The Koch Brothers plan to spend close to $900 million on the 2016 campaign, according to a New York Times report. What does this mean to the 2016 election?
MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough looks at the big money involved in campaign donations.
MSNBC
Tag: Koch Brothers
Do The Koch Brothers’ Have A Keystone XL Connection?
In March, a Washington Post Web article and print article stated that Koch Industries was the largest leaseholder in Canada’s oil sands. That has since been questioned. However, further reporting has indicated that Koch Industries is the largest American and foreign holder of leases in Canada’s oil sands based on net acreage, but it might narrowly trail two Canadian companies overall.
Below is a list of individual companies’ net acreage lease holdings in oil sands based on data from the Alberta provincial energy department, corporations’ annual information forms, information from a mapping firm called GeoScout, data from a Calgary-based exploration services firm called Divestco Geomatics and interviews with industry analysts and executives:
●Cenovus Energy (Canada) 1.57 million* (includes rights to an air weapons range)
●Athabasca Oil Corp. (Canada) 1.56 million**
●Koch (U.S.) 1.12 million to 1.47 million***
●Canadian Natural Resources (Canada) 1 million*
●Suncor (Canada) 986,000****
(Sources:)
*company filings with
Canadian securities regulators;
e-mails from company spokesmen
**company Web site:
atha.com/operations/
thermal-oil/
***GeoScout, Alberta
energy department, Divestco
****Divestco
According to the Washington Post, an oil industry official with direct knowledge of Koch’s lease holdings has said that Koch’s leases in the oil-sands region are “closer to 2 million.” (The official spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect his relationship with the firm.)
This is possible because big companies frequently use brokers or private affiliates to quietly purchase rights without triggering a scramble for nearby acreage. If that is the case, Koch Industries ranks as the largest leaseholder in Alberta.
Koch itself did not reply to questions from the Post about its acreage holdings.
Even without counting possible acreage acquired through brokers or private affiliates, it is clear that Koch Industries through its wholly owned subsidiaries ranks as the largest leaseholder among U.S. or non-Canadian firms and no lower than the third-largest overall.
Figuring out net acreage positions and rankings in the oil-sands region is complex, and a measure of uncertainty is unavoidable.
“It’s so opaque,” said Andrew Leach, a professor at the University of Alberta in Edmonton. “There are so many different layers here.”
The province of Alberta keeps track of designated representatives on oil-sands leases, but the list doesn’t indicate whether those representatives have partners who share the cost of purchase and development. It is a list of gross, not net, lease holdings.
Net ownership could be higher (if a company holds a lot of minority positions in partnerships) or lower (if a designated representative brings in other partners to reduce development costs and spread risks).
Moreover, Canadian government and industry officials note that any company can establish a subsidiary identified only with a number, such as 12345Alberta, and the authoritative industry official says that Koch’s holdings far exceed the acreage listed by name with the Alberta provincial government.
Other oil companies might be doing the same thing, which adds more uncertainty.
The link between Koch and Keystone XL is, however, indirect at best. According to industry sources and provincial government publications, Koch’s oil production in northern Alberta is “negligible.”
Also, Koch has not reserved any space in the Keystone XL pipeline, a process that usually takes place before a pipeline is built.
The pipeline also does not run anywhere near Koch’s refining facilities, and TransCanada, owner of the Keystone routes, says Koch is not expected to be one of the pipeline’s customers.
Still, an activist group that is publicizing the figures about Koch holdings in the oil sands – the International Forum on Globalization (IFG) – is arguing that Koch will benefit indirectly.
The IFG contends that the Keystone XL pipeline will create competition among rail and other pipelines and lower transportation costs for all oil sands producers, bolstering profit margins and making additional reserves economically viable.
Sources:
June Donor’s Meeting Between Mitch McConnell, Koch Brothers
The Nation and other sources have obtained an audio recording of Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell’s remarks at a Koch Brothers’ sponsored meeting between politicians and donors at the St. Regis Monarch Bay Resort in Dana Point, CA.
The Nation claims that the resort was rented by the Koch brothers for $870,000 for the meeting on June 15th.
In the question-and-answer period following his session titled “Free Speech: Defending First Amendment Rights,” McConnell says:
“So in the House and Senate, we own the budget. So what does that mean? That means that we can pass the spending bill. And I assure you that in the spending bill, we will be pushing back against this bureaucracy by doing what’s called placing riders in the bill. No money can be spent to do this or to do that. We’re going to go after them on healthcare, on financial services, on the Environmental Protection Agency, across the board [inaudible]. All across the federal government, we’re going to go after it.”
(recording below)
McConnell’s pledge to “go after” Democrats on financial services was apparently a reference to changing or getting rid of Dodd-Frank regulation. Dodd-Frank, of course, was legislation passed in 2010 in response to the under-regulation of the financial industry that led to the Great Recession.
McConnell has also been a vocal opponent of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in particular, and presumably under his Senate leadership funding for the CFPB would be high on the list for appropriations cuts.
According to the Center for Responsive Politics, Wall Street was the number-one contributor to McConnell’s campaign committee from 2009 to 2014.
McConnell is running against Democrat Alison Lundergan Grimes in a close contest that could determine which party controls the Senate. Total spending in the race is expected to exceed $100 million, which would make it the most expensive Senate election in history.
As of July 21, PACs and individuals affiliated with Koch Industries have given at least $41,800 to McConnell’s campaign committee in this election cycle—a figure that does not include any funding to outside groups that could spend heavily in the race’s closing weeks.
Recently, Grimes has been airing ads that criticize McConnell for “voting seventeen times against raising the minimum wage” and “twelve times against extending unemployment benefits for laid-off workers.” Perhaps unsurprisingly, McConnell himself seems quite proud of this legislative record, at least in front of an audience of wealthy donors. After he lays out his agenda to shrink the federal government “across the board.”
“And we’re not going to be debating all these gosh darn proposals,” said Mitch. “That’s all we do in the Senate is vote on things like raising the minimum wage [inaudible]—cost the country 500,000 new jobs; extending unemployment—that’s a great message for retirees; uh, the student loan package the other day, that’s just going to make things worse, uh. These people believe in all the wrong things.”
In late April, Senate Republicans, led by McConnell, successfully filibustered a bill to increase the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour.
Earlier in the year, McConnell also led a filibuster of a three-month extension of unemployment insurance to some 1.7 million Americans. At one point in the negotiations, he offered a deal to extend unemployment only if Democrats agreed to repeal the Affordable Care Act, even though the ACA does not add to the federal deficit.
Just days before he addressed the Koch brothers’ billionaire donor summit, McConnell was instrumental in blocking Senator Elizabeth Warren’s proposal to help Americans refinance their growing student loan debt.
Warren’s plan would have been funded by a new minimum tax on America’s wealthiest. In response, McConnell has said that “not everybody needs to go to Yale” and that cash-strapped students should look into for-profit colleges. That seemed to be an odd response, considering that for-profit colleges are more expensive than state colleges.
The main thrust of McConnell’s remarks to the Koch conference were about his favorite issue, campaign finance, which he regards as a matter of free speech.
Mitch McConnell: Do you think he cares about you?
Koch Brothers False Voter Registration Mailers
Americans For Prosperity (a conservative group with financial ties to the wealthy brothers Charles and David Koch) sent hundreds of North Carolina voters incorrect voter registration information, according to the State Board of Elections.
The mailers contained false information about the deadline to submit voter registration forms, incorrect contact information for the Secretary of State and State Board of Elections offices and an incorrect explanation about how voters are notified that their information has been received.
Clearly, some people may have sent in the mailers thinking that they would be registered, but were not.
Joshua Lawson, a public information officer with the State Board of Elections, told the News & Observer that his office has been receiving phone calls “all day, every day” asking about the mailings. He said that one resident had even received a registration form addressed to her cat.
“It’s unclear where [Americans for Prosperity] got their list, but it’s caused a lot of confusion for people in the state,” Lawson said, explaining that the group did not alert the board before sending the forms.
Misinformation about voter registration can be a felony if it is intentionally misleading and suppresses votes.
Bob Hall, the executive director of Democracy NC, told The Huffington Post that he believed an investigation should be conducted.
In his statement, Hall referenced a television ad that State Senate President Pro Tem Phil Berger (R) was forced to change after the state’s NAACP chapter complained that it gave misleading information to voters about a new identification requirement that doesn’t go into effect until 2016.
OK, Fine. 