As a practicing Agnostic, I should stay away from quoting the Holy
Bible...but...some verses are just too darn good.
proverbs 21:10-11
There is no honor among thieves...not even among thieving brothers.
Matthew 6: 24
No man can serve two masters: for either he. will hate the one, and
love the other; or else. he will hold to the one, and despise the
other, Ye cannot
serve God and mammon.
So what does that say about a couple of brothers who are each worth
about 60 Billion dollars?
Carl Jarvis
On 6/9/18, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
One Koch Brother Forces the Other Out of the Family Business
By Jane Mayer, The New Yorker
09 June 18
An arch-conservative political machine will be down one billionaire but
have
more clout than ever.
The retirement of David Koch from Koch Industries will make it easier to
see
more clearly what has been true from the start: Charles and David Koch, who
came to be known as "the Koch brothers," were equals in bloodlines and in
wealth, but Charles has always been the brains behind the brothers' vast
corporate and political operations. Those who know the brothers well
predict
that David's retirement will have scant impact, particularly in the
political realm, where the Kochs exert enormous influence.
For the past four decades they have tapped their vast fortune from a
hundred-and-fifteen-billion-dollar-a-year family business, Koch Industries,
to finance a private political machine whose reach and size have been
described as rivalling that of the Republican Party. By lavishly
underwriting candidates, policy organizations, and advocacy groups-often
through untraceable donations-they have pulled American politics toward
their own arch-conservative, pro-business, anti-tax, and anti-regulatory
agenda, particularly in the environmental area. Although David Koch is also
stepping down from his role as chairman of the Americans for Prosperity
Foundation, the foundation wing of the Kochs' main political-advocacy
group,
their influence isn't likely to wane anytime soon.
David Koch, who is seventy-eight and the wealthiest resident of Manhattan,
is more socially prominent than his older brother. He is often chronicled
on
the social pages, having donated by his own estimate $1.2 billion to
philanthropic causes, including many of New York City's cultural, medical,
and educational institutions, several of which bear his name. In contrast,
Charles Koch, an eighty-two-year-old libertarian ideologue who continues to
live in the brothers' home town of Wichita, Kansas, has largely stayed
outside of the limelight. But those familiar with the brothers suggest that
although Charles is less well-known, he, not David, has long been the
driving force behind both the phenomenal growth at Koch Industries and the
duo's ambitious political ventures.
Charles also appears to have dominated David's decision to retire.
According
to two well-informed individuals close to the family, David, who has been
in
declining health for several years, had resisted resigning, but Charles
forced him out. A business associate who declined to be identified, in
order
not to jeopardize his ties to the family, told me, "Charles pushed David
out. It was done with a wink, and a nod, and a nudge." A second longtime
family associate confirmed this, saying, "Charles had been pushing him out
for quite some time. David kept resisting. It was bad. Charles took
control."
The decision became public on Tuesday, when Charles, who is the chairman
and
chief executive officer of Koch Industries, sent a letter to employees
announcing that David would be retiring as vice-president, a development
that he attributed to David's deteriorating health. "We are deeply saddened
by this, as we miss David's insightful questions and his many contributions
to Koch Industries," Charles's letter said. The letter didn't disclose the
nature of David's health problems, but he was diagnosed with prostate
cancer
twenty-four years ago. Multiple associates say that in the past year or so
he had visibly declined, losing weight and losing his train of thought in
conversations, as well as occasionally nodding off in meetings and public
events. "As a result," the letter said, "he is unable to be involved in
business and other organizational activities." Charles Koch, meanwhile,
continues to work through the weekends, often arriving at Koch Industries'
Wichita headquarters earlier than many other employees. "He's a workaholic,
like Warren Buffet. He lives to work," the well-informed business associate
told me. "It looks like he's going to be doing this into his nineties."
It is unclear, however, what will become of David's ownership of nearly
half
of Koch Industries, the second-largest private company in the country,
which
began as oil refineries and pipelines, and has grown into a multinational
conglomerate encompassing lumber, paper, chemicals, coal, fertilizer, and
sophisticated financial-trading operations. Because the company is private,
there is minimal transparency. But Charles and David Koch reportedly own
virtually all of its stock, splitting the shares equally among themselves
and plowing most of the profits back into the company. Forbes magazine
estimates that each brother is worth approximately sixty billion dollars,
tying them as America's ninth-richest men. Steve Lombardo, Koch Industries'
chief of corporate communications, did not respond to questions about who
would exercise control of David's shares, should he prove unable to
function. David has three children, the oldest of whom is college-aged.
Charles has two children, including a son, Chase Koch, who has assumed a
growing role in running the company.
The Kochs' future prospects are of public interest because of the oversized
influence they have exerted in American politics. Beginning in the late
nineteen-seventies, the brothers became the primary underwriters of
hard-line libertarianism in the country. From the start, though, Charles
was
the instigator behind their political activism while remaining largely
behind the scenes. This dynamic was evident as far back as 1980, when
Charles convinced his younger brother David to run for Vice-President on
the
Libertarian Party ticket. The brothers regarded Ronald Reagan, who was
running for President that year, as too liberal. The Libertarian platform
called for abolishing all federal income taxes and virtually every federal
agency, including the I.R.S., the F.B.I., the C.I.A., the F.E.C., the
E.P.A., the F.D.A., and the S.E.C. The party also opposed Medicaid,
Medicare, Social Security, public education, and minimum-wage and
child-labor laws. Charles and David, former members of the John Birch
Society, which their father, Fred, helped found, regarded centralized
government as a scourge akin to Communism. At the time, however, such views
were considered kooky even by most conservatives. The conservative stalwart
William F. Buckley, Jr., called the Kochs' views "Anarcho-Totalitarianism."
The voters' verdict was equally harsh. David spent two million dollars of
his own money on his candidacy in 1980, but he was trounced. The
Libertarian
Party earned only one per cent of the vote.
Afterward, Charles told a reporter that he had grown disillusioned with
conventional electoral politics but had not given up his quest to advance
libertarianism. "Politics," he told a reporter, "tends to be a nasty,
corrupting business." His interest, he said, is "in advancing libertarian
ideas." Instead of just funding candidates, Charles set out to subsidize an
ideology. He aimed to change the way Americans thought by creating and
funding an interlocking array of libertarian think tanks, advocacy groups,
and academic, legal, and other organizations. Even two years before his
brother's Presidential run, Charles declared, "Our movement must destroy
the
prevalent statist paradigm."
Nearly forty years later, many of the Kochs' policy preferences are now
standard Republican orthodoxy, having been promoted from the fringes into
the mainstream by the dozens of nonprofit organizations and candidates they
funded. Small government, anti-tax, anti-regulatory, and pro-privatization
policies, as well as skepticism regarding global warming, are commonplace.
After his 1980 bid for office, David Koch continued to be the more visible
of the brothers. He spoke at Americans for Prosperity events and made
head-turning political donations. But most of the planning for the Kochs'
political takeover was done by Charles Koch, various sources close to the
process told me. It was Charles Koch, for instance, who came up with the
idea, in 2003, of pooling political donations with like-minded wealthy
conservatives, creating a huge, centrally controlled war chest for what is,
in essence, a conservative millionaires' movement. There are now some seven
hundred members of this exclusive club, which meets twice a year at
Charles's invitation and calls itself the Seminar Network. Each member
commits to donate a minimum of a hundred thousand dollars, and some donate
millions. "David liked to rub shoulders with the other big donors, and to
make large donations," the well-informed business associate told me, "and
so
that part may now change. But Charles really runs the bus. Only when
Charles
goes will everything change."
The election of Donald Trump, the single Republican Presidential candidate
whom they had openly opposed, seemed to some to sideline the brothers.
Charles had memorably described the choice between Trump and Hillary
Clinton
as like one between "cancer or a heart attack." But while the Kochs didn't
get the candidate they wanted, under Trump they have nonetheless gotten
many
of the policies they wanted. Political allies, many of whom have have been
subsidized by the Kochs in one way or another in the past, now fill
numerous
key Trump Cabinet and administrative posts.
At the E.P.A. and the Interior Department, for instance, two government
agencies that are vital to the profit levels of Koch Industries, top
personnel have deep ties to the Kochs. The career of the E.P.A.
administrator, Scott Pruitt, in Oklahoma politics was financially supported
by the Kochs. Daniel Jorjani, now the acting solicitor in the Interior
Department, formerly worked for Freedom Partners, the Kochs'
political-funding group, and at the Charles Koch Institute and Charles Koch
Foundation. Dozens of other key Koch-affiliated personnel encircle Trump,
including Marc Short, the congressional liaison in the Trump White House;
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who received backing from the Kochs as a
businessman and a congressman from Wichita; Education Secretary Betsy
DeVos,
who was a billionaire donor in the Kochs' Seminar Network; and
Vice-President Mike Pence, whose financial ties to the Kochs run so deep,
the former Trump White House strategist Steve Bannon told me, that he
worried that if Pence were ever elected "he'd be a President that the Kochs
would own."
Recent news accounts have highlighted differences that the Kochs have had
with Trump, including their plans to spend heavily against Trump's
imposition of tariffs on imports, and their opposition to Trump's
restrictive immigration policies. Some cite these fissures as evidence that
the Kochs are changing or moderating their views. Frank Baxter, a longtime
donor to the Kochs' political operation, told the Washington Post that the
Koch network was "evolving." But the Kochs have long favored free trade and
minimal immigration barriers, both of which are consistent with their
free-market beliefs, and also boost the profits of their multinational
corporation. What has been evolving is merely their messaging, which casts
their industry-friendly immigration and trade stances in terms of helping
Dreamers and protecting low-income consumers.
What is often overlooked, and is far more significant, is the large extent
to which the Kochs' policy preferences have prevailed under Trump. Trump's
only major legislative achievement, the tax bill, which reduced corporate
taxes from thirty-five to twenty-one per cent, was passed with the support
of a twenty-million-dollar campaign by Americans for Prosperity, the Kochs'
nationwide advocacy group. At the same time, the Kochs launched an equally
effective political campaign to defeat the mechanism that Trump originally
embraced to pay for these enormous tax cuts: a "border adjustment tax"
devised by Republican Speaker of the House, Paul Ryan. Despite support from
the White House and Republican leaders in Congress, the Koch network killed
it. The final tax bill redistributed wealth from the bottom and the middle
to the top and created gaping deficits that will likely require additional
cuts in government spending, positions the Kochs have long embraced.
Trump's rollback of the Obama Administration's environmental policies,
crippling of Obamacare, and dismantling of key provisions in the Dodd-Frank
financial-services law all have been top items on the Kochs' wish list.
There is no sign that David Koch's departure from public life will
significantly affect any of this. The Kochs' Seminar Network is promising
to
spend an estimated three to four hundred million dollars during the this
fall's midterm election. Evidently, even if there is only one Koch brother
left at the table, the menu will remain exactly the same, and the tab will
be larger than ever.
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