24, January 2016 Dark Money
In her new book, “Dark Money”, New Yorker
reporter, Jane Mayer, explores how the Koch brothers and their fellow right-wing
billionaires have poured money to elect Republican ideologies to shape public
policy. Mayer traces the history of the family fortune beginning with
industrialist, Fred Koch, the Koch’s father who built an oil refinery in Nazi
Germany which was personally approved by Adolf Hitler. The fuel from the
refinery was used on German warplanes.
The Koch brothers expanded their family
fortune amassing a combined aggregate of about $82 billion. They plan to spend
nearly $900 million on the 2016 presidential and congressional races. Since the
Supreme Court’s Citizen United
landmark decision which removed limits on campaign spending, the Kochs and
others such as Mellon banking and Gulf heir, Richard Mellon Scaife, chemical
tycoon John M. Olin, electronics magnates Harry and Lynde Bradley have
leveraged their business empires on candidates who will serve their corporate interests
with the safe knowledge that the source of their donations will be kept secret.
The “dark money” is also used to fund right-wing think tanks, university
endowments, research to favor their right-wing agenda such as Americans for
Prosperity, Citizens for a Sound Economy.
Koch Industries has recently been cited as the single biggest U.S.
producer of toxic waste.
Funding from the corporate conglomerates, “The Kochtopus” is conditional on signing on to a
pledge denying climate change. A staggering 156 members of Congress have already
signed on to the pledge.
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