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An activist dressed as a fossil fuel executive pours fake gas over fake money outside Shell’s headquarters in May 2026. During the 2026 midterm elections, the U.S. fossil fuel industry lit actual money on fire trying to elect Republicans. Photo by James Willoughby/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images.

The U.S. oil and gas industry spent at least $182 million trying to elect Republicans in last night’s midterm elections¹.

It didn’t buy them very much.

Voters rejected fossil fuel allies and priorities across the country, not only stripping Republicans of control of both the House and Senate, but delivering stunning defeats in fossil-fueled governors’ races, state legislatures, regulatory commissions, and ballot measures.

Here are some notable examples.

• Republicans lost control of the House and Senate despite large oil industry donations. Chevron gave $8.2 million, Koch Inc. gave $6.8 million, and Energy Transfer gave $2 million to the Senate Leadership Fund and Congressional Leadership Fund, according to a Public Citizen analysis. The American Petroleum Institute gave at least another $8 million to the two super PACs, which work to elect Republican majorities in Congress. Republicans still lost both chambers.
• A Texas oil billionaire’s attempt to buy Michigan’s Senate race failed. Texas oil billionaire Tim Dunn gave $5 million to a super PAC backing Republican Mike Rogers in Michigan’s Senate race. It didn’t matter. Voters still elected Democrat Abdul El-Sayed, whose platform includes shutting down the Line 5 pipeline and transitioning to 100 percent renewable energy.
• In fact, pretty much everything Tim Dunn tried to do failed. The ultra-Christian oil billionaire gave more than $11 million to Texas Republican PACs, with almost all of it going to Texans United for a Conservative Majority. And what happened in Texas was the polar opposite of a conservative majority. Speaking of which:
• Chevron and fracking money couldn’t make Texans like Ken Paxton. Lone Star Liberty PAC, the group backing Republican Ken Paxton’s bid for U.S. Senate, received at least $2 million from oil and gas interests, including $200,000 from the Chevron Employees PAC and $250,000 from oil executive Russell Gordy. Fracking billionaire Farris Wilks gave another $250,000 to Paxton Victory. Voters still elected James Talarico, who campaigned on restoring federal support for renewable energy and strengthening clean air and water protections.
• Chevron couldn’t save Susan Collins, either. The oil company gave $200,000 to Pine Tree Results PAC, the super PAC backing Maine’s Republican senator. Voters still elected Democrat Troy Jackson, ending Collins’s nearly three decades in the Senate.

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• Two oil executives poured ~$6 million down the drain trying to save Greg Abbott. Midland Energy founder Javaid Anwar contributed about $4.37 million to the Texas Republican governor’s re-election campaign, and Energy Transfer’s Kelcy Warren also gave at least $1.5 million. Texans still elected Democrat Gina Hinojosa, who campaigned on making the energy industry pay its fair share and accused Abbott of letting gas companies profit at Texans’ expense during the deadly 2021 blackouts.
• Fossil fuel money couldn’t even save Texas’s fossil fuel regulator. In perhaps the most stunning blue flip in Texas, Democrat Jon Rosenthal won the race to oversee the Texas Railroad Commission, the agency that oversees the state’s massive oil and gas industry—and his did it despite his Republican opponent receiving $1.8 million from oil-linked donors. While Rosenthal hardly portrays himself as a climate champion, he’s campaigned on ending routine flaring and venting, requiring modern leak detection, and enforcing pollution rules.
• An oil heir wasted $18 million trying to buy the Texas attorney general’s office. Republican Mayes Middleton, president of his family’s Middleton Oil Company, contributed $18 million to his own campaign, but ultimately wound up losing to Nathan Johnson, who will become the first elected Democrat attorney general in Texas since 1994. This could have major implications for climate accountability, as state attorneys general have the power to investigate corporate deception and sue fossil fuel companies for misleading the public about climate change. (Middleton also received $100,000 donations from Energy Transfer vice chairman Kelcy Warren and Double Eagle co-founder Cody Campbell, to no avail.)
• Utility and coal money couldn’t keep Georgia’s energy regulators in Republican hands. For the first time in decades, Democrats gained control of Georgia Public Service Commission, which helps decide how much people pay for electricity and which power plants Georgia Power builds. They did this despite fossil fuel money flowing into the race: Republican candidate Fitz Johnson received nearly $200,000 from donors connected to companies the commission regulates, while Republican candidate Josh Tolbert received $63,200 from trusts linked to Alabama’s coal-rich Drummond family.
• Colorado voters will likely reject a Constitutional amendment establishing the right to buy methane gas. Amendment 82’s financial backers were largely unknown, but the ballot measure’s express purpose was to undermine state and local efforts to move buildings to electric appliances—so I’m just assuming it was a fossil fuel-backed measure. Nevertheless, it looks destined for defeat: With counting continuing, Amendment 82 had only about 46 percent support, well short of the 55 percent needed to pass.
• Bonus: Elon Musk flushed $445 million down the toilet. “But Elon Musk isn’t a fossil fuel billionaire,” you say. And sure, perhaps that’s technically true—but it’s getting less true by the day. Earlier this year, his company SpaceX acquired a literal fossil fuel company called APR Energy, in a deal valued at roughly $1 billion. APR operates mobile gas and diesel turbines to power AI data centers. Speaking of which, by June, Musk’s AI company xAI had installed at least 57 methane gas turbines at its Mississippi power plant, according to the NAACP and environmental groups—with enough generating capacity to power an estimated 738,000 to 950,000 homes. If that’s not a man in the fossil fuel business, please tell me what is.

Now, none of this is to say that oil money was entirely defeated in the 2026 midterms. Many fossil fuel-backed Republicans, including Texas Senator August Pfluger and U.S House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, handily won reelection.

Nor is it to say that the oil industry’s priorities will suddenly disappear from U.S. politics. Donald Trump is still the president, and *many* elected Democrats are out and proud champions of methane gas, one of the most climate-polluting fuels on the planet. (Perhaps now this is a good time to remind everyone that James Talarico championed ExxonMobil on the campaign trail).

But last night demonstrated something worth remembering, particularly for people who care about climate change but often doubt whether meaningful progress is possible, and as we head into two more difficult years of trying to achieve some kind of climate action under Donald Trump.

Fossil fuel money is one of the most powerful forces in American politics. It is the biggest obstacle we face in preserving a livable climate for everyone on Earth.

But it is not invincible.

Not even close.

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https://www.desmog.com/2022/09/20/petroleum-papers-geoff-dembicki-oil-sands-canada-exxon-imperial-syncrude-climate-denial/

Imperial Oil might not be a household name in the United States, but the company, which is mostly owned by ExxonMobil, is a big name in Canada. There, it’s one of the major players in Canada’s oil sands — the name for the vast fields containing a tarry mixture of sand, water, and the thick, heavy oil called bitumen — that were first mined in 1967. These oil sands, sometimes called “tar sands,” which lie in northern Alberta, are one of the largest oil reserves in the world.

But the oil that comes from them is distinctive in several ways. Oil sands’ unique texture means it takes more money and energy to refine than traditional crude. In addition, its oil is some of the most carbon-heavy in the world, with up to 20 percent higher emissions, and that has drawn the attention of climate advocates. Because of these factors, asGeoff Dembickiexplains in his new book **The Petroleum Papers: Inside the Far-Right Conspiracy to Cover Up Climate Change** (Greystone Books, September 20),oil sands producers and refiners, like Imperial Oil or Koch Industries, are particularly vulnerable to any efforts to mitigate climate change that would increase the already higher costs of extracting and refining bitumen.

Dembicki’s book illuminates for the first time how these industry players profited from Canada’s oil sands and then spun those profits into international networks of climate denial that would help extend the oil sands’ lifetime. “Bitumen from Alberta bankrolled the assault on truth led by companies such as Koch Industries and Exxon,” he writes. Dembicki drew heavily on the Imperial Oil Files we published in 2019, relying on internal company documents that demonstrated not only that Imperial Oil knew about climate change by the late 1970s but also that it studied climate solutions — so that it could try to shut them down. As he explains in the book, “Canada could slow down climate change, or it could tap one of the world’s largest oil reserves — but it couldn’t do both.” It chose the oil sands. 

Those oil sands–fueled efforts to spread climate denial and delay action aren’t just a thing of the past. As Dembicki demonstrates, “the machinery of Big Oil’s climate crisis denial” continues its work influencing U.S. and Canadian politics even today.

We spoke with Dembicki ahead of the release of The Petroleum Papers. The following conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Lindsey J. Smith

I want to start with a really simple question: Why write about the oil sands?

Geoff Dembicki

For me, it’s kind of personal because I was born and raised in Edmonton, Alberta. That’s only a few hours’ drive south of the oil sands and, literally, my childhood home was just down the road from a huge oil refinery, and friends and family worked in the oil and gas industry. As I got older, I just wanted to have a better understanding of the industry. And then, of course, once I learned about the massive climate impacts it was creating, and how some of the companies involved with that industry had covered up those impacts and lied to the public that just got me more and more curious.

SMITH

Do you think that other people, even people who are informed about climate change, are aware of the oil sands and of their climate impact?

DEMBICKI

There is a bit of awareness of that, especially in Canada. But part of the reason I wanted to do this book was to really educate readers in the U.S., and in Canada, and all over the world, just about the massive climate impacts that this gigantic oil industry has created. I think when a lot of Americans imagine foreign oil, they’re thinking about like Saudi Arabia, or something, but a huge part of the oil that Americans use every day, and that Canada sends to the U.S., comes directly from the oil sands. And it’s not just like the physical properties of oil that affect what’s happening with climate change. As I explain in the book, there’s a long history of sort of very powerful conservative forces — like Koch Industries, or even going back to Howard Pew in the 1950s and ’60s, and these are people who had a very sort of reactionary, far-right view on the world — and Canada’s oil was important to those types of business people and really funded and made possible this torrent of a very conservative politics, which has had a massive impact on our ability to deal with the climate emergency.

SMITH

A great example of that in the book is thePine Bend refinery owned by Koch Industries.

DEMBICKI

Yeah. I had known that Koch Industries owned and operated this refinery in Minnesota for a while, but I don’t think I knew how central it was to their company and to their history until I started doing more research for this book. Because it [is] placed so closely to the Canadian border, they could import all of this oil from Canada, which other U.S. refiners didn’t usually take because it was lower quality and required specialized equipment. And so the Kochs were able to do that in their Minnesota refinery and then they can sell the processed oil as gasoline and whatever else at extremely high margins. This created so much money for Koch Industries in the early days that it really allowed the company to become the massive industrial behemoth that it is now. And then, of course, everyone knows the political impact of the Koch brothers becoming so wealthy, which is like an absolute restructuring of our entire political system along free market, anti-government, climate denying lines. So I was just amazed at the central role that oil from Canada played in all of that. 

Canadian oil sands giant Suncor Energy’s plant. Credit: [Suncor Energy (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

SMITH

I think that’s something that will surprise a lot of readers. Beyond Koch Industries, I’m wondering if you could briefly summarize the web of denial connected to the oil sands?

DEMBICKI

Part of the reason we named the book “The Petroleum Papers” is because I was drawing heavily on this large archive of documents that DeSmog and some others obtained, called the Imperial files, which is a record going back decades of what this company discussed internally in terms of the environment and climate change. Imperial Oil was doing all of this research on climate change, going back to like the 1960s even, and then sharing a lot of that research with Exxon executives. The documents are quite, quite amazing and kind of because they show how scientists inside Imperial and Exxon not only studied climate change internally long before the public knew about it, but they also anticipated that climate change would become a major public policy issue. They were really worried that there would be government regulations that would make their oil sands operations no longer profitable. And so before this issue was even clearly defined for the public, Imperial Oil was already figuring out ways to not only discredit the science of climate change, but also to discredit solutions that could fix the climate emergency too.

SMITH

What solutions were they studying?

DEMBICKI

There’s a document from 1993 that was one of the most alarming that I saw in the entire course of doing research for this. Basically, in the early ’90s, climate change was just starting to become a publicly known issue, but it was very ill-defined so people didn’t really know what to think of it. So Imperial Oil decided to model a bunch of different potential solutions for climate change internally so it would know how to respond. Imperial studied a bunch of different solutions… [and] determined that if there was this price on carbon emissions across the whole economy, this could actually have a really big positive impact on fighting climate change. 

And then, this part, which was not known before and it was just included in a few footnotes in Imperial’s research, was that in the early days of bringing in such a policy, there would be an economic hit mostly through oil refineries and stuff being closed down. But Imperial actually determined that all of the tax revenue from a carbon price would create this huge amount of money that governments could then spend on green infrastructure and other forms of climate stimulus. And this would actually have a positive impact on the economy. I was just floored by that because it’s like, decades and decades ago, Imperial basically acknowledges that you could do a big part in fixing climate change, and it actually wouldn’t hurt the economy at all, it would probably be good for it. It would just be bad for Imperial Oil, and the oil sands. In this document in 1993, Imperial Oil came up with aconfidential plan to misrepresent its own research to policymakers and government and media. There were all of these talking points emphasizing the uncertainty of climate solutions, how it would be bad for the economy, it would hurt international competitiveness.At this very early stage, when we could have made a big impact in fighting the climate emergency, Imperial had already planted these seeds of sabotage and denial.

Read: Exxon Could Have Helped Stop Climate Change 30 Years Ago, ‘Proprietary’ Docs Show

SMITH

Wow, that’s infuriating. A lot of the latter half of the book focuses on these climate lawsuits that have come up in the last few years, including some led by a lawyer named Steve Berman, who managed to finally get a ruling in the courts against Big Tobacco. He and others are now trying to prove a similar thing with Big Oil: that these companies knew that their products were harmful, and they misled the public about that. So far, these climate lawsuits haven’t succeeded, but I’m wondering if you have any thoughts on what it might take for one to succeed?

DEMBICKI

I mean, it’s definitely a long game. With tobacco, it took decades to get any sort of ruling against the industry. That said, there’s been climate lawsuits against Big Oil, I believe, filed by more than 20 jurisdictions in the U.S. Those lawsuits haven’t resulted in any big rulings against the industry yet, but the fact that they’re still all sort of moving forward and clearing procedural hurdles is a big deal. To me, though, the most significant thing that these lawsuits do is really change the narrative around climate change. For so long, we’ve had this idea that no one specifically can be held responsible for climate change because it’s something that we all contribute to. But the climate change lawsuits flip all of that on its head, and they point directly at the oil and gas industry. And it’s not just for the emissions that that industry releases, even though they’re significant. It’s the fact that we had all these really good opportunities to bring in meaningful legislation and to clean up the economy, and the oil and gas industry has played a really bad faith role in sabotaging those solutions, spreading denial about them, confusing the public, flooding politics with their money. These lawsuits are pointing blame at specific companies, specific executives, specific industry groups, and I think that we’re still in the early days, but that’s really going to profoundly change how people see the climate emergency.

Suncor’s primary extraction plants separate raw bitumen from the sand in giant separation cells. Credit: [Suncor Energy (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

SMITH

One of the lawsuits in particular in the book that caught your attention is a case in Colorado against an oil refinery operated by Suncor, a Canadian oil sands company, in the greater Denver area. The lawsuit names both Suncor and Exxon and calls out the oil sands as a major contributing factor to the pollution locals are dealing with. Why is that lawsuit significant?

DEMBICKI

That one was interesting to me because it specifically named Suncor and Exxon. When I heard about that, I was like, “Oh, this is a lawsuit against the oil sands.” Suncor is the company that grew out of Sun Oil, which created the first commercial oil sands operation back in the ’60s. And the second big commercial oil sands operation was started by Imperial Oil, the Exxon subsidiary. Essentially, it’s litigation against the entire Canadian oil sands industry.

SMITH

Another thing that stood out to me in the book was that some of the U.S.’s early support for developing Canada’s oil sands had to do with wanting to have a friendly source of oil in the face of communism. I feel like we’re in a very similar moment right now, where oil and gas companies are capitalizing on a global political crisis to expand production. What can we take away from that past push to develop the oil sands that also applies to this moment we’re in?

DEMBICKI

I think there are two big takeaways for me, or almost like general principles of disinformation that I have observed taking place over many decades. One of them, as you pointed out, is that the oil and gas industry always, always loves to use a global political crisis for its own favor. Of course, the oil and gas industry isn’t in the business of trying to provide good faith solutions to geopolitical problems. They’re looking out for their profits, and that’s always been the case. So I think we can always expect oil and gas companies to try to turn any large global crisis in [their] favor.

The second big pattern I noticed was at the moments of greatest possibility in fixing the climate emergency, that’s when the disinformation and the torrent of denial will be at its loudest. When governments are close to bringing in huge structural changes to the economy to fight climate change, when that poses the biggest economic threat to oil and gas companies, that’s when their denial machine really just cranks up as loud as possible.[// Brulle]

Learn more about these issues by checking out :{Dembicki’s book:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}: and diving into :{the Imperial Oil Files:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}:.

https://www.citywatchla.com/index.php/cw/guest-words/24209-the-money-trail-ginni-thomas-emails-to-overturn-biden-s-election-leads-to-charles-koch

2020 ELECTION CONSPIRACY - The Washington Post’s Bob Woodward and Bob Costa of CBS News have unleashed a fury of renewed interest in the work of the House Select Committee investigating the January 6 attack on the Capitol.

Last Thursday, Woodward and Costa set off a political firestorm when they released the contents of emails that Ginni Thomas, wife of the sitting Supreme Court Justice, Clarence Thomas, had sent to President Donald Trump’s Chief of Staff, Mark Meadows, in 2020, urging him to overturn the Biden election win and attempting to steer his efforts in that regard.

A total of 29 emails were obtained by Woodward and Costa, with the bulk of the emails occurring in just the month of November 2020, raising questions as to how many more emails are still out there from Thomas to the White House from December 1, 2020 through January 20, 2021 when Biden was sworn in.

Much of the current news debate around the emails is focusing on whether Clarence Thomas should recuse himself from cases involving groups with which his wife is involved and whether the Select Committee should subpoena Ginni Thomas to testify. While those are certainly important issues, what has thus far been ignored is the smoking gun trail that leads directly to the doorstep of billionaire and right-wing Republican political mastermind, Charles Koch, the Chairman, CEO (and majority owner with the heirs of his deceased brother David) of the fossil fuels conglomerate Koch Industries.

Wall Street On Parade has previously documented that at least three of the front groups that fomented the Big Lie that the 2020 presidential election had been stolen from Trump and that actively solicited thousands of people to turn out for the January 6 event at the Capitol, were funded by Koch Industries or its front groups.

The smoking gun in the Ginni Thomas email thread occurs in an email dated November 10, 2020 when she tells Meadows to “Listen to Rush. Mark Steyn, Bongino, Cleta.” Thomas is clearly referring to conservative commentators Rush Limbaugh, Mark Steyn and Dan Bongino, and lawyer, Cleta Mitchell.

Cleta Mitchell is best known in the Trump election saga as the lawyer who was on the January 2, 2021 call with Donald Trump when he phoned the Secretary of State of Georgia, Brad Raffensperger, and told him this: “I only need 11,000 votes. Fellas, I need 11,000 votes. Give me a break.” That call took place two months after the presidential election. (Mitchell stepped down from her long-term employment at law firm Foley & Lardner after her presence on that call made the news cycle.)

But Cleta Mitchell’s relationship with Ginni Thomas dates back at least a decade earlier – and not in a good way.

Cleta Mitchell had filed an amicus briefin the Citizens Unitedcase before the Supreme Court that was decided on January 21, 2010. That case would be the tipping point to allow unlimited sums from corporations – like Koch Industries — in U.S. elections.

Just eight days after Justice Thomas voted in favor of that decision to open the floodgates to corporate money in campaigns, Cleta Mitchell made a move that looked very much like a quid pro quo to Ginni Thomas. Mitchell, then still a partner at Foley & Lardner, filed an application with the Internal Revenue Service to set up a nonprofit called Liberty Central, Inc.on behalf of Ginni Thomas. According to IRS tax filings, Liberty Central received a combined $1.478 million from dark money donors in 2009 and 2010.

On the IRS tax filings for Liberty Central for 2009 and 2010, Ginni (Virginia) Thomas is listed as President and CEO. The 2010 tax filing shows that Ginni Thomas received $120,511 in compensation from Liberty Central that year. She eventually stepped down from an official post at the nonprofit, stating she would serve as a consultant.

Liberty Central had the fingerprints of Charles Koch all over it. Acting as General Counsel in 2010 for Liberty Central was a former lawyer for the Charles G. Koch Foundation, Sarah Field. A former Koch lobbyist, Matt Schlapp, served on the Board of Liberty Central at inception.

Mitchell’s law firm, Foley & Lardner, employed three attorneys working as lobbyists for a Koch Industries affiliate, Koch Companies Public Sector, LLC in Madison, Wisconsin in 2011. The Koch-related lobbyists were Ray Carey, Jason Childress and Kathleen Walby.

Mitchell, herself, was a former lobbyist at the federal level in years 2005 through 2008 for the Alliance for Charitable Reform, a project of The Philanthropy Roundtable, another tax-exempt organization. Donors Trust and Donors Capital Fund, two dark money groups which also have Charles Koch’s fingerprints all over them, were spun off from the Philanthropy Roundtable in 1999. (See our report: Koch Footprints Lead to Secret Slush Fund to Keep Fear Alive.)

Mitchell is listed on the 2018 federal tax filing for SteveBannon’s charity, Citizens of the American Republic, as an officer of the organization, holding the position of Secretary. Bannon and others were charged in August of 2021 by the Department of Justice with bilking donors out of hundreds of thousands of dollars through that charity.

Senator Ron Johnson, a Republican from Wisconsin, was one of those pushing the narrative on television that the election had been stolen from Donald Trump. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, lawyers and staff of Foley & Lardner were the third largest donor to Johnson’s campaign committees since 2015. Employees and officials of Koch Industries ranked fifth.

There were only eight Republican Senators who refused to certify the votes for the challenged states of Arizona and/or Pennsylvania. Those Republican Senators were: Ted Cruz of Texas; Josh Hawley of Missouri; Rick Scott of Florida; Tommy Tuberville of Alabama; Roger Marshall of Kansas; Cindy Hyde-Smith of Mississippi; John Kennedy of Louisiana; and Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming. Every Republican Senator who refused to certify the election results on January 6 received funding from Koch Industries PAC.

Trump’s Chief of Staff, Mark Meadows, whom Ginni Thomas enlisted in the White House to help overturn Biden’s election win, was previously a member of the House of Representatives from North Carolina from 2013 to 2020. He also received campaign funding from the Koch Industries PAC throughout his time in Congress.

Charles Koch is usually very careful in keeping an arm’s length relationship between himself and his political operations. But on at least one occasion Koch conducted a dinner meeting directly with sitting Justice Clarence Thomas at a private club in California.

In January 2008, Justice Thomas attended an all-expenses-paid, four-day trip to the Koch brothers’ semi-annual political gathering in the Palm Springs area of California. (According to his 2008 disclosure form and the Supreme Court’s public information office, Thomas’ expenses for that trip were paid by the Federalist Society, a conservative nonprofit that Koch foundations have generously supported.)

Justice Thomas’ trip to the Koch event occurred in the same year that the Citizens United case was accepted by the Supreme Court.  The Court accepts less than two percent of all cases appealed to it.

Wall Street On Parade was previously able to confirm with Scott Markley, Public Information Specialist at the Supreme Court, that during that January 2008 visit to the Koch political gathering, Justice Thomas was hosted by Charles Koch and his wife, Elizabeth, at the private Vintage Club where Charles Koch is a member.

The Citizens United decision did not pass the smell test when it was approved in a 5-4 vote by the Supreme Court. Four of the nine justices wrote a scathing dissent that raised the issue of unprincipled behavior, writing that the majority had ruled on issues that were not even legally before the court.

The money that the Koch political machine pumped into putting Trump in the Oval Office quickly paid big dividends in his first term (and made it clear as to why Charles Koch would have wanted to see a second Trump term).

Koch Industries’ law firm, Jones Day, sent 12 of its law partners to staff up key positions in the Trump administration on the very day Trump was inaugurated. Jones Day has since sacked the press release it issued at the time but you can read the reporting on it at the American Bar Association Journal.

Once Trump was settled in the Oval Office, a Koch front group, then known as Freedom Partners, mapped out the agenda it expected Trump to march to. In a document titled “Roadmap to Repeal: Removing Regulatory Barriers to Opportunity,” the group listed the laws and regulations it expected to be repealed in the first 100 days of Trump’s administration. The Trump administration dutifully marched to the beat. Repeal the Paris Climate Accord – done. Tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy – done. Gutting federal regulations and the Environmental Protection Agency – done.

By the spring of 2018, 12 people who previously worked at Freedom Partners were working in the Trump administration. Freedom Partners has since disbanded but when we last took a look at the nonprofit in July 2018, we found that all but one of Freedom Partners’ 9-member Board of Directors was a current or former Koch company employee. The Board Chair of Freedom Partners at that time was the same Mark Holden that was the General Counsel of Koch Industries.

It’s time for the House Select Committee to subpoena not just Ginni Thomas and Cleta Mitchell. It’s time to hear from Charles Koch directly on how so much money bearing his fingerprints ended up fomenting the attack on the Capitol on January 6.

There will never be a better time than now for the American people to finally get at the truth.

(Pam Martens & Russ Martens are authors at CounterPunch.org.  This originally appeared on Wall Street on Parade.)

ref 1/20/21

Money Trail to the Siege at the Capitol Leads to Charles Koch and Koch Industries

the FBI has asked the public for help in collecting evidence surrounding the siege at the Capitol on January 6 — an insurrection that left five people dead, dozens injured, and Congressional members’ offices ransacked and laptops stolen. The violent scenes at the Capitol played out live on TV, humiliating the United States around the world. The world will watch President-Elect Joe Biden’s inauguration today, surrounded by 25,000 National Guard Troops in Washington, D.C. These images will further undermine the standing of the United States among world leaders.

Because the FBI seems to have ignored for decades the serial warning signs regarding Charles Koch, Koch Industries and their intrusions into  elections, we’re providing the FBI a simple and clear roadmap today.

Charles Koch is the billionaire Chairman and CEO of Koch Industries, one of the largest private corporations in the world. Koch Industries is a conglomerate with interests in fossil fuels, refineries, chemicals, paper products and extensive trading operations. For the past forty years, Charles Koch has been involved in a stealthy network of front groups that seek to gut the federal government of its regulatory functions and kill off popular federal programs like the U.S. Post Office, Social Security and Medicare.

To understand the full scope of Koch’s involvement in the events of January 6, let’s first remember what actually fomented the attack on the Capitol. It was based on the Big Lie that the election had been stolen from Donald Trump through voter fraud — something that Trump’s own cyber security chief, Chris Krebs, and Attorney General, William Barr, dismissed as lacking a factual basis. The playbook for the Capitol attack on January 6 was to intimidate Republican members of the Senate and House into refusing to certify the election results, thus withholding the Presidency from Joe Biden.

These are the red flags that lead to the doorstep of Charles Koch and Koch Industries and should play a significant role in any serious investigation conducted by Congress, the FBI, or U.S. intelligence agencies.

Red Flag # 1: There were only eight Republican Senators who refused to certify the votes for the challenged states of Arizona and/or Pennsylvania. (All Democrats voted to certify all states.) Those Republican Senators are: Ted Cruz of Texas; Josh Hawley of Missouri; Rick Scott of Florida; Tommy Tuberville of Alabama; Roger Marshall of Kansas; Cindy Hyde-Smith of Mississippi; John Kennedy of Louisiana; and Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming.

Every Republican Senator who refused to certify the election results on January 6 received funding from Koch Industries PAC.

On January 2, ten Senators joined with Senator Ted Cruz to announce that they planned to “vote on January 6 to reject the electors from disputed states as not ‘regularly given’ and ‘lawfully certified’ ” until an emergency audit was commissioned. Six of those Senators backed down from challenging the certification after the attack on the Capitol occurred. Those six Senators were: Ron Johnson of Wisconsin; James Lankford of Oklahoma; Steve Daines of Montana; Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee; Mike Braud of Indiana; and Bill Hagerty of Tennessee. All six of these Senators have also been on the receiving end of campaign largesse from the Koch Industries PAC and/or Koch family members.

The money to these 14 Senators from Koch-related entities has been documented by Alex Kotch and David Armiak in a January 5 report at the Center for Media and Democracy. Kotch and Armiak also note that Koch-funded Super PACs boosted the election chances for Blackburn, Daines, Hawley and Marshall, writing that Americans for Prosperity Action has “spent $11.9 million” to promote those candidates.

The authors also note that the Koch-backed Freedom Partners Action Fund, “dropped nearly $3 million into the Wisconsin Senate race to support Johnson and attack his liberal opponent, Russ Feingold.”

Wall Street On Parade also looked at data compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics based on Federal Election Commission records. We found that since 2012 Koch Industries has ranked between the second to six largest donor to Ron Johnson in every fundraising cycle. The Center’s data also shows that Koch Industries was the number one donor to Senator Lankford in the current 2019-2020 cycle. (The money comes from the Koch PAC, employees or family members of employees of Koch Industries, not the corporation itself.)

Red Flag # 2:At least three of the “nonprofit” groups that fomented the Big Lie that the election had been stolen and actively solicited thousands of people to turn out for the January 6 event were funded by Koch Industries or its front groups.

According to the TrumpMarch.com website, which was sponsored by Women for America First, its “Coalition Partners” for the January 6 event at the Capitol included the Rule of Law Defense Fund; the Tea Party Patriots; and Turning Point Action, among others. The TrumpMarch.com website has since been taken down but it was captured on January 2, 2021 (give it a little time to load) by the Internet Archives’ Wayback Machine.

Rule of Law Defense Fund is the dark money arm of Republican Attorneys General Association (RAGA), a group that is raising millions of dollars from corporate felons in order to elect the highest law enforcement officers at the state level. (See our in-depth report of January 14, 2021.) According to IRS filings made by RAGA, it has received $511,400 from Koch Industries and a subsidiary since 2014.

A division of Koch Industries, i360, has a massive voter database that some suggest is far more sophisticated than that of the Republican National Committee.The database includes phone numbers of people likely to turn out for an event of this nature. Its program, Predictive Dialer, says it can “scale call volume quickly so you aren’t let down as you ramp up your campaigns, from hundreds of outbound calls per hour to more than 100,000.” The Congressional Committees that are investigating the attack at the Capitol need to ascertain if Koch’s i360 services were used to make robo calls for the event.

As originally reported by Jamie Corey at the watchdog group, Documented, the dark money arm of RAGA made robo calls to boost turnout for the January 6 event at the Capitol. The message was as follows:

“I’m calling for the Rule of Law Defense Fund with an important message. The ‘March to Save America’ is tomorrow in Washington D.C. at the Ellipse in President’s Park between E St. and Constitution Avenue on the south side of the White House, with doors opening at 7:00 a.m. At 1:00 p.m., we will march to the Capitol building and call on congress to stop the steal. We are hoping patriots like you will join us to continue to fight to protect the integrity of our elections. For more information, visit MarchtoSaveAmerica.com. This call is paid for and authorized by the Rule of Law Defense Fund, 202-796-5838.”

Another of the Coalition Partners, Turning Point Action, Tweeted that it was “honored to help make this happen, sending 80+ buses full of patriots to DC to fight for this president.” The Tweet was first reported by DailyDot.com.

Turning Point Action is a dark money group that does not report its donors to the Federal Election Commission. However, according to the Center for Media and Democracy, its sister group, Turning Point USA, has received $610,000 fromDonors Trustsince 2017. (We should note that the IRS has not posted the 990 tax filings as yet for Donors Trust’s tax years of 2019 and 2020 so it is quite possible that the cash haul is far greater than $610,000.)

Charles Koch’s footprints are all over Donors Trust, another dark money group, as we exclusively reported in 2010. (See Koch Footprints Lead to Secret Slush Fund to Keep Fear Alive.) We wrote at the time:

“There are shades of Charles Koch all over Donors Capital and Donors Trust. Two grantees receiving repeat and sizeable grants from Donors Capital are favorites of the Koch foundations: George Mason University Foundation and Institute for Humane Studies. Another tie is Claire Kittle. A project of Donor’s Trust isTalent Market.org, a headhunter for staffing nonprofits with the ‘right’ people. Ms. Kittle serves as Talent Market’s Executive Director and was the former Program Officer for Leadership and Talent Development at the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation. Then there is Whitney Ball, President of both Donors Capital Fund and Donors Trust. Ms. Ball [now deceased] was one of the elite guests at the invitation-only secret Aspen bash thrown by Charles Koch in June of this year,as reported by ThinkProgress.org. Also on the guest list for the Koch bash was Stephen Moore, a member of the Editorial Board at the Wall Street Journal. Mr. Moore is a Director at Donors Capital Fund. Rounding out the ties that bind is Lauren Vander Heyden, who serves as Client Services Coordinator at Donors Trust. Ms. Vander Heyden previously worked as grants coordinator and policy analyst at the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation.”

According to the April 1, 2020 report at the Center for Media and Democracy, “In 2014-15, the Koch’s Knowledge and Progress Fund gave $5.3 million to Donors Trust, and the Charles Koch Foundation has given $980,000 to it since 2014. The connected Donors Capital Fund, to which Koch family foundations have also contributed large sums, donated $100,000 to TPUSA [Turning Point USA] in 2016.”

Another Coalition Partner for the January 6 event, Tea Party Patriots, has received at least $200,000 from Freedom Partners, a Koch front group. Tea Party Patriots has also received donations from Donors Trust.

We are unable to report if Women for America First, which obtained the permit for the speeches and rally that preceded the march on the Capitol, has ties to Koch funding because it is such a new group that it has yet to file an IRS 990 form. However, its Chair, Amy Kremer, held previous positions in two tea party groups. The tea party movement was a Koch Industries and Big Tobacco creation, as insider Jeff Nesbit explains in his book, :{Poison Tea: How Big Oil and Big Tobacco Invented the Tea Party and Captured the GOP:(style="background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-attachment:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial;border:0px;margin:0px;padding:0px;vertical-align:baseline"):}:.

Red Flag # 3: Charles Koch and Koch Industries were heavily vested in wanting to ensure that Donald Trump had another four-years as President.

One of the Koch front groups that played a major role in the 2016 election was Freedom Partners, which closed up shop in 2019.  It was hard to tell where Freedom Partners begins and Koch Industries ends. When the group was still active in 2018, we took a look at its Board of Directors. We found that all but one of its Board Members was a current or former Koch company employee. According to the Center for Media and Democracy, Freedom Partners ended up with 12 of its former employees working in the Trump Administration.

Freedom Partners Action Fund,a related organization that ran attack ads against Democrats, had received at least $14 million from Charles Koch and his trust before it shuttered its operations.

Freedom Partners laid down their marching orders for the Trump administration in a formal memo and their handmaidens in the Trump administration delivered: from the withdrawal from the Paris Climate Accord to the massive tax cut for corporations and one percenters to the gutting of federal regulations and putting industry lobbyists in charge of federal agencies.

But that was just the beginning. Koch Industries law firm, Jones Day, sent 12 of its law partners to staff up key positions in the Trump administration on the very day Trump was inaugurated. Jones Day has since removed the press release it issued at the time but you can read the reporting on it at the American Bar Association Journal. Wall Street On Parade also reported on it at the time, finding it unusual that the Trump transition team would give so many key slots to Jones Day when its partners had supported Hillary Clinton for President. This is another matter worthy of Congressional and FBI investigation.

Red Flag # 4: Koch Industries, through its ownership of i360, was deeply entangled in the campaigns of members of Congress who voted against certifying the votes for Joe Biden. (What kind of intelligence agencies and FBI would allow a private fossil fuels conglomerate like Koch Industries to directly run campaign activities for federal candidates for Congress?) We broke the news in 2018 that Koch Industries had purchased i360.We obtained that information from an internal newsletter at Koch that was available online and from the fact that help-wanted ads for i360 sent applicants to apply at Koch Industries. (The company hasn’t denied our reporting over the past two years.)

We reported this at the time:

“The i360 website says that its database now has information on 199 million voters from all 50 states; information on 290 million consumers with 700+ data points; information on precinct election returns as well as data from the Census, NOAA, the Bureau of Labor Statistics and geo-spatial data; individual sentiment information on candidates and issues from its social media operations; and information from its grassroots groups (read Americans for Prosperity) and paid door-to-door knockers who are using a sophisticated hand-held device to update the database in real time in the pivotal weeks before an election.

“But i360 is far more than just a voter database. It has social media targeting operations and really scary data collection that reaches into people’s homes. Consider this from their website:

‘Through an exclusive partnership with D2 Media Sales, the strategic relationship between DirectTV and Dish, i360 is able to identify households that meet your target criteria and serve ads uniquely to those households – no matter which stations or programs they are watching. With dozens of i360 custom segments pre-matched to more than 20 million DIRECTV and DISH homes, campaigns can now reach the largest addressable TV advertising platform in the nation. One-to-one television targeting combines the emotional impact of TV advertising with the precision and accuracy of direct mail marketing – resulting in the most cost-effective and high impact buying solutions.”

According to Federal Election Commission records, a number of Republican House Reps who objected to the certification of Biden’s win utilized the services of i360. For example, Mike Johnson of Louisiana paid i360 $15,580 for what he called “electronic media expense.” Elise Stefanik of New York paid i360 more than $128,000 which she tagged as telephone service, web service, equipment rental, or simply “subscription.” Barry Moore of Alabama paid i360 $12,815 in 2020 for fundraising mailouts and ad buys.

Senator Tommy Tuberville, who objected to the certification of Biden’s win, also engaged the services of i360 in 2020. Tuberville paid i360 $50,875 for data subscriptions and making phone calls. As the Capitol was under siege and Trump was watching these scenes on TV, he spoke with the newly-sworn in Senator Tuberville by phone, urging Tuberville to make more objections to the certification of the vote, according to reporting at CNN.At around 7 p.m., Trump’s attorney, Rudy Giuliani, made a second call to Tuberville. The call went to voice mail. Giuliani left this message for Tuberville, according to CNN, based on a report from The Dispatch:

“Sen. Tuberville? Or I should say Coach Tuberville. This is Rudy Giuliani, the President’s lawyer. I’m calling you because I want to discuss with you how they’re trying to rush this hearing and how we need you, our Republican friends, to try to just slow it down so we can get these legislatures to get more information to you. I know they’re reconvening at 8 tonight, but it … the only strategy we can follow is to object to numerous states and raise issues so that we get ourselves into tomorrow — ideally until the end of tomorrow…”

The nagging question, of course, is what Trump and Giuliani had planned for “tomorrow.”

https://www.drillednews.com/post/alleging-consumer-fraud-minnesota-sues-exxon-koch-and-api-for-climate-change-deception

june 24

Minnesota on Wednesday joined the growing number of states and municipalities seeking damages from the fossil fuel industry for knowingly deceiving consumers about climate change and its impacts. But Attorney General Keith Ellison is charting a different and potentially groundbreaking legal course from those lawsuits, by suing ExxonMobil, Koch Industries, and the American Petroleum Institute _{:{under state laws that prohibit lying to consumers.:(style="background-image:initial;background-position:0px 0px;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-attachment:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial;margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;outline:0px;vertical-align:baseline;font-style:inherit;font-variant:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;-webkit-tap-highlight-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0);box-sizing:inherit"):}:}_

To date the majority of this generation of climate suits are nuisance cases. They allege that fossil fuel companies’ efforts to misinform the public on climate change successfully delayed for decades any regulations and other actions to slow or stop it, creating the need for billions of dollars in mitigation costs that municipal and state governments could otherwise have avoided. In those cases, which include among others suits filed by the cities of Oakland and San Francisco, Calif., and Boulder, Colo.,, the plaintiffs are seeking damages: They want fossil fuel companies to pay their fair share of the cost of climate adaptation.

The Minnesota case is different in a few key ways:

First, there are two of the defendants, Koch Industries and the American Petroleum Institute, or API, the largest fossil fuel industry trade group. The nuisance suits have concentrated on companies with refineries and pipelines, such as Exxon. This suit, however, focuses on knowingly and actively deceiving the public— it is targeting the refiners and distributors not just of fossil fuel products, but of climate change denial, an arena where both API and Koch have been major players.

In 1998, API convened a group of industry stakeholders to draft the _{:{blueprint of the industry’s climate disinformation strategy:(style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;outline:0px;vertical-align:baseline;background:0px 0px;font-style:inherit;font-variant:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;-webkit-tap-highlight-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0);box-sizing:inherit"):}:}_ in an effort to keep the U.S. from committing to binding emissions reductions targets under the first international climate agreement, the Kyoto Protocol. Ten years later, ahead of the pivotal 2008 climate conference in Copenhagen where nations hoped to agree on a strong successor to the Kyoto pact, API spent at least $75 million with one PR firm alone, Edelman, to work against climate action. And that was_{:{ just one contract in one year.:(style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;outline:0px;vertical-align:baseline;background:0px 0px;font-style:inherit;font-variant:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;-webkit-tap-highlight-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0);box-sizing:inherit"):}:}__{:{ :(style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;outline:0px;vertical-align:baseline;background:0px 0px;font-style:inherit;font-variant:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;-webkit-tap-highlight-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0);box-sizing:inherit"):}:}_

Koch Industries, along with co-owners and brothers Charles and the late David Koch themselves, have for decades funneled hundreds of millions of dollars into think tanks and front groups that spread climate disinformation. The long list of examples ranges from _{:{the work of Patrick Michaels,:(style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;outline:0px;vertical-align:baseline;background:0px 0px;font-style:inherit;font-variant:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;-webkit-tap-highlight-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0);box-sizing:inherit"):}::{ :(style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;outline:0px;vertical-align:baseline;background:0px 0px;font-style:inherit;font-variant:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;-webkit-tap-highlight-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0);box-sizing:inherit"):}:}_the Cato Institute’s director of the Center for the Study of Science to the _{:{“documentary” Green Tyranny:(style="background-image:initial;background-position:0px 0px;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-attachment:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial;margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;outline:0px;vertical-align:baseline;font-style:inherit;font-variant:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;-webkit-tap-highlight-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0);box-sizing:inherit"):}:}_ (which originally aired on Fox News), as well as one of the _{:{earliest convenings of climate deniers,:(style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;outline:0px;vertical-align:baseline;background:0px 0px;font-style:inherit;font-variant:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;-webkit-tap-highlight-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0);box-sizing:inherit"):}:}_ “Global Environmental Crises: Science or Politics?” which _{:{the Cato Institute hosted:(style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;outline:0px;vertical-align:baseline;background:0px 0px;font-style:inherit;font-variant:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;-webkit-tap-highlight-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0);box-sizing:inherit"):}:}_ in 1991.

Which brings us to the second key difference: The claim itself. It’s not a nuisance claim, but a consumer protection suit that combines Minnesota statutory and common laws centered on false advertising, deceptive trade practices, and consumer fraud. In that way, it’s closer to the :{_{Massachusetts fraud case}_:(style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;outline:0px;vertical-align:baseline;background-image:initial;background-position:0px 0px;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-attachment:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial;font-style:inherit;font-variant:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;-webkit-tap-highlight-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0);box-sizing:inherit"):}:_{:{ :(style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;outline:0px;vertical-align:baseline;background-image:initial;background-position:0px 0px;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-attachment:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial;font-style:inherit;font-variant:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;-webkit-tap-highlight-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0);box-sizing:inherit"):}:}_against ExxonMobil, than to the dozen or so climate liability cases making their way through the country’s state and federal district courts.

“This complaint does not seek to hold these companies accountable for climate change. It seeks to hold them accountable for violating Minnesota’s consumer protections,” said Leigh Currie, Minnesota’s assistant attorney general at a press conference announcing the suit. This is significant because, the complaint’s reliance on state consumer protection laws may help it avoid some of the _{:{jurisdictional issues that the nuisance cases have faced. :(style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;outline:0px;vertical-align:baseline;background:0px 0px;font-style:inherit;font-variant:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;-webkit-tap-highlight-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0);box-sizing:inherit"):}:}_

And then there’s the injunctive relief part, which makes this case unique, and a really interesting one to watch moving forward. Injunctive relief is legalese for a court order that forces some person or entity to stop doing something. In this case, Ellison has asked for injunctive relief to stop deception, a corrective public education campaign in Minnesota on climate change, and full disclosure of all internal research the three defendants have conducted on the issue of climate change.

“This was a 30-year effort to defraud consumers in Minnesota about climate change and the role of fossil fuel products in it,” Ellison said at the press conference, illustrating his point with a series of images of internal industry documents revealing what they knew and when.

Several other speakers at the press event connected the fossil fuel industry’s climate denial efforts to the tobacco industry’s deception of the public about the harms of smoking, including Doug Blanke, a former state prosecutor who now directs the _{:{Public Health Law Center:(style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;outline:0px;vertical-align:baseline;background:0px 0px;font-style:inherit;font-variant:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;-webkit-tap-highlight-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0);box-sizing:inherit"):}:}_ at Mitchell Hammond School of Law. When he worked in the Attorney General’s office, Blanke spent much of his time onlawsuits holding Big Tobacco accountable. “We were combatting the lies of the tobacco industry — lies that echo through every page of today's lawsuit,” he said. “These strategies are ripped straight from the pages of tobacco’s playbook.”

Minnesota’s suit is also seeking restitution and disgorgement of profits, essentially a handing over of ill-gotten gains. The complaint does not request a specific amount, but it compares the billions of dollars in profits earned by oil companies from the 1980s to the early 2000s, with the billions of dollars of climate-related costs borne by Minnesota residents, stating, “If Defendants had not misled the public to pad their own pockets, Minnesota would not have already incurred such large costs because of climate change and would not be facing such dramatic future costs.”

Flooding has increased dramatically in Minnesota over the past decade. _{:{According to the Environmental Protection Agency:(style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;outline:0px;vertical-align:baseline;background:0px 0px;font-style:inherit;font-variant:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;-webkit-tap-highlight-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0);box-sizing:inherit"):}:}_, over the last half century, average annual precipitation in most of the Midwest increasing by 5 to 10% with rainfall during the four wettest days of the year has increased about 35%. The _{:{Minnesota Pollution Control Agency notes:(style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;outline:0px;vertical-align:baseline;background:0px 0px;font-style:inherit;font-variant:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;-webkit-tap-highlight-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0);box-sizing:inherit"):}:}_ that temperatures have increased by 1 to 3 degrees Fahrenheit statewide, and that more frequent heavy rains have been causing low areas to flood, resulting in crop, home, and business damages.

Minnesotans are also grappling with immediate impacts of the oil and gas industry on public health and the environment, including air pollution and pipeline-related water pollution. Environmental activist and authorWinona LaDuke, a member of the Chippewa White Earth Nationin north-central Minnesota, spoke about the _{:{Enbridge pipeline:(style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;outline:0px;vertical-align:baseline;background:0px 0px;font-style:inherit;font-variant:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;-webkit-tap-highlight-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0);box-sizing:inherit"):}:}_. “I never expected to be spending years fighting Enbridge, but this pipeline company brings more than 70% of the tar sands oil into this country,” she said.

Sam Grant, director of the climate action group Minnesota 350, connected the lawsuit to the nationwide Black Lives Matter protests spurred by the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis. “We have a choice between freedom to profit or freedom to breathe,” he said. “It ought to be a no brainer that freedom to breathe comes first, because we have to be alive for anything else to happen.”

Grant described low-income Black and Brown neighborhoods in northern Minneapolis where air pollution from fossil fuel facilities has shortened lifespans by at least 11 years compared to the national average. And in a first for climate lawsuits, the complaint itself highlights climate justice, too, right up top on the first page, where it notes, "Warming will continue with devastating economic and public-health consequences across the state and, in particular, disproportionately impact people living in poverty and people of color."

While oil companies don’t like to lose money, especially now when the oil and gas market:{_{ }_:(style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;outline:0px;vertical-align:baseline;background:0px 0px;font-style:inherit;font-variant:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;-webkit-tap-highlight-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0);box-sizing:inherit"):}:_{:{is turned upside down:(style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;outline:0px;vertical-align:baseline;background:0px 0px;font-style:inherit;font-variant:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;-webkit-tap-highlight-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0);box-sizing:inherit"):}:}_, it’s possible the “disclosure of all internal research” piece of the Minnesota suit is the thing they’ll fight hardest. A full disclosure of the Koch, API, and ExxonMobil files on climate change could hurt its chances of winning all the other climate cases, and send the industry hurtling down the Big Tobacco pathway towards a multi-hundreds of billions of dollars settlement with states.

Juwaria Jama, co-leader of the Minnesota Youth Climate Strike, spoke about the fossil fuel industry “infringing on Indigenous and low-income communities to build pipelines and refineries that harm those communities.”

“Because of the deception of these companies, as teenagers we are spending our time fighting for a future that could be stolen,” said Jama, “a last-minute battle to preserve a livable world for myself and subsequent generations. And the most heartbreaking thing is that it could have been prevented.

“These corporations knew the impacts of climate change long before now, and they could have sounded the alarm. Instead they covered up the damage,” she said. “These corporations have gone far too long without being held accountable for our globe and our future.”

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new 919

Workers Lose in Koch’s Georgia-Pacific Restructuring

By Don Wiener — Koch Industries’ paper subsidiary cuts more than 2,100 jobs in the past two years, with taxpayers left holding the bill.

Read more >>

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new 519

Koch Industries’ Federal Lobbying Rose 35 Percent in First Quarter of 2019

By Don Weiner — Koch Industries has lobbied against every major measure to reduce reliance on fossil fuels so far this year.

Read more >>

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Guns, Climate Denial and Conspiracies: Al Jazeera Captures Australian Far Right Political Figures Meeting Koch Industries

Sitting in the offices of Koch Industries in Washington D.C., far-right Australian politician Steve Dickson shows his hand in a request...

Koch Companies Public Sector

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Invista

Entergy-Koch LP

Georgia Pacific Corporation

Koch Mineral Services

Flint Hills Resources

Nancy Pfotenhauer, Koch, and Lobbying

Nancy Pfotenhauer (formerly Nancy Mitchell) was an advisor to Senator John McCain during his presidential election campaign, and a former director of Koch Industries' Washington office. Pfotenhauer was Koch Industries' chief in-house lobbyist from 1996 to 2001. Her lobbying efforts were focused on gas pipelines. In 2001, Nancy Pfotenhauer left Koch Industries to become the president of the Independent Women's Forum, a conservative research group that receives funding from Koch Industries. [3], [4]

In 2003, the Independent Women's Forum became affiliated with the Citizens for a Sound Economy (now Americans for Prosperity). Pfotenhauer served as president and CEO of Americans for Prosperity and executive vice president of policy for Citizens For a Sound Economy. Citizens for a Sound Economy was co-founded by David H. Kochand has received a combined total of at least $12,906,712 in grants from the Koch Family Foundations. Americans for Prosperity has received $1,000,000 in funding. [5], [6], [7]

The Mercatus Center

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kochindustries1217

new category 4/14 will concentrate on behavior of the co in particular, eg pollution

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capt 12/17

see bak

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XL map

http://ecowatch.com/2015/03/05/koch-brothers-connection-keystone-xl/

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desmog

Koch Industries and Lobbying in Washington

2008 Lobbying Expenditures

Koch Industries lobbying expenditures in 2008 include:

Koch Industries–$15,130,000

Capitol Tax Partners–$240,000

Hogan & Hartson–$240,000

SIFF CERDA & LAKE LLP–$220,000

Hunton & Williams–$190,000

Mehlman Vogel Castagnetti, Inc.–$120,000

MWR Strategies–$80,000

Peter J. Loughlin–40,000

Nancy Pfotenhauer, Koch, and Lobbying

Nancy Pfotenhauer (formerly Nancy Mitchell) was an advisor to Senator John McCain during his presidential election campaign, and a former director of Koch Industries’ Washington office.  Pfotenhauer was Koch Industries’ chief in-house lobbyist from 1996 to 2001.  Her lobbying efforts were focused on gas pipelines.  In 2001, Nancy Pfotenhauer left Koch Industries to become the president of the Independent Women’s Forum, a conservative research group that receivesfunding from Koch Industries.

In 2003, the Independent Women’s Forum became affiliated with the Citizens for a Sound Economy (now Americans for Prosperity). Pfotenhauer served as president and CEO of Americans for Prosperity and executive vice president of policy for Citizens For a Sound Economy.  Citizens for a Sound Economy was co-founded by David H. Koch and has received$12,906,712 in grants from the Koch Family Foundations. Americans for Prosperity has received $1,000,000 in funding.

The Mercatus Center

The Mercatus Center is a conservative think tank located at George Mason University that regularly lobbies in the federal government.  Koch Industries has funded the Mercatus Center since the 1980s.

Koch and the Bush Administration

During George W. Bush’s second presidential term, his administration tried several times to appoint individuals who were “pro-industry” to important environmental positions.  However, the Senate blocked the president’s continued efforts.  Included in the president’s nominations were Alex Beehler and Susan Dudley, both of whom have connections to Koch Industries.

Susan Dudley was the director of Regulatory Studies at the Mercatus Center.  Dudley opposes federal regulation.  She lobbied against the Environmental Protection Agency’s attempts to reduce smog, produce cleaner gasoline, and remove arsenics from drinking water.  President Bush nominated Dudley to be the Director of the White House Office of Management and Budget.  The person working in this position can interfere, without scrutiny, in the dealings of agencies such as the EPA.  This position can also be used as a conduit for industries to avoid federal health and environmental standards.

Bush also nominated Alex A. Beehler to be the Inspector General of the EPA.  The Inspector General oversees EPA management and conducts audits.  Beehler’s environemental highlights include:  lobbying for military activities to be exempt from environmental regulations, and trying to influence the EPA’s decision on creating a health standard for percholorate, a rocket fuel component.  Perchlorate can impair fetal brain development and has contaminated water in 25U.S. states.  At Koch Industries, Beehler worked as the director of environemntal and regulatory affairs.  He also served as vice president for environmental projects at the Charles G. Koch Foundation.

While the senate was not in session, George W. Bush by-passed the Senate and appointed Susan Dudley to be the Director of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs.  She served as Director from 2007 to 2008.

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https://www.desmogblog.com/koch-industries-inc-lobbying-activities

The Mercatus Center

The Mercatus Center is a conservative think tank located at George Mason University that regularly lobbies in the federal government. Koch Industries has funded the Mercatus Center since the 1980s. [8]

Koch and the Bush Administration

During George W. Bush's second presidential term, his administration tried several times to appoint individuals who were “pro-industry” to important environmental positions. However, the Senate blocked the president's continued efforts. Included in the president's nominations were Alex Beehler and Susan Dudley, both of whom have connections to Koch Industries.

Susan Dudley was the director of Regulatory Studies at the Mercatus Center. Dudley opposes federal regulation. She lobbied against the Environmental Protection Agency's attempts to reduce smog, produce cleaner gasoline, and remove arsenics from drinking water. President Bush nominated Dudley to be the Director of the White House Office of Management and Budget. The person working in this position can interfere, without scrutiny, in the dealings of agencies such as the EPA. This position can also be used as a conduit for industries to avoid federal health and environmental standards. [9]

Bush also nominated Alex A. Beehler to be the Inspector General of the EPA. The Inspector General oversees EPAmanagement and conducts audits. Beehle's environemental highlights include: lobbying for military activities to be exempt from environmental regulations, and trying to influence the EPA's decision on creating a health standard for perchlorate, a rocket fuel component. Perchlorate can impair fetal brain development and has contaminated water in 25 U.S. states. At Koch Industries, Beehler worked as the director of environmental and regulatory affairs. He also served as vice president for environmental projects at the Charles G. Koch Foundation. [9], [10]

While the senate was not in session, George W. Bush by-passed the Senate and appointed Susan Dudley to be the Director of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. She served as Director from 2007 to 2008.

Resources...

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ALEC’s corporate members and funders have included a number of agriculture interests, including Archer Daniels Midland (ADM), Cargill, and DuPont, as well as industry organizations like the National Pork Producers Council, theIllinois Corn Marketing Board, and the Illinois Soybean Association. Cargill is the nation’s second largest beef processor, third largest turkey processor, and fourth largest pork processor. In three other areas, flour milling, soybean crushing, and production of animal feed, ADM joins Cargill asthe biggest in the industry. Chemical giant DuPont is one of the world’s largest makers of numerous pesticides, and in 1999, it purchased seed giant Pioneer Hi-Bred, the world’s top seller of corn seeds, including genetically engineered seeds.

Unlike the corporations, the National Pork Producers Council (NPPC) is actually led by farmers … and lobbyists for multinational pork processors, like Don Butler, past president of NPPC and lobbyist for Smithfield Foods, the largest pork processor in the world. The farmers who lead NPPC tend to own farms similar to that of NPPC president Doug Wolf. Wolf’s farm produces 24,000 hogs per year – and it also has a beef feedlot and 1,200 acres of corn, soy, and alfalfa.

Perhaps the most surprising “agribusiness” donor to ALEC is the most powerful of all: Koch Industries. It turns out that an early part of the Koch empire was the Matador Cattle Company, founded in 1952. To this day, Koch Agriculture Company retains Matador Cattle Company, which has about 15,000 cattle. However, in the 1990's, Koch Beef Company was the nation’s 10th largest cattle feeder, with feedlots that held up to 165,000 cattle. Koch bought a new feedlot in 1996 and, among other things, decided to expand its capacity by adding 20,000 more cows. The neighbors did not think that was a good idea:

Some businesses and farm owners expressed concerns over the health of their employees, some of whom would be housed within 300 feet of Koch’s cattle pens. Other neighbors cited concerns over the potential for groundwater pollution, the amount of dirt, insects, and odors added to the area contributing to health problems, a decrease in the quality of life for nearby residents, and the possible devaluation of land.

Koch overcame their objections with the ruling of a friendly regulator in Texas, winning the right to expand. With all these corporate interests in limiting regulation of factory farming, thank goodness their pals at ALEC approved a model version of a Right to Farm bill in 1996!

Why Corporations Care About Laws For Farmers

GP 2011

Toxic Koch: Keeping Americans at Risk of a Poison Gas Disaster

On this page

1. The Problem

2. Koch Industries’ Dangerous Chemical Facilities

3. Koch lobbying on Chemical Security Legislation

4. Koch Industries’ Toxic Money

5. Conclusion

Koch industries puts over 4 million people at risk of a poison gas disaster and they have mounted one of the biggest lobbying campaigns to keep it that way.

In 2010 Koch Industries and the billionaire brothers who run it were exposed as a major funder of front groups spreading denial of climate change science and a key backer of efforts to roll back environmental, labor, and health protections at the state and federal levels. Through enormous campaign contributions, an army of lobbyists, and funding of think tanks and front groups,David and Charles Koch push their agenda of a world in which their company can operate without regard for the risks they pose to communities, workers, and the environment. This report, Toxic Koch: Keeping Americans at risk of a Poison Gas Disaster, examines how Koch Industries has quietly played a key role in blocking yet another effort to protect workers and vulnerable communities; comprehensive chemical security legislation.

Since before the September 11, 2001 attacks, security experts have warned of the catastrophic risk that nearly every major American city faces from the bulk storage of poison gasses at dangerous chemical facilities such as oil refineries, chemical manufacturing facilities, and water treatment plants. Nevertheless, ten years later, thousands of facilities still put more than 100 million Americans at risk of a chemical disaster. According to the company's own reports to the EPA, Koch Industries and its subsidiaries Invista, Flint Hills, and Georgia Pacific operate 57 dangerous chemical facilities in the United States that together put 4.4 million people at risk.

A coalition of more than 100 labor, environmental, and health organizations has advocated for comprehensive chemical security legislation that would help remove the threat of a poison gas disaster by requiring the highest risk facilities to use safer processes where feasible. Koch Industries and other oil and chemical companies have lobbied against legislation that would prevent chemical disasters, despite repeated requests from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for disaster prevention. Instead Koch favors an extension of the current, weak Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Standards (CFATS) that exempt most facilities and actually prohibit the authority of DHS to require safer processes. As in other policy areas, Koch's huge efforts have gone largely unnoticed. Ananalysis of lobbying disclosure records reveals that since 2005, Koch has hired more lobbyists who lobbied on chemical security issues than the largest chemical companies such as Dow and Dupont. Koch lobbyists even outnumber those at trade associations including the Chamber of Commerce and American Petroleum Institute - only the American Chemistry Council hired more.

Koch campaign contributions also reveal the company's influence over the chemical security debate in Washington DC. All of the key Senators and Representatives who have taken a lead role during the last year in pushing legislation that supports Koch’s chemical security agenda have received Koch campaign contributions. The House members who introduced two bills that would extend CFATS without improvements and block the DHS from requiring safer processes for seven years have all taken KochPAC contributions over the last three election cycles, including Representatives Tim Murphy (R-PA), Gene Green (D-TX), Peter King (R-NY) and Dan Lungren (R-CA). And all of the cosponsors of similar legislation in the Senate - Senators Susan Collins (R-ME), Rob Portman (R-OH), Mary Landrieu (D-LA), Mark Pryor (D-AR), and before his retirement, George Voinovich (R-OH) - received KochPAC contributions during their most recent elections. As Congress debates how to protect Americans from dangerous chemical facilities, Koch is once again opposing disaster prevention legislation, despite the enormous risk its facilities pose to communities, workers, and the environment.

1. The Problem

As of July 2011, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has identified 4,069 “high risk” domestic chemical facilities. Many of these facilities are located in densely populated areas with stockpiles of hazardous chemicals that threaten hundreds, thousands, or, in some cases, millions of people with unnecessary risks.

As an interim measure, in 2006 Congress directed the DHS to establish a stopgap chemical security program until comprehensive legislation could be enacted. As a result the DHS created the Chemical Facilities Anti-Terrorism Standards (CFATS) in the fall of 2007. The program was meant to expire after three years and since then major flaws have been identified including:

Hundreds of “port facilities” and 2,400 water treatment plants are exempt from regulation;

Facilities are not required to consider safer chemical processes where feasible because the DHS cannot require that specific security measures be implemented at chemical facilities;

Chemical facility workers are not included in the site security assessment process.

In part, the chemical industry’s lock-step opposition to changing the program has frustrated lawmakers who would add teeth to CFATS. Chemical trade associations and individual companies have flooded Capitol Hill with lobbyists and campaign donations in an effort to deter any such action. This report documents the activities of one of these companies, Koch Industries, and its unique role in blocking comprehensive chemical security legislation.

This report shows how Koch Industries has helped to derail the enactment of a prevention oriented chemical security program with targeted lobbying activities and campaign donations. Where the company could have feasibly implemented safer chemical processes, many of Koch Industries’ facilities continue to stockpile ultra hazardous chemicals. Koch Industries not only refuses to use safer available chemical processes, but it also pressures Congress to perpetuate weak security standards that do not require the use of safer chemical processes.

2. Koch Industries’ Dangerous Chemical Facilities

Koch Industries operates 57 dangerous chemical facilities nation-wide. These facilities are dangerous because they stockpile huge quantities of toxic gases and flammable chemicals that put entire communities outside the fence-line at risk of death or injury in the event of a release. In most cases, the risk is preventable, as there is a growing universe of proven safer alternatives for dangerous chemical processes (see Center For American Progress's Chemical Security 101, page 9). Implementing these safer alternatives can reduce or even eliminate the number of people threatened by a facility’s toxic chemicals.

A few chemical companies have taken steps to move away from their dangerous processes. One example is the Clorox Company, which announced in 2009 that it would convert all of its bleach manufacturing processes from using elemental chlorine gas, to high-strength bleach.  With this change Clorox will no longer endanger approximately 13 million Americans (Chemical Security 101, pp. 29-45). Koch Industries, whose chemical facilities currently endanger over 4.4 million Americans, has not embraced this view and openly opposes inherently safer technologies (IST) requirements.  Koch claims that the implementation of safer chemical process requirements will put the industry at a "competitive disadvantage."

The implementation of safer processes is especially relevant for Koch as one of its facilitiesputs 1.8 million people at risk of injury or death and another seven put more than 100,000 people at risk each. This section profiles dangerous chemical facilities operated by Koch Industries and its subsidiaries Flint Hills, Georgia-Pacific and Invista.

Koch Industries’ Flint Hills:

Koch Industries operates ten high-risk chemical facilities under its Flint Hills subsidiary. Nine of these facilities stockpile flammable chemicals such as butadiene, butane, and/or propylene. One, the Flint Hills Resources, LP-CC West Refinery in Corpus Christi, TX stores hydrofluoric acid (HF), a Toxic Inhalation Hazard (TIH) chemical. The plant’s stockpiles of HF endanger 350,000 people.

The community that lives with this disaster risk is made up of historically marginalized citizens. According to the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI), 84.5% of residents in the immediate vicinity of the plant identify as a minority and 36.4% live below the poverty line. For comparison, in 2006 the percentage of the US population that identified as a minoritywas 31.8% while those living below the poverty line were estimated at 12.9% of the population.

Flint Hills uses HF to refine gasoline. In February of 2011, the Center for Public Integrity (CPI) and ABC News jointly released a series on hydrofluoric acid and the danger that the chemical poses to workers and communities. CPI noted that among the country’s aging refineries, “over the past five years authorities have cited 32 of the 50 refineries using HF for willful, serious or repeat violations of rules designed to prevent fires, explosions, and chemical releases.” In 2001, Koch Industries was fined $20 million for criminal violations of the Clean Air Act at its Corpus Christi refinery for releasing enormous quantities of Benzene, a known human carcinogen and then conspiring to cover it up.

In a release scenario at the Flint Hills facility, those exposed to HF would experience symptoms of varying severity. Ingestion, inhalation, or extensive exposure to the skin can result in the lungs filling with fluid (pulmonary edema) and/or death. Other side effects can include severe damage to the eyes, vomiting, abdominal pain, painful lesions, throat irritation, cough, and lung injury (Chemical Security 101, pg. 50). An in depth look at human exposure to HF wasdocumented by ConocoPhillips.

By transitioning to an alternative chemical process, Koch Industries can reduce the danger that the Flint Hills refinery poses to the La Porte community. The best option currently available is asolid acid catalyst, such as the InAlk  product, that eliminates the need for HF. Transitioning to this alternative would eliminate the risk of a catastrophic release of the HF catalyst. If this Flint Hills refinery along with the 49 other refineries that use HF were to convert to these alternatives, millions of lives would no longer be at risk from a release of this chemical. This technology is on the market by more than one company and yet Koch is unwilling to change its process to make its facility more secure.

Georgia-Pacific Corporation:

The Georgia-Pacific Corporation, acquired by Koch Industries in 2005, is a producer and distributor of paper products. Georgia Pacific operates nineteen hazardous facilities. Of these nineteen, three facilities each put more than 100,000 Americans at-risk:

Georgia Pacific Operation Number of people at Risk

Palatka Operations (Palatka, FL) 148,315

Consumer Products (Camas, WA) 400,000

Port Hudson Operations (Zachary, LA) 520,000

Chlorine dioxide can affect people in a variety of ways. In lower workplace exposures the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) warns that:

Chlorine dioxide is a severe respiratory and eye irritant.... Inhalation can produce coughing, wheezing, respiratory distress, and congestion in the lungs... Irritating effects in humans was intense at concentration levels of 5 ppm. Accidental exposure at 19 ppm of the gas inside a bleach tank resulted in the death of one worker (time of exposure is not specified).

These side effects were observed at only ambient workplace levels. In a catastrophic release of chlorine dioxide, the gas could be more concentrated leading to more severe reactions. Skin irritation, tissue and/or cellular damage, visual disturbances, the lungs filling with fluid (pulmonary edema), and death are all in the realm of possible reactions.

There are safer chemical processes that can mitigate or prevent catastrophic releases of chlorine dioxide. Paper can be bleached with an oxygen-based process using ozone or hydrogen peroxide (Chemical Security 101, p. 15).  These processes can be completedwithout chlorine dioxide, which could eliminate the risk of a catastrophic disaster at these Georgia Pacific facilities.

INVISTA S.a.r.l.:

Invista, another Koch company, is a producer of resin and fibers intermediaries. The company was founded as a DuPont subsidiary in 2003 and acquired by Koch soon afterwards in 2004. Invista operates four dangerous facilities, the most dangerous of which is the INVISTA Intermediates Plant in LaPorte, TX. This facility puts an estimated 1,889,251 people at risk with its use of a formaldehyde process.

In its short corporate existence, Invista has earned a reputation for poor environmental stewardship. In April of 2009, the Justice Department and EPA ordered Invista to pay $1.7 million for an estimated 680 water, air, hazardous waste, emergency planning and preparedness, and pesticide violations. It was estimated that the company would have to spend an additional $500 million to correct these violations.

The La Porte, TX plant uses formaldehyde in the production of spandex fibers. Aside from its acute risk, studies have indicated that workers exposed to formaldehyde on a regular basis are at an increased risk of cancer. Koch Industries is a high-profile critic of these studies and any government regulation of formaldehyde.

Symptoms of formaldehyde exposure can vary based on factors such as the gas’ concentration level. At low exposure rates, .1-5 ppm, formaldehyde can cause eye irritation, skin irritation, or respiratory tract irritation. At more elevated concentrations, 5-20 ppm, can cause burning of the eyes, tears, and breathing problems. In even higher concentrations, 20-100 ppm, formaldehyde can cause the chest to tighten, an irregular heartbeat, severe lung irritation, the lungs to fill with fluid (pulmonary edema), and death (Chemical Security 101, p. 49)

The danger that Invista’s La Porte plant poses to the community is unnecessary. Koch can reduce the overall risk to the community by improving the plant’s pipeline delivery capabilities. In this arrangement, formaldehyde can be synthesized on an as-needed basis, eliminating the need for bulk storage of the chemical and the accompanying risks.

3. Koch lobbying on Chemical Security Legislation

On its website, Koch Industries clearly states its position on chemical security legislation.  Koch unambiguously advocates for a permanent extension of the flawed Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Standards (CFATS), and against comprehensive legislation that the House of Representatives passed in 2009 (H.R. 2868). In delivering its criticisms the company has used misleading information and made factual errors.

Koch falsely claims that in the House passed bill “the IST [“inherently safer technologies”] provision would require manufacturers to use certain products and processes without regard for practicality, availability or cost.” Koch’s first error is that the term “inherently safer technologies” does not appear anywhere in the legislation. Instead, the bill refers to the implementation of safer processes as “methods to reduce the consequences (MRC) of a terrorist attack on [a] chemical facility.”  H.R. 2868 represented a compromise that would have made only the highest risk plants subject to conditional requirements to use safer processes where feasible and cost effective. Other conditions in H.R. 2868 include that MRC must reduce the risk to human health; must not shift the risk of a chemical release to another facility; can be practically applied to a facility and do not cause the chemical facility undue economic strain. In other words, the bill explicitly allows owners and operators of chemical facilities to factor in practicality, cost, and availability before transitioning to safer chemical processes of their choosing.

Koch also makes the unsupported claim that “mandating IST would result in even more job losses and higher consumer prices as American manufacturers struggle to comply with the new regulations and compete with overseas manufacturers.” Koch references no study or academic analysis to support this assertion. However, Greenpeace tested Koch’s concern over employment by commissioning an independent economic analysis of H.R. 2868, performed by Management Information Services, Inc. (MISI). The analysis projects the effects of H.R. 2868 on the job market and economy as a whole. The firm drew two conclusions: “we estimate that H.R. 2868 will create a total gross sales impact of almost $2 billion in the first year of 2011 and account for about 8,000 jobs.” To put it more simply, H.R. 2868 would produce a moderate economic stimulus and result in job creation not loss.

Another misleading claim from Koch Industries’ chemical security policy statement is that, “during this time not one incident of terrorism has occurred.” The danger of this argument is that it directs attention away from the real issue: terrorists are actively seeking opportunities to attack our chemical infrastructure, and a single successful attack could be catastrophic for millions of Americans. In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, for example, it was discovered that the hijackers’ ringleader, Mohammed Atta, may have been interested in staging an attack on a chemical facility that stockpiled 250 tons of Sulfur Dioxide, a chemical of interest regulated under CFATS. More recently, the Lashkar-i-Taiba terrorist network, the group responsible for the 2008 Mumbai attacks, had terrorists conduct surveillance operations on a high-risk chemical facility in Maryland. Information from the journal of Osama Bin Laden has revealed Al Qaeda’s interest in attacking the American rail system, the most common method used to transport hazardous chemicals throughout the country.  The Department of Homeland security has also issued a warning to utilities, including water treatment facilities that use chlorine gas, that their facilities may be victims of an insider attack.  The assumption that because terrorists have not yet attacked a U.S. chemical facility, they will not do so is simply wishful thinking.  To truly end the catastrophic threat that chemical facilities pose to communities we must eliminate any possibility of a chemical disaster, terrorist induced or accidental.

Koch Industries’ Toxic Lobbyists:

To achieve its goal of extending the weak CFATS program, Koch Industries uses its in-house lobby shop, Koch Companies Public Sector, to pressure Congress directly. The company has also hired eleven other firms (at a total of forty-five individuals) to lobby on chemical security legislation since 2005. An analysis of lobbying disclosure records from major companies and industry groups reveals that Koch Industries has played a central role in stalling chemical security legislation. Indeed, Koch has hired more lobbyists who worked on chemical security than its largest peer companies, including chemical industry heavyweights such as Dow and Dupont. Koch’s chemical security lobbyists outnumbered even industry trade groups such as the Chamber of Commerce and American Petroleum Institute; the only group that listed more lobbyists on chemical security was the American Chemistry Council, which purports to represent the entire chemical industry sector.

All data are taken from publicly available lobbying disclosure forms available at the Clerk of the House of Representatives’ website.

(Chart 1 -- number of lobbyists employed in a given year.)

2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011

ACC 1 16 23 21 25 22 25

Koch Industries 11 17 10 27 25 20 16

US Chamber of Commerce

0 0 0 11 19 19 11

API 0 5 2 5 18 15 16

NPRA 7 9 3 7 7 6 3

SOCMA 4 6 4 6 9 7 3

Dow 1 8 3 2 1 7 5

BASF 1 10 6 3 2 3 0

DuPont 0 5 2 7 4 4 3

NACD 3 3 1 1 2 2 1

Chart 1 shows the number of lobbyists that a company or trade association hired each year to influence chemical security legislation. The data indicate that the American Chemistry Council (ACC) typically hires the most lobbyists on this policy matter. One important qualification is that the ACC is a chemical industry trade association and purports to represent the collective interests of chemical manufacturers. According to its website, more than 150 distinct chemical companies pay membership dues for the ACC’s services (including household names such as Dow Chemical and DuPont).

Koch Industries, a single corporation, is consistently a close second in the number of lobbyists that it sends to Capitol Hill on chemical security. In some cases, Koch actually out-lobbies the ACC, as was the case in 2008. By comparison, peer companies of Koch Industries such as BASF, the Dow Chemical Company, and DuPont have never reported an equivalent lobbying force.

Aside from the ACC, Chart 1 shows the lobbying forces of five other trade associations. These are the American Petroleum Institute (API), the Society of Chemical Manufacturers and Affiliates (SOCMA), the US Chamber of Commerce, the National Petrochemical Refiners Association (NPRA), and the National Association of Chemical Distributors (NACD). Each of these organizations, like ACC, purports to represent the policy interests of its chemical and petrochemical industry members.

Koch leaves no room for interpretation of its lobbying activities. The company is engaged in efforts to extend the flawed CFATS program for as long as possible, and avoid any requirements that its facilities make changes that would protect nearby communities from a poison gas disaster. The fact that Koch as a single corporation sends more lobbyists to Capitol Hill than chemical industry trade associations and its peer companies is indicative of the investment the company has made in stalling comprehensive legislation. American communities remain at risk of a chemical disaster in no small part because Koch has used its vast resources to stall disaster prevention legislation.

4. Koch Industries’ Toxic Money

In conjunction with its direct lobbying efforts, Koch Industries also exerts influence overlawmakers with campaign contributions to members of Congress and candidates who will support the company’s opposition to protective environmental and worker safety standards. Among the politicians that Koch funds is a bipartisan group of well-placed lawmakers with sway over chemical security legislation. These politicians generally sit on one of the three primary committees with jurisdiction over chemical security policy; these are the Energy and Commerce and Homeland Security Committees (in the House of Representatives) and Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee (in the Senate).

Each of the key Senators and Representatives who have taken a lead role over the last year in pushing legislation that supports Koch’s agenda of blocking comprehensive chemical security legislation have received Koch campaign contributions. In 2010, Senators Susan Collins (R-ME), George Voinovich (R-OH), Mary Landrieu (D-LA), and Mark Pryor (D-AR) introduced legislation that would extend the flawed temporary CFATS law and fail to require any disaster prevention at the highest risk chemical plants, while leaving thousands of hazardous oil refineries and water treatment plants exempted. In March 2011, the legislation was reintroduced with minor changes, and Senator Rob Portman (R-OH) replaced Senator Voinovich as a cosponsor, who retired in 2010. Koch Industries' praised the 2010 legislation as an "encouraging effort."

All five Senators who sponsored this Koch-backed legislation received KochPAC campaigncontributions in their most recent election. Since 2005, KochPAC has given Senator Landrieu and her PAC $36,500, Senator Pryor and his PAC $30,000, and Senator Voinovich's PAC $15,000. Senator Collins received $6,000 from KochPAC during her 2008 reelection campaign, while Senator Portman's 2010 election campaign enjoyed contributions from both KochPAC and the Koch Brothers' families; $10,000 from KochPAC and $2400 each from David and Charles Koch, their wives Julia and Elizabeth, and Charles' son Chase and his wife Annie, for a total of $24,400.

In the House of Representatives, the members who introduced legislation in line with Koch’s chemical security policy objectives have each received tens of thousands of dollars from KochPAC. In the House Homeland Security Committee, HR 901 was introduced by Rep. Peter King (R-NY), the Chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, and Dan Lungren (R-CA), Chairman of the Subcommittee on Cybersecurity, Infrastructure Protection, and Security Technologies, which has primary jurisdiction over chemical security policy. In the Energy and Commerce Committee, HR 908 was introduced by Rep. Tim Murphy (R-PA) and Rep. Gene Green (D-TX). The influence of Koch campaign contributions on chemical security legislation can also be seen in the May 26, 2011 Energy and Commerce Committee vote on HR 908. Twenty-nine of the thirty-three Energy and Commerce members whose votes supported Koch’s agenda, including all five Democrats, have received contributions from KochPAC.

House Committee on Homeland Security

Total Koch Donations to HCHS Members (112th Congress - 2006-2010): $273,000

Koch Campaign Donations to Republican: $237,500

Koch Campaign Donations to Democrats: $35,500

Representative Peter King (R-NY)

Chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security (HCHS)

$37,000 from KochPAC (2006-2010)

King put his weight behind a measure to extend the flawed CFATS program for seven years, H.R. 901, as the bill’s cosponsor.  H.R. 901 will not require the most hazardous facilities to implement safer chemical processes where feasible.

Interestingly, King has not always been against disaster prevention. In 2006, King was quoted in Congressional Quarterly as saying that legislation “should not preclude chemical conversions to inherently safer technology, or IST” and voted along with his committee for H.R. 5695 which became the basis for the compromise adopted by the House in 2009 (H.R. 2868).

Representative Dan Lungren (R-CA)

Chairman of the Subcommittee on Cybersecurity, Infrastructure Protection, and Security Technologies

$22,500 from KochPAC (2006-2010)

Early in the 112th Congress Lungren wrote the seven-year extension of the flawed CFATS program, H.R. 901. In Subcommittee, Lungren led the Republican majority to vote against Democratic amendments that would require facilities to asses their ability to convert to safer chemical processes, close regulatory loopholes, and involve non-management level workers in the chemical security process. In 2006, however, he voted in committee for H.R. 5695 which became the basis for the compromise adopted by the House in 2009 (H.R. 2868).

House Committee on Energy and Commerce

Total Koch Donations to E&C Members (112th Congress – 2006-2010): $622,100

Koch Campaign Donations to Republicans: $523,100

Koch Campaign Donations to Democrats: $99,000

Representative John Shimkus (R-IL)

Chairman of the Subcommittee on Energy and the Environment

$50,000 from KochPAC (2006-2010)

Shimkus assured the passage of the flawed CFATS extension, H.R. 908, through his Subcommittee on May 4, 2011. In full mark-up, Shimkus proposed an amendment to increase H.R. 908’s authorization from six to seven years. Shimkus has opposed conditionally requiring dangerous chemical facilities to implement safer technologies even when feasible. He has alsovoted against whistleblower protections and measures to close CFATS’ regulatory loopholes.

Representative Raymond "Gene" Green (D-TX)

Ranking Member of the Subcommittee on Energy and the Environment

$18,500 from KochPAC (2006-2010)

Green cosponsored H.R. 908, a measure to extend the flawed CFATS program for a period of seven years. Green’s Houston area district, Texas-29, is home to 16 chemical facilities that each put more than one million people at risk. One of those facilities, Koch Industries’ INVISTA plant in La Porte, puts 1.8 million people at risk of a catastrophic formaldehyde release.

In the 111th Congress Green voted for H.R. 2868, a comprehensive overhaul of CFATS that would have closed the regulatory gaps, conditionally required the implementation of safer processes, and involved workers in site security planning. Green is one of only 11 other Democrats serving in the current House to receive campaign donations from Koch Industries in the 2010 election cycle (Appendix H).

Representative Tim Murphy (R-PA)

Vice Chair of the Subcommittee on Energy and the Environment

$15,000 from KochPAC (2008-2010)

Representative Murphy introduced H.R. 908, a seven-year extension of the critically flawed CFATS program, along with Representative Gene Green. Murphy has opposed granting authority to the Department of Homeland Security to require specific security measures at chemical facilities, including safer chemical processes.

Koch Democrats: $79,000 from KochPAC (2006-2010)

Jim Matheson (D-UT) - $25,500

John Dingell (D-MI) - $10,000

Mike Ross (D-AR) – $17,500

John Barrow (D-GA) - $8,000

Representatives Matheson, Dingell, Ross, and Barrow broke rank with their fellow Democrats tovote for H.R. 908 in the Energy and Commerce Markup.  All four have received campaign funding from Koch Industries over the last three election cycles. In contrast, sixteen other Democrats voted against H.R. 901; of these sixteen only one member had received funding from Koch sources.

Representative Mike Ross has two dangerous Koch chemical facilities in his district.

Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee

Total Koch Donations to HSGAC Members (112th Congress –2006-2010): $224,300

Koch Campaign Donations to Republicans: $121,800

Koch Campaign Donations to Democrats: $92,500

Koch Campaign Donations to Independents: $10,000

Senator Susan Collins (R-ME)

Ranking Member of the Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee (HSGAC).

$6,000 from KochPAC (2006-2010)

Collins has introduced multiple bills backed by the oil and chemical industries that would significantly extend the flawed chemical security program.   Her most recent attempt, S. 473, is a three-year extension that will not address the fatal flaws with the CFATS chemical security program. Collins vehemently opposes any attempt to include even conditional requirements for dangerous chemical facilities to implement safer chemical processes.

Koch Industries has publicly endorsed Collins’ chemical security legislation in the past (Appendix C).

Senator Mary Landrieu (D-LA)

$35,000 from KochPAC

Senator Mark Pryor (D-AR)

$30,000 from KochPAC

Joining Sen. Susan Collins in her attempts to extend the weak chemical security program, CFATS, are Senators Mary Landrieu (D-LA) and Mary Pryor (D-AR) as cosponsors. Senator Landrieu has received $5,000 in direct campaign contributions with an additional $30,000 to her leadership PAC from Koch Industries, since 2006. Senator Pryor has received $10,000 to his campaign and an additional $20,000 to his leadership PAC. Landrieu and Pryor rank second and third respectively on HSGAC in terms of campaign funding from KochPAC.

Pryor has two Koch facilities in his district that threaten 6,651 people and 36,129 people respectively with their holdings of chlorine dioxide and formaldehyde.

Landrieu’s district has three Koch facilities that respectively put 49,500, 81,210, and 230,263 Louisianans at risk from an Anhydrous Ammonia or Chlorine Dioxide release.

Senator Rob Portman (R-OH)

$24,400 from KochPAC and the Koch family

Soon after his election to the Senate, Senator Portman joined Collins as a cosponsor of S 473, aiming to extend the weak chemical security program.

Senator Portman received $10,000 from KochPAC, and $2400 each from David and Charles Koch, their wives Julia and Elizabeth, and Charles' son Chase and his wife Annie, for a total of $24,400 (data provided by the Center For Responsive Politics through the OpenSecrets.org Donor Lookup).

5. Conclusion

Koch Industries is engaged in activities to prevent the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) from using the best security methods of preventing poison gas disasters at dangerous chemical facilities. Koch’s lobbying efforts speak to the substantial investment that the company has made in blocking the implementation of a truly protective chemical security program. Also campaign contributions from KochPAC and the Koch Brothers themselves are directed at the election campaigns of politicians who are now spearheading the company’s chemical security agenda. Meanwhile, Koch Industries’ facilities continue to put at least 4.4 million Americans at risk of a disaster at one of their chemical facilities.

Despite Koch’s political machine working at full force, other members of Congress have introduced legislation that can fix the systemic problems in the CFATS program. Provisions in this legislation include:

Conditional requirements for the most dangerous chemical facilities to implement safer chemical processes;

Language that closes the regulatory loopholes which exempt arbitrary classes of chemical and petrochemical facilities

Measures to include non-management level workers in the site security planning process, whistleblower protections, and safeguards against background check abuses

The necessary discretion for DHS to require specific security measures at chemical facilities

These provisions are necessary in any bill that would truly protect Americans from chemical disasters, and lawmakers must stop allowing Koch Industries and other oil and chemical companies to stand in the way of effective, comprehensive chemical security legislation.

http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/en/campaigns/toxics/toxic-chemical-threats/Toxic-Koch-Keeping-Americans-at-Risk-of-a-Poison-Gas-Disaster/

By John Deans and Will Vickery

Return to the Greenpeace Toxics Campaign page

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Koch Bros. Company Files to Develop Oil Sands Project 5/26/14

The Globe and Mail)

The Canadian oil arm of the conglomerate owned by the U.S. billionaire Koch brothers has begun initial regulatory work on a multibillion-dollar oil sands project after an asset-sales effort two years ago left it holding a number of leases.

Koch Oil Sands Operating LLC, the Calgary-based unit of Koch Industries Inc., has made an initial filing with Alberta regulators and has been in consultation with the nearby Fort McKay First Nation regarding the proposed development.

"We intend to develop a bitumen recovery project identified as the Dunkirk In Situ Project and have submitted the proposed Terms of Reference for an Environmental Impact Assessment to Alberta Environment and Sustainable Resource Development," Paul Baltzer, spokesman for the Wichita, Kan.-based company, said in an e-mail.

http://insideclimatenews.org/breaking-news/20140526/koch-bros-company-files-develop-oil-sands-project

==

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Koch_Industries

Koch Industries (pronounced "coke") has been described by Hoovers as "one of the largest (if not the largest)" privately owned company in the United States. [1] The company states that it "owns a diverse group of companies involved in refining and chemicals; process and pollution control equipment and technologies; minerals; fertilizers; polymers and fibers; commodity trading and services; forest and consumer products; and ranching."[2] The company was started in 1927 by Fred Koch, an early member of the John Birch Society.[3] The company is led by Charles Koch and David Koch, arguably two of the leading and most influential financiers of anti-regulation and right-wing ideology in the United States.

The Koch Brothers are the conservative billionaire co-owners of Koch Industries. As two of the richest people in the world, they are key funders of the right-wing infrastructure, including theAmerican Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and the State Policy Network (SPN). In SourceWatch, key articles on the Kochs include: Koch Brothers, Koch Industries, Americans for Prosperity, American Encore, and Freedom Partners.

Koch Industries is a privately-held company. It is reported to have a revenue of over $100 billion in revenue per year.[4]

Contents   [hide]

1 Ties to the American Legislative Exchange Council

2 Business interests

2.1 Subsidiaries

3 Koch Brothers' Fortune vs. Koch Industries' Employment

4 Affiliations and Funding of Interest Groups

4.1 Koch Family Foundations

4.2 Cato Institute

4.3 Americans for Prosperity

4.4 Tea Party Movement and Funding

5 Direct Lobbying and Campaign Contributions

5.1 Political Contributions

5.2 Lobbying

6 Koch Industries' Political Activities

6.1 Voting Advice to Employees

6.2 Koch strategy retreat, 2011

6.2.1 Attendees

6.2.1.1 June 2010 participants

6.2.1.2 Earlier guests included politicians and Supreme Court justices (Scalia & Thomas)

6.3 Linked to union-busting efforts

6.3.1 In Wisconsin and nationally, 2011

6.4 Climate denial and delay

6.4.1 Fighting greenhouse gas regulations

6.4.1.1 Regional Climate Change Accords

6.4.1.1.1 New Hampshire

6.4.1.2 EPA, 2011

6.4.1.3 California, 2010

6.4.1.3.1 Koch subsidiary donates $1 million to stop Calif. GHG law

6.4.2 Other Koch funding

6.4.2.1 Koch-funded organizations

6.4.2.2 Organizations' messaging on "ClimateGate"

6.5 Tar Sands, 2011

6.6 Actions during and before the GW Bush administration

6.6.1 Lobbying

6.6.2 Pollution - Spills, fines and indictments

6.6.2.1 Off the hook after GWBush became president

6.6.2.1.1 Koch representation in Bush's cabinet

7 2011 Bloomberg Markets Exposé

7.1 Bribery of Foreign Officials

7.2 Firing of Compliance Officer

7.3 Trading with Iran

7.4 Falsifying Benzene Emissions

7.5 Stealing Oil on Indian Reservations

7.6 Deadly Butane Explosion

7.7 The 'Koch Method'

8 Company background

8.1 Early history

8.1.1 Mergers & acquisitions

8.1.1.1 Entergy (2001)

8.1.1.2 Invista (Lycra, etc), 2003

8.1.1.3 Georgia-Pacific (mills, paper products), 2005

8.1.1.3.1 Product brands

8.1.1.3.2 Lumber mills

9 Contact

9.1 Wichita, KS

9.2 Washington, DC

10 Articles and resources

10.1 Related SourceWatch articles

10.2 External resources

10.3 External articles

10.4 References

Ties to the American Legislative Exchange Council

...

Political Contributions

As of March 10, 2014, Koch Industries PAC made a total of $2,397,855 in political donations for the 2014 election, including $1.0 million to the Republican Governor's Association.[35] They donated $1.38 million to congressional candidates, with 98% of the money going to Republicans.[36] Top recipients include Mike Pompeo (R-KS), Speaker John Boehner (R-OH), John Cornyn(R-TX), and Lynn Jenkins (R-KS).[37]

During the 2012 election cycle, Koch Industries PAC made $4.9 million in federal campaign contributions.[38] This included $2.1 million to the Republican Governor's Association, $250,705 to the Republican State Leadership Committee, and $161,250 to the Republican National Committee.

The Kochs or the Koch PAC "donated directly to 62 of the 87 members of the House GOP freshman class" during the 2010 election campaign cycle.[39] At the state level, they spent "$5.2 million on candidates and ballot measures in 34 states since 2003. They donated directly to 13 governors that won election" in 2010.[40] They have "pledged to raise $88 million for the 2012 election and have started scheduling events for potential Republican presidential candidates."[41]

Koch Industries is the single largest oil company contributor to both Republican and Democratic candidates for Congress. These contributions total $1,065,750 to the 110th US Congress (as of the third quarter), the largest of which has been to Rep. Todd Tiahrt (R-KS) for $42,950. Rep. Tiahrt, for his part, has consistently voted with the oil industry on energy, war and climate bills. [9]

Additionally, Koch:

Spent $5.74 million in PAC money for candidates, committees, and campaign expenditures since the 2006 election cycle.

Contributed at least $270,800 to federal political party committees since the 2006 election cycle.

Gave $10,000 to Senator Lisa Murkowski in 2010,[42] who, in January, proposed stripping the EPA of its ability to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act, and lamented that BP's Deepwater Horizon oil disaster has temporarily halted exploratory offshore drilling in the arctic planned by Shell Oil for summer 2010, a topic that even many conservative opponents of climate action have remained silent on in the face of the unfolding historic despoiling of the gulf.[43][44]

Contributions like this from fossil fuel companies to members of Congress are often seen as a political barrier to pursuing clean energy. More information on oil industry contributions to Congress can be found at FollowtheOilMoney.org, a project created by the nonpartisan, nonprofit organization Oil Change International.

Lobbying

Koch wields significant influence on climate change and other issues by direct federal lobbying. Open Secrets reports that Koch Industries :

Spent $10.4 million lobbying in 2013.[45] Top issues lobbied on were energy & nuclear power, homeland security, taxes, and clean air & water.[46]

Spent $10.5 million lobbying in 2012[47]

Spent $37.9 million from 2006 to 2009 for direct lobbying on oil and energy issues, outspent only by ExxonMobil ($87.8 million) and Chevron Corporation ($50 million).[48]

The April 2011 Center for American Progress report presents the following chart of the Koch brothers' issue agenda:

...

Koch Industries' Political Activities

Voting Advice to Employees

According to an article in The Nation, "on the eve of the November midterm elections, Koch Industries sent an urgent letter to most of its 50,000 employees advising them on whom to vote for and warning them about the dire consequences to their families, their jobs and their country should they choose to vote otherwise." [49]The authors also wrote that "The Nation obtained the Koch Industries election packet for Washington State—which included a cover letter from its president and COO, David Robertson; a list of Koch-endorsed state and federal candidates; and an issue of the company newsletter, Discovery, full of alarmist right-wing propaganda. Legal experts interviewed for this story called the blatant corporate politicking highly unusual, although no longer skirting the edge of legality, thanks to last year’s Citizens United Supreme Court decision, which granted free speech rights to corporations.""[49]

Koch strategy retreat, 2011

See also Koch network.

On October 19, 2010, the New York Times reported on a personalized invitation signed by Charles Koch to prospective members to “develop strategies to counter the most severe threats facing our free society and outline a vision of how we can foster a renewal of American free enterprise and prosperity.” The invitation discussed meetings called “Understanding and Addressing Threats to American Free Enterprise and Prosperity” that he hosts twice a year to plan and expand its efforts “to review strategies for combating the multitude of public policies that threaten to destroy America as we know it.” Those efforts, the letter makes clear, include countering “climate change alarmism and the move to socialized health care,” as well as “the regulatory assault on energy,” and making donations to higher education and philanthropic organizations to advance the Koch agenda. The goals for the twice-yearly meetings include attracting more investors to the cause, and building institutions “to identify, educate and mobilize citizens” and “re-establish widespread belief in the benefits of a free and prosperous society.”[50]

Attendees

June 2010 participants

See Koch Event 2010-06 Attendees for the names and affiliations of roughly 200 participants from the June 2010 meeting in Aspen Colorado, including hedge fund executives, Republican donors, and free-market evangelists[50] - and for the actions some have taken.

Earlier guests included politicians and Supreme Court justices (Scalia & Thomas)

The letter from Charles Koch also noted that previous guests have included politicians and Supreme Court justices.

The politicians included Governors Haley Barbour and Bobby Jindal; Senators Jim DeMint and Tom Coburn and Representatives Mike Pence, Tom Price and Paul Ryan. [50]

Supreme Court Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas have attended these events. (According to Salon, "Thomas claimed he just made "a brief drop-by" at the Koch brothers' January 2008 Palm Springs political retreat to give a talk; in fact he was reimbursed for four days of “transportation, meals and accommodations” by the Federalist Society.[51]"). The attendance of Thomas and Scalia has sparked debate over judicial ethics and the 2010 Citizens Uniteddecision.[52] Common Cause filed a petition with the Justice Department in January 2011 alleging a conflict of interest for these Justices, as David and Charles Koch operate foundations that contribute to political groups, which might benefit from relaxed campaign finance rules. [53] Common Cause has also noted that the Cato Institute, which Charles Koch founded, filed an amicus brief in Citizens United opposing campaign finance. [54] The Center for Competitive Politics also filed a brief in the case; the Center is headed by Bradley Smith, who is affiliated with the Institute for Humane Studies where Charles Koch is Chair of the board and funder. [55]

Linked to union-busting efforts

In Wisconsin and nationally, 2011

In a Spring 2011 article, Andrew Stern of Reuters tied the Koch brothers directly to the union-busting effort, writing that "Charles and David Koch, who both rank 24th on the Forbes list of the world's richest people with $17.5 billion each, are behind campaign donations of tens of thousands, if not millions, of dollars to Republicans leading the anti-union effort." Brian Doherty, editor of Reason Magazine (which is published by a Koch-funded think tank), wrote "this is all a wave of political belief that the Kochs unquestionably have funded in various ways for years and years," [56]

The New York Times reported that, between 1997 and 2008, David and Charles Koch collectively gave more than $17 million to groups lobbying against unions[57]; the Kochs are one of (Republican) Governor Walker's largest corporate supporters.[58]

Climate denial and delay

A 2012 report by the International Forum on Globalization (IFG) describes the role of David and Charles Koch as leaders in the opposition to climate change policy in the U.S. The report, titled Behind a Global Crisis: U.S. Carbon Billionaires and the U.N, Climate Deadlock, explains how the Kochs are using their immense wealth to kill U.S. climate legislation and convince America that "energy independence" is more important than addressing adverse climate change. Contained in the report are details of how the Kochs' activity in campaign contributions, lobbying legislators, funding climate denialists, attacking clean air laws, and stopping the shift in subsidies from fossil fuels has helped to halt any serious progress on climate policy in the United States. The result is a deadlock in addressing the global climate crisis.[59]

Meena Raman of the Third World Network and an IFG Board Member noted that, "The world cannot expect U.S. negotiators to do anything but lead a race to the bottom toward a total climate crisis as long as they speak for their oil billionaires and not for the American people. How many more must die from climate disruptions before U.S. negotiators align their position with the scientific reality that says the world needs ambitious actions to cut carbon now?"[60]

Fighting greenhouse gas regulations

Regional Climate Change Accords

With the collapse of federal cap-and-trade legislation, a total of 32 states became active participants or observing members in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative in the Northeast, the Midwestern Greenhouse Gas Reduction Accord, or the Western Climate Initiative. Some commentators have suggested that Koch family foundations and ExxonMobil have opposed these initiatives, and that the American Legislative Exchange Council has advanced model legislation to that end. [61]

New Hampshire

On Feb. 23, 2011, New Hampshire's overwhelmingly Republican House of Representatives voted to support HB 519, a bill that would repeal participation in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, which has cut greenhouse gasemissions and other pollution and made improvements in energy efficiency. The bill passed by a nearly party-line vote of 246 to 104 (13 Republicans voted against, two Democrats for). The bill has to pass through the finance committee before a final house vote and consideration by the senate. Gov. John Lynch (D-NH), who has touted the success of RGGI in making the air healthier while increasing economic prosperity, is expected to veto the bill, but Republicans hold veto-proof majorities in both chambers of the New Hampshire legislature. The bill was aided by robocalls from the Koch-funded Americans for Prosperity group, which flooded the state with calls in support the bill. Rep. Sandra Keans (D-Rochester), told the Nashua Telegraph that AFP’s calls were “sleazy” and deliberately false: “I have never seen such a cowardly perpetration pulled on the citizens of New Hampshire."[62]

In July 2011, New Hampshire Gov. John Lynch vetoed the effort, stating ""I am vetoing this legislation because it will cost our citizens jobs, both now and into the future, hinder our economic recovery, and damage our state's long-term economic competitiveness." [63]

EPA, 2011

The Energy Tax Prevention Act of 2011 is proposed by Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK), Rep. Ed Whitfield (R-KY), and House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Rep. Fred Upton (R-MI), who describe the bill as "a sensible, narrowly crafted 'fix' to clarify that the Clean Air Act was never intended to be used to impose cap-and-trade by regulation." The bill seeks to prevent the EPA from regulating greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to climate change.[64]

The House Energy and Commerce Committee, under Republican control, held a hearing on Feb. 9, 2011 to discuss the bill, chaired by Whitfield, who has received $9,000 from Koch Industries since 2008. Koch operatives reportedly met with Rep. Upton on the first day of the 112th Congress to discuss such a bill. Upton received $20,000 from Koch employees in 2010, making them among his top 10 donors. Nine of the 12 new Republicans on the panel signed the Koch-funded Americans for Prosperity “No Climate Tax” pledge that opposed any government action to reduce carbon dioxide pollution.[64]

California, 2010

Koch subsidiary donates $1 million to stop Calif. GHG law

In September 2010, a company controlled by the Koch brothers donated $1 million to the campaign to pass Proposition 23, the Suspend AB 32 California ballot initiative that would halt the state's global warming law. The contribution came from Flint Hills Resources, a Kansas petrochemical company that is a subsidiary of Koch Industries. The Koch donation came a day after Tesoro, a Texas oil company that has been bankrolling the pro-Prop 23 campaign, put $1 million into the campaign coffers. According to the No Prop 23 campaign, 97 percent of the $8.2 million raised by the Yes forces has been given by oil-related interests and 89 percent of that money has come from out of state. Three companies, Koch Industries, Tesoro, and Valero -- another Texas-based oil company -- have provided 80 percent of those funds.[65]

Other Koch funding

Koch-funded organizations

According to the 2010 report by Greenpeace, Koch Industries: Secretly Funding the Climate Denial Machine, Koch has out-spent ExxonMobil in funding climate change denial. From 2005 to 2008, ExxonMobil spent $8.9 million, while the Koch Industries-controlled foundations contributed $24.9 million in funding to organizations of climate change skeptics. Efforts include:

More than $5 million to Americans for Prosperity Foundation (AFP) for its nationwide “Hot Air Tour” campaign opposing clean energy and climate legislation.

More than $1 million to the Heritage Foundation, which writes about climate and environmental policy issues.

Over $1 million to the Cato Institute, which disputes the scientific evidence behind global warming, questions the rationale for taking climate action, and has been heavily involved in spinning the recent ClimateGate story.

$800,000 to the Manhattan Institute, which has hosted Bjorn Lomborg twice in the last two years, a prominent media spokesperson who challenges and attacks policy measures to address climate change.

$365,000 to Foundation for Research on Economics and the Environment (FREE), which advocates against taking action on climate change because warming is “inevitable” and expensive to address.

$360,000 to Pacific Research Institute for Public Policy (PRIPP) which supported and funded An Inconvenient Truth...or Convenient Fiction, a film attacking the science of global warming and intended as a rebuttal to former Vice-President Al Gore’s documentary An Inconvenient Truth (PRIPP also threatened to sue the U.S. Government for listing the polar bear as an endangered species.)

$325,000 to the Tax Foundation, which issued a misleading study on the costs of proposed climate legislation.

The reports says such contributions are only part of the picture, because the full scope of direct contributions to organizations is not disclosed by individual Koch family members, executives, or from the company itself.

Organizations' messaging on "ClimateGate"

ClimateGate Echo Chamber—At least twenty Koch-funded organizations have repeatedly rebroadcast, referenced and appeared as media spokespeople in the story, dubbed “ClimateGate,” regarding stolen emails from the University of East Anglia in November 2009. These organizations claim the emails prove a “conspiracy” of scientists and "proves" climate change is a hoax.

Tar Sands, 2011

In 2011, TransCanada requested permission to build a 1,661 mile pipeline from Canada's tar sands oil fields to U.S. refiners in Texas. The so-called Keystone XL pipeline would import as much as 510,000 barrels per day. Koch Industries is responsible for close to 25 percent of the oil tar sands crude that is imported into the United States, and are one of the biggest refiners of Alberta oil sands crude oil. [66] Some speculated that Koch Industries would benefit significantly from the project. [67]

In May, 2011, Reps. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) and Bobby Rush (D-Ill.) formally requested more information from Republican leadership on the House Energy and Commerce Committee about how the project might benefit Koch Industries. They wrote:

Publicly available information indicates that the company is involved in several aspects of Canadian tar sands development. Koch’s Pine Bend Refinery in Minnesota currently processes roughly 25% of the tar sands fuel imports to the United States. Koch owns Flint Hills Resources, LLP, in Calgary, Canada, which is “among Canada’s largest crude oil purchasers, shippers and exporters.” Flint Hills Resources also operates a crude oil terminal in Hardisty, Alberta, where the Keystone XL pipeline will begin. According to the Government of Alberta, Koch Industries has both proposed and producing tar sands projects in the province. The Oil Sands Developers Group also indicates that Koch is a tar sands project developer. Koch’s Corpus Christi refinery is positioned near the end of the proposed Keystone XL pipeline and would be a potential buyer for the tar sands crude shipped through the pipeline.

[68]

Actions during and before the GW Bush administration

Lobbying

In 2006, the company spent $3,528,750 on lobbying. $820,000 was to outside lobbying firms with the remainder spent on in-house lobbyists.[69]

In February 2005, the Hill reported, "Top White House official Matt Schlapp is joining the Washington office of oil-and-gas conglomerate Koch Industries, the latest example of high-level administration and congressional staffers making post-election leaps to the lobbying world." Schlapp had headed the White House’s Office of Political Affairs. At Koch, Schlapp will be the executive director of federal affairs, directing Washington lobbying. [10]

Elizabeth Stolpe, previously in-house lobbyist for Koch Industries, became Associate Director For Toxics & Environmental Protection at the White House Council on Environmental Quality.

Pollution - Spills, fines and indictments

During the 1990s, faults in Koch Industry pipelines were responsible for more than 300 oil and chemical spills in five states, prompting a landmark penalty of $35 million from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). In Minnesota, it was fined an additional $8 million for discharging oil into streams.

According to an August 30, 2010 article in The New Yorker magazine, "In 1999, a jury found Koch Industries guilty of negligence and malice in the deaths of two Texas teen-agers in an explosion that resulted from a leaky underground butane pipeline. (In 2001, the company paid an undisclosed settlement.)

During the months leading up to the 2000 presidential elections, the company faced even more liability, in the form of a 97-count federal indictment charging it with concealing illegal releases of 91 metric tons of benzene, a known carcinogen, from its refinery in Corpus Christi, Texas. The company faced liability for three hundred and fifty million dollars in fines, and four Koch employees faced up to thirty-five years in prison. [70]

Off the hook after GWBush became president

After George W. Bush became president the U.S. Justice Department dropped 88 of the charges. Two days before the trial, John Ashcroft settled for a plea bargain, in which the company pled guilty to falsifying documents. All major charges were dropped, and Koch and Ashcroft settled the lawsuit for a fraction of that amount.

David Uhlmann, a career prosecutor who, at the time, headed the environmental-crimes section at the Justice Department, described the suit as “one of the most significant cases ever brought under the Clean Air Act.”[70]

The Koch Industries PAC had donated $332,000 to Republican candidates in the 2010 elections. [71]

Koch representation in Bush's cabinet

Alex Beehler, assistant deputy under secretary of defense for Environment, Safety and Occupational Health, was previously Koch Industries' director of environmental and regulatory affairs and concurrently served at the Charles G. Koch Foundation as vice president for environmental projects. [72] Beehler was later nominated and re-nominated by the Bush White House, to become the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Inspector General. [73]

2011 Bloomberg Markets Exposé

On September 22, 2011, business media outlet Bloomberg released an extensive report detailing the results of an investigation it had conducted into allegations by several former Koch employees turned whistle-blower. One whistle-blower detailed her termination after her compliance check had discovered a number of bribery payments made in order to secure contracts in six countries, including Nigeria, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia. Reporters also discovered that Koch companies had traded with Iran through foreign-held subsidiaries, possibly violating US law. Other sources within the article detailed a culture of poor ethics and allegations of outright theft.[74]

Bribery of Foreign Officials

In 2008, an internal investigation found numerous instances of bribery to foreign officials to secure contracts by Koch Industries subsidiary Koch-Glitsch. One incident which came under investigation was the payment of an unusually high premium to a sales agent who admitted in a French court that the payment had been passed on to someone representing a partially state-owned Egyptian company in order to secure a contract there.

The company attempted to blame the sales agent and terminated him with a six page letter detailing the company's illicit payments to interests in Algeria, Egypt, India, Morocco, Nigeria and Saudi Arabia and placing blame for them on the sales agent. However, the court found that "[the sales agent] was not giving authorizations" for the payments, instead indicating that Charles Ender, a major Koch executive and president of Koch-Glitsch for Europe and Asian operations at the time, was responsible.[75]

Firing of Compliance Officer

Meanwhile, the compliance offer initially assigned to the investigation was removed from the inquiry almost immediately and fired a short time later. After a seven week hospitalization in 2009, saying that she failed to share documents within the company and didn't have the skills she'd claimed on her resume, she was terminated.

The compliance officer argued that she her termination was retaliation for uncovering the illegal payments.[76]

Trading with Iran

Bloomberg also found that Koch companies had traded and worked extensively with Iran over a ten year period. Notable Koch-Iranian collaborations include the construction of the world's largest methanol plant for the National Iranian Petrochemical Company at the city of Bandar Assaluyeh. The plant is being used to tap into Iran's extensive natural gas resources.

A purchase order for refining equipment at the plant was sent the day after President George W. Bush outlined the concept of an "axis of evil" in his 2003 State of the Union address, where he articulated his view that Iran was a direct threat to the United States and specifically advocated for economic sanctions that Koch companies may have been violating. “Every single chance they had to do business with Iran, or anyone else, they did,” said one whistle blower of Koch Chemicals' dealings with Iran.[77]

Falsifying Benzene Emissions

In April 2001, the Koch Petroluem Group (now Flint Hills Resources) "pleaded guilty to a felony charge of lying to the government about its benzene emissions". A report to the Texas Natural Resource Conservation Commission disclosed only 1/149th of the actual benzene pollution. The company was fined $10 million and ordered to fund an additional $10 million in costs for environmental cleanup in South Texas.

The extremely profitable plant earned almost $200 million for the company in 1995, the year of the violation; the benzene emissions would have cost $7 million to control. After an environmental technician reported the false report that led to the fines, Koch Petroleum Group moved the whistle blower to an empty office with no tasks and no e-mail access. She quit a short time later.[78]

Stealing Oil on Indian Reservations

In May 1989, the Senate held hearings on what the Senate special committee on investigations called "a widespread scheme to steal oil on Indian land." According to data the committee compiled, Koch took 1.95 million barrels of oil it didn’t pay for from 1986 to 1988.

The Senate referred the case to the Justice Department, but no indictment followed. In December 1999 in a civil trial, the jury found that "Koch Industries had made 24,587 false claims in buying oil, underpaying the U.S. government for royalties on Native American land from 1985 to 1989." Koch settled the case in 2001 for $25 million.

Koch's current PR line on the scandal? Melissa Cohlmia, Koch’s director of corporate communications, said in an email to Bloomberg reporters, "We believe that our practices were consistent with industry practice."[79]

Deadly Butane Explosion

In 1996, two Texas teenagers, aged 16 and 17, were killed after their car stalled in a cloud of butane vapor that disabled the vehicles internal mechanisms. The butane vapor was leaking from a corroded steel pipeline owned by Koch Industries. As the driver attempted to re-start the vehicle, the leaked butane cloud caused a massive explosion that killed both teenagers, burning them alive. A jury later awarded nearly $300 million to family members in a wrongful death lawsuit.

In the Bloomberg expose, a Koch spokesperson argued that this was only an isolated incident.[80]

The 'Koch Method'

In detailing past regulatory action against Koch businesses, the article interviewed whistle-blowers who had testified about their role in actions that drew enforcement. Court testimony details one man who testified under oath that he was taught to steal and cheat in business dealings, using techniques he was taught by superiors, who referred to them as the "Koch Method." [81]

Company background

On its website, Koch Industries states that the company is named after Fred C. Koch "who developed an improved method of converting heavy oil into gasoline in 1927."[82] In one profile on the evolution of the company, published by Koch Industries, he "spent most of 1924 and 1925 in England as an employee of the Medway Oil and Storage Company." Subsequently he became the third partner in Keith-Winkler, a Wichita Kansas engineering firm which had been founded by Lewis Winkler and Dobie Keith. Keith left the firm in approximately 1926 and Winkler and Koch's firm struggled by on "small, low-margin projects." The pairs fortunes changed when Koch developed a thermal cracking process which was sold to "several independent refineries in 1928 and 1929." By 1931 the company was known as the Winkler-Koch Engineering Company. When Winkler and Koch "ended their partnership in 1945" Koch established Koch Engineering Company.[83]

In 1940, Koch co-founded the Wood River Oil & Refining Company which six years later bought the Rock Island Oil & Refining Company's refinery in southwestern Oklahoma. In 1959 Wood River Oil & Refining Company's name was changed to Rock Island Oil & Refining Company. The company's name was changed once more in 1968 to Koch Industries following the death of Fred Koch.[84]

From its foundation in the 1940's up until the late 1980's Koch Industries business interests were dominated by oil and gas industry operations, along with some ranching and engineering subsidiaries.[84]

Koch Industries has 70,000 employees globally,[85] and annual sales of $100 billion in the fiscal year ending December of 2008.[1]

Cargill comes in second for privately owned companies.

Early history

Fred Koch, father of Charles and David, was the Koch who initially grew Koch Industries, which grew from an oil delivery business in Texas. According to the John Birch Society's New American publication, Koch "was an early member of the The John Birch Society’s National Council, an advisory group to JBS founder Robert Welch." [86]

Koch Industries' earliest founding statistics are mixed. The NYTimes said it was "founded in 1927 by Fred Koch with a fleet of oil delivery trucks"[87]; the Koch website pegs the founding year at 1940 ("What is now Koch Industries, Inc. began as Wood River Oil and Refining Co. in 1940")[88]; and a detailed early history from a Koch Industries internal newsletter says Fred Koch joined an existing struggling enterprise, and implies that he joined in the year 1926.[89]

Mergers & acquisitions

Entergy (2001)

In 2001, power company Entergy formed a partnership with Koch Industries to form Entergy- Koch, LP.[90]

Invista (Lycra, etc), 2003

In 2003, Koch announced a $4.4 billion cash purchase of Invista, the world's largest fibers company and owner of brand names such as Lycra and Teflon; from DuPont. [91]

Georgia-Pacific (mills, paper products), 2005

In 2005 Koch Industries acquired the American pulp and paper products giant Georgia-Pacific, which now operates as a subsidiary.[92]

Product brands

Georgia-Pacific's brands include Quilted Northern, Angel Soft, Brawny, Sparkle, Vanity Fair, and Dixie cups. Internationally, its brands include Lotus, Colhogar, Delica, Tenderly, and the Vania brand of personal care products.

Lumber mills

Georgia-Pacific owns and operates the following mills:

Naheola mill in Pennington, Alabama, which began operations in 1958. Currently, the principle products from the Naheola mill include both plate stock and cup stock for use in the food service market.

The Crossett mill, located in Crossett, Arkansas, produces bleached paperboard grades, including folding carton, plate stock, bleached linerboard, and various cup stock grades.

The recently acquired Brewton mill, located in Brewton, Alabama, produces folding carton, blister packaging, and skin packaging grades.

Fort James Muskogee Mill Power Plant is a coal-fired power station in Muskogee, Oklahoma that provides power to Georgia-Pacific's Muskogee paper mill. [93]

Contact