Submitted by Elaine Magliaro, Guest Blogger
Last week, Charles Koch—chairman and CEO of Koch Industries based in Wichita, Kansas—launched a new media campaign “to laud economic freedom and warn the public about government overreach.” This media campaign, which will run in Wichita for four weeks, will cost the Charles Koch Foundation approximately $200,000. Charles Koch, whose estimated net worth is reported to be more than $30 billion, said that if his media effort is successful, it may be expanded to other cities.
Here is the video produced by Koch’s foundation that has been airing in Wichita:
Economic Freedom in 60 Seconds
So…a man worth billions has taken it upon himself to inform the public that people in the US making $34,000 a year should consider themselves to be among the top 1% of earners in the world. I would assume that millions of Americans don’t realize how rich they really are. Maybe that’s because the US government has been doing its best to make people feel poorer than they really are.
According to the 2013 POVERTY GUIDELINES FOR THE 48 CONTIGUOUS STATES AND THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA provided by the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation, a family of six earning $31,590 is below the poverty level. C’mon! A family of six earning nearly $32,000 a year is below the poverty level? Who are you going to believe—the government or Charles Koch? After all, Koch is a successful “free market” businessman. HE knows what the United States needs to become the most prosperous country in the world.
In a telephone interview recently, Koch said that he “believes prosperity grows where economic freedom is greatest, where government intervention in business affairs is kept to a minimum. He also “emphasized several times that he believes his ideas on economics will help disadvantaged people.” Koch said, “We want to do a better job of raising up the disadvantaged and the poorest in this country…” Koch added that government regulations and the minimum wage law “tend to hold everyone back.” He criticized the “culture of dependency” in this country—which, according to Koch, includes government subsidies and cronyism in addition to an “avalanche” of regulations, and the minimum wage.
Back in 2011, Charles Koch wrote an opinion piece for the Wall Street Journal in which he criticized “crony capitalism.” Koch wrote: “But it [crony capitalism] erodes our overall standard of living and stifles entrepreneurs by rewarding the politically favored rather than those who provide what consumers want.” He added; “Government spending on business only aggravates the problem. Too many businesses have successfully lobbied for special favors and treatment by seeking mandates for their products, subsidies (in the form of cash payments from the government), and regulations or tariffs to keep more efficient competitors at bay.”
Rebecca Leber of ThinkProgress found Koch’s opinion piece amusing. She wrote, “Hilariously, he [Koch] is not writing about himself or his brother David.” She added, “Drawing on just a small portion of their net worth, the Koch brothers bankroll a network of Tea Party groups and Republican political war chests. In return, they receive continued subsidies, government contracts, and pro-polluter policies that benefit their interests.”
Andy Kroll of Mother Jones wrote an article (March 1, 2011) after reading Koch’s Wall Street piece titled Hypocrisy Alert: Charles Koch Blasts “Crony Capitalism.”
In his article, Kroll wrote: the following:
And while Charles Koch criticizes “crony capitalism,” his company is one of the biggest players in the nation when it comes to lobbying and political donations. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, Koch Industries has spent more than $40 million lobbying the federal government in the past three years alone. Koch Industries, company executives, and the company’s political action committee have doled out $11 million since 1989 to federal candidates, political parties, and political committees; Charles and David Koch and their wives contributed $2.8 million of that, a mere $1,500 of which went to Democrats, according to the Public Campaign Action Fund (PCAF). Much of that spending has gone toward fighting new regulations of the oil and gas industry, which would hurt Koch Industries’ profits. Not surprisingly, then, lawmakers on the influential House energy and commerce committee have pocketed $630,950 in Koch-connected donations.
Koch’s concerns about the fiscal health of the US, as voiced in his op-ed, are not unfounded. But his criticism of lobbying and “crony capitalism” flies in the face of his own actions and those of companies, critics say. “Koch Industries is the perfect example of absolutely everything Charles claims to hate about our current political system,” David Donnelly, national campaigns director for Public Campaign Action Fund, said in a statement. “The hypocrisy is palpable.”
And Lee Fang, writing for ThinkProgress in March of 2011, said the following:
Charles [Koch] has compared himself to a libertarian “Martin Luther,” evangelizing to the world for their supply side cause. However, the tens of millions in campaign donations and the dozens of front groups funded by Koch work in tandem to promoting the business interests of Koch Industries.
Koch funds both socially conservative groups and socially liberal groups. However, Koch’s financing of front groups and political organizations all have one thing in common: every single Koch group attacks workers’ rights, promotes deregulation, and argues for radical supply side economics. Not only do the Koch’s front groups pad Koch Industries’ bottom line, they supply the Koch brother’s talking points. In fact, for his opinion piece today, Charles heavily relied on front groups he finances for statistics. The “freedom index” cited by Charles is a creation of the Koch-funded Heritage Foundation, and the erroneous “unfunded liabilities” claim was supplied by the Koch-funded National Center for Policy Analysis.
MSNBC’s Dylan Ratigan Talks To Mark Ames & Yasha Levine About The Koch Brothers
One has to wonder what goes on in the minds of billionaires like Charles Koch. Does he truly believe that folks earning $34,000 a year are rich? Does he really think that lowering the minimum wage will help the working poor? Does he even give a damn?
SOURCES
Charles Koch Foundation: An Income Of $34,000 Puts You In The Wealthiest 1 Percent (Huffington Post)
Billionaire Koch Brother Says Eliminating The Minimum Wage Will Help The Poor (ThinkProgress)
Five Ways Charles Koch Benefits From Practices He Criticizes In Absurd Wall Street Journal Op-Ed (ThinkProgress)
Charles Koch launching Wichita campaign about economic freedom, government overreach (The Wichita Eagle)
Hypocrisy Alert: Charles Koch Blasts “Crony Capitalism” (Mother Jones)
Billionaire Charles Koch on helping the poor: Eliminate minimum wages (Raw Story)
Charles Koch launching Wichita campaign about economic freedom, government (McClatchy)
7 Ways the Koch Bros. Benefit from Corporate Welfare (Exiled Online)
Charles Koch, America’s largest crony capitalist, takes on crony capitalism (Grist)
REPORT: How Koch Industries Makes Billions By Demanding Bailouts And Taxpayer Subsidies (Part 1) (ThinkProgress)
REPORT: How Koch Industries Makes Billions Corrupting Government And Polluting For Free (Part 2) (ThinkProgress)
Why Koch Industries Is Speaking Out (Wall Street Journal)
Elaine,
You are right that $30,000 is spare change to the Koch’s but if he truly believes his own video, he should give away his money and live on $30,000 for the rest of his life.
Yeah, you keep saying that and yet no one ever seems to agree with you, Bron, and they frequently supply the same or similar factual definitions from the worlds of political science and economics as I do.
Again, you are entitled to your own opinion, but you are not entitled to your own facts.
They have a word for people who make up their own facts on a consistent basis: delusional.
Seriously, man. Put down the Rand and the von Mises and get a well rounded education not based on the work of sociopaths and the scientifically ignorant who hide political polemic behind a thin mask of economic pronouncements. It’ll do your brain good.
Gene H:
Oh I understand basic definitions. It is you who doesnt.
gbk:
the Koch’s dont drive my thought. They are libertarians. While I dont think 100 legal systems are a good idea, I do believe in more freedom of action for human beings.
I also believe that people who financially injure you should pay for any injuries.
If you dont like being called a statist, then dont be one. You cannot be a free market socialist. Socialism is inherently authoritarian.
The irony of someone who can’t get basic definitions correct telling someone who uses words properly is simply delicious. Or is that ridiculous? Maybe both.
Selfishness is not a virtue, Bron.
It’s inherently anti-social.
gbk:
educate yourself. There is a world of difference between a group of free people coming together voluntarily to make their lives better than being forced to do so by the state.
I read a Jack London quote about how people should own the means of production so they can share in nature’s bounty. I agree 100% with that statement. But if they want to do that then get 20 of their friends together and start an employee owned company or buy the company they work for.
There is no natural right to the labor of another man.
rafflaw,
To Charles Koch, who is in the top 1% of the top 1% worldwide, $30,000 is spare change.
Great link Elaine. If the Koch’s think $30,000 +- is such a freeing amount to live on, maybe he should get free and give all his money to charity?
Charles Koch on the Poor: Let Them Eat Economic Freedom
Leslie Savan
July 16, 2013
http://www.thenation.com/blog/175302/charles-koch-poor-let-them-eat-economic-freedom#
Excerpt:
But let’s get real. A household income of $34,000 for a family of two parents and two children in America is close enough to the poverty level to qualify that family for federal subsidies, like food stamps. And according to the Economic Policy Institute, that family would need an income of $48,144 to cover its basic living expenses in Marshall County, Mississippi, one of the cheaper places to live, while $53,721 would keep it above water in the more expensive Wichita, Kansas, where Koch Industries is headquartered.
By torturing the Occupy term “1 percent” until it’s forced to include America’s poor, Charles Koch is simply promoting the Reagan, Romney, Limbaugh, and Hannity dogma that poor people (the “takers”) never had it so good. Citing a 2011 Heritage Foundation report finding that many poor people own appliances, Fox News’s Stu Varney complained that “99 percent of them have a refrigerator. 81 percent have a microwave.” (Colbert: “ A refrigerator and a microwave? They can preserve and heat food? Ooh, la la! I guess the poor are too good for mold and trichinosis.”)
And those overly entitled refrigerator owners are undoubtedly the same folks who think they’re entitled to vote (to Supreme Court Justice Scalia, the Voting Rights Act is a “perpetuation of racial entitlement”) or to walk home with Skittles without being stalked and killed.
Of course, the Koch ad isn’t really directed toward the poor or the middle class. It’s geared to the corporate elite, lobbyists and legislators to help them better rationalize their crusade to kill minimum wage increases, voting rights, Obamacare, environmental protections and other nuisances. Shockingly, but not surprisingly, the GOP-controlled House voted Thursday to completely eliminate funding for food stamps from the Farm Bill. The right doesn’t just want to starve the beast, it wants to feel morally upright even if it starves hundreds of thousands of souls along the way.
Charlie Koch’s 1 percent solution is only the latest excuse for this politics of cruelty. It’s like the right’s fake fretting—cue the violins!—that deficit spending “steals from future generations” (even as they steal from non-hypothetical children today), or that government assistance creates “a culture of dependency” (even as Koch Industries, to take one example, receives federal oil subsidies, government contracts and bailouts).
The power to delude is apparently stronger than the power of economic freedom. Charles Koch told The Wichita Eagle last week that he’d be “raising up the disadvantaged and the poorest in this country” by ridding them of a minimum wage.
Bron,
You don’t have knowledge of any of the bad things that the Kochs have done. Why not do some investigating? There is plenty of information available on the Internet about them. Are you afraid of what you may find out?
Sorry to all, should read:
Bron,
“I dont know the Kochs personally. So I cannot say they are or are not fascists.”
This is very telling as you don’t “personally” know anyone who comments on this blog (I’m assuming) and yet you feel that you can call us statists, socialist, authoritarians, etc.
Why do you not use the same rationale in your acceptance of other’s who drive your thought and yet you, by admission, don’t personally know?
Bron,
“I dont know the Kochs personally. So I cannot say they are or are not fascists.”
This is very telling as you don’t “personally” know anyone who comments on this blog (I’m assuming) and yet you feel that you can call us statists, socialist, authoritarians, etc.
Why do you not use the same rationale in your acceptance of other’s who drive your thought?
A tutorial on Governments by Monty Python.
Oh well, another comment lost in the bowels.
Bron,
“socialism is socialism. I dont care what form it takes, it interferes with the economy and with peoples freedom.”
So does this make the farmers of America – when pooling their money to build grain silos and demanding membership to make use of in a legal form of business known as cooperative – socialists?
From sba dot gov:
“A cooperative is a business or organization owned by and operated for the benefit of those using its services. Profits and earnings generated by the cooperative are distributed among the members, also known as user-owners.”
Wow, those damn farmers. How tricky to they are. Marxists, all, to be sure.
Really, Bron, educate yourself. Your socialism is fascism is socialism just doesn’t fly any more than my dogs who love the socialist aspect of my feeding them everyday without any economic benefit to me.
Start here, these are simplified definitions of socialism and fascism.
Socialism: where the means of production are in control of the workers (producers).
Fascism: where the interests of business becomes government policy.
There are many gray areas that one can argue about, but your incessant conflationary squawking of socialism = fascism = why America is failing is absurd.
Gene H:
I dont know the Kochs personally. So I cannot say they are or are not fascists. Are they looking out for their own interests? I would not doubt that.
But do they wake up in the morning saying “I want to stick my koch up the little guy’s a$$”, I would hope not.
Did they graze on public land? I dont know both sides of the story. Did they cause a pipeline to burst? I dont know both sides of the story.
Look at what Solyndra did, the basically stole 500 million dollars from what it looks like but then I dont know both sides of that story either.
If anything those are just examples of the unholy alliance of business and government.