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)
Bron,
You are incorrectly mixing socialism and communism.
Gene H:
dont you call Obama a corporatist/fascist? How can that be? Is he a dictator?
Gene H:
read your own definition again. You make me laugh.
rafflaw:
Hitler and Mussolini were pikers compared to Mao, Stalin and Pol Pot and then you had your various other communist dictators who only killed thousands instead of millions.
It does seem that socialism has tried to improve its image since all the mess they made in the 20th century but we shall see. Statism is certainly alive and well in this country although not yet fully malignant.
You claim to be for the common man but why do you want to deny him the freedom of choice?
Bron,
Where are you citations to prove your claim that socialism has killed more people than fascism? Have you forgotten the names Hitler and Mussolini?
The differences are only minor if you have a reading comprehension problem.
Socialism is any of various theories or systems of social organization in which the means of producing and distributing goods is owned collectively or by a centralized government that often plans and controls the economy.
Fascism is a system of government marked by centralization of authority under a dictator, stringent socioeconomic controls often directed in concert with industry including organization of the economy that suppresses trade union liberty, suppression of the opposition through terror and censorship, rampant nationalism, racism, anti-democratic, militarization of politics and police, and with the goal of imperialist expansion.
They are not the same thing.
Gene H:
they are almost identical, the differences are minor. Although you might be right, socialism has killed far more people than fascism. Although I guess you will argue that communism isnt socialism either.
By the way I did learn a new term, I thought it was pretty good so I used it.
Although I did know about Fourier and have mentioned him several times.
Did I give the impression I care what a British pol thinks?
No, Bron. I’m not factually wrong and neither are the literally dozens of others who have corrected you in the past for your made up definitions and your willingness to use them. I’m not factually wrong and neither of the literally hundreds (maybe more) poli sci, law texts (including legal theory) and history books that inform me you are wrong in conflating socialism and fascism.
But please, act like a petulant child some more.
I do so get a kick out of it.
As for your “accusation” of having a Fourier complex? Did snugum’s learn a new term? That’s adorable.
No, I also don’t have a Fourier complex. I’m not prepared to accept nor do I desire widespread poverty as a means of making the material wellbeing of every member of society equal. Having a higher average standard of living does not require that. Yet. But it very well might some day if we don’t stop making more humans than the environment and resources of Earth can support. Widespread poverty may just be a consequence of our myopic shortsighted exploitation of nature in the name of profits first whether we want that outcome or not. That, however, is an entirely different discussion.
To accuse someone who is an egalitarian of having a Fourier complex simply because egalitarianism conflicts with your Objectivist “greed is good” mantra is both presumptive and childish. If you wonder what the limits to egalitarianism are that I find acceptable, you should ask. You might even be surprised at what you hear just as you were surprised by the articles based in philosophy I’ve written here surprised you. Despite your self-imposed philosophical blinders and willful ignorance about political science and economics that Objectivism has served you, I do expect better from you than that.
Again, a false equivalent is a form of lie.
I remind you again of one of my prime operational principles.
“If someone is able to show me that what I think or do is not right, I will happily change, for I seek the truth, by which no one was ever truly harmed. It is the person who continues in his self-deception and ignorance who is harmed.” – Marcus Aurelius
Lie to yourself all you like. You lie to others? I’m going to call you on it, Bron.
Just in case someone reading this gets the wrong impression you have a clue as to what you are talking about on the topic.
Because as I (and many others) have pointed out to you, you don’t. I realize that Objectivism has a strong anti-democratic component to it, but maybe you might want to consider the consensus view that your definitions are flat ass wrong after hearing it so many times. You’re entitled to your own opinion and to express it. You are not entitled to your own facts.
The facts are your definitions are wrong.
Socialism and fascism are not the same thing.
Repeating the lie that they are won’t make it any truer.
Detroit is what socialism is all about. Even a member of parliment in Britian has it figured out:
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/danielhannan/100227375/obamanomics-is-turning-america-into-detroit-ayn-rands-starnesville-come-to-life/#disqus_thread
“The Observer, naturally, quotes a native complaining that ‘capitalism has failed us,’ but capitalism is the one thing the place desperately needs. Detroit has been under Leftist administrations for half a century. It has spent too much and borrowed too much, driving away business and becoming a tool of the government unions.”
Gene H:
you are factually wrong. In fact you are philosophically wrong. You dont understand that the fundamental principles behind each [Marxism, fascism, socialism] is fundamentaly the same.
You have Fourier Complex/Syndrome and a really bad case of it.
Koch-Funded Climate Contrarians Make Mischief on Capitol Hill
By Elliott Negin–Director of News & Commentary, Union of Concerned Scientists
Posted: 07/19/2013
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/elliott-negin/koch-funded-climate-contr_b_3620727.html
Excerpt;
With Congress about to head out of town for its summer recess, a Washington-based think tank is ramping up a campaign to foil any attempts to institute a tax on carbon emissions, The Hill, a Washington political trade publication, reported this week.
“We’re hoping to put the final nail in the coffin of the carbon tax,” said Benjamin Cole, the communications director for the Institute for Energy Research (IER) and its advocacy arm, the American Energy Alliance (AEA). “The proposal should be dead on arrival by the time lawmakers come back from August recess.”
IER’s campaign includes a survey of American attitudes about such a tax and a $120,000 to $150,000 radio ad buy targeting a handful of House members who, according to Cole, “are soft on the carbon tax issue.”
The Hill story, however, merely described IER as a “conservative” group. That doesn’t explain why a think tank named the Institute for Energy Research is so dead set against a carbon tax, given the initiative would certainly help some energy technologies, especially wind, solar and other renewables.
So why is IER so down on cutting carbon?
Because it’s backed by the fossil fuel industry, that’s why.
The Koch Connection
Over the last decade or so, IER and AEA have received hundreds of thousands of dollars from ExxonMobil; the American Petroleum Institute (API), the oil and gas industry’s trade association; the Center to Protect Patient Rights, a secretive nonprofit group linked to Charles Koch and his brother David, the billionaire owners of the coal, oil and gas behemoth Koch Industries; and the Charles Koch-controlled Claude R. Lambe Charitable Foundation, one of a handful of Koch family funds.
Top IER-AEA officials also are well-entrenched members of the Koch brothers’ climate change contrarian network. IER and AEA President Thomas Pyle, for example, is a former lobbyist for Koch Industries and the National Petrochemical and Refiners Association. IER and AEA Director of Regulatory and State Affairs Daniel Simmons, meanwhile, worked for the API-, ExxonMobil- and Koch-funded American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a stealthy lobby group that has been trying to repeal state standards requiring electric utilities to use more renewable energy. Before his stint as director of ALEC’s Natural Resources Task Force, Simmons was a research fellow at the Koch-founded and funded Mercatus Center at George Mason University.
Not to be outdone, IER founder and CEO Robert L. Bradley, Jr. — a former public policy analysis director at the now-defunct Enron Corp. — is an adjunct scholar at the Koch-founded and funded Cato Institute and the API- and Koch-funded Competitive Enterprise Institute. He also has been a featured speaker at the API- and Koch-funded Heartland Institute’s annual climate science-bashing conference, and is a member of the academic review committee at the Koch-funded Institute for Humane Studies at George Mason. The Institute for Humane Studies’ chairman, I should add, is Charles Koch.
Fascism is not socialism with a nationalistic bent.
They are two different kinds of government and two different kinds of economic policy.
How I feel is irrelevant to you simply being factually wrong, Bron.
I’m also certain I’ve read more history, law, political science and economics than you have, so save your reading suggestions for someone who doesn’t know how precisely and perfectly full of crap you are on this matter.
Gene H:
go look at real history for once. It most certainly is not utter BS.
I suggest you brush up on your understanding of identity.
If fascism didnt have public health care, public schools, public retirement, etc., you might have a point. But since it did, well if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck and lays eggs like a duck and has feathers like a duck, there is a good chance it is a duck.
OK socialism isnt fascism.
Fascism is socialism with a nationalistic bent.
Does that make you feel better?
Bron,
Speaking of fascism:
Proto-Fascist Infrastructure: The NSA, Booz Allen, Unysis, Verizon… And The Koch Bros.
6/10/13
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/06/10/1215137/-Proto-Fascist-Infrastructure-The-NSA-Booz-Allen-Unysis-Verizon-And-The-Koch-Bros
Excerpt:
I keep trying to convince reality-based activists and other concerned citizens that the greatest challenge we face has nothing to do with factual arguments about the wrongness of our system, but with propaganda.
When an entire society is subjected to a mind-numbing amount of carefully-calibrated propaganda designed to manipulate, subjugate, and enslave the citizenry, no amount of facts will be able to pierce through the fog of lies and misinformation.
In this diary, I’m going to engage in presenting facts that show that the United States of America is under the control of a proto-fascist ruling elite, but the purpose of me taking the time to show this is not only to present these facts, but to also emphasize the importance for social justice activists to engage in a relentless counter-propaganda campaign.
Fiction has become reality:
Nineteen Eighty-Four is a dystopian novel by George Orwell published in 1949. The Oceanian province of Airstrip One is a world of perpetual war, omnipresent government surveillance, and public mind control, dictated by a political system euphemistically named English Socialism (Ingsoc) under the control of a privileged Inner Party elite that persecutes all individualism and independent thinking as thoughtcrimes.
ALEC is fascistic corporatist cartel who has been able to infiltrate our entire system of government, both at the federal and at the states level. They mainly operate behind the scenes, but they are responsible for pushing thousands of laws and ordinances specifically-designed to weaken human rights, workers rights, and environmental protections so the citizenry can be manipulated, exploited, and enslaved, and the environment can be ravaged in the name of profit.
Some of the key players behind ALEC are people like the Koch brothers. In the latest news about the NSA, one person of interest is U.S. District Judge Roger Vinson.
U.S. District Judge Roger Vinson, who signed an order requiring Verizon to give the National Security Agency telephone records for tens of millions of American customers, attended an expense-paid judicial seminar sponsored by a libertarian think tank that featured lectures from a vocal proponent of executive branch powers.
– “Secret court judge attended expenses-paid terrorism seminar”
And guess who funds the organization that paid for this seminar:
From 2005 to 2009, FREE received a total of $430,000 in general operating support from the Claude R. Lambe Charitable Foundation, of which billionaire businessman Charles Koch is a director.
Proto-Fascist Infrastructure: The NSA, Booz Allen, Unysis, Verizon… And The Koch Bros.
6/10/13
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/06/10/1215137/-Proto-Fascist-Infrastructure-The-NSA-Booz-Allen-Unysis-Verizon-And-The-Koch-Bros
Excerpt:
I keep trying to convince reality-based activists and other concerned citizens that the greatest challenge we face has nothing to do with factual arguments about the wrongness of our system, but with propaganda.
When an entire society is subjected to a mind-numbing amount of carefully-calibrated propaganda designed to manipulate, subjugate, and enslave the citizenry, no amount of facts will be able to pierce through the fog of lies and misinformation.
In this diary, I’m going to engage in presenting facts that show that the United States of America is under the control of a proto-fascist ruling elite, but the purpose of me taking the time to show this is not only to present these facts, but to also emphasize the importance for social justice activists to engage in a relentless counter-propaganda campaign.
Fiction has become reality:
Nineteen Eighty-Four is a dystopian novel by George Orwell published in 1949. The Oceanian province of Airstrip One is a world of perpetual war, omnipresent government surveillance, and public mind control, dictated by a political system euphemistically named English Socialism (Ingsoc) under the control of a privileged Inner Party elite that persecutes all individualism and independent thinking as thoughtcrimes.
ALEC is fascistic corporatist cartel who has been able to infiltrate our entire system of government, both at the federal and at the states level. They mainly operate behind the scenes, but they are responsible for pushing thousands of laws and ordinances specifically-designed to weaken human rights, workers rights, and environmental protections so the citizenry can be manipulated, exploited, and enslaved, and the environment can be ravaged in the name of profit.
Some of the key players behind ALEC are people like the Koch brothers. In the latest news about the NSA, one person of interest is U.S. District Judge Roger Vinson.
U.S. District Judge Roger Vinson, who signed an order requiring Verizon to give the National Security Agency telephone records for tens of millions of American customers, attended an expense-paid judicial seminar sponsored by a libertarian think tank that featured lectures from a vocal proponent of executive branch powers.
– “Secret court judge attended expenses-paid terrorism seminar”
And guess who funds the organization that paid for this seminar:
From 2005 to 2009, FREE received a total of $430,000 in general operating support from the Claude R. Lambe Charitable Foundation, of which billionaire businessman Charles Koch is a director.
What Gene said. Yikes.
That is utter bullshit, Bron.
Fascism and socialism are not the same thing no matter how you try to spin it, Godwin.
Gene H:
Sorry it isnt a made up definition. Well that is not entirely true, the left distanced itself from fascism being socialism once all that nasty Nazi stuff came to light. Prior to knowledge of the concentration camps, most of Europe’s well known socialists were giving fawning praise to Herr Hitler, whoops.
Because it’s a false equivalence, Bron.
A false equivalent is a form of lie.
I remind you again of one of my prime operational principles.
“If someone is able to show me that what I think or do is not right, I will happily change, for I seek the truth, by which no one was ever truly harmed. It is the person who continues in his self-deception and ignorance who is harmed.” – Marcus Aurelius
Contrast this principle with someone who insists on false equivalence and made up definitions as a substitute for truth and true definitions.
A=A, Bron. For an Objectivist, you have a real tenuous grasp of the Law of Identity. Especially when it presents internal logical inconsistencies in your Randian worldview. Rand was a crazy person and she’s given you a crazy person’s appreciation of the Law of Identity. The Law of Identity applies all the time. Not just when it’s convenient as a weak rationale for greed and anti-social behavior.
That’s why it “irritates” me, Bron.
Your perpetual conflation is deceptive at best and ignorant at worst. Or vice versa. Take your pick.
Gene H:
Why does it irratate you so much to have 2 similar ideas equated?
A feral pig is, after all, a pig. It causes more damage but it is just a wild pig.
There is another apt analogy for fascism and socialism: wild pig vs. domestic pig.