Koch Facts Home
Wednesday, May 16th, 2012
Fact Checkers Back Kochs Over Liberal Adversaries
http://www.newsmax.com/US/koch-brothers-oil-industry/2012/05/14/id/439008
NEWSMAX
The Washington Post’s Fact Checker blog and non-partisan FactCheck.org say liberal critics who have labeled billionaire GOP patrons David and Charles Koch as “Big Oil” are wrong, Politico reports.
Response from Senator Martin to ALEC Inquiries
http://www.kochfacts.com/kf/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Response-from-Senator-Martin-to-ALEC-Inquiries.pdf [PDF]
SENATOR STEVE MARTIN (VA-11)
Based on some significant misrepresentations about how bills become law and a desire to silence conservative voices various leftist groups have been attacking a conservative voluntary membership organization (ALEC) that is used by conservative legislators as a resource for limited government/free enterprise/competitive market based solutions to issues arising in the 50 states.
Trolling for Dirt on the President’s List
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304070304577396412560038208.html?mod=wsj_share_tweet
WALL STREET JOURNAL — Kimberley A. Strassel
Political donations don’t come with a right to privacy, and Mr. VanderSloot might have expected a spotlight. Then again, President Obama, in the wake of the Gabby Giffords shooting, gave a national address calling for “civility” in politics. Yet rather than condemn those demeaning his opponent’s donors, Mr. Obama—the nation’s most powerful man—instead publicly named individuals, egging on the attacks. What has followed is the slimy trolling into a citizen’s private life.
Mr. VanderSloot acknowledges that “when I first learned that President Obama’s campaign had singled me out on his ‘enemies list,’ I knew it was like taping a target on my back.” But the more he’s thought it through, “the public beatings and false accusations that followed are no deterrent. These tactics will not work in America.” He’s even “contemplating a second donation.”
Letter to the Editor
http://www.nashuatelegraph.com/opinionletters/960896-263/keystone-xl-letter-got-firms-attention.html
NASHUA TELEGRAPH – Grady Semmens, TransCanada Corp.
“. . . contrary to Ms. Trivilino’s letter, Koch Industries is not one of our customers. It would be a shame if Americans did not receive the benefits of Keystone XL if the project is not approved.”
Monday, May 14th, 2012
Koch companies have had a presence in Canada for decades. Our businesses – including Flint Hills Resources, Koch Fertilizer, Georgia-Pacific, Koch Exploration, Koch-Glitsch, Koch Heat Transfer and INVISTA – employ more than 2,000 people in manufacturing, trading, marketing and sales throughout Canada. This publicly available Canada fact sheet provides information about Koch’s diverse operations, safety and environmental commitment, and community stewardship in Canada.
Our Flint Hills Resources Pine Bend Refinery in Rosemount, Minn., was built in the 1950s specifically to handle heavy Canadian crude oil. Koch purchased controlling interest in the refinery in 1969. Today, Pine Bend is one of the safest and cleanest refineries operating in theUnited States and in the top quartile for energy efficiency. Pine Bend is also among the top processors of Canadian oil in the U.S. and a leader in providing cleaner-burning fuels including gasoline, diesel, jet fuel, propane and butane as well as other petroleum products such as asphalt. The Canadian oil we process is shipped to the refinery via pipeline systems that have been in operation for decades.
Canadian oil is a critically important resource for the United States. A stable and friendly trading partner, Canada is the United States’ number one supplier of imported oil, and has about 15 percent of the world’s oil reserves, second only to Saudi Arabia. Canada’s oil sands will be developed – if not for the U.S., then for other countries. The U.S. is the most efficient and environmentally responsible transportation destination for Canadian oil.
Finally, with regard to the Keystone XL pipeline, Koch Industries has no financial stake in the proposed project and we are not party to its design or construction. We are not a proposed shipper or customer of oil delivered by this pipeline. This was verified by TransCanada’s CEO in a November 2011 statement.
Friday, May 11th, 2012
In an analysis published on May 10, the Washington Post’s Fact Checker column found no inaccuracy in our rebuttal to the Obama campaign’s misleading video and yet strangely assigned Koch “two Pinocchios” — the paper’s designation for misleading rhetoric. Yet, the main fault the Post cites is that the columnist regards most of our video as a “non-sequitur” since it doesn’t address all of the points raised by Obama Deputy Campaign Manager Stephanie Cutter.
But the assertions of Ms. Cutter’s that we omitted were not about Koch at all. Rather, as we explained to the columnist, those points were about an ad produced by Americans for Prosperity, an entirely separate organization to which Koch is but one of tens of thousands of contributing members. Days before our rebuttal appeared, AFP had released a thorough, line-by-line debunking of all the points that she had made about them. Here is a link that we provided the Post, although it did not appear in the piece.
Click Here For Full Post
Thursday, May 10th, 2012
Wednesday, May 9th, 2012
AP Plays Up Romney On Obama and Treason, Plays Down Axelrod Calling Rove, Koch Brothers ‘Contract Killers’
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/tim-graham/2012/05/07/ap-plays-romney-obama-and-treason-plays-down-axelrod-calling-rove-koch-b
NEWSBUSTERS — Tim Graham
Reporter Steve Peoples passed along the Obama campaign spin that Romney should stand up to “extreme voices” in his party. Soon after, the same Steve Peoples wrote a story on Obama strategy that waited until paragraph 16 to note the extreme voice of Obama campaign adviser David Axelrod telling reporters in a conference call that Team Obama was ready for criticism from “the Karl [Rove] and Koch brothers’ contract killers over there in super PAC land.”
Click Here For Full Post
Wednesday, May 9th, 2012
Letters to the Editor
The Washington Post
To the Editor,
Tom Ehrich’s derogatory statements about Kansas [Morning in Middle America, April 24] include the usual distortions elites use to convince themselves that life is even more bleak and broken in other parts of the country than where they live. If Mr. Ehrich thinks the bustling and orderly Kansas Motor Speedway is an “end of empire circus” I wonder what he makes of the New York City subway system?
Click Here For Full Post
Tuesday, May 8th, 2012
On May 2, the President and his campaign again attacked private citizens because of their exercise of their constitutional rights to speak out about issues of public policy. In their most recent attack video, the Obama campaign makes multiple false representations about Koch, our operations and our position on public policy issues.
This is not the first time the Obama campaign has chosen dishonesty and invective over principled discussion as many others have pointed out. We will not be intimidated or silenced by the President and his allies. It is essential that we exercise our constitutional right to speak out on reckless fiscal policies, irresponsible over-regulation, and the critical role of economic freedom and individual liberty in restoring the growth and vitality of our country.
We have posted the following rebuttal to expose the Obama campaign’s dishonesty:
Monday, May 7th, 2012
Statement from Philip Ellender
President, Government & Public Affairs
Koch Companies Public Sector, LLC
Despite pronouncements from the Obama campaign that its rhetoric would become more “positive”, senior Obama advisor David Axelrod’s comments to reporters on May 7 reveal that the campaign continues to stoop to the lowest forms of invective. Mr. Axelrod described Koch as “contract killers over there in super PAC land.”
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Thursday, May 3rd, 2012
A news item released yesterday quotes oil and natural gas investor T. Boone Pickens saying, “The biggest deterrent to an energy plan in America is Koch Industries.” His reasoning? That we support market prices for natural gas.
Mr. Pickens has stated that he is standing up for the American people by lobbying Congress for the passage of the NAT GAS Act. However, as The Atlantic reported, the NAT GAS Act is a scheme to get tax breaks from the government – in the form of another government subsidy – in order to increase the number of natural gas-powered tractor-trailers and heavy trucks on U.S. roads. What’s less well-known is that Mr. Pickens is the major shareholder in BAF Technologies, self-described as “the leading provider of natural gas vehicle systems and conversions in the U.S.”
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Tuesday, May 1st, 2012
Friday, April 27th, 2012
No, Paranoid Progressives, the Koch Brothers Had Nothing to Do With Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” Law
http://www.openmarket.org/2012/04/20/no-paranoid-progressives-the-koch-brothers-had-nothing-to-do-with-floridas-stand-your-ground-law/
OPEN MARKET – Hans Bader
In primitive societies, people blame their misfortunes on witchcraft and other imaginary phenomena. The American Left blames the Koch brothers for everything, with equally little basis in reality. (One of my uncles, who once volunteered for Obama, told me that to him, the Koch brothers are like “the devil.”) The Kochs are routinely blamed by progressives for pushing all sorts of legislation that the Kochs have absolutely no interest in, and that would not financially benefit them or Koch Industries one bit. To be responsible for all the activity attributed to them by leftists, the Kochs would have to have supernatural energy and powers, much like the witches of primitive mythology.
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Tuesday, April 24th, 2012
Thursday, April 19th, 2012
Contrary to an irresponsible rumor that began circulating online on April 18, Koch has no involvement whatsoever with the defense of George Zimmerman, the defendant in the Trayvon Martin case.
The exact origin of that rumor remains to be seen but similar falsehoods made by partisan activists in recent days have intentionally sown confusion about Koch. On March 23, Democratic party operative Karen Finney wrongly accused Koch of a connection with the tragic circumstances surrounding the Trayvon Martin matter. We provided MSNBC with a formal statement and demonstrable proof that Ms. Finney was deceiving viewers — and yet the network refuses to air those remarks or post them online.
Just days later, former White House aide Van Jones appeared on MSNBC and remarked, “You’ve got all of the passion around Trayvon and what a horrible injustice that was and you can draw a direct line to the Koch brothers.” We confronted the network about that lie as well and again they refused to air our statement.
Despite MSNBC’s appalling disregard for basic journalism standards, we will continue to set the record straight on this issue as often as necessary.
Wednesday, April 18th, 2012
From: Cohlmia, Melissa
Sent: Wednesday, April 18, 2012 9:44 AM
To: ‘Porges, Marian
Subject: RE: Response to MSNBC regarding Karen Finney
Dear Ms. Porges:
Thank you for your response. With all due respect, I find your response troubling and insufficient to address our concerns regarding Ms. Finney’s false and malicious statements about us. Contrary to your claim, we correctly stated in our March 27 email that Ms. Finney “accused Koch of a connection with the tragic circumstances surrounding the Trayvon Martin matter. ‘Who was the Typhoid Mary for this horrible outbreak,’ Finney asked. She then stated, ‘It’s the usual suspects the Koch brothers…the same people who stymied gun regulation at every point who funded and ghost write these laws.’” Your email brushes this aside by playing semantics and ignoring the fact that Ms. Finney’s statements were dishonest and baseless. In addition, you fail to even mention our concerns about activist Van Jones’ false and malicious statements on the April 8th Ed Show that, “You’ve got all of the passion around Trayvon and what a horrible injustice that was and you can draw a direct line to the Koch brothers.”
In light of this information we struggle to understand how your approval of MSNBC’s refusal to post our statement concerning this matter demonstrates is consistent with either journalistic ethics or accountability. Your claim that our statement was not in response to Ms. Finney’s false statements misses the point. We issued that statement the day before Ms. Finney’s comments because of our concerns that extremists like Ms. Finney and MSNBC would repeat the malicious lies that The Nation and Mother Jones had first published. Our experience the past few years has been that MSNBC often repeats the outrageous and distorted allegations about us that are first set forth in the far left blogosphere. Unfortunately, this has happened once again in this situation and you chose not to address it.
Click Here For Full Post
Friday, April 13th, 2012
Wednesday, April 11th, 2012
Statement from Philip Ellender
President, Government & Public Affairs
Koch Companies Public Sector, LLC
A recently issued press release by the Obama campaign once again singles out Koch and misrepresents the facts in a divisive manner when Americans are asking for a reasoned dialogue and solutions to pressing economic issues. The Obama campaign is upset about a study put out this week by the Mercatus Center at George Mason University concerning President Obama’s Affordable Care Act. Instead of addressing the study’s findings and analysis, the campaign spokesperson deflects and falsely criticizes Koch for supporting “subsidies for oil and gas companies that are making record profits and boosting their own bottom line.”
As has been explained repeatedly, Koch has consistently and for many years opposed government subsidies of any kind and urged the government to discontinue them. Further, Charles Koch and David Koch have championed free-market policies for more than 50 years and criticized those policies that are counter to free-market principles, regardless of whether Democrats or Republicans were in power. We have long supported the Mercatus Center and other groups that analyze and advance thoughtful, reliable, free-market solutions to the pressing economic problems facing our country. The Obama campaign’s complaints about energy policy appear to be a tactic to divert attention from the study’s analysis of the Affordable Care Act’s impact on our country’s massive deficits. The fact that the President’s campaign would prefer to demonize Koch rather than discuss the economic consequences of the president’s policies demonstrates that the Administration and its allies would prefer not to deal with the serious economic crisis our nation faces.
We encourage and support a principled, fact-based and civil debate about the important issues we face today. However, we continue to object to attempts by the president’s campaign and other politicians to single out private citizens for exercising their First Amendment rights concerning matters of important public policy.
Friday, April 6th, 2012
Wednesday, April 4th, 2012
America Live With Megyn Kelly
Fox News
March 28, 2012
Tuesday, April 3rd, 2012
