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Tag: koch industries
Koch Industries Still Operating In Russia Despite Massive Corporate Shutdowns

Koch Industries Still Operating In Russia Despite Massive Corporate Shutdowns

Award-winning journalist Jane Mayer, who literally wrote the book on the Koch Brothers and Koch Industries, pointed to a report published Monday stating, “Koch Industries continues doing business in Russia.” Despite major U.S. corporations shutting down operations after Putin’s illegal war on Ukraine, major U.S.-based multinational corporations, from Apple to Disney to McDonald’s, have responded by pulling out of Vladimir Putin’s Russia.

Mayer’s 2016 book “Dark Money” focuses on Charles Koch and (the now late) David Koch, the powerful conservative billionaire Koch Brothers.

Monday morning in his widely-read newsletter Popular Information Judd Legum reported Koch Industries doesn’t seem to be joining the American movement to isolate Putin and Russia – even after his forces have slaughtered thousands of innocent civilians in Ukraine.

“Guardian Industries,” writes Legum, “is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Koch Industries, acquired in 2017. Guardian, a manufacturer of industrial glass and other products, is based in Auburn Hills, Michigan but has production facilities around the world.”

Guardian has two glass production plants that operate in Russia. One facility is in Ryazan, Russia, about 120 miles southeast of Moscow. The company added “a new jumbo laminated glass production line” to that facility in August 2021. Another facility is located in Rostov, Russia, near the border with Ukraine. The Rostov plant, which began operations about a decade ago, cost $220 million to build and produces “Guardian’s high-performance, energy-efficient ClimaGuard(R) (residential) and SunGuard(R) (commercial) glass products for construction of homes, offices, retail, health-care and other facilities.” It is capable of producing “900 tons of glass per day.”

Mayer, an investigative journalist who is a staff writer for The New Yorker, also wrote an article about the Koch Brothers, in 2010: “The billionaire brothers who are waging a war against Obama.”

Mayer’s piece suggests the Koch Brothers had funded and fueled the Tea Party almost since its inception.

A Republican campaign consultant who has done research on behalf of Charles and David Koch said of the Tea Party, “The Koch brothers gave the money that founded it. It’s like they put the seeds in the ground. Then the rainstorm comes, and the frogs come out of the mud—and they’re our candidates!”

And it paid off.

“The anti-government fervor infusing the 2010 elections represents a political triumph for the Kochs. By giving money to ‘educate,’ fund, and organize Tea Party protesters, they have helped turn their private agenda into a mass movement.”

So where did the Koch money originally come from?

Mayer on Monday reminded America:

For those who would like more information, here’s The New York Times on Mayer’s 2016 book:

The father of the billionaires Charles G. and David H. Koch helped construct a major oil refinery in Nazi Germany that was personally approved by Adolf Hitler, according to a new history of the Kochs and other wealthy families.

Mayer’s “book is largely focused on the Koch family, stretching back to its involvement in the far-right John Birch Society and the political and business activities of the father, Fred C. Koch, who found some of his earliest business success overseas in the years leading up to World War II. One venture was a partnership with the American Nazi sympathizer William Rhodes Davis, who, according to Ms. Mayer, hired Mr. Koch to help build the third-largest oil refinery in the Third Reich, a critical industrial cog in Hitler’s war machine.”

Reprinted with permission from Alternet

12 Ways Gary Johnson Is A Hardcore Right-Wing Radical

12 Ways Gary Johnson Is A Hardcore Right-Wing Radical

A recent NBC News/Quinnipiac poll reveals that more than a quarter of young voters—many who had supported the presidential bid of Sen. Bernie Sanders—plan to cast their presidential ballots for Libertarian Party candidate Gary Johnson. Democrats are increasingly nervous that Johnson’s candidacy could pull more voters from Hillary Clinton than from her Republican rival, Donald Trump, especially in key states like Colorado and Wisconsin. While Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein draws mostly progressive voters, Johnson’s support hails from the breadth of the political spectrum, making it more difficult to suss out. However, because he is on the ballot in all 50 states (Stein is not), most pollsters consider his campaign to be a greater threat to Clinton’s chances in some swing states. And because the U.S. uses the electoral college system to determine the outcome of presidential elections, that could matter on November 8, no matter Clinton’s overall support among the general population.

Johnson’s former adviser, Roger Stone, is now advising the Trump campaign, and has talked in the past of how to use a third-party candidate to split an opponent’s vote.

Former New Mexico governor Gary Johnson has emphasized his support for marijuana legalization and touts an anti-war stance in an attempt to lure progressives to his cause. But progressives are likely less aware of his links to the radical right and the Koch brothers, as well as his billionaire-coddling tax policies. AlterNet found that the largest corporate donor to his campaign is a California polluter, and that the pro-Johnson political action committee, Purple PAC, is primarily financed by a member of the radical right involved with efforts to privatize public education.

Here we examine a few of Johnson’s alarming stances and ties.

1. Opposes federal guarantees for student loans. In June, Johnson told Julia Glum of the International Business Times that the reason college tuition is so high is that federal government-guaranteed loans eliminate competition for students. At the crux of Johnson’s argument is that if you don’t have the money up front to attend college, you shouldn’t have the opportunity to attend college.

2. Opposes virtually all forms of gun control. Even more trigger-happy than most of the Republicans in Congress—who wouldn’t even pass loophole-closing gun legislation in the wake of the Orlando and Sandy Hook mass shootings—Johnson has bought into the National Rifle Association’s “good-guy-with-a-gun” trope, which argues that levels of gun violence would decrease if everybody had a gun.

3. Opposes the minimum wage. “I do not support the federal minimum wage,” Johnson told CNN in June. In July, he told the Washington Examiner, if given the chance, “I would sign legislation to abolish it. I don’t think it should be established and I, having been in business, having employed a thousand people myself, the minimum wage was never an issue.” But if you think he’s all for a state-level minimum wage, consider this: In 1999, during his first term as New Mexico governor, Johnson vetoed a bill that would have raised his state’s minimum wage from $4.25 an hour to $5.65.

4. Opposes equal-pay laws. According to the website ISideWith.com, Johnson answered the following when asked whether he supports requiring employers to pay men and women the same for performing the same job: “No, there are too many other variables such as education, experience, and tenure that determine a fair salary.”

5. Opposes collective bargaining for public employees. When it comes to his stance toward labor unions, Johnson is on par with Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker. Like the Koch-linked Walker, Johnson opposes allowing public employees to collectively bargain. In May 1999, Johnson vetoed a bill that would have renewed the contracts of the state’s public employees, as well as one that would have renewed the state’s collective bargaining law that covered state employees.

6. Proposes cuts to Social Security and removing Medicare and Medicaid from federal control. Johnson says he believes in “devolving” Medicare and Medicaid programs to the states, and raising the retirement age for collecting Social Security. Given his druthers, Johnson would also means-test eligibility for Social Security.

7. Supports private prisons. Johnson touts the discredited notion that private prisons are more cost-effective than public facilities while adhering to state and federal standards. When Johnson came into office in New Mexico, the state was housing some 700 prisoners outside its borders because the Department of Justice had found New Mexico’s facilities to be inadequate for the number of prisoners held by the state. Johnson brought in private contractors to build two new prisons. But in April 1999, one of the prisons run by Wackenhut Corrections Corporation erupted into violence when prison administrators refused to provide Native American prisoners the firewood needed to practice their spiritual traditions, as mandated by law. That same month, Johnson vetoed a bill that would have provided enhanced oversight of New Mexico’s privately run prisons.

8. Gave a sole-bidder contract to Koch Industries. In 1998, Gov. Johnson announced that Koch Materials, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Koch Industries, was contracted by the state for a $323 million highway project that involved the widening of N.M. Highway 44 to four lanes. A loophole in the controversial $62 million (on top of the construction costs) warranty provision of the contract, as well as the relegation of payment to federal highway funds (after Johnson vetoed the use of a gas tax for such projects) ultimately cost the taxpayers of New Mexico some $20 million a year in federal highway funds over the course of the next five gubernatorial administrations. After winning the contract, Koch Industries donated the maximum allowable $5,000 to Johnson’s re-election campaign.

9. May have Koch backing for 2016 effort. The Daily Caller, a right-wing website,breathlessly reported in May an anonymous Johnson campaign staffer’s assertion that David Koch had pledged “tens of millions of dollars” to bankroll Johnson’s 2016 campaign. (David Koch was the Libertarian Party’s 1980 vice-presidential nominee.) According to reporter Drew Johnson, “[a] Koch spokesman declined to comment on record.” But after his article was published at the Daily Caller, Drew Johnson wrote, the unnamed spokesman said Koch had not pledged his support to any presidential candidate. So, who knows? You don’t have to pledge your support in order to pass money to a PAC.

0. Uses dirty tricksters. In his 2012 presidential campaign on the Libertarian Party ticket, the Johnson campaign employed several unsavory operatives, as documented by independent reporter Mark Ames. They included Maureen Otis, a right-wing vote-caging specialist affiliated with the anti-immigrant Minutemen Civil Defense Force militia group; Jim Lacy, also involved with the Minutemen; and birther propagandist Floyd Brown, who also created the infamous racist Willie Horton ad that many credit with having won George H.W. Bush the presidency. Then there’s Roger Stone, now an adviser to the Trump campaign.

11. Accepted $1 million in PAC money from anti-education right-wing donor.Since September 8, an entity called Purple PAC has purchased $550,000 in airtime and online advertising on behalf of Johnson. Founded by former Cato Institute president Ed Crane, Purple PAC has few donors, and is primarily bankrolled by Jeffrey Yass, an options trader whose pet cause is the privatization of public education. In the 2016 election cycle, Yass, who has donated $1 million to Purple PAC, sits on the Cato board with David Koch. Yass is also known for his work with Students First PAC, a group formed by the right-wing Betsy DeVos, a member of the Koch network and the religious right. The PAC shared its name with the Students First initiative of Michelle Rhee, the former chancellor of the Washington, D.C. public schools who is a star proponent of education privatization.

12. Top corporate contributor slapped with $1.5 million pollution fine. The top corporate contributor to the Johnson campaign (as opposed to PACs) is Morning Star Packing Company, an agribusiness tomato grower and processor of tomato products. Morning Star is also the top donor to AlternativePAC, which is behind a purported “matching service” between liberal and conservative voters inclined toward Johnson in order to falsely assure such voters they won’t be skewing the election toward either Clinton or Trump should they cast a vote for Johnson. In March, the Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board in California slapped the company with a $1.5 million fine for illegally enlarging wastewater ponds, polluting groundwater with excess salts, nitrates and organic waste.

 

Published by permission of AlterNet.

Charles Koch’s Disturbing High School Economics Project Teaches ‘Sacrificing Lives for Profits’

Charles Koch’s Disturbing High School Economics Project Teaches ‘Sacrificing Lives for Profits’

Charles Koch is known for being CEO of industrial giant Koch Industries and a chief financier of the massive conservative political operation he runs with his brother David. In recent years, student activists and investigative journalists have exposed another of Koch’s hats: mega-donor to hundreds of colleges and universities, often funding free-market-focused academic centers housed at public and private schools alike. One Koch-funded program is advocating cutthroat economics to grade school students, even sacrificing lives for profits.

Anti-tax industrialist billionaires like Charles and David Koch stand to gain a lot by financing higher education programs tailored to their ideologies. Richard Fink, the Kochs’ right-hand man for decades, laid out their “Structure of Social Change,” the plan they devised in the late 1970s to shape society with their libertarian ideals. The plan begins with funding academic programs that favor laissez-faire economics, resulting in academic papers promoting the free market and chastising regulation and taxation. Next, think tanks they fund repackage the academic work into more easily digestible policy proposals that “citizen activists” (actually Koch-funded “social welfare” groups like Americans for Prosperity) use to pressure lawmakers.

From 2005 to 2014, the Charles Koch Foundation doled out nearly $108 million to colleges and universities. The school that has accepted the second highest total from the Charles Koch Foundation from 2005 to 2014 is Florida State University, whose economics department entered into a 2008 agreement that gave the foundation a say in its curriculum and hiring decisions, as Dave Levinthal of the Center for Public Integrity reported. One part of the 2008 agreement, which proposed a $6.6 million budget to be funded by the Charles Koch Foundation and unnamed “Donor Partners,” established a “Program for Excellence in Economic Education” within the Gus A. Stavros Center for the Advancement of Free Enterprise and Economic Education, part of the economics department. Annual reports confirm these funding arrangements.

The 2008 Koch agreement also funded professorships, postdoctoral fellowships, an undergraduate program and administrative costs for the “Program for the Study of Political Economy and Free Enterprise,” part of the Stavros Center as well.

The Stavros Center promotes “Common Sense Economics,” a free-market-focused book coauthored by the director of the Stavros Center, James Gwartney, and accompanying course materials for economics teachers all the way down to the kindergarten level. The center, along with programs at other colleges and universities, hosts workshops for teachers who want to offer Common Sense Economics courses at their schools; one such workshopoccurred on February 4-5 of this year, hosted by the Excellence in Economic Education program.

Under “Readings Reflective of Common Sense” on the “Fun Readings” page of the Common Sense Economics website, one probably not-so-fun selection sticks out. “Sacrificing Lives for Profits,” written by Common Sense Economics coauthor Dwight Lee, actually argues that we’d all be better off if companies cut corners, even risking customers’ lives, in the name of profit:

“The charge that sways juries and offends public sensitivities … is that greedy corporations sacrifice human lives to increase their profits. Is this charge true? Of course it is. But this isn’t a criticism of corporations; rather it is a reflection of the proper functioning of a market economy. Corporations routinely sacrifice the lives of some of their customers to increase profits, and we are all better off because they do. That’s right, we are lucky to live in an economy that allows corporations to increase profits by intentionally selling products less safe than could be produced. The desirability of sacrificing lives for profits may not be as comforting as milk, cookies and a bedtime story, but it follows directly from a reality we cannot wish away.”

Lee gives the example of expensive safety features in cars. With cheaper, less safe cars, he argues, consumers would be free to spend more money on (overpriced) education and (overpriced) health care, ignoring compelling economic arguments for free education and single-payer health care, both of which might have a chance if it weren’t for the extremely low tax policies he no doubt supports. The longer life expectancy that comes with more education and health care, he thinks, far outweighs the occasional traffic death due to dangerous automobiles, yet he apparently overlooks the fact that the healthiest, most highly educated individual could die in an instant from poorly manufactured brakes or shoddy paneling.

Dwight Lee is a senior fellow with the O’Neil Center for Global Markets and Freedom in Southern Methodist University’s business school, which has helddiscussions featuring sweatshop proponent Benjamin Powell of Texas Tech University. SMU, based in Dallas, Texas, received almost $586,000 from the Charles Koch Foundation from 2005 to 2014, and the school just announced a $3.5 million grant from the foundation, along with $3.5 million more from Rick Perry mega-donor and Ted Cruz supporter Darwin Deason, to found a criminal justice reform center. As it turns out, the O’Neil Center has teamed up with the Libre Institute, part of the Kochs’ effort to engage Latino voters, to run free enterprise teaching programs.

Lee is also a fellow at the Independent Institute, formerly funded in part by the David H. Koch Charitable Foundation, and an “expert” at the Heartland Institute, which has received funding from the Charles Koch Foundation and the Claude R. Lambe Foundation, another Koch-led foundation that’s now closed. The professor previously held faculty positions at several other schools including George Mason University, also known as “Koch U,” which has raked in by far the most money from the Charles Koch Foundation, the majority going to its two free-market academic centers, the Mercatus Center and the Institute for Humane Studies, at nearly $78 million since 2005.

Students at FSU found “Sacrificing Lives for Profits” and attended the February 4 Common Sense Economics kickoff event, distributing flyers about the Stavros Center’s Koch funding and alerting participants to the author’s enthusiasm for sacrificing lives for profit. They later demonstrated outside the building during the reception.

Photo Credit: Paul Rutovsky

Ralph Wilson, a doctoral candidate at FSU who has led efforts to expose the university’s Koch ties, took part in the demonstration. He wrote in an email to me:

Rather than teaching economics, FSU’s agreement has let the Koch network propagate pro-corporate propaganda into K-16 classrooms all over the country, providing intellectual justifications for a moral trade-off: lives for profit … The curriculum is a mish-mash of recycled free-market essays from Koch-funded think tanks patched together by corporate academics.

Despite documents that clearly outline how the Charles Koch Foundation’s grant established the Program for Excellence in Economic Education, professors and university officials have gone to great lengths to deny this connection. According to Wilson, FSU officials denied that the workshop had ties to Koch money, and a local news story set to run was never published.

One professor in the Excellence in Economic Education program, Joab Corey, who spoke at the Feb. 5 workshop, sent emails to multiple FSU students who had asked about his Koch connections at the event. Corey wrote that he is “not biased or influenced by donors in any way” and denied any ties to Koch funding, writing that he “did not really know where the funding for my position came from,” although he “vaguely remembered” that his position was funded by BB&T Bank (actually, the BB&T Charitable Foundation, which is known for making at least 63 million-dollar grants to universities explicitly for the purpose of teaching Ayn Rand’s libertarian bible Atlas Shrugged). Corey’s “undergraduate teaching specialist position” is in fact funded by the BB&T Foundation, which came on as a Donor Partner in the Koch-FSU agreement. What Corey failed to acknowledge is that the very program he teaches in was established with Koch funding, and that, at least originally, every hire within his program and the similar Political Economy and Free Enterprise program had to meet the approval of Charles Koch Foundation officials.

Corey also wrote that he thought those who objected to “Sacrificing Lives for Profit” didn’t understand the argument and he invited dissenters to discuss it at office hours.

In 2014, someone left a customer review of Economics: Private and Public Choice, coauthored by Gwartney, linking him and other authors to Koch funding. Joseph Calhoun, assistant director of the Stavros Center and a lecturer in the Excellence in Economic Education program, weirdly posted a response credited to Gwartney that reads, “the Stavros Center for Economic Education and Free Enterprise at Florida State University which I direct has never received any funds from the Koch brothers or Americans For Prosperity, nor any of their charitable organizations.” This is patently false.

Another coauthor of this volume and of Common Sense Economics is self-proclaimed “free-market environmentalist” Richard Stroup of Raleigh, North Carolina, who formerly taught at FSU and is a research fellow at the Independent Institute and an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute, which was founded by the Charles Koch Foundation. Unfortunately for Stroup’s “environmentalist” claims, and for the many students who’ve had to readEconomics: Private and Public Choice, the textbook has earned a failing gradefor its treatment of climate change by PhD economist Yoram Bauman.

Stroup’s wife is Jane Shaw, former president of the John William Pope Center for Higher Education Policy, which has long advocated reducing university funding, cutting courses that focus on non-Western subject matter, and giving university donors control of how schools use their money. The Pope Center is funded by the John W. Pope Foundation, which has given millions to higher education programs mainly in the South and is led by Republican political mega-donor and close Koch brothers ally Art Pope.

Common Sense Economics has other primary hubs at University of South Florida’s own Stavros Center and Northern Michigan University’s Center for Economic Education and Entrepreneurship, which Common Sense Economics coauthor Tawni Ferrarini codirects.

The Stavros Center and other similar centers are part of a national movement to push free-market principles on kids all the way down to kindergarten, headed by the national Council for Economic Education, which has more than 200 state and university affiliates, including FSU and many other universities that also receive funding from the Charles Koch Foundation. Many of these affiliates host Common Sense Economics courses and workshops.

More Koch-funded programs are part of this movement. Charles Koch’s Youth Entrepreneurs program to indoctrinate grade-school kids with free-market gospel is well established. Koch-funded Institute for Humane Studies’ The EDvantage program, which features Ferrarini as one of its editors, is a “curriculum hub” for K-12 educators.

Across the country, Koch-funded academic centers and professors are training teachers of all grade levels to pass on the same ideas, even promoting lives lost in the name of profit. “Corporations like Koch Industries need this generation to make the lives for profit trade-off in order to justify their continued existence, and so they are trying to influence younger and younger students,” wrote Wilson. “Charles Koch is quoted in Jane Mayer’s recently published book, Dark Money, as saying that youths were crucial to his quest to alter society because ‘this is the only group that is open to a radically different social philosophy.’”

Photo: Flickr user (and saint) DonkeyHotey. 

Powerful Message From An Imperfect Messenger

Powerful Message From An Imperfect Messenger

Earlier this month, billionaire Charles Koch had a surprising message: In a speech to his fellow conservatives, he said politicians must end taxpayer-funded subsidies and preferential treatment for corporations.

Why is this surprising? Because the demand came from an industrialist whose company and corporate subsidiaries have raked in tens of millions of dollars’ worth of such subsidies.

The Koch-organized conference at a luxury resort in Southern California reportedly attracted roughly 450 conservative donors who have committed to spending nearly $900 million on the 2016 presidential election. The event included appearances by Republican presidential candidates such as former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio.

“Where I believe we need to start in reforming welfare is eliminating welfare for the wealthy,” said Koch, who, along with his brother David, is among the biggest financiers of conservative political causes. “This means stopping the subsidies, mandates and preferences for business that enrich the haves at the expense of the have nots.”

Yet, in the last 15 years, Koch’s firm Koch Industries and its subsidiaries have secured government subsidies worth more than $166 million, according to data compiled by the watchdog group Good Jobs First. The group says since 1990, Koch-owned properties have received 191 separate subsidies worth a total of $195 million.

Koch Industries and its subsidiaries, which are a privately held, are involved in everything from oil refining to manufacturing to high finance. In 2012, Charles Koch issued a similar jeremiad against government-sponsored subsidies for corporations. In a Wall Street Journal op-ed, he said, “We are on dangerous terrain when government picks winners and losers in the economy by subsidizing favored products and industries.” In his essay, he specifically derided tax credits — yet even after the op-ed, Koch-owned properties accepted more than $77 million worth of such taxpayer-funded preferences from governments, according to Good Jobs First.

Among the biggest subsidies received by Koch-owned companies was a $62 million Louisiana property tax abatement for Georgia Pacific — a paper and chemical conglomerate that was acquired by Koch Industries in 2005. Georgia Pacific also received a separate $11 million tax credit from Louisiana in 2014 to upgrade its facilities.

Since 2007, Good Jobs First says Koch Industries itself has received more than $20 million in subsidies through an Oklahoma program designed to incentivize investment and job creation. Oklahoma’s government website lists more than $28 million in such tax credits to the firm and its subsidiaries.

Koch, it should be noted, is not like other top executives of major corporations. His company is not publicly traded — it is privately held, with most of the company owned by him and his brother, David. That means the Kochs could reject subsidies and not have to justify the move to hordes of shareholders. Instead, though, they have accepted the government support, even as they fund conservative campaigns that deride the influence of government on the economy.

Of course, Koch’s speech certainly did identify a growing trend in America. As Big Business has used campaign cash to secure more control over politics, elected officials have been approving more and more taxpayer subsidies for corporations. Conservative opposition to those expenditures will no doubt be key to reining them in.

However, it is difficult to believe that the head of a company that has benefited from so much taxpayer support is really going to use his political power to end the largesse. In other words: The message may be compelling, but the messenger is not particularly credible.

David Sirota is a senior writer at the International Business Times and the best-selling author of the books Hostile Takeover, The Uprising, and Back to Our Future. Email him at ds@davidsirota.com, follow him on Twitter @davidsirota or visit his website at www.davidsirota.com.

Illustration: Caricature of Charles Koch (DonkeyHotey via Flickr)