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Koch Brothers Kill Nashville Transit Project Just Because They Can
Apr 1, 2014
If you are not aware of Koch Industries and The Koch brothers attempt to control our government, you need to inform yourself. Their tactics and antics are corrupt, unethical and undermining our American democracy. Start with listening to this video. The Randolph Review has considerable additional information on the Koch brothers. Just go to The Randolph Review .com In this article, The Koch Brothers funds a campaign to kill a mass transit project in Nashville Tennessee. Why kill a project that does not impact your business or personal life? Some believe it’s because they want everyone to know how powerful they are.
The Koch brothers, showing how powerful they are.
TUESDAY, APR 1, 2014 02:28 PM EDT
Koch brothers vs. a bus: Why two billionaires hate a transit project in Nashville
A bus rapid transit project is imperiled because a couple of rich guys love meddling
Naturally, this usually makes drivers annoyed, because drivers hate losing one single lane of traffic to drive on anywhere at any time. Property owners often worry, too, that mass transit projects will make it easier for undesirable elements (poor people and black and Latino city residents) to travel to rich neighborhoods.* That is why the project has become “oddly ugly,” in the words of Atlantic Cities. The ugliness is actually understandable for anyone who follows urban transit politics. What doesn’t quite make sense is why Americans for Prosperity, one of the Koch brothers’ largest political organizations, is now lobbying against the project. [*There are also more sympathetic criticisms of the project from residents of working-class neighborhoods, who believe that the city is prioritizing transit for tourists over essential transit upgrades for low-income residents. But it’s always easier to find funding for projects connecting already thriving commercial districts than for projects connecting poor people to that commercial activity.] The Tennessean reports that the Tennessee office of Americans for Prosperity was involved in the drafting of a state Senate bill that would “make it illegal for buses to pick up or drop off passengers in the center lane of a state road,” effectively banning Nashville from creating Amp along the route that it has been planned to operate on since it was first proposed years ago.
StopAmp.org Inc., the leading opposition group, thanked AFP in a news release Thursday, and Andrew Ogles, AFP’s state director, said that the group didn’t back the effort financially but that the bill grew out of a conversation he had had with Sen. Jim Tracy, the sponsor.
In other words, AFP suggested the bill and a friendly legislator sponsored it. According to Ogles, Americans for Prosperity-Tennessee was founded nine months ago, with a “sizable” undisclosed budget and three employees (two of whom are registered lobbyists). Why Tennessee, a state that the Kochs have no personal interest in? Well, it’s just a good environment for their agenda:
“With supermajorities in both houses,” [Ogles] said, “Tennessee is a great state to pass model legislation that can be leveraged in other states.”
So, this is not “the Kochs” doing this, in the cartoonish sense of David or Charles calling up a henchman and saying “kill that new bus line in Nashville,” and then cackling and dipping an orphan in fracking runoff and using it to light a cigar. But this is the story of how billionaires dedicated to advancing an agenda at every level of government can do so with practically no one noticing until they’ve already won. Because a couple of energy moguls are constitutionally opposed to mass transit spending based on a very self-serving definition of “liberty,” Nashville, a city neither of them spends any significant amount of time in, may not get a new bus line. “All politics is local” means something a bit different in this age of unregulated free-for-all political spending.
Alex Pareene writes about politics for Salon and is the author of “The Rude Guide to Mitt.” Email him at apareene@salon.com and follow him on Twitter @pareene
Thanks To Salon.com
Koch Brothers – Koch Industries Links
Mar 29, 2014
The Right Wing Organization, Koch Industries, Is Putting Millions Behind The Assault on Social Security And The Destruction Of The American Middle Class A new video by Robert Greenwald’s Brave New Films, “The Koch Echo Chamber,” puts the GOP position that changes to Social Security ought to be a part of a deficit reduction plan in the context of the Koch brothers’ longtime support for conservative and libertarian organizations who argue for such cuts. Over the years, the Mercatus Center, the Cato Institute, the Heritage Foundation and Reason Foundation have collectively been given $28 million by the GOP benefactors, the film notes, tying that giving to a subsequent shift in the public conversation as it relates to Social Security. – See more at: couchmouse.net
1-25-2014
The Koch Party
Only a few weeks into this midterm election year, the right-wing political zeppelin is fully inflated with secret cash and is firing malicious falsehoods at supporters of health care reform.
As Carl Hulse of The Times reported recently, Democrats have been staggered by a $20 million advertising blitz produced by Americans for Prosperity, the conservative advocacy group organized and financed by the Koch brothers, billionaire industrialists. The ads take aim at House and Senate candidates for re-election who have supported the health law, and blame them for the hyped-up problems with the law’s rollout that now seem to be the sole plank in this year’s Republican platform. More
4-3-2014
On MSNBC, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) laid out in chilling fashion how much money the Koch brothers are now free to spend to buy the White House. Link
Americans for Prosperity-
Mar 25, 2014
Below, written by fact check.org regarding the group, Americans for Prosperity which is a great description of this political organization funded by the Koch brothers. The Koch brothers have expended hundreds of millions of dollars over the past several years attempting to create a Congress controlled by the publican party. They have further funded millions of dollars in state races were many of their business interest reside. And philosophy is not the main logic to remove the Democrats from power. The motive, is money. They want significant reductions in regulatory requirements that they indicate cost their company hundreds of millions of dollars. The Koch brothers own such companies as Georgia -Pacific, Flint Hills Resources, Koch Pipelines, Koch Fertilizer, Koch Minerals and The Matador Cattle Company.
From Fact Check.Org February 7, 2014 Political leanings: Conservative/libertarian Spending target: Unknown
Founded by billionaire businessman and conservative/libertarian political activist David Koch, Americans for Prosperity has emerged as one of the most influential conservative issue advocacy groups on the national and state political scene. A major force behind the tea party movement, AFP seeks to support free markets and entrepreneurship by advocating lower taxes and limited government spending and regulation.
The group’s president is Tim Phillips, a Republican campaign strategist and early tea party organizer.
Directors of theorganization include James Miller, an economist, former chairman of the Federal Trade Commission and a budget director under President Ronald Reagan, and Frayda Levin, a former Reagan administration official who also sits on the boards of Club for Growth and the Foundation for Economic Education.
Americans for Prosperity is registered under the IRS code as a 501(c)(4). As such, it is not required, nor does it, disclose its donors. It is allowed to advocate for political issues, but cannot solicit votes for a specific candidate. Its sister organization, Americans for Prosperity Foundation, is a 501(c)(3), a designation that allows donations to be tax-deductible but has restrictions on political activity. David and Charles Koch, co-owners of Koch Industries, have been major contributors to AFP. However, it is unclear how much money the brothers funnel directly into AFP and their larger network of libertarian advocacy groups. The Kochs have defended the anonymity of their political activities as “fundamental liberties protected by the First Amendment.” And the groups say that more than 90,000 donors from all 50 states contribute to AFP and its sister organization, AFP Foundation. AFP has been one of the primary outside spending groups attacking the Affordable Care Act – self-naming itself the “nation’s largest grassroots champion for health care freedom.” According to the New York Times, the group has spent at least $20 million since September 2013 on television ads targeting Democrats running for reelection for their support of the health care law. Sen. Kay Hagan, a Democrat from North Carolina, has faced an onslaught of attack ads criticizing her stance on the ACA. According to the Times, AFP issue ads against Kagan aired 3,535 times from June 1, 2013, to Jan. 12, 2014, and the group has spent about $5 million against her. On Feb. 4, AFP announced that it would be spending $1.4 million on new television ads attacking Hagan, and that figure doesn’t include additional digital ads, radio ads and grassroots actions. In the 2012 election cycle, AFP reportedly raised $140 million — with more than $44 million of that coming from a donor network organized by the Koch brothers. In total, the Koch-backed political donor network — identified by the Washington Post and Center for Responsive Politics — raised at least $407 million in the 2012 elections. Fact-checking Americans for Prosperity ads: ACA Hurts ‘Struggling Families’? Jan. 16, 2014 In Florida Ad: Recycled Quote Still Wrong, Feb. 11, 2014 AFP Distorts Begich’s Carbon Tax Stance, Feb. 28, 2014
Political Activity:
• Koch Industries has spent more than $50 million to lobby in Washington since 2006, according to the Center for Responsive Politics
• According to the Center for Responsive Politics, many of Koch Industries’ contributions have gone toward achieving legislation on energy issues, defense appropriations and financial regulatory reform.
• Koch employees were the largest donors from the oil and gas industry to members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which is responsible for legislation affecting that industry.
• Charles Koch co-founded the Cato Institute in 1977
Their free enterprise seminars in Aspen Colorado have included supreme court justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas; Governors Bobby Jindal and Haley Barbour; commentators John Stossel, Charles Krauthammer, Glenn Beck, and Rush Limbaugh; Senators Jim DeMint and Tom Coburn; and Representatives Paul Ryan, Mike Pence, and Tom Price.
• Known as “the nation’s most prominent funders of efforts to prevent curbs on fossil-fuel burning“.
• As of 2011, David Koch sits on the board of directors of the Cato institute, the Reason Foundation and the Aspen Institute
• Public records show that the Kochs gave more than $17 million between 1997 and 2008 to various groups including the Competitive Enterprise Institute, which lobbies for legislation opposing unions.
• According to Greenpeace, the company has “had a quiet but dominant role in a high-profile national policy debate on global warming,” and has out-spent ExxonMobil (another corporation active in
fighting climate change science and legislation) in giving money to organizations fighting legislation related to climate change. “From 2005 to 2008, ExxonMobil spent $8.9 million while the Koch Industries-controlled foundations contributed $24.9 million in funding.”
• According to a study by the progressive media watchdog Media Matters for America, Koch Industries (and other Koch brothers-owned companies) “have benefited from nearly a $100 million in government contracts since 2000.”
• According to Jane Mayer (New Yorker magazine) During the US 2000 election campaign, Koch Industries spent some $900,000 to support the candidacies of George W. Bush and other Republicans. And tax records in 2008 indicate the three main Koch family foundations gave money to thirty-four political and policy organizations, three of which they founded, and several of which they direct.
Reducing the cost of environmental regulations by a Republican-controlled Congress would more than Koch industries millions of dollars. It would further allow them to expand their most environmentally dangerous operations. Below, we list several of their environmental violations and note the source in each case.
Additional Koch Brothers Links
Thoughts to Ponder- II
Mar 16, 2014
Talking to a friend: swore she’d never lied: I asked—“Have you ever clicked on the accept terms and conditions button without reading them?” RJ Intindola- 2009
If you’re alone, I’ll be your shadow. If you want to cry, I’ll be your shoulder. If you want a hug, I’ll be your pillow. If you feel pain, I’ll be your aspirin. If you are unhappy, I’ll be your smile. If you are ill, I’ll be your prescription. But anytime you need a friend, I’ll just be me. RJ Intindola – 1972