Nice timing, given the post this morning about the $100 million effort by the Koch brothers to take over 35 state legislatures, including Arkansas’s, for a Republican agenda light on regulation of their polluting industries and heavy on tax breaks for wealthy people like the billionaires from Kansas.
Images above and below are from a four-page newsprint publication that’s reportedly been circulating since mid-summer in Northwest Arkansas. I received a copy today in the mail, from an anonymous sender.
It was in Northwest Arkansas that the Koch bros. Americans for Prosperity tentacle in Arkansas got serious politically in defeating Republican candidates they deemed too moderate.
The publication doesn’t identify the source or amount spent, in keeping with the Kochs’ own practice. It is less politically direct than Koch organization mailings, which specifically hammer disfavored candidates. Here, in addition to lots of background on the Kochs’ wealth and poisonous political agenda, is a general admonition, “Don’t Buy the Lie.” The little paper urges this caution to anyone in receipt of anything from Americans for Prosperity, FreedomWorks, Club for Growth and American Crossroads, to name just some of the shadowy outfits spending huge sums to purchase the Arkansas legislature and many others. Good advice.
The flyer identifies Republican candidates Bruce Holland, Jon Woods and Bart Hester as among those “Sold!” in the Koch-financed campaign. Holland and Hester there’s no doubt about. Though Woods is just their kind of candidate — and opponent Bill Pritchard was successfully pounded by Woods as a tax-and-spender against all evidence — his camp asserts his independence from the Koch-heads. If so, it’s a distinction with little political difference.