Free Republic

Call their bluff. Break the left’s media monopoly. Then rename the paper the “Los Angeles Kochtopus,” just to spite them. At a Los Angeles Times in-house awards ceremony a week ago, columnist Steve Lopez addressed the elephant in the room… Facing the elephant trunk-on, “Raise your hand if you would quit if the paper was bought by the Koch brothers.” About half the staff raised their hands. Perhaps one brave Times reporter would go public with a story killed by the new owners. She would lose her job, and it would be written about in The New York Times. And,...

Call their bluff. Wherever you stand politically, we can all agree on that, right? If you’re a liberal, you want to see the fair, balanced, impartial LA Times newsroom rise as one and walk out in protest of having to work for libertarian oligarKKKs. If you’re a conservative, you want them gone for different reasons, partly as a smoking gun of bias and partly because it’ll clear the decks to hire more neutral reporters. And if they don’t walk out, that’s okay — their cheap bravado will have been exposed in all its cheapness. Call their bluff. Break the left’s...

The Koch brothers have become the nation’s leading cheerleaders for free markets where consumers, employees, entrepreneurs and investors are free to pursue their own selfish interests without interference from government or unions or anyone else for that matter. Now comes word that the billionaire brothers want to buy up Los Angeles Times, one of the nation’s last remaining quality newspapers, or its parent, the Tribune Co., which has only recently emerged from bankruptcy reorganization following the disastrous takeover by real estate mogul Sam Zell. All this has come to a head because the bottom-fishing hedge funds that grabbed control of...

Harold Meyerson doesn't want the LA Times to become a political toolNewser) – The Tribune Company's board likely views the Koch Brothers' attempt to buy its eight newspapers as a purely financial transaction. But almost no one else sees it that way, writes Harold Meyerson at the Washington Post. Thousands of LA Times readers, for instance, have already signed petitions against the move, because they see it for what it would be: "a political transaction … turning LA's metropolitan daily into a right-wing mouthpiece whose commitment to empirical journalism would be unproven at best." The deal would include the LA...

Media: Billionaire brothers with a free-market bent are said to be eyeing some big newspapers. The left is worried. Will this end a noble tradition of red ink and layoffs? As readers of Mother Jones and the Daily Kos will tell you, David and Charles Koch fund a vast right-wing conspiracy that has warped American political life and kept a boot heel on the neck of the 99%. So with power like that, why would the brothers want to buy struggling newspapers? Why not go after something with more of a future, like mobile apps? Whatever the reasons, the Kochs...

On May 21, Los Angeles voters will go to the polls to select a new mayor. Who will govern Los Angeles, however, is only the second-most important local question in the city today. The most important, by far, is who will buy the Los Angeles Times. The Times is one of the eight daily newspapers now owned by the creditors who took control of the Tribune Co. after real estate wheeler-dealer Sam Zell drove it into bankruptcy. Others include the Chicago Tribune, the Baltimore Sun, the Orlando Sentinel and the Hartford Courant. The Tribune board members whom the creditors selected...

Tribune Company’s moves to sell its newspapers—a string that includes the Los Angeles Times and the Chicago Tribune—has reportedly sparked the interest of a number of heavyweight financiers. These include familiar media moguls like Warren Buffett and Rupert Murdoch. But heads turned when another pair of possible bidders emerged early in March: the billionaire industrialists Charles and David Koch. The Koch brothers, of course, are best known for funding conservative causes and conservative politicians. Unlike Buffett, who has purchased 63 newspapers in the last 15 months, and Murdoch, whose News Corp. owns The Wall Street Journal and the New York...

LOS ANGELES (CBSLA.com) — Protesters were set to gather Monday in downtown Los Angeles to urge the owners of the Los Angeles Times not to sell the newspaper to “political propagandists”. Members of the self-described “progressive” Courage Campaign along with MoveOn.org and Daily Kos launched an online petition demanding the Tribune Company, publishers of the L.A. Times, to reconsider a rumored sale to billionaire businessmen David and Charles Koch. Protesters were expected to deliver some 100,000 Californian signatures calling on Tribune Company President Peter Liguori “to refuse to sell the paper to political propagandists” to the company’s headquarters near City...

LA Weekly on Tuesday published a story about a rumored purchase of the Tribune Company by the Koch Brothers. As you might imagine, this has gotten great attention in the media world: The latest rumor about the next owner of the L.A. Times, which is for sale, is a doozy. A bombshell. It's a doozy wrapped in a bombshell exploding inside a Drudge siren. Multiple sources tell L.A. Weekly that Charles and David Koch -- the infamous right-wing billionaire brothers -- are considering an offer on either the Tribune Co. newspaper group, which includes the L.A. Times, the Chicago Tribune...

Al 'Jazeera' Gore took to the Huffington Post on Valentine's Day to attack the Tea Party as well as the Koch brothers. Not surprisingly, his "False Spontaneity of the Tea Party" consisted of his practically patented brand of factually-challenged left-wing propaganda: A new study by the National Cancer Institute of the National Institute of Medicine reveals that the Tea Party Movement was planned over a decade ago by groups with ties to the tobacco and fossil fuel industries. The movement was not a spontaneous populist uprising, but rather a long-term strategy to promote the anti-science, anti-government agenda of powerful corporate...

His Eminence and Hizzoner, by John Cardinal O'Connor and Mayor Edward I. KochJune 1989 New York City, N.Y., Feb 1, 2013 / 07:02 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Cardinal Timothy Dolan and Cardinal Edward Egan responded to the death of New York City Mayor Ed Koch with praise for the Jewish official's collaboration and friendship with Catholics. “He will have special place in my prayers, and in those of the Catholic community he loved and worked closely with, this weekend,” said Cardinal Dolan, who has been Archbishop of New York since 2009. Cardinal Dolan said that as a young priest in...

One of former New York City Mayor Ed Koch's last interviews before his death on Friday came in Vanity Fair's Proust Questionnaire. The most interesting part of the Q&A came when he was asked who was what living person he "most despise[s]." ... Which living person do you most despise? Former president Jimmy Carter.

Edward I. Koch, the master showman of City Hall, who parlayed shrewd political instincts and plenty of chutzpah into three tumultuous terms as mayor of New York with all the tenacity, zest and combativeness that personified his city of golden dreams, died Friday morning at age 88. Mr. Koch’s spokesman, George Arzt, said the former mayor died at 2 a.m. from congestive heart failure. He was being treated at New York-Presbyterian Columbia Hospital.

Ed Koch, the brash, colorful and often confrontational mayor who helped to lead New York City out of its brush with bankruptcy in the 1970s, launching an astonishing municipal turnaround that continues to this day, has died. He was 88.

....I depart and return to Israel with a sense of sorrow and dismay. For many, Israel remains a focal point of their lives enriching their collective sense of responsibility and Jewish identity. For these American Jews their frustration has only been reinforced by Obama's reelection only to be followed by him turning his back towards those very American Jews aligned with the White House, those Jews who wholeheartedly supported Obama's reelection yet now find themselves unable to defend his latest betrayal. Two major supporters of Obama, former NY Mayor Ed Koch, a life long Democrat and Prof Alan Dershowitz have...

"We get threats from people in Congress, and this is pushed out and becomes part of the culture: That we are evil so we need to be destroyed." - Charles Koch A man who, by FORBES’ careful measure, is one of the 50 most powerful people in the world, one of the 20 wealthiest–and one of the dozen most vilified–is perpetually in a position to reflect. But given it’s Charles Koch’s 77th birthday, the calendar demands it. Especially with the presidential election that Charles has called “the mother of all wars” less than a week away, and with Koch Industries,...

Koch Industries, the Wichita, Kan.-based company run by the billionaire Koch brothers, sent a voter information packet to 45,000 employees of its Georgia Pacific subsidiary earlier this month. In it was a letter, dated Oct. 1, from Koch Industries president Dave Robertson implicitly warning that "many of our more than 50,000 U.S. employees and contractors may suffer the consequences" of voting for President Obama and other Democrats in the 2012 elections, a list of conservative candidates the company's political action committee endorses and a pair of editorials: one, by David Koch, supporting Mitt Romney, and the other, by Charles Koch,...

In a column on his website, Fran Tarkenton wonders why Charles and David Koch are the targets of so much criticism. He writes: “So why do we vilify people who represent the greatness of America? Is it just because they have different political beliefs? It’s time to stop demonizing people who do things the right way and generate tremendous wealth — and value to all Americans. Those are the people we should celebrate, whether you agree with their politics or not! If we want to preserve America as the great place it is, we need more entrepreneurs, more innovators —...

Billionaire industrialist David Koch, who is helping steer millions of dollars to elect Mitt Romney and congressional Republicans, on Thursday told Politico he disagrees with the GOP’s stance on gay marriage and believes the U.S. needs to consider raising taxes to balance the budget. Koch, who is serving as a delegate to the Republican National Convention from New York, spoke to Politico after delivering brief remarks at a reception held in his honor him by Americans for Prosperity, the political advocacy group he chairs and has helped fund. The 1980 vice presidential nominee for the socially liberal—but fiscally conservative—Libertarian Party,...

Americans for Prosperity, the Tea Party organization backed by the Koch brothers, is set to begin a $25 million advertising assault aimed at President Obama, its largest effort to date. The ad takes a relatively straightforward approach, avoiding hyperbole or over-the-top negativity. An image of the national debt clock appears on screen for much of the ad, ticking ever higher. It ends with Mr. Obama's words, "If I don't have this done in three years, then there's going to be a one-term proposition."