David Koch

Liberals endlessly harp on what they perceive as conservatives' greed. What really sticks in their craw is conservatives' generosity.

An example of this occurred on Ed Schultz's radio show Monday with guest Robert Greenwald, a filmmaker specializing in left-wing agitprop at an outfit he modestly calls Brave New Films.

Greenwald was describing a website he recently created, Koch Brothers Exposed, about energy magnates David and Charles Koch. The site includes a video of protesters outside a Lincoln Center theater named after David Koch when he pledged $100 million for badly-needed renovations three years ago. The demonstrators staged a "renaming ceremony" demanding the theater shed Koch from its name.

Friday’s lead New York Times story by Stephanie Strom focused on an I.R.S. crackdown on politically motivated non-profits established by wealthy investors like the libertarian Koch brothers, and the left-wing George Soros: "I.R.S. Sets Sights On Donors Gifts That Push Policy - Says Tax May Be Owed – Advocacy Groups Draw Scrutiny – A Rare Use of a Provision."

Strom focused mainly on the Koch brothers of the right, and an accompanying photo caption claimed that while David Koch gave to libertarian causes, the left-wing Soros merely "donated millions to other causes."

Big donors like David H. Koch and George Soros could owe taxes on their millions of dollars in contributions to nonprofit advocacy groups that are playing an increasing role in American politics.

Most of the conspiracy theories about libertarian philanthropists Charles and David Koch have originated in the left-wing blogosphere. But a few media outlets, most notably MSNBC and the New York Times, have served to filter the anti-Koch campaigns into the mainstream political conversation.

The Times, which has printed numerous factual inaccuracies relating to the Koch brothers of late, recently published a piece on its website that focused on a relatively obscure left-wing non-profit's attack campaign against them.

The article spurred Koch Indutries, the massive conglomerate owned by the billionaire brothers, to hit back at the paper. In a letter to its public editor, the company's general council asked whether the Times was "reporting on events or participating in them?" See the text of that letter below the break.

Does the New York Times fact-check its editorial pages? A slew of recent errors in Times opinion pieces suggest it does not - or, if it does, that it needs to do a better job.

The most recent bout of falsehoods was, perhaps unsurprisingly, directed at the much-maligned owners of Koch Industries, Charles and David Koch. In a Sunday, April 3 op-ed in the Times, David Callahan, a senior fellow at the left-wing advocacy group Demos, made numerous factual errors regarding the company and its fraternal owners, and about non-profit tax law - together, the two central topics of his piece.

Koch Industries sent a letter to Andrew Rosenthal, the Times's editorial page editor, on Tuesday requesting corrections to the "several errors" in Callahan's op-ed, but as of Monday afternoon, no correction had been issued. Read the full letter below the break.

Earlier today, my Examiner colleague Mark Tapscott wrote on the left's tendency to create political bogeymen and then accuse them of just about everything under the sun. There's a bit more that needs to be added in the context of the left's newest bogeymen, the newly infamous Charles and David Koch. Just like they did previously in their attacks on the likes of Kenneth Starr and Richard Scaife, lefties are once again playing fast-and-loose with the facts regarding the Kochs.

Fortunately, lawyer John Hinderaker over at the Power Line blog has engaged in some industrial-strength deconstruction to debunk two hit-pieces against the Kochs and Wisconsin governor Scott Walker put out by Think Progress blogger Lee Fang. He goes through each piece point-by-point and demonstrates that when it comes to the Koch Industries and the environment (and everything else), there is no truth to the leftist smears. Both pieces (1 and 2) are must-reading.

Here's just a taste of the debunking (Fang quotes or summaries are in bold):

The Left has been making quite a bit of conspiratorial hay over the following paragraph Eric Lipton wrote at the New York Times on February 21 ("Billionaire Brothers’ Money Plays Role in Wisconsin Dispute") about the alleged degree of involvement Koch family members have allegedly had in the Wisconsin public-sector union showdown:

Even before the new governor was sworn in last month, executives from the Koch-backed group had worked behind the scenes to try to encourage a union showdown, Mr. Phillips said in an interview on Monday.

Notice something missing? How about quotation marks? Their absence is not an accident.

When conservatives gather behind closed doors, the left plans protests and counter events. When the left plans a closed-door meeting, it gets almost no attention at all.

Politico reported briefly on Feb. 16, that Democratic operatives will gather in early March for a private strategy conference. That has gotten little attention or criticism, yet when conservatives gather at the semiannual Koch conference the left mounts elaborate protests.

“Participants include Obama campaign pollsters Joel Benenson and Paul Harstad, the 2010 executive directors of the DSCC, DCCC, and DGA, Organizing for America deputy director Jeremy Bird, SEIU political director Jon Youngdahl, and current DSCC executive director Guy Cecil,” Politico’s Ben Smith said.

When the latest “semiannual confab of conservative activists” hosted by Charles and David Koch took place, people on the left from environmentalists to unions held a counter-meeting called “Uncloaking the Kochs.” The Los Angeles Times covered the protests and even linked to streaming video of the lefties’ event, but didn’t quote a single conservative in that story.

I was going to say the left has now officially hit rock bottom.  But it's still a long way to Election Day for the desperate Dems . . .

On this evening's Ed Show, trial-lawyer guest Mike Papantonio accused Glenn Beck and the Koch brothers of consciously plotting, via Beck's DC rally, to provoke race riots.

In Papantonio's fevered imagination, the Beck-Koch axis is attempting to recreate the race riots of 1968 . .

The Tea Parties are driving the liberals crazy. They charged that Tea Partiers were racists but that pretty much backfired on them when they were unable to collect on the $100,000 Breitbart prize offered for any video evidence of racial epithets that were supposedly hurled at congressmen on March 20 at the Capitol. Now it seems that they have gone back to the Nancy Pelosi charge of accusing the grassroots Tea Party of being an "astroturf" organization. And who is suposedly financing them? According to a New Yorker hit piece article written by Jane Mayer, much of the money is coming from businessmen brothers, Charles and David Koch.

Of course, any article complaining about businessmen contributing to conservative causes will have a big elephant in the room in the form of George Soros who pours hundreds of millions into the far left movement. And that elephant is so large that even Mayer can't ignore it. So what to do? Why, portray Soros as saintly. So start plucking your harps as you read the hilarious money quote Mayer employs to explain away this hypocritical matter by presenting the "benevolent" Soros floating upon his heavenly cloud:

Of course, Democrats give money, too. Their most prominent donor, the financier George Soros, runs a foundation, the Open Society Institute, that has spent as much as a hundred million dollars a year in America. Soros has also made generous private contributions to various Democratic campaigns, including Obama’s. But Michael Vachon, his spokesman, argued that Soros’s giving is transparent, and that “none of his contributions are in the service of his own economic interests.”