Hiroko Tabuchi in a front-page article at the NY Times website has pulled back the curtain on how Charles and David Koch are targeting public transit projects around the country. It’s a primer on how big money can use technology and messaging to get what it wants. How the Koch Brothers Are Killing Public Transit Projects Around the Country shows how they killed a transit plan in Nashville, TN, the tools they use, the partners they team up with, and their tactics.
...In cities and counties across the country — including Little Rock, Ark.; Phoenix, Ariz.; southeast Michigan; central Utah; and here in Tennessee — the Koch brothers are fueling a fight against public transit, an offshoot of their longstanding national crusade for lower taxes and smaller government.
At the heart of their effort is a network of activists who use a sophisticated data service built by the Kochs, called i360, that helps them identify and rally voters who are inclined to their worldview. It is a particularly powerful version of the technologies used by major political parties.
The Koch brothers are dedicated libertarians who believe in lower taxes and smaller government — except when the money goes to them.
...The Kochs’ opposition to transit spending stems from their longstanding free-market, libertarian philosophy. It also dovetails with their financial interests, which benefit from automobiles and highways.
One of the mainstay companies of Koch Industries, the Kochs’ conglomerate, is a major producer of gasoline and asphalt, and also makes seatbelts, tires and other automotive parts. Even as Americans for Prosperity opposes public investment in transit, it supports spending tax money on highways and roads.
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It isn’t just about making the Koch fortune grow, it’s also about what it is doing to the planet. Remember the saying, “Think globally but act locally”? The Koch’s have put a new twist on that.
The paucity of federal funding for transit projects means that local ballots are critical in shaping how Americans travel, with decades-long repercussions for the economy and the environment. Highway funding has historically been built into state and federal budgets, but transit funding usually requires a vote to raise taxes, creating what experts call a systemic bias toward cars over trains and buses. The United States transportation sector emits more earth-warming carbon dioxide than any other part of the nation’s economy.
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The article details how the local forces funded by the Kochs are armed with lists of voters to target, messages tailored to local conditions to turn them out, and framing of the issues in ways that further their agenda. It’s information warfare against soft targets, because local organizers for transit have nothing comparable. Quite simply, money can overwhelm the public interest, and the Koch brothers are doing it time after time.
Read The Whole Thing. Tabucchi has shown how the Kochs do it — the challenge now is to learn how to fight back. Our survival as a democratic republic is at stake, as is our continued existence on this planet.