Free Republic

Americans should have the courage to ignore their written laws, to amnesty DACA illegals and accept an open-borders world, says an op-ed by two wealthy CEOs who stand to gain more wealth in a labor market flooded by low-wage migrants. The op-ed by Tim Cook (CEO of Apple, wealth $800 million and growing) and Charles Koch (Koch Industries, $49 billion and growing) was posted in the Washington Post newspaper owned by Jeff Bezos (owner of Amazon, $98 billion and growing). Under the headline “Congress must act on the ‘dreamers,’” it declared: We must do better. The United States is at...

The Climate Change Business Journal has calculated that global warming is now a $1.5 trillion a year industry. The Business Journal’s report is not available for free online, but its findings are reviewed by the Insurance Journal. They are eye-opening, to say the least: The $1.5 trillion global “climate change industry” grew at between 17 and 24 percent annually from 2005-2008, slowing to between 4 and 6 percent following the recession with the exception of 2011’s inexplicable 15 percent growth, according to Climate Change Business Journal. The San Diego, Calif.-based publication includes within that industry nine segments and 38 sub-segments....

Conservative think tank Americans for Prosperity (AFP), co-founded by principals of Koch Industries, sued in federal court to prevent ultra-liberal California Attorney General Kamala Harris from using her office to disclose the names and addresses of their 90,000 donors. Harris may have a problem with AFP being a major force behind the Tea Party movement and its support of free markets, entrepreneurship, lower taxes, and limited government spending and regulation. As a federally registered 501(c)(4), not-for-profit educational organization, Americans for Prosperity is allowed under federal law to raise and spend money educating the public regarding issues associated with political campaigns...

In 2007, Charles Koch, CEO of Koch Industries, Inc., published a book titled “The Science of Success: How Market-Based Management Built the World’s Largest Private Company,” laying out five principles that comprise his market-based management philosophy, to which he attributes the exponential growth of Koch Industries. As political observers are likely aware, the success of Koch Industries has enabled the Kochs to spend millions of dollars funding libertarian ideological initiatives and Republican political campaigns, something Democrats are not enamored of. Sen. Harry Reid most famously has attacked the Kochs — using them as a caricature for the villainous one percent...

Do you think the Koch brothers and other super-rich conservatives are the ones spending more money than anyone else to influence elections in states across the country? You’re wrong.

The political network spearheaded by conservative billionaires Charles and David Koch has expanded into a far-reaching operation of unrivaled complexity, built around a maze of groups that cloaks its donors, according to an analysis of new tax returns and other documents. The filings show that the network of politically active nonprofit groups backed by the Kochs and fellow donors in the 2012 elections financially outpaced other independent groups on the right and, on its own, matched the long-established national coalition of labor unions that serves as one of the biggest sources of support for Democrats. A spokesman for Koch Industries...

Reports that Koch Industries is exploring a bid to buy the Tribune Co.’s newspapers has Orlando’s far left in a lather over the prospect of losing “its” paper. The Orlando Sentinel is one of several Tribune newspapers, which also include the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune, the Baltimore Sun and the Sun Sentinel. Florida Watch Action organized a rally Thursday in front of the Orlando Sentinel’s offices to “fight back” against the dastardly billionaire industrialists Charles and David Koch, arch enemies of all things progressive...

Ted Olson weighs in...

According to Opensecrets.org Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton and seven other Senate Democrats took political donations from Koch Industries in 2008. Democrats and the left have since demonized Charles Koch and David Koch, co-owners of Koch Industries. Via Opensecrets.org 

Democratic U.S. lawmakers have asked Congressional panels to look into whether Koch, an energy company led by brothers who are powerhouses in conservative politics, will benefit if the Obama administration approves a $7 billion pipeline to bring crude from Canada into the United States. U.S. Representatives Henry Waxman and Bobby Rush wrote a letter on Friday to Republicans chairing the House Committee on Energy and Commerce and one of its subcommittees, asking them to request documents from Koch Industries regarding the extent to which the company would benefit if the Keystone XL oil sands line would be built. Privately held...

<p>The vitriol from protesting Wisconsin workers towards the Kochs emerged quickly and intensely. Signs ranging between lame and vulgar (often both) dot the public-union marches.</p>

VIDEO - Detroit's current "light rail" system has been called a “Horizontal Elevator to Nowhere” and the “least cost-effective transit project in the last 20 years.” So what's the response to this epic disaster of central planning from the political class? To build more, of course.

Crony capitalism and bloated government prevent entrepreneurs from producing the products and services that make people's lives better. Years of tremendous overspending by federal, state and local governments have brought us face-to-face with an economic crisis. Federal spending will total at least $3.8 trillion this year—double what it was 10 years ago. And unlike in 2001, when there was a small federal surplus, this year's projected budget deficit is more than $1.6 trillion. Several trillions more in debt have been accumulated by state and local governments. States are looking at a combined total of more than $130 billion in budget...

Industrialists who own private company with annual revenues of £62bn have channelled millions of dollars to rightwing causes It likes to present itself as a grassroots insurgency made up of hundreds of local groups intent on toppling the Washington elite. But the Tea Party movement, which is threatening to cause an upset in next month's midterm elections, would not be where it is today without the backing of that most traditional of US political supporters – Big Oil.

A Treasury Department watchdog has launched an investigation into whether the Obama administration improperly snooped around the tax records of the mega-conglomerate that has poured millions into Republican campaigns.... The controversy concerns the multibillion-dollar oil company Koch Industries, a major political contributor to conservative causes and a major target this year of Democrats trying to stoke voter outrage over the funding behind those causes. President Obama publicly called out the Koch-funded Americans for Prosperity at an early August fundraiser in Texas -- that incident, in turn, helped fuel suspicion after an administration official was quoted later in the month speaking...

A federal inspector general is looking into whether the Obama administration used confidential taxpayer information in an effort to attack a political opponent, Koch Industries.The review was revealed Tuesday by Sen. Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, two weeks after he and a handful of other top Senate Republicans called for the Treasury Department's inspector general for tax issues to look into the matter, saying either administration officials had illegal access to taxpayer information or were inappropriately speculating in public about the company's tax status.Charles and David Koch, brothers who control the Kansas-based company, are libertarians who have used some...

Mark Holden, a lawyer for Koch Industries, tells THE WEEKLY STANDARD that Austan Goolsbee is the "senior administration official" who discussed the private company's tax status during an August 27 press briefing. As THE WEEKLY STANDARD reported on Monday, at the briefing, a senior Obama administration official singled out Koch Industries, which has drawn the ire of the White House and media for funding right-leaning causes. Said the official at the August 27 briefing on a report by the President's Economic Recovery Advisory Board on corporate taxes: So in this country we have partnerships, we have S corps, we have LLCs,...

Lately, the White House and its allies have been drawing attention to the political activities of libertarian billionaires Charles and David Koch. In an August 9 speech, President Obama singled out Americans for Prosperity, a free-market political group founded by David Koch in 2004. In the wake of the Citizens United Supreme Court decision, Obama said: ... "Using a great deal" of research by the left-wing Center for American Progress, the New Yorker's Jane Mayer reported in the magazine's August 30 issue that the Kochs are "waging a war against Obama." Reason's Nick Gillespie argued that Mayer's report was nothing...

Mainstream America is finally getting to know the billionaire brothers backing the libertarian movement, thanks to a pair of dueling profiles in New York and The New Yorker. Now that we've heard about their charitable giving, David's 240-foot mega-yacht and role as patrons of the Tea Party movement, it's time to ask a more serious question: How libertarian are they? The short answer...not very.Charles and David Koch, the secretive billionaire brothers who own Koch Industries, the largest private oil company in America, have spent millions bankrolling free-market think tanks and pro-business politicians in order, as David Koch has put it,...