The billionaire Koch brothers: Tea Party puppetmasters?

[YumYum]

They are funding the Tea Party according to an article in the New Yorker. They inherited from their father a business whose financial success was built on the back of work done in collaboration with the Soviet government under Stalin in the 1930s.


The billionaire Koch brothers: Tea Party puppetmasters?

The New Yorker makes a case that a pair of wealthy brothers is the force behind the Tea Party movement. Here, 5 key assertions from a new article.


posted on August 24, 2010, at 3:45 PM

The New Yorker's Jane Mayer has investigated the political funding networks of Charles and David Koch, two of the wealthiest people in America and generous donors to conservative political causes. In her 6,000-word story, Mayer makes a case that the billionaire brothers have funded and fostered the Tea Party movement as a well-disguised means to pursue their private political agenda. The brothers vehemently deny the claim, and Mayer's story has been written off by conservative bloggers as a "coordinated character assassination." Here are some of the key assertions in the article:

The family has a complicated relationship with communism

The family business, Koch Industries, was built up by the brothers' father, Fred, an "arch-conservative" and member of the staunchly anti-communist (some might say "paranoid") John Birch Society. But, ironically enough, the firm's financial success was built on the back of work done in collaboration with the Soviet government under Stalin in the 1930s, according to Mayer. By the 1950s and '60s, Fred Koch was raising the alarm about communists infiltrating U.S. society and government. In addition to a vast fortune, says Mayer, the Koch boys also inherited their father's "distrust of the U.S. government."

They funded a proto–Tea Party movement

The brothers' first step into the political arena came in 1980, when they were the key backers of Libertarian Party candidate Ed Clark's run for president, a campaign that "presaged the Tea Party movement." David Koch even became Clark's vice presidential nominee — though this, says Mayer, was mainly to overcome the legal limits on campaign donations. Despite the fact that David "spent more than $2 million on the effort," the ticket received just 1 percent of the vote in the election that made Ronald Reagan president.

http://theweek.com/article/index/206405/the-billionaire-koch-brothers-tea-party-puppetmasters

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/08/30/100830fa_fact_mayer

[FrankRep]

Koch responds (http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0810/Koch_responds.html?showall)


Politico.com
August 25, 2010


The low-profile Koch brothers, elevated (http://newyorker.com/reporting/2010/08/30/100830fa_fact_mayer?currentPage=1) by the New Yorker this week to the kind of mythical status on the left that George Soros holds on the right, have launched a public relations effort of their own (http://www.kochind.com/kochfacts/default.aspx).

Their company's new website, Koch Facts, offers point-by-point rebuttals to the New Yorker piece, and blames the magazine's approach for its refusal to make Charles and David Koch available:
We submitted extensive facts and background information to the magazine. Given that all we provided did not change the publication’s negative, unbalanced tone and agenda, we declined their requests to speak to Koch executives.


The new site offers point-by-point rebuttals and responses to every charge in the story, an odd combination of corporate -- the details, for instance, of a legal settlement -- and ideological communications. It suggests -- to speculate -- a bit of a tension between the corporate PR impulse to drown controversy in bland language and the brothers' strong views and family pride.

On the latter front, the company describes its hostility to climate-related regulation as a matter of trying to "help highlight the facts of the potential effectiveness and costs of policies proposed." The site also challenges the EPA' attempts to regulate Formaldehyde on scientific grounds, and warns that a "government takeover of healthcare may stymie innovation, affect medical research negatively and reduce the reimbursements our leading research institutions receive."

One last quibble, suggesting that the article was read quite closely in Wichita:

John Birch Society and opposition to communism

Fred Koch, who died in 1967, was a supporter, not a founder, of the John Birch Society (http://www.jbs.org/) in the 1950s. His anti-communist sentiment stemmed from time he spent in the Soviet Union between 1929 and 1932 when his engineering company designed and built oil cracking units to be erected in refineries in the U.S.S.R. Fred found the Soviet Union to be "a land of hunger, misery and terror." Virtually all the Soviet engineers he worked with were purged by Stalin, who exterminated tens of millions of his own people. This experience, combined with what his Communist associates told him of their methods and plans for world revolution, caused Fred Koch to become a staunch anti-communist.


SOURCE:
http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0810/Koch_responds.html?showall

[Austrian Econ Disciple]

No, the Kochtopus are not puppetmasters of the Tea-Party. They run Reason/CATO, and Reason/CATO isn't exactly influential within the Tea Party. I'd argue the LvMI has a lot more clout than them!

The Koch's were good in the 60s and 70s, then fell in love with Milton Friedman and totally went off the reservation in the late 70s early 80s when he had a "fall-out" with the Austrians. It is generally widely known to those in the libertarian movement, what psuedo-libertarians they are. Hence, they are known as the KOCHTOPUS!

http://www.lewrockwell.com/gordon/gordon37.html

Rothbard vs. Kochtopus

[libertybrewcity]

I am pretty sure they are the reason why George Mason University has so many libertarian economists.

[FrankRep]

The Koch brothers deserve Medals for exposing the Global Warming Hoax
http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?t=238802

Koch Industries Responds to New Yorker Claims
http://www.newsmax.com/InsideCover/koch-industries-new-yorker/2010/08/26/id/368519

[FrankRep]

The Koch's were good in the 60s and 70s, then fell in love with Milton Friedman and totally went off the reservation in the late 70s early 80s when he had a "fall-out" with the Austrians. It is generally widely known to those in the libertarian movement, what psuedo-libertarians they are. Hence, they are known as the KOCHTOPUS!

http://www.lewrockwell.com/gordon/gordon37.html

Rothbard vs. Kochtopus

Yeah, that is disappointing.

[trey4sports]

OMGz We've got billionarez who will self finanze Dr. PaUl's 2012 RuN Call Ghemmy!!!!!

[legion]

I wanted to write an article like this for this forum about these guys for a long time. Now I don't have to. :)

Its important that everyone here knows who's pulling the strings on both sides.

[FrankRep]

I wanted to write an article like this for this forum about these guys for a long time. Now I don't have to. :)

Its important that everyone here knows who's pulling the strings on both sides.

The Koch brothers are not Tea Party Puppetmasters.

[legion]

The Koch brothers are not Tea Party Puppetmasters.

Yes, and moveon.org has nothing to do with George Soros.

And well produced videos like this just fall from the sky and get 9 million hits without using email lists and radio hosts, etc.

YouTube - We The People Stimulus Package (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jeYscnFpEyA)


Just read the article with an open mind. You owe yourself that intellectual honesty.

[FrankRep]

Yes, and moveon.org has nothing to do with George Soros.

The Koch family may have major influence at CATO, Americans for Prosperity Foundation, and FreedomWorks, but the Tea Party is a collection of different groups of people and organizations.

[legion]

The Tea Party is a collection of different groups of people and organizations.

Of course it is! So was the British Aristocracy. The important thing to know is who is at the wheel of the ship and what their motivations are, so we can figure out if they are the same as our own.

There's a reason its only traditional republican party donators show up at these events. They are on the mailing lists. They represent the same republican groups they always have, just using different names. The people going to the tea parties didn't just wake up and decide to be politically active, they typically always have been.