Union activists confront Koch Brothers conclave

By Mike Andrew

A phalanx of sheriff’s deputies in full riot gear were needed to protect Charles and David Koch and 200 of their richest and most conservative friends in Palm Springs on January 30.

The Koch brothers hosted a secret meeting of right-wing money men in the Rancho Las Palmas Resort and Spa, one of Southern California’s most luxurious hotels, to plan political strategy and raise money for the 2012 election campaign.

Challenging them were more than 1,000 activists, including members of the California Nurses Association/National Nurses United (CNA/NNU), AFSCME, Health Care for America Now (HCAN) and Common Cause.

25 demonstrators were arrested.

The Koch brothers, heirs to the oil and chemical conglomerate Koch Industries, have founded or funded dozens of conservative or libertarian publications, think tanks and attack groups, according to an investigative piece by The New Yorker’s Jane Mayer.

Among Koch-sponsored political organizations are Citizens United, Americans for Prosperity, and the Tea Party.

Their Palm Springs meeting raised an estimated $30 million for the 2012 election.

Their father, Fred Koch, was a founding member and the principal funder of the ultra-right John Birch Society in the 1950s and 1960s.

With annual revenues of $98 billion, Koch Industries is the second largest privately held corporation in the country. 

It is also the 10th worst corporate polluter in the country, according to the Political Economic Research Institute of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. 

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor was among several members of Congress who flew in for the two-day meeting. 

Cantor has been generously backed by Koch Industries in the past, having received $36,650 in campaign contributions from the company’s executives and employees since 2002, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. 

Past participants in the Koch brothers’ conclaves have included members of Congress, media personalities like Glenn Beck, and Supreme Court Justices Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia, both of whom voted on the Koch brothers’ side in the infamous Citizens United ruling.

No surprise, then, that the Koch brothers have been identified as financial supporters of union-busting Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker. 

Koch Industries gave Walker $43,000 in direct contributions, as well as giving $1 million to the Republican Governors Association, which then spent $65,000 on Walker’s campaign.

According to Salon magazine, a key section of Walker’s so-called “budget repair bill” allows the state to conclude no-bid contracts with private energy companies in order to benefit Koch industries.

The Koch brothers’ tentacles even reach into our state.

In the 2010 election, the Koch brothers donated $5000 directly to Republican Senate candidate Dino Rossi, and donated additional money to other right-wing PACs that then funneled some $64,500 to Rossi’s campaign.

In January, Kirby Wilbur, the former chairman of Americans for Prosperity in Washington, was elected chair of the state Republican Party organization.

Americans for Prosperity claims chapters in 32 states, including Washington and Wisconsin; an e-mail list of 1.6 million supporters; and a $40 million annual budget.

Officers of the organization refuse to say how much of its budget comes from the Koch family.