Voice For Liberty

Tag: Koch Industries

  • U.S. business under attack by its own government

    Who would have thought that President Barack Obama would take a page — maybe an entire chapter — from the Richard Nixon political playbook?

    A Review & Outlook piece in the Wall Street Journal explains the connection. The subject is campaign fund disclosure: “Democrats claim only to favor ‘disclosure’ of donors, but their legal intimidation attempts are the best argument against disclosure. Liberals want the names of business donors made public so they can become targets of vilification with the goal of intimidating them into silence. A CEO or corporate board is likely to think twice about contributing to a campaign fund if the IRS or prosecutors might come calling.”

    The war on business that’s being conducted by liberals is puzzling and misplaced. Who do they think creates income and wealth that generates taxes to fund Obama’s expanding government?

    Regarding Wichita-based Koch Industries and an Obama administration official’s potentially improper disclosure of information, the Journal says it’s glad to hear that this example won’t be used again. But the Journal is skeptical: “… pardon our skepticism given the ferocity of this White House-led campaign against businesses that donate to political campaigns. Faced with electoral repudiation as the public turns against their agenda, Democrats are unleashing government power to silence their political opponents. Instead of piling on, the press corps ought to blow the whistle on this attempt to stifle political speech. This is one more liberal abuse of power that voters should consider as they head to the polls.”

    Shutting Up Business

    Democrats unleash the IRS and Justice on donors to their political opponents.

    If at first you don’t succeed, get some friends in high places to shut your opponents up. That’s the latest Washington power play, as Democrats and liberals attack the Chamber of Commerce and independent spending groups in an attempt to stop businesses from participating in politics.

    Since the Supreme Court’s January decision in Citizens United v. FEC, Democrats in Congress have been trying to pass legislation to repeal the First Amendment for business, though not for unions. Having failed on that score, they’re now turning to legal and political threats. Funny how all of this outrage never surfaced when the likes of Peter Lewis of Progressive insurance and George Soros helped to make Democrats financially dominant in 2006 and 2008.

    Continue reading at the Wall Street Journal

  • Kansas and Wichita quick takes: Sunday October 10, 2010

    Countryman back on air: Gene Countryman, host of a long-running radio show that went off the air earlier this year, returns to the airwaves tonight with the Gene Countryman Show. The new show airs Sunday evenings from 6:00 pm to 8:00 pm on KNSS Radio 1330 AM.

    Koch article criticism: Andrew Ferguson, media critic for Commentary, provides a critical look at the left-wing hysteria over Jane Mayer’s New Yorker Magazine “exposé” of Charles Koch, David Koch, and Koch Industries. Best quote: “The only support in Mayer’s article for this extravagant charge comes from second-hand assertions, usually in quotes from the brothers’ critics. Many are anonymous. Others are incompletely identified. Conservative think tanks and activists are carefully pinned with the ideological tag; liberal think tanks and left-wing activists are, well, just think tanks and activists.”

    Who wins here? Letter from Pat Risley in Wichita Eagle: “Westar is requesting approval to recover direct costs and lost revenues associated with the implementation of the SimpleSavings program. Basically, it means that as homes become more energy-efficient, the lost revenues to Westar would be passed on to all Westar customers.” I thought we were all supposed to win with conservation measures. At its core, I imagine this has something to do with Westar being a regulated utility, rather than operating in a free market for energy.

    ‘Down-ballot’ races also are important this year: Writing in the Wichita Eagle, Kansas University political science professor Burdett Loomis discusses the “minor” statewide races in Kansas this year. Minor perhaps in terms of the public policy impact of some of these offices, but not for some of the candidates. Writes Loomis: “Beyond the races themselves, these statewide offices offer the real pathways for advancing to the governorship or Congress.”

    Informed choice: The Lawrence Journal-World notes the lack of debates in this election season, both statewide and local: “The near lack of joint debate or forum appearances by the two major party candidates for Kansas governor has drawn considerable attention across the state, but the gubernatorial candidates aren’t the only ones opting out of such events. The unwillingness of candidates to participate in voter education events is reaching all the way to the local level.” An exception might be the Kansas fourth district. Raj Goyle’s events page lists several past and upcoming forums and debates.

    Equity in education? Ken Stephens of the Hutchinson News contributes a story looking at the Kansas school finance formula and the issues involved in its reform. It contains a rare piece of wisdom from school lobbyist Mark Tallman, who advocates for more school spending at any expense to the state. Stephens reports: “Mark Tallman, a lobbyist for the Kansas Association of School Boards, once suggested that he would like to lock a group of the smartest superintendents in the state in a room to rewrite the formula. The kicker, though, would be that when they were done, all their names would be placed in a hat and their names would be randomly drawn to determine which district they would serve in the future. ‘So don’t write the formula for the district you’re in now,’ Tallman said. ‘Write a formula you think will work for whatever district.’” This reminds me of the wisdom of Walter E. Williams, who wrote “The kind of rules we should have are the kind that we’d make if our worst enemy were in charge.”

    Wichita Eagle Opinion Line: “Thanks to the Sedgwick County commissioners for saving us from another tax-increment financing district. Wish the city had some backbone to do what is right for taxpayers.” … “Did anyone else notice that the Republicans’ Pledge to America didn’t include one word about earmarks and pork-barrel spending? I guess that’s just too much to ask.”

  • Liberal politics: The paranoid style

    This month Andrew Ferguson, media critic for Commentary, provides a critical look at the left-wing hysteria over the New Yorker “exposé” of Charles Koch, David Koch, and Koch Industries.

    Ferguson is quite critical — justifiably — of the New Yorker article: “The only support in Mayer’s article for this extravagant charge comes from second-hand assertions, usually in quotes from the brothers’ critics. Many are anonymous. Others are incompletely identified. Conservative think tanks and activists are carefully pinned with the ideological tag; liberal think tanks and left-wing activists are, well, just think tanks and activists.”

    Other targets of Ferguson’s include MSNBC talk-show host Rachel Maddow: “When Maddow speaks, the White House listens, and by August, the president himself was at a Texas fundraiser warning an audience that had paid at least $5,000 a person about the dangers that rich people posed to politics.”

    PRESS MAN: The Paranoid Style in Liberal Politics

    By Andrew Ferguson

    Over the past 30 years, Charles and David Koch, owners of a Kansas-based family business called Koch Industries, have given hundreds of millions of dollars to organizations that advance their political views. Those views can be described as unevenly conservative and generally libertarian (pro-gay marriage, anti-ObamaCare). The donations are readily observable in foundation tax records posted on the Internet, as all such transactions are, and the brothers themselves have made many public appearances on behalf of the think tanks and magazines they fund, given speeches and media interviews, issued statements of support, sat on boards—even, in David’s case, made a hopeless and expensive run for the vice presidency on the Libertarian Party ticket in 1980.

    Oddly, it took a while for the Inspector Clouseaus of the American left to smell a rat. And in fairness, it should be said that hiding in plain sight can often be the most sinister form of disguise for billionaires like the Kochs, the tricky bastards. About a year ago, the alarming rise of the Tea Parties inspired researchers at a website called ThinkProgress to start Googling. Among their discoveries, breathlessly reported, was the news that one of the Kochs’ foundations had funded Americans for Prosperity, a group instrumental in the Tea Party movement.

    Continue reading at Commentary Magazine

  • Lynn Jenkins: The only jobs Democrats care about are their own

    Lynn Jenkins, a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from the second district of Kansas, writes that actions by Congressional Democrats are harming jobs prospects for Americans: “The American people elected us to do our jobs, but instead of focusing on that, Democrats in Washington have decided to wage a campaign against the very companies that eventually will get us out of this economic mess.”

    In particular, Jenkins mentions Wichita-based Koch Industries as a company working hard to create jobs and value in the marketplace, only to suffer criticism from President Barack Obama, his administration, and his political allies.

    Some of the attacks on Koch Industries are false. Jenkins mentions Rep. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and his claim that Koch outsourced jobs, when the company in question was not related to Koch Industries at the relevant time. This false charge is often repeated.

    Then, there’s the income tax information about Koch Industries, which Austan Goolsbee, who was just named by Obama as Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers, leaked, apparently inappropriately. The Washington Times reports this matter now being investigated by a federal inspector general.

    JENKINS: Working on excuses

    The only jobs Democrats care about are their own

    By Lynn Jenkins

    When President Obama signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act into law, the Democratic majority told us it would cost $787 billion and keep unemployment below 8 percent. Neither proved to be true. Unemployment has risen to 9.6 percent, and the Congressional Budget Office anticipates that the law will increase deficits by $814 billion.

    In addition to historically high unemployment, this year’s annual federal deficit is set to exceed $1.3 trillion, and our national debt is more than $13.5 trillion. However, instead of focusing on job creation or doing our constitutionally obligated task of passing a budget and annual appropriations bills, the president’s staff and congressional Democrats have sought out a boogeyman to blame.

    Last week, the House of Representatives passed a continuing resolution to allow members to get back to their districts to campaign for re-election. Instead of holding a vote on whether to extend the current tax rates set to expire in 2011 and eliminating the uncertainty that is crippling potential job creators of all sizes, Democratic leaders skipped town to protect their jobs rather than fighting to save jobs of hardworking Americans.

    Continue reading at the Washington Times

  • Political attacks by Obama camp endanger opportunity

    By Ronald Gidwitz

    As a recovering politician (I ran for governor of Illinois in 2006), I know it’s seldom a good idea to hint that voters are dupes. Sometimes, though, in an attempt to “divide and conquer,” politicians do just that.

    Lately we’ve seen President Barack Obama and his team, who ran for office on the claim they would bridge political differences, playing this foolish and ultimately self-defeating dividing game.

    “Right now all around this country there are groups with harmless-sounding names like Americans for Prosperity, who are running millions of dollars of ads against Democratic candidates all across the country,” the president told Democratic donors in Texas last month.

    His advisers have followed his lead. “Americans for Prosperity is funded by billionaire oil men, David and Charles Koch, to promote Republican candidates who support their right-wing agenda and corporate interests,” Obama’s senior adviser David Axelrod wrote in The Washington Post last month. He further claimed that these “billionaire oilmen secretly (are) underwriting what the public has been told is a grass-roots movement for change in Washington.”

    Well, it’s no secret what AFP is, who we are or what we want to do. Nationwide, Americans for Prosperity and the Americans for Prosperity Foundation have more than 1.5 million activists and 31 state chapters and affiliates. I’m state director for Illinois. More than 80,000 Americans in all 50 states have given money to AFP or the foundation.

    • We want lower taxes and less government spending, ideas that appeal to a solid majority of Americans.
    • We support removing unnecessary barriers to entrepreneurship to spark citizen involvement in the regulatory process.
    • We aim to restore fairness to our judicial system.

    Americans aren’t fools. Our call for change is being echoed by millions of citizens. That experienced businesspeople and successful job-creators are among those putting resources behind it is not an insult to the effort, it’s an affirmation of it.

    Unfortunately, President Obama has ignored the people’s cries for fiscal responsibility. On issues including the stimulus, health care reform and tax policy, he’s hammered through decidedly liberal and unpopular approaches to America’s problems. Not surprisingly, his popularity rating is sinking, and polls indicate his party seems headed for a thrashing in November’s midterm elections.

    Without a positive agenda to run on, the president and his allies have launched the coordinated attacks in an attempt to discredit conservatives.

    After Obama’s Texas speech came a 10,000 word attack piece in the New Yorker magazine that went after the Kochs for supposedly “waging a war against Obama.” That article quoted a series of “experts” from groups that are supported by left-wing billionaire currency speculator George Soros, including the Center for Public Integrity and Media Matters for America.

    More chilling, Mark Holden, a lawyer for Koch Industries, has fingered Austan Goolsbee, one of Obama’s top economic advisers, as saying during a press briefing that Koch Industries did not pay corporate income taxes.

    Enough!

    The federal government has almost infinite power to investigate and intimidate people. It can, whether it intends to or not, easily destroy businesses and reputations. That’s why Americans recoiled against Richard Nixon in the 1970s when they learned he was using federal investigators to track his political “enemies.”

    Americans of all political persuasions can agree that we face serious national problems, including sluggish job growth and soaring federal spending. The way to solve these problems is by coming together, not by attacking each other. President Obama should call off the attack dogs, before they end up biting him too.

    Ronald Gidwitz is a partner in GCG Partners, a strategic consulting and equity capital firm he co-founded in 1998. He chairs the Illinois chapter of Americans for Prosperity.

  • More left-wing hatred, less facts

    Reason points out how New York Times columnist Frank Rich simply does not understand the issues he’s trying to cover. Either that, or he simply lies to make his left-wing, anti-capitalist political points.

    Matt Welch shows how Rich’s attempt to create an interesting conspiracy theory ignores all available facts.

    Frank Rich’s Connect-the-dots Errors

    By Matt Welch

    New York Times conspiracist Frank Rich had a column over the weekend positioning the Christine O’Donnells of the world as “useful idiots” providing “populist cover” for shadowy billionaires, especially the Koch family, who are cashing in on anti-government sentiment they themselves don’t believe in, in order to stage a political “coup.”

    Continue reading at Reason

  • Mine safety regulations: do they work?

    The mainstream media attack on Charles Koch, David Koch, and Koch Industries has reached the state of West Virginia. This time a newspaper criticizes the Charles G. Koch Foundation for supporting a “conservative Morgantown think tank and several positions at the West Virginia University economics department.” A specific target of criticism is West Virginia University economics professor Russell S. Sobel and a collection of essays he edited.

    Here’s what the Charleston Gazette printed in an article: “One essay questions the value of ‘mandated’ mine safety laws, stating government regulations may increase accident rates.”

    Lobbing a brick like this doesn’t do much to increase understanding of important issues of public policy, including the safety of coal miners.

    Who could be opposed to the safety of coal miners, after all? I think we can all agree that we’d like miners to work in safety. But do laws and government regulation make them safer? The natural reaction of most people is to assume that government regulation will increase safety. But that’s not always the case.

    Here’s a recent example of regulatory failure: Recently research has been presented that shows that bans on texting while driving don’t work and may actually increase the number of crashes. The results of this research are contradictory to what almost everyone in Kansas — and other states — thought this year when the legislature passed, and the governor signed, the texting ban law. It was well-intentioned, but potentially harmful to the safety of drivers — the very people the law is designed to protect.

    Having seen examples of regulatory failure like this, we should ask this question: Have mine safety laws — well intentioned as they are — increased the safety of miners?

    Chapter 4 of the book in question (Unleashing Capitalism: Why Prosperity Stops at the West Virginia Border and How to Fix It) probably holds the material referred to by the Gazette. This chapter was not written by Sobel, but he is the book’s editor. Here’s two points from the book:

    • A focus by regulators on one type of accident led to an increase in other accidents. Overall deaths increased: “In 1910, the U.S. Bureau of Mines was created with a focus on mainly large-scale accidents, defined as gas and dust explosions and other accidents killing more than five men. State mining legislation was also mainly concerned with these types of accidents. This resulted in a decline in large-scale accidents, but an increase in small-scale accidents, which received less publicity but accounted for more deaths overall.”
    • Incentives matter: “With the passage of workers’ compensations laws, accidents actually increased. Under this new system, employers had an incentive to pay workers compensation instead of paying the extra costs of accident prevention.”

    So there is good reason to be skeptical and critical of mine safety laws, even though this is contradictory to a superficial examination of the issue. Yet the mainstream media will automatically demonize those who question the validity of government regulation and those who are bold enough to support their work.

  • New York Times’ criticism of Koch Industries

    The anti-human agenda of the New York Times is on full display in its criticism of Charles Koch, David Koch, and Koch Industries regarding a contribution to the campaign against the AB32 ballot measure in California.

    To the Times, the question of man-made global warming and its purported harm is fully settled. Anyone who questions this is labeled a crank — or worse.

    Slowly but surely, the contradictions of the global warming alarmists are being revealed. Writing in the Washington Times, Richard Rahn points out the conflict of interest inherent in many of the global warming alarmists:

    It is also true that more environmental scientists say that global warming is a problem than not. But if you omit from your sample all of those environmental scientists who are on a government tab — salary or research grant — and those relatively few environmental scientists who are on the tab of an oil company or some other vested private industry, you are likely to have a much smaller ratio between those who agree versus those who disagree about global warming. If you are a professor at a state university and write a research paper showing that global warming is not a problem, how long do you think your government funding will remain?

    In the case of the New York Times, a crusade against energy fits right in with its hatred of capitalism and the freedom that inexpensive energy gives to millions of Americans with modest incomes. If you’re the typical Times reader, you don’t have to worry much about the cost of energy. But for most Americans, the cost of energy is very important.

    Inexpensive energy — which the Times opposes — is essential to our standard of living and its continued advancement. As economist George Reisman has written, we need to consider “the comparative valuation attached to retaining industrial civilization versus avoiding global warming.” This is a balance that global warming alarmists don’t consider. Or if they do, they come out against human progress in favor of something else.

    The types of carbon emission controls and reductions advocated by the Times would lead to — in Reisman’s words again — “the end of further economic progress and the onset of economic retrogression.” Summing up, he writes: “Global warming is not a threat. But environmentalism’s response to it is.”

    This is why we should be thankful that Charles and David Koch have been active in the global warming debate. Koch Industries‘ position on this issue is given on their website KochFacts.com:

    A free society and the scientific method require an open, honest airing of all sides, not demonizing and silencing those with whom you disagree. We’ve strived to encourage an intellectually honest debate on the scientific basis for claims of harm from greenhouse gases. Because it’s crucial to understand whether proposed initiatives to reduce greenhouse gases will achieve desired environmental goals and what effects they would likely have on the global economy, we have tried to help highlight the facts of the potential effectiveness and costs of policies proposed.

  • Media only mind when donors are conservatives

    Today’s Washington Times carries an editorial that points out — as others have — the bias evident in the mainstream media treatment of Charles Koch, David Koch, and Koch Industries.

    The major points made in this piece are:

    • The Koch brothers are accused of “self-dealing” because they believe in free enterprise. But economic freedom generates prosperity that is good for everyone, rich and poor.
    • George Soros, the Left’s favorite and prodigious donor made his money betting on economic failure.
    • The government funds many climate scientists who push global warming alarmism.
    • The MSNBC television network, which strongly supports the Obama administration and its big-government policies, has been owned by General Electric, one of the nation’s largest government contractors.

    There’s more in the article.

    Conflict-of-interest bugaboo

    Media only mind when donors are conservatives
    By Richard W. Rahn

    What is the most corrupting institution in society? Quite simply, it is government, because it controls and distributes more money to more people and institutions than any other single entity and it has the power to coerce and punish or reward that dwarfs what any private party might be capable of doing.

    Now that we are in the midst of the political season, we are constantly being warned by the establishment media about the dangers of businesses donating to political candidates either directly or indirectly. In recent weeks, there have been at least two major hits in the New Yorker and New York magazine on businessmen Charles and David Koch and their roles in supporting candidates who oppose the policies of President Obama and the Democrats, as well as for supporting free-market think tanks and grass-roots organizations. Yet, at the same time, the articles note that the brothers have given far more to cultural institutions and events than they have to their political causes. Through factual errors, exaggerations and insinuations, the Koch brothers are portrayed as a great danger to the “progressives.” Ah, if only it were more true.

    Continue reading at The Washington Times