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xchrom

(108,903 posts)
Tue May 20, 2014, 06:13 AM May 2014

11 Things The Koch Brothers Don't Want You To Know, From Robert Greenwald's Newly Updated Documentar

http://www.alternet.org/election-2014/11-things-koch-brothers-dont-want-you-know-robert-greenwalds-newly-updated-documentary



***SNIP

1. The family's $100 billion fortune comes mostly from a massive network of oil and gas pipelines, and investments in other polluting industries like paper and plastics. The brothers inherited the seed money for their holdings from their father Fred Koch, who made his first fortune building oil pipelines for the Russian dictator Joseph Stalin in the 1930s. Back in the states, Fred Koch supported racial segregation and white supremacist groups like the John Birch Society.

2. Koch Industries is the second largest privately held company in America, worth upwards of $80 billion. It is one of the country’s top 15 polluters, responsible for more than 300 oil spills. It has paid over $100 million in fines and been found guilty by a federal jury of stealing oil from Native American lands.

3. The Kochs have invested multi-millions in more than 85 right-wing organizations over the years to push an anti-government, libertarian agenda. Many local Tea Party chapters were fronts for Americans for Prosperity, one of their groups. Another big recipient, ALEC, or the American Legislative Exchange Council, drafts bills and talking points that Republican officials cite again and again. In the 2012 presidential election cycle, the Koch’s right-wing donor network spent $400 million on electioneering.

4. The brothers work to create legal decisions to empower their efforts. They brought two U.S. Supreme Court Justices, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, to give speeches at their invitation-only gatherings for libertarian industrialists. That was before the Court issued its Citizens United ruling, gutting federal laws that restricted the kinds of outside campaigns they bankroll. They funded groups that filed thousands of pages of legal briefs to attack those election laws. After the Court threw out federal campaign restrictions in 2010—a ruling they help to write—the Kochs began to spend unprecedented sums to sway elections.
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11 Things The Koch Brothers Don't Want You To Know, From Robert Greenwald's Newly Updated Documentar (Original Post) xchrom May 2014 OP
"I want my fair share –and that's ALL OF IT." KansDem May 2014 #1
+1 xchrom May 2014 #2
They are PURE Evil Rockyj May 2014 #13
Welcome to DU, Rockyj! calimary May 2014 #18
K and R. nt MaeScott May 2014 #3
IMO, this type dotymed May 2014 #4
+1 n/t LittleGirl May 2014 #6
Definition of Criminal rickyhall May 2014 #5
K & R !!! WillyT May 2014 #7
They are biblically evil zentrum May 2014 #8
Judges and politicians become "Koch Dealers", wonder if it pays well, as America circles the drain Augiedog May 2014 #9
That's just a conspericy theory zeemike May 2014 #10
K&R. Overseas May 2014 #11
#1 Gas Pipelines. Just like they got in Ukraine. grahamhgreen May 2014 #12
Communist forced propaganda is how they learned how to do it IkeRepublican May 2014 #14
The Koch Kartel Blue Owl May 2014 #15
I'd call the Koch family Aerows May 2014 #16
'psychopathic criminals' is the phrase you might use diane in sf May 2014 #21
I think that was the phrase Aerows May 2014 #22
Shit does more to nourish the earth than these psychotic sociopaths ever will. nt IronLionZion May 2014 #28
Arch Villains tea and oranges May 2014 #17
More exposure!! K&R!! hue May 2014 #19
K&R woo me with science May 2014 #20
What I want to know is there any truth to the rumor that the Koch Crime Family is butting rhett o rick May 2014 #23
The Kochs are horrible guys, but the problem is systemic RufusTFirefly May 2014 #24
K&R. Nt. Lunacee_2013 May 2014 #25
Worthy of our support, Robert Greenwald and "Brave New Films." mountain grammy May 2014 #26
The Kochs always remind me of Plainview in "There Will Be Blood" . nt adirondacker May 2014 #27
"Koch made his fortune building oil pipelines for Joseph Stalin"... well that's embarrassing! reformist2 May 2014 #29
fuck greenwald! if he's against the koch bro's, then I'm for them!!! KG May 2014 #30
! xchrom May 2014 #31
Hey GG, and other Libertarians DonCoquixote May 2014 #32
LOL! wrong greenwald. nt xchrom May 2014 #33

KansDem

(28,498 posts)
1. "I want my fair share –and that's ALL OF IT."
Tue May 20, 2014, 06:49 AM
May 2014
...stealing oil from Native American lands.

According to the transcript of the secretly recorded tape, Charles Koch was chuckling like a six-year old. Koch was having a hell of a laugh over pilfering a few hundred dollars' worth of oil from a couple of dirt-poor Indians on the Osage Reservation.

Why did Koch, worth about $3 billion at the time (now $20 billion) need to boost a few bucks from some Indian in a trailer home? Koch answered:

"I want my fair share – and that's all of it."

Now "all of it" includes a pipeline, the Keystone XL, which would run the world's filthiest oil, crude made from tar sands, down from Canada to his family's refinery on the Gulf Coast of Texas.

Greg Palast for Vice Magazine

calimary

(81,304 posts)
18. Welcome to DU, Rockyj!
Tue May 20, 2014, 09:27 PM
May 2014

Glad you're here! They ARE. They are indeed. I just don't see how they qualify as anything but! Total unabashed greed. From coast to coast. Trying to buy their way in locally, state-wide, regionally, nationally, and in both policies and candidates. They're the worst opportunistic infections I've seen in quite some time. They are literally human toxins. What they do to benefit themselves is quite literally toxic to those around them, and to those who have to live in, and around, the areas of their influence They deal in so many pollutants and pollution-generating industries that they endanger people's health.

dotymed

(5,610 posts)
4. IMO, this type
Tue May 20, 2014, 07:55 AM
May 2014

of "me, me...mine" entitlement "thinking" has gotten America where it is...at the bottom of the heap.
IF we are still considered a 1st world nation (that would be only because of our military spending), then we are the worst one. We rank below all of the 1st nations in most everything, except militarily.

It is sickening...worst in wealth distribution, medical care, etc.

Bernie and/or Elizabeth seem to be our only chance to improve.

zentrum

(9,865 posts)
8. They are biblically evil
Tue May 20, 2014, 08:50 AM
May 2014

By "Biblical" I mean--they even have fire and ash and all the accoutrements of hell around them. Not a believer in this way myself--but if there was an Anti-Christ, this would be it, both by deed and as a set of ideas---where it's fine to burn up the earth itself for personal power.

IkeRepublican

(406 posts)
14. Communist forced propaganda is how they learned how to do it
Tue May 20, 2014, 03:37 PM
May 2014

That's why they're always playing the communist victim cards.

Where I grew up, just a few miles from the Kentucky border, such methods are referred to as "The Pastor's Daughter Syndrome."

The pastor's daughter is revered by her parents, relatives and townspeople alike to be as pure as the driven snow. But, all the boys at school know all too well that she's the easiest ride in town. Any evidence to the latter is immediately disregarded as sour grapes because everybody knows the pastor will make trouble in town for anybody who knows anything.

 

Aerows

(39,961 posts)
16. I'd call the Koch family
Tue May 20, 2014, 06:11 PM
May 2014

pieces of shit, but at least shit does something positive in the world. I almost called them "these assholes" but then I realized assholes have a purpose, too.

These _____ (I can't think of something foul enough that doesn't at least have a purpose) just sit around hoarding their wealth and only want more and more of it, caring not one bit about the environment, plants, animals, people and the world that they ruin. It takes a special kind of evil to have that perspective toward life.

tea and oranges

(396 posts)
17. Arch Villains
Tue May 20, 2014, 06:56 PM
May 2014

The Koch's are comic book depictions of greed, destruction, & solipsism brought to life. Where's Wonder Woman, Superman, et al when we need them?

 

rhett o rick

(55,981 posts)
23. What I want to know is there any truth to the rumor that the Koch Crime Family is butting
Tue May 20, 2014, 11:10 PM
May 2014

heads with the Bush Crime Family? Was Christie a Koch puppet?

RufusTFirefly

(8,812 posts)
24. The Kochs are horrible guys, but the problem is systemic
Tue May 20, 2014, 11:22 PM
May 2014

If you think that stopping the Kochs will solve the problem in the long term, think again.
They are a product of a system that allows for massive, unchecked accumulation of wealth and actually rewards selfish, Machiavellian behavior.

mountain grammy

(26,623 posts)
26. Worthy of our support, Robert Greenwald and "Brave New Films."
Wed May 21, 2014, 12:24 AM
May 2014

Not too many years ago, few people knew who the Kochs were. I knew of the John Birch Society, but not Fred Koch. ALEC? A well kept secret for 40 years. Greenwald is doing some important work here.

KG

(28,751 posts)
30. fuck greenwald! if he's against the koch bro's, then I'm for them!!!
Wed May 21, 2014, 06:28 AM
May 2014

oh, robert greenwald. well then, never mind!

DonCoquixote

(13,616 posts)
32. Hey GG, and other Libertarians
Wed May 21, 2014, 07:25 AM
May 2014

I can appreciate this expose, but when you are libertarian, you want a smaller government that cannot control the ultra rich. It says a lot that the Kochs identify as libertarian, and indeed, one of them actually ran for president as one.

In other words, how you can be libertarian and fail to see that freeing the ultra rich will do nothing but allow them to do more damage?

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