Free Republic

Florida Republican Rep. Anna Paulina Luna blasted a so-called “immigration expert” testifying before a House committee in Washington on Wednesday when he began laughing at her over her accusations that the Biden administration is aiding in the trafficking of children at the southern border. David J. Bier, associate director of immigration studies at the Cato Institute, was testifying before lawmakers during a House hearing on immigration when he began openly laughing at Rep. Luna when she was asking him her questions. The Cato Institute is a libertarian think tank based in Washington, D.C., that is funded by the Koch Brothers...

The Koch Brothers are teaming up with tech companies, universities and other fellow billionaires to combat online extremism. On July 17, the After Charlottesville Project will host its second summit in San Francisco, California. Founded in the aftermath of the deadly 2017 white supremacist attacks in Virginia, the conference brings together political and business leaders to discuss solutions for curbing political terrorism. While last year’s gathering in Missouri involved grassroots and city response initiatives, the focus of this year’s summit will involve the “private tech sector” and “best practices on the fight against hate and extremism online,” according to the...

The pro-mass immigration Koch brothers’ network of billionaire, donor-class organizations is readying to financially back Democrats, so long as they promise to support amnesty for illegal aliens and vote to advance free trade at all costs. In a memo to its staff, the Koch-funded Americans for Prosperity (AFP) organization announced that the economic libertarian group is set to back any elected official in Washington, DC, — including Democrats — who support their agenda of amnesty for illegal aliens and endless free trade, and oppose the GOP voter-preferred economic nationalist agenda of less immigration and tariffs to protect American jobs. The...

President Donald Trump’s nominee to oversee chemical safety at the Environmental Protection Agency has for years accepted payments for criticizing studies that raised concerns about the safety of his clients’ products, according to a review of financial records and his published work by The Associated Press. Michael L. Dourson’s nomination as head of EPA’s Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention was to be considered by a Senate committee Wednesday, but was postponed when the Senate adjourned early for the week. If confirmed, ethics experts said, Dourson’s past writings and the money paid to him and a nonprofit he founded...

Many scientists disagree. They say those quakes, and thousands of others before and since, are mainly the work of humans, caused by wells used to bury vast amounts of wastewater from oil and gas exploration deep in the earth near fault zones. And they warn that continuing to entomb such huge quantities risks more dangerous tremors — if not here, then elsewhere in the state’s sprawling well fields.

Nowadays, the Kochs, with their billionaire accomplices, secretly donate funds to their countermovement lackeys whilst operating in the shadows, like Al-Qaeda, operating out of caves, and, similar to how the Weathermen operated, aka: the Weather Underground Organization, circa 1970s, whose goal was overthrow of the U.S. government. In point of fact, they may eventually be classified as white-collar terrorists, but they have every appearance of honest, upstanding citizenship. On any given Sunday, you’d probably exchange a smile with them at church without suspecting in the least that you are acknowledging a terrorist.

A new documentary makes the controversial case that a political cocktail of big corporate money and racially charged sentiments has helped fuel the rise of the tea party. And squarely behind that movement, the film argues, are the Koch brothers. Co-Directors Carl Deal and Tia Lessin sat down with “Top Line” to discuss their film, “Citizen Koch,” and why they say the GOP’s deep-pocketed donors, the Koch brothers, are such figures in American politics today. “Money – $100 billion now,” Deal said in explaining the Kochs’ influence. “When we started out making this film, their net worth was about $68...

Chuck Schumer has joined Harry Reid in obsessive attacks on Charles and David Koch and their company, Koch Industries. […] Here is the funny thing: when KochPAC, Koch Industries’ political action committee, donated money to Schumer’s 2010 Senatorial campaign, Schumer thought the Kochs were wonderful. …

Add Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.) to the list of Senate Democrats who have benefitted from Koch money. In fact, he might as well pay one of his grandchildren to stitch Koch insignias onto his suit to denote their sponsorship: According to campaign finance records, former Koch Industries lobbyist Robert P. Hall III donated $500 to Reid’s campaign in 2003. Hall worked for Koch Industries from 1998 to 2004, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. He was previously a lobbyist for INVISTA, the Koch Industries subsidiary that Democrats are targeting in their latest campaign to “other” the...

How lame can you get. Kathleen Park, a WaPo columnist and failed CNN host, criticized and AFP ad because the guy in it had a southern accent. She argued that there are plenty of smart, sophisticated people who are just as confused by the Obamacare law. So, no need to get a stupid guy with a southern accent when a smart sophisticated person will do:

The Washington Post recently published a quixotic editorial maintaining that the left has no deep-pocketed financiers like the right does in the much written about and thoroughly maligned Koch brothers. In its editorial, the paper laments that Democrat groups have no one like the Kochs. For the Post, Reid Wilson wrote that for "Democratic professionals who actually run campaigns, the thing that frustrates them most about the Koch brothers network is that there’s no real equivalent on their side."

Something of a wake-up call for establishment Republicans, I think. The New York Times is reporting that “insurgent” Republican groups are outraising more establishment-oriented organizations. By a lot.

Threats by members of the Los Angeles City Council to use the city’s pension funds to penalize investors if they sell the Los Angeles Times to Charles and David Koch could be illegal and unconstitutional, experts say.A proposal by councilman Bill Rosendahl would allow the city to yank investments by the city’s three pension funds in the Tribune Co., which owns the Times, if the company opts to sell the paper to someone who does not uphold “the highest terms of professional and objective journalism.”Rumors that libertarian industrialists Charles and David Koch might buy the paper spurred him to propose...

Americans for Prosperity, the Tea Party organization backed by the Koch brothers, is set to begin a $25 million advertising assault aimed at President Obama, its largest effort to date. The ad takes a relatively straightforward approach, avoiding hyperbole or over-the-top negativity. An image of the national debt clock appears on screen for much of the ad, ticking ever higher. It ends with Mr. Obama's words, "If I don't have this done in three years, then there's going to be a one-term proposition."

According to Opensecrets.org Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton and seven other Senate Democrats took political donations from Koch Industries in 2008. Democrats and the left have since demonized Charles Koch and David Koch, co-owners of Koch Industries. Via Opensecrets.org 

An open letter to the Obama campaign Byron Tau reports at Politico that the Koch Companies have released a response to the Obama campaign’s fundraising letter of this past Friday directly assaulting the Koch brothers and their business. John wrote about the disgusting nature of the Obama capping fundraising letter here, alternately quoting from and responding to it. It is a letter that comes straight out of the Alinsky playbook. Tau links to the Koch Companies’ response, a letter to the Obama campaign from Phillip Ellender, head of Government Affairs and Public Relations at the Koch Companies. It seems to...

Nothing new here. Remember, O’s very first campaign ad of the year was also aimed at the Kochs. Until the GOP chooses a nominee, the Emmanuel Goldstein brothers will have to do as the designated root of all political evil. Look at it from Obama’s perspective: What’s more likely to get a shrieking leftist to open his wallet, some perfunctory grumbling about Mitt “Meh” Romney or a dire new warning about just how far the Kochtopus’s tentacles extend? The title of the fundraising e-mail, no joke: “They’re obsessed.” In just about 24 hours, Mitt Romney is headed to a hotel...

Gov. Rick Perry spoke Sunday at a summit hosted by the billionaire Koch brothers near Vail, Colorado. Perry spokesman....described the Colorado summit as a “private gathering of business leaders” and said it was not related to a possible presidential campaign. “This was an opportunity to talk about the economic success in Texas,” Miner said, adding that it was no different than other speeches Perry gives touting the Texas job record. Charles and David Koch of Koch Industries, an energy conglomerate based in Kansas, are among the country’s leading financial backers of conservative candidates and causes. The Denver Post has more...

For some time now, the left has been whipping up a boycott campaign against its favorite bogeymen, David and Charles Koch, billionaire owners of Georgia Pacific. As the lefties see it, the Koch brothers fund conservative organizations and politicians, like the Tea Party — which means, according to Common Cause, that they are “moving democracy into the control of more wealthy corporate hands.” (Common Cause, it should be noted, is itself heavily funded by corporate types, including the Kochs’ left-wing counterpart, George Soros.) But now, a top official of the United Steelworkers union, International Vice President Jon Geenen, has discovered...