Now, you may have heard a thing or two about Koch Industries. Their role in funding climate change deniers is well documented. What you may not realize is that Koch intentionally flies beneath the radar. David Koch likes to joke that Koch Industries is the biggest company you've never heard of. They're able to remain unknown because they hide behind shadowy front groups like Americans for Prosperity. Co-founded by David Koch, Americans for Prosperity funds advertising and public events designed to mislead Americans about climate change and energy policy.
Koch Industries knows that if Americans realized that a massive oil pipeline and refinery company was behind harmless-sounding groups that work to mislead us about climate change, no one would listen to them. They want you to think that what is good for the oil industry is good for the American people, but you and I both know what they actually care about: their bottom line.
But if you never have heard of Koch Industries hold on to your hat:
Koch Industries, Inc. (pronounced /ˈkoʊk/) is an American private energy conglomerate based in Wichita, Kansas, with subsidiaries involved in manufacturing, trading and investments. Koch also owns Invista, Georgia-Pacific, Flint Hill Resources, Koch Pipeline, Koch Fertilizer, Koch Minerals and Matador Cattle Company.
Koch companies are involved in core industries such as the manufacturing, refining and distribution[1] of petroleum, chemicals, energy, fiber, intermediates and polymers, minerals, fertilizers, pulp and paper, chemical technology equipment, ranching, finance, commodities trading, as well as other ventures and investments.
In 2008, Forbes called it the second largest privately held company in the United States (after Cargill) with an annual revenue of about $98 billion, down from the largest in 2006. If Koch Industries were a public company in 2007, it would rank about sixteenth in the Fortune 500.
Fred C. Koch, for whom Koch Industries, Inc. is named, co-founded the company in 1940 and developed an innovative crude oil refining process. His sons, Charles G. Koch, chairman of the board and chief executive officer, and David H. Koch, executive vice president, are principal owners of the company after they bought out their brothers, Frederick and William for $1.1 billion in 1983. Charles and David Koch each own 42% of Koch Industries, and Charles has stated that the company will publicly offer shares "literally over my dead body".
Much attention has been paid to Koch’s role in funding the organizers of the Tea Party movement and its supporting institutions. Koch operatives orchestrated the first anti-Obama Tea Party protests, channeled Tea Party groups into increasing the Koch’s personal wealth, and organized Tea Parties for Republican campaigns and lobbying drives.
Koch Industries is the largest private corporation in America and they thrive on emitting carbon pollution and other forms of pollution for free. Much of Koch Industries’ $120 billion-a-year revenues are derived from burning fossil fuels: oil refineries and pipelines, chemical plants, fertilizer plants, manufacturing factories, and the shipping of coal. Moreover, Koch Industries owns Georgia Pacific, one of the largest timber companies, so Koch also contributes to global warming by decreasing the world’s carbon sink capacity. The National Academy of Sciences, the US Global Change Research Program, and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change have all come to the same conclusion: “that carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel use and the loss of carbon-sink capacity in heavily timbered forests are increasing temperatures and making oceans more acidic.” Corporate documents revealed by ThinkProgress show that Koch Industries explicitly targeted laws to reduce carbon emissions as a threat to Koch’s bottom line.
To boost their profits, Koch is the largest funder of climate change denying organizations and media outlets in the world. For example, Koch bankrolls denier groups like the CATO Institute, Fraser Institute, Foundation for Research on Economics and the Environment, the Manhattan Institute, the Marshall Institute, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, the State Policy Network, and dozens of others. Not only have Koch fronts instructed Tea Party groups to kill national legislation to address climate change, but Koch groups have been instrumental in pushing climate change-believers out of the Republican Party. As the Wonk Room’s Brad Johnson has detailed, the vast majority of new Republicans in Congress are “climate zombies.” Koch Industries is so fervently anti-climate science that it recently filed a lawsuit claiming that a belief in global warming damages its reputation.
Koch’s active role in Republican politics and multifaceted propaganda campaigns are almost always tied to Koch Industries’ business interests.
Oh the web one weaves when one chooses to deceive. The below links (provided by think progress) show a clear and present danger that Koch Industries provides in both politics and global business.
Arguing Over Racial Segregation Plan, AFP Official Threatens Professor: ‘I’m Going To Knock You For A Loop’
Exclusive: Tea Party Billionaire David Koch Denies Climate Change, Shrugs Off His Carbon Pollution
Exclusive: David Koch Refuses To Answer Questions About Citizens United, Secret Right-Wing Meetings
Fulfilling Father’s Campaign To Segregate Public Schools, Koch Groups End Successful Integration Program In NC
Tea Party Billionaire David Koch Entertains Newly Elected Republicans On The First Day Of The New Congress
Theater Audience Boos Tea Party Billionaire David Koch
Koch-Funded Book Argues Against Mine Safety Laws In West Virginia
Koch-Backed Groups Helped Kill Law Designed To Prevent Voter Suppression Plot Hatched By Koch-Backed Groups
Meet Mike Pompeo: The Congressional Candidate Spawned By The ‘Kochtopus’
TP’s Lee Fang Discusses The ‘Kochtopus’ Network On Countdown
Koch Industries Takes Credit For The ‘Spontaneous’ Tea Parties: We’re Glad We ‘Helped Stimulate’ Them
McCain Caught Fundraising With Business Group That Killed McCain-Feingold, Shouts ‘I Love The Chamber!’
TIMELINE: From Promoting Acid Rain To Climate Denial, Over 20 Years Of David Koch’s Polluter Front Groups
Drilling Is Not The Solution To Create Jobs And Reduce Reliance On Foreign Oil
Right-Wing Billionaire David Koch Funding SwiftBoat Campaign Against Global Warming Science
Beck’s Character Assassination Campaign Against Van Jones Was Fueled By AFP’s Efforts To Kill Green Jobs
This past weekend, David and Charles Koch, the co-owners of the $100 billion Koch Industries pollution conglomerate, hosted their annual meeting in Palm Springs to coordinate strategy and raise funds for the extreme radial tea bag movement.
When NFTOS tells you Koch Industries funds the Tea Party movement, this is what we mean:
"The Koch's are on a whole different level. There's 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. I've been in Washington since Watergate, and I've never seen anything like it. They are the Standard Oil of our times."Koch Industries, has always been a major backer for a myriad of radical right-wing causes. While the Koch brothers have tried to insure one degree of separation from tea bag central, the plethora of associations are overwhelming.
Righties and Glenn Beck have been on the George "spooky dood" Soros mob lynching parade for months.
Knowing what we know now about Koch Industries and the brothers Grimm (David and Charles Koch) its high time the progressives apply pressure to these radical right wing nut jobs.
There is know doubt that the brothers Grimm are the puppet masters to the tea bag society.
Progressives took to Palm Springs to boycott the Koch's tea party. The theme of the party crash was to "uncloak the Koch's".
We at NFTOS will carry this theme on, moving forward to expose our readers to just how corrupt these boys are. Corporate malfeasance seems to exist everywhere within Koch Industries.
A Bush selected Supreme Court cleared the path for Corporations funding politics. Corporations have been around far longer than our country, and our founding fathers were very wary of extending privileges to economic entities. They were way more concerned with living, breathing human beings. The Bill of Rights was written for the benefit of people, not companies – and there lies the ultimate irony of the Supreme Court ruling.
The Plutocracy is way too big today in our country. Say goodbye to the Republic, because it’s a thing of the past if Koch and the Chamber of Commerce are allowed to keep their hands in the cookie jar.
NFTOS
