Free Republic

Alaska Senate Race Becomes Most Expensive Campaign In State's History By MARIA L. LA GANGA With $39 million in outside spending to sway half a million voters, Alaska Senate race is priciest per capita Both candidates in Alaska Senate contest condemn outside money, but it keeps rolling in The local official introducing the candidate eventually got around to the point — Sen. Mark Begich, standing up for Alaskans, get out the vote — but first he lit into the Koch brothers and what he described as money's power to warp politics. "They're literally spending hundreds of millions of dollars to...

As Wichita’s Koch family has learned the hard way, the surest way to make mortal enemies in contemporary America is to build a hugely successful business, stick to your principles, and care about the future of your country. A bantam-weight among those enemies is The Kansas City Star. Not above the occasional rabbit punch, Star editors jabbed away with a recent story headlined, “Conservative Koch group launches TV ad attacking Orman in Kansas Senate race.” Never mind that the Kochs are libertarians, not conservatives. What intrigues about the story is that hundreds of groups run ads every campaign season. To...

Here is an exclusive and detailed account of the UCLA Hammer Museum event featuring hokey stick inventor Michael Mann.This event was notable even before this report for: UCLA taking away Michael Mann’s false Nobel prize; andWeather Channel Founder John Coleman’s letter to UCLA denouncing warmism and demanding equal time for skeptics. Report on Octber 23, 2014 UCLA Hammer Museum Event “Tackling Climate Change Nationally and Globally” By Michael Greer (@thetalentscout) October 24, 2014Last night I went to the Hammer Museum to hear Michael Mann of Penn State and Brenda Ekwurzel of the Union of Concerned Scientists speak about global warming....

Joyce and Karen Koch aren’t related to each other. But that’s not important; they’re sisters “in spirit.” Besides, what they really want you to know is that they’re not related to the Koch brothers, the billionaire conservatives funding political candidates and causes nationwide. more...

The Koch Brothers are the 2 headed devil the left and the lame stream media so often targets. I'd challenge them to read this article, I seriously doubt it’ll do anything to influence their misguided opinion but you never know.

Some of the most powerful political committees faced a Wednesday deadline to reveal how much cash they raised and spent during July, August and September. It was likely to be one the last times before Nov. 4’s elections that voters could see how millions of dollars were flowing into outside campaign groups. Only groups that report their money in three-month windows were filing Wednesday. …

In 2007, Charles Koch, CEO of Koch Industries, Inc., published a book titled “The Science of Success: How Market-Based Management Built the World’s Largest Private Company,” laying out five principles that comprise his market-based management philosophy, to which he attributes the exponential growth of Koch Industries. As political observers are likely aware, the success of Koch Industries has enabled the Kochs to spend millions of dollars funding libertarian ideological initiatives and Republican political campaigns, something Democrats are not enamored of. Sen. Harry Reid most famously has attacked the Kochs — using them as a caricature for the villainous one percent...

Should election campaigns and the candidates themselves - be it in Iowa with Bruce Braley (D) saying his rival Joni Ernst (R) is tied to the hip of the Koch Brothers or be it Tom Cotton in Arkansas (R) saying his rival Mark Pryor (D) is tied to the hip of Obama - eschew such tactics? In summation... Should both sides (be it the candidates and PACs on the Republican and Democrat side) eschew this political tactic, or should both sides continue to employ this tactic - and how is the MSM figuring into the dissemination of this political tactic?

While strong cases can be made for both Benghazi and Fast and Furious, most voters consider Barack Obama’s misuse of the IRS to be his administration’s worst scandal so far. But, as we wrote last year, targeting of conservative non-profits for harassment is not the only dimension of the IRS scandal. In addition, there is strong reason to believe that one or more White House political appointees have illegally accessed private taxpayer information and used it for political gain.Austan Goolsbee directed Obama’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board and later chaired his Council of Economic Advisers. In August 2010, Goolsbee conducted...

Together, Charles and David Koch control one of the world's largest fortunes, which they are using to buy up our political system. But what they don't want you to know is how they made all that money. The enormity of the Koch fortune is no mystery. Brothers Charles and David are each worth more than $40 billion. The electoral influence of the Koch brothers is similarly well-chronicled. The Kochs are our homegrown oligarchs; they've cornered the market on Republican politics and are nakedly attempting to buy Congress and the White House. Their political network helped finance the Tea Party and...

A couple of weeks ago at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, several hundred people went to their feet to applaud a speech delivered by David H. Koch. The occasion was the opening of the Met’s new facade on Fifth Avenue. ... Mr. Koch contributed the entire $65 million cost of the project, which took years to complete. The Left demonizes David Koch and his brother Charles for their free-market views, their political donations, and the fact that they run a substantial energy company. Harry Reid has made a new career of it, calling them “un-American.” But on the platform...

Scandal: A court tells the White House to ac knowledge the existence of a probe into whether one of its advisers used private tax records for political gain. Transparency is being forced on an administration that's anything but. In 2010, an attorney for industrialists and libertarian political donors Charles and David Koch told the Weekly Standard of a senior Obama aide telling reporters on background that the Kochs "do not pay corporate income tax" through their company, Koch Industries. How, the attorney justifiably wondered, did the White House get his clients' private information from the IRS? The anonymous official has...

An American worth less than $1.55 billion could not land on this year's "The Forbes 400," the annual ranking for the richest people in America. The cut-off increase from last year's $1.3 billion disqualified 113 poor billionaires for this year's list. Bill Gates once again lorded over his fellow wealthy Americans for the 21st consecutive year with a healthy $81 billion, up $9 billion from 2013. He outpaced Warren Buffet ($67 billion), Larry Ellison ($50 billion) and the Koch brothers' Charles and David (each worth $42 billion) to round out the top five. Michael Bloomberg ($35 billion) managed to slide...

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In 2007, when the Charles Koch Foundation considered giving millions of dollars to Florida State University’s economics department, the offer came with strings attached. First, the curriculum it funded must align with the libertarian, deregulatory economic philosophy of Charles Koch, the billionaire industrialist and Republican political bankroller. Second, the Charles Koch Foundation would at least partially control which faculty members Florida State University hired. And third, Bruce Benson, a prominent libertarian economic theorist and Florida State University economics department chairman, must stay on another three years as department chairman—even though he told his wife he’d step down in 2009 after...

Blissfully unaware of how hot the irony burned, Robert Kennedy Jr. yesterday took to a public protest to rail avidly in favor of censorship. The United States government, Kennedy lamented in an interview with Climate Depot, is not permitted by law to “punish” or to imprison those who disagree with him — and this, he proposed, is a problem of existential proportions. Were he to have his way, Kennedy admitted, he would cheer the prosecution of a host of “treasonous” figures — among them a number of unspecified “politicians”; those bêtes noires of the global Left, Kansas’s own Koch Brothers;...

Senate Democrats started their campaign-season drive Monday for a constitutional amendment aimed at curbing special interests’ financial clout in elections, a doomed effort the party hopes will help them make a populist appeal to voters. The measure would allow Congress and the states to limit the money raised and spent in election campaigns by outside groups, candidates and others, curbs that the Supreme Court has weakened in recent years. It has no chance of winning the two-thirds majority needed to clear the Senate, let alone even being considered by the Republican-run House. Democrats brought the measure to the Senate floor...

The nation’s largest labor federation took aim Tuesday at the conservative Koch brothers in ads designed to highlight the billionaire industrialists’ political clout and to gin up liberal voters. […] “For years, the Koch brothers have epitomized how corporations and the super-rich have tried to systematically destroy our democracy,” president of the 12 million-member AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said. “Today, they’re finally meeting their match.” …

Candidates for new congressional district focus on their Republican credentials. HOUSTON -- Face to face for the first time since the primary, GOP congressional candidates Ben Streusand and Michael McCaul stayed in tune with a runoff campaign that has devolved into an issue-free contest based on questioning each other's Republican credentials. After several previously scheduled debates fell through when Streusand didn't show up, and after some last-minute negotiations needed to get McCaul to show up Tuesday, the two candidates sparred at an evening event organized by several Houston-area Republican clubs. Streusand and McCaul will face off in an April 13...

RUSH: George Bush yesterday, the 9/11 memorials. You know, a friend of mine observed this. What did Obama do? Obama went to a soup kitchen, 9/11, a day of service, as though we've got something to apologize for, for what happened on 9/11. A friend of mine observes Obama and Bloomberg both acted like it was a natural disaster. Bush, George W. Bush, who, by the way, stands tall in retrospect. Ten years, not one attack. Great statesmanship. If somebody told me today they wanted to put Bush's face on Mount Rushmore, I'd be in there supporting it. I saw...