The Billionaire Right-Winger
The Kochs are poster boys for the plutocratic cancer devouring the American republic.
By Joe Conason | Posted on Aug 27, 2010 [print_link]
.For decades, the Koch brothers, billionaire heirs of one of the largest privately held companies in the United States, have covertly sought to promote their hard-right ideology through third parties, think tanks, foundations and front groups. Their late father, Fred, having earned a fortune assisting the nascent Soviet oil industry, eventually became a right-wing extremist and member of the John Birch Society. His sons, especially David Koch, have not only expanded the family business but infiltrated their father’s political views into the mainstream.
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Happily for them, the expenditure of hundreds of millions of dollars on nonprofit and “educational” ventures has served their corporate priorities perfectly. While Mayer cites many examples of self-serving Koch philanthropy that match their more direct program of buying politicians and policies, the enterprise that is currently most pertinent is the tea party movement. PHOTO (Right)-Charles Koch..
Although the Kochs cannot be said to directly control the tea party outfits, they have succeeded in infusing their priorities, strategies and ideas into the movement through an organization called Americans for Prosperity. Typically, a Koch Industries spokeswoman sought to deny that David Koch, his brother Charles, their company or their foundations have funded the tea parties—and technically that may be true. David Koch says he has never attended a tea party event and that nobody representing the tea party “has ever even approached me.”
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In short, Mr. Koch is not exactly a pitchfork populist and has no interest in mingling with such unfashionable types. He also doesn’t care much what they think. A former Koch adviser told The New Yorker that the Kochs back the tea party movement for the most cynical reasons. “This right-wing, redneck stuff works for them. They see this as a way to get things done without getting dirty themselves.”
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The kind of things that the Kochs want to “get done”—aside from advancing their social profile in places like the Upper East Side—mostly involve reducing taxes and regulations on themselves and their companies.
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If they had their way, Social Security and Medicare would disappear tomorrow, and so would any other program that benefits families without a billion dollars at their disposal. So would the Environmental Protection Agency, the Clean Air Act and every other obstacle to their massive effusions of deadly filth. Lately, they have been trying to prevent stricter regulation of formaldehyde, a known carcinogen, because their company produces enormous amounts of the stuff for commercial use.
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Bruce Bartlett, a conservative economist and historian who worked at one of the many right-wing think tanks funded by Koch money, believes that the Koch brothers are “trying to shape and control and channel the populist uprising into their own policies.” Perhaps the tea party activists should take a harder look at those policies—and try to figure out whether the national interest truly coincides with the avaricious, destructive attitude of these “libertarians.”
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Joe Conason writes for the New York Observer.
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