RSS Feed MenuAndrew Goldman has an almost unimprovable profile of David Koch in the August 2nd edition of New York Magazine. I’m stunned by the access that Goldman was able to achieve with New York City’s 2nd richest man.
The piece has illuminated David Koch, a man whom some have branded as an ‘environmental criminal’, and has made him human with a real voice, with real jokes (on his artificial knees: “If you spent as many years as I did begging girls for favors, you’d have bad knees, too.”)
Goldman weaves Koch’s tale in a fashion befitting the gentleman. In this story, we delve into Koch’s estrangement from his brother William, the aircraft tragedy that nearly killed him, the reasons behind his philanthropy, even his private sexual… difficulties.
Thanks to this article, we can also trace the origins of much of the conservative grassroots movement to today. Goldman explores Koch’s relationship with his father, a man whom Koch dryly notes was “paranoid about communism, let’s put it that way.”
Dissatisfied with their father’s John Birch Society, the Koch brothers set to building something William F. Buckley would have seen as at least more agreeable: groups like the Cato Institute, the Mercatus Center, and Americans for Prosperity.
The Koch family is perhaps the largest financial cog in the engine that drives conservative intellectual thought in this country. This piece is indispensible in understanding one of the key men behind the machine:
Koch concedes that he sympathizes with the tea party. “It demonstrates a powerful visceral hostility in the body politic against the massive increase in government power, the massive efforts to socialize this country, which goes against the conservative grain of the average American,” he says. He insists he vigorously opposes the elements of the party “that go too far” and that he stands firmly against “violence” and other “bad things” perpetrated by tea-party members. “I’m not a racist. I’m very broad-minded,” he says.
Add me on twitter: www.twitter.com/timkmak
balconesfault // Jul 27, 2010 at 7:09 pm
From the article: Although David never adhered quite so tightly to the libertarian liturgy as his brother, he did embrace its central tenets—that taxes and government regulation are destructive forces and that government generally makes people’s lives worse.
Yeah. A real tough revelation to arrive at when you inherit a large portion of a billion dollar oil company!
And no doubt someone whose company in 2000 faced a 97 count indictment for environmental violations at his refineries, with potential statutory penalties of $48.5 million, and civil fines of up to $352 million, is all against government regulation. This, only a year after Koch had had to pay a $30 million settlement for multiple oil spills going back to 1990, of more than three million gallons of crude oil leaking into rivers and coastal waters. Conveniently enough, in 2001 the Bush DOJ took over, and that second massive indictment was settled for $20 million.
Perhaps that’s why, despite Koch’s views on the Iraq War cited in the article, he still heavily supported the Bush/Cheney administration. Business is business!
Look – I have a lot of respect for men like Koch who run successful large corporations that put a lot of people to work. But on the flip side, the Koch family companies seem to be the kind of actors in the marketplace who force government to have strong regulations and a stronger enforcement mechanism. When a Koch constantly plays at the edges of the regulations, trying to get away with everything they can, it forces everyone else in the marketplace to do the same or have non-competitive operating costs. Show me a oil company exec who considers environmental regulations a “destructive force”, and I’ll show you a man who would have us compete with China by making the air quality and water quality in our major industrial cities as bad as it is in China’s … while he hangs out in his Manhattan penthouse, and vacations in the Mediterranean where Europe’s stringent regulations keep the water clean enough for him to enjoy.
Balloon Juice » Blog Archive » Koch and sympathy // Jul 27, 2010 at 11:21 pm
[...] Fee-fees of the rich and famous: [...]
SFTor1 // Jul 28, 2010 at 1:53 am
It always seems to escape rich people that they make their money off well ordered, civilized societies where the law rules the day. That would be societies endowed with effective government.
They always think that they invented infrastructure, education, and prosperity. Bah.
Elvis Elvisberg // Jul 28, 2010 at 4:46 am
On your point, SFTor1, I’d think that, were I behind the veil of ignorance, I’d be willing to pledge about 95% of my income in order to be born in the United States.
Living With Colon Cancer « mesothelioma-faq.us // Jul 28, 2010 at 10:24 am
[...] Inside the Koch Family | FrumForum [...]
sinz54 // Jul 28, 2010 at 11:17 am
SFTor1: It always seems to escape rich people that they make their money off well ordered, civilized societies where the law rules the day. That would be societies endowed with effective government.
They don’t forget that.
Contracts signed between companies, or between a company and an individual, would be worthless if there was no mechanism for enforcement.
But what a lot of folks on the Left tend to forget is that there’s a big difference between legality and government control.
CitizenWhig // Jul 28, 2010 at 2:40 pm
“The Koch family is perhaps the largest financial cog in the engine that drives conservative intellectual thought in this country.”
I think this statement is representative of the problem with much conservative thought today. For all of the talk about how conservatives are individualistic and rely on the free market, the modern conservative movement is very much the result of central planning groupthink. Think tank organizations that are organized by wealthy power brokers, disseminate ideas to the footsoldiers in an organized, almost bureaucratic manner.
I’m sure Mr. Koch is very charismatic and personable, but I’m less concerned about how well he presents in an interview and more about the ideology he is pushing. He may say that he is against elements of the movement that “go too far” however he clearly will not identify these elements. He gave a very lawyerly answer to the interviewer with regard to his connection to the Tea Party. This profile was a puff piece and another example of how a “mainstream” media outlet treats a conservative figure with kid gloves.
balconesfault // Jul 28, 2010 at 2:51 pm
CitizenWhig:
This profile was a puff piece and another example of how a “mainstream” media outlet treats a conservative figure with kid gloves.
But wait … this was “an almost unimprovable profile” per Tim Mak.
So the question becomes – are Mr. Mak’s standards just too low? Or does Mr. Mak see the best interview of a Republican power broker being a People-magazine style interview which reveals the minimal amount of useful information?
CitizenWhig // Jul 28, 2010 at 3:11 pm
balconesfault:
Your comment led me to review Mr. Mak’s blogger profile. Somehow I’m not surprised that he was a “Koch Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.” Or perhaps I should be surprised that someone who is so smart can be so transparent about his cheerleading for a former benefactor.
searchlight // Jul 29, 2010 at 1:43 pm
You have to hand it to the Koch family. They play all sides of the conservative movement, and the big-government lobbying game, with great skill and unerring self-interest.
They keep very quiet about it, too. The sock puppets at Fox News yap away endlessly about big bad George Soros, but never, never say a word about the Kochs and how they have bankrolled much of the rising fringe of the Right.
The Kochs and their fat wallets are the silent partners of the conservative media/think tank/lobbying complex. They deserve far more public scrutiny – and not of the puff-piece variety this post demonstrates.
Boomerang // Aug 1, 2010 at 1:45 am
The Koch family might be easy to target for criticism but it’s important to recognise that they have given vast sums to the community. I suspect that there’re likely numerous causes they have supported with no recognition. There are no successful businesses that don’t have critics or those that they offend. I’d rather have the Koch’s as champions of our community than the legions of successful wallets across the Finance sector.