The American Energy Alliance that is launching a $3.6 million
ad campaign blasting President Obama over rising gasoline prices has—surprise!—strong ties to oil-and-chemical billionaires, Charles and David Koch. The ads come after a $6 million campaign by the Koch-funded Americans for Prosperity attacked the Obama administration for loan guarantees to the now-bankrupt Solyndra solar power company. The Koch brothers have, in fact,
been running a war on Obama.
Before the run-up to 2010 midterm elections, the brothers had stuck pretty much to contributing money to projects at the state level supporting their radical libertarianism as well as disinformation campaigns denying climate change. But then they chose to back the tea party and tea party-aligned candidates for Congress in a big way through their AFP. It's said that they plan to spend $200 million on political ads and related activity this year. But such calculations are guesswork.
The American Energy Alliance is the political arm of Institute for Energy Research. IER is notorious for its climate change denialism. Kenneth P. Vogel writes:
The groups are run by Tom Pyle, a former lobbyist for Koch Industries. Pyle regularly attends the mega-donor summits organized by the Koch brothers, including the 2012 winter summit in Indian Wells, Calif., where the Kochs raised more than $150 million to be directed to groups ahead of the general election.
The American Energy Alliance’s ad campaign, which launches Friday in eight states, hammers Obama for his decision on the Keystone XL pipeline and recycles a 2008 quote from Energy Secretary Steven Chu about the benefits of European-level gas prices.
According to the web site
Sourcewatch, Pyle worked for the ethically challenged Rep. Tom Delay (R-TX) when he was House Whip. He also lobbied for the National Petrochemical and Refiners Association and Koch Industries. Another board member is William Gable, also a former lobbyist for Koch Industries. While the AEA does not reveal its contributors, past funding for IER has come from Exxon Mobil, Brown & Root, the Searle Freedom Trust, and the Claude R. Lambe Charitable Foundation, which is also run by executives of Koch Industries. What a tangled web we weave when spending millions to deceive.
Democratic National Committee spokesman Brad Woodhouse on Thursday accused the brothers of “funding yet another shadowy outside group to defend the interests of Big Oil and protect their own tax breaks and profits with Mitt Romney being the ultimate beneficiary.”
Among the other distortions in the anti-Obama ad is the implication that building the Keystone XL pipeline will reduce gasoline prices. In fact, if it is built, prices are likely to rise by as much as 20 cents a gallon in the Midwest since the oil now transported from Canada's tar sands deposits to refineries in the region where there is an oil surplus will be shipped to refineries a thousand miles away. Much of the oil will likely be shipped abroad to other markets, including China, whose growing economy has a voracious energy appetite.
The claim that Obama has blocked Keystone XL is only half-true since he has supported construction of the southern leg of the pipeline and given strong hints that he will approve the northern leg that he rejected in January when the builder, TransCanada, comes up with an alternative route. A TransCanada executive said two weeks ago that the application would probably be submitted sometime in early April.
So two falsehoods right out the door. But then the Koch brothers aren't peeling a few bucks off their $25 billion stash to spread the truth.