By Cliff Montgomery – Mar. 25th, 2013
It seems that the poster boys for the U.S. neo-conservative movement – oil billionaire magnates Charles and David Koch – may be looking to purchase The Los Angeles Times, currently one of America’s most respected corporate news sources.
A deal remains uncertain at this time. All the same, its possibility has mobilized left-wing activist groups into creating a petition they hope will show just how unpopular a major newspaper owned by the Koch brothers would be with the public.
The petition was created by the famed liberal website The Daily Kos and by the Courage Campaign organization, which is based in L.A. The drive already has collected thousands of signatures.
As perhaps expected the Daily Kos bulletin so far has garnered more attention, with the petition there receiving – as of this writing – well over 70,000 “total signers.” By comparison, the Courage Campaign’s website so far has seen nearly 12,000 “actions taken.”
“It would be a travesty to the fourth estate if the Koch brothers purchase one of the most respected newspapers in the country in order to peddle their discredited ideas and right-wing propaganda,” stated The Daily Kos on its petition webpage.
“The Koch Brothers are the worst of the worst,” chimes in the Courage Campaign’s webpage dedicated to the petition. “Oil and gas billionaires, they’re known for buying elections, funding anti-science organizations, union busting, dodging taxes, and twisting democracy any way they can to promote their personal agenda.”
The activist groups will submit the anti-Koch petition to Peter Liguori, President of the Tribune Company, which owns such media assets as The Chicago Tribune and The Los Angeles Times.
It must be acknowledged that the Koch brothers are strong supporters of conservative agendas. But are they really as rabidly ideological as these activists say? The Kochs’ money trail indicates that the claims are true.
For instance, their right-wing Super PAC Americans for Prosperity [for a few] spent $130 million on the 2012 elections, according to The Wall Street Journal. The Super PAC spent over $36 million on that year’s federal elections alone.
We at The American Spark already have revealed how the Koch brothers spend quite a bit of their money on far-right causes. But in January, a leading British newspaper uncovered some especially unsavory Koch actions.
“Audit trail reveals that donors linked to fossil fuel industry are backing global warming sceptics,” declared The Independent.
It appears the Kochs are behind “a secretive funding organisation in the United States” which “has emerged as a major operator in the climate ‘counter movement’ to undermine the science of global warming,” according to the paper’s report, which hasn’t gotten a lot of attention in the U.S.
Two Alexandria, VA-based groups – the Donors Trust and its sister organization, Donors Capital Fund – are “funnelling millions of dollars into the effort to cast doubt on climate change,” even though the groups do not reveal the names of their “wealthy backers or that they have links to the fossil fuel industry,” stated The Independent.
“However, an audit trail reveals that Donors is being indirectly supported by the American billionaire Charles Koch,” added the paper.
The Donors groups have received millions from a third-party group which calls itself the Knowledge and Progress Fund. Knowledge and Progress “is operated by the Koch family but does not advertise its Koch connections,” states the newspaper.
How connected is the Knowledge and Progress Fund to the Kochs? Charles Koch and wife Liz are among its directors. Knowledge and Progress shelled out “$1.25m to Donors in 2007, a further $1.25m in 2008 and $2m in 2010,” according to The Independent.
The Donors Trust operates as a “donor advised fund” – which means that, at least on paper, the fund’s expenditures are not controlled by its financial backers.
It probably also should be pointed out that a “donor advised fund” allows its financiers a greater level of anonymity and rather charitable tax breaks. These are important matters.
“Anonymous private funding of global warming sceptics, who have criticised climate scientists for their lack of transparency, is becoming increasingly common,” stated The Independent.
“The Kochs, for instance, have overtaken the corporate funding of climate denialism by oil companies such as ExxonMobil,” continued the paper.
Drexel University sociologist Robert Brulle has calculated that in the last ten years, “about $500m has been given to organisations devoted to undermining the science of climate change, with much of the money donated anonymously through third parties,” stated the newspaper.
