Where there’s muck, there’s money, goes the old saying — and, in the case of the Kochs, where there’s money, there’s muck. The current generation of profiteers has its roots in the original Gilded Age, when their grandfather (local rail baron & newspaper owner) started the family fortune by misappropriating government resources and stealing from his competitors. Charles and David have remained true to their clan’s history of dishonesty — among their many violations, they were sued for stealing from Native American tribal oil fields as recently as the 1990s. (That seems to be when the brothers decided they couldn’t count on the Birchers-cum-Libertarians to protect them politically, so they started the process of taking over the entire Republican Party.) Tim Dickinson reports for Rolling Stone:
The enormity of the Koch fortune is no mystery. Brothers Charles and David are each worth more than $40 billion. The electoral influence of the Koch brothers is similarly well-chronicled. The Kochs are our homegrown oligarchs; they’ve cornered the market on Republican politics and are nakedly attempting to buy Congress and the White House. Their political network helped finance the Tea Party and powers today’s GOP. Koch-affiliated organizations raised some $400 million during the 2012 election, and aim to spend another $290 million to elect Republicans in this year’s midterms. So far in this cycle, Koch-backed entities have bought 44,000 political ads to boost Republican efforts to take back the Senate.
What is less clear is where all that money comes from. Koch Industries is headquartered in a squat, smoked-glass building that rises above the prairie on the outskirts of Wichita, Kansas. The building, like the brothers’ fiercely private firm, is literally and figuratively a black box. Koch touts only one top-line financial figure: $115 billion in annual revenue, as estimated by Forbes. By that metric, it is larger than IBM, Honda or Hewlett-Packard and is America’s second-largest private company after agribusiness colossus Cargill. The company’s stock response to inquiries from reporters: “We are privately held and don’t disclose this information.”
But Koch Industries is not entirely opaque. The company’s troubled legal history – including a trail of congressional investigations, Department of Justice consent decrees, civil lawsuits and felony convictions – augmented by internal company documents, leaked State Department cables, Freedom of Information disclosures and company whistle-blowers, combine to cast an unwelcome spotlight on the toxic empire whose profits finance the modern GOP.
Under the nearly five-decade reign of CEO Charles Koch, the company has paid out record civil and criminal environmental penalties. And in 1999, a jury handed down to Koch’s pipeline company what was then the largest wrongful-death judgment of its type in U.S. history, resulting from the explosion of a defective pipeline that incinerated a pair of Texas teenagers.
The volume of Koch Industries’ toxic output is staggering. According to the University of Massachusetts Amherst’s Political Economy Research Institute, only three companies rank among the top 30 polluters of America’s air, water and climate: ExxonMobil, American Electric Power and Koch Industries. Thanks in part to its 2005 purchase of paper-mill giant Georgia-Pacific, Koch Industries dumps more pollutants into the nation’s waterways than General Electric and International Paper combined. The company ranks 13th in the nation for toxic air pollution. Koch’s climate pollution, meanwhile, outpaces oil giants including Valero, Chevron and Shell. Across its businesses, Koch generates 24 million metric tons of greenhouse gases a year.
For Koch, this license to pollute amounts to a perverse, hidden subsidy. The cost is borne by communities in cities like Port Arthur, Texas, where a Koch-owned facility produces as much as 2 billion pounds of petrochemicals every year. In March, Koch signed a consent decree with the Department of Justice requiring it to spend more than $40 million to bring this plant into compliance with the Clean Air Act.
The toxic history of Koch Industries is not limited to physical pollution. It also extends to the company’s business practices, which have been the target of numerous federal investigations, resulting in several indictments and convictions, as well as a whole host of fines and penalties…
Read the whole thing, since there’s no new episode of Game of Thrones to distract you.
jibeaux
Okay, I know you didn’t say “open thread”, but I have a tech problem. I made the mistake of following a link to twitter while in the chrome browser on my android phone. Now I can’t open anything in chrome except twitter. Twitter fills the screen and gives me no options to leave it. And I hate twitter. And google is no help. Have tried rebooting the phone. Anyone know? Yes, I’m typing this from my desktop.
jibeaux
Had a stroke of genius. Opened my email and followed a random link to a store. Of course that took me to a browser. But why does twitter commandeer my chrome?
agorabum
They aren’t so dedicated to getting Republicans elected because they have political beliefs, they know that Republicans will help their business – by letting them pollute, poison, maim, and kill with impunity on the front end, and to radically cut their taxes on the back end.
It makes a good investment for them. It’s not about principle; it’s about prurient interest.
Also, when Republicans decided to abandon the environment, the Republican party became a viable recipient.
mai naem
@jibeaux: Can u go to settings and uninstall Twitter?
Not Adding Much to the Community
@agorabum: “Also, when Republicans decided to abandon the environment, the Republican party became a viable recipient.” The Republicans “abandoned the environment” in no small part because of efforts by Koch-funded ‘think tanks’ and lobbying. Synergy!
Tree With Water
‘None Dare Call GOP Bullshit Treason’.
Except me.
All republicans are American fascists. And that’s that.
Tehanu
Read the whole thing? Sorry, can’t, I’d have a stroke. Just reading what you excerpted has my b.p. soaring. It strikes me, though, that this post is an appropriate companion to the Betty Cracker posts of the last couple of days on cockroaches.
Time Travelin'
Quit it, Kochs.
Hal
Isn’t it amazing that the end of the world might be precipitated by the greed of two relics?
Mike in NC
Fucking Kochs have set up at least half a dozen front groups in NC to grap a Senate seat. In addition to the well known Americans for Prosperity, there is Carolina Rising, Concerned Veterans for America, and a couple of new ones they’ve just rolled out in last couple of weeks. All are dedicated to spreading their lies and bullshit 24/7.
PurpleGirl
@efgoldman: Funny but I was fan of CSI with William Peterson, stopped watching it at some point and I’m watching it again with Ted Danson. Loved William Peterson and Gary Dourdan, didn’t much care for Laurence Fishburne. I like the Ted Danson character.
The Fat Kate Middleton
I have two nephews connected to the Koch Bros in Wichita … one in the Air Force whose family (three children) live in base housing and is thrilled to live near Koch Bros. The other nephew is a grandson of the founders of Cessna (and possessor of an amazing trust fund) … and loathes the Kochs. I’m not sure which I feel most sorry for,
Matt McIrvin
The odd thing is that some of the PBS shows they find pull no punches on global warming. Possibly they’re trying to launder their own names.
The Fat Kate Middleton
@Mike in NC: I cannot properly express my sympathy for you or anyone who lives in NC. I have two sisters whose families, after careful research about ten years ago, decided to settle in your state. Politically, they are bitterly regretting their choice, but have decided to stay and work for change. Despite their bitterness, they love NC.
gene108
I read the whole thing. I didn’t like them to begin with, now I wish they could be executed. Arrogant rich like this is why revolutions happen and their heads end up on pikes as an object lesson to the rest of their class.
They are evil, evil men.
Throwing a few bucks to ballet and theatre groups in NYC does not absolve them.
It only makes things worse, because they are crapping everywhere but living the good life protected by relatively strong pollution standards in NYC.
Mike in NC
@The Fat Kate Middleton: My wife decided to retire here 7 years ago from NoVA — against my instincts about the south still being an unrestructed shitty redneck armpit — just to be near friends. I regret the move.
Ruckus
@The Fat Kate Middleton:
About 10-12 yrs ago I had to do business with one of their companies for my job. Didn’t know about them then except that just talking to the employees was one of the low lights of the job. Assholes to a person.
The reason they make so much is that they have their fingers in a lot of basic businesses. Things that most would never hear about because they sell to industry and other industries need what they produce. And they have so much money that the cost of penalties and judgements is absorbed as the cost of doing business. Actually absorbed is not the correct way to see it, passed on is much more appropriate.
They are evil personified.
gene108
@The Fat Kate Middleton:
Where they settled makes a serious difference regarding their experience in the state.
The Research Triangle area – Durham, Raleigh/Wake and Orange County – have become very different than the rest of the rural areas of the state.
I wouldn’t call any of those places, with the exception of Chapel Hill-Carrboro, to be especially liberal but they have better educated and more diverse populations.
Also, I think the UNC System is still one of the better state college systems in the country. Despite the incredible run up in tuition costs, college education in NC is still relatively affordable compared to other states.
Mr Stagger Lee
Shame that the Kochs cannot be busted for RICO,mmmmm maybe we can say that the Kochs bankrolled medical marijuana throughout the land or Ed Snowden’s pimp daddy maybe AG Holder can get them investigated before he leaves the door. Wait can we say they are ISIS’s sugar daddy?
gene108
The damage Bush & Co did to this country will be most felt by the people dealing with the effects of global warming. They set the whole cause back, basically, to the starting point.
All the work done, from the reports of the late 1980’s about globing warming, during the 1990’s was basically flushed down the toilet by Bush & Co., so they could keep their oil buddies happy.
Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)
@gene108: It’s like Reagan pulling the solar panels from the roof of the White House.
Roger Moore
@Tehanu:
Perhaps we should start calling Charles and David (and the people who do their bidding) Kochroaches.
Roger Moore
@Ruckus:
Then the fines aren’t big enough. The whole point of fines is that they’re supposed to deter the behavior they’re fining. If a company can rationally decide that it’s more profitable to engage in bad behavior and pay the fines for it than to behave properly, the fines aren’t doing their job.
mai naem
I saw the pic of the Clintons and the grandbaby and ,jayzus, Bill Cllinton all of a sudden looks really old. I hope it’s just the lighting in the pic because it will become a campaign issue.
The Fat Kate Middleton
@Mike in NC: I’m so sorry to hear this. I think it explains why one sister lives out of the country 3-6 months each year, and the other travels all over the United States with her husband. Those few times we visited them, we loved NC.
Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)
@mai naem: He isn’t young anymore.
The Fat Kate Middleton
@Ruckus: They are evil personified. That’s what my nephew says – he knows the Koch bros.
SiubhanDuinne
@mai naem: @Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name):
I just thought he (and Hillary) looked happier than I can ever remember seeing them.
Ruckus
@Roger Moore:
Exactly.
I think to the people leveling the fines they seem pretty high. But someone worth over 40 Billion, let alone what the companies have in profits/yr they probably are pocket change. It’s hard to wrap your head around how much 40 billion really is. Few people have/are worth a mil, let alone a billion. Forty billion? How could you spend that much in 100 lifetimes? It’s so ridiculous a sum that we just can’t fathom it. They spend 200 mil a year to hope to be able to rip us off for even more. That 200 mil is absolutely nothing to them and yet it is around 100 times more than the average lifetime pay.
I’ll say it again, they are evil personified.
Xenos
@Ruckus: I have bumped into a couple dozen persons in the main business and the other brothers’ business, over the last few years. Assholes is a bit strong of a word, but very stressed out, anxious, and quick to raise noisy complaints. Just the imagine the environment that creates that sort of consistent suite of personality traits in people.
Ruckus
@Roger Moore:
There was a discussion here the other day about credit/debt card hacking. I brought up the point about the PCI card safety changes that required the point of swipe machine to encrypt the data. I’d bet most small firms(as my retail store was) up dated, because our merchant banks/sales software required it. But the big boys, Target et al, just paid the fines as it was much cheaper than upgrading. And that was if they got caught. Cutting down budgets cuts down inspectors on all types of things, fewer inspectors means fewer fines, easier to fight the ones they get because the departments are either or both understaffed/overworked. Conservatives really don’t care about the size of government, they care that it is actually effective in making them belong to a society that they think they don’t like. One with clean water, clean air, safer cars, etc.
Ruckus
@Xenos:
I was dealing with the petrochemical end. I stand by my description.
Roger Moore
@Ruckus:
I don’t think that’s quite right. As far as I can tell, conservatives like having clean water, clean air, safe cars, etc; they just object to the government programs that actually bring them about. They either deny that the programs are necessary, pretending that magic market pixie dust will achieve the same thing more efficiently, or they simply want to duck out on the financial and non-financial cost of bringing those goals about and make everyone else do it instead.
ruemara
I’m blown away. I got a call from the office manager a few minutes ago. My boss killed herself.
Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)
@ruemara: The fuck? Seriously?
ruemara
@Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name): Seriously. We don’t know when, as she was alone all weekend, but, I swear I begged her to tell me this was a horrible joke.
Violet
@ruemara: What the hell? Seriously? How awful.
Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)
@ruemara: I am so sorry that you are in that situation.
suzanne
@ruemara: Oh my God. How are you holding up? That is just awful, and I’m so sorry. I don’t know if you liked your boss or not, but that is a sadness no matter what. Hugs.
SWMBO
@ruemara: Are you ok? I’m more concerned about you than her.
ruemara
I’m stunned. And angry. She’s messed with a lot of lives, left her innocent pets alone and confused and for fuck’s sake, even I would have driven over and talked to her and told her not to do this because her life mattered. The signs were there, in retrospect. I was concerned because she wasn’t doing what she loved anymore. Some of these young women around her idolized her, even when she was awful. My heart goes out to them and the parents. All I am is broker than I expected, sooner. I wish I liked her enough to cry for her, but I also had a wish that for her, she’d have some peace and joy in her achievements finally. I have no idea how I’m going to deal with a grieving staff of 20 year olds.
Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)
@ruemara: With whom are you angry?
ruemara
@Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name): Her. So many people adored her and she never appreciated her own talents.
Scamp Dog
@ruemara: Was this the boss you made a holiday dinner for last year?
Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)
@ruemara: Honestly, I have nothing to offer other than my sympathies. And you have those.
ruemara
@Scamp Dog: thankfully, no. I’d be apoplectic in mourning. She was a delight. I have to go get her dog now. How do you explain this to a dog?
Anne Laurie
@ruemara: Cant’ blame you for being angry right now, alongside being stunned. That’s a heavy burden to leave for you & her other employees.
Do you know if she has family, or business associates, who might be taking over the company?
ruemara
@Anne Laurie: Lawyer and office manager will work on it tomorrow. Even if they elect not to continue, we’ll have to deal with finishing off things to create assets to sell off for business commitments.
PurpleGirl
@ruemara: I have to no advice as to what to do now. But you have my sympathies and {{{Hugs}}}. How horrible for you and the other workers.
Gian
@Anne Laurie:
anger is normal, so is thinking “you selfish %$#@&”
Sometimes these are things that will just happen. Back in the late 80s someone I know worked at saving people who jumped off the golden gate. I am not lying, some poor soul, freaking jumped, got pulled out, got stable at the hospital, went out and jumped again. For some that’s just how things are.
and if she was told “you have an inoperable tumor and will die in 3 months” I’d be hard pressed to judge.
Just going to say in about 2 months in the 1 year anniversary of my 19 year old nephew’s suicide. He used a shotgun. the point is that he was frequently angry with his mother and chose something that would hurt her the most.
I’m hoping your story is not some horrific thing like she took a bottle of pills and texted a friend who didn’t have a signal because she wanted attention.
Mnemosyne
@ruemara:
Holy shit! On a purely selfish note, you will definitely qualify for unemployment benefits from the state, so you won’t be totally broke. How awful, though.
Mnemosyne
One of G’s best friends committed suicide about a dozen years ago, and G said that Kay Jamison Redfield’s Night Falls Fast was the book that best helped him understand what had happened.
Ruckus
@ruemara:
This is horrible.
Obviously do what you need to do but also don’t forget to take care of yourself as well. If you need help, ask.
The fellow in the bunk next to me in boot camp attempted this but was found in time. I also noticed, in retrospect, the signs as he tried to talk to me but I didn’t understand them at the time. I found out a few years later when training for working at a crisis center what the signs usually are and what to do for both them and myself. Since boot camp I’ve handled this differently but it still is difficult. Like I said if you need help please ask someone.
Ruckus
@Roger Moore:
You are talking about them wanting something for nothing, no cost, no care, no involvement on their part. In fact they seem to want to do everything to counteract anything that might make the world a little bit better. The actively fight any programs that do, even at their own expense. All the programs that have passed have been or least attempts have been made to water down or starve for operating costs and they fought them tooth and nail before they became law. This is nothing new, it’s been going on my entire life. The Clean Air/Clean Water acts, civil rights, the ACA, voting rights, OSHA, Roe/Wade, etc, etc. How can you say they want the progress but not the costs? They want neither and have proved it time and time again. If you were to say they would miss the progress if it went completely away, that I could agree with. But would they do anything to get it back? No.
TheMightyTrowel
Late to the thread but dammit! Pet Peeve!
Enormity DOES NOT mean vastness or large size
Enormity DOES MEAN wickness or viciousness, morally bad
GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR
TR
@TheMightyTrowel:
God bless you. I’ve given up correcting that mistake, I see it so commonly now.
See also “infamous.” Your restaurant’s cheesecake shouldn’t be that, and if it is, it likely killed someone.
Cermet
@ruemara: So very sorry for this terrible tragedy to happen and hope you can handle it – remember, the full effects can take days. Best wishes and do talk about it since that can help.
JGabriel
@Tehanu:
Maybe we should call them kochroaches.
C.V. Danes
@Tree With Water:
How’s the saying go? Not everyone who is Republican is stupid, but most everyone who is stupid is a Republican.
C.V. Danes
@Hal:
I truly believe that there is a special place in Hell reserved for these f’cks. I truly do.
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
@Ruckus: If they’re federal fines they’re usually proscribed by regulation and it’s really hard to change regulations because of all the procedural hoops. So what seemed like a deterrent 20 years ago now isn’t sufficient to deter bad behavior but the regulatory Agencies have to dedicate about 2 years worth of labor for 10 or so staff people to raise the fees, and fight anti-regulatory zealots in the private sector and the White House Office of Management and Budget the whole way.
They should just index fees and penalties to inflation but even that wouldn’t really do it when the incomes of the top .1% are growing much faster than inflation while the rest of us are falling behind. They’re making so much more money than they used to that even with inflation adjustment it would probably be cheaper to pay the fines.
RaflW
We will need a change in the composition of both the SCOTS and the US House to have even a chance at making a dent in the problem: campaign finance is a significant part of the rot. But those 5 Republicans think “more money” is the answer to $625 million spent by two people.
I just read the long article about the Putin kleptocracy. We’re fairly far on our way to something similar, just with better faux-democracy optics. I fear for my 7 year old niece’s future.
The Other Chuck
@TheMightyTrowel: Given these definitions, how does “enormity” not describe the Koch fortune?