Koch-Funded Organizations Launch New Campaign To Protect Big Oil Profits

As ThinkProgress and others have reported, Koch Industries and its billionaire owners, Charles and David Koch, have played a leading role in the apparently successful effort by polluters to stymie Senate passage of comprehensive clean energy and climate legislation.

Not content to simply stop progress, however, the Koch brothers and various Koch-funded organizations have also been actively trying to roll back existing clean air and clean energy laws — both at the state and national levels. David Koch, who lives in New York City and whose company is based in Kansas, is secretly bankrolling the Proposition 23 effort to roll back California’s landmark clean energy law. Koch-backed Americans for Prosperity helped make opposition to “cap-and-trade” a Tea Party talking point and then launched its so-called “Regulation Reality” tour to attack Supreme Court-mandated Clean Air Act regulations being finalized by the Environmental Protection Agency.

Today, a new Koch-backed national effort to protect the energy industry, dubbed “Rally for Jobs,” begins with rallies in Texas and will continue next week with events in New Mexico, Colorado, Illinois, and Ohio. While the American Petroleum Institute, Big Oil’s Washington lobbying arm, is the “presenting sponsor” of the Rally for Jobs tour, several Koch-backed groups are also involved:

• FreedomWorks, whose Koch-founded precursor, Citizens for a Sound Economy, received some $5.7 million from Koch foundations.
• Americans for Prosperity, which received at least $5.1 million from Koch Foundations from 2005-2008 and is an offshoot of the Koch-founded Citizens for a Sound Economy Foundation, which itself received more than $6 million from Koch foundations.
• The American Highway Users Alliance, of which Koch Industries is a member.
• Americans for Tax Reform, which received $60,000 from Koch Foundations from 1997-2008.
• The Institute for Policy Innovation, which received $35,000 from Koch foundations.
• The National Petrochemical and Refiners Association, of which Koch Industries is a member.
• The National Taxpayers Union, which has received $20,000 from Koch foundations.
• The Natural Gas Supply Association, of which Koch Industries appears to be a member.
• The Texas Prosperity Project, on whose board of directors sits Bill Oswald, Government & Regulatory Affairs Director at Koch Industries.
• The Corpus Christi Chamber of Commerce, which recently held an event sponsored by Flint Hills Resources, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Koch Industries.

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Joshua Dorner @'AlterNet'