Industrialists Charles and David Koch, well known for their climate change denial, have very recently expressed interest in buying newspapers. We all know the Koch brothers by now. They are known to create and support partisan astroturf groups [e.g. Freedomworks and Americans for Prosperity] that have no problem bending and/or denying the truth to fit their tea party narrative.

Remember back in 2008 when Americans for Prosperity passed around a pledge to government officials asking them to “oppose any legislation relating to climate change that includes a net increase in state or local government revenue”? Or when the brothers funded a study on climate change only to have the study conclude that climate change is real? Those are just the sort of shenanigans the Kochs are involved in.

It’s not hard to imagine the level of spinning that might take place in a Koch-owned newspaper, but there’s a group of climate change believers over at Forecast the Facts that have made it simple to toy with this idea. It’s easier to spread misinformation through the media when you own said media, right? Take a look at this entertaining [fictional] version of a Koch-owned L.A. Times newspaper.

In the would-be Koch post, this serious article:

Turns into this denial:

If you want to try “Kochifying” the news, visit kochifythenews.com.

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The Koch family fortune has its roots  in the Metro East area of Illinois, with branches radiating in many directions. The patriarch of the clan, Fred C. Koch, started as an engineer in the oil and gas industry. In 1940, Fred Koch partnered with a fellow MIT alumni to found Wood River Oil and Refining Company. After the elder Koch’s death in 1967 the company was renamed Koch Industries in his honor. The company is currently run by two of Fred Koch’s sons, Charles (CEO) and David (executive VP). These two brothers bought out the remaining heirs of the estate in the 1980’s, in a deal worth over a billion dollars.

Sins against the environment

From the beginning, a major part of Koch Industries has been oil and gas pipelines, with the Wood River- Hartford area of Illinois serving as a major terminus connecting the Wood River refineries with facilities from Indiana, New Orleans, Minnesota and North Texas. This network of pipelines has a long history of problems.

The worst inland spill in American history took place in Vienna MO, in 1983 spilling over 800,000 gallons of oil. Koch Industries was criticized for failing to report the spill to authorities until well after the event. The spill was bad enough that beer tasters at Anheuser Busch in St. Louis reported an “oily smell” to the product they were testing.

According to Wikipedia:

During the 1990s, Koch Industries’s faulty pipelines were responsible for more than 300 oil spills in five states, prompting a landmark penalty of $35 million from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). In Minnesota,[ Koch] was fined an additional $8 million for discharging oil into streams. During the months leading up to the 2000 presidential elections, the company faced even more liability, in the form of a 97-count federal indictment charging it with concealing illegal releases of 91 metric tons of benzene, a known carcinogen, from its refinery in Corpus Christi, Texas.

The Koch Industries website would have us believe that “When challenges arise, Koch companies’ approach is to move quickly to correct the situation (clean up a spill, rectify a reporting issue, etc.) and take responsibility with the appropriate regulatory authorities.” The reality has been that when a spill occurs, the company attempts to escape blame, delays cleanup, and opposes efforts of regulators and officials overseeing the cleanup.

Currently, Koch Industries is pushing for the addition of the “Keystone XL” pipeline to be constructed from Alberta to tie into the current pipelines. This would allow tar sand oil from Alberta to be piped to refineries in Minnesota, and the refinery in Wood River, Illinois. The pipeline developer is lobbying for the same type of environmental waivers for the tar sand pipeline that were granted to BP prior to the Gulf spill, prompting some to label this a “BP on the Prairies”.

Charles and David Koch have become familiar to most Americans as the deep pockets behind the Tea Party. Funding of conservative causes also includes groups such as “Americans for Prosperity” and “Freedomworks”. Totals spent are difficult to track given the wide variety of companies owned or controlled by the Kochs (Georgia-Pacific, Invista, Koch Minerals, etc.) but has been estimated in the hundreds of millions of dollars.

Anti-government hypocrisy

Among the causes that the Kochs, or their proxies, have fought against include healthcare reform, spending millions in political efforts to deny access to healthcare . At the same time, Koch Industries applied for healthcare subsidies made possible by a program vigorously opposed by groups funded by the Koch brothers. They have fought worker’s rights, most dramatically through their support of Governor Walker’s (WI) efforts. PACs funded by the Koch brothers spent $1 million in TV ads attacking Walker’s opponent and contributed $48,000 directly to his campaign.

The Koch brothers argue against government funded assistance at every turn, except when it directly benefits their business. Matador Cattle Company, a Koch brother’s subsidiary, grazes cattle on government-owned land, at no cost. Georgia-Pacific (another Koch owned company) logs national forests with the financial assistance of the federal government. The forest service cuts roads and is paid only a modest fee when vast areas of America’s forests are laid bare.

David Koch ran for Vice-President on the Libertarian ticket in 1980. The platform included the end of Social Security, public schools and a long list of government agencies (FBI, ATF, EPA, etc.) and especially those regulations seen as hindering business. The family has a long history of attempting to influence the political scene. Fred Koch (the company founder) helped found the John Birch Society. His sons have founded The Cato Institute, Heritage Foundation and many others. These groups are pushing America in a direction that benefits the Koch brothers greatly, but not the average American.

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Wisconsin Republican Scott Walker was elected governor, and long time Democratic senator Russ Feingold was defeated, because conservative billionaires, David and Charles Koch, flooded the state with their money in order to influence the elections. Thanks to the Citizen’s United Supreme Court decision, they were able to fund, through various venues, an unprecedented number of non-stop, 24/7, conservative TV and radio ads. Most were negative, and the ones that weren’t, were not forthcoming about the extremist agenda they wished to enact. As George Lakoff notes, this massive amount of political advertising mattered, because “. . .language heard over and over changes brains.” Feingold, and Walker’s Democratic opponent, who had significantly less money, were simply not able to compete against the Koch brothers largesse. From Mother Jones on the Walker race for governor:

According to Wisconsin campaign finance filings, Walker’s gubernatorial campaign received $43,000 from the Koch Industries PAC during the 2010 election. That donation was his campaign’s second-highest, behind $43,125 in contributions from housing and realtor groups in Wisconsin. The Koch’s PAC also helped Walker via a familiar and much-used politicial maneuver designed to allow donors to skirt campaign finance limits. The PAC gave $1 million to the Republican Governors Association, which in turn spent $65,000 on independent expenditures to support Walker. The RGA also spent a whopping $3.4 million on TV ads and mailers attacking Walker’s opponent, Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett. Walker ended up beating Barrett by 5 points. The Koch money, no doubt, helped greatly.

So far, the attention on Scott Walker’s legislative proposal has focused on his effort to revoke Wisconsin public employees’ collective bargaining rights. His major donors, the Kochs, have long backed groups like Americans for Prosperity, the Cato Institute, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, and the Reason Foundation, which have called for the eradication of public-sector unions. They personally vehemently oppose them. But the Koch’s interest in Wisconsin politics goes beyond the issue of unions. They are counting on Walker to enact a core conservative principle by selling off the state’s assets to private interests. And if his bill passes, they will be first in line. Consider these items buried in Walker’s 144-page bill:

16.896 Sale or contractual operation of state-owned heating, cooling, and power plants. (1) Notwithstanding ss. 13.48 (14) (am) and 16.705 (1), the department may sell any state-owned heating, cooling, and power plant or may contract with a private entity for the operation of any such plant, with or without solicitation of bids, for any amount that the department determines to be in the best interest of the state. Notwithstanding ss. 196.49 and 196.80, no approval or certification of the public service commission is necessary for a public utility to purchase, or contract for the operation of, such a plant, and any such purchase is considered to be in the public interest and to comply with the criteria for certification of a project under s. 196.49 (3) (b).

So, to translate, the Koch brother’s reward for drowning Scott Walker in money may be a chance to buy a bunch of publicly owned power plants for a song. The “best interest of the state” phrase in the bill would mean whatever Walker wants it to mean. This is textbook Republican corporatism: privatization, no-bid contracts, deregulation, and naked cronyism.

It comes at no surprise that the Koch brothers already have considerable business interests in Wisconsin. They own Flint Hills Recources, LLC, a leading refining and chemicals company; Koch Pipeline Company, L.P. which operates a pipeline that crosses the state; the C. Reiss Coal Company that supplies coal to power companies; and the Georgia Pacific companies, which has six facilities in the state. And with Walker in the Governor’s mansion, other lucrative business opportunities await them. To underscore their keen interest and ongoing meddling in the state of Wisconsin, they recently bussed in Tea Party members at their expense to have a “rally” for Walker, to counter the teachers who are demonstrating.

The need to understand the many anti-democratic aspects of the Walker bill

There are other time bombs in this bill such as Walker being able to slash Badger Care and other programs for the poor at his discretion outside of the legislative process.

Walker’s “Budget Repair Bill” presents an important political moment for both the state of Wisconsin, and the country. It is a moment when anti-American, anti-democratic conservative forces, which are trying to usher in a new Gilded Age, can be named and stopped in their tracks. To be most effective, the teachers and their supporters demonstrating for the right to collective bargaining need to demonstrate against these other negative implications of the bill as well.

The Democratic legislators fled the state to avoid having this bill shoved through the senate without deliberation, and to allow for better public scrutiny of what it proposes. Hopefully the people of Wisconsin will soon understand just how extreme their governor’s agenda is, and publicly expose and stand against all of the draconian aspects of his bill. If they do, they will provide much needed inspiration and guidance for the rest of the country, especially in those Republican controlled states, whose politicians are well funded by people like the Koch’s, and that are also undergoing similar anti-union and anti-democratic attacks.

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