US Politics in Trump era
Koch Data Mining Sent Anti-Immigrant Ads to Targeted Voters
Last year, when many GOP candidates across the country turned to vicious anti-immigrant advertisements to turn out voters in the midterm elections, some turned to i360, Koch’s state-of-the-art data analytics company. The company is one of the several appendages of the Koch political machine — one that includes a suite of voter outreach organization, lobbying, and campaign messaging tools.
Trump Quietly Planted a Top Koch Official Inside the E.P.A. | Vanity Fair
I Respected Scott Walker. Then I Worked for Him.
An ex Scott Walker cabinet member exposes how he governed, he explains that after Scott Walker won his recall election, Walker rarely attended Cabinet meetings anymore, and radically reduced the number of one-on-ones with Cabinet secretaries. He took more far-right positions, probably because he thought they would play well with the Republican base. Funding for public education and our University of Wisconsin system was cut dramatically. Our infrastructure continued to deteriorate to the point that we ranked 49th in the nation in the quality of our roads and bridges.
‘A total joke’: Trump lashes out at Koch brothers after political network slams White House
President Trump lashed out at the Koch brothers Tuesday, saying their conservative political funding and policy network has “become a total joke in real Republican circles” and is “highly overrated. The president’s assessment, made in a flurry of morning tweets, followed a weekend gathering at which top officials affiliated with billionaire industrialist Charles Koch sought to distance the network from Trump and his base in the Republican Party, citing tariff and immigration policies and “divisive” rhetoric out of Washington.
Koch-Backed Think Tank Finds That “Medicare for All” Would Cut Health Care Spending and Raise Wages. Whoops.
A new study from the Mercatus Center at George Mason University is making headlines for projecting that Independent Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders’s “Medicare for All” bill is estimated to cost $32.6 trillion — a number that’s entirely in line with 2016 projections, and is literally old news. But what the Associated Press headline fails to announce is a much more sanguine update: The report, by Senior Research Strategist Charles Blahous, found that under Sanders’s plan, overall health costs would go down, and wages would go up.
Koch network attacks Senators who voted against spending cuts
David Shulkin’s Firing at the VA Is Latest Step in Trump-Koch Push to Privatize Veterans’ Healthcare
On Wednesday, President Trump fired Secretary of Veterans Affairs David Shulkin and said he’d replace him with White House physician Dr. Ronny Jackson, a rear admiral in the Navy. Dr. Jackson has no experience running a large agency. Shulkin says he’s actually being ousted because of his opposition to privatizing the VA, which runs 1,700 hospitals and clinics.
Mike Pompeo’s Mission Is to Destroy the Iran Deal
All you need to know about Mike Pompeo, the four-term congressman from Kansas who is actually from California, is that most of his life he has been in business with the Koch brothers. His appointment as secretary of state puts a seal on President Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris climate accord. More dangerously, Trump was straightforward: He put Pompeo in to replace Rex Tillerson in order to destroy the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action treaty between the United Nations Security Council and Iran.
Koch Brothers Could Be $1 Billion Richer Each Year From GOP Tax Bill
A new analysis has found that political mega-donors Charles and David Koch and/or the business they operate could make between $1 billion and $1.4 billion more money each year, thanks to the tax breaks in legislation passed in December by Republican members of Congress. The two brothers are currently worth a combined $104.4 billion.
Paul Ryan Collected $500,000 In Koch Contributions Days After House Passed Tax Law
Koch Brothers’ Internal Strategy Memo on Selling Tax Cuts: Ignore The Deficit
The billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch spent much of the eight years of the Obama presidency stoking fears about the budget deficit. Now that Republicans control all levers of power in Washington and the Koch brothers are poised to reap a windfall of billions of dollars through tax cuts, they have a new message: Don’t worry about the deficit.
Koch network teaming up with Trump officials for tax-reform event
The billionaire Koch Brothers, and conservative “think tanks” that support them, have spent hundreds of millions trying to convince ordinary Americans that cutting corporate tax rates and repealing the estate tax is a good idea, using the language of “freedom from big government.” But if President Trump’s current tax plan sees the light of day, corporations will get a $2.4 trillion tax break, and the wealthiest two-tenths of one percent of Americans will get a $328 billion tax giveaway, just from one of his plan’s provisions—repealing the estate tax. Getting rid of the estate tax would also give Donald Trump’s own family a $4 billion tax handout, and the Koch Brothers, some $34 billion.
This is how the Kochs’ anti-renewable agenda becomes White House policy
President-elect Donald Trump raised eyebrows late last year when he named the head of an obscure right-wing think tank, with close ties to petrochemical billionaires Charles and David Koch, to lead his energy transition team. Since then, officials from the Institute for Energy Research (IER) have been appointed to high-level positions at the Department of Energy where they are playing major roles in implementing pro-fossil fuel, anti-renewable energy policies.
Koch Brothers’ Operatives Fill Top White House Positions, Ethics Forms Reveal
If the billionaire Koch brothers turn to the White House for favors, they will see many familiar faces. Newly disclosed ethics forms reveal that a significant number of senior Trump staffers were previously employed by the sprawling network of hard-right and libertarian advocacy groups financed and controlled by Charles and David Koch, the conservative duo hyper-focused on entrenching Republican power, eliminating taxes, and slashing environmental and labor regulations.
In Ohio’s Trump country, a House conservative gets an earful
It was Rep. Jim Jordan’s second Presidents’ Day visit to the home of Warren G. Harding, but it was the first to be surrounded by protesters. Nearly 200 people had swarmed the building, their signs accusing the congressman of being a pawn of the Koch brothers who wanted to pollute Ohio’s streams and rip health insurance away from sick people.
One-Third of the Trump Team Has Ties to the Koch Brothers
Behind “Make America Great”, the Koch Agenda Returns with a Vengeance
Some journalists suggest that the hundreds of conservative millionaires and billionaires organized by Charles and David Koch lost relevance this time – because the two brothers personally refused to endorse Trump and their donor network cut back originally projected spending from almost a billion to a “mere” $750 million. But we beg to differ.
Republican Kelly Ayotte Lost Millions of Dollars by Defying Koch Brothers on Climate Change
Climate Deniers Exposed: Top Scientist Got Funding from ExxonMobil, Koch Brothers, Big Coal
A new investigation exposes how one of the top scientists involved in denying climate change has failed to disclose his extensive funding from the fossil fuel industry. Dr. Wei-Hock Soon of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics has downplayed global warming and rejected human activity as its cause, arguing the sun is more responsible than greenhouse gases from pollution. Climate denialists — including Republican Senator James Inhofe, chair of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee — frequently cite Soon’s work to reject concrete action.