Glenn Greenwald has a new organazation fighting the Koch agenda.
I was astounded recently on Elections forum, some people dont even know who, (or what) the Koch Brothers are.
Here is an overview of what the Koch Bros. represent:
1. In North Carolina, Kochs attempted to infiltrate school boards in Wake County, in order to "resegregate" schools.
2. The company states that it "owns a diverse group of companies involved in refining and chemicals; process and pollution control equipment and technologies; minerals; fertilizers; polymers and fibers; commodity trading and services; forest and consumer products; and ranching." The company was started in 1927 by
Fred Koch, an early member of the
John Birch Society. The company is led by
Charles Koch and
David Koch, arguably two of the leading and most influential financiers of anti-regulation and right-wing ideology in the United States.
Koch Industries is a privately-held company. It is reported to have a revenue of over $100 billion in revenue per year
3. Falsified benzene emissions:
In April 2001, the Koch Petroluem Group (now
Flint Hills Resources) "pleaded guilty to a felony charge of lying to the government about its benzene emissions". A report to the Texas Natural Resource Conservation Commission disclosed only 1/149th of the actual benzene pollution. The company was fined $10 million and ordered to fund an additional $10 million in costs for environmental cleanup in South Texas.
The extremely profitable plant earned almost $200 million for the company in 1995, the year of the violation; the benzene emissions would have cost $7 million to control. After an environmental technician reported the false report that led to the fines, Koch Petroleum Group moved the whistle blower to an empty office with no tasks and no e-mail access. She quit a short time later
4.
Koch Industries is a long-time member and funder of the
American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), and a long-time member of the ALEC corporate
Private Enterprise board.
[13]
A list of
ALEC corporations can be found here.
5.
Koch Industries subsidiaries include the polymer company
Invista;
Koch Minerals, which handles bulk commodities;
Koch Carbon which trades and transports petroleum coke, coal, cement, pulp and paper, sulfur and other commodities; the
Koch Exploration Company which acquires, develops and trades petroleum and natural gas properties in the United States, Canada and Brazil; and
Flint Hills Resources, which operates crude oil refineries in Alaska, Minnesota, and Texas, ethanol plants in Iowa and petrochemical plants in Illinois, Michigan and Texas.
The
Koch Pipeline Company owns and operates approximately 4,000 miles of pipelines used to transport crude oil, refined petroleum products, natural gas liquids and chemicals, and the
Koch Alaska Pipeline Company owns an approximate 3 percent interest in the Trans Alaska Pipeline System. Koch Industries also owns a 28% interest in the
Colonial Pipeline Company which it describes as the "owner and operator of the world’s largest-volume refined products pipeline."
The
Koch Supply & Trading companies "provide risk management services in crude oil; refined petroleum products; natural gas and gas liquids; gas, power and emissions; industrial metals; and other commodities and financial instruments. It also "operates an 80,000 barrel-per-day refinery in Rotterdam, the Netherlands."
Koch Fertilizer is, according to Koch's website, the world's "third-largest maker of nitrogen fertilizer," and Koch owns or has interests in fertilizer plants in the United States, Canada, and Trinidad and Tobago.
Koch Industries also owns
Georgia-Pacific, which has approximately 300 manufacturing facilities across North America, South America and Europe. Georgia-Pacific facilities include pulp, paper and tissue operations, as well as gypsum plants, box plants and building products operations. Subsidiaries of Koch Agriculture Company have cattle ranching businesses in Montana, Kansas, Texas, and South America
In 2010, Koch Industries was named one of the United States' top 10 air polluters in a study released by the University of Massachusetts at Amherst’s Political Economy Research Institute
6. Tar Sands, Keystone Pipeline:
In May, 2011, Reps. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) and Bobby Rush (D-Ill.) formally requested more information from Republican leadership on the House Energy and Commerce Committee about how the project might benefit Koch Industries. They wrote:
Publicly available information indicates that the company is involved in several aspects of Canadian tar sands development. Koch’s Pine Bend Refinery in Minnesota currently processes roughly 25% of the tar sands fuel imports to the United States. Koch owns Flint Hills Resources, LLP, in Calgary, Canada, which is “among Canada’s largest crude oil purchasers, shippers and exporters.” Flint Hills Resources also operates a crude oil terminal in Hardisty, Alberta, where the Keystone XL pipeline will begin. According to the Government of Alberta, Koch Industries has both proposed and producing tar sands projects in the province. The Oil Sands Developers Group also indicates that Koch is a tar sands project developer. Koch’s Corpus Christi refinery is positioned near the end of the proposed Keystone XL pipeline and would be a potential buyer for the tar sands crude shipped through the pipeline.
Tar Sands project utilizes easements to transport oil through the US, but is exported, pipipeline is for shipping oil out of US only.
Related SourceWatch articles
Dirty Truth about Keystone Pipeline
Ring Of Fire Radio: Robert Kennedy Jr, Mike Papantonio and Sam Seder -
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