Koch Industries is America’s second-largest private corporation, with revenue of $100 billion in 2009, and 80,000 employees in 60 countries. According to Charles Koch, Koch Industries has grown 2,000-fold since he took over from his dad in 1967, transforming a middling oil transportation and refinement operation into a corporate mini-state involved in oil, petrochemicals, paper, agriculture and financial services. Worth just under $20 billion apiece, the brothers live like emperors. David Koch, 70, resides in a Park Avenue and likes to take a few weeks off every year to lounge on his 246-foot megayacht in the Mediterranean, which costs $500,000 a week to operate and has been rented out for pleasure cruises by Prince Charles.
http://exiledonline.com/a-people-history-of-koch-industries-part-ii-libertarian-billionaires-charles-and-david-koch-are-closetcase-subsidy-kings-who-milk-big-government-tyranny-but-want-to-slash-spending-on-anyone-else/The Koch Family did not makes its money the old fashioned way, through hard work and ingenuity. It made its money the new-fangled way---by ripping off the public coffers of nations all across the globe. The Kochs are the biggest, fattest pigs at the public trough. Under Stalin, they got very, very rich. And very scared, too. Because they realized that the public hand that fed them could cut off the supply of slops to the trough at any time. And so, they have invested a great deal of time and money into creating a country which will never be able to tell them “no.”
When the press talks about “shared sacrifice”, they do not mean that rich folks will eat cat food one night a week to show solidarity with their starving fellow Americans. They do not suggest that people who live in mansions take to the streets once a month to seek what shelter they can find under a freeway overpass or inside a cardboard box. The wealthy are not being asked to take their chances when it comes to their health. No one would dream of suggesting that the Koch Brothers weather their next heart attack at home, the way that middle class Americans must.
“Shared sacrifice” is code for “we can squeeze more money out of the middle class in order to make the super rich super-duper rich.”For decades, the family that made its fortune supplying oil for Stalin’s communist Russia has been in the forefront of the so called “conservative” movement. John Birch Society, Cato Institute, Tea Parties---these are all supposed to be about limited federal government. These political groups are intended to blind the public to the fact that the Koch Family is still sucking at the public teat--- only now it drinks American breast milk instead of Soviet.
The article cited at the beginning of this journal lists the many forms of government pork which the Koch family savors. Their huge ranching business grazes its cattle on federal government land---at no cost, thanks to a New Deal program. To get paper for Dixie cups, they log publicly owned forests---with the government paying much of their costs. The Cato institute complains about ethanol subsidies, but did you know that the Koch family is in the ethanol business and makes money from those subsidies? Why? Subsidies are supposed to be about helping Iowa corn farmers survive. The Kochs are doing way better than surviving. Just ask David when he is sailing around on his mega-yacht.
Koch Industries has been the recipient of about $85 million in federal government contracts mostly from the Department of Defense. Koch also benefits directly from billions in taxpayer subsidies for oil companies and ethanol production.
http://planetsave.com/2011/03/08/koch-industries-makes-billions-corrupting-government/Under Bush, the Kochs were paid to fill the strategic oil reserve. Now, through the Cato Institute, they are demanding that the oil be sold back to them---presumably so that under the next Republican administration they can sell the same oil back to U.S. taxpayers again, for a tidy profit. If they play their cards right, they won't even have to move the crude. It will be a paper transaction.
http://www.fossil.energy.gov/news/techlines/2002/tl_spr_rik2002_koch.htmlhttp://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=13244 You know, when I see a powerful corporation trying to make a quick paper profit from energy without actually doing anything, I think of one word---
Enron---and I wonder
Is the Koch Empire a house of cards, too?
The Kochs are now renowned for their greed---and reviled. Hardly a good way to do business, but they can’t seem to help themselves. They are compelled to gorge on public pork until they can’t eat another bite----and then they go back for seconds and thirds? Why? John Steinbeck had something to say about it in
The Grapes of Wrath.
“’They’re scairt.’”You want to talk about “shared sacrifice”? I’ll give up a part of my Social Security---after Charles and David give up their oil and ethanol subsides, their free grazing and lumber, their tax breaks for the wealthy. Any budget deal which does not allow these two to “share” in the “sacrifice” is a sick joke.
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
