Oil company owned by Tea Party's billionaire brothers gives $1 million to fight California's climate

[harvey007]

Source: Sacramento Bee

An oil company headed by conservative billionaires David and Charles Koch has contributed $1 million to the campaign to suspend the state's landmark climate change law.

Read more: http://www.mercurynews.com/science/ci_15993066

[fascisthunter]

1. and Once again Wealth Influences Our Well-Being

I see this as poison... preventing something from happening when we really need it to happen. It's sick what people will do for money... how do some sleep at night.

[Gman]

13. Would you believe they sleep very well?

Not having anything in common with us, they really don't care.

[sasquuatch55]

25. Kochsuckers!

nt

[me b zola]

26. "Kochsuckers"

...that would be what you (I) call blue-dogs who enable the Kocks.

[SoapBox]

2. The KKKoch Brothers make me sick...

I saw this in the LA Times this morning.

How do we, the normal people, compete against billionaire slime like these creeps?

[izquierdista]

12. Fraud and deception

But you can't just get the Koch brothers' e-mail address and send them a Nigerian 419 letter. You have to do like Dick Armey, set up some patriotic group like "Moms for Baseball Freedom" or the "Apple Pie Liberty League" and get them to contribute $100 million or so. Once the bank wire clears, reroute it to Lichtenstein, hop on a plane to Dubai and rent out the condo next to Erik Prince and play the movie "Reds" on a continuous loop with a 200-watt sound system.

[Duer 157099]

3. K&R;

from the LA Times:

Koch brothers give $1M to back Proposition 23

SACRAMENTO — Oil billionaires David and Charles Koch have jumped on board an effort to suspend California's global warming law by making a million-dollar contribution this week.

A subsidiary of Wichita, Kan.-based Koch Industries, the nation's second-largest private company with oil refineries and pipelines, made a $1 million contribution Thursday to the campaign for Proposition 23. They join two Texas-based companies, Valero Energy Corp. and Tesoro Corp.

According to the Los Angeles Times, a spokeswoman for Flint Hills Resources said the company "may consider additional support."

California's global warming law, known as AB32, seeks to reduce greenhouse gas emissions statewide to 1990 levels over the next decade.

Proposition 23 seeks to suspend California's 2006 law until the state's unemployment rate falls below 5.5 percent for four consecutive quarters. That level has happened three times in the last three decades, according to state statistics.

(more at link)

http://www.pressdemocrat.com/article/20100904/NEWS/100909767/1350?Title=Oil-billionaires-give-1M-to-overturn-state-s-global-warming-law

*************

Certainly makes it easy to vote on this Prop without having to read one word of it!

[Drale]

4. You know

Theses are going to be the first people bitching when the prime ocean front million dollar mansions are 20 feet under water.

[Uncle Joe]

5. Kicked and recommended.

Thanks for the thread, harvey.

[ShamelessHussy]

6. Billionaires for Dirty Air

[GreenTea]

7. You Damn Liberals Hippies Progressives & Bums!!

Cleaning up the world is progressive & liberal to these super billionaire republicans - And after all it's the liberal love the world "hippies" who do stuff like that - And those hippies want to stop the free market and keep them & their corporations from making more and adding more billions to their oil wealth....

No, OIL is good and profits are even better - nothing is gonna happen to them before they die except more corporate power and more corporate wealth....

Climate change & pollution is just liberal hippie rhetoric and it might curb some of our corporations profits, they will say....the new "hippie" alternative clean renewable energy sources industries will get a foot hold and there goes some of our oil profits - Nope, we can't have that - We want it all!”

The saddest part is that as an American citizen we are limited on what we can donate, but any multi-national corporation can donate what ever they want.

The republican dominated US Supreme Court just allowed UNLIMITED contributions & donations from corporations to candidates and issues - (including foreign corporations) into our electoral process - How can a single American compete with that kind of money when corporations can buy & spend as much as they please, to benefit only their own greedy corporations?

Why does a corporation (not the owner of the corporations - BUT the corporation itself) have the same rights and privileges as an individual, considered the same as a living breathing American citizen? Again this was also passed by the US Supreme Court?

What happens when corporations are more powerful than government and corporations & government are one in the same and the corporations make and influence our laws as corporations are doing now?

This didn't happen overnight - It really accelerated over the past 30 years with Reagan and the republicans, they have since been screaming the deregulation mantra for the corporations over & over the past 30 plus years!!

We see the incredible mess & unfairness that corporate deregulation has given us....too big to fail corporations, collusion, monopolies, bailouts, government subsidies (corporate welfare from OUR tax dollars) corporate bankruptcies wiping people's lifetime retirements, savings & pensions, out sourcing our jobs, union busting, worker safety & pollution considerations ignored, tax cuts for the corporations, low paying jobs with little or no benefits, millions of unemployed and the corporations making hundreds of billions of dollars and 2% of the elitist doing better than ever.

It will only get worse as the corporations through deregulation (no oversight, republicans say leave the collusive corporations alone and let them police themselves) will only get bigger, richer and more powerful.

The people can no longer compete with them and we know corporations care ONLY for profits here and abroad certainly not the American worker - Corporations have no patriotism or loyalty just profits and the cheapest labor they can find in the world (as well as undocumented workers here).

[Ignis]

8. You've nailed the core problem: This isn't "free speech."

This is "might money makes right."

[shanti]

9. one million?

chump change for them! of course they would fight it tho, oil men that they are :( they make me puke!

[GreenTea]

10. They also give millons to republicans, neocon orgaizations, "think" tanks and any

democratic hating organizations and they will continue to finance more with tens of millions of dollar of unlimited contributions & donations to fight any progressive candidate and/or issues.

[shanti]

22. yup

i just read a very long, enlightening article about the kochs. wasn't one of them jackie o's boyfriend?

[Beartracks]

11. Be sure to always tie Tea Party to the Kochs.

If they are indeed the power and the money behind this enormous faux-grassroots boondoggle, then they may as well own it. Calling it "the Koch brothers' Tea Party" or the "The Tea Party, founded by Koch Industries" or whatever seems most effective and accurate.

People, if they don't know why you are referring to the Tea Party that way, will probably ask you about it, and then you can inform them.

---------------------------------

[droidamus2]

14. Keep Texans in Texas

Not that I approve, but if Texans want to pollute why don't they keep their asses in Texas. Amazing that they aren't happy with just polluting their own state they want to assure that other states are just as polluted. I know this may be sacrilegious to some but some things are more important than money. Having a cleaner planet and addressing the global warming problem are among them as far as I'm concerned. I am a non-violent person but sometimes I just want to slap these know nothing conservatives upside the head and try to knock some sense into them (I know it wouldn't help but I might feel better).

[mbperrin]

17. Koch Industries is headquartered in Wichita, Kansas, and at least one

of the brothers resides in New York.

Don't hang this on Texas, please.

[defendandprotect]

15. Because $$ is "free speech" .... overrunning and destroying our democracy ..!!

Not to mention the suicidial aspect of capitalism's exploitation and destruction

of nature -- and the resulting Global Warming --

It's quite a suicidal bunch -- and they're taking us all with them --

[Downwinder]

16. How much are CA drivers paying per gallon to promote Prop.23?

The millions to promote it is being collected in profits from the pump.

[BREMPRO]

18. i wonder if these Koch suckers are the ones that also killed the electric car

back in the 90's? - The GM EV1 as chronicled in the movie "who killed the electric car" I wouldn't be surprised if they were directly or indirectly responsible for bribing and strong arming of politicians to repeal the law that mandated more alternative energy vehicles. These guys are true evil.

[TomCADem]

19. Proposition 23 - Backed By The Tea Party, Oil Giants and Carly Fiorina (R)

Democracy for sale in California. If millions can pass Proposition 23, what can tens of millions do?

[IndianaGreen]

20. The Rightwing Koch Brothers Fund the DLC

From an old post at democrats.com:

The Rightwing Koch Brothers Fund the DLC

Submitted by Ted Kahl on February 9, 2006 - 10:44pm

Do deep-pocketed "philanthropists" necessarily control the organizations they fund? That has certainly been the contention of those who truck in conspiracy theories about the Rockefeller and Ford Foundations funding liberal and neo-liberal organizations. As for the rightwing, journalists such as Joe Conason and Gene Lyons uncovered that the "vast right wing conspiracy" -- or the New Right network of think tanks, media outlets and pressure groups -- was marshalled under rightwing billionaire Richard Mellon Scaife for his Get-Clinton campaign. Prior to the work of Conason and Lyons, Russ Bellant extensively documented in "The Coors Connection" how the Coors Family, Scaife and other wealthy rightwingers have funded the New Right movement since the early '70's. Among these rightwing benefactors are the Koch brothers. But the Kochs have been working both sides of the fence. As Bill Berkowitz writes, the Koch brothers have also been funding the Democratic Leadership Council.

According to SourceWatch, a project of the Center for Media & Democracy, the brothers are "leading contributors to the Koch family foundations, which supports a network of Conservative organizations and think tanks, including Citizens for a Sound Economy, the Manhattan Institute the Heartland Institute, and the Democratic Leadership Council."

Charles Koch co-founded the Cato Institute in 1977, while David helped launch Citizens for a Sound Economy in 1986.

This is no less stunning than if Scaife or the Coors family were funding the DLC. So do the Kochs just throw money at the DLC -- as long as the Council supports a free-market" (i.e. unrestricted/unregulated corporate power) agenda that the Kochs generally agree with. Or is it more than just that -- does this really buttress what Greens and other disaffected liberals contend -- that the DNC has just become a party of "Republicrats", thanks especially to the DLC? They would say that corporate backers like the rightwing/libertarian Kochs have co-opted the Democratic establishment -- a hostile takeover of (what was once) the opposition.

http://www.democrats.com/node/7789

Date: Mon, 11 Jun 2001 14:29:03 -0500
From: [e-mail] (New Democrats Online)
Subject: Important DLC Strategy Session
< http://www.ndol.org & http://www.ppionline.org >

Special Event Invitation:
Please join DLC Chairman Evan Bayh in Indianapolis next month
for an important gathering of New Democrat elected officials and
community leaders:
The DLC's 5th Annual National Conversation
July 15-17, 2001
Westin Indianapolis Hotel
Indianapolis, Indiana


The interesting thing about this event is that it is actually
touting the fact that it is funded by Koch Industries of Kansas.
This company is one of the anchors of the CONSERVATIVE movement,
and is a major contributor to the Bush campaign. To be fair, Koch
is only one of more than a dozen sponsors. Here is the list
of event sponsors, straight from the DLC web site at
http://www.ndol.org/ndol_ci.cfm?contentid=3397&subid=166&kaid=126 :

Anthem Blue Cross & Blue Shield
Baker & Daniels / Sagamore Associates
Barnes & Thornburg
Steven & Phoebe Crane
Dominion
Eli Lilly & Company
Emmis Communications
Indianapolis Colts
International Association of Fire Fighters
Koch Industries Inc.
PSComm, LLC
Sallie Mae
Sheet Metal Workers International Association (SMWIA)
United Water

http://lists.democracygroups.org/pipermail/rightwatch/2001q2/000103.html

[diane in sf]

24. Very good--you ought to run this as its own topic

[alp227]

21. Kick the Kochs & Recommend. I read this in an opinion column earlier.

posted at the California forum.

[aquart]

23. Vast inherited wealth is insufficiently taxed.

Do death duties like the British did and there will be no more Paris Hiltons, no more Koch brothers.

No man should be so rich he has nothing left to buy but his government.

[Iwillnevergiveup]

27. We can only hope

David Koch is 70 years old and has 3 little kids - ages 4 to 10. So they're not exactly waiting in the wings to take over from Papa and continue his evil ways.

In 2006, when his wife was expecting their 3rd child, the ENTIRE 15TH FLOOR of Jackie O's former apartment which he bought just wasn't big enough.



http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/16/realestate/16deal1.html

[mod mom]

28. and they funded the DLC to assure the corporate Dems are on their side.

These are really radical kooks undermining this country.

[Downwinder]

29. Senate's Inquiry on Cheating Of Indians Cites Oil Concern

http://www.nytimes.com/1989/05/10/us/senate-s-inquiry-on-cheating-of-indians-cites-oil-concern.html