7 Disturbing Facts About the Koch Brothers' Relationship with Race and Civil Rights

[xchrom]

http://www.alternet.org/7-disturbing-facts-about-koch-brothers-relationship-race-and-civil-rights




1. Kochs' union-busting efforts hurt African American mobility.

Though unions have been known to increase the economic mobility of African-American workers, Koch-funded organizations have been very active in destroying anything that's left of them. Koch-backed organizations like Americans for Prosperity, the Cato Institute, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, and the Reason Foundation have long viewed public sector unions with disdain. In 2011, collective bargaining was ended in Wisconsin after the state legislature passed Act 10.

***SNIP

2. Koch brothers' secret billionaire summit hosts known racist.

According to the Nation, the Koch brothers hosted a secret summit on June 16 at the St. Regis Monarch Bay resort, in Dana Point, Calif. Besides a number of notable Republican politicians in attendance, one of the most controversial men giving "dinner remarks" was Charles Murray, a co-author of The Bell Curve, a book which argued that blacks and Latinos have lower IQs than Asians and whites.

***SNIP

3. Koch-backed organization blasts AARP over its opposition to Minnesota voter ID amendment.

The Koch brothers fund the 60 Plus Association, a non-profit senior citizen advocacy group, according to the Center for Public Integrity. In 2012, the 60 Plus Association blasted AARP for speaking out against voter ID laws, which require voters to present a photo ID at the polls. 60 Plus Association's chairman and founder Jim Martin applauded Minnesota seniors who cut "up their AARP membership cards in protest of the organization’s opposition to the Minnesota Voter ID amendment."

4. The Kochs fund climate-change denial research that hurts poor communities.

A Drexel University Study reveals that the Koch brothers were active in funding climate change denial efforts, especially in 2007 and 2008. Since then, the brothers have not made public their contributions, if any. Frontline reports that according to a UN report published in 2013, poor communities (of which minority populations are heavily represented) will be hurt the most as a result of climate change:

It starts with a drop in food production. Climate change has already reduced wheat and maize yields in tropical and temperate regions, along with some rice and soybean crops, according to the UN. “All aspects of food security are potentially affected by climate change, including food access, utilization, and price stability,” the report noted. That’s expected to worsen as climate change continues, it said.

[merrily]

1. Union busting and climate change are race issues, not economic and environmental?

The Kochs want to suppress votes of minorities, regardless of whether those minorities are Republican or Democratic? Suppressing Democratic votes, regardless of the race of the voter, is not their objective?

I don't know if the Kochs are racist or not. They are awful people generally, IMO, so I would not put racism past them.

However, I don't know the point of trying to make every issue a race issue. The more they divide us, the worse off we are. And the more they try to divide us along color lines, the worse off everyone is.

[JustAnotherGen]

3. I would say having the Bell Curve guy there

Makes them pretty prejudiced against those not 'like them'.

Ahhhhhhhhhhh - but they also just gave a boatload of money to the NAACP. And I'm telling you- it's a rope a dope.

They are sneaky and insidious.

See the below post - John Birch was an inherently racist organization.

I agree on the labor issues - those are economic.

But are they bigots. Oh yeah - that is a hill I would die on.


They've shown me who they are - I believe them.

[merrily]

5. As I said, I sure don't put racism past them. They are horrible people all around.

But, that was not my point. We are stronger together than we are divided by race, whether you define "we" as Democrats, Americans or the 99%.

If something is a race issue, I am all for confronting it as a race issue. But, let's not say global warming is a race issue. Yes, it impacts the poor more. Yes, so does union busting. What doesn't impact the poor more than anyone else? Almost every bad thing impacts the poor more than the rich. But, global warming could kill ALL our descendants. I think that is a more realistic-- and a more effective-- argument to make against global warming than that it is a race issue.

I don't see how it helps minorities to say global warming is a racism issue and I don't see how it helps the cause of fighting global warming to say that it is a race issue. So, who or what does it help? Seems to me, it helps only those who want us divided.

Divided, we are less effective. Divided, we turn on each other more than on "them." None of that does much good for any of us. Helps them out, though.

[JustAnotherGen]

6. I agree on all of that

I just believe they hate us black folks - the Koch brothers that is.

They do.


And minority outreach requires us to share those guys names - and show what they are to all of the 'others'. What they do. How insidious they are.


Don't disagree with you on the greater issues of the article -

Just whole heartedly believe if they could round up every black American and shoot us tomorrow - the Kochs would.

I truly believe them to be capable of the quality of evil.

[merrily]

7. I don't doubt it for a minute.

I think they might be happy to shoot poor people, too. And communists, etc.

[JustAnotherGen]

8. I agree

But who is the easiest to pick out? It will be browns first.

We are the easy target. And there's another thread in GD - about Poor White people.
White Poverty Exists, Ignored
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10025630845
Links back to Leonard Pitts Jr.

I've no doubt that many of those poor white folks who have been so brain washed by this bullshit far right racist crap -

Would volunteer to do the shooting.

Not realizing they are right behind the blacks, hispanics, asians (easy pickings), GLBT community, disable, etc. etc.

[merrily]

10. Another reason we don't need to let them divide us any more.

"I've no doubt that many of those poor white folks who have been so brain washed by this bullshit far right racist crap -

Would volunteer to do the shooting."

[Archae]

2. Don't forget...

The Kochs saw nothing wrong with cheating Native Americans out of the money owed them from their oil.

Also, their Dad was one of the founders of the John Birch Society, that group during the 50's and 60's called civil rights advocacy a "communist plot."

[Octafish]

4. John Birch meets Fourth Reich

Eugenics and the Nazis -- the California connection

by Edwin Black
Sunday, November 9, 2003

Hitler and his henchmen victimized an entire continent and exterminated millions in his quest for a so-called Master Race.

But the concept of a white, blond-haired, blue-eyed master Nordic race didn't originate with Hitler. The idea was created in the United States, and cultivated in California, decades before Hitler came to power. California eugenicists played an important, although little-known, role in the American eugenics movement's campaign for ethnic cleansing.

Eugenics was the pseudoscience aimed at "improving" the human race. In its extreme, racist form, this meant wiping away all human beings deemed "unfit," preserving only those who conformed to a Nordic stereotype. Elements of the philosophy were enshrined as national policy by forced sterilization and segregation laws, as well as marriage restrictions, enacted in 27 states. In 1909, California became the third state to adopt such laws. Ultimately, eugenics practitioners coercively sterilized some 60,000 Americans, barred the marriage of thousands, forcibly segregated thousands in "colonies," and persecuted untold numbers in ways we are just learning. Before World War II, nearly half of coercive sterilizations were done in California, and even after the war, the state accounted for a third of all such surgeries.

California was considered an epicenter of the American eugenics movement. During the 20th century's first decades, California's eugenicists included potent but little-known race scientists, such as Army venereal disease specialist Dr. Paul Popenoe, citrus magnate Paul Gosney, Sacramento banker Charles Goethe, as well as members of the California state Board of Charities and Corrections and the University of California Board of Regents.

Eugenics would have been so much bizarre parlor talk had it not been for extensive financing by corporate philanthropies, specifically the Carnegie Institution, the Rockefeller Foundation and the Harriman railroad fortune. They were all in league with some of America's most respected scientists from such prestigious universities as Stanford, Yale, Harvard and Princeton. These academicians espoused race theory and race science, and then faked and twisted data to serve eugenics' racist aims.

CONTINUED...

http://www.waragainsttheweak.com/offSiteArchive/www.sfgate.com/index.html

Evil will continue for as long as some people think they're better than other people.

[JustAnotherGen]

9. If I'm correct

There was intersection with the teachings of Rushdooney and the Eugenics movement.

Which would mean that Charles and David Koch had cruelty, and inflicting pain on others woven into their souls from a very young age.