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Climate Progress

As Koch Industries Ramps Up Attack On ‘Left-Leaning’ Media, WNET Dumps David Koch From Board

By Brad Johnson, Guest Blogger on May 20, 2013 at 3:17 pm

by Brad Johnson, campaign manager of Forecast the Facts

In the wake of Superstorm Sandy, New York City’s flagship public television station, WNET, has dropped the richest man in New York, carbon pollution billionaire David Koch, from its board of trustees. Days before the monthly board meeting on May 16, Koch’s name was removed from the WNET website. Koch had been a board member since 2006. Koch has been funding WNET since 1986.

The severance of Koch’s longstanding relationship with WNET — which not only serves the New York City area but also produces national programs such as Charlie Rose, Nature, and Great Performances — comes at a time of increasing tension between Koch’s anti-regulatory, climate-polluting industrial empire and the educational mission of public television.

The inherent conflict between Koch’s conspiratorial, anti-science ideology and the public interest with has come under attention in recent months. After Superstorm Sandy struck, WNET’s Charlie Rose and Bill Moyers ran shows on the tragic consequences and threat of greenhouse pollution for the New York region. More recently, reports of Koch Industries’ interest in the newspaper holdings of the Tribune Company have spurred nationwide protests.

Koch also was featured in the November 2012 PBS documentary Park Avenue, which contrasted the extreme wealth of Koch’s residence at 740 Park Avenue with the stark poverty less than a mile north in East Harlem. In the documentary, a former doorman noted that Koch, with a net worth of about $45 billion, gives only $50 holiday tips.

On May 16, the evening after Koch left the WNET board, the station ran a major live town hall on Superstorm Sandy. Broadcasting from New Jersey and New York City, the NY/NJ/Long Island affiliates under WNET management broadcast a two-hour show that talked repeatedly about the major threat posed by climate change in rising sea levels and more frequent storms of increased intensity — threats which Koch’s Cato Institute denies.

In anticipation of today’s piece on the Kochs in The New Yorker by Jane Mayer, Koch Industries issued a conspiratorial rant accusing her of running a “left-leaning” “smear” campaign, in coordination with “MSNBC, ThinkProgress, The New York Times, NPR, The Nation, Mother Jones, Huffington Post and more”:

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Alyssa

What PBS’s Treatment of Two Movies About The Kochs Says About Which Money Counts In Public Television

By Alyssa Rosenberg on May 20, 2013 at 12:23 pm

In this week’s New Yorker, Jane Mayer, who has covered the industrialists Charles and David Koch extensively, chronicles the fate of two documentaries produced for PBS, Alex Gibney’s Park Avenue, which explored the lives of both wealthy residents of a single building on one end of the street and poorer New Yorkers at the other, and Citizen Koch, which examined the consequences of the Citizens United decision. Both movies ran into trouble for the same reason: fear of offending David Koch, who has been a major public television donor, and was until recently on the board of New York public television affiliate WNET. While Park Avenue eventually made it to air on PBS, albeit with a recut introduction and a discussion afterwards that excluded Gibney, Citizen Koch, which was initially supposed to be part of the Independent Lens series, ended up off the lineup. Whether or not David Koch was involved, Mayer’s story would still be interesting as an illustration of what happens when two different philanthropic models bump up against each other.

On one side are the foundations. Gibney’s documentary, Mayer reported, “had been produced independently, in part with support from the Gates Foundation.” And both Park Avenue and Citizen Koch were projects of the Independent Television Service, “the small arm of public television that funds and distributes independent films…ITVS, which is based in San Francisco and was founded some twenty years ago by independent filmmakers, prides itself on its resistance to outside pressure. Its mandate is to showcase opinionated filmmakers who ‘take creative risks, advance issues and represent points of view not usually seen on public or commercial television.’” These foundations represent a mission rather than a personal interest, and that mission is to create space and provide support for a range of ideas, rather than to advance particular arguments or worldviews. It’s a critically important role to fill, but it also means that those organizations have some disadvantages when they come up against the other funding model at stake here, in this case, the support of private donors.

As Mayer explains, in addition to his donations to Lincoln Center—where the David H. Koch Theater, home of the New York City Ballet, bears his name—” In the nineteen-eighties, he began expanding his charitable contributions to the media, donating twenty-three million dollars to public television over the years. In 1997, he began serving as a trustee of Boston’s public-broadcasting operation, WGBH, and in 2006 he joined the board of New York’s public-television outlet, WNET.” Unlike ITVS, for example, which is designed specifically to produce content for public television, there are a lot of places David Koch can spend his money. And unlike ITVS, which has an ongoing mission of making sure that new points of view make it onto public television, a setup that means it’s going to have to expend political capital on behalf of its filmmakers on a regular basis, private donors like Koch are more likely to concentrate their leverage on a few issues, or a few pieces of content. If Koch can make a “seven-figure donation,” which Mayer reported he had planned to give to WNET before he resigned from the board, contingent on two hours of programming, while ITVS has to fight for many films—PBS has already aired 15 movies through ITVS’ Independent Lens program in 2013—ITVS is understandably going to be at a disadvantage, as is the Gates Foundation, which may be all too happy to fund a single film, but doesn’t necessarily want to be in the postion to cover a multi-million dollar hole.
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Media

Koch Brothers Plan To Buy Up Eight Major Newspapers

By Annie-Rose Strasser on Apr 21, 2013 at 10:40 am

The billionaire oil moguls Charles and David Koch are pushing ahead with their plans to purchase several news outlets across the United States, according to a detailed report in the New York Times on Sunday.

At a recent seminar in Aspen, one attendee reported that the brothers — infamous for bankrolling conservative candidates and causes — put forth the question of, “How do we make sure our voice is being heard?” Their answer, it seems, will be to purchase the entire Tribune company, which constitutes a huge swath of American print media:

The papers, valued at roughly $623 million, would be a financially diminutive deal for Koch Industries, the energy and manufacturing conglomerate based in Wichita, Kan., with annual revenue of about $115 billion.

Politically, however, the papers could serve as a broader platform for the Kochs’ laissez-faire ideas. The Los Angeles Times is the fourth-largest paper in the country, and The Tribune is No. 9, and others are in several battleground states, including two of the largest newspapers in Florida, The Orlando Sentinel and The Sun Sentinel in Fort Lauderdale. A deal could include Hoy, the second-largest Spanish-language daily newspaper, which speaks to the pivotal Hispanic demographic.

In total, the Tribune company is responsible for eight print publications.

Charles and David Koch’s money has been instrumental in getting anti-climate politicians into office, and in funding anti-climate science studies. The brothers have also funded with the secretive conservative network ALEC (the American Legislative Exchange Council), which has crafted “model legislation” for voter ID laws that limit voting rights, particularly for low-income people of color. The group was also responsible for the so-called “Stand Your Ground” law that temporarily allowed Trayvon Martin’s killer, George Zimmerman, to walk free.

The brothers also tried to influence the latest election by warning some 45,000 employees that there would be “consequences” if they didn’t vote for Republicans.

Climate Progress

Carbon King David Koch Thinks Climate Action Will ‘Damage The Economy’, But Sandy Underscores Inaction Is Much Costlier

By Brad Johnson, Guest Blogger on Nov 2, 2012 at 1:24 pm

by Brad Johnson

Koch Industries billionaire David H. Koch is the wealthiest man in New York City, with a net worth of $31 billion. His fortune is built on polluting the climate system, from refining, pipeline, chemical, fertilizer, cattle, and forestry operations. The rising seas and superheated oceans made Hurricane Sandy into a monster that has caused upwards of $50 billion of damage to the greater New York area, by early estimates. Constructing a sea barrier to defend against future sea level rise will cost another $10 billion.

Not only has Koch Industries dumped billions of tons of carbon into the air, David Koch has spent hundreds of millions of dollars promoting climate deniers and Tea Party ideologues who fight regulation of carbon pollution.

In 2010, Koch told New York Magazine that global warming should be welcomed, even as coastlines dwindle from the rising seas:

Koch says he’s not sure if global warming is caused by human activities, and at any rate, he sees the heating up of the planet as good news. Lengthened growing seasons in the northern hemisphere, he says, will make up for any trauma caused by the slow migration of people away from disappearing coastlines. “The Earth will be able to support enormously more people because a far greater land area will be available to produce food,” he says.

In January 2011, ThinkProgress reporter Lee Fang confronted Koch as he left the swearing-in ceremony for Speaker John Boehner (R-OH). Fang questioned why Koch’s Tea Party front group, Americans for Prosperity supported climate denial and what his own position on climate science was:

FANG: Why does Americans for Prosperity focus so much on the science of climate change? I’m just curious why they spread so much information that denies the existence of climate, of global warming?

KOCH: Well… I think it’s uh, regulating CO2 excessively is going to put — uh really damage the economy.

FANG: Do you believe in climate change yourself? [...] Do you believe in climate change yourself, Mr. Koch?

KOCH: Climate does fluctuate. It goes from hot to cold. We have ice ages.

FANG: But do you believe carbon pollution affects climate change? [Koch shrugs]

Watch it:

David Koch should pledge his fortune to pay the government of New York City for all necessary repairs and investments to guard against future sea level rise and fossil-fueled storms.

Brad Johnson is the campaign manager of Forecast the Facts and ClimateSilence.org

Related Posts:

Election

Koch-Backed Groups Dropped At Least $95 Million On TV Ads In Presidential Race

By Rebecca Leber on Oct 31, 2012 at 12:17 pm

Charles and David Koch

Few billionaires play a more influential role in bankrolling right-wing and fossil fuel interests than the Koch brothers, whose affiliated groups pledged to spend up to $400 million this election.

A ThinkProgress analysis of Kantar Media CMAG data finds that outside groups with strong Koch ties spent $95 million on more than 100,000 TV ad spots between April and October 27. Most groups ran at least one ad attacking clean energy investments and prioritizing oil above all, although the majority of the ads focused on the economy and federal spending.

Koch group spending in the presidential race rivals another major player in Republican ad wars: Karl Rove’s groups American Crossroads and Crossroads GPS together funded $95.4 million on ads that aired more than 130,000 times.

These Koch-linked groups, most of which don’t disclose donors, have aired close to $100 million worth in ads:

Americans For Prosperity: $31.7 million

After pouring more than $8.4 million into bogus energy attack ads before the general election season, the Koch-founded Americans for Prosperity spent close $32 million in the presidential race. One of these ads, “Wasteful Spending,” directly attacked the loan guarantee program for clean energy projects, claiming that it sent jobs overseas. However, the ad, which aired more than 3,400 times, told four outright lies in a minute:


American Energy Alliance: $461,000

AEA has run two fossil fuel ads in seven states. AEA’s president Thomas Pyle was former director of federal affairs for Koch Industries, and it is affiliated with the Koch- and ExxonMobil-backed Institute for Energy Research. AEA’s recent ad, “Stand With Coal,” runs parallel to the group’s anti-wind campaign to make tax credits “so toxic” Republicans won’t support them. An ad titled “Nine Dollar Gas” aired during peak gas price season was riddled with lies about who to blame for gas prices. Despite the ample evidence that increased oil production doesn’t lower prices, their ad pins blame on the president.


Restore Our Future: $48.88 million

The pro-Romney super PAC has run a number of ads targeting the economy, stimulus, and unemployment. William Koch, the third Koch brother, has funneled millions of dollars to the pro-Romney super PAC group through his company Oxbow Carbon. Oxbow has donated $3.75 million to Restore Our Future, in addition to William Koch’s $250,000 contribution.

American Future Fund: $5.26 million

American Future Fund’s millions in Koch funding comes through the Center to Protect Patients’ Rights, steered by a “Koch operative.” American Future Fund’s eight ads have focused on issues relating to the economy and federal spending. AFF is behind an ad, which aired over 1,000 times, that falsely claims stimulus funding sent green jobs overseas. The ad repeats similar claims as Amerians for Prosperity, citing the same Washington Times source stating that stimulus money sent jobs overseas (although the 2010 story has been factchecked factchecked since):


Americans For Job Security: $8.85 million

Americans For Job Security has an ad on the economy running in eight states. Like American Future Fund, it is Koch connected through the Center to Protect Patients’ Rights.

Outside group spending on TV ads is just one part of the story where Koch money fueled Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign. Beyond saturating the airways, the Kochs have sought to influence their employees’ votes, warning of company-wide “consequences” if Mitt Romney loses. This summer, the Koch brothers raised $3 million at a fundraiser they hostedfor the candidate. Meanwhile, Americans for Prosperity has doubled down on its gas price lies with publicity stunts around the country offering cheap gas to voters, and an expanded ground operation.

Justice

Koch Front Group Joins Revenge Campaign Against Florida Justices With Pro-Nullification Ad

By Ian Millhiser on Sep 25, 2012 at 12:00 pm

Nineteenth century nullificationist Senator John C. Calhoun

Last week, the Florida GOP launched a campaign to remove three sitting state supreme court justices who previously ruled against Gov. Rick Scott (R-FL). If this campaign succeeds, Scott will be able to appoint three of the court’s seven justices, giving the Tea Party governor control over nearly half the court.

Today, the Tea Party group Americans for Prosperity — which is chaired by GOP energy billionaire David Koch — joined this effort as well. The Koch group’s first ad attacks the three justices because they joined a 5-2 opinion blocking an unconstitutional ballot initiative seeking to nullify the Affordable Care Act:

Many states, like Ohio, gave their citizens the right to vote against [the Affordable Care Act]. But not Florida. Our own supreme court denied our right to choose for ourselves. Shouldn’t our courts protect our rights to choose?

Watch it:

First of all, the Florida Supreme Court’s decision had nothing whatsoever to do with denying people their “right to choose.” To the contrary, the court removed the unconstitutional ballot initiative after the initiative’s own defenders admitted that the ballot language accompanying this initiative was misleading. So the court’s opinion stood simply for the very banal point that voters should know what they are voting for before they cast a ballot.

More importantly, however, by praising this ballot initiative, the Koch group is also endorsing a misguided constitutional theory known as “nullification.” Because the Constitution provides that duly enacted federal laws “shall be the supreme law of the land,” states simply do not have the authority to block an Act of Congress such as the Affordable Care Act, whether through a ballot initiative or otherwise.

Although nullification was very much in vogue among nineteenth century slaveholders and Civil Rights era segregationists, it has largely been avoided for most of American history because the Constitution speaks so clearly and unambiguously that it is not allowed. Nevertheless, it has experienced a moderate renaissance among Tea Partiers after a right-wing pseudo-historian named Tom Woods published a book defending the idea. Woods also once published an article declaring the Confederacy to be “Christendom’s Last Stand.” In it, he endorsed the view that the Civil War was a battle between “atheists, socialists, communists, red republicans, jacobins on the one side and the friends of order and regulated freedom on the other.” He concludes that “[t]he real watershed from which we can trace many of the destructive trends that continue to ravage our civilization today, was the defeat of the Confederate States of America in 1865.”

So the Koch group’s ad does not simply seek to punish three justices for placing the law before conservative ideology and turn Florida’s highest court over to the mercies of a Tea Party governor, it also endorses one of the most outlandish misreadings of the Constitution ever conceived by states’ rights advocates — many of whom later wielded it to defend the most abhorrent practices in American history. The Koch ad demonstrates that one of the most powerful and well-moneyed interest groups in the Republican coalition embraces the worst kinds of constitutional thinking, and that they are eager to seek revenge against a judge or justice who rejects their twisted view of the Constitution. If the Koch group succeeds in taking out these three justices, if will send a clear message to every elected judge in the country that they follow the Constitution at their own peril.

Economy

Even David Koch Says The GOP Is Wrong On Taxes

By Ian Millhiser on Aug 30, 2012 at 9:13 pm

David Koch, one half of the pair of billionaire brothers who have pumped millions into the Republican infrastructure, admitted today that even he thinks that the Republican Party has strayed too far too the right:

Koch said he thinks the U.S. military should withdraw from the Middle East and said the government should consider defense spending cuts, as well as possible tax increases to get its fiscal house in order – a stance anathema to many in the Republican Party.

“I think it’s essential to be able to achieve spending reductions and maybe it’s going to require some tax increases,” he said. “We got to come close to balancing the budget, otherwise we’re in a terrible deep problem.”

Koch’s disagreement with the GOP’s hard right turn must not be too serious, however. According to Politico, Koch-backed groups still play to spend $400 million this election cycle to buy control of the federal government for Republicans.

NEWS FLASH

Koch Brother Will Be Official Romney Delegate At Republican National Convention | David Koch will be an official delegate for Mitt Romney at this month’s Republican National Convention and will represent the New York Republican Party, according to National Journal. Koch, an oil billionaire currently ranked number five on the Forbes U.S. billionaire list, has pledged along with his brother Charles to spend $100 million in their effort to oust President Obama this November. For years, the Koch brothers have used their vast wealth to finance the tea party and attack progressive policies on health reform, Wall Street reform, and climate change. It’s unclear if David Koch will attend the RNC in person, which kicks off August 27.

Justice

Better Know A Right-Wing Attack Group: Americans for Prosperity

By Josh Israel and Scott Keyes on Aug 8, 2012 at 5:10 pm

Americans for Prosperity logoPart three of ThinkProgress’ profiles of right-wing groups that are taking advantage of the Citizens United ruling to flood the airways with independent attack ads. See Part 1 and Part 2.

Americans for Prosperity (AFP) is a tax-exempt 501(c)(4) organization.

Created in 2004 when Citizens for a Sound Economy (a conservative organization founded in 1984 by oil billionaires David and Charles Koch) split, AFP calls itself “an organization of grassroots leaders who engage citizens in the name of limited government and free markets.” Its goals include “cutting taxes and government spending in order to halt the encroachment of government in the economic lives of citizens,” “removing unnecessary barriers to entrepreneurship,” and “restoring fairness to our judicial system.”

Though generally associated with the Koch Brothers, the organization is led by president Tim Phillips. Phillips, a former chief of staff for Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-VA), co-founded Century Strategies with Ralph Reed — the former Christian Coalition executive director and Jack Abramoff-scandal figure. Phillips has made a career in corporate “astroturfing.”

The group’s directors include controversial millionaire and former North Carolina State Rep. Art Pope (R) and former Reagan administration budget director James C. Miller.

The group has funded efforts to “incubate” Tea Party organizations and was highly visible in the Wisconsin gubernatorial recall election running ads and sending staffers in the state to support Gov. Scott Walker (R).

Sample AFP ad:

Affiliates:

YouTube channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/AforP
Twitter feed: https://twitter.com/AFPhq

Graphics by Adam Peck. Christina Lewis and Ellie Sandmeyer contributed to this report

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.

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