posted
Covert Operations The billionaire brothers who are waging a war against Obama. by Jane Mayer
On May 17th, a black-tie audience at the Metropolitan Opera House applauded as a tall, jovial-looking billionaire took the stage. It was the seventieth annual spring gala of American Ballet Theatre, and David H. Koch was being celebrated for his generosity as a member of the board of trustees; he had recently donated $2.5 million toward the company’s upcoming season, and had given many millions before that. Koch received an award while flanked by two of the gala’s co-chairs, Blaine Trump, in a peach-colored gown, and Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg, in emerald green. Kennedy’s mother, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, had been a patron of the ballet and, coincidentally, the previous owner of a Fifth Avenue apartment that Koch had bought, in 1995, and then sold, eleven years later, for thirty-two million dollars, having found it too small.
The gala marked the social ascent of Koch, who, at the age of seventy, has become one of the city’s most prominent philanthropists. In 2008, he donated a hundred million dollars to modernize Lincoln Center’s New York State Theatre building, which now bears his name. He has given twenty million to the American Museum of Natural History, whose dinosaur wing is named for him. This spring, after noticing the decrepit state of the fountains outside the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Koch pledged at least ten million dollars for their renovation. He is a trustee of the museum, perhaps the most coveted social prize in the city, and serves on the board of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, where, after he donated more than forty million dollars, an endowed chair and a research center were named for him.
One dignitary was conspicuously absent from the gala: the event’s third honorary co-chair, Michelle Obama. Her office said that a scheduling conflict had prevented her from attending. Yet had the First Lady shared the stage with Koch it might have created an awkward tableau. In Washington, Koch is best known as part of a family that has repeatedly funded stealth attacks on the federal government, and on the Obama Administration in particular.
With his brother Charles, who is seventy-four, David Koch owns virtually all of Koch Industries, a conglomerate, headquartered in Wichita, Kansas, whose annual revenues are estimated to be a hundred billion dollars. The company has grown spectacularly since their father, Fred, died, in 1967, and the brothers took charge. The Kochs operate oil refineries in Alaska, Texas, and Minnesota, and control some four thousand miles of pipeline. Koch Industries owns Brawny paper towels, Dixie cups, Georgia-Pacific lumber, Stainmaster carpet, and Lycra, among other products. Forbes ranks it as the second-largest private company in the country, after Cargill, and its consistent profitability has made David and Charles Koch—who, years ago, bought out two other brothers—among the richest men in America. Their combined fortune of thirty-five billion dollars is exceeded only by those of Bill Gates and Warren Buffett.
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.
In a statement, Koch Industries said that the Greenpeace report “distorts the environmental record of our companies.” And David Koch, in a recent, admiring article about him in New York, protested that the “radical press” had turned his family into “whipping boys,” and had exaggerated its influence on American politics. But Charles Lewis, the founder of the Center for Public Integrity, a nonpartisan watchdog group, said, “The Kochs are on a whole different level. There’s no one else who has spent this much money. The sheer dimension of it is what sets them apart. They have a pattern of lawbreaking, political manipulation, and obfuscation. I’ve been in Washington since Watergate, and I’ve never seen anything like it. They are the Standard Oil of our times.”
A few weeks after the Lincoln Center gala, the advocacy wing of the Americans for Prosperity Foundation—an organization that David Koch started, in 2004—held a different kind of gathering. Over the July 4th weekend, a summit called Texas Defending the American Dream took place in a chilly hotel ballroom in Austin. Though Koch freely promotes his philanthropic ventures, he did not attend the summit, and his name was not in evidence. And on this occasion the audience was roused not by a dance performance but by a series of speakers denouncing President Barack Obama. Peggy Venable, the organizer of the summit, warned that Administration officials “have a socialist vision for this country.”
Five hundred people attended the summit, which served, in part, as a training session for Tea Party activists in Texas. An advertisement cast the event as a populist uprising against vested corporate power. “Today, the voices of average Americans are being drowned out by lobbyists and special interests,” it said. “But you can do something about it.” The pitch made no mention of its corporate funders. The White House has expressed frustration that such sponsors have largely eluded public notice. David Axelrod, Obama’s senior adviser, said, “What they don’t say is that, in part, this is a grassroots citizens’ movement brought to you by a bunch of oil billionaires.”
David Axelrod (2009- )Senior Advisor to the President Jared Bernstein (2009- )Chief Economist and Economic Policy Advisor to the Vice President Rahm Emanuel (2009-2010) Chief of Staff Lee Feinstein (2009) Campaign Foreign Policy Advisor Gary Gensler (2009- ) Chair of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission Elena Kagan (2009-2010) Solicitor General of the United States Ronald Klain (2009- ) Chief of Staff to the Vice President Jacob Lew (2010- ) Director of the Office of Management and Budget Eric Lynn (2009- ) Middle East Policy Advisor Peter Orszag (2009-2010) Director of the Office of Management and Budget Dennis Ross (2009- ) Special Advisor for the Gulf and Southwest Asia to the Secretary of State Mara Rudman (2009- ) Foreign Policy Advisor Mary Schapiro (2009- ) Chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission Dan Shapiro (2009- ) Head of Middle East desk at the National Security Council Susan Sher (2009- ) First Lady's Chief of Staff James B. Steinberg (2009- ) Deputy Secretary of State Lawrence Summers (2009- ) Director National Economic Council Mona Sutphen (2009- ) Deputy White House Chief of Staff
_________________________________________
although blacks got to be president, Jews aint made it yet
Posts: 43095 | From: , | Registered: Jan 2010
| IP: Logged |
posted
You guys do understand that no single group anywhere did more for black civil rights in the 50's and 60's than Jews. With all the Jew baiting that goes on here that fact needs to be remembered.
Posts: 2036 | From: Texas | Registered: Sep 2009
| IP: Logged |
posted
Hammer Black people helped ourselves for the most part and there were plenty of Liberal non Jews as well as White Christian Abolitionists during the Slave Era.
That said there are good Jews and bad Jews, just as there are Good Blacks and evil blacks..etc. Its just people seem to have a problem when the bad amoung the Jews are pointed out, It amazes me how people who call themselves followers of Christ can ignore the plight of the People of Palestine and lament the Jew victims. the Jews are damn guilty of Persecution, Apartied and Ethnic Cleansing in Palestine just as Hamas.
You have no problem not pandering to blacks, you seem to be very comfortable pointing out our shortcomings so stop pandering to Jews who consider you nothing more than a Goyim Christian.
Posts: 8812 | From: The fear of his majesty had entered their hearts, they were powerless | Registered: Nov 2007
| IP: Logged |
posted
Jari, I am not pandering to anyone. I am simply making a case for balance here. Jews in america were very important in the march toward black civil rights. In fact they were a major part of the entire liberal political movement in America after world war II. As a history teacher I know that one of the major themes of human history is the continual displacement of one group of people by another, over and over again. Naturally I feel for those who suffer in any group in the world. The Palestinians fought for their land and were defeated, just as brave Creek warriors were defeated by Jackson or Carthage was destroyed in a gallant struggle with Rome. Modern liberals call the losers of these battles victims, nothing could be further from the truth.
-------------------- The tree of liberty is watered by the blood of tyrants. Posts: 2036 | From: Texas | Registered: Sep 2009
| IP: Logged |
posted
A music video I picked up from a secondary link Goddessnetwork that Nesben introduced us to. But really what if the tea-party was black?something to stop and pause about these brothers are on point.
UBBFriend: Email this page to someone!
Printer-friendly view of this topic