Lest We Forget... Re: Koch Brothers...

[WillyT]

A PEOPLE’S HISTORY OF KOCH INDUSTRIES: HOW STALIN FUNDED THE TEA PARTY MOVEMENT
By Yasha Levine - CLASS WAR FOR IDIOTS / TEA PARTY
This article was first published on Alternet.org
APRIL 17, 2010

“I would rather live under a bridge than live under socialism”

—tea bagger slogan

<snip>

Everyone knows that Tea Party revolutionaries fear and hate socialism about as much as the Antichrist. Which is funny, because the Tea Party movement’s dirty little secret is that it owes its existence to the grandaddy of all Antichrists: the godless empire of the USSR.

What few realize is that the secretive oil billionaires of the Koch family, the main supporters of the right-wing groups that orchestrated the Tea Party movement, would not have the means to bankroll their favorite causes had it not been for the pile of money the family made working for the Bolsheviks in the late 1920s and early 1930s, building refineries, training Communist engineers and laying down the foundation of Soviet oil infrastructure.

The comrades were good to the Kochs. Today Koch Industries has grown into the second-largest private company in America. With an annual revenue of $100 billion, the company was just $6.3 billion shy of first place in 2008. Ownership is kept strictly in the family, with the company being split roughly between right-wing brothers Charles and David Koch, who are worth about $20 billion apiece and are infamous as the largest sponsors of right-wing causes. They bankroll scores of free-market and libertarian think tanks, institutes and advocacy groups. Reason magazine, Heritage Foundation and Cato Institute are just a few of Koch-backed free-market operations. Greenpeace estimates that the Koch family shelled out $25 million from 2005 to 2008 funding the “climate denial machine,” which means they outspent Exxon Mobile three to one.

I first learned about the Kochs in February 2009, when Mark Ames and I were looking into the strange origins of the then-nascent Tea Party movement. Our investigation led us again and again to a handful of right-wing organizations and think tanks directly tied to the Kochs. We were the first to connect the dots and debunk the Tea Party movement’s “grassroots” front, exposing it as billionaire-backed astroturf campaign run by free-market advocacy groups FreedomWorks and Americans For Prosperity, both of which are closely linked to the Koch brothers.

But the Tea Party movement—and Koch family’s obscene wealth—go back more than half a century, all the way to grandpa Fredrick C. Koch, one of the founding members of the far-rightwing John Birch Society which was convinced that evil socialism was taking over America through unions, colored people, Jews, homosexuals, the Kennedys and even Dwight D. Eisenhower.

These days, the Kochs paint themselves as true-believer Libertarians of the Austrian School...

<snip>

More: http://exiledonline.com/a-peoples-history-of-koch-industries-how-stalin-funded-the-tea-party-movement/

*********************************************************************

And...

Koch Brothers Exposed
Katrina vanden Heuvel - TheNation
April 23, 2012 - 5:23 PM ET

Link: http://www.thenation.com/blog/167502/koch-brothers-exposed

[Cirque du So-What]

1. And these reprehensible bastids

have the unmitigated gall to call *us* 'collectivists?'

[WillyT]

2. Yeah... Huh...

[moondust]

3. Hehe.

The irony is awesome!

I have to admit that for a brief moment today, when I heard about their "collectivists" whine, I couldn't help but wonder what the Bolsheviks would have done with the Kochs. Quick and ugly no doubt.



K/R

[SleeplessinSoCal]

4. the more attn on the Kochs, the better

Quote them on the beaches and in the streets. Americans need to know them and their philosiohy well.

[blue neen]

5. Amazing, interesting, and disgusting.

“What Koch was doing was taking all these measurements and then falsifying them on the run sheets,” said Bill Koch. “If the dipstick measured five feet 10 inches and one half inch, they would write down five feet nine and one half inches.”

"That may not sound like much, but Bill Koch said it added up. “Well, that was the beauty of the scheme. Because if they’re buying oil from 50,000 different people, and they’re stealing two barrels from each person. What does that add up to? One year, their data showed they stole a million and a half barrels of oil.”

Crooks, extremely rich crooks.

[WillyT]

6. Yep... And They Are Trying To Buy The Country... And Us...

We need to fight back.

[blue neen]

7. They certainly did buy themselves a complicit Supreme Court.

Which one of them was whining in the WSJ?

[WillyT]

8. Check This Out:

DULink: http://www.democraticunderground.com/10024778121

[blue neen]

9. Yes.

We really do need to get money out of politics.

BTW, the guy listed for PA (checked this out yesterday on another thread) is retiring. Jim Ferlo is one of the good ones, but gerrymandering has done him in. Pennsylvanians hate to see him go.

[WillyT]

11. Yep...

[Rex]

10. IMO, there can never be enough posts about these kockroaches.

So daddy had money, who could have guessed. All that bullshit they talk about hard work...I should have known they were nothing put parasites. Just like The Donald.

[JohnnyRingo]

12. Fred Koch was a Bircher...

If you read anything about The John Birch Society, their basic tenets dovetail nicely with the so called Tea Party movement of today. Just replace the word Obamacare with Medicare and socialist with liberal, and it reads like a carefully written script... which it is.

History often repeats louder in echo. The words "If you don't work, you don't eat" was first shouted so long ago, few people today can recall the dispicable tone of voice.

[WillyT]

13. Exactly !!!

[kitt6]

14. How many blacks are republicans?

So here we are. Cause and effect!