Koch-heads and Koch-Suckers...

(6:11:05 PM)
First, let's be straight about their names. It's spelled K-O-C-H, but it's pronounced 'COKE', like the drink from Atlanta or the drug from Bolivia. It's the first subterfuge in the lives of Charles and David Koch, cause if you hear the name, you don't know how it's spelled, and vice-versa.

I won't go over Jane Mayer's article in the 8/30/10 New Yorker. If you've read it and not been appalled at the Koch brothers and their operations, you're not an American. Why you should care: They own the second largest privately-held corporation in America, and they own the Tea Party operations nationwide. If they weren't funding the Tea party, it wouldn't exist.

But in reviewing the article, a couple of things struck me. One was how much money they have, and how they lie to themselves about it. David Koch jokes that he learned business through buying low, selling high, year after year, until  (punchline:) "Father died and left me three hundred million dollars!" And that was 1967 dollars, when the average annual income was around $7,300, a house ran about $14K and a new car was $2,375. So this wasn't like a measly $300M is today.

 Fred Koch, fresh from MIT, invented a newer way to refine oil to gasoline. But when Big Oil of the time (1930s) shut him out, he went to Soviet Russia and helped them set up refineries based on his technology. It's where he made his early money, until Stalin started confiscating everything and purging his associates. He came back to the states, started an oil company of his own, and in the late 50's, was a founder of the John Birch Society. Apparently, he was unable to tell the difference between a democratic republic and a totalitarian dictatorship. Something else Fred left his sons.

So neither David nor his brother Charles are what you would be called self-made men. Not like their father, who actually invented something after his graduation from MIT. But they like to appear philanthropic. On the first page of Mayer's article, she lists The following donations by David H. Koch:
$  2.5M   - American Ballet Theatre
 100.0M  - Lincoln Center refurb
    20.0M - Am Museum of Natural History
    10.0M - MOMA
    40.0M - Sloan Kettering Cancer Ctr

That's roughly $175 Million. Since 2008. From a guy who, along with his brother, is worth $35 BILLION. And, along with his brother, owns, OWNS, a conglomerate with $100BILLION in annual revenues. This isn't a philanthropist. His total donation, over several years, is one-half of one per cent of their net worth. It's not even a major part of the interest he's earning on his principal.
And what's his brother, Charles, doing with his money. According to interviews, his goal is to tear government "out at the root."

So these are small men, recipients of the luck of which uterus they turned up in.
They keep anyone from looking hard at them, by paying the high and mighty of society to look the other way.

And they have become what their father despised. Corporate squatters who run off anyone who threatens their lazy corporate fortunes.

This was the other thing I realized, reading the article. Remember, dear old dad, Fred Koch, ran off to help the Communists when Big Oil wouldn't let him play, wouldn't try something new. Now that the Koch brothers ARE Big Oil, they will do anything and everything to prevent new technologies from gaining a foothold, or from American citizens from dmanding that they actually pay for what they list as 'externalities' on their books: massive oil spills (convicted), benzene dumps (convicted), deaths from exploding refineries (settled out of court), and massive numbers of cancers from from formaldehyde, of which they produce 2.2 Billion gallons a year.

This last the EPA is trying to finally issue a carcinogen notice on. Which is one of the big reasons why the Koch Bros ginned up Americans For Prosperity, which ginned up the Tea Party, which 'terrorized' Congressmen all last summer, to swing back the few Republicans who'd seen Obama's huge numbers at election time and after, and had become willing to work with him. Anything to stop Democrats from actually holding Big Oil, including the Koch Brothers, accountable. Anything to prevent competition. Anything to be able to destroy the existing government and run it themselves.

Almost as if Stalin had been twins...
(06:54:40 PM)(07:19:07 PM)