Alright, so Cain gets all the headlines. Yesterday with characteristic bombast at the meeting with Americans for Prosperity Cain blared his close connections to the Koch brothers. This gathering would hit the headlines and the blogosphere later in the day when a confrontation between Occupy DC protesters and an Americans for Prosperity participant resulted in three people being sent to the hospital. Fair-and-Unbalanced-5, DC reported that the vehicle struck two people, kept driving, and then struck a third person sending all to the hospital with serious though non-life threating injuries. The driver won’t be cited because as the police said he had the light. Really? You can use that? How many times I would have loved to while navigating the frustration of NY streets.
In a quote that may come back to haunt him, but probably won’t, Cain nearly shouted that “…This may be a breaking news announcement for the media — I am the Koch brothers’ brother from another mother”. In a clever piece of theatrics Cain created a substantial field of theatrical smoke. In doing so he avoided the thrust of the NY Times article which was Cain’s association with Mark Block, his smokin’ campaign manager. Both were Koch Funded Americans for Prosperity operatives together and spent a considerable amount of time on the right wing rubber chicken circuit before Koch money created the Tea party and gave them both new career paths which have now morphed into this improbable run for the presidency. The NY Times article raised questions as to whether Block, through a splinter group called Prosperity USA had illegally funded various expenses of the Cain Campaign to the tune of $40,000.
Of course there are those that will suggest that this is all just the lame stream media casting aspersions on Cain and his campaign, but the record of illegality on the Koch brothers, and Block is extensive, real and documented. Block was previously barred for three years from Wisconsin politics and paid a $15,000 fine for illegally coordinating state Supreme Court Justice Jon Wilcox’s 1997 re-election campaign with a special interest group that favored school vouchers. In a situation eerily prescient of Cain’s current sexual harassment troubles Block’s settlement did not include an admission of guilt which now allows Block to tell the AP that the charges were “ridiculous”.
The Koch brother’s record of malfeasance and criminality is deeper and eminently more troubling. The Koch Brothers run one of the largest privately held conglomerates in the world. Being privately held company they have no legal responsibility to report much about their company and the intensely private conglomerate does just that. There is no definitive record of either the actual sales or profits of the company, though most estimates are in the neighborhood of $100 billion per year in revenues.
Koch Industries was started as an oil company in 1927 by Fred Koch, an early member of the John Birch Society. Fred was an early adviser to the founder of the anti-communist John Birch Society, which battled the civil rights movement claiming at one point that ”The civil rights movement in the United States... has not been infiltrated by the Communists, as you now frequently hear. It has been deliberately and almost wholly created by the Communists patiently building up to this present stage for more than forty years.”
Fred’s sons Charles and David (the brothers) provided the critical early seed money to the Tea Party. That money is largely responsible for turning the Tea Party which initially mobilized around anger at TARP money bailing out big financial institutions and Wall Street—something exactly on track with the OWS crowd. The TP was at the outset an anti-big business/ anti-government/ anti-Wall Street somewhat “populist” organization, but the source of its funds, the Koch brothers, turned it into an arm of the most conservative arm of the party. Working closely with Dick Armey’s FreedomWorks, another privately (and through some insurance scam highly questionably) funded political organization, the Tea Party, which while exhibiting come real ugliness on its fringes, did originally press some populist thrust. All of that is now lost. But it was that populist anger that caused some to seek a confluence of thought between the OWS movement and the TP-- which to some extent was partially and ironically real-- before the reordering of the TP priorities by the Koch brothers and Dick Armey.
Koch industries is a large conglomerate with holdings in consumer products with well-known brands such as Brawny, Vanity Fair, Mardi Gras, Dixie paper products. There are calls for boycotts of these products, but there is little likelihood that that would have much effect on the kingdom which still draws much of its treasure from energy and large industrial projects where the record of corruption is extensive.
In an extensive piece from early October, Bloomberg Markets of all people summarized the unethical record of Koch:
· In 2008 an internal Koch Industries investigation turned up a pattern of bribery and other illegal activities in a division working on a contract basis on distillation, pollution control and water filtration equipment in several countries, including Nigeria, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia. The whistle blower, Ludmila Egorova-Farines, Koch Industries Compliance and Ethics manager, was fired and is currently in litigation for wrongful termination in France
· In 1999, a Texas jury imposed a $296 million verdict on a Koch pipeline unit -- the largest compensatory damages judgment in a wrongful death case against a corporation in U.S. history. The jury found that the company’s negligence had led to a butane pipeline rupture that fueled an explosion that killed two teenagers. Trial testimony indicated that Koch employees aware of the danger in the leaks ordered employees to ignore it, thus saving the expense in repair.
· True American patriots Koch companies worked extensively and illegally with Iran over a ten year period. In contravention of US law, Koch industries worked with the Iranians to build and develop a methanol plant.
· In April 2001, the Koch Petroleum Group pled guilty to a felony charge of lying to the government about its benzene emissions. A report to the Texas Natural Resource Conservation Commission disclosed only 1/149th of the actual benzene pollution. The extremely profitable plant earned almost $200 million for the company in 1995, the year of the violation; the benzene emissions would have cost $7 million to control. In an early sign of a pattern that would be repeated again and again the whistle blower, an environmental technician released the information on misreporting. This led to fines, which led to the employee being moved to an empty office with no tasks and no e-mail access. Of course, she also quit.
· According to the Senate Special Committee on Investigations Koch industries took 1.95 million barrels of oil from Indian Land and didn’t pay for it from 1986 to 1988. The moneys were actually owed the Federal Government which then passed a portion on to Indian Tribes. The Senate referred the case to the Justice Department, but no indictment followed. In December 1999 in a civil trial, the jury found that "Koch Industries had made 24,587 false claims in buying oil, underpaying the U.S. government for royalties on Native American land from 1985 to 1989." In the end they paid a small civil fine which amounted to a fraction of the actual theft.
The Brothers grim have an interesting record of job creation and philanthropy in addition to their political giving. As reported by Rachel Maddow while the Koch brothers net worth grew by about 50% from 2007 to 2011 ($34B to approx $50 Billion) the number of employees of Koch Industries has shrunk by nearly 20% from 80,000 to 67,000. Think about that the next time you hear Boehner or Cantor talk about job creators. We can be certain that further tax breaks which the brothers advocate with substantial political corruption, I mean contributions, will free them up to employ more people. So as Bill Murray would say, “We got that going for us.”
According to Bloomberg the brothers in the tradition of Rockefeller, Carnegie, and other robber barons of the early 20th century do have an extensive record of supporting the arts and education at favored institutions. They have supported Kansas Special Olympics, Big Brothers Big Sisters (a charity near and dear to me), the Red Cross, the Salvation Army, victims of the March 11 earthquake and tsunami in Japan, and ironically considering their flagrant record on the environment the Nature Conservancy.
But according to Mother Jones the brothers through their PAC contributed over $43,000 to the anti-collective bargaining campaign of Scott Walker in Wisconsin. Then, through a legal loophole Koch Industries ceded additional funds well beyond the legal limit by contributing $1 million to the Republican Governors Association, which in turn contributed additional corruption to Walker. The boys supported Scott Brown in Massachusetts, no Cain for sure and certainly liberal for their neo-fascist tastes, but the best they were ever going to be able to buy in deep blue Massachusetts.
According to www.opensecrets.org since the beginning of the 2006 election cycle, Koch’s PAC spent more on contributions to federal candidates than any other oil-and-gas sector PAC. For that period, Koch Industries and its executives spent $2.51 million compared to next three biggest contributors: Exxon ($1.71 million), Valero ($1.68 million), and Chevron ($1.22 million). They contributed to a stunning 62 of 87 members of the 2010 freshman class of Republicans on the house, many of these Tea Party followers, all of whom signed the Grover Norquist “No-Tax-Increases-Ever-For-Any-Reason” Oath. 90% of total Koch corruption/ contributions, went to the “fight for the little guys” Republicans.
The pattern of marginally legal to wholly illegal business activities then funding efforts to influence political races at all levels whether through contributions or lobbying where they spent $20M in 2008, mostly on stopping Obama’s Healthcare reform, and $35 million since, is clear. These are business investments designed to increase their wealth. As evidenced by the growth in their net worth it appears that their strategy has paid off handsomely. The Koch brothers see the United States Government, the governments of the states, the legislative and regulatory arms of both institutions, as business issues to be solved though their political largesse. With a $50 billion fortune their giving is a fraction of their net worth, and from a purely business perspective a totally logical, although deeply corrupting, investment.
This pattern of corruption has not stopped almost every single repub candidate for President from genuflecting at their slimy altar. Perry has received over $50,000 from the Koch brothers. Bachman has received more than $25,000 of their corrupt cash. Cain is the biggest recipient but it may take years to unravel the series of front organizations set up by the Koch brothers which are funding him. The Citizens United decision is the direct reason for this culture being allowed to hide corporate involvement in American politics.
Romney with a net worth of $200 to $250 million can fund a lot but alas he does not have billionaire-deep pockets. He has been off the radar all week, thanks to the silly season of a drugged up (or whatever) Perry and an amnesia suffering (or whatever) Cain. But Romney is aggressively after the billionaire brothers endorsement. According the Washington Examiner Romney badly wants the endorsement of David Koch by far the most engaged of the two brothers contributing over 2/3 overall of what the family spreads around. An internal Romney campaign memo spotlighted by the examiner calls the Koch brothers the “financial engine of the Tea Party”, something the brothers foolishly deny, though Romney and his staff firmly believe is true.
So there he was on Friday, Romney laying out this platform for the rabid crowd of sliver haired and finely suited thugs and bankers, wall streeters, and conservative middle, lower and working class rabble so happy to be in the presence of wealth which serves them not at all except in its ability to feed their deep and abiding anger. One of the crowd would later run over three Occupy DC protesters with his car—though, keep in mind, he did have the light. Cain is a side show at this point, a circus act meant to distract. Here’s the real news. Romney proposed:
* Turning Medicaid, the primary healthcare program for the poor--Already uneven in its allocation of resources based on certain (especially southern—read Texas, for example) states record of hostility to the poor—back to the states in its totality.
* Cutting federal spending to no more than 20% of GDP from its current level of 24%
* A constitutional balanced budget amendment
* Reverse Obama’s defense cuts which is the one area for cutting that everyone except the most right wing agree is long overdue. Here Romney panders shamelessly on a point that he knows will never hold up in real budget negotiations.
* Repeal Obamacare, a program that has so often been pointed out closely resembles the program he passed while governor.
* Eliminating all funding for AMTRAK
* Eliminating funding for the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, as well as National Public Broadcasting. While it is well known that all of these targets are frequently raised as budget reduction targets, all are the frequently attacked by the right because all three are perceived as being liberal and anti-corporate, mostly because their lesser reliance on corporate advertising allows them to report on things which do not find corporations always in a favorable light.
* Reducing money an unspecified amount to Planned Parenthood. Previously Romney has said that he would eliminate completely the $75 million the Fed supplies to the women’s health organization. This is another budget neutral position which mostly provides red meat to the thugs on the right. That is $75 Million with an “M” not a “B”. Romney estimates that In addition to the $75 Mil in PP money the Federal government spends an additional $225 million in other family planning environments and wants to save all that money, all of it.
* The repeal of Davis Bacon enacted in 1931, which guarantees workers handling federal contacts to be paid the prevailing wage in a community. While it cannot be argued that the repeal of this law would reduce the cost of many government contracts, it should be noted that in absence of any other legislation protecting worker rights, this proposal dovetails with the anti-union efforts which the Koch brothers have championed across the country which would seek to balance government budgets on the back of middle class working men and women.
I am hard pressed to believe Romney, a scion of Liberal Republican politics from the east, actually believes all this claptrap, but he is convinced that this is the only way to get office and we can be sure that if elected he will believe it will be the way to maintain power. Because in the end this is political power chasing the money of the extremely corrupt, conservative right wing America.
Romney argued that fiscal responsibility is not “heartless”, and pointed to what everyone knows are programs or expenditures weighted down with bureaucratic ineptitude and waste. He noted other places to cut such as pentagon procurement, fraud in government contracts, job training which is wildly inefficient though critical in this technology driven age, the size of the federal work force, and overlapping departmental oversight.
He did in fairness mention a three stage plan on Social Security which is certain to be something like the real compromise we will eventually see there. Romney’s SS plan included no steps on those near retirement, a higher retirement age down the road, and lesser benefits for those that can afford it. The Koch family wants to eliminate Social Security, so they probably weren’t that thrilled with this proposal. Romney was a total demagogue on Obama’s plan for Medicare cuts and brought up the old health care “rationing” lie.
Romney made repeated reference to the “immorality” of turning this generations debts over to the our children and grandchildren but never once asked the group of overfed, overly pampered slugs in front of him to contribute a dollar to the effort of national reconstruction.
Wouldn’t be prudent to kneel at the altar of greed and explain a truthful or balanced narrative, because where the big money sits, nothing but totally loyalty to the crown will do. As the wildly undisciplined Cain and the slick side show which is Rick Perry fade into the rear view mirror we need to remember the corruption that is at the heart of where the real battle is located and why the movements happening across the country are so important. Occupy!
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