David Koch (1940-2019), rhymes with choke, was an oil billionaire and the richest man in New York, where his name is all over buildings. He and his brother Charles made up the infamous Koch brothers, they who spent billions on Republicans to get them to weaken labour unions and government regulation, to cut taxes on billionaires and corporations, and, worst of all, to stop the US government from doing much on climate change.
Amazon burning: As David Koch lay on his death bed the Amazon rain forest burned, darkening the skies of São Paulo thousands of kilometres away, thanks to Jair Bolsonaro – the right-wing nut they helped to make president of Brazil.
His older brother Charles will no doubt carry on his dear departed brother’s legacy. Especially since much of it seems to have been his idea to begin with. Together they owned oil refineries, pipelines, and a huge amount of the tar sands in Canada.
His father, Fred Koch, built oil refineries for Hitler and Stalin. He was good at building refineries that turned oil into fuel for war planes. He was one of the main backers of the right-wing John Birch Society, to which both brothers belonged. It opposed the Civil Rights Movement.
Disaster: His father almost died in the Hindenburg disaster in 1937, three years before David was born. David himself lived through a plane crash in Los Angeles in 1991 that killed 33 others.
Evil capitalist: David and Charles tried to blackmail their older brother Fred into giving up his share of Koch Industries, by threatening to out him as gay. They took more oil from Native Americans than they paid for. Koch Industries is among the biggest US producers of toxic waste, right up there with ExxonMobil.
Libertarian: In 1980 David Koch ran for US vice president for the Libertarian Party – running against Reagan! He was for ending Medicare, federal income taxes, and child labour laws, among other things.
Kochtopus: They lost faith in third-party politics and instead used their fortune to back think tanks, advocacy groups, professors, and Republican politicians to push their positions – like climate change denial and (by way of ALEC) stand-your-ground gun laws. The Cato Institute – that was them. So was the “grass-roots” Tea Party. So was Trump’s tax cut, more or less, saving them over a billion dollars.
Dark money: Thanks to dark money, we do not know how much they spend on their political causes, but as of 2016 their political machine employed 3.5 times more people than the Republican National Committee itself.
David Koch:
“If we’re going to give a lot of money, we’ll make darn sure they spend it in a way that goes along with our intent. And if they make a wrong turn and start doing things we don’t agree with, we withdraw funding.”
This is why so many Republicans deny that climate change is man-made.
Trump: In 2016 they wanted Scott Walker for president – they disagreed with Trump on trade and immigration. Vice President Pence, though, is a long-time Koch ally.
– Abagond, 2019.
See also:
- billionaire
- White Catholics
- Citizens United
- dark money
- climate change
- Brought to you by the Koch brothers:
- Nazi Germany, brought to you by…
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The Koch Brothers represent the acquisition of enormous wealth in the pursuit of absolute power. At this point, wealth means nothing at all to them but sheer power, the ability to skywrite their names across the whole of future human history. But what had really baffled me until fairly recently is their endgame regarding global warming. See, the Kochs are VERY science literate. They are at least as climate cognizant as the leading climate scientists, and they are quite aware that the danger presents an existential threat to human life on this planet. They are also smart enough not to chase a buck lemming-like off an environmental cliff. And although their money is in oil, I’m sure they are aware that renewables are the future and that they could easily dominate the industry by quietly getting in at the ground level. So why watch the world burn?
Then last year (finally), I got a head-smacking epiphany: watching the world burn is their entire point. They hope to position themselves as the behind-the-scenes rulers what is left of the West and its spheres of influence. They aspire to be the world’s apocalyptic warlords, the absolute top of Oceania (screw Eurasia and Eastasia). They actually want to reproduce the hierarchical world at the end of Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged with themselves “heroically” at the summit of new world order, a phoenix emerging literally from its ashes.
(BTW, pray for RBG.)
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POS.
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Thoughts and Prayers 😩😒
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Human pieces of scatology
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It’s a tragedy they could not use their wealth and power for good. They are monsters.
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With the rise of satanism, the red guy needed one of his generals back to their posts.
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“Koch rhymes with choke” LOL 😂
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A Prince of Darkness has returned to his place in Hell…where it’s already over-crowded. Hope he finds a seat.
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Reading about these Koch devils and how they were members of the John Birch Society and how they opposed the Civil Rights Movement and attacked MLK. I wonder did they have anything to do with MLK’s murder?
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When a billionaire dies who inherits their Senators? 😩😂
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There is still two more of those beast left too bad the grim reaper didn’t do a 3in 1 wipeout. They are evil and dangerous.
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@ Mary
There is a fourth son, Bill. But Charles and David managed to reduce Fred and Bill to mere millionaires after a 20-year court battle. Charles and David were the ones with the big money, the kind that could (and has) warped a major political party.
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