Busting the Kochtopus
There is a great piece out in the August 30, 2010 New Yorker entitled, "Covert Operations: The billionaire brothers who are waging a war against Obama," that describes two siblings who've managed, on the whole, to remain invisible to the vast majority of Americans despite their tied-ranking as the 3rd richest people in the United States.
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 industry—especially environmental regulation. These views dovetail with the brothers’ corporate interests. In a study released this spring, the University of Massachusetts at Amherst’s 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 “kingpin of climate science denial.” 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 policies—from health-care reform to the economic-stimulus program—that, in political circles, their ideological network is known as the Kochtopus.
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deltadoc
August 23, 2010 - 18:55
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“To bring about social change...”
"Charles Koch seems to have approached both business and politics with the deliberation of an engineer. “To bring about social change,” he told Doherty, requires “a strategy” that is “vertically and horizontally integrated,” spanning “from idea creation to policy development to education to grassroots organizations to lobbying to litigation to political action.” The project, he admitted, was extremely ambitious. “ We have a radical philosophy,” he said."
avahome
August 28, 2010 - 21:59
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At Americans for Prosperity Conference, Pushback Against New Yor
From the Washington Independent
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