The secretive, many-tentacled Koch Industries has just donated a million dollars to the Yes on 23 campaign. Tesoro Industries, another Texas oil business, has matched that amount. Scorecard:
Total Contributions to date: $8,221,096
Contributions from oil interests: $7,987,995 (97% of the total)
Contributions from out of state: $7,307,995 (89% of the total)
Valero, Tesoro & Koch Industries: $6,575,000 (80% of the total)
Were you ever on the fence? Did you really think that a measure to “suspend” California's landmark global warming law, bankrolled by out of state dirty energy interests and opposed by Californians from Silicon Valley tycoons to Small Business California to Latino families deserves a yes vote? The oil companies who've given 97% of the money to Proposition 23 don't give a rat's a$$ about California jobs. They certainly don't care about the existing 500,000 clean energy jobs that Proposition 23 would kill. For them, it's their out-of-state bottom line.
Koch has been operating in the shadows, bankrolling tea party activists, denying the existence of climate change, for too long. Only now, with a lengthy New Yorker piece entitled Covert Operations: the Billionaire Brothers who are Waging a War Against Obama, have they been exposed to sunshine. “From 2005 to 2008, the Kochs vastly outdid ExxonMobil in giving money to organizations fighting legislation related to climate change, underwriting a huge network of foundations, think tanks, and political front groups. Indeed, the brothers have funded opposition campaigns against so many Obama Administration policies—from health-care reform to the economic-stimulus program—that, in political circles, their ideological network is known as the Kochtopus.” Shorter, from the LA Times
“If you combined BP’s approach to safety with Enron’s greed, you would have Koch.”
Koch operates refineries in Alaska, Minnesota, and Texas. Why are its long, slimy tentacles reaching into California? Now that a climate bill appears dead in the Senate, the battle over the future moves to California. Proposition 23 presents California voters with the stark choices of building the future or burning the planet. It's also now a battleground in the war for the soul of America: Koch and its fellow polluters vs the future.
If you're in California, speak up. Tell your neighbors. Write a letter to the editor. Even if you're not in California, please get involved.
Join the No on Prop 23 Campaign
Add your name as a citizen endorser to Stop Texas Oil — Hell No on Prop 23
If on Twitter, be among the first to follow @StopKoch campaign, run by @StopBeck.
I hope others will do the same.
Any chance we can reform the financing of ballot measures? It’s rather sickening to watch these scumbags funding wave after wave of dirty propositions. A system modeled after “clean elections” laws – providing limited funding to the outspent side of a debate – would be a good place to start.