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Archive 5Archive 6Archive 7Archive 8

Content Up for Debate - Requesting Feedback

With user HughD's topic ban coming in today I wanted to open up a discussion pertaining to the material recently added by the editor. I would like to address the content here and see what everyone thinks should, and should not be kept on the page per WP policies and guidelines. If an RfC is needed to determine whether or not this material should be kept or removed, I would be happy to put one together as well:

  1. AFP has been funded by the Kochs and others.[1][2][3][4][5].
  2. In 2011, the AFP Foundation received $3 million from the foundation of the family of billionaire Richard DeVos, the founder of Amway, making the DeVos family the second largest identifiable donor to the AFP Foundation.[6][7]
  3. According to NBC News, The New York Times and others, some of AFP's policy positions align with the business interests of the Koch brothers and Koch Industries, including its support for rescinding energy regulations and environmental restrictions, expanding domestic energy production, lowering taxes, and reducing government spending, especially Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid[8][9][10][11][12][13][14]
  4. According to Bloomberg News, with AFP the Koch brothers "harnessed the Tea Party's energy in service of their own policy goals, including deregulation and lower taxes....As the Tea Party movement grew in the aftermath of Obama’s election, the Kochs positioned Americans for Prosperity as the Tea Party's staunchest ally"[15]

Let me know what you guys think. Comatmebro User talk:Comatmebro 21:39, 28 August 2015 (UTC)

references

References

  1. ^ "Americans for Prosperity". FactCheck.org. October 10, 2011. Retrieved April 22, 2015.
  2. ^ Cohen, Rick (September 15, 2010). "The Starfish and the Tea Party, Part II". Nonprofit Quarterly. Institute for Nonprofit News. Retrieved June 18, 2015. The Koch family does show up as a major funder of another of the national Tea Party infrastructure, Americans for Prosperity.
  3. ^ Roarty, Alex (June 12, 2014). "Americans for Prosperity Is Just Getting Started". National Journal. Retrieved May 1, 2015.
  4. ^ Ballhaus, Rebecca (September 25, 2014). "Mystery Money: Your Guide to Campaign Finance in 2014". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved June 7, 2015.
  5. ^ Pilkington, Ed (October 13, 2010). "Americans For Prosperity sponsors Tea Party workshop". The Guardian. London. Retrieved March 24, 2015.
  6. ^ Clifton, Eli (November 3, 2014). "Who Else Is in the Koch Brothers Billionaire Donor Club?". The Nation. Retrieved April 25, 2015.
  7. ^ Hansen-Bundy, Benjy; Kroll, Andy (January 2014). "The Family That Gives Together". Mother Jones. Retrieved August 27, 2015.
  8. ^ Caldwell, Leigh Ann (January 15, 2015). "Koch-backed Group Vows To Hold GOP's Feet To The Fire". NBC News. Retrieved August 24, 2015. Americans for Prosperity, which spent more than $100 million in the 2014 election in efforts to help elect Republicans, is vowing to hold Republicans accountable now that they have control of both bodies of Congress. The group, financed largely by conservative entrepreneurs Charles and David Koch, promised Thursday at the National Press Club to expand its reach and influence in 2015 by pushing its core legislative policies of repealing the Affordable Care Act, rolling back energy regulations, expanding domestic energy production, reducing taxes and reining in government spending, especially Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid - all efforts that would financially benefit the Koch brothers' sprawling business entities.
  9. ^ Hulse, Carl; Parker, Ashley (March 20, 2014). "Koch Group, Spending Freely, Hones Attack on Government". The New York Times. Retrieved April 30, 2015. The Kochs, with billions in holdings in energy, transportation and manufacturing, have a significant interest in seeing that future government regulation is limited.
  10. ^ Fish, Sandra (August 12, 2014). "Americans for Prosperity: Koch brothers' advocacy gets local in Colorado". Al Jazeera. Retrieved May 11, 2015. AFP — and the Kochs — are strong supporters of oil and gas development and strong opponents of regulation, especially environmental restrictions.
  11. ^ Fang, Lee (January 25, 2015). "Americans for Prosperity's legislative agenda is just Koch Industries' corporate wish list". Salon. Republic Report. Retrieved August 24, 2015. Americans for Prosperity, the grassroots organizing group founded by billionaire industrialists Charles and David Koch, spent $125 million in the midterm elections last year. Now, they're calling in their chips. At the National Press Club yesterday, AFP president Tim Phillips and several officers with the group laid out their agenda. The group is calling for legalizing crude oil exports, a repeal of the estate tax, approval of the Keystone XL pipeline, blocking any hike in the gas tax, a tax holiday on corporate profits earned overseas, blocking the EPA's new rules on carbon emissions from coal-burning power plants, and a repeal of the Affordable Care Act, along with a specific focus on the medical device tax. The announcement was touted by NPR as a "conservative agenda for Congress." But it's also a near mirror image of Koch Industries' lobbying agenda. Koch Industries — the petrochemical, manufacturing and commodity speculating conglomerate owned by David and Charles — is not only a financier of political campaigns, but leads one of the most active lobbying teams in Washington, a big part of why the company has been such a financial success.
  12. ^ Meyer, David S.; Pullum, Amanda (2014). "The Tea Party and the Dilemmas of Conservative Populism". Understanding the Tea Party Movement. Ashgate Publishing. p. 86. in Nella Van Dyke and David S Meyer, eds., * Describes AFP as one of several groups “established before Obama’s election and funded by very wealthy sponsors who sought both to promote an ideological vision and to protect a financial interest. As Jane Mayer’s profile of the billionaire Koch brothers (2010) notes, the promotion of a conservative ideology with hundred of millions of dollars serves business concerns worth many times that. Moreover, she notes, the Koch brothers had accepted the input of big government initiatives when they were helpful to the business.”
  13. ^ Skocpol, Theda; Williamson, Vanessa (January 2, 2012). The Tea Party and the Remaking of Republican Conservatism. USA: Oxford University Press. p. 105. ISBN 978-0-19-983263-7. Retrieved August 22, 2015. Using the Tea Party as backdrop, Americans for Prosperity is trying to reshape public discussions and attract widespread conservative support for ultra-free-market ideas about slashing taxes and business regulation and radically restructuring social expenditure programs.
  14. ^ Van Dyke, Nella; Meyer, David S (March 1, 2014). Understanding the Tea Party Movement. Ashgate Publishing. p. 177. ISBN 978-1-4094-6522-5. Retrieved August 24, 2015. When faced with the charge that the Tea Party movement really represents only the interests of its generous benefactors, the Koch brothers, Tea Partiers like to cite George Soros, the billionaire currency speculator who has bankrolled political efforts for civil liberties generally. The easy equivalence is deceptive; it's hard to see how decriminalizing drugs, for example, serves Soros's business interests in the way relaxing environmental regulations supports the Kochs' businesses; the scope and scale of the Tea Party's dependence on large capital may indeed be unique.
  15. ^ Bykowicz, Julie (February 17, 2015). "Scott Walker Is King of Kochworld". Bloomberg News. Retrieved April 20, 2015.
My thoughts:
  • Item #1 is a simple statement of fact that is backup up by the vast majority of reliable sources on the subject. We could probably swap in some higher-quality refs to support the statement, but it is exceedingly well documented in RS.
  • Item #2, footnote #7 is not a great source (it's just an infographic), and it's not clear to me why we're singling out DeVos (the other article discusses multiple AFP donors). It's a good source of information for identifying who some of the main donors to AFP are, but we could probably phrase that sentence differently.
  • Item #3 is, again, a clearly accurate statement that is backed up by a very large number of high-quality reliable sources. So much so that I don't see the need to attribute it to NBC, the York Times, etc. This statement is accurate and well-documented enough to be stated as fact in wikipedia's voice. Certainly, it should not be removed.
  • Item #4 is basically just an attributed quote that backs up Item # 3. Again, this is one of salient facts about AFP that reliable sources place front and center. We can talk about whether we need the Bloomberg quote (I can probably replace it with one from an academic source or three that say exactly the same thing), but basically there's nothing wrong with that content - it's entirely accurate and one of the most salient facts about AFP that this article should highlight.
Sourcing on all of this can be supplemented as needed - there are lots of high-quality sources on AFP out there that can be used to back these statements up further. Fyddlestix (talk) 22:50, 28 August 2015 (UTC)
Seems more-or-less reasonable. In regard point 3, I thought there was a source for the assertion that some of AFP's policy positions oppose the business interests of Koch Industries. If so, it should be added, especially if (as I tend to agree) the claim is made in Wikipedia's voice. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 23:57, 28 August 2015 (UTC)
I have a few concerns with some of these items. On item #1, sure it is accurate and reliably sourced. But didn't someone way back in this talk page find out that the Koch's aren't the top funders of AFP? So saying that any funding from the Kochs is notable entirely because they are Kochs hints at COATRACKING. No one seems to want to enact this policy with any of the other "billionaire philanthropists" who pour money into politics (of which the Kochs are nowhere close to the largest contributors).
On item #3, why say AFP policy aligns with Koch views? Why not phrase it like "AFP supports conservative/libertarian views"? But if you do agree to keep this, why is it in the Background section at the top of the page and not a criticisms section? This page has plenty of COATRACKING issues; that is, it hints at something akin to "the Kochs are buying American politics". Even if this were true there are scores of other philanthropists doing the same thing on a much larger scale and to say that the Kochs are bad guys and not anyone else is POV, UNDUE, COATRACKING.
On item #3, lower taxes are not a Koch goal, they are a conservative and/or libertarian goal. Next, the Koch's didn't move AFP like a chess piece into a realm of support for the Tea Party. AFP itself did that. This item seems to have some of the same issues as the one I have listed above. DaltonCastle (talk) 20:30, 30 August 2015 (UTC)
The intended implication of #3 (if the sources didn't actually say that; I haven't checked) is that AFP reflects the financial goals of the Kochs and Koch Industries. There are sources stating that some of the goals of AFP are contrary to those goals, but their reliability and independence have been questioned. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 04:32, 31 August 2015 (UTC)
Then how is that in the Background section? If its kept on the page, shouldnt it be way down in a criticism section? Claiming that allegations AFP aligns with financial goals is notable for the background just does not add up. It was not founded to help the Kochs financially. DaltonCastle (talk) 04:49, 31 August 2015 (UTC)

OVERCITE in the article

I don't want to wade into the controversies associated with actually editing this article but I would suggest dealing with WP:OVERCITE would be one area for article improvement. There are many examples of 4, 5 or even 6 citations being used for one fact/sentence. I'm not sure if the other references were added as an attempt to prove DUE or just because someone liked the spin a particular source added. Either way, it seems many of the overcite examples aren't overly controversial claims or are claims made by reliable sources. Perhaps some of the active editors could parse down the extras? Springee (talk) 13:28, 24 May 2016 (UTC)

I personally don't value that essay much at all. It is definitely not something we should be considering for this article when people are complaining about WP:UNDUE on this very page. Multiple citations make it clear that the material is indeed WP:DUEWEIGHT and affords readers multiple sources for verification and further research.- MrX 13:34, 24 May 2016 (UTC)
The large number of citations are there because some editors have dragged their heels on including certain content, despite the fact that it is extremely well documented by RS. If folks agree to stop trying to whitewash the article then the citations can be trimmed, but given the article`s history of conflict that seems unlikely. If the number of notes really bothers you that much the citations can always be bundled. Fyddlestix (talk) 13:43, 24 May 2016 (UTC)
You say whitewash but it may be equally seen as black washing depending on the tone, nature and/or political leanings of the added source. I understand the claim regarding some controversial points but consider this claim with four citations, "President Obama, speaking at a Democratic National Committee fundraising dinner in August 2010, criticized AFP for its political spending and non-disclosure of donors." What is controversial about that claim? What about this one, "AFP has been funded by the Kochs and others."? It has 5 citations, why? This run-on sentence has 6 which should tell anyone that perhaps the sentence needs to be broken up and rephrased.
According to NBC News, The New York Times and others, some of AFP's policy positions align with the business interests of the Koch brothers and Koch Industries, including its support for rescinding energy regulations and environmental restrictions, expanding domestic energy production, lowering taxes, and reducing government spending, especially Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.[19][20][21][22][23][24]
I do understand the concerns about people claiming UNDUE but that shouldn't be an excuse for otherwise sloppy work. I would hope that people here can address this without feeling like they are opening the door for spin (black or white). Springee (talk) 14:16, 24 May 2016 (UTC)
I disagree that it's sloppy to have multiple citations, but I am open to hearing why you think it is.- MrX 14:37, 24 May 2016 (UTC)
In general I think the OVERCITE article does a good job of explaining why. If a fact needs that number of citations (more than 3) then perhaps the sentence should be changed. A talk page discussion can settle UNDUE concerns while the article can use just the strongest citations. In at least two of the specific examples above I don't see anything that is overly controversial regarding the statements that would warrant so many citations. Anyway, I don't see any issue with the OVERCITE article and I think it applies aptly in this case. This isn't an argument for changing the text (except for perhaps expanding it if the citations are really needed) but instead to get rid of the many examples of more than 3 citations per statement/claim. Springee (talk) 16:06, 24 May 2016 (UTC)
Trimming sources in the middle of a WP:DUEWEIGHT on a politicized topic is a fool's errand and as sure as the sun rising in the East immediately after we trim sources some silly person will cry "Undue, undue, you only used CNN (or Foxnews or MSNBC) as a source" and start deleting stuff. Finish the weight discussion and after it is over, trim the sources. (By the way, I completely agree sources need to be trimmed, just not yet) Lipsquid (talk) 04:40, 25 May 2016 (UTC)

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