How Dead Veterans Can Make the Koch Brothers Money

The Veterans Administration, which oversees veterans health care and burial has an annual budget of over $100 billion. The Koch Brothers---whose family sire got rich drilling oil for Stalin in the USSR and who graze their cattle on private land and who cut trees for Georgia Pacific using public resources---want that money. Or, at least, a big chunk of it. But how does a family known for feeding at the public trough---they accepted a big chunk of change from the federal government to stockpile oil under Bush-Cheney---how do they plan to get rich from an agency that administers health care? Are they hoping to snag a contract for toilet paper and feminine hygiene products? Maybe they want to make all those sterile paper gowns, masks and shoe covers that the surgeons wear. Or maybe they are more interested in a little discussed section of the Veterans Affairs Administration, the National Cemetery. Maybe they are not interested in keeping our veterans healthy. Maybe they want to make money off our veterans' deaths.

Here is a link to National Cemetery Administration's budget and statistics. There are 22 million Americans who may one day be buried at federal government expense. Right now, the allotment for the coffin or urn has not kept up with inflation, but that could change. We could soon see the federal government paying $2000 per dead veteran for coffins. Coffins made of wood. And who manufactures the most wood products in this country? The Koch Brothers' own Georgia Pacific.

http://www.independentbudget.org/2014/08_nca.pdf

Georgia Pacific is having a hell of a time competing with Asian imports. So why not take over the Veterans Administration and offer every Veteran a $2000 wooden coffin made by Georgia Pacific? With 22 million veterans that would make....$44 billion in sales! Of cheap, compressed wood pulp textured to look like the real thing. Made in America, of course.

I started looking for links between Georgia-Pacific and the funeral industry. Here is a piece by Dan Saunders, who used to be a plant engineer at Georgia Pacific and who now runs a funeral business. Read about how America wants--no, make that needs--wooden caskets made in America.

http://www.cfsaa.org/news/268367/Dont-Get-Left-Behind-in-a-Changing-Industry.htm

Why waste money keeping people who have outlived their usefulness to the oil industry fighting foreign wars for oil alive at taxpayers' expense, when the Koch Brothers can make a hefty profit from their deaths? No one cares if the paper with which they wipe their ass comes from Asia, but I am betting these scam artists will be able to sell a lot of overpriced "Made in America" caskets and call it patriotic.