Subject: [big campaign] Fwd: BREAKING: Koch Brothers' Americans for Prosperity Begins Six-Figure Ad Buy for GOP Recall Candidates
From: Aniello Alioto <[email-masked]>
To: [email-masked]
Date: Fri, 29 Jul 2011 10:09:19 -0400
List-Id: <bigcampaign.googlegroups.com>

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From: Scot Ross, One WI Now <[email-masked]>

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*For Immediate Release
July 29, 2011*
*Contact: Cody Oliphant
Phone: (608) 772-9202*

 Koch Brothers’ Americans for Prosperity Begins Six-Figure Ad Buy for GOP
Recall Candidates *Wisconsinites See Why ‘David Koch’ Was Told ‘Thanks a
Million!’ By Walker During Prank Call As Pro-Republican AFP Spending Tops
$500,000 in Wisconsin This Year
*

Madison -- Americans for Prosperity, the organization funded by big oil
billionaires David and Charles Koch, has just purchased over $150,000 in
television ad time for Green Bay, Madison and Milwaukee in what could be a
new wave of spending to try and save the six Republican state Senators who
are being recalled for their support of Gov. Scott Walker’s reckless attacks
on public education, health care, workers’ rights and the middle class. This
is in addition to $380,000 Americans for Prosperity previously spent this
year to support Walker’s agenda.

“The granddaddy of corporate, big oil special interest money has turned on
the money pipeline in a new six-figure bid to save Scott Walker’s Senate
majority,” said Scot Ross, One Wisconsin Now Executive Director. “The Koch
Brothers’ Americans for Prosperity has now dumped over $500,000 to pollute
Wisconsin airwaves about the failed agenda of Scott Walker and the Senate
Republicans and they may just be getting started.”

Gov. Scott Walker was roundly-criticized when just days after unveiling his
scheme to end the rights of 175,000 Wisconsin workers, he was pranked in a
recorded phone call from someone he thought was David Koch. Walker not only
admitted during the call his team considered sending agitators to cause
trouble during the protests at the Wisconsin State Capitol, but also told
“Koch” he needed the group to come and spend money in the state, saying:

…they ‘re going to need a message out reinforcing why this was a good thing
to do for the economy a good thing to do for the state so the extent that
message is out over and over again, that’s obviously, that’s obviously a
good thing.

Americans for Prosperity emerged as the most powerful of all of the groups
fueling the so-called Tea Party movement and has spent in excess of $65
million since 2008, including $40 million in 2010 when Republicans seized
power of numerous state legislatures and Gubernatorial seats, including
Wisconsin which went from having a Democratic governor and
Democratic-controlled Senate and Assembly to complete Republican control.

Governor Walker and the Republican legislature have put protections for
clean air and water in the crosshairs of their pro-corporate agenda. This is
particularly helpful for Koch Industries, which owns Georgia Pacific, a
company that has contributed nearly 10 percent of all phosphorus pollution
in the Lower Fox River basin, according to a government
report<http://onewisconsinnow.pnstate.org/site/R?i=GB1BJU253TAqjZfFwj0lHA..>released
in June 2010. Koch pipelines in Wisconsin over the past two decades
have leaked 160,000 gallons of oil and gasoline, which is particularly
problematic in a state like Wisconsin, where 70 percent of residents rely on
groundwater as their drinking source.

In the final weeks of the campaign, a new shadowy group with strong ties to
Americans for Prosperity spent approximately $1 million to re-elect
pro-Walker Supreme Court Justice David Prosser in April 2011. After the
election, the head of the state Americans for Prosperity chapter bragged
about the group’s effort in the campaign’s waning days to help Prosser win
by the slimmest margin in any recent Supreme Court race. Prosser not only
cast the deciding vote to uphold Walker’s attack on collective bargaining,
but also joined the Court’s majority in overturning a “lower court decision
allowing a public challenge to the permit giving Koch’s Georgia Pacific
plants more leeway in dumping phosphorus into waterways.” [ThinkProgress,
4/13/11; Slate, 6/17/11]

“The Koch pipeline has opened up once again for Scott Walker and his
Republican Senate,” said Ross. “But it’s the attacks by Scott Walker and his
Republican Senate lapdogs on the middle class, education, health care and
workers rights that are fueling the historic recalls and rejection of the
Walker-GOP pro-corporate agenda.”

# # #

One Wisconsin Now is a statewide communications network specializing in
effective earned media and online organizing to advance progressive
leadership and values.

Media Inquiries: (608) 204-0677 | Email: [email-masked]

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