I’ve been in Washington since Watergate, and I’ve never seen anything like it. They are the Standard Oil of our times.”

– Charles Lewis, founder of the non-partisan Center for Public Integrity, quoted in a New Yorker expose of the Koch Brothers

Over the years, the Koch Brothers have spent over $50 million on campaigns in their fight to stop any action on climate change. They have poured gobs of money into federal politics, bankrolled climate deniers, and issued completely false ads on the impact of carbon-reduction policies. And to top it all off, the Koch Brothers are reportedly set to raise and spend $200 million on the 2012 election — with much of that money going toward energy-related issues.

In short, no two people more epitomize the corrupting power and influence of the 1% over the 99% than the pollutocrats, Charles and David Koch.

Now, one of the most prominent and vocal Koch-backed organizations, Americans for Prosperity, is spending $2.4 million on a new media campaign to highlight the Solyndra bankruptcy, releasing a one-minute television ad in key battleground states.

The tagline: “Tell President Obama that you shouldn’t use taxpayer dollars for political favors.”

Well, after two months of investigation, public hearings and a whole lot of political posturing, we still don’t have any proof of political favors or illegal behavior. Of course, it would be silly to speculate or assume anything before the official investigation of the loan guarantee program is complete. But that’s not how the war of communications is won.

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Special Topic

100 Kansans March On Koch Industries Headquarters In Wichita

By Zaid Jilani on Oct 31, 2011 at 9:05 am

The oil billionaires Charles and David Koch, the heads of Koch Industries, are some of the far right’s biggest funders. They have provided millions of dollars to bankroll causes ranging from school privatization to climate change denialism.

On Saturday, nearly a hundred 99 Percenters in Kansas took their complaints about this corporate influence in democracy directly to the Kochs by marching on the Wichita headquarters of Koch Industries. The demonstrators chanted against special interest influence and income inequality. “I’m tired of 80 percent of the people only having 7 percent of the wealth of this county,” said protester Ramona Becker about why she was there. “We used to all have a fair chance in this country, and that’s not true anymore. The American Dream has gone away. No matter how hard people work, they can’t make it, because there’s only so much money to go around and only a few people have it.” Local news station KAKE filed a video report about the protest. Watch it:

The company responded to the protest with a written statement essentially saying that it was a bad idea to protest Koch Industries simply because it is a large employer in the region: “Rather than protest an American company that employs 50,000 Americans, including more than 2,600 Kansans, we encourage citizens to turn their attention to the burden of excessive government spending, uncontrolled debt and onerous regulations that are crippling our nation.” The company did not respond to protesters’ complaint that the Kochs were using their money to corrupt the political system.

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