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This came in the mail this afternoon. It was interesting to me
R. E. (Dick) Driscoll, Sr.
A Frustrated Koch Brother Decides It's Time to
'Spout Off' The Wall Street Journal.
Patrick O'Connor Oct 27, 2015
WICHITA, Kan.-Charles Koch sounds a lot like
an ordinary voter when he bemoans what he said
is a lack of substance and civility in the
2016 White House race.
"It's mainly about personalities, and 'your
mother sucked rotten eggs,' " he said during
an interview in his office here. Except, of
course, Mr. Koch is no ordinary voter: The
79-year-old businessman and his brother
preside over a network of conservative donors
who plan to spend roughly $750 million
influencing 2016 races. Mr. Koch is chief
executive of Koch Industries, one of the
nation's largest privately owned companies,
and his calls for reduced taxes and
regulations have long found a fruitful home
among Republican politicians. But so far in
this primary race he said he is frustrated by
the dearth of discussion about other issues he
cares about, from ending subsidies and tax
breaks for corporations to overhauling the
criminal-justice system and making it easier
for low-income Americans to start businesses.
He plans to wait until year-end to determine
how much he will spend on 2016 elections,
including the White House contest. "How much I
give to the political side will depend on to
what extent the candidates out there are going
to make a difference on the things I care
about," he said. Mr. Koch and his brother
David haven't endorsed a presidential
candidate, and unlike other wealthy donors,
Mr. Koch said they aren't necessarily shopping
for a candidate to support. He bristles at
news reports that suggested they have a
favored contender. Instead, their alliance is
focused on groups that advance free-market,
small-government ideals, he said. Some are
more educational than political. But many of
these organizations have a political aim.
Americans for Prosperity, for example, which
started with money from the Kochs, has built
an army of grass roots volunteers to push
issues and candidates at the local, state and
federal level. Republican candidates and
officeholders regularly turn out to these
events because the groups can attract big
crowds of voters and activists. Asked whether
he thinks the rise, and media coverage, of
Donald Trump in the GOP field has distracted
from serious policy discussions, he said,
"Well, yeah. I mean, critical for a free
society is tolerance," an apparent reference
to Mr. Trump's comments about immigrants and
women that some have called insensitive.
Detractors have called the Koch brothers
modern-day robber barons whose energy business
pollutes the environment and whose political
spending represents all that is wrong with
money in politics. But the media-shy Charles
Koch is working to tell his own story,
explaining in a new book, "Good Profit," how
he helped build Koch Industries into a
sprawling conglomerate that makes everything
from oil pipelines to toilet paper. "I always
followed the mama whale's advice to the baby
whale: Son, the time you get harpooned is when
you come up to spout off," Mr. Koch said. "But
I was too thick to realize I was being
harpooned already and spouting off would maybe
lessen the harpoons, or at least it wouldn't
make 'em any worse." The book-a blend of
biography, social theory and management
advice-also sheds light on the system of
beliefs that guide Mr. Koch, both in business
and in politics. His overarching view is that
society benefits when people are free to
pursue work they love, making them more
productive. In "Good Profit," Mr. Koch holds
up his company as the living example of those
ideals, from its emphasis on an employee's
values over his rsum to a relentless drive to
question everything Koch Industries does and
to strive for new ways to be more efficient.
He cites the company's growth-it has added
85,000 employees since just 2004-as evidence
that these methods work. A voracious
reader-books line the walls of his office and
are stacked to the ceiling of his office
bathroom-Mr. Koch traces the roots of his
belief system to reading "Why Wages Rise," an
obscure book by a former Cornell University
professor who argued pay is determined by
productivity. Reading that book led Mr. Koch
to briefly support the Libertarian Party
before eventually prompting him to bankroll
entities that advocated free-market policies.
In 2003, Mr. Koch convened about a dozen
like-minded conservatives in Chicago with the
goal of becoming more overtly political. Those
efforts took hold early in Barack Obama's
presidency amid voter unease with the bank
bailout signed by President George W. Bush and
with the passage of the Affordable Care Act.
Groups financed by the Kochs and their
alliance spent more than $400 million in 2012,
according to tax returns, although much of
that money went to ventures not overtly
political. In that year's presidential
election, Americans for Prosperity and two
other Koch-financed groups spent a total of
more than $50 million on television ads,
according to Kantar Media. There are now more
than 450 donors financing these organizations,
with operations in all 50 states. In the 2014
election cycle, three groups backed by the
Kochs spent $200 million, including some money
not spent directly on politics. An adviser to
the Kochs' umbrella organization said the
groups plan to spend $100 million on political
ads alone this cycle, a fourfold increase from
2014. Mr. Koch said that, of his $111 million
in charitable contributions last year, just $5
million went toward explicitly political
purposes. So far this year, he said just
$2,700 of the $48 million he has donated was
political spending; his staff said that money
went to Republican Sen. Jerry Moran of Kansas,
up for re-election next year. Liberal groups
are keeping up their attacks on the Kochs and
their network. "Someone should remind Charles
Koch that you get what you pay for," said
Regan Page, a spokeswoman for American Bridge,
which has devoted a website to the alleged
misdeeds of the Kochs and their businesses.
"The Kochs complain about dysfunction in
Washington, forgetting that their network
spent hundreds of millions to bankroll the
campaigns of far-right, out-of-touch
Republicans." In the interview, Mr. Koch said
he holds no sway over the Republican Party or
GOP members of Congress, citing their recent
failure to block legislation extending a
series of tax breaks for a wide swath of
businesses. "They say we have all this
influence," he said. "Well, where?" Mr. Koch
said he is looking for issues on which he can
work with both parties, citing their recent
efforts to work with the White House to ease
sentences for nonviolent drug offenders and
enact other changes to the criminal justice
system. He also mentioned work to reduce red
tape for low-income Americans looking to start
a small business, another White House
priority. Asked about money he has spent
against Mr. Obama and his party, Mr. Koch
said, "It's not against him; it's for these
ideas...I would love to be able to support
Democrats." While Mr. Koch shares many voters'
dissatisfaction with the country's elected
leaders, he expressed alarm at the rise of Mr.
Trump and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, a
self-described democratic socialist.
"Typically, what happens when voters are
frustrated is they give the government even
more power," he said. "I have no idea how this
will turn out...There's tremendous
dissatisfaction out there, and so it's scary."
Koch Industries is in the middle of an
advertising and PR campaign to rebrand the
company around the products it makes, rather
than its owners' political activity. Koch
employs 60,000 people in the U.S. and operates
126 manufacturing facilities. Its subsidiaries
produce Dixie cups and Brawny paper towels, as
well as Lycra and component parts for
smartphones. Koch companies are the largest
tissue maker in the U.S., a top-10 producer of
ethanol and support more than 12,000 head of
cattle. On the cusp of 80, Mr. Koch sometimes
sounds more like someone just starting out in
business than an established figure whose
estimated net worth exceeds $40 billion. "The
more we've improved, the more I see
potential," he said. "It's kind of a receding
horizon."
Write to Patrick O'Connor at
patrick.oconnor@xxxxxxx
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