With his brother Charles, who is seventy-four, David Koch owns virtually all of Koch Industries, a conglomerate, headquartered in Wichita, Kansas, whose annual revenues are estimated to be a hundred billion dollars. The company has grown spectacularly since their father, Fred, died, in 1967, and the brothers took charge. The Kochs operate oil refineries in Alaska, Texas, and Minnesota, and control some four thousand miles of pipeline. Koch Industries owns Brawny paper towels, Dixie cups, Georgia-Pacific lumber, Stainmaster carpet, and Lycra, among other products. Forbes ranks it as the second-largest private company in the country, after Cargill, and its consistent profitability has made David and Charles Kochâwho, years ago, bought out two other brothersâamong the richest men in America. Their combined fortune of thirty-five billion dollars is exceeded only by those of Bill Gates and Warren Buffett. The Kochs are longtime libertarians who believe in drastically lower personal and corporate taxes, minimal social services for the needy, and much less oversight of industryâespecially environmental regulation. These views dovetail with the brothersâ corporate interests. In a study released this spring, the University of Massachusetts at Amherstâs Political Economy Research Institute named Koch Industries one of the top ten air polluters in the United States. And Greenpeace issued a report identifying the company as a âkingpin of climate science denial.â The report showed that, from 2005 to 2008, the Kochs vastly outdid ExxonMobil in giving money to organizations fighting legislation related to climate change, underwriting a huge network of foundations, think tanks, and political front groups. Indeed, the brothers have funded opposition campaigns against so many Obama Administration policiesâfrom health-care reform to the economic-stimulus programâthat, in political circles, their ideological network is known as the Kochtopus. In a statement, Koch Industries said that the Greenpeace report âdistorts the environmental record of our companies.â And David Koch, in a recent, admiring article about him in New York, protested that the âradical pressâ had turned his family into âwhipping boys,â and had exaggerated its influence on American politics. But Charles Lewis, the founder of the Center for Public Integrity, a nonpartisan watchdog group, said, âThe Kochs are on a whole different level. Thereâs no one else who has spent this much money. The sheer dimension of it is what sets them apart. They have a pattern of lawbreaking, political manipulation, and obfuscation. Iâve been in Washington since Watergate, and Iâve never seen anything like it. They are the Standard Oil of our times.â In April, 2009, Melissa Cohlmia, a company spokesperson, denied that the Kochs had direct links to the Tea Party, saying that Americans for Prosperity is âan independent organization and Koch companies do not in any way direct their activities.â Later, she issued a statement: âNo funding has been provided by Koch companies, the Koch foundations, or Charles Koch or David Koch specifically to support the tea parties.â David Koch told New York, âIâve never been to a tea-party event. No one representing the tea party has ever even approached me.â Oddly enough, the fiercely capitalist Koch family owes part of its fortune to Joseph Stalin. Fred Koch was the son of a Dutch printer who settled in Texas and ran a weekly newspaper. Fred attended M.I.T., where he earned a degree in chemical engineering. In 1927, he invented a more efficient process for converting oil into gasoline, but, according to family lore, Americaâs major oil companies regarded him as a threat and shut him out of the industry. Unable to succeed at home, Koch found work in the Soviet Union. In the nineteen-thirties, his company trained Bolshevik engineers and helped Stalinâs regime set up fifteen modern oil refineries. Over time, however, Stalin brutally purged several of Kochâs Soviet colleagues. Koch was deeply affected by the experience, and regretted his collaboration. He returned to the U.S. In the headquarters of his company, Rock Island Oil & Refining, in Wichita, he kept photographs aimed at proving that some of those Soviet refineries had been destroyed in the Second World War. Gus diZerega, a former friend of Charles Koch, recalled, âAs the Soviets became a stronger military power, Fred felt a certain amount of guilt at having helped build them up. I think it bothered him a lot. More http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/08/30/100830fa_fact_mayer
Hermit-nickname; Sounds like they & the tea party are doing well- ''funding opposition '' to so called climate change. ...
Definitely the Koch brothers are more believable than Scientists from 113 countries, what do Scientists know anyway.