Forum Post: I hope everyone already knows the walker - koch connection
Posted 12 years ago on Feb. 20, 2012, 7:48 p.m. EST by bensdad
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Billionaire campaign donor David Koch, heir to a fortune and a political legacy created by one of the driving forces behind the John Birch Society, makes no secret of his enthusiasm for Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker.
“What Scott Walker is doing with the public unions in Wisconsin is critically important. He’s an impressive guy and he’s very courageous,” Koch explained in a recent conversation reported by the Palm Beach Post. “If the unions win the recall, there will be no stopping union power.”
That’s no surprise. What is surprising is that Koch is now appears to be bragging about how he and his brother Charles are using their vast fortune to fund an independent campaign aimed at “helping” Walker. Even in an era when billionaires such as the Kochs are emerging as key financiers of Super PACS and other campaigning vehicles Koch’s admission will raise eyebrows—and questions about whether inappropriate coordination of by a candidate, his campaign and a supposedly independent group might be the stuff of “scandal.”
Like their father before them, David Koch and his brother Charles are longtime champions of extreme right-wing causes. And Walker’s militant anti-labor policies coupled with a willingness to cut funding for public education and public services have made him a hero of conservative hardliners like the Kochs. At the same time, Walker’s extremism has inspired a movement to recall him from office, which recently filed petitions with more than 1 million signatures calling for an election to remove the governor.
The governor has already spent a fortune trying to block the recall drive, with millions of dollars in television advertising, as well as expensive legal efforts to block a new vote. Both have been strikingly unsuccessful so far; at least in part because Wisconsin has steadily lost jobs since Walker’s budget was enacted—a dismal record that has caused a loss of confidence in the governor and his agenda.
Even as Walker struggles to explain why Wisconsin is shedding jobs while the rest of the country is gaining them, conservative groups funded by Charles and David Koch, such as Americans for Prosperity, are filling the state’s television airwaves with ads that claim Walker’s policies are “working.” According to Reuters, “a $700,000 advertising campaign sponsored by Americans for Prosperity (AFP), a foundation funded by conservative billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch of oil and gas conglomerate Koch Industries, hit the Wisconsin airwaves, the latest phase of its ‘Stand with Walker’ campaign.”
These ads are supposedly independent expenditures by a not-for-profit organization that operates under tax rules established to benefit the work of “Religious, Educational, Charitable, Scientific, Literary, Testing for Public Safety, to Foster National or International Amateur Sports Competition, or Prevention of Cruelty to Children or Animals Organizations.”
- from Nation of Change
Yeah, the Kochs would like to install their Kochbot puppet governors in every state of the union. Then they could privatize all your schools and fill them with Kochbot teachers that warp your kids into thinking polluted waters are no big deal and that global warming is just a natural weather trend. People like Eric Cantor will begin to make sense to your kids. We have to stop this nightmare. Recall Walker! The vote can't come soon enough.
This article only scratches the surface. I highly recommend this video for more info.
http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/peopleandpower/2011/10/2011102683719370179.html
The Kochs are one of the prime donors to ALEC, and so are quite active in all the States that ALEC is active in.
Where's Rummy when you need him? These are not nice people, and they should be prosecuted, and incarcerated.
I don't know how either of those two sleep at night... but I guess sleeping on a mattress filled with dollar bills can be comfortable for some... :p
I imagine its a firmer mattress of $10,000 bricks.
That $700k seems small and I fully expect them to scale up on that later. One of the troubling things about having so much money in the race is that if they wanted to, AFP could purchase every second of TV commercial air time on every network not just to get their message across, but to deny the other side the opportunity.
One more really nifty thing about the Koch brothers is their 'Libertarian' connections. So many people believe that libertarianism, and Friedrich Hayek's Austrian economics are the next big thing. Here in Austria we do not even do this so-called "Austrian" economics..that is how little we think of it! Years ago, Mr. Hayek and the Koch brothers were quite chummy. The brothers helped Hayek to find a way to get social security from America, but he refused to immigrate because he did not want to lose his nationalized healthcare here in Austria. (contrary to many people's beliefs, nationalized healthcare is pretty awesome, and a great way to use tax dollars..much better than bullets imo.) Here's a link from The Nation: http://www.thenation.com/article/163672/charles-koch-friedrich-hayek-use-social-security
What percentage of your income goes to taxes? Everyone around here wants European Heathcare, but they don't seem to realize it's not 'free', all workers contribute to it, right? Half the workers in the US pay no taxes today. They need to be careful what they wish for!
As for your 'bullets' comment, yeah, all you Europeans have been getting a free ride from the US since the turn of the last century.
Wiedersehn
What Gov Walker is doing to the public unions is what each State should be doing "get rid of them" they are bankrupting States
the unions hate wlaker because he's a threat to union leaders power and money.