Democracy Now! : "Kochland"

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“Kochland”: How David Koch Helped Build an Empire to Shape U.S. Politics & Thwart Climate Action

Billionaire conservative donor David Koch died Friday at the age of 79 from prostate cancer. David Koch — who was worth some $42 billion — and his brother Charles poured massive amounts of money into funding climate change denial through conservative think tanks and politicians. The Koch brothers founded the political advocacy group Americans for Prosperity in 2004, which is credited with turning the “tea party” into a full-fledged political movement. They also backed “right-to-work” efforts, which aim to weaken labor rights and quash union membership. The brothers made their fortune running Koch Industries, the second-largest privately held company in the United States. We speak with the business journalist Christopher Leonard, who just last week published a major new book examining the business dealings of the Koch brothers. It’s titled “Kochland: The Secret History of Koch Industries and Corporate Power in America.”

AMY GOODMAN: But “David Koch Was the Ultimate Climate Change Denier.” Now, if he is one individual, that’s his own business. But this affected the entire country. Explain what Kochland is and how he and his brother had such a massive effect on the issue of climate change and denialism in this country.

CHRISTOPHER LEONARD: Yes, I will. And maybe to start, we could back up and look at the corporate empire that made David and Charles Koch the richest — some of the richest people in America. They’ve owned this privately held firm in Wichita, Kansas, for decades, Koch Industries. And as we said earlier, Koch Industries is one of the largest corporations in America. Its annual sales are bigger than Facebook, Goldman Sachs and U.S. Steel combined.

And the thing about Koch Industries is that it specializes in the kinds of businesses that underpin civilization. You couldn’t boycott Koch Industries if you wanted to.

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[ video and transcript at link ]
https://www.democracynow.org/2019/8/27/christopher_leonard_kochland_koch_brothers

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1. Kochland, Part 2

https://www.democracynow.org/2019/8/27/kochland_christopher_leonard_on_the_secret

So, Kochland refers to, first of all, the institution itself. I’ve been a business reporter for 20 years. I’ve never seen anything like this in my life. Charles Koch has written this detailed code of life, called Market-Based Management, and he says it’s the best way to run a company, best way to run a country, best way to run your personal life. The people inside this institution absorb this creed totally. They speak in their own vocabulary. And it’s like its own little world, Kochland. It is sort of Charles Koch’s utopian perfect society. But, of course, there’s a bigger picture here, as well. The United States, more and more, is reflecting what life is like inside that corporation. So, I feel like we’re becoming Kochland more and more all the time.

And this issue of climate change is a really important example. You know, as we said earlier, and we can talk about this, the Koch network is opposed to Trump in many respects. On the issue of climate change, they’re working hand in hand.

[Guy Whitey Corngood]

2. K&Fuckin'R

[2naSalit]

3. K&R

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4. Guardian: Death and destruction: this is David Koch's sad legacy

Alex Kotch
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/aug/27/death-destruction-david-koch-legacy

In 1992, billionaire industrialist David Koch was diagnosed with advanced prostate cancer and given just a few years to live. Thanks to his enormous wealth, he was able to purchase the best treatment in the world, and he survived 27 more years until his death last week.

For all his adult life, he’d led Koch Industries, a diversified manufacturing conglomerate, with his older brother Charles. Now taking in around $110bn per year, the company creates chemicals and fertilizers; it produces synthetic materials such as Lycra; it sells lumber and churns out paper and glass products; it makes electronics components used in weapons systems. But first and foremost, Koch Industries mines and refines petroleum and operates pipelines to spread it throughout North America.

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Not only did Koch help unleash countless metric tons of greenhouse gases from the earth, he was a key funder of climate change denialism, stiff-arming scientists in order to further plunder the earth he was destroying. Revelations in Christopher Leonard’s new book, Kochland, show that Koch played an even greater role in funding climate change denialism than we previously knew. As we careen towards a climate catastrophe that seems more and more likely to happen within the next 11 years, we can rightly pin a portion of the blame on David and his brother.

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5. Koch's legacy is system of dark money

https://www.salemnews.com/opinion/columns/koch-s-legacy-is-system-of-dark-money/article_0f9ed9ad-5c7e-5ab3-a110-5f4ddbad22bc.html

Koch's legacy is system of dark money

Michael Hiltzik

The passing of billionaire David Koch, announced Friday, already is inspiring retrospectives about the noxious influence he and his brother Charles have had on government policies — but it may be better to remember him for his real innovation in the sphere of public discourse.

That’s the creation of a network of moneyed donors so potent and ubiquitous that the voice of the individual voter has been drowned out.

The Koch brothers’ individual efforts to undermine policies on climate change and other problems are bad enough, but the system they pioneered bodes even worse for the future of American democracy. And let’s not ignore that this system has spread throughout American politics, with huge funding networks on the right and the left.

As muckrakers, including Jane Mayer and Christopher Leonard, have documented, the Koch network — the brothers and affiliated entities — spent some $900 million on political activities during the 2016 electoral cycle. The money was not only the brothers’, but came from like-minded millionaires and billionaires. But this army marched to the brothers’ tunes.

The siren call was for a world without regulation, justified by casting doubt on science in climate change and healthcare, among other topics, and fueled by pantsfuls of cash distributed through a vast web of tax-exempt entities.

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