Inside the Koch Brothers' Toxic Empire

[carlfense]

Much, much more at the link. Explains quite a bit.

 

Thanks in part to his efforts, in 1989 a Senate committee investigating Koch business with Native Americans would describe Koch Oil tactics as "grand larceny." In the late 1980s, Koch was the largest purchaser of oil from American tribes. Senate investigators suspected the company was making off with more crude from tribal oil fields than it measured and paid for. They set up a sting, sending an FBI agent to coordinate stakeouts of eight remote leases. Six of them were Koch operations, and the agents reported "oil theft" at all of them.

 

One of Koch's gaugers would refer to this as "volume enhancement." But in sworn testimony before a Texas jury, Phillip Dubose, a former Koch pipeline manager, offered a more succinct definition: "stealing." The Senate committee concluded that over the course of three years Koch "pilfered" $31 million in Native oil; in 1988, the value of that stolen oil accounted for nearly a quarter of the company's crude-oil profits. "I don't know how the company could have figures like that," the FBI agent testified, "and not have top management know that theft was going on." In his own testimony, Charles offered that taking oil readings "is a very uncertain art" and that his employees "aren't rocket scientists." Koch's top lawyer would later paint the company as a victim of Senate "McCarthyism."

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/inside-the-koch-brothers-toxic-empire-20140924?page=4

[Junior]

Amazing. Every now and then, The Rolling Stone kills it on these pieces. Sadly too many people will ignore it or blame the liberal media.

[carlfense]

Amazing. Every now and then, The Rolling Stone kills it on these pieces. Sadly too many people will ignore it or blame the liberal media.

"Harry Reid."

[QMany]

Selling out to Stalin and stealing from Native Americans, the American way.

[carlfense]

Selling out to Stalin and stealing from Native Americans, the American way.

^^^+1

[beanman]

Amazing. Every now and then, The Rolling Stone kills it on these pieces. Sadly too many people will ignore it or blame the liberal media.

I'm pretty conservative and I believe in humans impacting global climate change and am also a tree hugger. Don't label all of us man. I don't believe in dinosaurs though. I call those Jesus Horses.

[QMany]

 

Amazing. Every now and then, The Rolling Stone kills it on these pieces. Sadly too many people will ignore it or blame the liberal media.

I'm pretty conservative and I believe in humans impacting global climate change and am also a tree hugger. Don't label all of us man. I don't believe in dinosaurs though. I call those Jesus Horses.

I laughed out loud. +1

[Junior]

 

Amazing. Every now and then, The Rolling Stone kills it on these pieces. Sadly too many people will ignore it or blame the liberal media.

I'm pretty conservative and I believe in humans impacting global climate change and am also a tree hugger. Don't label all of us man. I don't believe in dinosaurs though. I call those Jesus Horses.

 

 

Actually, I was just talking to the wife about this the other day. Said how you were an oddball religious guy who is an environmentalist etc. Which is a rarity, though it shouldn't be! You'd think protecting God's Earth would be compatible with religion...

[beanman]

 

 

Amazing. Every now and then, The Rolling Stone kills it on these pieces. Sadly too many people will ignore it or blame the liberal media.

 

I'm pretty conservative and I believe in humans impacting global climate change and am also a tree hugger. Don't label all of us man. I don't believe in dinosaurs though. I call those Jesus Horses.

Actually, I was just talking to the wife about this the other day. Said how you were an oddball religious guy who is an environmentalist etc. Which is a rarity, though it shouldn't be! You'd think protecting God's Earth would be compatible with religion...

I wouldn't label myself as religious. Moreso confused and don't know what to believe...

[Abdullah the Butcher]

 

 

 

Amazing. Every now and then, The Rolling Stone kills it on these pieces. Sadly too many people will ignore it or blame the liberal media.

I'm pretty conservative and I believe in humans impacting global climate change and am also a tree hugger. Don't label all of us man. I don't believe in dinosaurs though. I call those Jesus Horses.

Actually, I was just talking to the wife about this the other day. Said how you were an oddball religious guy who is an environmentalist etc. Which is a rarity, though it shouldn't be! You'd think protecting God's Earth would be compatible with religion...

I wouldn't label myself as religious. Moreso confused and don't know what to believe...

I hear praying to Joe Pesci works about half the time.

[tschu]

Man, this whole paragraph

 

Charles even convinced David to stand as the Libertarian Party's vice-presidential candidate in 1980 – a clever maneuver that allowed David to lavish unlimited money on his own ticket. The Koch-funded 1980 platform was nakedly in the brothers' self-interest – slashing federal regulatory agencies, offering a 50 percent tax break to top earners, ending the "cruel and unfair" estate tax and abolishing a $16 billion "windfall profits" tax on the oil industry. The words of Libertarian presidential candidate Ed Clark's convention speech in Los Angeles ring across the decades: "We're sick of taxes," he declared. "We're ready to have a very big tea party." In a very real sense, the modern Republican Party was on the ballot that year – and it was running against Ronald Reagan.

[QMany]

I was talking to a Republican friend of mine who lives Wichita and supports Koch. I told him about this good piece in Rolling Stone.

I'm sure. What lib propaganda did they write about?

Right on cue, guys.

[VectorVictor]

Very informative piece, and a well done piece of objective journalism. Of course, since it is informative and objective, I fully expect it to be herpaderped until Rush can't herp any more derp out of it.

 

On a related note, I have a very personal connection to a Koch Brothers-ran business that they took over, and what my late father imparted to me before they hijacked the Republican Party with their Tea-Party jihad scared the living s**t out of me.

[QMany]

Koch's Response

 

We also expressed our concerns that given his and Rolling Stone’s past distorted and dishonest coverage of Koch, we were doubtful that he would be fair and objective with us.

 

Author's Reply

 

The salient feature of Koch's response is that the company does not argue the core facts of our 9,000-word expose. Instead, Koch targets the messenger. Koch's top target here is not even Rolling Stone, but me, Tim Dickinson.

I find it, frankly, amusing that a company that has been convicted of six felonies and numerous misdemeanors; paid out tens of millions of dollars in fines; traded with Iran, and been so reckless in its business practices that two innocent teenagers ended up dead, attempts to impugn my integrity, and on the basis of my association withMother Jones — where I worked as an editor in the late 1990s and early 2000s, on a team that was twice nominated and once awarded a National Magazine Award for General Excellence.

[Abdullah the Butcher]

Goddamn commie writers