| OCR Text |
Show 10 & Bottari, 2015, para. 2). One of the Koch's most successful political groups has been Americans for Prosperity, which was founded as the successor to their previous political pet project, Americans for a Sound Economy, after it split in 2004. Americans for Prosperity, and its sister group, the Americans for Prosperity Foundation, was created to advocate fiscal responsibility, limits on collective bargaining and public sector trade unions, and freemarket values. With 2.3 million volunteer activists (Beckel, 2013), the organization has been one of the most successful advocacy groups in American history (Kroll, 2012). Thriving on philanthropic donations from Koch Industries, AFP has mobilized millions to advocate on the organizations' behalf after nearly single-handedly creating the Tea Party Movement, but also ardently opposing the re-election of President Barack Obama, capand-trade propositions, and the Affordable Care Act (Beckel, 2013). Koch Industries uses its networks horizontally, and it is difficult to track the political network, especially since Koch supports hundreds of organizations. Consider the financial networks between Koch and AFP. In 2010 AFP and the AFP Foundation raised $39.6 million, but as Laurie Bennett (2012) of Forbes discovered, it is unclear exactly how much the Kochs contribute to this political group, and others, since Koch is legally not required to reveal its donations. Tax returns and other public documents offer a glimpse of the expenditures, but even still, the only thing that is clear is that the political network is perplexingly entangled. Based on research from 2008 and 2010, the David and Charles Koch foundations directly gave AFP a total of $1.68 million, but a fuller picture must also consider that the AFP is indirectly funded by other "Koch entities" such as The Knowledge and Progress Fund. |
