Democracy Now: Senate GOP Healthcare Bill Estimated to Kill 28,600 More in U.S. Each Year & Drop 22M from Insurance
More articles and research proving my above claims that the Koch Brothers control the GOP on healthcare (& most, if not all, other issues);
CNN: Kochs pledge millions to GOPers in 2018 -- if they vote no on health care bill
Business Insider: Billionaire Koch brothers are promising millions to Republicans that help sink 'Trumpcare'
The Blaze: Koch Brothers dropping millions to decide the fate of the GOP healthcare bill
Politico: Koch network pledges to defend Republicans who vote against GOP health bill Two Koch groups are starting a 'seven-figure' reserve fund to protect bill opponents from political harm.
USA Today: Koch groups slam GOP health care replacement plan as 'Obamacare 2.0'
EcoWatch: Paris Exit Was 'Victory Paid and Carried Out' by Republican Party for the Koch Brothers: The 22 Republican senators who sent a letter to President Donald Trump last week urging the United States' withdrawal from the Paris climate agreement received more than $10 million dollars in campaign funds from fossil fuel interests. The two-page letter was signed by a number of Republican heavyweights from coal/gas/oil-rich states, including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma and Ted Cruz of Texas.
Huffington Post: Here’s How Much Fox News Hosts Are Intertwined With The Koch Brothers
CNN (& probably MSNBC/NBC) also hires Koch Brothers shills but it mostly goes unreported or ignored if mentioned on the network itself;
Media Matters: Watch an economist call out CNN for hosting a Koch-backed Trump surrogate to lie about the Paris accord Jeffrey Sachs to Stephen Moore: "I'm shocked that you are a [contributor] for this network"
Media Matters: Pro-Koch CBS Analyst Received $1.5 Million From The Kochs
Media Matters: New Book Exposes Koch Brothers' Guide To Infiltrating The Media
Note: Even the media watchdogs, Media Matters, haven't reported any statements from mainstream media that indicate what's really going on and everytime CNN does something right for once they report it like news (sadly enough);
Huffington Post: Here’s How Much Fox News Hosts Are Intertwined With The Koch Brothers
More than a dozen Fox News personalities have made appearances at events for groups funded by the Koch brothers, even as many of them were also defending the controversial billionaires on the network’s airwaves, according to a new study from Media Matters.
Charles and David Koch, founders of Americans for Prosperity (AFP) and the Americans for Prosperity Foundation (AFPF), have called on at least 15 Fox News hosts and contributors to publicly promote upcoming AFP and AFPF events, Media Matters said. These hosts include Tucker Carlson, Mike Huckabee, Laura Ingraham, Guy Benson, Dana Perino and Andrew Napolitano.
A recent Politico report showed that AFP “intends to spend more than $125 million this year on an aggressive ground, air and data operation benefiting conservatives.” Since 2012, a growing number of hosts have become the faces of these Koch-funded events in an effort to increase the attendance.
Moreover, many of these hosts have also loudly backed the Koch brothers on Fox News shows, Media Matters noted. Just weeks before Tucker Carlson was set to be the lead speaker at an AFPF in May, for instance, he criticized opponents of the Koch brothers during an edition of “Special Report.” Hosts of “Fox & Friends” and “The Five” have also come to the brothers’ aid and used their shows to promote AFP and AFPF material.
Media Matters: Watch an economist call out CNN for hosting a Koch-backed Trump surrogate to lie about the Paris accord Jeffrey Sachs to Stephen Moore: "I'm shocked that you are a [contributor] for this network"
JEFFREY SACHS: It's just unbelievable. Every word has been a lie for the last two days. So much ignorance. And you have Stephen Moore and he is from the Heritage Foundation, paid for by the Koch brothers have engineered the whole story here. So it's just endless. Big money of the Koch brothers is behind this. And Mr. Moore and his Heritage Foundation is a Koch brothers-financed operation and this is corruption. And it's so clear and it's disgusting after a while because they are all lying.
ANA CABRERA (HOST): Jeffrey, this study was the National Economic Research Associates study that Stephen was just citing that we've heard from the Trump administration. Why do you not believe that's a credible source?
SACHS: There are about 20,000 coal miners in this country out of 150 million people. This is so bogus, it's unbelievable. Everything that Trump has said is bogus. And the idea that he has given to the American people that somehow this is an agreement that is against America, that's biased against America. This is a completely symmetrical agreement in which all 193 countries have agreed to the same thing. They have agreed to submit national plans of action under a common framework. And so it's all a lie. And the important thing for your viewers to understand is this is the future of their children and their grandchildren. And this man is wrecking the planet and it's because of the oil, gas, and coal interests that have funded the Heritage Foundation, that have funded Stephen Moore, and that have funded the 22 senators that wrote to the president last week saying to do this. This is a game and it's a game against my children and my grandchildren. And it's disgusting.
CABRERA: Stephen, I'll give you a chance to respond.
STEPHEN MOORE: Well, Jeff just needs to get his facts straight. We get less than three percent of our budget from the Kochs. So, Jeff I don't know where you're getting your facts from, but what you just said is a lie.
SACHS: I know where I'm getting my facts from. You're on the take.
[...]
SACHS: I'm shocked that you are a [contributor] for this network.
Previously:
Media Matters: Pro-Koch CBS Analyst Received $1.5 Million From The Kochs
A newly-released IRS filing reveals that a central group in Charles and David Koch's financial network paid CBS News analyst Frank Luntz's firm roughly $1.5 million in 2014 for messaging work. Luntz recently used his CBS platform to praise Koch donor conference attendees as symbolizing "the American dream," and defend the Kochs' spending -- without disclosing that he's benefited from their largesse.
Koch Organization Paid Frank Luntz's Firm Roughly $1.5 Million
Politico: Freedom Partners Chamber Of Commerce Is The "Central Group" In The Koch Brothers' Financial Network. Politico's Ken Vogel wrote that Freedom Partners Chamber of Commerce is the "central group in the increasingly powerful network of conservative public policy and political groups helmed by the billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch." Freedom Partners was created in 2011 and "raised $162 million in 2013 and 2014. Three quarters of that haul came in last year, almost entirely from six-figure membership dues of wealthy donors who the Kochs convene twice a year for summits that highlight the virtues of fiscally conservative, small government policies -- and that raise money for groups and candidates who support those policies." [Politico, 11/17/15]
Freedom Partners Paid Luntz Global LLC Roughly $1.5 Million In 2014. An IRS filing for Freedom Partners Chamber of Commerce, publicly released on November 17, said that the Koch organization paid Luntz Global LLC $1,496,879 for market research in 2014. Luntz is the founder and president of Luntz Global. [FreedomPartners.org, accessed 11/17/15, LuntzGlobal.com, accessed 11/17/15, via Politico]
Luntz Is A Regular Attendee At Koch Donor Seminars. Politico wrote that Luntz is "a regular guest at Koch donor seminars." This past summer, Luntz reportedly attended "a closed-door gathering of major conservative donors in Southern California ... which was organized by the political network helmed by billionaire industrialists Charles and David Koch." [Politico, 11/17/15, 8/18/15]
Mother Jones: Luntz Provides "Message Advice" For Koch Network. Campaign finance reporter Peter Stone wrote in Mother Jones of Luntz:
GOP operatives say that Luntz also provided message advice for Americans for Prosperity and Freedom Partners, the fundraising hub for the Koch network, for critical ad campaigns in Senate battleground states. "The Koch team seeded these Democratic Senate seats early with powerful anti-Obama and anti-Obamacare ads," one operative told me. (AFP told me its policy is not to comment on whether someone is a consultant; Freedom Partners failed to respond to my inquiries for this story.) [Mother Jones, 12/8/14]
Luntz Praised Koch-Backed Work In 2014 And 2015
Luntz Defended Koch Brothers In August 2015 Appearance. On August 3, CBS This Morning hosted Luntz to talk about the influence of the Koch brothers. CBS began the segment by identifying him as a "Republican strategist" and "CBS News contributor." Luntz said he was going to be speaking to participants at the Koch gathering, but he and CBS did not disclose any details about their financial relationship. Luntz used his appearance to defend the Kochs, stating that the people who attend the Koch conference are examples of "the American dream that`s all brought into one place at one time."
CHARLIE ROSE: So what came out of the Koch brothers` weekend?LUNTZ: I actually am going to be speaking there in a couple of hours and I`m going to be curious to ask participants what they thought. I know that Carly Fiorina, who will not be part of the debate on Thursday night, that she was definitely a favorite of the people who were there. You know, everyone is trying to size up these candidates, and what`s interesting about that Koch conference is that they`re not looking at each other based on who is more intellectually purer, who`s a better speaker. They see these candidates versus Hillary Clinton because they`re so eager to have a replacement, a philosophical replacement in the White House. And they want to try to figure out who`s the best person. Who`s the best candidate for that job?ROSE: And Donald Trump was not invited?LUNTZ: He was not invited, no.GAYLE KING: So how important is an endorsement of the Koch brothers to a Republican candidate, Frank, do you think?LUNTZ: Well, I don`t think it`s the Koch brothers, and that`s one of the misnomers that people don`t realize that there are four hundred or five hundred people who are attending. And these are small business owners, very successful people. Most of them first generation. And this is kind of the American dream that`s all brought into one place at one time. They all have different candidates that they support. The one thing that they`ve got in common is that they`re all about economic freedom. And they`re looking for a candidate who`s going to support less rules, less taxes, less government spending, less government involvement, and more freedom and -- and they split. They split over a number of different candidates.ROSE: But, Frank, it is true that a lot of the candidates have been making stops to -- to meet with the Koch brothers hoping to get their support because their financial support could mean a lot.LUNTZ: No, you know there`s a lot of money in -- that`s very true, Charlie, and there`s a lot of money in politics on both sides but there`s no difference in going to see people who are in that room versus those who go to the AFL-CIO or those who go to see the teachers` unions. That -- everyone who`s running for president is desperate for two things, money and airtime. You cannot win a presidential campaign without having both.KING: All right. Thank you, Frank Luntz. It certainly looks like a laidback California scene where you are. Thank you very much. [CBS, CBS This Morning, 8/3/15]
Luntz Praised Americans For Prosperity Ad As "One Of The Best Ads" Of The Cycle. During an April 2014 appearance on Hannity, Luntz praised an ad by Americans for Prosperity as "one of the best ads" of the cycle. He added: "It's good. It's very good ... It would have been actually more effective if they had talked about what the president had promised us and then focused on those broken promises." The Koch brothers founded Americans for Prosperity, which is considered their "main political arm." Luntz and Fox News did not disclose anything about Luntz's financial connections to the Koch brothers. [Fox News, Hannity, 4/3/14, via Media Matters; Politico, 5/9/14; Media Matters, 3/25/15]
CBS' Relationship With Frank Luntz Is An Ethical Mess
CBS Repeatedly Failed To Disclose Luntz's Financial Ties To Paul Ryan. Luntz has repeatedly praised Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) during CBS appearances, with neither Luntz nor the network disclosing that Ryan has paid Luntz's company over $100,000 in consulting fees in recent years. [Media Matters, 10/9/15]
CBS And Luntz Failed To Disclose His Financial Ties To Eric Cantor In 2014. Luntz used his CBS position to praise former House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA). CBS and Luntz didn't disclose that Luntz's firm received more than $15,000 in consulting fees since 2012 from Cantor's congressional campaign. [Media Matters, 6/11/14]
Luntz Responds To Conflict Of Interest Criticism: Media Matters Is "A Professional Bitch Organization Of The Left .... All They Do Is Bitch." Washington Post writer Erik Wemple interviewed Luntz after Media Matters criticized him over his appearance praising Paul Ryan:
"They put me on to talk about Kevin McCarthy," said Luntz, who noted, accurately, that the segment began with a disclosure about his relationship with McCarthy. As the conversation moved along, Luntz swiveled his artillery: "If you actually follow what Media Matters says, then I feel sorry for you...I'm not going to sit there and everything I say, 'Oh, by the way, 18 years ago, I had dinner with that person....' I can't believe you don't have better things to do," he ripped the Erik Wemple Blog for taking seriously a report from Media Matters. "They are a professional bitch organization of the left....All they do is bitch...They hire interns to watch TV every day. It's an embarrassment." [WashingtonPost.com, 10/9/15]
Media Matters: New Book Exposes Koch Brothers' Guide To Infiltrating The Media
A new book by New Yorker writer Jane Mayer lays out how the oil billionaire Koch brothers rose to the powerful position they are in today, where they wield unquestionable political influence and have shaped public opinion in drastic ways. Titled Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right, the book brings to light many tactics that the Koch brothers and others in their network of like-minded millionaires and billionaires have used over the years to push their agenda while hiding the true motivations behind it.
The book examines the influence of several of the country's wealthiest conservative donors, but it pays particular attention to the activities of Charles and David Koch, who have organized their network and spearheaded the group's political efforts. "Few had waged a more relentless or more effective assault on Americans' belief in government," Mayer wrote of the Kochs.
A key element of the Koch brothers' strategy is influencing the media. Through media, they have advanced their political and ideological goals and attacked those who stand in their way. The Koch brothers and their network have paid conservative media figures to promote their message, bankrolled front groups that run aggressive anti-environmental media campaigns, and even created their own right-wing "news" outlets. Meanwhile, they've garnered some favorable mainstream media coverage by tightly controlling reporter access to their summits and other events, while attacking and otherwise intimidating journalists who dare to shine a light on their activities.
Here is how the Koch brothers and their network have infiltrated the media:
"Instead of earning the media, they were paying for it."
This is how former Republican Rep. Dick Armey of Texas described the activities of the Koch front group he once chaired. Indeed, Mayer lays out several ways that Koch-backed front groups have spent money to create a "national echo chamber" in the conservative media. Most notably, she highlights two Koch-backed organizations that directly paid conservative pundits to promote the Koch agenda on air.
The first group is FreedomWorks, which originated from the Koch-founded Citizens for a Sound Economy. Mayer reported that FreedomWorks "quietly cemented a deal" in 2011 with Glenn Beck, who was a Fox News host at the time. Beck read "embedded content" written by FreedomWorks staff in exchange for an annual payment "that eventually topped $1 million." Mayer further explained: "They told him what to say on the air, and he blended the promotional material seamlessly into his monologue, making it sound as if it were his own opinion." Because of this deal, Politico reported, FreedomWorks saw "50,000 new email sign-ups."
Americans for Prosperity (AFP) -- the other Koch front group that formed out of Citizens for a Sound Economy and has received significant funding from Koch foundations -- forged a contract with conservative radio host Mark Levin to promote AFP's attacks on climate scientist Michael Mann, thereby "copying the deal that FreedomWorks had struck with Glenn Beck." Levin attacked Mann and other climate scientists, Mayer wrote, accusing "enviro-statists" of "inventing global warming in order to justify a tyrannical government takeover."
In addition to the deals between Koch front groups and conservative pundits that are identified in Mayer's book, the Heritage Foundation, which has received millions from Koch foundations, has spent millions to sponsor the radio shows of Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham, according to Politico.
Additionally, Freedom Partners Chamber of Commerce, the central group in the Kochs' financial network, paidRepublican strategist Frank Luntz's firm $1.5 million for messaging work in 2014. Luntz then used his media platform as an analyst at CBS News to praise the Kochs and defend their spending without disclosing his own financial ties to them.
And in 2011, Koch Industries hired Republican political operative Michael Goldfarb to improve the company's image while Goldfarb was working as opinion editor for the conservative magazine The Weekly Standard. Shortly thereafter, The Weekly Standard published a long piece defending the Kochs, which was describedby investigative reporter Lee Fang in a Think Progress piece as "8,000 words of hagiography." Goldfarb is still listed as one of The Weekly Standard's contributing editors, and the conservative magazine has published several articles in recent weeks criticizing Jane Mayer and her book.
The Koch brothers and their network have had a hand in creating several "news" outlets that echo the Kochs' conservative, anti-government message: The Daily Caller, The Washington Free Beacon, and the Franklin Center.
The Daily Caller was founded by financial investor Foster Friess, a major Koch donor who has attended many of the Kochs' annual summits and donated at least $1 million to conservative causes that the Kochs support. Friess provided $3 million in seed funding to The Daily Caller, a conservative website which, according to Mayer, has "functioned more as an outlet for opposition research paid for by the donor class." Charles Koch's foundation would later back the website, and the Daily Caller News Foundation is currently listed as a "partner organization" of the Charles Koch Institute. Tucker Carlson, co-founder and editor-in-chief of The Daily Caller, also has other ties to the Kochs: He joined the Cato Institute in 2009, which the Koch brothers co-founded, and he is currently listed as a senior fellow there. The Cato Institute has received millions of dollars from the Koch family, and David Koch currently sits on Cato's board of directors. Mayer notes that The Daily Caller was "the chosen receptacle" for the Kochs' retaliatory attacks on her after The New Yorker published an exposé she wrote on the Kochs in 2010.
After the Kochs started receiving some bad publicity, Koch Industries hired Michael Goldfarb to improve the company's image. Later, in 2012, Goldfarb founded The Washington Free Beacon, and he remains its chairman. The website has published articles defending the Kochs, attacking their opponents, advancing the Kochs' criticisms of President Obama and Sen. Harry Reid, and promoting their agenda. Plus whatever this is.
The Franklin Center, which runs Watchdog.org, is the "investigative news" service for the State Policy Network, a network of conservative think tanks that are largely funded by Koch-backed dark money groups DonorsTrust and Donors Capital Fund. The Franklin Center itself received 95 percent of its revenue from Donors Trust in 2011, and it was receiving millions from Donors Capital Fund as of 2013. Mayer writes that the Franklin Center frequently "attacked government programs, particularly those initiated by Obama," adding that it "claimed to be a neutral public watchdog, but much of its coverage reflected the conservative bent of those behind it." As Mayer pointed out, a couple of journalists have "t[aken] issue with the Franklin Center's labeling of its content as 'news.'" Yet the Franklin Center continues to reach far and wide, with 40 state news websites and writers in 34 states as of 2013, and its reporting appearing in state and local newspapers at times.
Key to the Kochs' success has been the "growing fleet of nonprofit groups" that "mobilized public opinion" behind their agenda, writes Mayer, particularly against action on climate change. The Koch brothers "had built and financed a private political machine," backing "[e]ducational institutions and think tanks all over the country" that "promoted [their] worldview." Mayer cited Harvard scholar Theda Skocpol, who noted: "Climate denial got disseminated deliberately and rapidly from think tank tomes to the daily media fare of about thirty to forty percent of the U.S. populace."
Mayer focused on two organizations in particular: Americans for Prosperity (AFP) and the Cato Institute. In addition to "spearhead[ing] a national drive to block action on climate change," AFP "took a lead role in organizing the Tea Party rebellion." But the Kochs insisted that they were not involved in the tea party movement, and as Mayer noted, "such denials helped shape the early narrative" in the media "of the Tea Party movement as an amateur uprising by ordinary citizens."
The Cato Institute, which was co-founded by the Koch brothers, took a lead role in attacking the scientific consensus on human-caused climate change. Cato published "a steady stream" of misleading reports, which were frequently criticized by experts yet "echoed throughout the network of Koch-funded groups." Cato also "energetic[ally]" promoted the faux Climategate scandal -- falsely claiming that climate scientists deceitfully manipulated data -- in the mainstream media, where Cato officials were often "respectfully quoted as nonpartisan experts." One Cato scholar gave more than 20 interviews pushing the contrived scandal, spreading the story "from obviously slanted venues to the pages of The New York Times and The Washington Post, adding mainstream credence."
AFP and Cato have continued to promote their anti-environment agenda in the media without disclosing their oil industry ties. And those groups are just the tip of the iceberg; Media Matters has identified dozens of groups backed by fossil fuel interests that are working to attack the Environmental Protection Agency's climate change plan. One tactic commonly employed by these groups is to run op-ed campaigns promoting false and misleading attacks on environmental policies in state and local newspapers, as Media Matters and othershave detailed.
The Kochs' political activities have largely been "shrouded in secrecy," writes Mayer, and such secrecy is a key to their success. When they do make media appearances, it is to "portray themselves as disinterested do-gooders and misunderstood social liberals."
The Kochs' biannual donor summits, where they have "succeeded in persuading hundreds of the other richest conservatives in the country to give them control over their millions of dollars in contributions," have historically been closed-door affairs. Only in recent years have the Kochs invited a handful of mainstream media reporters to attend the summits, but just in "snippets," and under tightly controlled conditions. Reporters had to agree to refrain from identifying conference attendees without their consent or approaching donors for interviews, and they were allowed in to only a select number of sessions, according to a copy of the conditions for the August 2015 summit obtained by ThinkProgress. That summit thereafter received positive coverage in publications including Politico, USA Today, The Washington Post, and The New York Times.
But these conditions also drew some criticism from media ethicists. Jane Kirtley, professor of media ethics and law at the University of Minnesota's School of Journalism and Mass Communication, told ThinkProgress that the terms were "outrageous," and suggested that news organizations should "refuse to attend under these circumstances." Robert Drechsel, a professor and director of the Center for Journalism Ethics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, found it "remarkable" that news organizations "would agree to in effect become complicit in facilitating such secrecy and anonymity." Huffington Post media reporter Michael Calderone questioned whether the rules "still allow for reporting in the public's interest" or are "so rigid that the resulting coverage will primarily benefit the Kochs." Calderone noted in a separate article that the rules "could restrict journalists from reporting what's right in front of their eyes," and that "it's possible journalists end up reporting largely what the event sponsors want ... but less on the power brokers attending who play key behind-the-scenes roles in the 2016 election."
Mother Jones' Daniel Schulman told Calderone that the rules allow the Kochs to "closely control their images." And indeed, at the most recent conference, Undercurrent's Lauren Windsor overheard that a USA Todayreporter was "prepped" by the Koch's communication staff hours before an article was published that Windsor said "dutifully relayed Koch talking points" about the new Koch group that is purportedly aiming to address poverty and education. Bloomberg News was recently prompted by a Koch spokesperson to remove a linefrom an article in which the reporter stated that Charles Koch "warned that climate change's worst effects would fall on people in poorer parts of the world." The article was changed to say that according to a Koch spokesman, Koch was "referring to the impact of bad climate policies or programs, not the negative effects of climate change itself."
Ever since her first long-form article on the Koch brothers in The New Yorker in 2010, Mayer has faced intimidation tactics and efforts to discredit her by the Koch network.
Koch operatives formed a "boiler room operation," seeking to discredit the New Yorker story by "undermining" Mayer. They hired a private investigation firm looking for "dirt" on Mayer, who was told by a well-informed source: "If they couldn't find it, they'd create it." After their search for dirt turned up nothing, Mayer learned that The Daily Caller intended to publish a "hit piece" accusing her of plagiarism. But Mayer reached out to the reporters she was supposedly plagiarizing, and they "offered to make public statements" supporting her, so The Daily Caller dropped the story.
Mayer is not the only journalist to experience intimidation from the Kochs (though hers may be the most extreme example). At the American Legislative Exchange Council's annual meeting, Greenpeace researcher Connor Gibson was confronted by Koch Industries government affairs director Mike Morgan. Gibson captured a partial video of the interaction, but Morgan then took Gibson's phone away from him, until Morgan was forced to return it by police. Rolling Stone reporter Tim Dickinson called Koch Industries "the most hostile and paranoid organization I've ever engaged with." Mayer also wrote that Koch security threatened to arrest Politico reporter Kenneth Vogel after catching him in a cafe at one of their summits, "[u]nless he left the premises immediately."
Koch Industries also utilizes its website KochFacts.com to combat negative reports. Mayer notes that KochFacts.com "wage[s] ad hominem attacks, questioning the professionalism and integrity of reporters whose work the company found unflattering, ranging from The New York Times to Politico." The website has blastedDavid Sassoon of the Pulitzer Prize-winning InsideClimate News as a "professional eco-activist" and "agenda-driven activist." It also frequently posts personal email exchanges with journalists, "sometimes to the reporter's shock," according to The Washington Post. This includes email exchanges with reporters and editors at The New York Times, MSNBC, Politico, and more.
Hopefully, Jane Mayer herself is a testament to the fact that reporters will not back down from exposing the true extent of the Kochs' influence and how it is shaping our country for the worse. There is surely more to the story not yet uncovered.
Note: Even the media watchdogs, Media Matters, haven't reported any statements from mainstream media that indicate what's really going on and everytime CNN does something right for once they report it like news (sadly enough);
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