Obama Campaign Calls Out Kochs

President Obama’s reelection campaign manager, Jim Messina, wrote a letter to the Koch brothers, disputing the supposedly “grassroots” status of Americans for Prosperity, a group the billionaires fund. “You argue that Americans for Prosperity is a grassroots organization of everyday citizens,” Messina wrote. “But its emphasis on rolling [b]ack environmental protections and blocking a clean energy economy appears to be nothing more than an effort to promote the corporate interests of your employers and others who lavishly, and secretly, fund its operations.” Koch’s president of government and public affairs has insisted that Americans for Prosperity promotes democracy and is grassroots. Messina implores the Kochs to reveal their group's donors if they want to prove that the group is actually grassroots. “It’s a cynical stretch to describe the political activities of your employers as furthering democracy when they are courting huge checks from special-interest donors to pay for negative ads, with no public disclosure of the identity of those donors,” he writes.