Koch in the Media

This is a roundup of coverage of Koch in the Media that was started Monday, April 25, 2011.

Key Articles
Mark Ames and Mike Elk - The Nation 4/21/11 "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...."
 * Big Brothers: Thought Control at Koch

John Aloysius Farrell - Center for Public Integrity 4/18/11 At an EPA hearing last summer, representatives from Koch Industries argued that moderate levels of the toxic chemical dioxin should not be designated as a cancer risk for humans.
 * Koch’s Web of Influence

When members of Congress sought higher security at chemical plants to guard against terrorist attacks, Koch Industries lobbyists prowled Capitol Hill to voice their opposition.

And when Congress moved to strengthen regulation of the financial markets after recent collapses, Koch Industries—a major commodities and derivatives trader—deployed a phalanx of lobbyists to resist proposed changes....

Greenpeace 4/14/11 ... Our March 2010 report documented well over $48 million dollars that David Koch and his brother Charles have quietly funneled to front groups that actively deny global warming science or work to delay policies and regulations aimed at solving the crisis. Over half of that money has been donated since 2005, as climate change policy rose in prominence.
 * Koch Industries: Still Fueling Climate Denial 2011 Update

This update of our 2010 report reveals that the Kochs’ funding of the climate denial machine continued apace in 2009, the latest year for which Koch Foundation tax forms are available. In 2009, they contributed over $6.4 million dollars to some 40 organizations that continue to deny the scientific consensus on global warming while attempting to slow or block policies to solve the climate crisis. The Koch foundations continue to fund their favorite organizations like the Cato Institute and the Heritage Foundation....

Lee Fang - Center for American Progress 4/13/11 Shortly after helping to elect Gov. Scott Walker (R-WI), Koch Industries opened a new lobbying office in Madison near the state capitol. However, little has been disclosed about the Koch lobbying agenda in Madison. The New York Times reported that Koch political operatives privately pressured Walker to crush public employee unions. But Walker’s major payback to Koch relates to environmental deregulation.
 * Walker And Prosser Crushed Regulations On Koch Industry’s Phosphorus Pollution In Wisconsin

ThinkProgress has learned that the Walker administration, along with state Supreme Court judge David Prosser, has quietly worked to allow Koch’s many Georgia-Pacific paper plants to pollute Wisconsin by pouring thousands of pounds of phosphorus into the water....

Lee Fang - Center for American Progress 4/13/11 "... While much of the attention on oil speculators has rested on the backs of investors and commodity traders, the petrochemical conglomerate Koch Industries occupies a unique role in manipulating the oil market. Koch has little business in the extraction process. Instead, Koch focuses on shipping crude oil, refining it, distributing it to retailers — then speculating on the future price. With control of every part of the market, Koch is able to bet on future prices with superior information. As Yasha Levine notes, Koch along with Enron pioneered a number of complex financial products to leverage its privileged position in the energy industry...."
 * The Contango Game: How Koch Industries Manipulates The Oil Market For Profit

Tony Carrk - Center for American Progress 4/4/11 Any attempt to understand the modern conservative movement will eventually lead to billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch. Using their vast wealth and connections, the Koch brothers are key players in bankrolling right-wing political action groups, think tanks, and individual politicians, using this array of political power to advance their ideological agenda of limited government and less regulation. Chances are they are part of any recent right-wing attack you have seen lately.
 * What You Need to Know About the Financiers of the Radical Right

The Koch brothers, leaders of a vast family oil-and-gas conglomerate, use this political network to pursue their right-wing agenda at nearly every level of government. Whether they are contributing millions in campaign contributions, spending millions on lobbying, or investing millions in right-wing think tank and advocacy groups, the Koch brothers’ influence is pervasive....

Jane Mayer - The New Yorker 8/31/10 ... With his brother Charles, who is seventy-four, David Koch owns virtually all of Koch Industries, a conglomerate, headquartered in Wichita, Kansas, whose annual revenues are estimated to be a hundred billion dollars. The company has grown spectacularly since their father, Fred, died, in 1967, and the brothers took charge. The Kochs operate oil refineries in Alaska, Texas, and Minnesota, and control some four thousand miles of pipeline. Koch Industries owns Brawny paper towels, Dixie cups, Georgia-Pacific lumber, Stainmaster carpet, and Lycra, among other products. Forbes ranks it as the second-largest private company in the country, after Cargill, and its consistent profitability has made David and Charles Koch—who, years ago, bought out two other brothers—among the richest men in America. Their combined fortune of thirty-five billion dollars is exceeded only by those of Bill Gates and Warren Buffett.
 * Covert Operations: The billionaire brothers who are waging a war against Obama

The Kochs are longtime libertarians who believe in drastically lower personal and corporate taxes, minimal social services for the needy, and much less oversight of industry—especially environmental regulation. These views dovetail with the brothers’ corporate interests. In a study released this spring, the University of Massachusetts at Amherst’s Political Economy Research Institute named Koch Industries one of the top ten air polluters in the United States. And Greenpeace issued a report identifying the company as a “kingpin of climate science denial.” The report showed that, from 2005 to 2008, the Kochs vastly outdid ExxonMobil in giving money to organizations fighting legislation related to climate change, underwriting a huge network of foundations, think tanks, and political front groups. Indeed, the brothers have funded opposition campaigns against so many Obama Administration policies—from health-care reform to the economic-stimulus program—that, in political circles, their ideological network is known as the Kochtopus....

2011
Kris Hundley - St. Petersburg Times 5/10/11 A conservative billionaire who opposes government meddling in business has bought a rare commodity: the right to interfere in faculty hiring at a publicly funded university.
 * Billionaire's role in hiring decisions at Florida State University raises questions

A foundation bankrolled by Libertarian businessman Charles G. Koch has pledged $1.5 million for positions in Florida State University's economics department. In return, his representatives get to screen and sign off on any hires for a new program promoting "political economy and free enterprise."...

Public Citizen Press Release 5/9/11 A federal judge’s ruling today in Utah dismissing Koch Industries’ lawsuit against a group of anonymous climate change activists known as Youth for Climate Truth is an important victory for free speech online.
 * Federal Judge Favors Free Speech, Rules That Political Spoof Against Koch Industries Did Not Break Law

The judge ruled that Youth for Climate Truth had a First Amendment right to issue its satirical press release and website – in which the group impersonated Koch and announced that the company had reversed its position on climate change – in an effort to call attention to Koch’s bankrolling efforts to deny climate change. The U.S. District Court for the District of Utah rejected all of Koch’s legal claims, which alleged trademark infringement, unfair competition, cybersquatting, computer hacking and breach of the company website’s terms of use. The judge also issued an order barring Koch from using any identifying information it already obtained by subpoena about the anonymous group....

Ray Bellamy and Kent S. Miller - Tallahassee Democrat 5/1/11 ... Two of the more visible corporations making substantial contributions to universities are the Koch brothers and BB&T. The brothers are owners of the second-largest privately held corporation in the U.S. and are much in the news because of efforts to influence public policy, elections, taxes, environmental issues, unions, regulations, etc. BB&T is a large financial services corporation that frequently teams up with Koch.
 * Universities deal with political economics

Both corporations have worked out agreements with colleges and universities across the country, many of them being controversial. James Mason University received over $23 million from Koch brothers foundations to hire seven libertarian professors, subjecting the college to the charge that the university had been "bought."...

Wenonah Hauter - Huffington Post 4/29/11 "Last week I was in Berlin at the Global Water Summit 2011, a meet up for corporations that want to profit from water as it becomes scarcer. Sponsored by all the bad actors in the water industry, from Veolia to General Electric, the conference URL was WaterMeetsMoney.com. Even the Koch Brothers' empire was represented (Koch Industries helped pollute water with its fossil fuel operations, so why not profit also from cleaning up the mess?)...."
 * The Next Big Thing In Industry: Water Profiteering

Tom Harvey - Salt Lake Tribune 4/28/11 "An attorney for an anonymous group of environmentalist pranksters argued Thursday that one of the leading opponents of climate change science, Koch Industries, overstepped its bounds in suing the pranksters over a false news release issued from a near-exact copy of the company’s website...."
 * Court asked to dismiss lawsuit over climate change prank

Dean Walker - Ground Report 4/25/11 "Charles and David Koch might very well the greatest threat to America since World War II.  Over the last fifty years, the bothers have been slowly developing, tweaking, and expanding a fascist political network designed to end American democracy as we know it. The many arms of the Koch brother’s ideological network have been descriptively labeled by some as the Kochtopus...."
 * Kochtopus: Right-wing Network of Money, Power, and Influence

Richard Anderson - BBC 4/25/11 ... Koch Industries is a giant US conglomerate which, like Cargill, has its hands in many pies.
 * The private companies that drive the global economy

Its various divisions cover commodities trading, oil exploration and refining, fertiliser manufacturing and distribution, chemicals and financial services.

It also owns Invista, which is the world's largest manufacturer of Nylon and the maker of Lycra....

Jon Bresler - Concord Monitor 4/25/11 As presidential campaigns swing into full gear in our first-in-the-nation primary state, one question all Granite Staters should be asking is, "What is your plan to create jobs here in New Hampshire?"
 * GOP forum hosted by noted outsourcer

Many presidential candidates will be participating in a forum Friday hosted by a group whose founder has literally won awards for outsourcing jobs to China. It is sadly ironic that the first major Republican presidential forum to be held in New Hampshire during the 2012 election cycle celebrates the downfall of the middle class....

Americans for Prosperity, the group hosting the forum, was founded by David Koch, one of the wealthiest men in America. He is the executive vice president and a board member of Koch Industries. In 2006 a key subsidiary of Koch Industries received the "Outsourcing Excellence Award" for its work outsourcing work to China. This is just one example in a long list of the company's shipment of American jobs overseas....

Carol Forsloff - Digital Journal 4/23/11 "The Cato Institute and Rasmussen polls are often cited by conservatives that support certain social and political ideas, so are these organizations non-biased and their results to be trusted? Some critics don’t think so...."
 * Cato Institute, Rasmussen poll results said politically biased

Rick Ungar - Forbes Policy Page 4/22/11 ... That speculation has now turned to Jason Childress, a lobbyist employed by the law firm of Foley & Lardner, the Wisconsin based firm with strong ties to Gov. Scott Walker and the Walker administration. It is also the law firm once run by Walker campaign chairman and Walker transition team leader, Mike Grebe.
 * More Questions Of Koch Brothers’ Fingers In Scott Walker’s Wisconsin Pie As ‘Jason’ Identity Revealed?

Grebe now serves as the CEO for the uber-conservative Bradley Foundation and has previously served as Chairman of the Greater Milwaukee Committee, both clients of the Foley law firm.

As previously reported here, it is the Foley firm, one of the nation’s largest law practices, that is drafting legislation on behalf of their client, the Greater Milwaukee Committee (GMC) – legislation that would create the financial stress test that would be imposed on Wisconsin municipalities....

Michelle Chen - In These Times 4/22/11 "Before the words 'Koch Brothers' became an epithet among labor activists everywhere, the oil industry barons were already persona non grata to Mother Earth. This Earth Day, let us celebrate the myriad ways Koch has touched the lives of flora and fauna alike...."
 * How the Koch Brothers Celebrate Earth Day

Andrew Ferguson - TIME 4/21/11 "From their wildcatting father, the Koch (pronounced Coke) brothers, David, 70, and Charles, 75, inherited an oil-refining company based in Wichita, Kans., and a ferocious belief in the beneficence of capitalism. It's a beneficence demonstrated, according to the Kochs, by the balance sheet of Koch Industries, a multitasking conglomerate that has grown 2,600-fold under their management and now employs more than 50,000 people in the U.S. Their personal fortunes have kept pace, into the low 11 figures...."
 * David and Charles Koch: Tycoons

Lynn Hicks - Des Moines Register 4/19/11 A case of mistaken identity has entangled a small family-owned Des Moines company in union protests and led to a death threat.
 * |head Fury aimed at titans hits wrong Koch firm

Angry callers are mistaking Koch Brothers, a Des Moines office supply firm, with the brothers who own Koch Industries, the global energy conglomerate. Billionaires Charles and David Koch have fought Wisconsin unions, financed the tea party and opposed climate change rules....

Justin Gillis - New York Times Green Blog 4/18/11 "Last year, Greenpeace, the environmental group, accused the brothers Charles and David Koch of a stealth campaign to attack climate science, setting off extensive media scrutiny of the Kochs and their company, Koch Industries. (A Koch subsidiary is a major oil refiner.) Now Greenpeace is out with an update...."
 * The Koch Brothers and Climate Science, Redux

Mike Ivey - Capital Times 4/14/11 Right or wrong, Koch Industries has served as the bogeyman for all the evil doings of the Walker administration.
 * Koch Industries gains from pollution law delays

Sometimes there's no smoking gun -- like the new state contract for copy paper with Koch-owned subsidiary Georgia-Pacific, which was awarded while Gov. Jim Doyle was still in office.

But this new report from the liberal ThinkProgress.org offers some insight into Gov. Scott Walker's call for delaying implementation of tougher water pollution laws in Wisconsin....

Paul Harris - Guardian 4/8/11 ... The Kochs defenders argue that none of this should be surprising. The Kochs are fiercely political libertarians and thus believe much of government is wrong and that companies should be freed from the shackles of regulation. They openly fund libertarian organisations and, surely, have every right to promote their political ideology in any (legal) way they can. Just as every other American does.
 * The Koch brothers: all the influence money can buy

That is true. Or at least it would be if the Kochs' activities were consistent with their proclaimed ideology. But the genius of the CPI's work is exposing that it is not. The Kochs (who, remember, oppose government intervention as anti-capitalist) should have nothing to do with the heavily subsidised ethanol industry. Yet, in fact, the Kochs are responsible for buying and marketing about one tenth of all ethanol produced in the US, effectively cashing in on government largesse. Likewise, the Kochs have vociferously opposed a cap-and-trade system for carbon emissions in the US. Yet, in Europe, the Kochs make millions from trading in emissions credits....

Matthew Continetti - Weekly Standard 4/4/11 David Koch’s secretary told him the news. This was in February, during the rowdy standoff between Wisconsin governor Scott Walker and demonstrators backing 14 Democratic legislators who’d fled to Illinois rather than vote on a bill weakening public employee unions. Koch’s secretary said that an editor for a left-wing website, the Buffalo Beast, had telephoned the governor posing as David Koch and recorded the conversation. And Walker had fallen for it! He’d had a 20-minute conversation with this bozo, not once questioning the caller’s identity. But then how could Walker have known? Sure, David Koch was a billionaire whose company had donated to his campaign. But Koch (pronounced “Coke”) had never talked to Walker in his life.
 * The Paranoid Style in Liberal Politics: The left’s obsession with the Koch brothers

Yet here were the media reporting that he and his brother Charles were behind Walker’s push against public employees. Anger washed over David like a red tide. He’d been victimized by some punk with a political agenda. “It’s really identity theft,” he told me a month later, during an interview at Koch Industries’ headquarters. “And I think it’s extremely dishonest to misrepresent yourself. I think there’s a question of integrity. And the person who would do that has got to be an incredibly dishonest person.” Up until Walker’s showdown with the Democratic state senators, Koch had never seen a photograph of the governor. He didn’t know him at all. But now the protesters occupying the Wisconsin state capitol were calling Walker a “Koch Whore.”...

Joel Brown - Boston Globe 3/28/11 WILMINGTON — When the Brazilian state of Sao Paulo needed to cleanse large volumes of waste water, it turned to Koch Membrane Systems Inc. in Wilmington — a company that is finding a growing market for its filtration technologies in places where development is running up against water supplies....
 * For a Mass. company, filtering the world's water is a growth business

The company, which has a factory complex off Route 38, is owned by billionaire brothers and MIT engineering graduates Charles and David Koch. It is a subsidiary of Koch Chemical Technology Group LLC, which in turn is a subsidiary of Koch Industries Inc. in Wichita, Kan....

Koch Membrane does not release financial information but its literature cites sales of $110 million in 2008, a fraction of the $110 billion in revenue for all Koch brothers holdings....

Kenneth P. Vogel - Politico 3/28/11 "When it comes to the suddenly infamous Koch brothers, there’s one thing the conservative Weekly Standard and liberal filmmaker Robert Greenwald can agree on: The Kochs, Charles and David, have been a boon to the American political left...."
 * The battle to define Charles and David Koch

Karen Kleiss - Calgary Herald 3/24/11 … Alberta's lobbyist registry shows that on March 15, Koch Industries signed up to lobby the province on energy and resource development policy issues, as well as taxation and economic development. The company is run by Charles and David Koch, two of the richest men in the world….
 * Tea Party backers register to lobby in Alberta

The company website says subsidiary Flint Hills Resources is among Canada's largest crude oil purchasers, shippers and exporters.

The company operates a crude oil terminal in Hardisty, 200 kilometres southeast of Edmonton. It also has offices in Calgary.

Flint Hills' Pine Bend Refinery in Minnesota was specifically designed to process Alberta bitumen. Some reports suggest that refinery processes 325,000 barrels of crude oil a day and that 260,000 of those barrels come from Alberta. Cohlmia did not respond to a request to confirm those numbers….

Canada NewsWire Group 3/10/11 … The Tea Party's biggest funders, the billionaire Koch brothers, have significant business links in Alberta. They are responsible for receiving and handling about 25 per cent of the oil sands crude sent to the U.S. and they own Calgary-based Flint Hills Resources Canada.
 * Alberta unions condemn Wisconsin decision to strip collective bargaining rights from workers

"Don't expect these guys to stay out of our politics. In fact, they may already be funding the Wildrose Alliance and Tory leadership candidates. We can't know for sure because both parties refuse to reveal their donors. Albertans should demand to know who is funding campaigns and candidates here," says McGowan….

Michael Cooper - New York Times 3/4/11 CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — More than a thousand miles from the labor tumult in Wisconsin — where his name shows up on the signs of protesters and a liberal blogger impersonating him got through to the governor on the phone and said “gotta crush that union!” — the real David H. Koch was greeted rather more warmly here Friday when he officially opened a new cancer research institute bearing his name.
 * Cancer Research Before Activism, Billionaire Conservative Donor Says

Mr. Koch, a billionaire who is perhaps best known for his family’s contributions to conservative causes, got a standing ovation from scientists, Nobel laureates and politicians of various political stripes as he opened the new David H. Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which he gave $100 million to help build. And in a brief, and rare, interview, Mr. Koch, 70, spoke of his hopes for the new center, his prostate cancer and the prank call heard around the world....

Brooke Williams - Watchdog Institute 2/28/11 ... Issa’s staff already has released findings sympathetic to industries bent on softening or eliminating certain government regulations. A preliminary report this month, for example, focused largely on Environmental Protection Agency standards and relied heavily on input from industry associations. Other standards the committee is targeting include new regulations on workplace safety and the financial services industry.
 * Industry insiders score jobs on Issa’s team

And some on Issa’s staff know this territory from the inside.

Several have ties to billionaire brothers David and Charles Koch, who have made much of their fortune in oil and chemical businesses and have established a reputation as staunch small-government conservatives. Their influence through campaign contributions, lobbying and nonprofit groups — such as Americans for Prosperity, an activist organization with connections to the Tea Party movement — has become more pronounced since the shift in power in the House last November....

Robert Costa - National Review 2/24/11 "... “With the Left trying to intimidate the Koch brothers to back off of their support for freedom and signaling to others that this is what happens if you oppose the administration and its allies, we have no choice but to continue to fight,” says Richard Fink, the executive vice president of Koch Industries. “We will not step back at all. We firmly believe that economic freedom has benefited the overwhelming majority of society, including workers, who earn higher wages when you have open and free markets. When government grows as it has with the Bush and Obama administrations, that is what destroys prosperity.”..."
 * Koch Executives Speak Out on Wisconsin

Jonathan D. Salant - Bloomberg 2/23/11  Koch Industries Inc. and its employees and subsidiaries spent $1.2 million in the last election helping to elect Republican governors who are trying to take away bargaining rights of state workers.
 * Koch Funneled $1.2 Million to Governors Battling Unions

Republicans Scott Walker of Wisconsin and John Kasich of Ohio, who won election last November with Koch support, are pushing to limit the ability of public-employee unions to negotiate for salaries and benefits.

“This is a very well-financed, well-coordinated assault on labor unions,” said Craig Holman, a lobbyist for the Washington-based advocacy group Public Citizen. “If they can break the backs of organized labor, they will have accomplished a great deal toward deregulating the American society.”...

Larry Bivins - Appleton Post-Crescent 2/23/11 For more than two decades, Charles and David Koch have been quietly building the foundation for a conservative movement that critics say is at the center of the dispute between Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and public employee unions....
 * Billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch bring conservative mission to Wisconsin

The billionaire owners of Kansas-based Koch Industries, a petroleum empire with seven sites in Wisconsin, are closely linked to Americans for Prosperity, a conservative grassroots group that organized Saturday's "Stand With Walker" rally in Wisconsin in response to union-led demonstrations....

Thomas Content - Milwaukee Journal Sentinel 2/23/11 When a prankster called pretending to be billionaire David Koch, Gov. Scott Walker took 20 minutes out of his packed schedule to provide an unguarded briefing on the political stand-off in Madison.
 * Walker devoted 20 minutes to Koch call. Why? Billionaires back conservative causes, issues

No wonder: Koch is one of the biggest financial backers of conservative causes in the country, including Walker's campaign for governor.

David Koch (pronounced "coke"), the man impersonated in the phone call to Walker, and his brother Charles control Koch Industries Inc., a privately held company with estimated revenue of $100 billion a year.

Last year, Koch Industries' political action committee contributed $43,000 to Walker, the largest donation the Republican candidate received from a corporate committee, and the group's largest gift in Wisconsin....

ICIS News 2/22/11 HOUSTON (ICIS news)--US nitrogen fertilizer maker Koch Industries said on Monday it was developing new deepwater terminals and expanding existing operations at ports around the world.
 * US Koch to build, expand port terminals around the world

Koch and its affiliates are developing and expanding port facilities in France, the UK, Australia, Mexico and the US.

With the new additions, Koch’s global dry bulk, liquid and ammonia storage capacities will exceed 2m tonnes.

Koch would not divulge total expenditures for the projects....

Noam Cohen - New York Times 2/13/11 ... In December, a fake news release was sent out by a group claiming to be Koch Industries, the oil processing company owned by Charles and David Koch, the Republican donors, arts benefactors and global warming skeptics.
 * A Conglomerate’s Tack to Quash a Parody Site

Under the headline “Koch Industries Announces New Environmental Commitments,” the fake release said that after “a recent internal and thorough company review,” the company would be “restructuring its support of climate change research and advocacy initiatives.”

Months later, the company, based in Wichita, Kan., is still pursuing the identities of the members of the group that claimed responsibility for the prank, Youth for Climate Truth. In a lawsuit, it is demanding damages including “costs associated with spending time and money to respond to inquiries about the fake release,” as well as “investigative and legal expenses” in pursuing the tricksters....

Kenneth P. Vogel & Ben Smith - Politico 2/11/11 In an expansion of their political footprint, the billionaire Koch brothers plan to contribute and steer a total of $88 million to conservative causes during the 2012 election cycle, according to sources, funding a new voter micro-targeting initiative, grass-roots organizing efforts and television advertising campaigns.
 * Kochs brothers' plan for 2012: raise $88 million

In fact, as the annual Conservative Political Action Conference meets this week in Washington and conservatives assess the state of their movement, the Koch network of nonprofit groups, once centered on sleepy free-enterprise think tanks, seems to be emerging as a more ideological counterweight to the independent Republican political machine conceived by Bush-era GOP operatives Karl Rove and Ed Gillespie before the 2010 midterm elections....

Tom Hamburger, Kathleen Hennessey & Neela Banerjee - Los Angeles Times 2/6/11 The billionaire brothers David and Charles Koch no longer sit outside Washington's political establishment, isolated by their uncompromising conservatism. Instead, they are now at the center of Republican power, a change most evident in the new makeup of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.
 * Koch brothers now at heart of GOP power: The billionaire brothers' influence is most visible in the makeup of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, where members have vowed to undo restrictions on greenhouse gases

Wichita-based Koch Industries and its employees formed the largest single oil and gas donor to members of the panel, ahead of giants like Exxon Mobil, contributing $279,500 to 22 of the committee's 31 Republicans, and $32,000 to five Democrats....

Kenneth P. Vogel - Politico 2/2/11 RANCHO MIRAGE, Calif. – Faced with an avalanche of bad publicity after years of funding conservative causes in relative anonymity, the billionaire industrialist Koch brothers, Charles and David, are fighting back.
 * The Kochs fight back

They’ve hired a team of PR pros with experience working for top Republicans including Sarah Palin and Arnold Schwarzenegger to quietly engage reporters to try to shape their Koch coverage, and commissioned sophisticated polling to monitor any collateral damage to the image of their company, Koch Industries....

Rich Connell & Tom Hamburger - Los Angeles Times 1/31/11 Hundreds of environmentalists, union members and liberal activists converged on Rancho Mirage on Sunday to rally against what they see as the influence of two of the nation's leading financial backers of conservative causes.
 * Billionaire brothers undermine democracy, demonstrators say

The protestors waved signs condemning "corporate greed," chanted slogans and surged toward a line of helmeted police officers at the entrance to a resort where billionaires Charles and David Koch were holding a retreat for prominent conservative elected officials, major political donors and strategists....

Michael Isikoff - MSNBC 1/31/11 RANCHO MIRAGE, CA — A phalanx of sheriff’s deputies with riot gear fended off protestors and blocked all access to one of southern California’s most luxurious resort hotels on Sunday as more than 200 conservative donors gathered inside to plot political strategy and raise an estimated $30 million for the 2012 election.
 * Conservative high-rollers gather to plot strategy

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor was among several members of Congress who flew in for the two-day event, a semi-annual meeting of political high-rollers sponsored by Charles and David Koch, the billionaire owners of Koch Industries, the giant, privately held oil firm based in Wichita, Kan. The Koch brothers, strong economic libertarians, have become two of the country’s biggest donors to conservative political groups and think tanks....

Roxana Hegeman - Associated Press 1/27/11 Lawyers representing the environmentalists behind a media hoax targeting Koch Industries Inc. have asked a federal judge to dismiss a lawsuit by the Wichita-based company seeking the pranksters' identities.
 * Advocacy group defends pranksters behind Koch hoax

The Washington-based Public Citizen Litigation Group said the lawsuit would have a chilling effect on anonymous Internet communications and basic First Amendment rights. In a request filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Utah, the group asked a judge to quash subpoenas obtained by Koch Industries and issue a protective order....

Kenneth P. Vogel & Simmi Aujila - Politico 1/27/11 This weekend, for the eighth straight year, the billionaire Koch brothers will convene a meeting of roughly 200 wealthy businessmen, Republican politicians and conservative activists for a semi-annual conference to raise millions of dollars for the institutions that form the intellectual foundation – and, increasingly, the leading political edge – of the conservative movement.
 * Koch conference under scrutiny

In the past, the meetings have drawn an A-list of participants – politicians like Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina, leading free-market thinkers including American Enterprise Institute president Arthur Brooks, talkers Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck and even Supreme Court justices - to mingle with the wealthy donors who comprise the bulk of the invitees. The meetings adjourned after soliciting pledges of support from the donors – sometimes totaling as much as $50 million – to non-profit groups favored by the Kochs.

For the most part, the meetings, which are closed to the public and reporters, have attracted little attention outside conservative circles. But very different circumstances surround the Koch conference set to begin Saturday at an exclusive resort outside Palm Springs, Calif....

Koch Industries Press Release 1/26/11 Wichita, Kan. – Koch companies employ or support the jobs of more than 203,000 people nationwide, according to a recent analysis conducted by an independent economic research firm.
 * Study Shows Koch Companies Support More Than 200,000 Jobs in U.S. (pdf)

Koch companies, which include Wichita, Kan.,-based Koch Industries, Inc., Flint Hills Resources and Invista, and Atlanta-based Georgia-Pacific, directly employ more than 50,000 people in 46 states and the District of Columbia. The companies also buy goods and services from local businesses, and their employees spend paychecks for food, shelter, entertainment and more. This combined spending generates more than 150,000 additional jobs, Harrah Analytics determined in its recent study....

Tom Hamburger, Los Angeles Times 1/21/11 A government watchdog group alleges that two of the Supreme Court's most conservative members had a conflict of interest when they considered a controversial case last year that permitted corporate funds to be used directly in political campaigns.
 * Justices' impartiality in campaign spending case questioned

Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas are the subjects of an unusual letter delivered Wednesday to the Justice Department by the nonpartisan group Common Cause.

The letter asks the department to look into whether the jurists should have disqualified themselves from hearing the campaign finance case if they had participated in a private meeting sponsored by Charles and David Koch, billionaire philanthropists who fund conservative causes....

Associated Press 1/5/11 WICHITA, Kan. (AP) — Koch Industries Inc. has filed a federal lawsuit in Utah seeking the identities of the people behind a media hoax that claimed the company was shifting its financial commitments for climate change research and advocacy to more environmentally friendly groups.
 * Koch Industries sues over bogus website, release

The lawsuit by the Wichita-based firm stems from a bogus website and fake news release issued last month that falsely announced the company was discontinuing its funding for organizations such as Americans for Prosperity and others whose positions on climate change no longer matched those of the company's leadership....

2010
For articles published 2010 and before, please see Koch in Older Media

For articles about Georgia-Pacific or Flint Hills Resources (subsidiaries of Koch Industries), please see Georgia-Pacific in the Media and Flint Hills Resources in the Media.

Related SourceWatch articles

 * Koch in Older Media
 * Georgia-Pacific in the Media
 * Flint Hills Resources in the Media
 * Koch Industries
 * Georgia-Pacific
 * Flint Hills Resources
 * Invista
 * Koch Brothers
 * David H. Koch
 * Charles G. Koch
 * Americans for Prosperity