My parents had never heard of the Koch Brothers.
I find this worrisome and it makes me wonder how many others – people who vote and pay attention to the world around them and care about more than just themselves and their immediate families – have no idea who’s really calling the shots, denigrating government, further sullying our already-corrupt political process, caring only about themselves and enhancing their lots at our expense.
Charles and David Koch are secretive billionaires – each is worth more than $22 billion – who fund the supposedly-grassroots-but-in-reality-manufactured Tea Party through Americans for Prosperity, the front group that gave birth to the anti-tax, anti-government, anti-regulation “movement.” They inherited Koch Industries – a huge conglomerate headquartered in Wichita, Kansas, that got its start as an oil and petrochemical company and has expanded into a “chemical, textile, trading and refining conglomerate spanning more than 50 countries” – from their daddy, Fred, a founder of the anti-communist John Birch Society which opposed the United Nations and the civil rights movement.
Gee, I wonder why these guys despise government so much that they’ve launched an army of misguided, disenfranchised, ignorant goons and minions to muck up the machinery and distract the lazy media from reporting legitimate news stories.
These two are the puppet masters behind much of the effort to castrate and denigrate Barack Obama (read the New Yorker magazine’s profile entitled, “Covert Operations: The billionaire brothers who are waging a war against Obama”).
Since the 1980s, more than $100 million in Koch money has gone to conservative and libertarian organizations like the Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute, FreedomWorks and the aforementioned Americans for Prosperity. They donated $50,000 to Rick Perry’s gubernatorial campaign in Texas. They’re behind the rash of voter suppression laws being passed around the United States and they don’t believe climate change is a serious issue. They buy members of Congress (see “Five U.S. Senators are Perfect Koch Servants, Americans for Prosperity Reports”) and supported “Crazy Lady” Bachmann’s congressional campaigns. (Bachmann promptly founded the “Tea Party Caucus” in the U.S. House of Representatives.)
David Koch gained a little unwanted exposure last February when an editor with the Buffalo Beast, an online news site, called Wisconsin’s Republican, union-hating Governor, Scott Walker, pretending to be Koch. Walker not only took the call, thinking it was the billionaire conservative, but was recorded telling the fake Koch about his plans to bust the unions in Wisconsin and spread his methodology to other states. (Click here for more.)
It’s pretty clear that people ought to know who the Koch Brothers are, isn’t it?
By the way, I just learned that David Koch was the vice presidential candidate on the Libertarian ticket back in 1980 and had pledged to abolish Social Security, the Federal Reserve System, welfare, minimum wage laws and the Department of Energy, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Central Intelligence Agency. (See how I listed all three agencies there, Governor Perry?) I’m ashamed to admit that I voted Libertarian in 1980 – I turned 18 that year – which means I’ve made even more egregious mistakes in my life than I thought.
If you want more information on David and Charles Koch, just google ‘em. My parents don’t google but you can.
Sources: Thinkprogress.org, New Yorker, kochbrothersexposed.com, Bloomberg.com, Inspirationgreen.com, huffingtonpost.com.
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