Crossposted from PolluterWatch.
If you were the Koch brothers and you wanted to connect better with Latino and Hispanic voters, after you just dumped millions of your own cash into a presidential election that didn’t go in your favor, you’d probably be annoyed if one of your favorite front groups started undermining your voter outreach.
That’s exactly what’s happening with the Koch-funded Heritage Foundation. Heritage is having a public relations crisis after releasing a contentious report claiming that immigration reform would cost $6.3 trillion over the next 50 years, indebting taxpayers to support people who live in the U.S. illegally. The offensive kicker is that the Heritage report’s freshly-resigned co-author, Jason Richwine, previously published a dissertation claiming that Hispanic and Latino immigrants have lower IQs than White people.
Here’s a helpful meme for Mr. Richwine:
As Heritage Foundation is one of the billionaire Koch brothers’ favorite groups to implement their political agenda–receiving more than $2.7 million from Koch-controlled foundations since 2005–this is a poor start for the Kochs’ new interest in reaching Hispanic and Latino voters in the U.S.
Amid the fiasco, Heritage pulled out of Buzzfeed’s forum on immigration sponsored by the Charles Koch Institute. See infighting over Heritage’s assumptions about how so-called “illegals” contribute to the U.S. economy from the Koch-funded Reason Foundation, of which David Koch is a trustee.
Hispanic & Latino Voter Engagement is Central to the Kochs’ Refined Political Plans:
After coordinating hundreds of millions of dollars to defeat President Obama with the direct help of other billionaires like Sheldon Adelson, Foster Friess, and Philip Anschutz, the Kochs are meticulously refining their methods of controlling U.S. politics from behind the scenes. Some of those methods already involve serious marginalization of U.S. immigrants from Latin-American countries, as I’ve previously written:
Its worth noting that the Koch-fundedAmerican Legislative Exchange Council distributed Arizonas controversial racial profiling law, SB 1070, to states around the country so private prison companies can rake a profit off the incarceration of immigrants.
At the Kochs’ most recent political strategy and fundraising meeting, the Kochs prioritized outreach to Hispanic voters, according to leaked material published by Mother Jones. Kevin Gentry, a Koch Industries employee and Koch World‘s central fundraiser, explained the new priority in his invitation to “several hundred of America’s top business owners and CEOs” attending last month’s Koch meeting:
Among other topics, in April, we’ll discuss how to more effectively engage growing demographic groups, such as Hispanic and Latino voters, and how to encourage principled and effective advocates of free enterprise to run for office.
Kevin Gentry then offered mild elaboration to invitees of the Koch meeting:
Hispanic, women and youth engagement. Allies will present an approach to more effectively communicate to these growing demographics, all of which will play a critical role in advancing free enterprise.
New Heritage President Jim DeMint’s History with Koch World:
It’s unclear if anyone from the Heritage Foundation attended the recent Koch meeting, although Heritage’s new President and former U.S. Senator James DeMint has repeatedly attended the Kochs’ secretive confabs in the past. In turn, the Kochs were one of the top contributors to Jim DeMint’s political piggy bank while he ran and served in the Senate (2004-2012). Sen. DeMint’s campaign and leadership PACs received a total $76,000 from Koch Industries and the Koch family (see p. 21 of Greenpeace’s 2011 Koch report).
Either Jim DeMint and the Heritage Foundation didn’t heed the notes from the Kochs’ latest gathering, or Heritage staff didn’t realize that calling people stupid isn’t the best way to sell an ideology.
On a human level, the Kochs don’t get it. Even ignoring the offensive work of the Heritage Foundation, ALEC, and other Koch front groups, the recent focus on Latino and Hispanic voter outreach is clearly a self-serving political tactic, where broadly-defined groups of people are used as a means to an end.
Koch Industries bid for U.S. Newspapers includes major Spanish outlets:
The Koch brothers could potentially influence U.S. Latino voters through Koch Industries’ controversial bid for a pile of major U.S. newspapers owned by Tribune Company. Tribune Co’s print news in Chicago and Los Angeles isn’t limited to the Chicago Tribune and the LA Times; Tribune Co. owns Hoy, the nation’s second largest daily U.S. newspaper published in Spanish, as well as two major weekly outlets in Florida: El Sentinel de Florida Central and El Sentinel del Sur de la Florida, published in conjunction with two Tribune daily papers written in English, the Orlando Sentinel and the South Florida Sun-Sentinel.
Each Saturday, 127,000 copies of El Sentinel is distributed to its reader base, while Hoy‘s weekend edition reaches over one million homes in Los Angeles and Chicago.
Tribune Company’s widely distributed English newspapers also include the Baltimore Sun, the Hartford Courant, and the Allentown, PA’s Morning Call and Hampton Road, VA’s Daily Press.
While Koch Industries doesn’t yet own any media, a network of Koch-friendly media has shown it is capable of spreading misinformation on key topics like climate change. Due to the high possibility of warped editorial reporting if Koch buys Tribune, ten public employee unions and groups like Free Press, FAIR, Forecast the Facts, Courage Campaign, Daily Kos, and the Center for Media and Democracy have all urged the public and owners of the Tribune Company to reject an offer from Koch Industries.
