Tag Archives: Koch family

March 14, 2013 · 5:21 AM

Koch Brothers eye L.A. Times, other Tribune newspapers: sources

David Koch, executive vice president of Koch Industries, applauds during an Economic Club of New York event in New York, December 10, 2012. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid

Good luck with that, fellas…

Reuters

Charles and David Koch, two of the world’s richest men, are interested in Tribune’s newspaper assets, which include the Los Angeles Times and the Chicago Tribune, according to sources familiar with situation.

Earlier on Tuesday, L.A. Weekly reported that the Koch brothers were rumored to be interested in either all of the Tribune company, which includes 23 TV stations and national cable network WGN American, or the Tribune newspapers. The report also cited “another rumor” from a Los Angeles Times editorial board member that the Koch brothers are helping U-T San Diego newspaper owner Doug Manchester finance a bid.

According to one of the Reuters sources, the Koch brothers are not interested in Tribune’s other assets – which include the broadcast TV stations. Tribune, based in Chicago, owns eight major dailies, including The Baltimore Sun and Hartford Courant.

Manchester said in statement: “We are looking forward to opportunities to employ our cross-media strategy in other markets. We have no partnership with Koch Industries or with the Koch brothers, and we don’t anticipate any such arrangement. If we were to become involved in the sale of the Tribune Company or any other media assets, we would be glad to comment at the appropriate time.”

Melissa Cohlmia, a spokeswoman for Koch Companies Public Sector, said in a statement: “As an entrepreneurial company with 60,000 employees around the world, we are constantly exploring profitable opportunities in many industries and sectors.

“So, it is natural that our name would come up in connection with this rumor. We respect the independence of the journalistic institutions referenced in today’s news stories, but it is our long-standing policy not to comment on deals or rumors of deals we may or may not be exploring.”

Tribune spokesman Gary Weitman said the company does not comment on speculation.

The Koch Brothers – worth $34 billion, making them the world’s sixth-richest men, according to Forbes magazine – would have more than enough room to make a bid for all of Tribune’s newspapers.

Tribune’s newspapers are profitable and estimated to be worth $623 million, according to a report by Lazard, its financial adviser.

The brothers are the owners of Koch Industries, a sprawling conglomerate whose holdings include crude oil and natural gas pipelines, paper products like Dixie Cups and Angel Soft toilet tissue, and cattle ranches.

They are known for their conservative views and on the Koch Industries website explain that economic freedom means that “government is kept small and limited to those activities that contribute to societal well-being, rather than undermine it.”

Other notable names such as Warren Buffett and News Corp’s Rupert Murdoch have surfaced as possible buyers for some of Tribune’s dailies. Aaron Kushner, the owner of the Orange County Register near Los Angeles, said he was “prepared to take a serious look” at Tribune’s newspapers in December.

The newspaper industry is once again becoming a hive of activity as several big city papers hit the auction block while other smaller newspapers have been snapped up by the likes of Buffett.

Tribune is the latest example of a company exploring a sale of its newspapers. The New York Times announced in February it was putting The Boston Globe and other properties in New England up for sale.

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October 15, 2012 · 12:13 PM

Koch Industries Warns 45,000 Employees Of ‘Consequences’ If They Don’t Vote For Republicans

So much for Democracy.

The question I have is…will someone be looking over the shoulder of each employee as they vote?   This entire exercise is yet another bully tactic by the powers that be.   They are trying their best, it seems, to guarantee some sort of dystopian future for the American electorate.

Think Progress

The Koch brothers’ $60 million pledge to defeat President Obama — along with their political network’s $400 million spending — make them two of the most influential conservatives this election.

Not content with their unprecedented influence in politics, the Kochs have also taken to influencing the votes of their employees. According to In These Times, Koch Industries sent 45,000 mailers to employees at Koch subsidiary Georgia Pacific, urging votes for Romney and other conservative candidates. The letter warns ominously of “consequences” for the workers if Republicans lose.

The Koch mailer is one of several recent examples of executives warning that employees may lose their jobs if Republicans do not win in November. Here is an excerpt of the letter:

While we are typically told before each Presidential election that it is important and historic, I believe the upcoming election will determine what kind of America future generations will inherit.

If we elect candidates who want to spend hundreds of billions in borrowed money on costly new subsidies for a few favored cronies, put unprecedented regulatory burdens on businesses, prevent or delay important new construction projects, and excessively hinder free trade, then many of our more than 50,000 U.S. employees and contractors may suffer the consequences, including higher gasoline prices, runaway inflation, and other ills.

In These Times also reports that employees are restricted in their political free speech on social media outlets.

Continue reading here…

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January 12, 2012 · 11:34 AM

Five U.S. Senators Are Perfect Koch Servants, Americans For Prosperity Reports

The fact that corporations like Koch Industries have purchased legislation to favor their interests is no surprise to anyone.

Naming the top five United States senators that do Koch’s bidding is indeed a big deal.  Those guys need to be voted out of office or maybe even impeached.

In my opinion, selling democracy should be a felonious offense.

Think Progress

Five senators and 39 representatives received a perfect 100 percent score from the Koch brothers’ Astroturf group Americans For Prosperity for the first half of the 112th Congress. AFP judged Congress on their votes to protect the Koch brothers’ right-wing petrochemical empire on such issues as the repeal of President Obama’s new health care law, preempting EPA’s authority to regulate greenhouse gases, Chairman Paul Ryan’s budget to end Medicare, ending ethanol subsidies, several Congressional Review Act resolutions of disapproval to overturn new regulations and the fiscal year 2012 appropriations bills.

The Koch Five are Sens. Tom Coburn (R-OK), Mike Crapo (R-ID), Orrin Hatch (R-UT), Marco Rubio (R-FL), and Ron Johnson (R-WI), who have received a combined $187,400 in campaign contributions from the Koch empire:

THE KOCH FIVE
Senator Koch Contributions
Coburn (R-OK) $56300
Crapo (R-ID) $42000
Hatch (R-UT) $26500
Rubio (R-FL) $34700
Johnson (R-WI) $27900

 

The Kochs were the top contributors to Ron Johnson’s successful campaign to unseat Russ Feingold in 2010. Like first-termers Rubio and Johnson, Coburn has a perfect lifetime Koch score.

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November 5, 2011 · 11:22 AM

Giuliani mocks those hit by recession during his Koch Bros summit speech

Rudy Giuliani is such a jerk…

Democratic Underground

Rudy cozying up to the Koch Bros. cocktail crowd at the Americans for Prosperity summit and offering his blame-the-poor version of advice,’ by telling a generation of underpaid workers saddled with student loan debt that they need to work on their education more and find an eight-hour a day job.

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October 3, 2011 · 8:00 AM

Shady: Koch Brothers Made Sales to Iran

The Daily Beast

A mammoth investigative report in Bloomberg Markets Magazinehas some devastating charges against one of the world’s largest private companies: The billionaire Koch Brothers allegedly made a ton of money off sales of petrochemical equipment to Iran.

A unit of their company, Koch Industries, dodged the U.S. trade ban using foreign subsidiaries. The company allegedly engaged in illicit payments in Africa, India, and the Middle East, and, from 1999 to 2003, had to pay more than $400 million in fines. The report quotes an employee saying that managers taught them how to steal and cheat. The technique was called the “Koch Method.”

Read it at Bloomberg News 

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September 6, 2011 · 8:41 PM

During Secret Retreat With Billionaires, Koch Lobbyist Admits Tea Party Group ‘Designed’ To Elect Republicans In 2010

Rachel Maddow dissected the Koch brothers’ relationship to the Tea Party over a year ago…so this is nothing new.  It’s simply inadvertently out in the open.

Think Progress

This morning, blogger Brad Friedman, writing in Mother Jones and BradBlog, revealed a set of audio tapes from the last major donor meeting convened by the billionaire Koch brothers. There are a number of startling revelations from the scoop — but the opening remarks from Kevin Gentry, a Koch Industries executive at the firm’s DC lobbying office, blow the cover off the many Tea Party efforts underwritten by the billionaires in the Koch network of donors.

Gentry, who doubles as the official responsible for doling out Koch charitable grants, admits privately what ThinkProgress and others have noted for years: Americans for Prosperity, the front group founded by David Koch, orchestrates Tea Party events simply to elect more Republicans. Gentry said he met with Fred Young, a Wisconsin owner of engine manufacturing plants, at an Americans for Prosperity (AFP) event “designed to help in the Congressional races” during one of their “get out the vote tours”:

KEVIN GENTRY: I’m going to turn it over to a dear friend, Fred Young, for the purposes of an introduction. Fred is a long-time fighter, freedom fighter, in this movement, from Racine, Wisconsin. Former owner of Young Radiator. As part of our efforts last year, in 2010, I was on the road for [TN?] in Wisconsin, here at one of Americans for Prosperity’s last minute kind of get out the vote tours. And I went to an event in Racine, Wisconsin, and met up with Fred. It was sort of a Tea Party AFP event designed to help in the Congressional races. And Fred was kind enough to lend me a sweatshirt because I wasn’t actually prepared for Racine, Wisconsin in November. So Fred, let’s take it away, please.

Too many in the media ignored the Koch network’s transparently partisan agenda last year. A few outlets, like the Washington Post, took the group to task for spending $45 million in attack ads against Democrats using an unaccountable, secret money wing of Americans for Prosperity. However, most failed to report on the millions more spent on four different bus tours designed to promote Republicans. These rallies, which required great resources in terms of staff and logistics, were never reported to the Federal Elections Committee as campaign spending, thus evading the few watchdog groups and reporters interested in serious election coverage.

As ThinkProgress revealed last year, in documents outlining the June, 2010 donor meeting, billionaires like Paul Singer, Ken Griffin, Rich DeVos, and John Childs are regular attendees of these events, which solicit multi-million donations for an elaborate array of right-wing front groups, from Tea Party organizers like Americans for Prosperity to stealth advertising campaigns like “Public Notice.” Unfortunately, many still report on Tea Party groups like Americans for Prosperity as bonafide grassroots organizations.

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July 27, 2011 · 11:54 AM

Big business groups finding they can’t put the Tea Party genie back in the bottle…

Buyer’s remorse?

Greg Sargent – The Plum Line

My pick for read of the morning is this New York Times piece detailing one of the more amusing dynamics of the debt ceiling fight: Leading business groups who helped elect scores of Tea Party Republicans to Congress are suddenly finding that when it comes to the debt ceiling, they can’t control the monster they’ve unleashed.

Groups like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce spent millions to elect Tea Partyers in hopes of harnessing their anti-government ideology for the purposes of cutting their taxes, gutting regulations and rolling back Obama’s reforms. But now that these groups are pushing for a debt ceiling hike, they’re suddenly finding that these freshman Republicans are far more in the grip of their crazed anti-spending fanaticism than anyone bargained for. No matter how hard the groups try, the automaton-like shock troops they helped send to Congress can’t be reasoned with when it comes to staving off the impending debt limit default and implosion of our economy.

There’s no putting this ideological genie back in the bottle, and the consequences may be dire for all of us.

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April 24, 2011 · 2:03 AM

Plutocracy/ Koch Brothers’ Conservative Propaganda Machine – Front Groups

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April 21, 2011 · 7:12 AM

Big Brothers: Thought Control at Koch

Is this legal?  Did Citizens United actually pave the way for this to be legal? 

What has happened to American Democracy ?

 Finally, just how corrupt are our Supreme Court Justices?

The Nation

On the eve of the November midterm elections, Koch Industries sent an urgent letter to most of its 50,000 employees advising them on whom to vote for and warning them about the dire consequences to their families, their jobs and their country should they choose to vote otherwise.

The Nation obtained the Koch Industries election packet for Washington State—which included a cover letter from its president and COO, David Robertson; a list of Koch-endorsed state and federal candidates; and an issue of the company newsletter, Discovery, full of alarmist right-wing propaganda.

Legal experts interviewed for this story called the blatant corporate politicking highly unusual, although no longer skirting the edge of legality, thanks to last year’s Citizens United Supreme Court decision, which granted free speech rights to corporations.

“Before Citizens United, federal election law allowed a company like Koch Industries to talk to officers and shareholders about whom to vote for, but not to talk with employees about whom to vote for,” explains Paul M. Secunda, associate professor of law at Marquette University. But according to Secunda, who recently wrote in The Yale Law Journal Online about the effects of Citizens United on political coercion in the workplace, the decision knocked down those regulations. “Now, companies like Koch Industries are free to send out newsletters persuading their employees how to vote. They can even intimidate their employees into voting for their candidates.” Secunda adds, “It’s a very troubling situation.”

The Kochs were major supporters of the Citizens United case; they were also chief sponsors of the Tea Party and major backers of the anti-“Obamacare” campaign. Through their network of libertarian think tanks and policy institutes, they have been major drivers of unionbusting campaigns in Wisconsin, Michigan and elsewhere.

“This sort of election propaganda seems like a new development,” says UCLA law professor Katherine Stone, who specializes in labor law and who reviewed the Koch Industries election packet for The Nation. “Until Citizens United, this sort of political propaganda was probably not permitted. But after the Citizens United decision, I can imagine it’ll be a lot more common, with restrictions on corporations now lifted.”

Continue reading…

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April 6, 2011 · 3:48 PM

Behind the Story: Koch Industries Lobbying (Video)

Huffington Post

[...]

Charles and David Koch, the owners of the country’s second-largest private corporation, are libertarians of long standing, who contend that government regulations, taxes and subsidies stifle individual initiative and hamper American competitiveness. In recent years, the Kochs have played an increasingly public role as financial angels for conservative causes, politicians and foundations.

What’s not so well-known is the activity of Koch Industries in the trenches in Washington, where a Center for Public Integrity examination of lobbying disclosure files and federal regulatory records reveals a lobbying steamroller for the company’s interests, at times in conflict with its public pose.

The money that Koch (pronounced “coke”) has spent on lobbying in Washington has soared in recent years, from $857,000 in 2004 to $20 million in 2008. The Kochs then spent another $20.5 million over the next two years to influence federal policy, as the company’s lobbyists and officials sought to mold, gut or kill more than 100 prospective bills or regulations.       Continue reading here…

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