David Koch Built a Toxic Empire -- with Human Consequences

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

David Koch, the billionaire who famously cheated death — first in an airplane crash, and later in a multi-decade battle with cancer — has finally met his maker at 79. But the toxic empire he built, gilded with society-friendly largesse, survives him.

Koch brought — or more accurately bought — New York respectability for a ruthless Wichita oil clan whose business cut corners and fouled the environment, whose fortune was amassed atop staggering EPA violations and a wrongful death judgment. With his brother and co-owner of Koch Industries, Charles, David also built a right-wing political juggernaut that helped remake the Republican party into a playground for climate deniers that, at its core, has become a subsidiary of the oil-industry.

His New York Times obituary today illustrates the undeserved respectability that an oil fortune can bring. He’s described as “a man-about-town philanthropist.” He was a “gregarious, socially prominent New Yorker who loved the ballet” and “saw his name emblazoned on … the Manhattan institutions on which some of his $1.2 billion in charitable gifts were bestowed.” The David Koch of New York Times description was “an extrovert who attended several dinner parties a week and bantered with reporters, politicians and friends in New York society.” Koch “had palatial homes” in Manhattan, Southampton, Aspen, and Palm Beach, and hung out with “Winston Churchill Jr., Prince Charles and Bill and Melinda Gates.” The paper also takes note of David’s youthful, er, prowess: “He was known as a playboy whose penthouse parties were attended by models

But Koch wasn’t just a party-boy philanthropist. He was the charismatic frontman of the Koch Brothers, who profited from a family business with egregious practices. As Rolling Stone detailed in 2014, Koch Industries has not only been a leading polluter of America’s air, water and climate, it has a criminal record and paid record-setting fines for fouling the environment. Bill Koch, another brother whom Charles and David wrestled out of the family business, once said that under his brothers’ direction: “Koch Industries has a philosophy that profits are above everything else.”

Any obituary for David Koch ought to mention a young woman named Danielle Smalley. The teenager was incinerated, with a friend, while fleeing a butane leak from a decrepit Koch Industries-operated pipeline in 1996. The pickup she tried to drive away in, it seems, sparked the leaking fuel, creating a firebomb that burned for hours. Smalley’s death led to the then-largest wrongful death judgment in U.S. history, later settled by Koch Industries on undisclosed terms.

https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/david-koch-death-toxic-empire-875766/

[PJMcK]

1. Good riddance

The Koch brothers have done more harm to our country and world than probably any other individuals.

It wasn't enough that they were incredibly rich. They had to have more! Their greed pushed them to destroy our planet and our politics.

Rot in hell, Koch. I hope you suffered as you died.

[KT2000]

3. +100 !!

Weakling politicians sold out to them and this is where we are.

[3Hotdogs]

2. One more to go.

Please Jesus.

Take him now, and I promise I won't make no more fun of you.

[Wellstone ruled]

4. Until there is or are laws

with teeth,that truly govern Campaign Funding,people like David and Charles Koch wannabe's will exploit every loop hole possible.


Many of us have bitched about the Koch Money controlling the Political Message for decades. And those checks kept coming to those with a Ego that can be stroked.

[Demovictory9]

5. k&r

[question everything]

6. And from Mark Shields, PBS NewsHour

I met David Koch in 1980. He was a vice presidential nominee on the Libertarian ticket, a party that was dedicated to the abolition of the federal income tax, abolition of child labor laws, and the repeal of Medicare.

He is proof of the golden rule in American politics. He who has the gold rules. They put in hundreds of millions of dollars. They put in dark money. It was — it against any disclosure.

Money that was not revealed.

And, Judy, whether you're talking about opposition to clean air laws or clean water laws, under libertarian philosophy, yes, but there's no question about it, the air is less clean and the water is less clean.

And I just — I just think that with the dark money, you talk about climate change. You saw Brazil today. The two are bookends, that and the Koch brothers and what they have done politically.

From https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/mark-shields-and-ramesh-ponnuru-on-trumps-trade-war-and-bidens-lead

[manhattan123]

7. To paraphrase Bette Davis:

“Mother always said to speak good of the dead. David Koch is dead. Good.”

[ancianita]

8. From Charles P. Pierce's Twitter -- "...just drop the corpse into the Amazon rainforest fires."

"If they’re going to cremate David Koch, they should save themselves all the fuss and bother and just drop the corpse into the Amazon rainforest fires."

[moondust]

9. Built with Nazi money?

...the Koch family patriarch Fred Koch built an oil refinery for the Third Reich that was used to fuel Nazi warplanes.

http://timeline.com/the-koch-family-s-nazi-ties-are-more-entrenched-than-you-think-37c645012da0