RSS Feed MenuDavid Koch, a billionaire whose funding has helped support grassroots organizations tied to the tea parties, slammed the “liberal media” today at the Americans for Prosperity (AFP) summit in Washington, D.C. “Over the last year, my brother Charles Koch and I have been attacked non-stop in the liberal media,” he said.
Particular attention was reserved for Jane Mayer’s New Yorker piece, which argued that the Kochs funded groups like AFP for personal gain. Speaking to conference attendees, David Koch said that “the New Yorker article that’s running right now is an absolute slander and a highly inaccurate and dishonest attack on the two of us and our great company, Koch Industries.”
“The more we’re attacked, the more we’re inspired to fight harder, to be more successful,” added Koch to applause.
Koch’s political preferences should be no surprise, and he also talked about his hopes for a Republican “landslide” in November:
I’m very hopeful about the midterm elections, winning a big landslide there. Whatever happens, my brother and I are going to fight until our last breath to fight to preserve our free-enterprise system, to oppose socialism, and to bring the country back to the basic values that we had when we were founded as a nation.
The speech was not without a pump-up-the-crowd moment. Speaking about the growth of the foundation he helped start, Koch said:
At the time that I provided the funding to create this organization, never in my wildest dreams would I have imagined that we would have grown into the enormous size, or have the enormous influence that we have.
Add me on twitter: www.twitter.com/timkmak
Oldskool // Aug 27, 2010 at 1:50 pm
Charles Lewis, the founder of the Center for Public Integrity, a nonpartisan watchdog group, said, “The Kochs are on a whole different level. There’s no one else who has spent this much money. The sheer dimension of it is what sets them apart. They have a pattern of lawbreaking, political manipulation, and obfuscation. I’ve been in Washington since Watergate, and I’ve never seen anything like it. They are the Standard Oil of our times.”
Koch should sue for slander if that is incorrect. Of course Lewis would know better than to risk a lawsuit if those things weren’t true. Your move, Koches.
Elvis Elvisberg // Aug 27, 2010 at 2:11 pm
Of course he didn’t explain why anything in the article was untrue, and of course he won’t sue.
The tribalists of the Republican/Tea Party will take Koch’s word as Gospel because he’s One Of Us, with the right enemies, facts be damned. The MSM will report that it is a controversy, with both sides upset, so no one can tell who’s right. Casual followers of politics who don’t read and comment on political blogs will figure the truth is probably in the middle somewhere.
Thus right-wing lies become accepted as fact.
balconesfault // Aug 27, 2010 at 2:37 pm
From the article:
The Kochs and their political operatives declined requests for interviews.
Huh. Too bad they skipped that chance.
A 2004 report by the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy, a watchdog group, described the Kochs’ foundations as being self-serving, concluding, “These foundations give money to nonprofit organizations that do research and advocacy on issues that impact the profit margin of Koch Industries.”
Sounds like the Kochs have issues with the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy. Too bad they didn’t take the opportunity to discuss those issues with the New Yorker writer.
The Kochs have gone well beyond their immediate self-interest, however, funding organizations that aim to push the country in a libertarian direction.
Wow. Sounds like the author was interested in balance, even without the Kochs being willing to comment, doesn’t it?
Charles Koch seems to have approached both business and politics with the deliberation of an engineer. “To bring about social change,” he told Doherty, requires “a strategy” that is “vertically and horizontally integrated,” spanning “from idea creation to policy development to education to grassroots organizations to lobbying to litigation to political action.” The project, he admitted, was extremely ambitious. “We have a radical philosophy,” he said.
Ah – I suspect that this is the real problem.
The Kochs don’t mind being characterized as profiteers. They’re used to that. But being exposed as radicals subverts all the work they’ve done constructing a latticework of organizations to circulate their opinions as independent thinking by others.
TerryF98 // Aug 27, 2010 at 3:24 pm
These people are extremely dangerous to a democratic system. And Citizens United has made the danger even greater.
CO Independent // Aug 28, 2010 at 6:05 pm
Hmm, these guys are self-made billionaires who earned their fortunes in the private sector, creating tens of thousands of jobs along the way, and are willing to spend a part of their fortune advancing a political agenda of limited government and personal freedom, including economic freedom.
Yes, as TerryF98 says, these people are extremely dangerous to the Democratic system.
ktward // Aug 29, 2010 at 1:36 am
David Koch Slams New Yorker ‘Slander’
Heh. No doubt.
Terry Gross at NPR interviews Jane Mayer:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=129425186
(Informative interview– both audio and transcript available.)
The Koch’s aggressive anti-reg/anti-gov’t activities aren’t really news, per se, as JM illustrates:
JM: [The Kochs] have been working at this project really since before 1980, when David Koch became vice president for the Libertarian presidential ticket.
It was a miserable failure in 1980. They got one percent of the vote. And at that point, David [and] Charles Koch decided that if they wanted to have an impact on American politics, they were going to have to do something other than run for office.
It was clear that their ideas did not do well in the marketplace of the ballot box … and decided that they were going to fund a complete infrastructure of organizations that were aimed at manufacturing political public opinion that mirrored their own.
And so they set about doing this, and they’ve been doing it ever since …
The fascinating part — the news — is the radioactive irony that seeps from the Tea Party’s activities:
JM: [T]he other thing that’s interesting to me is that [the Kochs] tried to channel the very legitimate and genuine anger that’s out there in the country about economic problems and push it in towards their own agenda.
It’s not that they were the very creators of this anger … they’ve tried to take the anger and model it. Bruce Bartlett … a Republican and conservative historian and economist who actually worked for one of the Koch organizations … explains that for years, they’ve been trying to turn their politics … into a mass movement. And the Tea Party is what provided … the troops out on the street for them to do that.
GROSS: So how does the Tea Party meet the Koch brothers’ agenda?
JM: Well, it provides bodies on the street. It provides … voice to [their] agenda. Basically, if you take the example of the Texas branch of Americans for Prosperity, because I went down to Austin to see it, what they are doing is training angry people in issues that [the Kochs] care about.
They are trying to get people to fight regulations, fight energy reform, fight environmental reform. And they also provide education about who those angry people should target in the way of candidates and politicians, and how they should do it.
They even provide scripts … [handing] out talking points for the Tea Party.
GROSS: Do you think that most of the people who see themselves as members of the Tea Party don’t know about the [Koch] corporate money behind … the Tea Party activities?
JM: [W]hen I was down in the Austin convention talking to Tea Party people, there were a lot of people who had conspiracy theories about money flowing into American politics.
[I]ronically, none of those people that I interviewed seemed to be focused on the Koch brothers. They were kind of obsessed with the possible role played by George Soros in particular.
I didn’t find anyone who seemed focused on the Kochs’ role.
balconesfault // Aug 29, 2010 at 10:58 am
these guys are self-made billionaires
While the Kochs are very good businessmen, please don’t confuse them with “self-made billionaires”.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_C._Koch
Father Fred Koch, John Birch Society member, was a self-made billionaire. His sons were born on 3rd base.
CO Independent // Aug 30, 2010 at 9:03 am
@Balconsfault:
Once again, you’re wrong. This is the beauty of debating lefties–you never fact check. The company which Charles Koch took over from his father in 1966 had revenues of less than $200 million and a similar market cap. Koch Industries has grown to a $100 Billion company under Charles Koch’s leadership.
http://www.nnp.org/nni/Publications/Dutch-American/kochc.htm
Like I said, self-made billionaires willing to put their money behind causes that advance individual freedom are dangerous to the Democratic party, not the democratic system. But you, you resent them because of their success, don’t you?
Kansan // Aug 30, 2010 at 11:10 am
@ Co Independent
A quick calculation of the effect of inflation shows (assuming it is reasonably accurate) $200 million inherited in 1966 would be worth about $1.3 billion in 2009’s dollars. As you would know most likely a million just isn’t worth what it used to be … damned socialists
The current lineup of Koch’s have done a lot and done well for themselves but they started on a pretty high platform, even at @ a paltry $200 million.
CO Independent // Aug 30, 2010 at 11:21 am
>> A quick calculation of the effect of inflation shows (assuming it is reasonably accurate) $200 million inherited in 1966 would be worth about $1.3 billion in 2009’s dollars. As you would know most likely a million just isn’t worth what it used to be … damned socialists
Which changes my point . . . not one bit. At no point in time did the father hand down billions of dollars, inflation-adjusted or not, to the sons. A swing and a miss, Kansan.
Kansan // Aug 30, 2010 at 11:39 am
@Co Independent … well you said the beauty of debating lefties is that they never fact check. So I checked to see what the facts actually were. They started out as the equivalent of billionaires.
They have done well and they have done so by working the system. A democratic system that they have had a number of advantages very few others have had. That is a fact.
I don’t particularly think about them let alone resent them. But they do play the system and their money talks volumes.
So I suppose we can agree to disagree on these facts.
CHRIS LONDON’S LAST SUPPER IN ISLAMERICA (From my Dreams & Nightmares) | London in New York // Sep 27, 2010 at 9:04 am
[...] Tunnels secretly built below Lincoln Center by heirs to Philanthropist David Koch who were among the first in elite society to recognize the threat to civilization and the potential need for an escape valve [...]
A Koch Industries Climate Change Spoof? - NYTimes.com // Dec 10, 2010 at 11:59 am
[...] But perhaps the biggest suggestion that mischief is afoot is that the Koch Brothers, Charles and David, have long thumbed their nose at environmental groups’ complaints and what they consider a steady stream of liberal media attacks. This includes referring to a recent and lengthy New Yorker profile as “slander.” [...]