Koch Brothers behind recent opinion pieces

You recently ran two editorials opposing wind power and advocating “tax reform” written by officials of the Rio Grande Foundation that describes itself as “independent and nonpartisan.” Readers should know that the Rio Grande Foundation receives significant funding from the Koch Brothers, prominent right wing Republican partisans, that it is affiliated with the Koch Brothers legislative advocacy group and has co-sponsored events with Koch Brothers affiliates.

The two editorials offer superficially significant statistics but actually reflect Koch Brothers priorities: protection of the fossil fuel industries on which their wealth is based and cutting public funding in order to cut taxes on the rich. They argue that wind power is expensive and inefficient (implying that fossil fuels are superior). But this ignores the immense externalities of burning fossil fuels: the future costs of global warming, the hundreds of billions of dollars of annual increased health costs from air pollution and the trillions we have spent on wars to maintain access to Middle Eastern oil. Likewise, the authors assert that state taxes reduce economic growth, but there is no statistically significant relationship between marginal tax rates and rate of growth. Cutting state taxes inevitably leads to disastrous cuts in public services, especially education, as the recent example of Kansas demonstrates.

RICHARD OESTRICHER Taos, New Mexico