The most Orwellian op-ed of the year
Note: No head vise known to humankind can protect you from this op-ed — but for any survivors, I end the post with the joke of the day.
Quick Quiz — Who said what:
- For many years, I, my family and our company have contributed to a variety of intellectual and political causes working to solve these problems. Because of our activism, we’ve been vilified by various groups.
- I have spent the best years of my life giving people the lighter pleasures, helping them have a good time, and all I get is abuse, the existence of a hunted man.
- Despite this criticism, we’re determined to keep contributing and standing up for those politicians, like Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, who are taking these challenges seriously.
- You can get much farther with a kind word and a gun than you can with a kind word alone.
Let’s us have a moment of silence for the plight of the misunderstood businessmen. Time’s up.
Koch’s agenda is to concentrate wealth in the hands of the few, especially himself, with no regard to the health and well-being of the many who will suffer along the way — and he will stop at nothing to achieve this. He and his brother are the Al Capones of pollutocrats — or Bernie Madoffs, if you prefer the modern-day analogy. They outspend Exxon Mobil on pro-pollution disinformation aimed at preventing action to preserving a livable climate. They must make their billions as quickly as possible before the global Ponzi scheme they are pushing collapses.
The policies of Gov. Walker, of course, would greatly harm the citizens of Wisconsin, again benefiting the super-rich pollutocrats at the expense of the middle class and poor.
The subhead for the WSJ opinion piece could only have been written by some editor at the paper recently hired away from the Ministry of Truth (aka Minitrue):
Yes, that’s the goal of the Kochs — producing the products and services that make people’s lives better — if we lived in the Bizarro World. Here’s another quote:Crony capitalism and bloated government prevent entrepreneurs from producing the products and services that make people’s lives better.
This American system of ours … call it Americanism, call it capitalism, call it what you like, gives to each and every one of us a great opportunity if we only seize it with both hands and make the most of it.Oh, wait, that’s not Koch in the WSJ, it’s Al Capone again. Go figure!
The entire agenda of the Kochs is to ensure that businesses never are subject to science-based regulations aimed at preserving and improving the clean air, clean water, and a livable climate, thereby making people’s lives better. For the Kochs, limited government means unlimited pollution.
UPDATE: The Kochs want to continue all of the massive subsidies for dirty energy, while gutting them for the clean energy products and services that actually make people’s lives better. For good discussions of this, see
REPORT: How Koch Industries Makes Billions By Demanding Bailouts And Taxpayer Subsidies (Part 1):
– The dirty secret of Koch Industries is its birth under the centrally-planned Soviet Union. Fred Koch, the founder of the company and father of David and Charles, helped construct fifteen oil refineries for Joseph Stalin before expanding the business in the United States.
– As Yasha Levine has reported, Koch exploits a number of government programs for profit. For instance, Georgia Pacific, a timber company subsidiary of Koch Industries, uses taxpayer money provided by the U.S. Forestry Service to provide their loggers with taxpayer-funded roads and access to virgin growth forests. “Logging companies such as Georgia-Pacific strip lands bare, destroy vast acreages and pay only a small fee to the federal government in proportion to what they take from the public,” according to the Institute for Public Accuracy….
– Koch Industries won massive government contracts using their close relationship with the Bush administration….
– SolveClimate recently reported that Koch Industries will reap huge profits from the proposed Keystone XL Pipeline, which runs from Koch-owned tar sands mining centers in Canada to Koch-owned refineries in Texas. To build the pipeline, politicians throughout the Midwest, many of whom have received large Koch campaign donations, have used eminant domain— government seizures of private land. In Kansas, where Koch-funded officials advise Gov. Sam Brownback (R-KS) and the Republican legislature, the Keystone XL Pipeline is likely to receive a property tax exemption of ten years, aspecial loophole that will cost Kansas taxpayers about $50 million.The Kochs also fund and help oversee the extremist Tea Party movement (see New Yorker exposes Koch brothers and Video proof David Koch, the polluting billionaire, pulls the strings of the Tea Party extremists). As Brad Johnson summarizes their agenda:
Top on the Koch agenda is the elimination of the estate tax for billionaires, the end to an open Internet, and the prevention of limits on their toxic pollution. Spending millions of dollars a year — a tiny percent of their pollution-based wealth — the Koch brothers and their ideological allies intend to manipulate American democracy to protect their private economic interests.I feel obliged to end this most head-exploding of posts on an upbeat note.
First, DARPA is funding research and development into a containment field that could protect people’s crania from Minitrue op-eds like this one. It’s too late for you, of course, but just imagine how that breakthrough might improve the lives of future generations!
Second, here’s a joke that’s circulating:
A public union employee, a Tea Party activist and Charles Koch are sitting at a table with a plate of a dozen cookies in the middle. Koch takes 11 of the cookies, turns to the Tea Partier and says, “watch out for that union guy he wants a piece of your cookie.”Related posts:
- From promoting acid rain to climate denial — over 20 years of David Koch’s polluter front groups
- What we’re up against: Polluter-funded Tea Party climate zombie astroturfing
- Must-see video: Polluter-funded Smithsonian exhibit whitewashes danger of human-caused climate change
- Tea party pollutocrat David Koch denies climate change, shrugs off his carbon pollution
- Rolling Stone names 12 politicians and executives blocking progress on global warming
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