AFP AMs FOR PROSPERITY Koch

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https://ecollections.law.fiu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1743&context=lawreview

Uncharitable Think Tanks 207

Institution—also led in the earlier one, with only slight shifts otherwise.229 • From 2010 on, the top funders were Donors Trust, Donors Capital Fund, and the Scaife, Bradley, and Koch family foundations. The Devos family foundations rose to join the ranks of the top ten. • Grants channeled through Donors Trust and Donors Capital Fund accounted for 13.7% of the total. • 74% of all contributions came from completely unidentified sources. • }:}:

After AEI, Heritage and Hoover, the largest recipients were Cato, the Manhattan Institute, the Hudson Institute, the Mercatus Center, the Acton Institute, the State Policy Network, the Reason Foundation, Heartland, and the Americans for Prosperity Foundation. From 2003 to 2018, Brulle and his co-authors tallied total gifts to this cohort of $9.77 billion 230—a sum that refutes the mistaken notion that charitable giving is small dollars, and influential only at the margin. Now for the thought experiment.

cliven bundy; flamed out in racist q about whether blacks were better off as slaves (but note that the underlying claims are standard: welfare queen plus abortion; interesting to note prison (some synch left-right on expense of prison)

afp bails/scrubs: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/04/25/koch-brothers-cliven-bundy_n_5213481.html?view=print&comm_ref=false

parody of battle for Blair Mtn

==

huffpo: WASHINGTON -- Americans for Prosperity Nevada, the state affiliate of the Koch Brothers-backed group, appears to have hastily deleted social media posts expressing support for Cliven Bundy, the renegade rancher who exposed himself as a racist in recent press conferences.

A tweet sent by AFP Nevada on April 10 urging followers to read more about the #BundyBattle, which involves Bundy's refusal to pay fines for allowing his cattle to graze on public land, has been deleted. A Facebook graphic that the group posted criticizing the Bureau of Land Management for enforcing grazing laws against Bundy has similarly disappeared.

Previously, the page read: "The BLM spent HOW MUCH to round up cattle? ONE MILLION DOLLARS." As of Friday afternoon, it reads: "This content is currently unavailable"

AFP Nevada, a anti-government, libertarian organization, did not immediately return a request for comment. But the group is the latest to join the massive, frantic stampede of political organizations and media figures distancing themselves from Bundy in the wake of his comments. Sens. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Dean Heller (R-Nev.) both condemned the rancher's remarks, and various Fox News personalities called them repugnant as well.

block local regs/transit  http://grist.org/cities/states-try-to-block-cities-transit-plans/

pro publ 3/14

Freedom Partners Chamber of Commerce $32,300,000

Center to Protect Patient Rights $11,513,079

TC4 Trust $500,000

GRANTS FROM THIS ORGANIZATION TO:

Center to Protect Patient Rights $100,000

National Federation of Independent Business $20,000

New Hampshire Advantage Coalition $20,000

American Energy Alliance $15,000

Hampton Roads Tea Party $7,700

New Mexico Business Coalition $7,500

American Principles in Action $7,259

Citizens for Community Values Action $5,800

Smart Girl Politics Action $5,650

==

2/14

JUDY WOODRUFF:Senate Democrats face a tough map in this November’s midterm elections, having to defend 21 seats, compared to 14 for Republicans.

Among the top targets for Republicans are seven seats currently held by Democrats in states that Mitt Romney won in 2012: Alaska, Arkansas, Louisiana, Montana, North Carolina, South Dakota, and West Virginia. Democrats, meanwhile, view Kentucky and Georgia as their best pickup opportunities.

As the two parties stockpile resources for the fall campaign, outside groups have already begun spending massive sums of money. In fact, Americans for Prosperity, which is backed by conservative billionaires Charles and David Koch, has spent $27 million on ads just since August.

We examine the role that this money could play in shaping the battle for the Senate...

And I think what we’re seeing is kind of an acceleration of the trends that we saw through the last two elections, which is that the money is increasingly flowing to the unregulated, undisclosed organizations outside the traditional structure. So tax-exempt groups like Americans for Prosperity are taking on really an outsized role.

And what’s so striking about their spending is not just the amount, but how early we’re seeing them jump in and trying to define the landscape for these midterms.

JUDY WOODRUFF:And, by the way, this may be taking money away — we’re not sure yet completely — from these other groups that were trying to raise money.

MATEA GOLD:Yes, we’re not quite sure how it will all play out in the end.

One thing that’s been striking is some of the really big conservative super PACs from 2012, such as American Crossroads, have had really paltry fund-raising so far this year. There’s definitely a sense among conservative donors that I think they’re watching where they give their money, because so much was spent in 2012, and they obviously didn’t achieve their aims.

But (c)(4) groups seem to be very healthy, and as well as kind of candidate-based super PACs. We’re increasingly seeing specific race-based PACs set up in the states, and everyone has their own super PAC now....

What’s interesting is Americans for Prosperity has been really focused just on hitting vulnerable Democrats, particularly incumbent Democrats that are really facing tough reelections in the fall. They’re not engaging in primary fights. And they really are kind of softening them up before some of the Republican candidates are even selected in the primaries.

And then, meanwhile, a lot of the money being spent on the right is actually being spent by conservative groups vs. establishment Republican groups that are really fighting over the direction of the party. So we’re seeing money really kind of underscore these fissures all across the political spectrum...Americans for Prosperity is really just hitting Democrats on Obamacare, their support for the president’s signature health care legislation. I think another lesson from 2012 learned by groups particularly on the right was that they had too many messages, that voters were hearing too many reasons why they should vote against Obama. So there’s a lot of focus on message discipline this time around.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Meanwhile, what are Democrats saying to you about their hopes of being able to catch up with this amount of money and this amount of advertising?

MATEA GOLD: Well, the Democrats are very aggressively focusing on the connection between AFP and the Koch brothers. That’s a great fund-raising tool for them. And they’re making a lot out of that in each specific race.

And they’re succeeding in a lot of cases in raising healthy sums of money. And I think we’re going to see they’re not going to be able to match, I don’t think, the resources that the tax-exempt groups on the right will have. But they will probably be able to be very engaged throughout the year.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Matea Gold, it’s a lot to keep your eye on at The Washington Post.”

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/election/

 ===

As Congress dithers for the umpteenth time over extending a key subsidy for wind energy, the industry once again is up in the air. Called the production tax credit (PTC), the subsidy helps level the playing field between wind and fossil fuels and has proven to be critical for financing new projects, helping to make wind one of the fastest growing electricity sources in the country. Given the planet needs to transition as quickly as possible away from coal and natural gas to carbon-free energy to avoid the worst consequences of climate change, who would be against renewing wind's tax credit?

The Koch brothers, that's who.

Charles G. and David H. Koch -- the billionaire owners of the coal, oil and gas Koch Industries conglomerate -- have enlisted their extensive network of think tanks, advocacy groups and friends on Capitol Hill to spearhead a campaign to pull the plug on the PTC. Never mind the fact that the oil and gas industry has averaged four times what the wind tax credit is worth in federal tax breaks and subsidies annually for the last 95 years.

The Koch network is fighting the wind industry on a number of fronts. Last month, Koch-funded CongressmanMike Pompeo (R-Kansas) sent a letter signed by 52 House members to the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, urging him to let the PTC expire.Meanwhile, a coalition of some 100 national and local groups organized by the Koch-founded Americans for Prosperity sent a letter to each member of Congress asking them to do the same. And earlier this month, the Koch-funded Institute for Energy Research launched an anti-PTC ad campaign and released a report claiming that only a handful of states actually benefit from the subsidy.

Malcolm Gladwell didn't include this battle in his new book David and Goliath because, given the odds, it's more like Bambi versus Godzilla.

The Kochs' Man in Congress

The fact that Kansas Rep. Mike Pompeo is the Kochs' point man to scuttle the PTC in the House is a bit ironic given his state is a wind energy leader. Kansas has the second highest wind potential in the country, it has already attracted more than $5 billion in wind industry investment, and last year wind generated 11.4 percent of its electricity. With stats like that, the industry has broad bipartisan support. Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback and Sens. Jerry Moran and Pat Roberts -- all Republicans -- are big fans.

Pompeo, who has been in Congress since only 2011, would argue that he's against all energy tax credits. For the second year in a row, he has introduced a bill that would eliminate tax breaks that benefit oil, natural gas, coal, nuclear, electric vehicles, alternative fuels, solar and wind, including the PTC, which gives wind developers a tax credit of 2.3 cents for each kilowatt-hour of electricity they produce.

But there's a catch. Although it appears evenhanded, Pompeo's bill would severely hamper wind and solar but preserve a number of oil, gas and coal subsidies, including the percentage depletion allowance, the ability to expense the costs of exploration, and the accelerated depreciation of certain kinds of "geologic property." These and other tax breaks he left out of his bill would be worth about $12.5 billion to the oil and gas industry from 2011 through 2015, according to a March 2012 Congressional Research Service report.

Why is Pompeo so down on wind? Perhaps it's because Koch Industries is headquartered in Wichita, smack-dab in the middle of his district -- and the fact that the company is by far and away his biggest campaign contributor. Since 2010, Koch Industries has given him $200,000, more than four times what his second highest contributor kicked in. Besides Koch Industries, three other oil companies are among Pompeo's top five contributors -- McCoy Petroleum, Mull Drilling and Richie Exploration -- and they're also based in Wichita.

What about the other 51 House members who signed Pompeo's letter? As it turns out, 65 percent of them received contributions from Koch Industries during the last two or three campaign cycles, according to Federal Election Commission data compiled by the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics. A quarter of them, meanwhile, cashed checks from ExxonMobil. And except for two congressmen who didn't take any energy industry money, the signatories received sizable contributions from a number of other corporations that compete with wind, including coal barons Arch Coal and Alpha Natural Resources; oil and gas giants Chesapeake Energy, Chevron, ConocoPhillips and Valero Energy; and Exelon, which owns the most nuclear reactors in the country.

Americans for (Koch) Prosperity Weighs In

Pompeo's letter came on the heels of a letter from the Kochs' flagship advocacy group, Americans for Prosperity, calling for Congress to kill the PTC. AFP's letter, which was signed by 102 organizations, claims that "the wind industry has very little to show after 20 years of preferential tax treatment" and declares that "Americans deserve energy solutions that can make it on their own in the marketplace -- not ones that need to be propped up by government indefinitely."

Is that right? Little to show? Preferential tax treatment?

In fact, until Congress left the wind industry hanging late last year, it had been doing quite well. Even with a deep recession and slow recovery, over the previous five years -- with the help of the PTC, stimulus spending and state renewable electricity standards -- the industry doubled its electricity output, employment and private investment. In 2012, domestic manufacturers produced roughly 72 percent of the wind turbine equipment erected across the country -- nearly triple the percentage in 2006 -- and more than 13,000 megawatts of new wind generation capacity was installed. By the end of last year, there were enough wind turbines to power 15 million typical American homes -- without toxic pollutants or carbon emissions.

But AFP's complaint that the wind industry has been on the dole far too long is even more galling. What about the oil and gas industry? It's been feeding at the federal trough since 1918! On average, the industry has benefited from $4.86 billion in tax breaks and subsidies in today's dollars every year since then, according to a 2011 study by DBL Investors, a venture capital firm. Renewable energy technologies, meanwhile, averaged only $370 million a year in subsidies between 1994 and 2009. The 2009 stimulus package did provide $21 billion for wind, solar and other renewables, but that support barely begins to balance the scales that have tilted toward nuclear power for more than 50 years, oil and gas for 95 years, and coal for more than two centuries.

So who signed the AFP letter? About half of the signatories are local tea party affiliates and anti-wind NIMBY groups of indeterminate size and funding. The other half are, for the most part, relatively obscure national groups, but there are a few that have attractedattention over the years for their contrarian views on climate science and renewable energy. Like AFP, those groups are awash in petrodollars. The American Energy Alliance (and its parent, the Institute for Energy Research), Competitive Enterprise Institute, Freedom Works, Frontiers of Freedom and Heritage Action (and its parent, the Heritage Foundation) collectively have received millions of dollars from Koch family foundations, ExxonMobil and the American Petroleum Institute, the oil and gas industry's premier trade association.

The Institute for Energy Research's Questionable Research

On December 3, the Institute for Energy Research and its political arm, the American Energy Alliance, sponsored what they dubbed the "wind welfare" summit in Washington, D.C., featuring IER founder and CEO Robert Bradley Jr., a Koch network veteran. AEA announced it would spend $40,000 on print and digital ads calling for an end to the PTC and is flying in anti-PTC advocates for meetings on Capitol Hill.

Bradley presumably highlighted the findings of a report IER released the day before claiming that a small number of states with wind resources -- Iowa, North Dakota, Oklahoma and Texas -- are reaping the benefits of the PTC while 30 states and the District of Columbia are "losing millions" to fund it.

The report's findings, however, don't hold up to scrutiny. Mike Jacobs, a senior energy analyst at the Union of Concerned Scientists, pointed out in a recent blog that IER ignored the fact that a number of the states it identified as "net payers" are home to wind industry manufacturing facilities. There are 62 companies in Ohio making turbine components, for example, 40 in Michigan and 21 in California. Jacobs also discovered that IER downplayed the fact that "the PTC benefits consumers where wind-generated electricity adds to the supply and lowers the price of electricity, landowners who receive lease payments from the wind turbines, and local communities that collect tax payments on installed wind farms."

Jeff Spross, blogging on the Center for American Progress' ThinkProgress website, alsochided IER, pointing out that most industries are not equally distributed across the country. "The oil and gas industries, for instance, benefit from a wealth of federal tax carve-outs," he wrote, "but the economic activity they generate is concentrated in just a few key states."

In other words, it's disingenuous to single out the wind industry.

Twisting in the Wind

While Congress has generously provided the fossil-fuel and nuclear-energy industries a number of permanent subsidies, it has typically granted the wind industry the PTC on a short-term basis and then wavered over renewing it. Last year the PTC expired on December 31, but as part of the "fiscal cliff" budget deal the next day, Congress extended it for the seventh time since it debuted in 1992 -- for only one year. 

This uncertainty over the PTC's status has put wind developers at a distinct disadvantage, making it difficult to attract investors and plan ahead. Last year's cliffhanger, for example, definitely did a number on the industry. Wind farm construction has fallen off dramatically compared with 2012: Only one utility-scale wind turbine was installed in the first six months of this year. Business picked up somewhat in the third quarter, with 68.3 megawatts installed, according to the American Wind Energy Association, but that's far below the average of more than 1,000 megawatts that the industry constructed in most quarters in recent years. 

Given that it takes years to plan, finance and construct a wind farm, Congress is again undermining the industry's potential by slow-walking the PTC extension this year. And that potential is tremendous. Wind currently generates about 4 percent of U.S. electricity, but by 2030 it could produce more than 20 percent, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. The DOE's National Renewable Energy Laboratory also is bullish on wind and renewables writ large. Last year, it published a report that concluded today's commercially available renewable technologies could easily generate 80 percent of U.S. electricity by 2050, with nearly half coming from wind. If the Koch brothers and their allies have their way, however, it likely will take a lot longer to get there -- and it will cost a hell of a lot more.

Elliott Negin is the director of news and commentary at the Union of Concerned Scientists.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/elliott-negin/the-koch-brothers-are-sti_b_4396033.html

11/22/03 alter

Americans for Prosperity, the arch-conservative advocacy group backed largely by the Koch Brothers, released their latest attack ad against Obamacare on Wednesday, criticizing Alaskan Democratic Senator Mark Begich for his support of the Affordable Care Act. 

The commercial in question appears to feature an unidentified Alaskan voter, who complains about the betrayal at the hands of both Begich and Obama, while walking leisurely around her kitchen with a cup of coffee. But Connie Bowman, the woman in the video was interviewed by the New York Times, and she said she's “just an actress,” with a fairly prolific voice-over and commercial career.

And she doesn't live anywhere near Alaska. She lives in Maryland.

“Today’s misleading ad from the Koch brothers is just more evidence that even billions of dollars can’t buy integrity,” Begich spokeswoman Rachel Barinbaum said in a statement. 

The ad comes days after the billionaire brothers announced their $4 million anti-Obamacare advertising campaign, sponsored by the Americans for Prosperity, which plans to target six congressional democrats who supported the Affordable Care Act. Begich is just the first.

Begich, who is currently up for reelection in the red state, described his plans on Tuesday for legislation that calls for creating a new category of insurance plans within Obamacare that would offer citizens lower premiums with higher out-of-pocket costs. 

==

http://grist.org/politics/why-the-koch-brothers-matter-more-than-you-on-election-day/

==

see aspen on defending the dream summit

http://grist.org/politics/why-the-koch-brothers-matter-more-than-you-on-election-day/

http://grist.org/news/kochs-and-republicans-launch-bid-to-snuff-out-wind-energy-tax-incentives/

==

HEADING FOR THE HILLS

For now, however, no prominent Republican running for office in the next few years will want to get anywhere near a carbon-tax proposal, or even talk about climate change. While the rift in the party over global warming is becoming increasingly evident, most Republicans feel much more secure on the side that denies the problem.

That was made abundantly plain during the Conservative Political Action Conference in March, the annual Washington gathering that the GOP base uses to anoint its future leaders. Two leading speakers this year were Sen. Marco Rubio and former Gov. Jeb Bush, both of Florida, the state that scientists such as Kerry Emanuel warn is the most vulnerable to devastation from intensified hurricanes in the coming years.

Rubio was the undisputed star attraction, and his keynote speech sparked some of the loudest cheers when he denounced climate science in the context of condemning abortion.

“The people who are actually closed-minded in American politics are the people who love to preach about the certainty of science with regards to our climate but ignore the absolute fact that science has proven that life begins at conception,” Rubio said. A month earlier, in his response to President Obama’s State of the Union, Rubio had said, “When we point out that no matter how many job-killing laws we pass, our government can’t control the weather, [Obama] accuses us of wanting dirty water and dirty air.”

Bush’s CPAC speech had a decidedly different tone. He castigated his party for espousing hard-right views. “Way too many people believe Republicans are anti-immigrant, antiwoman, antiscience, antigay, anti-worker … and the list goes on,” he said. “Many voters are simply unwilling to choose our candidates, because those voters feel unloved, unwanted, and unwelcome in our party.”

Bush did not specifically mention climate change, although many on both sides of the aisle interpreted his remark about science as a signal that he’d be open to addressing the issue. Pundits praised the speech, but it was not a hit with his party. Bush spoke to a quiet room with a fair number of empty seats. Many in the audience members were checking their mobile devices. When he finished, Bush was met with a polite, modest smattering of applause. (Another Republican who has signaled support for climate-change legislation, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, wasn’t even invited to CPAC.)

At 41, Rubio personifies the next generation of Republican leadership, while Bush represents an older, perhaps out-of-date moderate mind-set—which means the party may very well be heading in the wrong direction when it comes to embracing climate science. Rubio’s view is likely to remain the mainstream one in the party in the short term, thanks to tea-party groups such as Americans for Prosperity, a super PAC founded by David and Charles Koch, the principal owners of Koch Industries, a major U.S. oil conglomerate.

Over the last several years, Americans for Prosperityhas spearheaded an all-fronts campaign using advertising, social media, and cross-country events aimed at electing lawmakers who will ensure that the fossil-fuel industry won’t have to worry about any new regulations. The group spent $36 million to influence the 2012 elections.

“We’ve been having this debate with the Left for 10 years, and we welcome having the debate with these new groups. If there are groups who want to do a niche effort with the Republican electorate, we’ll win that debate,” says the group’s president, Tim Phillips. He’s not worried that organizations such as Combs’s Christian Coalition or economists such as Laffer will influence lawmakers—because AFP would hit any such candidate with an all-out negative campaign. “Let them bring a carbon tax on. They know it’s political death for them to bring this forward on their own.”

There’s no denying the political power of groups like Americans for Prosperity. Still, despite its massive wealth, the super PAC failed to achieve either of its two chief political goals of 2012—unseating President Obama and claiming the Senate majority for Republicans.

The goal of grassroots efforts is to persuade Republicans that they’ll be rewarded if they take a stand in support of climate action—and that they could doom their party to minority status if they don’t. Advocates in the GOP realize that it’s too early and too fraught for Republicans seeking reelection to sound the alarm over the changing climate.

But out of sight on Capitol Hill, staffers say, conversations are taking place about how to go about doing that—eventually. “Most Republicans say the same thing behind closed doors: ‘Of course, I get that the climate is changing, of course I get that we need to do something—but I need to get reelected.’ Somehow they’re going to have to find a safe place on this,” says the Audubon Society’s Yarnold.

“We’re trying to get them to come out of the climate closet,” he says. “There’s no question they’re leaving votes on the table because of this. And they know it.”

==

"Citizen Koch," which premiered at Sundance in January and competed for Best Documentary, followed the activism and struggles of former Republicans who felt betrayed by Walker's union-busting move (which he never mentioned on the campaign trail). The film documents the role of Koch-funded entities like Americans for Prosperity, which spent $10 million [6] aiding Walker in his recall election. The film's final scene shows an Americans for Prosperity official making the incredible claim the group is "just like the Red Cross, just like any other nonprofit.” CF TP IRS "SCANDAL"

gore/sfu links dci to afp:

bio

Americans for Prosperity (AFP) is an astroturf front group started by oil billionaire David Koch and Richard Fink (a member of the board of directors of Koch Industries) in 2003. AFP works together with the Koch family’s other conservative foundations promoting right wing and libertarian causes.

A section 501(c)(4) organization, AFP and the Americans for Prosperity Foundation (AFP Foundation), a section 501(c)(3) organization, are "committed to educating citizens about economic policy and a return of the federal government to its Constitutional limits."

Source: SourceWatch

Evidence

AFP funding went from $7 million in 2008 to $16.3 million in 2009 to a $40 million in 2010 to $50 million in 2011.

Americans for Prosperity has reported spending a total of $1,322,058 on independent campaigning through October 2010, with 96% benefiting Republican candidates.

Americans for Prosperity and its sister organization, Americans for Prosperity Foundation, have 31 state chapters that are active players in organizing Tea Party demonstrations, training activists, and bussing in speakers and participants.

AFP orchestrated the anti-Obama, anti-tax tea party protests beginning in April of 2009.  AFP continues to organize tea party rallies currently, bussing speakers and participants all over the country.

According to Jane Mayer in The New Yorker, Americans for Prosperity and its foundation plan to spend$45 millionon “some fifty House races and half a dozen Senate races, staging rallies, organizing door-to-door canvassing, and running ads aimed at “educating voters about where candidates stand.”

AFP was involved in the attacks on Obama’s "green jobs" czar, Van Jones, and has crusaded against international climate talks.

AFP has enthusiastically promoted global warming denial and attacked environmental regulation with a series of national PR campaigns.  AFP’s  "Hot Air Tour,” a national tour that calls predictions of global warming “hysteria,” labels cap and trade legislation a “climate tax,” and features a hot air balloon, is one such stunt.

AFP also runs the website No Climate Tax, which exhorts citizens to send a message to federal and state lawmakers urging them to sign the No Climate Tax Pledge.

In the wake of the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, AFP has positioned itself as a conduit for corporate money entering political campaigns.  Americans for Prosperity spent $6 million in ads attacking democratic incumbents in the 2010 elections.

AFP director Art Pope is an ex-legislator in North Carolina who has been dubbed "The Knight of the Right" by Raleigh News and Observer journalist Rob Christensen. Pope has spent $24.1 million (1997-2008) on organizations  that deny climate change science including Americans for Prosperity, which has received over one millions dollars from Pope's family foundation. In addition to money from Art Pope's John William Pope foundation, AFP also received money from the Lynde and Harry Bradley foundation, of which Art Pope is a board member.

Americans for Prosperity Vice President Alan Cobb was the “director of Kansas Public Affairs for Koch Industries,” and is the lead policy maker at led two pro-corporate front groups: The Free Enterprise Fund and The Internet Freedom Coalition.

AFP advocates pro-tobacco industry positions on issues like cigarette taxes and clean indoor air laws.

AFP’s highest paid independent contractor in 2009 was FLS Connect, one of the largest GOP pollsters and fundraisers.  FLS Connect is a side project of the right wing PR firm DCI Group, which specializes in creating astroturf support for corporate interests and is responsible for organizing climate denial front groups such as Tech Central Station. FLS Connect received well over $100,000 in fees from AFP in 2009. FLS Connect and the DCI Group are “sister companies” says Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor party chairman Brian Melendez.  FLS Connect was originally incorporated in 1999 as Feather, Hodges, Larson & Synhorst, according to filings with the Arizona Corporation Commission. In 2001 the firm’s name was changed to FLS-DCI. Then in 2006 the company’s moniker was switched to FLS Connect. Synhorst is a founder and current chairman of the DCI Group, while Feather worked as a lobbyist for the firm from 2001 to 2006. “It’s basically the same group of people who have established and run both organizations” says Menendez.

In conjunction with political donations from Koch Industries to Republican Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, Americans for Prosperity has coordinated support for the Governor's union busting efforts. Wisconsin's budget crisis has been inflamed by corporate tax cuts initiated by Gov. Walker, who then used the lack of income to justify taking bargaining rights from Wisconsin union workers and cutting the salaries and benefits of state employees. Koch Industries holds numerous business operations in Wisconsin.

In March, 2011, Americans for Prosperity sent memos to U.S. senators to support an attack on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's lawful regulation of greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act. An amendment introduced by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) to a small business bill, based on anti-climate legislation authored by Senator James Inhofe (R-OK), was introduced as a partisan tactic with low likelihood for success, although other amendments on the table would also threaten the EPA's ability to curb the consequences of climate change. AFP's effort was complimented by advertisements run by the National Association of Manufacturers and the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity.

Links and Resources

SourceWatch

DeSmogBlog

FactCheck.org

OpenSecrets

The New Yorker

Political Correction

People for the American Way

http://www.polluterwatch.com/americans-prosperity

employee voter education:

Major Retailer Urges Workers To Take 'Civics Course' With Anti-Obama Content

October 31, 2012  |

If you live in the Midwest and you're working on a home-improvement project, you're as likely to do your shopping at a Menards store as at a Lowe's or Home Depot. With 270 stores [3] and 40,000 employees [4], Menards is the third-largest home-improvement chain in the U.S., and one of the largest privately held corporations in the country. But Menards stores sell more than just lumber and building supplies; their employees are sold a bill of goods in the form of right-wing ideology.

This January, as the Iowa Caucuses were underway, Menards began encouraging employees to take an at-home online "civics" course that characterizes the economic policies of President Barack Obama as a threat to the success of businesses such as Menards, and by extension, to the employees' own well-being.

FBI Investigation

The course, titled "Civics 101: The National Self Governing Will In-Home Training," incorporates much of the material comprising the Prosperity 101 program that AlterNet, working in partnership with the Investigative Fund at the Nation Institute, exposed [5] last year -- a program concocted by Koch-linked political operatives Mark Block and Linda Hansen, late of the now-defunct Herman Cain presidential campaign. In March, Daniel Bice of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported [6] that the FBI is investigating possible financial improprieties involving two non-profit organizations founded by Block that are linked to Prosperity 101, which is a for-profit venture.

Menards employees who sign up for the course are graded on their knowledge via a multiple choice pass-fail test, and those who pass the test are acknowledged in company publications and bulletins. While workers are not required to take the course, those who hope for promotions may feel pressure to do so, since it is clear that management is paying attention to who is or isn't taking the at-home classes, which are conducted on the employees' own time. The civics course is offered as part of a battery of courses, most of which pertain to products sold by the company, or other aspects of working at Menards.

AlterNet has obtained the online textbook for the Menards civics course. The third part of the textbok, subtitled "American Job Security [7]," imparts a message similar to the letter sent [8] by Koch Industries CEO Dave Robertson to retirees and employees of the company's Georgia Pacific subsidiary, as well as the e-mail sent [9] to employees of Rite-Hite, a Milwaukee equipment manufacturer, by company owner Mark White, urging them to vote for Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney. While the Menards course doesn't offer an explicit candidate endorsement, it describes Obama policies in threatening terms, while policies that echo Romney's proposals are portrayed in a positive and uplifting light.

Koch-Linked Program

In our June 2011 exposé [5], we reported that Herman Cain and Wall Street Journal editorial board member Stephen Moore conducted more than a dozen Prosperity 101 seminars for the employees of companies in Wisconsin and other Midwestern states during the campaign season for the 2010 congressional midterm elections. Hansen, we reported, was looking to create an online Prosperity 101 program for the Wisconsin-based Menards, and it appears as if something like that happened just in time for the 2012 presidential campaign season. While it remains unclear whether the current Menards program was sold to the retailer by Prosperity 101, what is clear is that several sections of the program come directly -- sometimes with minor edits -- from the textbook, also called Prosperity 101, that was distributed during a breakout session that took place at an Americans for Prosperity Foundation conference in Las Vegas in July 2010. The conference, called RightOnline, took place at the opulent Venetian, owned by right-wing super-PAC funder Sheldon Adelson [10], and billed by AFPF president Tim Phillips as "the only non-union hotel on the [Las Vegas] Strip." 

The Americans for Prosperity Foundation is chaired by David Koch, the multibillionaire funder, with his brother, Charles, of numerous right-wing think tanks and interest groups, and co-owner of Koch Industries, the second-largest privately held corporation in the U.S. Block is the former state director for the Wisconsin chapter of Americans for Prosperity, the foundation's sibling organization, and was deeply involved in effecting the sharp turn to the right that took place in Wisconsin politics in 2010 with the election of Governor Scott Walker, Sen. Ron Johnson, and Tea Party-allied members of Congress and the state legislature. (During the course of that campaign, Block was implicated in a vote-caging scheme [11] apparently designed to suppress turnout of young people and African Americans at Milwaukee polling places. He also enjoyed a brief moment of fame as the "smoking man [12]" in a bizarre Herman Cain campaign ad.)

Menards, as we reported [13] last year, is notorious not just as a polluter, but as a virulently anti-labor company. One former manager told *Milwaukee* magazine [14] reporter Mary van de Kamp Nohl that he wasn't allowed to hire two job candidates because, while in high school, they had worked as baggers in a union-organized grocery store. Menards threatened store managers with a 60 percent pay-cut, according to a 2003 *Forbes* article [15], if a union managed to get a foothold in a Menards store on that manager's watch.

http://www.alternet.org/print/election-2012/major-retailer-urges-workers-take-civics-course-anti-obama-content

==

astroturf wars: Defending Am Dream Summit (AFP)  newt, print, radio, tv ppl: chl koch spoke; 25 states rept: organized TP, defeated taxes (clean elections bill?); intensive traings eg cap and trade (and tax); last 10 yrs no warming myron bell ("nonprofit and nonpartisan")

agenda 21: Americans for Prosperity

As Far as the Koch's Americans For Prosperity goes, they hand out brochures about Agenda 21 that are almost fair and balanced compared to some of the stuff I have read.

    Some conservatives worry that sustainable development is just a disguise for a larger scheme to adopt radical environmentalism, wealth redistribution, or some form of “world government” through local initiatives. But whether this is true is largely irrelevant: regardless of the underlying motives and regardless of the source, the policies themselves prove to be an affront to property rights and harmful to the American economy. To those who favor economic freedom and limited government, this alone is grounds for concern.

AFP branches from Kansas to Oregon appear to have Tom Deweese constantly on the rubber chicken circuit, he is everywhere.

  treehugger

http://www.climatesciencewatch.org/2010/03/18/americans-for-prosperity-distorting-climate-change-science-and-economics-in-well-funded-campaign/

 ===

targetted online ads:

But these same dark money groups are also quietly expanding their online advertising efforts, using sophisticated targeting tactics to send their ads to specific kinds of people.

Who they’re targeting, and what data they’re using, is secret.

Online advertising companies have amassed vast quantities of information on what individual people read, watch, and do on the Internet. They collect this data using small files called cookies, which allows them to track Internet users as they move from site to site.

These anonymous profiles of information are used to customize advertisements—like sending casino ads to someone who just bought a plane ticket to Vegas. 

But these profiles are also increasingly used by political groups, which can decide which people to target with a message—and which people to avoid—based on the kinds of articles they read and the kinds of sites they visit.

Many Internet users who see these ads may not be aware they’re being targeted.  

As we’ve detailed, both the Romney and Obama campaigns are using advanced tracking and targeting tactics. Working with our readers, we found two examples of dark money groups using this kind of targeting, as well: one ad from Crossroads GPS and one ad from Americans for Prosperity, a nonprofit linked to the politically influential Koch brothers.

How many of these ads are dark money groups sending out? It’s hard to say, because it’s not easy to track exactly how much Crossroads, Americans for Prosperity, and similar groups are spending on different kinds of advertising.  

But these politically influential organizations are moving more of their efforts online.

While Crossroads spokesman Jonathan Collegio said he couldn’t get into the specifics of their budget, “Crossroads will certainly spend more in the online space in 2012 than it did in 2010,” he said.

Americans for Prosperity did not return multiple requests for comment.

Even when Internet users are sophisticated enough to spot a targeted ad, as Lauren Berns did, it is almost impossible for them to find out why a certain organization is targeting them—or what data about them is being used.... http://www.propublica.org/article/dark-money-political-groups-target-voters-based-on-their-internet-habits

Published on Center for Media and Democracy (http://www.prwatch.org)

Home > Americans for Prosperity Rally Calls for "Nullifying" Health Care Law (with Help from ALEC)

Americans for Prosperity Rally Calls for "Nullifying" Health Care Law (with Help from ALEC)

by Brendan Fischer [1] — July 2, 2012

• Topics: Democracy [2], Health [3], Politics [4]

• Projects: ALEC Exposed [5], Wisconsin Protests [6]

By Brendan Fischer and Laura Stiegerwald

The evening after the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, the Wisconsin chapter of the Koch-funded Americans for Prosperity held a "Hands Off My Health Care" rally to plan next steps in their effort to defeat "Obamacare." The plan apparently involves American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) model legislation.

"Nullification" of Health Care Law Advocated

"Any act or set of actions that you take on a state or a local level which has as its effect rendering a federal act null and void -- that's what we are trying to do," Michael Boldin of the California-based Tenth Amendment Center told the crowd of about 400 people gathered at the Country Springs Hotel in Pewaukee, Wisconsin.

Boldin was advocating for "nullification," a legal theory supported by conservatives that asserts any state has the right to nullify or invalidate a federal law the state deems unconstitutional. According to Boldin, "[Thomas] Jefferson said, 'whensoever the federal government assumes undelegated powers, its acts are unauthoratitaive, void and have no force; and nullification is the rightful remedy.'" The U.S. Supreme Court has rejected nullification, most recently in the 1950s when Southern states tried using the strategy to resist racial integration of public schools.

ALEC Has Lobbied to Defeat Health Reforms

Boldin said that constitutional amendments adopted in Ohio and Arizona could provide the basis for a nullification challenge to the federal health care law. He explained that the amendments declare, "no law or rule shall compel, directly or indirectly, any person, employer or health care provider to participate in the health care system."

The Ohio and Arizona laws Boldin referenced echo the ALEC "model" Freedom of Choice in Health Care Act. The ties between these laws and ALEC is revealed by in-depth investigations into ALEC's influence in Arizona [7] and Ohio [8].

Open records requests submitted by the Center for Media and Democracy revealed that ALEC Health and Human Services Task Force Director Christie Herrera emailed Wisconsin legislators in December 2010 [9] encouraging them to introduce ALEC's Freedom of Choice in Health Care Act. Herrerra recommended they use the language introduced in Arizona, which she says "expands and updates ALEC's original Freedom of Choice in Health Care Act." The following April, a version of the bill [10] was introduced in Wisconsin and passed the state senate, but failed to pass the assembly.

Similar bills were introduced in 43 other states [11] in recent years. The laws passed as a constitutional amendment in four states and as statutory provisions in eleven. According to ALEC, [12] the laws set the stage for Tenth Amendment litigation by creating state laws at odds with the federal healthcare reform's individual mandate. Legal scholars expect [13] that this litigation would fail because the federal law would trump state law under the U.S. Constitution's Supremacy Clause (Article VI).

Wisconsin State Senator Leah Vukmir, who is on the ALEC Board of Directors [14] and the Chair of the ALEC Health and Human Services Task Force, was quoted [15] in ALEC's press release about the Supreme Court's decision. She also spoke at the AFP rally.

According to ALEC's "Health" Co-Chair: "It Will Destroy our Economy"

At the rally, Vukmir did not specifically reference ALEC legislation but said generally that Obamacare is "devastating to our individual freedoms, our religious freedoms. To freedoms. It will destroy our economy."

"Obamacare is going to destroy quality healthcare and we have to intervene," she said, asserting the health care law would lead to "increased costs and lower availability."

Jon Peacock of the Wisconsin Council on Children and Families says otherwise. In an interview with the Center for Media and Democracy, he said there are approximately 500,000 people in the state who are currently uninsured, and estimated that between two-thirds and three-quarters of those individuals would get coverage because of the Affordable Health Care Act reforms, which include a Medicaid expansion, health care exchanges, and tax credits for small businesses that offer insurance to their employees.

Other Wisconsin legislators speaking at the rally included Reps. David Craig and Bill Kramer (who is a member of ALEC's Commerce, Insurance and Economic Development Task Force, as of 2011, which gives insurance company members an equal vote on "model" legislation).

The day after the "Hands off my Healthcare" rally, Americans for Prosperity launched a massive, $9 million ad buy [16] in twelve battleground states for the November elections (including Wisconsin), attacking President Obama for passing a healthcare reform law the Supreme Court described as a "tax" in finding the law consistent with Congress' powers. "How can we afford this tax? We're already struggling," the ad claimed.

Walker Plans to Thwart Healthcare Reform

In a statement released after the U.S. Supreme Court announced their decision, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker said, "Wisconsin will not take any action to implement ObamaCare." Walker reiterated that point in an appearance on CBS' Face The Nation [17] on Sunday, a sentiment shared by other GOP governors like Louisiana's Bobby Jindal, who has also worked to implement ALEC's agenda in his state.

Last year, Walker turned down $38 million in federal funding and announced the state had stopped work on designing the health insurance marketplace "exchanges," pending the outcome of the Supreme Court decision. Under the Supreme Court's decision, states are still required to implement the exchanges but can opt-out of expanding Medicaid coverage. Walker now says the state is awaiting the outcome of the November elections before implementing any part of the health care law -- but if Romney loses, the state would only have two months to design an exchange before the January 2013 deadline, after which the federal government would impose its own plan.

Even if former governor and Bain Capital partner Mitt Romney were to win, Republicans would also have to retain control of the House and get control of sixty votes in the Senate to overturn "Obamacare." Few expect this to happen.

"There will be an exchange and the real question is whether the state is going to participate in the developing of the exchange or not," said Walker's Democratic predecessor Jim Doyle, who now serves as a national co-chairman for the group Know Your Care, which promotes the health care law. "Part of a governor's job is preparing for things that may not go the way you want them to go."

Center for Media and Democracy • 520 University Avenue, Suite 260 • Madison, Wisconsin 53703

5/31

denies involvement in WI, but bus in TP http://www.prwatch.org/node/11533

—Tim Phillips, president of Koch-backed nonprofit Americans For Prosperity, on the group’s big new ad campaign attacking Obama’s green energy policies.

As the Los Angeles Times’ Matea Gold and Melanie Mason report, outside groups such as Americans For Prosperity and Crossroads GPS — both nonprofit “social welfare” organizations that are not required to reveal their donors — are pouring millions of dollars into attack ads hitting President Barack Obama before the general election gets in full swing.

Another article by Bloomberg’s Heidi Przybyla highlights the outside groups’ energy agenda:

In April, 16,991 negative ads aired in various parts of the country and 13,748 of them — or 81 percent — focused on energy, according to data provided by New York-based Kantar Media’s CMAG, which tracks advertising.

Republicans say the ads are timely and effective because high gasoline prices put Obama on defense at the onset of the general election. Democrats say they prove that Republicans are struggling to find an effective attack line amid an economy that is showing signs of recovery.

The outside spending is set to intensify from here: The Los Angeles Times reports that Americans for Prosperity plans to pour $151 million into TV and on-the-ground operations aimed at the 2012 election, with 80% of its TV budget to be spent before Labor Day.

The new ad from Americans for Prosperity knocking Obama's green-energy spending will run in eight battleground states.

Americans for Prosperity (AFP), a conservative group funded partially by the billionaire Koch brothers, unveiled a $6.1 million advertising campaign Thursday that knocks President Obama over green-energy spending.

Thet, which will run in eight battleground states, alleges that the administration sunk billions of dollars into renewable energy projects that created jobs in foreign countries...The ad will run for two weeks in the swing states of Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, Ohio, and Virginia

http://thehill.com/blogs/e2-wire/e2-wire/224055-koch-backed-group-take-aim-at-obama-on-energy-with-61-million-ad-buy

Chevron contributed $500,000 to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and the American Petroleum Institute gave $25,500 to the Koch brothers’ Americans for Prosperity, both of which ran vicious right-wing attack ads in the 2010 midterm elections:

The American Petroleum Institute, which advocates for the oil and gas industry, gave $25,500 to Americans for Prosperity, IRS disclosures show. Americans for Prosperity, based in Arlington, Virginia, spent more than $1.2 million in 2010 to help elect Republicans to Congress, according to FEC records.

The petroleum institute also gave $25,000 to the Alexandria, Virginia-based 60 Plus Association, which favors privatizing Social Security and spent more than $7 million in 2010 in support of Republicans, IRS and FEC records show.

Of course, Republicans picked up seats in both the House and Senate in 2010, when spending from these groups favored Republicans 10-to-1.

Groups like Chevron have seen billions in returns for their 2010 contributions. Chevron’s profits jumped 23.3 percent since 2010, and the company earned $3 million every hour last year. However, the company only paid an effective 19 percent income tax in 2011. Exxon, the most profitable oil company, paid a lowly 13 percent.

In 2012, undisclosed donations will play an even larger role, since interest group spending is up 1600 percent from the 2008 cycle.

http://thinkprogress.org/green/issue/

===...

There's little mistaking the intent of ads like this one: "Denny Heck is putting Nancy Pelosi's agenda ahead of our needs. Heck supported the liberal $787 billion stimulus...[and] refused to oppose new energy taxes that will kill even more jobs here. Denny Heck is a 30-year political insider and a career politician."

The 2010 attack on Heck, who was trying to win a congressional race in Washington state, may have helped his opponent win the seat. But who exactly paid to air the ad, beyond a group with the generally upbeat name Americans for Prosperity, remains unclear. Though it's clearly involved in trying to influence elections, AFP is shielded from having to disclose the donors that fund its work by its 501(c)(4) tax status, which labels it a  "social welfare" organization.

The same goes for its affiliated 501(c)(3) foundation. Both nonprofit groups spent millions -- about $40 million combined -- in 2010 attacking Democratic candidates and initiatives like the new health care law and cap-and-trade proposals. And a spokesman for the groups (which share s

DonorsTrust Officers & Directors

Whitney L. Ball, President [read bio]

President & CEO, DonorsTrust

Kimberly O. Dennis, Chairman[read bio]

President, Searle Freedom Trust

James Piereson, Vice Chairman [read bio]

President, William E. Simon Foundation

Nathaniel C. Moffat [read bio]

Moffat & Company

William J. Hume [read bio]

Chairman of the Board, Basic American, Inc.

Jeffrey C. Zysik, Secretary-Treasurer [read bio]

Chief Financial Officer & Chief of Information Technology, DonorsTrust

DonorsTrust Staff

Whitney L. Ball[read bio]

President & Chief Executive Officer

Jeffrey C. Zysik[read bio]

Chief Financial Officer & Chief of Information Technology

Jason W. Pompilio [read bio]

Program Manager

Joy L. Simington [read bio]

Finance & Administration Director

Lauren B. Vander Heyden [read bio]

Client Services Coordinator

..staff and overhead) tells OpenSecrets Blog that they expect to spend quite a bit more this year.

The groups -- which have helped incubate the Tea Party movement -- are once again under attack by President Obama, as they were in 2010 (although there are (c)(4) groups on the Democratic side, too, that refuse to name their funders). The fact that David Koch, of the conservative billionaire Koch brothers, who runs a major oil conglomerate, founded AFP and chairs its foundation only fuels calls for the groups to reveal more about their donors, which they decline to do.

Layers of Mystery

But tax forms filed by other foundations and groups show who some of the funders have been.

OpenSecrets Blog found, for example, that AFP received $25,000 from the American Petroleum Institute, the oil industry trade group, which vigorously opposes legislation that attempts to slow climate change. API also gave money to two other conservative groups that ran ads in 2010: The 60 Plus Association, which received $25,000 from API, and Americans for Tax Reform, which received $50,000, OpenSecrets Blogfound. Both of those groups sponsored numerous ads opposing Democratic candidates, often tying them to climate legislation or the new health care law.

Much larger sums of money came to the AFP entities from rightward-leaning foundations. In 2010 the John William Pope Foundation gave AFP $1.6 million; the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, $520,000; and the Claude R. Lambe Charitable Foundation sent $150,000.

The Pope Foundation is the creation of James Arthur Pope, a conservative multimillionaire who heads a company that owns several chains of discount stores. Pope sits on the board of AFP. He and his extensive political activities in his home state of North Carolina and nationally were the subject of a *New Yorker* profile last year.

Pope is also on the board of the Bradley Foundation, a Milwaukee-based foundation that has disbursed hundreds of millions of dollars over the last decade to conservative think tanks, publications and other groups. Bradley money has helped generate interest in such issues as welfare overhaul and school vouchers and supports an anti-union outfit called the Center for Union Facts.

The Lambe Foundation's directors include several members of the Koch family.

Still, the largest bundle of money from a single source came from a conservative 501(c)(3) conduit group called Donors Trust: It was the source of $7.65 million in funds for the AFP Foundation in 2010. Donors Trust is a "donor advised" fund: donors deposit money in accounts they set up and recommend where they'd like it to go. But Donors Trust controls the money and actually makes the contributions to other organizations; it cannot guarantee it will give to the original donors' preferred recipients. 

The arrangement provides donors with the same tax-deductibility that they would be entitled to if they gave money directly to the groups they want to assist, according to tax lawyers. But it also provides a further layer of anonymity: not even the IRS knows where a particular donor's money goes after it gets to Donors Trust.

Donors Trust was established in 1999, according to its website, to "ensure the intent of donors who are dedicated to the ideals of limited government, personal responsibility, and free enterprise." It's run by Whitney Ball, who used to serve as director of development at the Cato Institute, which Charles Koch helped start decades ago. (The Kochs recently filed suit to try to obtain greater control of Cato.) Ball also heads up a sister organization, Donors Capital, which gave $10,000 to AFP's Foundation in 2010, and transferred $2 million to Donors Trust.

In 2010, the same year it sent millions to AFP's foundation, Donors Trust gave to some entities that aren't tied to conservative ideology, such as the Pediatric Brain Tumor Foundation and the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology, but many more that are: the Manhattan Institute, the Reason Foundation, the Mountain States Legal Foundation and the National Right to Work Foundation, to name a few.

The AFP Foundation also took in $350,000 from a similar, but more regional, conduit for donors, the Virginia-based Community Foundation.

The (c)(4) Conundrum

...

http://www.opensecrets.org/news/2012/03/energy-industry-trade-groups.html

LAT:

Americans for Prosperity is the political arm of the

Americans for Prosperity Foundation, which David Koch

co-founded in the 1980s under the name Citizens for a

Sound Economy. He is chairman of the board of the

foundation, which says it aims to educate citizens on "a

return of the federal government to its constitutional

limits."

Americans for Prosperity says it spent $40 million in

the 2010 election cycle, organized rallies and phone

banks, and canvassed door to door in nearly 100 races

across the country. The organization found scores of

energetic activists in the "tea party" movement to carry

its message.

Throughout this effort, Americans for Prosperity kept a

strong emphasis on promoting its views on climate change

and energy regulation. In 2008, it began circulating a

pledge asking politicians to denounce a Democratic-led

effort to compel oil refineries and utilities to clean

up emissions of greenhouse gases through a so-called

cap-and-trade system. The organization said it amounted

to a hidden tax increase.

The cap-and-trade legislation passed the House but died

in the Senate. Americans for Prosperity began working to

defeat House Democrats who voted for the bill, showing

the power of its new activist base.

The advocacy group does not disclose spending in

individual races. But it said it facilitated tens of

thousands of phone calls and organized dozens of events

in recent congressional campaigns. Among the

beneficiaries, besides Griffith, were newly elected

Reps. Cory Gardner (R-Colo.) and Adam Kinzinger

(R-Ill.). All three now sit on the Energy and Commerce

Committee.

WISCONSIN

AFP certainly fits the bill. By now, it's been widely reported, both within Wisconsin and in prominent publications elsewhere, that AFP was largely inspired by the man who serves as its chairman, David Koch, one of the billionaire brothers who co-own Koch Industries, one of the largest privately-held corporations in the world. AFP also possesses many characteristics indicative of a front group. It avoids mentioning its main sources of funding, engages in actions that benefit a third party, like a company, industry or political candidate. Its members are not its primary financial supporters, though it touts its membership while not revealing its biggest funders. And, last but not least, AFP can afford to send a custom-painted luxury coach on a highly-publicized road trip, even as the price of gas goes through the roof. The "star" of the road show was Ohioan Samuel "Joe the Plumber" Wurzelbacher who gained some degree of notoriety during the 2008 presidential campaign.

http://www.prwatch.org/node/10299

Americans for Prosperity wages attack on regional climate accords

Americans for Prosperity (AFP)—a Tea Party-affiliated group founded and funded by David H. Koch of Koch Industries—is mounting a frontal assault on regional climate initiatives.

In New Hampshire, in the run-up to a vote on a House bill that would repeal the cap-and-trade system established under the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, AFP’s state branch hounded voters with robocalls, asking them to demand that their state reps support the measure. After the bill passed, AFP Vice President for Policy Phil Kerpen and AFP’s New Hampshire State Director Corey Lewandowski celebrated with an op-ed published by Fox News.

In New Jersey, AFP is putting pressure on Gov. Chris Christie (R) to drop out of RGGI, and has launched a TV and radio ad campaign in the state arguing that RGGI will drive electric rates “through the roof,” resulting in “higher taxes, lost jobs, and less freedom.” The group has also been pressuring Maine Gov. Paul LePage (R) to pull out.

In Arizona, AFP started publicly campaigning in 2009 to get the state to withdraw from the Western Climate Initiative. Its efforts paid off in February 2010 when Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer (R) issued an executive order announcing that the state would not participate in a cap-and-trade system under WCI, though she stopped short of pulling the state out of the accord entirely.

In Michigan, AFP is pushing new GOP Gov. Rick Snyder to reject the Midwestern Greenhouse Gas Reduction Accord. A post on the AFP Michigan site praises a 2010 resolution (with ALEC language) that would have pulled the state out of the accord, and warns, “Similar resolutions will be introduced by legislators in Wisconsin, Iowa and Minnesota.”

For more, check out the AFP website’s “RGGI Repeal Resource” page.

  via grist

SW

Americans for Prosperity (AFP), a section 501(c)(4) organization, and Americans for Prosperity Foundation (AFP Foundation), 

a section 501(c)(3) organization, are "committed to educating citizens about economic policy and a return of the federal government to its Constitutional limits." On its website it states that it supports "cutting taxes and government spending in order to halt the encroachment of government in the economic lives of citizens by fighting proposed tax increases and pointing out evidence of waste, fraud, and abuse."^{[1]^}(http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Americans_For_Prosperity#cite_note-0)

AFP was one of the lead organizations behind the Tax Day Tea Party protests April 15, 2009. Its Director is Art Pope, an ex-legislator who has been dubbed "The Knight of the Right" by Raleigh News and Observer journalist Rob Christensen.^{[2]^}(http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Americans_For_Prosperity#cite_note-1)

In mid-2009, Americans for Prosperity launched an advertising and advocacy campaign opposing U.S. health care reform named Patients United Now.^{[3]^}(http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Americans_For_Prosperity#cite_note-UN-2)

On its website it describes its "featured partners" as being the Heartland Institute's International Conference on Climate Change, the Internet Freedom Coalition and Townhall.com.^{[4]^}(http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Americans_For_Prosperity#cite_note-3)

Background and history

AFP was established in late 2003 as a successor to the Citizens for a Sound Economy Foundation, an industry-funded think tank,^{[5]^}(http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Americans_For_Prosperity#cite_note-4) following an internal rift between Citizens for a Sound Economy and its affiliated foundation.^{[6]^}(http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Americans_For_Prosperity#cite_note-5) AFP was formally affiliated with the Independent Women's Forum. Both organizations shared the same Washington address, and formerly shared most of the same operational staff.^{[7]^}(http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Americans_For_Prosperity#cite_note-6) In 2008, IWF moved to separate office space.

The October 2003 Washington Times report on the formation of AFP stated, "Nancy Pfotenhauer, an executive of Citizens for a Sound Economy [CSE] in the 1990s who helped defeat Hillary Rodham Clinton's health care reform proposal, has been tapped to head a new national advocacy organization to protect 'every American's fundamental right to pursue prosperity.'"^{[8]^}(http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Americans_For_Prosperity#cite_note-7)

"Before joining the Independent Women's Forum in 2001, [Nancy] Pfotenhauer headed the Washington office of Koch Industries, a conglomerate with holdings in oil and gas, chemicals, minerals, ranching, and securities; Koch Executive Vice President David Koch was a founder and a chairman of the CSE Foundation and is now on the AFP board," reported the National Journal in November 2003. "Pfotenhauer worked with Koch in the mid-'90s, when she was executive vice president of both CSE and the CSE Foundation. But she has an even longer history with AFP board member Walter Williams, for whom she was a graduate research assistant at George Mason University 20 years ago."^{[9]^}(http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Americans_For_Prosperity#cite_note-8)

Tobacco industry involvement

AFP advocates pro-tobacco industry positions on issues like cigarette taxes and clean indoor air laws. The name "Americans for Prosperity" will sound familiar to tobacco prevention policy advocates, as Americans for Prosperity worked around the U.S. in recent years to defeat both smokefree workplace laws and cigarette excise tax increases.

Americans for Prosperity opposed a proposed Texas smoking ban in 2005. According to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, “A proposed statewide smoking ban appears all but dead, supporters acknowledged Monday as they waged a frantic battle to bring the bill up for a vote in the Senate. ‘I think the bill is dead,’ said Peggy Venable, Texas director of Americans for Prosperity, which opposed the legislation, arguing that it is an intrusion on private-property rights." The strategy of portraying smoking as a "property right" can be traced to Philip Morris which, in the mid-1990s, introduced bills in state legislatures nominally to protect property rights as a means of fighting smoking bans. Venable called the smoke-free measure a "reckless expansion of government" that "set a dangerous precedent." Although Venable did not testify against the bill directly on behalf of the tobacco industry, the Houston Chronicle reported in 2007 that Americans for Prosperity had, in fact, been underwritten by tobacco companies in other states.^{[10]^}(http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Americans_For_Prosperity#cite_note-9)^{[11]^}(http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Americans_For_Prosperity#cite_note-10)

Americans for Prosperity opposes smoking bans by using slippery-slope arguments ("Where will it stop?") and erroneous arguments that smoking restrictions are economically damaging.^{[12]^}(http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Americans_For_Prosperity#cite_note-11)^{[13]^}(http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Americans_For_Prosperity#cite_note-12)

Americans for Prosperity (AFP) also opposed an Illinois state tax on cigarettes in 2008, claiming it would eliminate jobs.^{[14]^}(http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Americans_For_Prosperity#cite_note-13)

AFP opposed a clean indoor air law in Washington, D.C. in 2006.^{[15]^}(http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Americans_For_Prosperity#cite_note-14)

AFP opposed a clean indoor air law in Kansas City, portraying the issue as one of personal liberty and economics rather than public health.^{[16]^}(http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Americans_For_Prosperity#cite_note-15)

Involvement in protesting health care reform

In 2009 Americans for Prosperity, along with The 912 Project, was one of the conservative groups involved in organizing "town hall protests" and "recess rallies" where participants oppose health care reform by rambunctiously shouting down members of Congress while they are holding public meetings to inform the public about the proposals.^{[citation needed]}

AFP started a group called "Patients First" to oppose health care.^{[3]^}(http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Americans_For_Prosperity#cite_note-UN-2) Patients First conducts bus tours around the country to create opposition to health care reform. Americans for Prosperity/Patients First visit cities and speaks to rally people and encourage them to oppose health care reform by bringing up frightening prospect like "death orders" and "death sentences." Speakers typically liken Democratically-proposed health care reform to the regimes of Mugabe, Hitler, Stalin, and Pol Pot. The speaker typically repeats the discredited conservative idea that Democratic health care reform will mandate physician-assisted suicide or death for older members of society. "Adolf Hitler issued six million end of life orders -- he called his program the final solution. I kind of wonder what we're going to call ours," one speaker said. The speaker further advises audience to "go to offices of members of Congress and put the fear of god in them."^{[17]^}(http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Americans_For_Prosperity#cite_note-16)

Anti-Astroturf signs

After being accused of astroturfing for corporate interests, Americans for Prosperity volunteers started making hand-made signs for rally participants to gave more of an appearance of an actual grassroots crowd. Many of the pre-made signs had small “AFP” markers on them. Speakers at AFP rallies started mocking the "AstroTurf" and "Brooks Brothers" themes in nearly every speech at the rallies.^{[18]^}(http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Americans_For_Prosperity#cite_note-17)

Hot air tour

During 2008, Americans for Prosperity ran its Hot Air Tour campaign, a hot air balloon cross-country tour with the slogan, "Global Warming Alarmism: Lost Jobs, Higher Taxes, Less Freedom." According the the Hot Air Tour website, "Climate alarmists have bombarded citizens with apocalyptic scenarios and pressured them into environmental political correctness. It's time to tell the other side of the story. Americans for Prosperity is working hard to bring you the missing half of the global warming debate. What will the impacts of reactionary legislation be for you, your family and our economy?"^{[19]^}(http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Americans_For_Prosperity#cite_note-18)

No stimulus

Beginning in 2009, Americans for Prosperity launched the website nostimulus.com, a grassroots website intended to address concerns regarding government spending and growth. ^{[20]^}(http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Americans_For_Prosperity#cite_note-19) The site also contained a petition against the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act that became so popular that it crashed the website in early February 2009.^{[21]^}(http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Americans_For_Prosperity#cite_note-20)

State budget lobbying

"According to the Americans for Prosperity Web site, some 28 Republicans in the Wisconsin Legislature signed a 'no tax increase' pledge with the organization," along with two Democrats, wrote Dave Zweifel in October 2007. He blamed pressure from no-tax groups on delays with Wisconsin's state budget, more than three months overdue. When these legislators "already had announced they had closed their minds -- even to an increase in cigarette taxes to expand health care to kids -- how really could there be compromise?" he asked. ^{[22]^}(http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Americans_For_Prosperity#cite_note-21)

Americans for Prosperity, which held an anti-tax rally in Madison on October 17, 2007, ^{[23]^}(http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Americans_For_Prosperity#cite_note-22) has also been active in other states. In March, Americans for Prosperity put pressure on Kansas legislators as they debated their state budget. The group patched in calls from residents to legislators' offices, but "they weren't quite clear why they were calling in," said one office assistant, referring to the callers. "Something about state spending," but the Kansans "couldn't tell her who had made the call or any specifics on what they were told," reported the Capital-Journal in Topeka. ^{[24]^}(http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Americans_For_Prosperity#cite_note-23)

November Is Coming

Automated phone calls promoting seven rallies. Stated objective is to send a message to Senator Boxer. The phone call implies that they oppose Senator Boxer's re-election. This may be a violation of their non-political 501(c)(3) tax status.

Claims that Senator Boxer's support for cap-and-trade climate legislation will result in much higher prices for gasoline and electricity and less jobs. Rallies in Carson City, Reno, Las Vegas, Henderson, Nevada and Sacramento, Fresno, Bakersfield, California from June 15th to June 17th, 2010^{[25]^}(http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Americans_For_Prosperity#cite_note-24).

Funding

On its website, Americans For Prosperity states that "AFP gets its support from individuals and corporations which share its vision." However, it does not disclose which corporations fund its operations.^{[26]^}(http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Americans_For_Prosperity#cite_note-25)

Kevin Grandia, of DeSmogBlog, who has researched funding the AFP states on his blog that:

The AFP is the third largest recipient of funding from the Koch Family Foundations, behind the Cato Institute and the George Mason University Foundation. Before 2003, when the AFP was still named the Citizens for a Sound Economy Foundation, it received $18,460,912 in funding. 84% of that funding came from the Koch Family Foundations ($12,906,712) and the Scaife Family Foundations ($2,510,000). Koch Family Foundations is funded by Koch Industries. According to Forbes, Koch Industries is the second largest privately-held company, and the largest privately owned energy company, in the United States. Koch industries has made its money in the oil business, primarily oil refining. Presently, it holds stakes in pipelines, refineries, fertilizer, forest products, and chemical technology. Americans for Prosperity is also connected to oil giant ExxonMobil. According to ExxonSecrets, between the years 1998-2001, Citizens for A Sound Economy and Citizens for a Sound Economy Foundation received $380,250 from ExxonMobil.^{[27]^}(http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Americans_For_Prosperity#cite_note-26)

Media Transparency notes that Americans for Prosperity Foundation has received seven grants totaling $1,181,000 between 2004 to 2006. Grants to the foundation have included:^{[28]^}(http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Americans_For_Prosperity#cite_note-27)

• $1,000 in 2006 from the Roe Foundation;
• $50,000 in 2005 from the Ruth and Lovett Peters Foundation;
• $5,000 in 2005 from the Armstrong Foundation;
• $125,000 from three grants over 2004 and 2005 from the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation; and
• $1,000,000 from the Claude R. Lambe Charitable Foundation.

In its 2007 annual IRS return, the AFP Foundation's reported that its revenue was $5,695,000 with expenditure of $6,768,000. While the AFP Foundation ran at a loss of $1,072,000, it had a further $507,000 in reserves. Of its expenditure, $2,129,000 was spent on national office operations with just over $2.9 million allocated to the state-based chapters.^{[29]^}(http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Americans_For_Prosperity#cite_note-2007IRS-28)

Income for the Foundation since its formation in 2003 has been^{[29]^}(http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Americans_For_Prosperity#cite_note-2007IRS-28):

• 2003: $3,451,636
• 2004: $1,190,470
• 2005: $3,600,966
• 2006: $4,223,218

Personnel

Staff

The first president of Americans for Prosperity was Nancy Pfotenhauer who, prior to the groups foundation in 2003, had been an executive with the Citizens for a Sound Economy Foundation.^{[30]^}(http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Americans_For_Prosperity#cite_note-29) Pfotenhauer later left AFP and in 2007 joined the John McCain campaign. Pfotenhauer was simultaneously the president of the Independent Women’s Forum. From 1996 to 2001, Pfotenhauer was the director of the Washington office of Koch Industries.^{[31]^}(http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Americans_For_Prosperity#cite_note-IWF-30)^{[32]^}(http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Americans_For_Prosperity#cite_note-31)

A full staff list can be found at **Americans for Prosperity - National and State staff** The following are the key AFP staff members.^{[33]^}(http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Americans_For_Prosperity#cite_note-32)

National staff

• Tim Phillips, President
• John Flynn, Executive Vice President and General Counsel
• Phil Kerpen, Director of Policy was paid over $89,000 in 2007;^{[29]^}(http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Americans_For_Prosperity#cite_note-2007IRS-28)

• Phil Kerpen is policy director for the Free Enterprise Fund.

A biographical note states he is also the "publisher of Cross-X.com, the leading web site for high school policy debaters." He has previously worked as a policy analyst for the Club for Growth, the Woodhill Foundation and the Cato Institute. [1]

Kerpen is quoted frequently in a variety of publications.

External links

• • "Phil Kerpen", Free Enterprise Fund, undated, accessed July 2005.

James Valvo, Government Affairs Manager

• Carl Oberg, Policy Associate
• Dr. Larry Hunter, Senior Fellow

State staff

• Alan Cobb, National Director of State Operations Arizona was paid over $114,000 in 2007;^{[29]^}(http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Americans_For_Prosperity#cite_note-2007IRS-28)
• Tom Jenney, State Director, Arizona
• David Spady, State Director California
• Jeff Crank, State Director Colorado
• Virginia Galloway, State Director Georgia
• Joe Calomino, State Director Illinois
• Jim Raftis, Legislative Liaison Illinois
• Derrick Sontag, State Director Kansas
• Scott Hagerstrom, State Director Michigan
• Carl Bearden, State Director Missouri
• Travis Fitzwater, Field Director, Missouri
• Michelle Colbert, Field Director, Missouri
• Brad Stevens, State Director Nebraska
• Corey Lewandowski, State Director New Hampshire
• Colette Campbell, State Director, New Jersey
• Steve Lonegan, Senior Policy Director New Jersey was paid over $93,000 in 2007;^{[29]^}(http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Americans_For_Prosperity#cite_note-2007IRS-28)
• Dallas Woodhouse, State Director, North Carolina
• Jack Boyle, State Director, Ohio
• Jeff Kropf, State Director, Oregon
• Stuart Jolly, State Director, Oklahoma
• Peggy Venable, State Director Texas was paid over $72,000 in 2007;^{[29]^}(http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Americans_For_Prosperity#cite_note-2007IRS-28)
• Ben Marchi, State Director,
• Mark Block, State Director Wisconsin

Board of Directors

The following are listed as members of the Americans for Prosperity board, in the group's 2007 IRS report ^{[29]^}(http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Americans_For_Prosperity#cite_note-2007IRS-28) and/or on its website, as of February 2009: ^{[34]^}(http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Americans_For_Prosperity#cite_note-33)

• Art Pope, Director
• James C. Miller, III, Director
• James E. Stephenson, Director
• Frayda Levy, Director
• Michelle Korsmo, Secretary - paid $62,475 in 2007
• Tim Phillips, President - paid $60,646 in 2007
• Ed Frank, Treasurer - paid $60,441 in 2007

Former Board members:

• Michael Wigley, Director^{[35]^}(http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Americans_For_Prosperity#cite_note-Archive-34)

Americans for Prosperity Foundation

The Americans For Prosperity Foundation (AFPF) is "a nationwide organization of citizen leaders committed to advancing every individual's right to economic freedom and opportunity. AFPF believes reducing the size and scope of government is the best safeguard to ensuring individual productivity and prosperity for all Americans. AFPF educates and engages citizens in support of restraining state and federal government growth, and returning government to its constitutional limits."^{[36]^}(http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Americans_For_Prosperity#cite_note-35)

Board members

The members of the Americans for Prosperity Foundation board, as of November 2008, are:^{[37]^}(http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Americans_For_Prosperity#cite_note-36)

• David H. Koch, Chairman
• Art Pope, Director
• Dr. Wayne E. Gable, Director
• Debra Humphreys, Director
• Walter Williams, Director

According to Americans for Prosperity's 2007 IRS report, the following employees are common to AFP and AFPF, with AFPF paying the following amounts for their share of salaries and benefits: ^{[29]^}(http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Americans_For_Prosperity#cite_note-2007IRS-28)

• Michelle Korsmo - AFPF paid $96,883 in salary and $12,651 in benefits in 2007
• Tim Phillips - AFPF paid $185,843 in salary and $17,236 in benefits in 2007
• Ed Frank - AFPF paid $62,059 in salary and $5,401 in benefits in 2007

Former Board members:

• Richard Fink, Director^{[35]^}(http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Americans_For_Prosperity#cite_note-Archive-34)

Contact information

Americans For Prosperity Foundation

1726 M Street NW, 10th Floor

Washington, DC 20036

Phone: 202 349-5880 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting              202 349-5880      end_of_the_skype_highlighting

Toll Free 866 730-0150 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting              866 730-0150      end_of_the_skype_highlighting

Email: info AT AFPhq.org (sub @ for AT)

Web: http://www.americansforprosperity.org

Other websites include:

• http://www.rightonline.com/
• http://www.defendingthedream.org/
• http://www.hotairtour.org/
• http://www.noclimatetax.com/
• http://www.novemberiscoming.com/ November Is Coming
• http://americansforprosperity.com/031910-america-tells-congress-november-coming America Tells Congress: November is Coming

Articles and resources

Related SourceWatch articles

• Citizens for a Sound Economy
• Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation
• Craig Dewey
• FreedomWorks
• Global warming skeptics
• Joel A. Arends

References

1. ↑ Mission, Americans for Prosperity website, accessed August 21, 2007
2. ↑ Rob Christensen, "The knight of the right: Ex-legislator Art Pope has quietly built a political network to advance his conservative vision for North Carolina", News and Observer (Raleigh) January 29, 2006.
3. ↑ ^{3.0^}(http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Americans_For_Prosperity#cite_ref-UN_2-0) ^{3.1^}(http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Americans_For_Prosperity#cite_ref-UN_2-1) "Announcing Patients United Now", Americans for Prosperity website, accessed August 2009.
4. ↑ Americans for Prosperity, "Americans for Prosperity", Americans for Prosperity website, accessed September 2009.
5. ↑ Americans for Prosperity Foundation, "About AFP - Directors", Americans for Prosperity Foundation website, accessed February 2009. (Scroll down to the second paragraph of the profile on Art Fink).
6. ↑ "Personnel News", The Bulletin's Frontrunner, October 30, 2003.(Not available online).
7. ↑ Independent Women's Forum, "Independent Women's Forum Announces Exciting New Partnership; Affiliates with Americans for Prosperity", Media Release, PR Newswire, October 29, 2003. (Not available online).
8. ↑ John McCaslin, "Inside the Beltway," The Washington Times, October 28, 2003.
9. ↑ Lisa Caruso, Mark Kukis, Kellie Lunney, and Gregg Sangillo, "People," National Journal, November 15, 2003.
10. ↑ Kristen Mack Houston Chronicle (Chron.com)Debate on smoking ban renewed in House March 14, 2007
11. ↑ Fort Worth Star-Telegram, May 19, 2005
12. ↑ Americans for Prosperity, AFP Newsroom Hearing on Freedom Issues Undated. Accessed July 10, 2009
13. ↑ Regents of the University of California, San Francisco, TobaccoScam Fake Economics/Sales Don't Lie, accessed July 10, 2009
14. ↑ Americans for Prosperity Americans for Prosperity: Cigarette Tax Increase Would Cost Jobs, Feed State's Out-of-Control Spending Habits AFP Illinois Newsroom, January 7, 2008
15. ↑ Americans for Prosperity Put That Cigarette Out AFP District of Columbia blog, 2006], accessed July 12, 2009
16. ↑ Americans for Prosperity Smoking Bans and Liberty AFP Kansas Newsroom, undated blog, accessed July 12, 2009
17. ↑ Brian Beutler, "Americans for Prosperity Compares Health Care Reform To Holocaust, Tells Protesters To Put 'Fear Of God' In Members Of Congress", Talking Points Memo, August 7, 2009.
18. ↑ David Weigel, Americans for Prosperity Makes Anti-AstroTurf Signs, Washington Independent, August 14, 2009.
19. ↑ Americans for Prosperity, "Welcome to the Hot Air Tour", Americans for Prosperity website, accessed August 2008.
20. ↑ "About", "No Stimulus", 2009.
21. ↑ Rachel Weiner "Americans for Prosperity: "No Stimulus" Petition", February 10, 2009.
22. ↑ Dave Zweifel, editorial: "Paying our share is Wisconsin 's way," The Capital Times (Madison, Wis.), October 22, 2007.
23. ↑ David Callender, "Anti-tax group rally puts Madison on national stage," The Capital Times (Madison, Wis.), October 17, 2007.
24. ↑ James Carlson, "Phone calls cause confusion: Group contacts constituents about state spending issue," The Capital-Journal (Topeka, Kansas), March 19, 2007.
25. ↑ November Is Coming website
26. ↑ Americans for Prosperity, "Changing the Nation, One State at a Time... Supporting Americans for Prosperity and AFP Foundation", Americans for Prosperity website, accessed August 2008.
27. ↑ Kevin Grandia, DeSmogBlog The Big MOney Behind Americans For Prosperity Blog. February 26, 2009. Accessed August 7, 2009
28. ↑ "Americans for Prosperity Foundation", Media Transparency, accessed August 2008.
29. ↑ ^{29.0^}(http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Americans_For_Prosperity#cite_ref-2007IRS_28-0) ^{29.1^}(http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Americans_For_Prosperity#cite_ref-2007IRS_28-1) ^{29.2^}(http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Americans_For_Prosperity#cite_ref-2007IRS_28-2) ^{29.3^}(http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Americans_For_Prosperity#cite_ref-2007IRS_28-3) ^{29.4^}(http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Americans_For_Prosperity#cite_ref-2007IRS_28-4) ^{29.5^}(http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Americans_For_Prosperity#cite_ref-2007IRS_28-5) ^{29.6^}(http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Americans_For_Prosperity#cite_ref-2007IRS_28-6) ^{29.7^}(http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Americans_For_Prosperity#cite_ref-2007IRS_28-7) Americans for Prosperity Foundation, 2007 IRS Return, Guidestar, August 2008, page 1.
30. ↑ John McCaslin, "Pusuing prosperity" (sic), The Washington Times, October 28, 2003. (Not available online).
31. ↑ "About IWF: Nancy Mitchell Pfotenhauer: President", Independent Women's Forum website, Archived version December 14, 2004.
32. ↑ "Senator McCain Announces Economic Advisers: Policy Team Is A Collection Of Leading Conservatives", Media Release, July 12, 2007.
33. ↑ "Staff" Americans for Prosperity website, accessed September 2009.
34. ↑ "AFP Directors", Americans for Prosperity website, accessed February 2009.
35. ↑ ^{35.0^}(http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Americans_For_Prosperity#cite_ref-Archive_34-0) ^{35.1^}(http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Americans_For_Prosperity#cite_ref-Archive_34-1) About AFP, Americans for Prosperity website, February 13, 2008. (Now available only in the Internet Archive).
36. ↑ About, Americans for Prosperity website, accessed August 21, 2007.
37. ↑ "Americans for Prosperity Foundation", Guidestar, accessed February 2009.

External resources

• News Release: "Nancy Pfotenhauer To Head Grassroots Advocacy Group," AFPF website, January 1, 2003.
• Josh Marshall, "Untitled post," Talking Points Memo, June 7, 2005.
• James Carlson, "Phone calls cause confusion: Group contacts constituents about state spending issue," The Capital-Journal (Topeka, Kansas), March 19, 2007.
• Editorial: "Not from Wisconsin," The Capital Times (Madison, Wis.), October 17, 2007.
• David Callender, "Anti-tax group rally puts Madison on national stage," The Capital Times (Madison, Wis.), October 17, 2007.
• Dave Zweifel, editorial: "Paying our share is Wisconsin 's way," The Capital Times (Madison, Wis.), October 22, 2007.
• Will Evans, "Protecting A Republican Incumbent", NPR, October 6, 2008.
• Sue Sturgis, ""The oil money behind the anti-stimulus fight," Facing South, Institute of Southern Studies, February 16, 2009.
• Jake Sherman, "Conservatives Take a Page From Left's Online Playbook," Wall Street Journal (sub req'd), August 19, 2009.
• Adele M. Stan, > Utilizing Public Airwaves, Media Mogul Murdoch Is Big Muscle Behind Fraudulent Astro Turfers, AlterNet, August 20, 2009.
• John Grooms, Creative Loafing Unhealthy lies and the truth about healthcare reform August 18, 2009
• Tim Dickinson, The Lie Machine: GOP operatives are running a secret campaign to kill health care reform, and it's based on Karl Rove's old playbook, Rolling Stone, September 23, 2009.

Retrieved from "http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Americans_for_Prosperity"

Categories: Climate change | Tobaccowiki | Front groups portal | All articles with unsourced statements | Articles with unsourced statements | United States | Conservatives | Right wing | Groups protesting health care reform | Taxation | US lobbying groups | Co-sponsor of the Heartland Institute's International Conference on Climate Change (2009) | US Health Care System | Tea Party Movement

Jim H from koch

Here is a profile of just one of the Koch tentacles: **Americans For Prosperity**. AFP, the third-largest recipient of Koch foundation largesse, is the brothers' overtly political unit. Essentially, it is a front group for mass-producing front groups. Much like McDonald's churns out Big Mac franchises, AFP can pop out a grassrootsy-looking, cookie-cutter political operation on demand.

It has a $7 million annual budget that supports dozens of GOP operatives and former corporate PR veterans, all standing ready to assemble, fund, staff, and package a hot-to-go front group for any issue that comes up. Its menu includes such garnishes as hoked-up studies, alarmist talking points, deceptive attack ads, divisive hate messages, celebrity and religious endorsers, and a menagerie of media stunts.

AFP was launched by David Koch in 1984 as Citizens for a Sound Economy (CSE), a moniker it used until switching to its present name in 2003. It refuses to disclose its list of donors, but when it was known as CSE, about 70% of the $18 million it spent came from the Koch foundations. There's no reason to think that AFP is any less of a Koch-funded operation today, and David, as one of its top officers, continues to be actively engaged in directing the organization's work.

And what a piece of work it is.

Start with Tim Phillips, brought in to be AFP's president and Koch's point man in 2006. As a longtime Republican campaign director and Washington lobbyist for corporate interests, Phillips earned a reputation as one of the GOP's "Mr. Nasties," in the Karl Rovian mold.

His credits include helping George W. Bush win the pivotal 2000 GOP primary in South Carolina by spearheading a smear campaign that used images of John McCain's adopted daughter from Bangladesh to claim that he had fathered a black child; helping Saxby Chambliss defeat incumbent Democratic Sen. Max Cleland (a highly decorated Vietnam vet who lost both legs and an arm in that war) in the 2002 Georgia election by creating a TV ad linking the Democrat to Osama bin Laden and claiming that he lacked the courage to fight terrorists; and working with super-sleaze corporate lobbyist Jack Abramoff in 1998 to stir up evangelical churches in opposition to a labor-law reform that would've ended the brutal exploitation of Chinese girls and young women enslaved in sweatshops on the Northern Mariana Islands, a U.S. commonwealth. (Phillips rallied evangelicals by asserting that many of the Chinese workers "are exposed to the teachings of Jesus Christ" while on the islands "and return to China with Bibles in hand, so Congress should not interfere.)

At AFP, Phillips has the Kochs' deep pockets and political network at his disposal to take on a broad range of right-wing corporate causes. While the organization has 23 state "chapters" and immodestly bills itself as the nation's "premier grassroots organization," it has only 8,000 actual members, is totally controlled by corporate money, is headquartered in Washington, D.C., and is run by the exact same kind of professional political insiders it pretends to detest.

Consider the boisterous "tea bag" rebellion. No one professes more hatred for the two-party, business-as-usual political system in Washington than those angry Americans who're caught up in the tea-bag rallies. Yet unbeknownst to most of the mad-as-hellers who have showed up, it was AFP's Republican-tied lobbyists and political functionaries who cynically financed, organized, and orchestrated the very first tea-bag protest. AFP has steadily coopted the tea-bag faction to make it a front for the corporate agenda, and many of the tea-bag groups have devolved into subsidiaries of the Republican party. Indeed, AFP has become the Astroturf-To-Go Store, fabricating and spreading fake grassroots organizations all across the country. It was especially busy during the 2008 presidential campaign and in the first year of Obama's presidency. Here are a few recent AFP-manufactured campaigns on major public-policy issues:

• **PATIENTS UNITED NOW.** The website for PUN (odd choice for an acronym, huh?) proclaims, "We are people just like you." However, that statement is true only if you're one of the people working as paid political hacks for AFP. PUN is nothing but a shell created by AFP's laissez-faire corporate extremists. The goal of this front group is to kill legislation that would restructure the rip-off health-insurance industry so real patients can get fairly priced, quality care. In addition to running farcical, antireform TV ads under PUN's name, the AFP-directed effort has included a "Hands Off My Health Care" bus tour. Its message wasn't subtle--a giant bloody hand was painted on the side of the bus, and a speaker traveling with the group repeatedly compared the Democrats' health-reform plans to the Holocaust.
• **HOT-AIR TOUR**. During the past two years, people in 40 cities have been greeted by the sight of a 70-foot-tall hot-air balloon drifting over them. It heralded the arrival of a barnstorming tour to expose "the ballooning costs of global warming hysteria." This stunt had a just-folks veneer on it, but it was another AFP production--after all, as owners of the largest privately held oil corporation, the Koch brothers have a special interest in spreading denial about the existence of climate change. AFP ran ads mocking proponents of fossilfuel regulations as elitist brats more concerned about their "three homes and five cars" than about the jobs of working-class families (an incredible rhetorical gusher from a privileged billionaire like David, who lives the high life in Manhattan, where he hobnobs with the richest elites at society galas, while also owning a mansion in Aspen where he can curl up in luxury and sip fine wine from his collection of 5,000 vintage bottles). Perhaps he was tipsy on some of those grapes last fall when he attended an AFP summit of tea-party leaders and personally embraced the histrionics of a climate-denial film that accuses such leaders as Al Gore of wanting to bring back "the Dark Ages and the Black Plague."

Among AFP's other fronts are: FREE OUR ENERGY, which clamored during the 2008 election season to open up our seashores and national parks to oil drillers; NO STIMULUS, which tried to rev up the tea-party network last year to kill Obama's economic-recovery plan; and SAVE MY BALLOT, yet another "grassroots tour," this one to rail against a proposal to stop corporate intimidation of workers trying to unionize (AFP paid Joe the Plumber to front this smear campaign).

Out of the shadows

That year, internal rivalries at Citizens for a Sound Economy caused the organization to split apart. David Koch and Fink started a new group, Americans for Prosperity, and they hired Tim Phillips to run it. Phillips was a political veteran who had worked with Ralph Reed, the evangelical leader and Republican activist, co-founding Century Strategies, a campaign-consulting company that became notorious for its ties to the disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff. Phillips’s online biography describes him as an expert in “grasstops” and “grassroots” political organizing. The Kochs’ choice of Phillips signalled an even greater toughness. The conservative operative Grover Norquist, who is known for praising “throat slitters” in politics, called Phillips “a grownup who can make things happen.”

Last year, Phillips told the Financial Times that Americans for Prosperity had only eight thousand registered members. Currently, its Web site claims that the group has “1.2 million activists.” Whatever its size, the Kochs’ political involvement has been intense; a former employee of the Cato Institute told me that Americans for Prosperity “was micromanaged by the Kochs.” And the brothers’ investment may well have paid off: Americans for Prosperity, in concert with the family’s other organizations, has been instrumental in disrupting the Obama Presidency.

In January, 2008, Charles Koch wrote in his company newsletter that America could be on the verge of “the greatest loss of liberty and prosperity since the 1930s.” That October, Americans for Prosperity held a conference of conservative operatives at a Marriott hotel outside Washington. Erick Erickson, the editor-in-chief of the conservative blog RedState.com, took the lectern, thanked David Koch, and vowed to “unite and fight . . . the armies of the left!”

 Soon after Obama assumed office, Americans for Prosperity launched “Porkulus” rallies against Obama’s stimulus-spending measures. Then the Mercatus Center released a report claiming that stimulus funds had been directed disproportionately toward Democratic districts; eventually, the author was forced to correct the report, but not before Rush Limbaugh, citing the paper, had labelled Obama’s program “a slush fund,” and Fox News and other conservative outlets had echoed the sentiment. (Phil Kerpen, the vice-president for policy at Americans for Prosperity, is a contributor to the Fox News Web site. Another officer at Americans for Prosperity, Walter Williams, often guest-hosts for Limbaugh.)

Americans for Prosperity also created an offshoot, Patients United Now, which organized what Phillips has estimated to be more than three hundred rallies against health-care reform. At one rally, an effigy of a Democratic congressman was hung; at another, protesters unfurled a banner depicting corpses from Dachau. The group also helped organize the “Kill the Bill” protests outside the Capitol, in March, where Democratic supporters of health-care reform alleged that they were spat on and cursed at. Phillips was a featured speaker.

Americans for Prosperity has held at least eighty events targeting cap-and-trade legislation, which is aimed at making industries pay for the air pollution that they create. Speakers for the group claimed, with exaggeration, that even back-yard barbecues and kitchen stoves would be taxed. The group was also involved in the attacks on Obama’s “green jobs” czar, Van Jones, and waged a crusade against international climate talks. Casting his group as a champion of ordinary workers who would be hurt by environmentalists, Phillips went to Copenhagen last year and staged a protest outside the United Nations conference on climate change, declaring, “We’re a grassroots organization. . . . I think it’s unfortunate when wealthy children of wealthy families . . . want to send unemployment rates in the United States up to twenty per cent.”

Grover Norquist, who holds a weekly meeting for conservative leaders in Washington, including representatives from Americans for Prosperity, told me that last summer’s raucous rallies were pivotal in undermining Obama’s agenda. The Republican leadership in Congress, he said, “couldn’t have done it without August, when people went out on the streets. It discouraged deal-makers”—Republicans who might otherwise have worked constructively with Obama. Moreover, the appearance of growing public opposition to Obama affected corporate donors on K Street. “K Street is a three-billion-dollar weathervane,” Norquist said. “When Obama was strong, the Chamber of Commerce said, ‘We can work with the Obama Administration.’ But that changed when thousands of people went into the street and ‘terrorized’ congressmen. August is what changed it. Now that Obama is weak, people are getting tough.”

As the first anniversary of Obama’s election approached, David Koch came to the Washington area to attend a triumphant Americans for Prosperity gathering. Obama’s poll numbers were falling fast. Not a single Republican senator was working with the Administration on health care, or much else. Pundits were writing about Obama’s political ineptitude, and Tea Party groups were accusing the President of initiating “a government takeover.” In a speech, Koch said, “Days like today bring to reality the vision of our board of directors when we started this organization, five years ago.” He went on, “We envisioned a mass movement, a state-based one, but national in scope, of hundreds of thousands of American citizens from all walks of life standing up and fighting for the economic freedoms that made our nation the most prosperous society in history. . . . Thankfully, the stirrings from California to Virginia, and from Texas to Michigan, show that more and more of our fellow-citizens are beginning to see the same truths as we do.”

While Koch didn’t explicitly embrace the Tea Party movement that day, more recently he has come close to doing so, praising it for demonstrating the “powerful visceral hostility in the body politic against the massive increase in government power, the massive efforts to socialize this country.” Charles Koch, in a newsletter sent to his seventy thousand employees, compared the Obama Administration to the regime of the Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chávez. The Kochs’ sense of imperilment is somewhat puzzling. Income inequality in America is greater than it has been since the nineteen-twenties, and since the seventies the tax rates of the wealthiest have fallen more than those of the middle class. Yet the brothers’ message has evidently resonated with voters: a recent poll found that fifty-five per cent of Americans agreed that Obama is a socialist.

Americans for Prosperity, meanwhile, has announced that it will spend an additional forty-five million dollars before the midterm elections, in November. Although the group is legally prohibited from directly endorsing candidates, it nonetheless plans to target some fifty House races and half a dozen Senate races, staging rallies, organizing door-to-door canvassing, and running ads aimed at “educating voters about where candidates stand.”

Though the Kochs have slowed Obama’s momentum, their larger political battle is far from won. Richard Fink, interviewed by FrumForum.com this spring, said, “If you look at where we’ve gone from the year 2000 to now, with the expansion of government spending and a debt burden that threatens to bankrupt the country, it doesn’t look very good at all.” He went on, “It looks like the infrastructure that was built and nurtured has not carried the day.” He suggested that the Kochs needed “to get more into the practical, day-to-day issues of governing.”

Read more http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/08/30/100830fa_fact_mayer?printable=true#ixzz0xjo7xFQF

AFP

AFP is a corporate lobbying firm run by Tim Phillips, a former lobbying partner of conservative activist Ralph Reed, and funded in part by Koch Industries, the largest private oil corporation in America (see May 29, 2009). Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-GA) is also involved, through his lobbying form American Solutions for Winning the Future, which is supported by oil companies.

tea partyhttp://www.historycommons.org/entity.jsp?entity=americans_for_progress_1

http://www.campaignmoney.com/political/527/americans_for_progress_opportunity.asp

vs?

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

global warming, exxon. koch

pooley:

API 1998 action plan victory when doubt est'b sent memo to members aug

09 to send "energy Citizen" rallies, 20. told gas 4$/fal, 40% opposed

wnr to 63% 411  # came from heritage, piad for by exxon (biggest

member of api)

Beck uses kerpen, phil to go after VJ (afp) 411 a commie, and obama a

racist. VJ heartnened right that they could win by bs bullying 413

Phil Kerpen is policy director for the Free Enterprise Fund.

A biographical note states he is also the "publisher of Cross-X.com, the

leading web site for high school policy debaters." He has previously

worked as a policy analyst for the Club for Growth, the Woodhill

Foundation and the Cato Institute. [1]

Kerpen is quoted frequently in a variety of publications.

External links

   * "Phil Kerpen", Free Enterprise Fund, undated, accessed July 2005

http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2009/11/05/68017/david-koch-astroturf/

 Nov 5, 2009

Americans for Prosperity (AFP), the corporate front group founded in the 1980s by Koch Industries billionaire David Koch, worked closely with Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) to orchestrate the anti-health reform rally today. As ThinkProgress reported yesterday, AFP has been encouraging right-wing activists to board their buses — free of charge — to attend the rally. While AFP does not disclose all of its corporate donors, foundations controlled by David and Charles Koch provide millions in yearly funding, and David continues to chair the AFP foundation and preside over AFP’s annual convention.

ThinkProgress found at least a dozen AFP staffers standing at their designated bus drop off point near the Capitol, handing out signs, directions, talking points, petitions, and donuts to protesters. Many of the people who work at AFP are longtime Republican operatives, like Ben Marchi, the AFP Virginia director who previously worked for the National Republican Congressional Committee and for Rep. Tom Delay (R-TX). Victor Zapanta produced this video report of AFP staffers talking about their exploits at the rally today:

AFP STAFFERS: We have 25 buses just from Pennsylvania, New Jersey we probably have 5 or 6 from Maryland.

AFP STAFFERS: We have about 40 buses coming.

Watch it:

David Koch’s AFP has a long history of marshaling “grassroots” support for GOP objectives. In the early 1990s, AFP, then known as Citizens for a Sound Economy, worked secretly with then-Rep. Newt Gingrich (R-GA) to organize angry crowds following the Clintons as they touted their health reform bill. Industry money from health insurance, telecommunications, oil, and other companies has flowed freely to AFP over the years to help AFP promote an agenda of boosting the rich, stripping consumer safeguards, and maintaining corporate monopolies. Phillip Morris rented out AFP from the Koch family, contributing millions to the organization in exchange for AFP to build opposition to tobacco regulations.

AFP’s daily activities are managed by Tim Phillips, an infamous astroturf lobbyist who built a career using Christian front groups to wage stealth campaigns. For example, his work includes fighting under the radar to promote energy deregulation for Enron and helping Jack Abramoff clients continue forced abortion sweatshops in the Northern Mariana Islands.