Left wing nuts seem sure that AE is a secret project of the Kochs.
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The anti-government fervor infusing the 2010 elections represents a political triumph for the Kochs.
Billy of the Church of Earthalujah and a few short films by Greenwald on the Kochs.
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Which brings us to the other point, well, why might the Kochs buy the chain?
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The Kochs and their company have given additional millions to political campaigns, advocacy groups, and lobbyists.
The Kochs, when asked by reporters if they had given the money, refused to comment.
But the Kochs are also capable of surprise, with their libertarian instincts often trumping their conservative ones.
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The Kochs operate oil refineries in Alaska, Texas, and Minnesota, and control some four thousand miles of pipeline.
So the problem for the Kochs has been trying to create a movement.
Unlike climate change, the Kochs come at this cause with a more pristine mandate, since many subsidies help their company.
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Mayer waves aside the objection that billionaire George Soros spends as much, or more, on political organizations as the Kochs.
The Kochs have gone well beyond their immediate self-interest, however, funding organizations that aim to push the country in a libertarian direction.
Only the Kochs know precisely how much they have spent on politics.
Many of the organizations funded by the Kochs employ specialists who write position papers that are subsequently quoted by politicians and pundits.
The Kochs are wedded to solid assets like refineries and paper mills.
In addition, during the past dozen years the Kochs and other family members have personally spent more than two million dollars on political contributions.
The Kochs continued to disperse their money, creating slippery organizations with generic-sounding names, and this made it difficult to ascertain the extent of their influence in Washington.
The Koch long-game strategy is absolute: If it makes sense to them, the Kochs stay with the plan, no matter how burdensome or how long it takes.
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The Kochs are longtime libertarians who believe in drastically lower personal and corporate taxes, minimal social services for the needy, and much less oversight of industry especially environmental regulation.
In pursuit of his goals, Pope, like the Kochs, has created a network combining a family fortune, the resources of a large private company, and family-funded policy organizations.
The Kochs actually engaged against me and funded my opponent.
The bottom line is big estates require a lot of advance planning, which presumably the Kochs have engaged in, even as they pile up wealth within Koch Industries.
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The Kochs and their political operatives declined requests for interviews.
The Kochs have cast themselves as deficit hawks, but, according to a study by Media Matters, their companies have benefitted from nearly a hundred million dollars in government contracts since 2000.
Instead, a prominent New York public-relations executive who is close with the Kochs put forward two friends: George Pataki, the former governor of New York, and Mortimer Zuckerman, the publisher and real-estate magnate.
While the Kochs have long attracted the ire of liberal activists for underwriting the Tea Party and trying to kill clean air legislation, this was the first time one of their summits was greeted by a protest rally.
At her recent Netroots Nation keynote address, Burner pitched her plan of action to an audience of progressive bloggers: a smartphone app allowing shoppers to swipe bar codes to check whether the Kochs, or other right-wing supporters, are behind a product on the shelves.
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Charles Koch recently praised the Popes, along with other donors, for providing financial support for the 2012 election effort, and tax records show that Pope has given money to at least twenty-seven groups supported by the Kochs, including organizations opposing environmental regulations, tax increases, unions, and campaign-spending limits.
For all the money spent for Obama or against Obama, it's far from clear that the electorate is so easily malleable: The intersection of beliefs and economics creates a constellation of complex tropisms in which it seems just as facile to suggest that the Kochs have derailed the presidency as Warren Buffet and George Soros drove the Obama train into the White House.
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