The Koch Brothers--the Corporate Welfare Kings

Charles and David Koch appear to be honestly shocked that their activities generate such public hostility. What's so fascinating is the emergence of libertarian opposition to them as "statist interventionists". When you think about it, this makes alot of sense. The Koch Brothers depend on government subsidies for their oil company, special deals for leases, handsome personal tax breaks guaranteed under the Bush and now Obama tax laws,waivers from the new healthcare law, and no bid contracts at a state level and from our own defense department.

In fact, the whole Koch fortune is based on winning favors from the state. Fred's initial fortune was made as a partner with Stalin's regime to build 15 oil refineries and his relationship with Nazi Germany. So much for the free market. Fred's hero "Benito Mussolini" was one of the great theorists that the state should support private corporations. So why did anyone think the sons would be any different? After all, they were at the table at Dick Cheney's secret energy taskforce to map out this country's future energy policy.

Now it seems we are going to have a struggle between the anti-Koch Brother tendencies. Glenn Greenwald and Lee Fang of Thinkprogress are beginning to make documentaries on the various aspects of the Koch Brothers' political activities. Exiledonline is repeating its best hits on the Koch Brothers and are acting a bit miffed that they haven't got the credit for their groundbacking reporting. Some of these guys used to write for Reason magazine. I am sure more Koch critics are going to come out of the woodwork.

It was really the Wisconsin union-busting law by the Koch funded politicians that triggered the intense interest in the Koch Brothers. Their funding of the teaparties and their plans to destroy President Obama seemed more abstract than the tangible, immediate effects of their policies at a state level. And the blowback has been terrific.

ALEC, the Koch-funded think tank that creates model legislation for states, is now busy doing damage control by issuing press releases trying to distance themselves from the disasterous legislation that they sponsor. Previously, ALEC had tweeted about their maazing success until journalists and professors started to zoom in on them.

If you want a sense of the volume of anti-Koch sentiment, just check out the comments at www.KochBrothersExposed.com . Greenwald does a short clip of the various Koch "hits" on America and asks you to vote of them. Unfortunately,the list is too narrow so far but awesome enough.

I found one recurring theme of the comments very interesting. There is a recent myth that the Koch Brothers created the CATO Institute, the Washington-based libertarian think tank. This is repeated by Koch-friendly journalists and the brothers themselves. But commenters on Greenwald's website claim that the Koch brothers hijacked the think tank, kicked Murray Rothbard off the board and has tried to silence libertarians Lew Rockwell and Ron Paul. In short, they hijacked libertarianism.

This episode deserves more exploration because it would also provide an insight into their M.O. in seizing control of the teaparty phenomenon. Remember the first teaparty activities were the creation of Ron Paul's Crusade for Liberty. Then these were replaced by the Freedomworks' astroturf events funded by the Koch Brothers. In short, they acted like communists taking over a popular movement. I would say the same for their efforts in the Republican Party. With the Republican Party, their goal is simply to increase their fortune by being given carte blanche over environmental and regulatory policy.

I wish all the investigative journalists good luck and look forward to seeing the Greenwald documentaries. But as he said, he has had a team researching them for months and coming up with such vast amount of material that he doesn't know how much more there is to discover.

I would also suggest another theme that should be explored is the relationship between Glenn Beck and the Kochs. Tea party populists complained about Beck's Washington rally as being more a religious revival than a protest. Observers of Beck's behavior suggested that his general lunacy had taken him into the realm of religious revivalism. Perhaps, there is a more politically practical aspect of this in that the teabaggers had to be brought into control to do the Kochs' bidding.

But the spotlight on them obviously makes them uncomfortable. Everyone remotely linked to them is now noticed. For instance, the man Governor Walker picked as the head of the state utilities commission is a former Koch employee. You would never had known that before they drew all this attention.

I still say--Focus on Charles Koch. He believes he is another Martin Luther--as in the leader of the reformation. Or as in noted German.