Grubstakers - Episode 17: Koch Brothers (Part 2)

Episode Date: May 27, 2018

Part 2 of our Koch extravaganza is here. We dive into the many reasons the Koch brothers have used their resources to cause massive unrest, cancer and even death! Man these descriptions are less uplifting, but the content is pure. Enjoy!

Hey everybody, welcome to Grubstakers. In this part two of our special episode about the Koch brothers, we explore how they transitioned from being merely libertarian crank billionaires to controlling the entire Republican Party, and how one EPA investigation really set them off on that path. Then we take a look at how Citizens United allowed them to spend almost as much as the Democratic and Republican parties in the 2016 election. In many ways, the Koch brothers are their own third political party. And also, Charles Koch's son killed a 12-year-old. All that and more coming up on Grubstakers. I think we disproportionately stop whites too much.

I taught those kids lessons on product development and marketing, and they taught me what it was like growing up feeling targeted for your race. I am proud to be gay. I am proud to be a Republican. You know, I went to a tough school in Queens, and they used to beat up the little Jewish boys. You know, I love having the support of real billionaires. I'm like, head in forward as we go.

All right, we all ready? Yep. Hey, hey, hey, listeners. Welcome back to Grubstickers. This is part two of our Coke Brothers episode. Sean McCarthy, take it away. Oh, yeah. Hey, welcome back, everybody.

Coke Brothers, part two of two. Sean P. McCarthy here, as always. Andy Palmer. Steve it away. Oh yeah. Hey, welcome back everybody. Coke Brothers part two of two. Sean P. McCarthy here as always. Andy Palmer. Steve Jeffries. Yogi Poliwal. And we left you last week with the story of one Fred Coke, a hard-working industrialist who... Blood and soil industrialist. An industrialist who covered a lot of ground, as it were. Who provided the fuel for the fire. A lot of living ground. That's right. That's right. He was really instrumental in the tailorization techniques of a large scale industrial operation that was

extremely profitable, uh, that harvested, uh, gold and, um, clothing and hair, hair,

candles, goodwill. I think that's, uh, like a thrift store with, with, uh, bad attitude,

but a good heart. Um, Fred Koch, uh, Charles and David Koch's father, helped set up an oil refinery in Hamburg, Germany under the Nazi regime in 1935. It's part of what made him a multimillionaire at the time, his Koch Industries. Not only that, they set up oil refineries for the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin. He later became an ardent anti-communist but he died in 1967 and he split his company between his four brothers um charles coke david coke frederick coke bill coke now what happened to review charles is

gracho he's the funny one uh david is chico he lives in manhattan he's the sleazy urbanite frederick is zeffo he left the sleazy urbanite Frederick is Zefpo he left the family business early on and no one really knows much about him or cares and Bill is Harpo

who mostly communicates through horns and whistles and for our more millennial listeners just think of the Arrested Development family that's a good chunk of what we're talking about

it was like they had to yeah this bit would have gone over when hipster authenticity was more in vogue like eight years ago yeah i guess yeah arrested development did kind of update the reference so that the father helps saddam hussein instead of adolf hitler i mean it works when it works it works yeah um but no touching uh but so anyways so the father splits his inheritance equally between his four children however um fights break out conflict these sorts of things and eventually what happens is that bill and frederick coke agree to sell their shares of the company to charles and david coke in 1983

for about 800 million dollars later lawsuits are um filed by the other brothers because they say that they were stripped of more money that they should have had because Charles and David like hid the true value of the company and this that and the other they later settled those lawsuits but the family still is like there's a lot of recrimination like uh Jane Mayer writes about how at their mother's funeral, apparently Bill didn't make eye contact with the other brothers, and Frederick, who loved his mother,

wasn't even there because Charles Koch... That's sad because Bill mostly communicates through facial expressions. Charles Koch set up the funeral in some way to exclude Frederick from being able to make it, which is alpha. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Charles Koch like set up the funeral in some way to exclude Frederick from being able to make it, which is alpha.

Yeah. Oh yeah. You know, just like, but anyways, that's, that's actually his secret of what is called market-based management is planning funerals to planning your mother's funeral to make sure your

brother you like don't like can't be there. But anyways, so... If you do the game theory, that's the optimal outcome, is excluding your brother from the funeral. But the point of this was that, as we have mentioned on the previous episode, there are four Koch brothers, but the reason people only think of Charles and David is because Charles and David are the ones who control more than together 80% of Koch industries. Again, the second largest private corporation in the world. And their combined

net worth is like 120 billion, I believe. They each have 60 billion. Yes, they are each holders of more than 40% of Koch industries, which is primarily what generates their huge amount of wealth but so charles coke in particular as the alpha of the brothers sets off um to impose again groucho impose his libertarian vision on the country because you know in the 60s and 70s these ideas are extremely fringe his idea that as he learned at the Freedom School, that we should abolish everything in the Bill of Rights except for the right to own property. Whatever it is, I'm against it. And so in 1974, Charles Koch, Ed Crane, and Murray Rothbard, famous for his Market and Children,

set up the Cato Institute. The Cato Institute is a libertarian think tank that is entirely controlled by Charles Koch. Keyword there is tank. Yes. And it will later have a storied history of publishing report and study after study denying the existence of global warming.

But in the 1970s, it's kind of a dormant think tank. And they have this idea, Charles and David get the idea to take over the Libertarian Party. Again, a very small, very fringe organization in the United States of America. But the method that they do that is in 1980, David Koch runs for the vice presidency under the Libertarian Party ticket. And they think up this idea to circumvent at the time existing campaign finance laws. Jane Mayer quotes David Koch as giving a speech before the Libertarian Convention in 1980 saying that he promised to spend unlimited amounts of his fortune in service of the Libertarian Party to a wild...

Friends, talk fast. I see a man in the crowd with a rope. ...to wild cheers from the assembled Libertarians as they realized that their market for children was soon to be at hand. But so basically, they run president the vice presidency in 1980 and uh uh jane mayor says that charles kind of put david up to this because charles coke who uh again lives in kansas whereas david coke lives in new york city and runs the new york side of the business from new york whereas charles coke is at the headquarters in wichita kansas um uh charles puts david up to for running running for president because Charles doesn't like the spotlight, you know?

But they hatch this plan to take over the Libertarian Party. They spend tens of millions of dollars on this 1980 election, and they walk away with 1.1% of the vote. Entirely from people in their late 20s and early 30s, guys in their late 20s and early 30s guys in their late 20s and early 30s who latched on to their age of consent policy but so basically this experience kind of humbles them on the political process and they rethink their outlook because when we think when we associate the cokes with the republican party

we have to understand that is a relatively recent phenomenon in that it's only really happened in the last two decades, less than that. Charles Koch has said that Ronald Reagan was a sellout, the famously conservative president in the 1980s, who, of course, when Reagan took office— Wait, who was Reagan? When Reagan took office in 1980, the highest income tax rate in the United States was 70%. When he left office, it was under 30%. I think it was like 28%. What a tax and spend liberal. But that guy was a sellout.

So they really didn't donate much to the Republican Party. But that really changes with an investigation launched against them by the Clinton administration. Because as we mentioned on the previous Institute, the socialist vanguard, as we mentioned on the previous episode, as we mentioned on the previous episode, Koch Industries is one of the top 10 polluters in both air, water, and climate. They dump more than 26 million tons of carbon into the atmosphere every year. They are big proponents of global warming, which, unsurprisingly, the Cato Institute libertarian think tank promotes their bottom line interest by hiring scholars and pushing out studies to deny the existence of man-made global warming. And I think before we get into their investigation by the Clinton administration, I do just want to skip ahead to a couple of fun facts about the Cato Institute. So basically, Ed Crane, who we mentioned co-founded the Cato Institute, he was the president of

the Cato Institute, he gave this quote in the early 2000s saying, quote, there are more polar bears today than there have ever been. Global warming theories just give the government... We have to change that. Global warming theories just give the government more control of the economy. Jane Mayer says that after the scientists, the global warming scientists, had their emails hacked and they were leaked to the press, one Cato scholar gave more than 20 media interviews on the subject in the two weeks following. And they, again, published a stream of articles denying global warming. So it's very hard to separate their ideological vision from the fact

that Charles Koch totally controls the board of directors of the Cato Institute and has a bottom line interest in distorting the science on global warming. And a small follow-up on Mr. Ed Crane, president of the Cato Institute, former president. He was forced out in 2011 for being quoted in the media dismissing Charles Koch's idea of market-based management. And Charles Koch came up with this idea of market-based management, which was his idea that the best companies simulate the free market by having divisions compete against each other for rewards and resources, which is really dumb and bullshit. And part of the reason Sears is going out of business is because the CEO adopted this as well. But basically, Ed Crane, the president of Cato, was quoted in the media as

being dismissive of this idea. And so Charles Koch, as a complete controller of the Cato Institute, pushed him out, just like he pushed out Marie Market for Children Rothbard, by setting up other people on the board to force Ed Crane out in 2011. But in this year, 2018, Politico runs a fun article about Mr. Ed Crane, Mr. There are more polar bears than there have ever been. And I'm just going to quote from Politico here. One former Cato employee during the late 1990s recalled visiting Crane's office on multiple occasions and finding him viewing pornography on his computer. Former Cato employees during the late 1990s recalled visiting Crane's office on multiple occasions and finding him viewing pornography on his computer.

On one occasion, Crane told the employee that she resembled a woman in one of the pictures. Oh, my God. And on another occasion told her he would like to see how her breasts measured up to the images on his screen. She said Crane made dozens of sexual comments to her during her time at Cato.

I read it was actually Baker's dozens of comments. I just, uh, I, I just feel so much sympathy for people who just want to like wake up in the women, strong, powerful women who just want to wake up and put in a hard day's work,

uh, starving welfare recipients talking about how, uh, uh, food stamps are like the greatest government giveaway while ignoring oil subsidies and Defense Department contracts. And they have to deal with these kinds of fucking creeps. You know, he really gives a bad name to the market for children. But one other quote from that Politico article.

Again, quoting. that politico article uh again quoting three other former kato employees described witnessing ed crane making sexual and other inappropriate comments to young women at kato both at work and during after work events crane drank alcohol in his office during the day according to multiple former employees one male employee said he saw crane try to unsnap the bra of a female colleague at an office party on a boat on the potomac river wow if he was such a bad boss though the market wouldn't have allowed to hold that position well another quote from the uh kato uh from the politico story crane was paid four hundred thousand dollars annually by the kato institute uh so the free market, and you know what? The free market allocates resources efficiently,

so it is not our place to complain. It's a Pareto optimal situation. One guy starts with everything. No one can be made better off if he shifts any into it. But yeah, no, so, and it quotes, and so again, the Kochs, Charles Koch specifically,

forced this guy out because he mocked his idiotic management theory. But they're quoted in the Politico article as being like, you know, we only found out about his sexual harassment after we forced him out. And, you know, we're very disappointed and we had no idea this was going on. And again, this is a organization that was completely controlled by Charles Koch, so I 100% believe he was at least partially aware of these kinds of things because, again, in the Politico article, multiple employees said that they forwarded these complaints about it, crane up the chain. fair recipients and demand draconian cuts to the environmental protection agency that uh destroy lives and kill people through a pollution caused by your main benefactor but uh you also really need to understand that no means nobody counterpoint if we have a two-tiered society with some successful and a bunch aren't that isn't sustainable sustainable, and it's not just. Sounds pretty woke to me.

But yes, so the Cato Institute is essentially an ideological show. That's why you should be able to trade children. Some of those children who aren't going to be successful get to look in at what the good life's like. Yeah, yeah. The single-tiered society where all children are slaves. The state should provision child slaves. Who said it, me or Plato?

Look, you shouldn't be allowed to murder your child, but it is coercion if the government forces you to feed your child. But yes, so the point is the Cato Institute, as we have mentioned a couple times, it followed the model of the John Birch Society where Charles Koch set it up in 1974 as a nonprofit with stockholders and a board of directors,

with Charles Koch personally controlling the stock and the board of directors. So essentially, unsurprisingly, this libertarian think tank primarily promotes bottom line issues for Charles Koch. And this really shouldn't shock anyone because in a world with capital, where capital funds, political politicians, political movements, ideas, those ideas that are beneficial to the holders of capital will, for some reason, get more amplification than those ideas that are beneficial to people who of capital will, for some reason, get more amplification than those

ideas that are beneficial to people who do not hold capital, like, you know, those welfare recipients that Cato Institute is always demonizing. So essentially, they set up this real think tank movement, and it comes into its own. But an important thing to understand is that what we understand as the modern libertarian movement is entirely astroturfed by the Koch brothers and a bunch of useful idiots who, unfortunately, I am including my high school self in on this. So another, they also set up the, I believe, the Reason Foundation, and the Reason Foundation publishes Reason Magazine every month.

Reason Magazine is a libertarian magazine. No, no, no, it's a silent T, actually. Reason Magazine is a libertarian magazine no no it's a silent t actually uh reason magazine is a libertarian magazine uh uh again funded by the coke brothers uh and to my great yeah but it sounds reasonable let's hear them out to my great embarrassment in my high school days i paid for a subscription to libert Libertarian Reason magazine. And I know on a previous episode, I mocked the gentleman who donated $20 to the GoFundMe for Jeff Bezos. But I would just like to say, as somebody who sent subscription money to Reason magazine, I am just as stupid.

This magazine that is totally underwritten by the Koch brothers and exists only to promote their bottom line thinking. But anyways, you know, so it's like the libertarian movement is a bottom line movement for the Kochs and other billionaires and multimillionaires to protect their own interests. And it portrays it in a cool, hey, man, let's smoke weed and, you know, ignore age of consent laws way. But it's a bottom line business movement that takes in a lot of gullible gullible idiots and is extremely well funded that said uh you can intern at the

reason magazine uh offices this summer and interns work for 12 weeks and receive a seven thousand two hundred dollar stipend which is seven $7,200 more than the Daily Show the Colbert Report used to pay. Yeah, it's interesting how your entire job is to actively underwrite multi-billionaire polluters. How they are better able to pay you

than a comedy show. But yeah, no, shout out to all the libertarians out there. You guys definitely are in control of your own agency. Listen, is 2018 really deadlier for school children than service members? The Washington Post headline is misleading. Oh.

Well, you know, there are more polar bears now than there have ever been. Those Coke commercials. I mean, you can see the fucking polar bears drinking Cokes. My Cokes.

You see, Fred, their dad, Fred, would have taken a different tact and say the polar, the white bears succeeded beyond all measure. And this is just proof, you know,

the, the, of his, his family's racial purity. Fred Koch was like, uh, the brown bears are a communist plot to take over the jungle. Uh,

all right. So also new and reason magazine, it's time to put our federal meat inspection law out to pasture. Outdated regulations are hampering the beef meat industry that's fun because uh did you know that the only reason we have laws against e coli and beef was because that kid in the 90s died eating an undercooked uh jack-in-the-box hamburger worth it e coli hamburger but interestingly enough the chicken industry has always fought against similar regulations for salmonella in chicken,

instead blaming people when they die from salmonella for not cooking their meat properly. And this has been a constant fight with the, I believe the FDA regulates this, but this has been a constant fight where in the United States today, you can get salmonella chicken because the government does not. You mean like you can order it? Yes, you can be like, I want the extra salmonella chicken because the government you can order it like yes you can be like i want the extra salmonella i'm having the in-laws over that said they also say that deadpool 2 pretty good oh um so i want to talk a bit about because uh we we mentioned here the run for uh the vice presidency ended in crushing defeat. And Charles Koch's thoughts at the time are essential.

By the way, the deputy who failed to engage Parkland Shooter gets a $104,000 annual pension for life. It's a travesty that sheds light on public retirement costs in Florida and around the country. I love that this has become like a talking point again. And these Koch-funded organizations that we have to end public pensions because the guy is getting a pension. Because a cop didn't want to run into a field of bullets. We should abolish all pensions. Well, if that doesn't convince you, you're just one of these irrational liberals envious of wealth i will say it's pretty ballsy because if you can uh if you can undermine retirement payouts in florida you can do it

anywhere um all right so essentially they get crushed in the 1980 election and then this changes their outlook where jane mayer quotes charles coke is saying something to the effect of politicians are all just puppets reading from a script. I want to change the script they read from. I'm paraphrasing there, but essentially you see what happens with the Cato Institute. The Kochs

are also, as well as other billionaires, big funders of the American Enterprise Institute, the Heritage Foundation, all these conservative think tanks that are beholden to their donors that publish, you know, studies that, surprise, surprise, always say the rich should keep more of their money, environmental regulations are bad, unions are bad, etc., etc., that always reflect the bottom line interests of their donors. So not only do they set up these think tank networks, particularly in the Koch's case, the Cato Institute,

but they go on an educational campaign. And before we get to the Clinton administration thing, I do just want to give a quick overview. Essentially, the Koch brothers took over George Mason University as a public university in Virginia. And their strategy for taking over public universities, because they're not the first billionaire to come up first billionaires to come up with the idea, but they really perfected it where they realized that if you set up your own little crank university in the middle of nowhere, nobody will really give a shit. The key is instead you find a prestigious institute like Stanford, for example,

and then you set up what is called a private academic center there. So just for context on Stanford, they have what's called the Hoover Institute, which is a private academic center that promotes free market ideas, named after the worst president of the 20th century, who destroyed the economy and starved thousands of Americans to death by his refusal to do anything about the Great Depression caused by the very free market policies that is now advocated by the Hoover Institute. So it is really...

You know what was also named after Hoover? Shanty towns from people who were evicted from their houses during the Great Depression. It is really the conservative version of reclaiming a racial slur by saying, hell yeah, we're Hooverists. We want all of you to starve to death. But yes, so the Hoover Institute is one of these private academic centers. It's on the Stanford campus. I guess Stanford's a private college, but they'll do this with public colleges, too, where they'll approach the administration there and be like, hey, we'll set up a private academic center and they'll study something that seems non-controversial like economics. But because their funding comes with strings, so they will have control over faculty hirings and these kinds of things. So their economics research will, for some reason, always support bottom interests um and so once again a lot of words for propaganda yes right

um but so interesting thing that happened uh with the george mason university which again there was a recent story about how the coke brothers were exercising hiring and firing decisions over uh faculty at this publicly funded university. And what happened here was that basically some students who wanted to uncook their school, which, fun phrase, play on uncook, is they basically filed a Freedom of Information Act on their, or some equivalent to that, they basically sued their school to get them to release uh basically documents relating to the i thought the people who wanted to uncoke their schools were the ones you never wanted fraternity parties they uh they got a they got documents

that were uh basically the agreements between the coke brothers or the Charles and David Koch foundations that detailed what the conditions were. And in a 2003 agreement, Mercatus Institute said it. I guess Mercatus Institute is. That's the... Yes, so we're jumping ahead. But yes, the Mercatus Institute is the private academic center the Koch set up at George Mason University, which again, we explained how these agreements work, but eventually its tentacles kind of slithered into the rest of Russell Roberts, who is an economist who advocates limited government. And in response to this being released,

Angel Cabrera, who is both the Koch Foundation and George Mason president. Isn't he also a shortstop? When asked about this, he pointed out that the arrangements were old. Old? Yeah, that was his excuses like it was a long time ago you know it was 2003 we were going into iraq we didn't know if the world was going to end it's a different time after 9-11 you know we were all so scared of terrorism we had to

take over private universities to promote bottom line propaganda. Yeah. There were similar things at Florida State University. And apparently a professor at Arizona State University described drama involving a 2014 co-foundation. The Kochs demanded that they hire a new professor dedicated to teaching the history of capitalism, which I thought it would have been fun if that were David Harvey. He's very good at that. And the professor said that the university dean told him ASU will never hire anyone that Koch doesn't approve.

Yeah. Well, that's interesting. So essentially, yes, they set up this Mercatus Center. I guess this is Latin for markets. Yeah. So it's the Latin for market center, which, of course, promotes, again, their bottom line interests. But the center shares a building with another thing they set up, the Institute for Humane Studies, and Jane Mayer says that Charles Koch was obsessed with metrics and data, where he was essentially trying to graph the indoctrination of students in real time.

So what they did was this Institute for Humane Studies, which shared a building with the Mercatus Center, applicants would have to write application essays of course and so the uh ihs would run them through a computer which would count the number of references to einrand and milton friedman uh in order to uh apply saber metrics to uh the ideology it's like that's what the cokes figured out is really on base percentage is much more important than your simple conservative average like a walk is a walk it's like a hit yeah basically yeah um but the uh uh so again jane mayer says that the charles game theory to teach game theory uh uh jane mayer says the carls the charles coke foundation don't hate the game theory. Hate the game. The Charles Koch Foundation sponsored more than 307 different college market programs as of 2015.

Wow. So, again, they're setting up these academic centers. They're setting up these free market programs. And they're always kind of disguising it where they never say, you know, pro-free. I mean, they might have kind of a euphemism. But they're always trying to present it as a business school or an economics course or just any way to kind of like make it not look like a blatantly ideological project and between 2005 and 2015 they spent 150 million dollars which if you're worth if the two brothers are worth $60 billion each, that is a drop in the bucket.

If that. Yeah. And by the way, tell your friends because we would love to take that kind of money from the Cokes to shut this podcast down. And so if we get enough listeners, we can leverage that and say, we'll take the pressure off a bit if you just pay us out and we'll walk away. We'll start shredding magic cards on my instagram it'll be a new life we think that the uh microeconomics idea of applying game theory to actual human interactions which reduces a human to a simple agent that just wants to get more of something and that's the basis of microeconomics, essentially,

is to reduce... A simple human who just wants to get more pornography to show to their employees. That humans are rational actors who simply want to get more, and that model can explain all of human behavior. We're against that, but we can be convinced

for a cool $200,000 per grub staker ironically enough i'm not the first person to observe this but kind of the rational actors idea that you know politicians are like corrupted and uh these kind of thing all people are rational actors that uh self-maximize this was really promoted by uh again conservative economics departments uh well they kind of ignored the fact that themselves, as rational actors, would, of course, be corrupted by the philosophy with the most money behind it and go on to promote this philosophy that, of course, advocates government to completely stop all regulations, basically.

But one more fun fact about the Mercatus Center before we get into the legal proceeding that really gave the Koch received a list of regulations to eliminate from the Mercatus Center, and I believe eliminated 14 of the 28 suggestions just verbatim. So again, it's like you set up an ideology factory, and then you sponsor politicians, and then you get your way. I mean, it's an assembly line of propaganda but we imagine a story fits neatly into the liberal narrative that the coke brothers charles and david have used their inherited oil wealth to fund the development of radical economic theories at co-funded universities but uh steve stephen perlstein a washington post columnist for the

past seven years he's been a professor at Mason. And although he teaches economics and economic policy, he's not a member of the economics department. They wouldn't have him. And it turns out that Mason's economic department, they're actually just very libertarian in their mindset. And so they seek out donations from people who are like-minded. Oh, interesting. Yeah, yeah. Keeping it within the community.

Yeah. Says the guy who's not allowed into their economics department. It's interesting. You know, I really respect his ability to just take all that money to promote bottom-line interests of people and then not be corrupted by those people. He's just a free thinker well on every every block within the campus there's a button of course if you if you feel threatened there's one button and then underneath that button there's another one if you see steven just like a giant red button that says push here if you see paul krugman on campus um yeah i think jane mayer also quotes uh it was like some sort of high school actually was broke

and it had to take a deal from a coke foundation which involved uh textbooks that would declare that um franklin roosevelt made the depression worse through the New Deal. And, you know, labor laws were like stealing from poor people and these sorts of things. I mean, I hate to bring it up, but literally propaganda. Yeah. They operate on screwing over everyday people and then convincing them that they didn't screw them over. Yeah. Well, again, and it's just like, it's kind of a fascinating thing.

So fucked. Yeah. Well, again, and it's just like, it's kind of a fascinating thing where... Yeah, it's so fucked. Yeah. Well, it's essentially fascinating where it's like, you have like these Alex Jones and all these people with, you know, the various conspiracy theories. And it's like, again, I'm not the first person to make this point, but these conspiracy theories are popular. But you are the last person to make this point. I am the most recent person you have heard make this point. The conspiracy theories are popular because people recognize that they don't have control over their own government and all these forces are aligned against them but it turns out it's not like the illuminati lizards it's just the people at the top 10 of the fucking forbes list where you have the coke brothers spending almost as much as the major political parties on their own political organization and that's just in the actual

political lobbying side they are also pouring hundreds of millions into education efforts to turn out ideological soldiers and again like as somebody who graduated with a ba in economics there were certainly aspects of that ideology that bled into mainstream economics courses courses even though i got a rather keynesianian economics education, but I still had, for example, Marxist labor theory of value misdescribed to me by somebody who was a teacher who was trying to pre-bias me. Name names.

Which eventually trickled down into your Facebook posts. Right, that's right. When are you going to get to them lies that you talked about a while ago? Which lies? The amount of times they lied to people? Oh, yeah, yeah. So we'll get into that now. So basically what happens is, as we mentioned, Charles Koch, he's like, fuck politics.

Reagan's a sellout. I'm not donating to the Republicans. I'm going to change the script that these puppets are acting with. Fuck bitches getting money. Exactly. And this is why he's funding all these universities, these private academic centers. This is why he's funding the Cato Institute to change the script. But that changes in the 1990s, particularly 1999, because the Clinton administration launches an investigation into the egregious pollution practices of coke industries um you know and uh what happens in 1999 is a jury finds coke industries guilty

of making more than 24 500 false claims to the government uh and this is basically just lying about oil spills lying about uh that's uh 300 oil spills 300 oil from its pipelines and oil facilities in six different states this includes a a pipeline explosion that incinerated two teenagers. What? Yeah. Were they both dudes or chicks or one of both? I remember this story. Yes.

So basically what happens is like, it's like. They are driving out to make out landing. It was, what happens is, I forget the gas, but basically this father, his daughter and her friend were over in their trailer park. He was watching sports. This is from Jane Mayer's book. And so they smell a weird thing because there's a pipeline underneath them that is burst and it is leaking some sort of gas. But basically, the kids get the idea to drive out and try and check up on it.

And they take the truck out and they drive up and then they stop. And then when they reignite the car, it explodes in a fireball because all of this gas is leaking out from the pipeline and coke industries later uh settled with the family but not before you know uh smearing them and deny deny exactly exactly i like how these two teenagers were more responsible than the fucking corporation that put the goddamn gas underneath them yeah you know coke industries we uh we we make teenagers flaming hot. That should be the Coke medical beauty products. We'll make you as hot as we made those two teenagers.

So how many lies was it again? Well, they killed two people there. Oh, sorry, the lies. More than 24,500 lies to government investigators. And that says a jury found them guilty of this in 1999. It's like they were dating the government. Yes. A jury found them guilty of this in 1999. Another story from Jane Mayer's book is that an employee would testify in that trial that management regularly at Coke Industries regularly ordered him to dump toxic waste down drains.

Oh, my God. Like, just like, you know know tap water drains basically and again these are horrifically polluting chemicals i think the craziest thing about the podcast is learning about the evil things billionaires do it like yeah it's horribly monstrous corrupt things but there are these smaller petty things that i'm more bothered by because it's like you can't you can't operate in a shitty evil way and not be a dick like you can't be you know be like hey hundreds of thousand people we're gonna be killed by what we do but also i kick puppies like come on counterpoint people believe that

all these goodies we have today just appear right that uh appear out of the sky because we get spoiled. And that's what I say. The worst enemy of success is success. When you become prosperous enough, you take it for granted. And you forget what's required to make people's lives better, your own and others. That's right. You guys think we should stop blowing up teenagers? Well, say goodbye to those big buildings.

If you stop blowing up teenagers, you forget where you came from. Success. Think about all the Dixie Cups we'd have to stop making if we wanted all the teenagers to live. But essentially, the EPA imposes a multi-million dollar fine on them. I don't believe anyone actually goes to prison for this. But the EPA slaps a big fine on them i don't believe anyone actually goes to prison for this um but the epa uh slaps a big fine on them it was the largest up till then right uh the charges were dealt in a guilty plea and a 20 million dollar penalty oh well they never did it again oh wait 30 million dollar penalty

um but so this really is what sets them off on the path towards Republican politics. Because, again, until this point, they've been satisfied to try and set the script. But here they're like, oh, the government will actually fuck with our bottom line interests. So we have to align ourselves with the Republican Party. So it is, as we mentioned. They're going to fuck with us. So let's fuck with them first. Right. So they become a big donor to and supporter of the George W. Bush presidency. As we mentioned, the Bush administration took regulations to eliminate directly from the Mercatus Center that they run.

And a W stands for vulnerable. Right. But I guess we should really jump to the Obama administration because this is where they come into their own. Thanks, Obama. Yes. So we mentioned on the previous episode that their summit, their semi-annual summit where they gather all these multi-billionaires and millionaires together and kind of lobby them to donate to their political network, which in turn ships money out to all these different conservative advocacy groups, started in 2003. But it wasn't until 2009 with the election of Barack Obama that it really took off. There were, again, according to Jane Mayer, more than 18 billionaires at their January 2009 summit. People like Paul Singer, who we did two episodes ago, he sent a representative. The Mercers, Rebecca Mercer. She was there. I don't know if

she was at that one, but she attended one of the summits. So the point is a lot of different billionaires get involved in this because they're trying to fight the Obama agenda, which initially seems like it will be hostile to their bottom line interests. And what happens is the Tea Party breaks out, and this is partly a semi-grassroots response to the bank bailouts and all that stuff. But the Charles Koch Super PAC, Charles and David Koch, Americans for Prosperity, becomes a big financial backer of the Tea Party movement. So it's kind of like some citizens turned out, but they recognized this opportunity to astroturf their own interests onto this movement. And it should be noted that the Tea Party was also partly motivated by racial animosity towards Barack Obama. What? No. Because he was half white.

Yes. You can't have that cracker in office ruining the chicks. But basically, Americans for Prosperity goes to Tea Party rallies, and it sets up rallies where it chooses the featured speakers, who of course promote Koch brothers' bottom line interests. It gives out talking points. It gives out free American for Prosperity t-shirts. Like Jane Mayer tells a story about some person being pissed off that basically these volunteers paid by the Kochs showed up at a tea party rally, gave some people

Americans for Prosperity t-shirts, took a picture of them with them and then left. And they were like, oh, yeah, they're just sending that back to the Kochs to show that they're doing something. But so basically, and they also give these protesters like lists of representatives and government officials to contact. And, you know, surprise, surprise, the Koch brothers' bottom line interest is much different than the actual grassroots movement. Because, as we mentioned, you know, they've been trying for so long to find this grassroots movement to embrace all their libertarian principles. And then finally, with the election of Obama, they have some foot soldiers and they try to shape the message as much as possible. And just like one more thing on this, according to Jane Mayer, one study found that not one

Tea Party protester could be found who was in favor of privatizing Social Security. So it's just like, like again you have these grassroots protesters which you know some of them are racist some of them are misguided some of them are whatever but it's really just an attempt by billionaires to astroturf a campaign onto their newly emerging foot soldiers and they use their multi-billion dollars to do that just like another example of FreedomWorks was a Koch brothers affiliated Republican PAC that had a secret deal with Glenn Beck giving him 1 million dollars a year to plug them on air without disclosing that he was receiving money from them and the Americans for Prosperity the Kochs

He's friends with Samantha Bee right? Yes. He went to Burning Man. But you know and we'll talk a bit about more on the George Soros episode, Glenn Beck's talking about how George Soros is the puppet master. Well, of course, he is receiving a million dollars a year from the actual puppet masters. But so American for Prosperity sets up a similar deal with conservative conservative radio host mark levin um who uh later trashed i believe it was politico who exposed this uh deal but again you know mark levin becomes like one of these angry talk show hosts like rush limbaugh sean hannity etc etc who's really whipping up the tea party movement all the while he's taking money from americans for prosperity to plug and promote them on air without disclosing that he is receiving financial assistance from them.

So the Tea Party movement is really where the Koch brothers get their foot soldiers. And but it's Citizens United that really changes the whole game. See you. And let's see. We've talked a little bit about private foundations and what a scam they are so what happens is in 1999 an organization called donors trust is set up by a libertarian named whitney ball who had helped oversee the development of the cato institute donors trust is a 501c3 and it's a quote donor advised fund and basically what it does is that uh private uh foundations and uh

people who want to protect their privacy when they're giving to conservative groups can give to this donor-advised fund, and then it will redistribute their money to conservative groups. Oh, like a mutual fund charity? Basically, think... Yeah, a little bit. Right. So it's like Jane Mayer describes it as like Russian nesting dolls,

where the money starts in like a philanthropic... It's a money laundering operation. Right. So it's like Jane Mayer describes it as like Russian nesting dolls where the money starts in like a philanthropic... It's a money laundering operation. Right. The money starts in a philanthropic foundation, then it goes into Donors Trust, and then Donors Trust distributed more than $750 million to conservative groups. And its largest donation in 2010 was $7.4 million back to Americans for Prosperity. So that Koch Brothers PAC. So essentially, it's just a way of protecting their identities. And this is a big mechanism that they used in their push for global warming denial. But yes, like...

And the Koch brothers do like to play themselves up as like big philanthropists. Of course. All billionaires do when a lot of them are engaged in this kind of shady shit. What's interesting is I looked at their philanthropy website and they list four different philanthropies. The first one is the MicroWorks foundation uh which they say is through scholarship for the um they're using it to uh they're basically they they describe it as as ceo of the foundation micro spends a significant amount of time speaking about the country's dysfunctional relationship with work so basically uh the foundation i looked at their tax return it's

worth about 600 000 they're basically paying micro money to go around talking about the need for improved working. Basically, they're paying micro to talk. And out of that... Looks like he's doing a dirty job. Out of that, they got this amazing interview where he talks to Charles Koch and basically plays up how down to earth he is. There's this... You know the problem with poor people.

They're not willing to do the dirty job of fueling the Nazi war machine. Look, polluting the environment, specifically the air, water, and earth, it's a dirty job. Look, nobody says it's a glamorous job telling people that they're going to take a shower and then putting Zyklon B into the chamber as they are showering. But, you know, these jobs are necessary and people got to get over the idea that they can make it as an artist. You should be an Einsatzgruppen instead. That's what the market wants.

Fucking micro piece of shit. Here's one of the most telling segments of this. The part where our Venn diagrams overlap is the skilled trades. Oh, absolutely. These are underserved skills, tremendous need. In the recent years, the cost of doing a project, particularly on the Gulf Coast, has gone up 50% and taken much longer. And it's because we don't have enough skilled people to do that,

whether that's carpenters welders electricians mechanics and so we've been we've been working with uh with these trade schools and others and subsidizing them and supporting them it seemed so like my takeaway from that is that charles coke wants to put money into the skilled trades through Mike Rowe to lower his bottom line. Right. Basically to make the cost of buying people with skilled trades cheaper. Because his wages are too high.

Yeah. My takeaway was maybe we don't have enough skilled people because your father helped kill 12 million of them. But yes. So Citizens United really, and subsequent court rulings really opens the floodgates because again there was you know mccain feingold and some other uh campaign finance restrictions but citizens united essentially uh and subsequent legal rulings sets up uh the ability of donors to spend unlimited amounts on outside groups and so

what these are often called are social welfare groups that hide their donors' identities. These are 501c4s. One interesting part of 501c4s, again, I'm relying on Jane Mayer for this, they can't be majority political activity. But what happens is lawyers argue as long as 49% of it is political activity, it's not majority political activity. And again, because of the shell game,

the Center to Protect Patient Rights, which was a Koch, among others, funded conservative group that opposed Obamacare, it claimed in 2010 to the IRS that it spent, quote, no money on political activity when in reality it transferred more than $103 million to other conservative groups so again it's just a fucking shell game and one more uh illustrative statistic uh that jane mayer

got was in 2006 these kinds of outside groups accounted for only two percent of political spending whereas in 2010 the wave midterm election it was more than 40 percent so essentially citizens united unleashed the coke brothers to become the uh third major political party i can see why penn and teller love them so much because they're really good at that sort of ball and cup and uh sleight of hand yes and so again 2010 is a wave election and i just want to uh play a short sample of um an advertisement if if we could an advertisement that was run in Iowa that was partly funded by the Koch Networks against a Democrat in Iowa remember this is Iowa where this is being played for centuries Muslims built

mosques military victories now they want to build a mosque at ground zero Islamic terrorists killed 3,000 Americans. It's like the Japanese building at Pearl Harbor. The current building the mosque believes America was partly responsible for 9-11 and is raising millions overseas from secret donors. But incredibly, Bruce Braley supports building a mosque at Ground Zero. Tell Braley what you think. I hate that strong Iowa position of supporting a mosque at ground zero.

I really hate to inform this ad, but as someone who has visited Pearl Harbor recently, mostly Japanese tourists. But yes, that kind of like race-baiting Islamophobic ad. And interestingly enough, the guy who came up with that ad, I believe his name is Kenny McCarthy, my estranged father. But he's also the guy who did the Michael Dukakis ad about furloughs for black criminals and stuff. Oh, the Willie Horton stuff? Yes, he did the Willie Horton ads, and so, of course, he also came up with these Islamophobic post-9-11 ads, which they ran all across the country

against various Democrats to get them defeated using race-baiting Islamophobia. But so, essentially, this is what hundreds of millions of dollars in political spending gets you. And, excuse me, but in the 2010 and 2012 election, they coordinate with Karl Rove, sets up his own group like this, Crossroads USA. I believe in, I guess before we skip ahead to 2012, we should just mention 2010. 2010 is a wave election against Obama, funded by hundreds of millions of dollars in Koch

Brothers contributions. And once they win power, they launch this redistricting effort thought of first by Ed Gillespie, among others, called Red Map, where they go into all these different places where they have just won victories by spending, you know, in some cases, millions of dollars on local racists, millions of dollars of outside funds, and then they get their newly elected people to help set up redistricting operations under the Red Map strategy, but they also set up photo ID voting laws and other ways to try and disenfranchise voters. They really bought into the Karl Rove sort of playbook of trying to win it all at the county level in order to build the kind of constituencies you need that you could pour money into to take on bigger state and federal campaigns. Right. And so just a couple things uh in north carolina in particular which they uh jane mayer calls kind of like an experimental lab for them uh they uh um they redistricted heavily and like i'll post a

photo of one of these uh uh gerrymandered districts, but it looks like Ebola under a fucking microscope. It's just crazy. But when they took over North Carolina, they, of course, refused to expand Medicaid under Obamacare, Medicaid expansion. And an interesting note is that a Harvard study estimated that in North Carolina alone, 400 to 1,100 people died every year because of the refusal to expand Medicaid. Oh, my God. So it's interesting where it's like they're running all these ads about 9-11 where they're doing a mini 9-11 every three years.

Yeah. Fucking murderers. Social activist Petey Pablo was quoted as saying, North Carolina, come on and raise up. Take your shirt off. Let's spin around your head like a helicopter. And just one other thing on this voting disenfranchisement. Yeah, but they have the choice to choose their medical provider.

After they took over all these local state governments, Jane Mayer says that 37 different photo ID laws were proposed in different states, in 37 different states between 2011 and 2012. So essentially they took over in a wave election spending hundreds of millions of dollars, and then they were like, we're going to stay in power now. All right, so essentially, in 2010, they win this midterm election, and then they're like, what's next? Well, of course, next is the presidency.

That's what they didn't have. And so, interestingly enough, and again, this reflects the wider Republican shift on global warming, and it's entirely a result of Citizens United, where this unlimited money, they line up eventually behind Mitt Romney. They want it like Chris Christie first, but he was horribly corrupt, so it didn't run. Too corrupt for the Coke industry, Chris Christie. But basically, in Romney's 2010 book, he writes that global warming is a serious threat. And then suddenly, when he starts taking Coke money, he famously at the RNC says that Obama promised to stop the rising oceans, sarcastically. And he's like, but I'm going to help you and your family or whatever. And he later on the campaign trail said that CO2 is not that much of an issue. And again, you can entirely trace this back to Citizens United, where, again, in 2008, John McCain ran on global warming's a problem, we're going to do something about it. Newt Gingrich did a joint thing with Nancy Pelosi,

where she said, we're going to do something about global warming. But as of, you know, 2012, all of these people, uh most republican members of congress had totally reversed themselves on global warming because the cokes were with citizens united the third political party and if you were a republican and you said global warming is real you will have a primary challenger with unlimited outside spending you know so it's like it's just entirely a material analysis of how material circumstances shape ideology where coke brothers bottom line industry took over the republican party and made it anti-global warming how can you say that global warming is real and that when i strap my dog to the top of a car driving cross-country that it was freezing um i don't know but yes essentially

they lose in 2012 unfortunately obama um uh jane mayer describes this interesting story where um obama's political advisor i think it was that dipshit who went on to work for theresa may i think he was ob Obama's campaign manager. Howie Mandel? Yes. But so he sits Obama down at some point and says that outside groups are going to spend more than $660 million against you in 2012. And up to this point,

Obama had been against setting up a super PAC, but at this point he goes, okay, we have to fight them that way. And so they set up a super PAC, and it's just like a big back and forth with uh with money but ultimately the coke brothers lose we've mentioned our previous episode um the obama administration ran some hard ads against a bain capital which actually uh antagonized some of their own donors but like um i'm kind of jumping around here but it's just interesting the way wall Street money kind of intersects where after Obama was kind of critical of the banks, all of the hedge fund billionaires, even the ones some of them who had previously supported him, went over to the Koch brothers side.

But essentially. No. Essentially, they lose in 2012, and this is a soul-searching moment, because when they lose in 2012, it's partly because of Mitt Romney's, you know, 47% of the country will never vote for us, they're moochers, they're takers, you know. It's partly because of that, and so one of the...

Otherwise, Mitt Romney was an avatar of charisma. His name was Mitt mitt he had it in the glove uh so gary payton was supposed to be his vice president the glove with the glove but so they take over in 2010 they launch this red map redistricting but they lose in 2012 it's a setback carl rove melts down on air everyone's happy um uh but the donors are pissed off and so what they do is they rethink their strategy where um uh in 2014 the coke at the coke brothers semi-annual summit um a guy named richard fink who's their political advisor since the 80s um and if you want to know what a real-life necromancer looks like, just Google image Richard Fink.

Because, you know, I say this as a pale gentleman, but that man has not seen sun for more than 300 years. He has been deep studying under... Vampires want his shade. He's been studying Lee Atwater's copy of the Necronomicon to bring the worst of political strategy to life. But basically, in 2014, they reanalyze. This is before the 2014 midterms.

They reanalyze, and Richard Fink, the meeting, some of the audio of this meeting leaks, and Richard Fink... Oh, Andy Andy you got the audio real quick? Yeah maybe but it's apparently not so good quality but we can take a look I just want Andy to make those noises again sorry But so basically Richard Fink

gives this speech to the donors at the Coke Summit and he splits America into thirds. He says a third of the country will always be with us. A third of the country will always be He says, a third of the country will always be with us. A third of the country will always be against us. A third of the country will always be with us. And then we have to convince the other third that we care about them. We care about people like them. It's not change the policy. It's change the way we present the policy. And of course, this would lead into their uh as we mentioned on the previous episode their

push for criminal justice reform and all these other kind of humanizing things where they get these you know uh praising profiles in time magazine now now let's let's pause for a second take a step back uh to what coke money uh can basically get uh there was this, were you going to talk about Scott Walker a bit? No, actually, yes. So Scott Walker basically was one of the Koch projects. He was brought up as this free market governor of Wisconsin. And once he became governor, he started this very controversial plan

to basically make state worker unions illegal. Basically did everything he could to fight state worker unions. The Democratic part of the Wisconsin state legislature was furious at him about this. One of them complained that he couldn't get through to Scott Walker over the phone after trying repeatedly. And so in the midst of all this, this guy by the name of Ian Murphy asked himself who could get through to Scott Walker on the phone. And he arrived at David Coe or Charles Coe. And so apparently by his own account, he had been up 24 hours, was kind of drunk and stoned. And he called Scott Walker. Wait a minute.

This bit's not funny anymore. I don't like drug users. He called Scott Walker's office using his publicly listed line and said that he was David Koch. And they put him through to him. Oh, my God. And then he basically, he recorded the whole thing. It's 10 minutes. It's worth the listen, even though Scott Walker just rambles. I wouldn't know anything about that.

And he just plays Charles Koch as this comical villain with things like this. The other thing is I've got layoff notices ready and we'll probably get000 to 6,000 state workers will get at-risk notices for layoffs. Beautiful, beautiful. Got to crush that union. If they think I'm caving, they've been asleep for the last eight years, because we don't budge. You're doing the right thing, you stay firm. It gets better than that

Then there's How could it get better than that? There's this Yell at me for an hour I'm used to that I can deal with that But I'm not negotiating Bring a baseball bat

That's what I do I have one in my office You'll be happy with that I got a slugger with my name on it He's talking about negotiating with democrats and then um he's saying this about the union protests right right we'll back you any way we can but uh what we're thinking about the crowds was uh was planting some troublemakers you know the well the only problem with – because we thought about that.

The problem with – or my only gut reaction to that would be is if there was a ruckus caused, is that that would scare the public into thinking maybe the governor's got to settle to avoid all these problems. So that's – he got Scott Walker to basically admit to... They were thinking about staging violent protests. Yeah, yeah. Illegal activities. And then towards the end, there's this beauty. Well, I'll tell you what, Scott.

Once you crush these bastards, I'll fly you out to Cali and really show you good time. All right, that would be outstanding. Thanks for all the support and helping us move the cause forward. And we appreciate it. We're doing the just and right thing for the right reasons. And it's all about getting our freedoms back. But, you know, in fairness to Scott Walker, he was dealing with the American equivalent of Al Qaeda public service unions.

So Scott Walker claimed that everything he said was things he would say anyway. And then he claimed that because he rejected using violence that he was making the right decision. And then he said in his memoir that it was a message from God to be more humble. Wow. That's cool. his memoir that it was a message from God to be more humble. That's cool. And then another Koch project, real quick here, was Governor Sam Brownback of Kansas, who has been supported by the Kochs for his entire career. And when he was elected governor, he brought in the largest tax cuts in Kansas state history.

And Kansas, as a result, lost hundreds of millions in revenue. And so as a result, Brownback cut spending and services. And then in June 2017, towards the end of his tenure as governor, the Kansas legislature rolled back his tax cuts. This is a Republican legislature. They had to roll back Brownback's tax cuts, kind of undoing his whole project. And then he was appointed under Trump to the United States ambassador at large for international religious freedom. And at that time he made a statement about, uh,

or he criticized state buildings for being in a terrible state of disrepair and had no self-awareness that that was what he caused after eight years. What a fucking dipshit. Yeah. All right, I want to circle back to Richard Fink, though, because they get crushed in 2012, and then they have this soul-searching moment where they start quoting Martin Luther King

and talking about prison reform and stuff. But so Richard Fink, their political strategist, is quoted as this 2014 summit, splitting Americans into thirds and saying, he actually does admit, he says to them on this leaked audio recording, quote, we want to decrease regulations. Why? Because we can make more profit, okay? Where he's basically saying we have to figure out a new way to sell this to people, you know, and they eventually come up with freedom and all these

kinds of stuff. Well, that's always been their idea. But my favorite quote from this is he says that the minimum wage denied at this 2014 Koch Summit, he says the minimum wage, quote, denied an opportunity for earned success to 500,000 quote, a very big part of recruitment in Germany during the 1920s. And that minimum wage laws help support conditions that would, quote, lead to the rise and fall of the Third Reich. And you know who doesn't help support conditions that would lead to the rise and fall of the Third Reich is people with the last name Koch. But, yeah, no, I guess we're just kind of jumping around. And unfortunately, we can't cover everything. I will say that from my research into things that I did find out that all of the Koch brothers, including Frederick, do not eat butt.

So sorry, world. The Coke don't do butt. But Bill does honk a bicorn into the butt. That's right. Yes yes out of respect uh and another thing about the the coke's criminal justice reform push there was the big thing that made headlines in 2015 was there was this bipartisan uh criminal justice reform bill uh it was called the sentencing reform and corrections act and it was supported by the Koch brothers you know they were behind it they went on this big PR blitz uh it was hailed as

this thing that both Obama and the Kochs supported uh if you read through like some of the provisions of the act apparently it was just like really minor things like reducing mandatory minimums from like life sentences for the third strike rule to 20 years something like that but they they made a huge thing about it and then just as the uh as the act was about to go through coke industries through uh senator orrin hatch shoved in what's called the mens rea reform act uh in which you have to prove intent for white collar criminals when prosecuting them for a crime uh may basically making it almost impossible to prosecute white collar criminals because you know you have fraud but you also have in addition to proving fraud which is incredibly difficult you have to prove that they were knowingly committing fraud right and republicans

basically said you know either this goes in or we're not voting for the whole criminal reform act uh the whole thing got torpedoed and basically just died in the senate and that's that's basically the criminal justice reform legacy of the Koch brothers. That's what Martin Luther King Jr. would have wanted. But, so I guess we should talk a little bit more while we have time on some of the reasons the Kochs might be interested in making white-collar prosecution more difficult.

I just want to tell the story again. This is from Jane Mayer's book about a man named Donald Carlson who worked for the Kochs since 1974. He was cleaning out tanks that contained leaded gasoline, often, you know, scrubbing them down by hand and these kinds of things. I think they're called Panzers. The OSHA, O-S-H-A, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration or whatever it is. But the Workplace Safety Administration of the federal government mandated in the late 70s that companies that were exposing workers to benzene poisoning, possible benzene poisoning, has to offer them annual blood tests and tell them if abnormalities are found. Donald Carlson underwent these tests, but they started showing that his blood count, his blood cell

counts were abnormal, seriously abnormal. In 1990, 1992, 1993, Koch Industries does not tell him until 1994. They fire him after he becomes too sick to work in 1995. He dies of leukemia in 1997. They settle with his widow out of court on condition of no written agreement charles coke has of course called these kinds of government regulations quote socialistic so yes the coke industries murders their employees they murder teenagers a small town in crossett arkansas 11 of the 15 households there had cancer in the late 2000. 11 of the 15 households there had cancer in the late 2000s. 11 of the 15?

There were 15 households. 11 of them had family members that had cancer. They believed it was caused by chemical waste dumped by the nearby paper mill owned by Koch Industries. The air stank so bad

people would not leave their houses without respirators. There was a USA Today story, and actually the EPA administrator under Obama made some noise about an investigation into this. But unsurprisingly, after the Koch-funded 2010 midterm, Republicans became adamant about gutting the EPA's budget. And in fact, the Senate eventually passed a bill to reduce the EPA's budget by 16%, as according to Jane Mayer, after the 2010 midterms.

So essentially, as we've mentioned, once the Clinton story, once the Clinton verdict was rendered, they became obsessed with destroying the EPA and protecting their bottom line interests by making it as hard as possible for the EPA to do its job. And you can see why, because they're poisoning people and poisoning their employees.

Yeah. Well, I don't think this is a good billionaire. I don't think... Well, wait, let's... To go out, here is a clip from the documentary Park Avenue where it's an interview with one of the doormen from 720 Park Avenue where David Koch lives. And he talks about what it's like to be a doorman for David Koch.

When I started at 740, I was like, this is great. You know, come around to Christmas time. I'm going to get a thousand from each resident, you know, because they are multi-billionaires. But it's not that way. You know, these guys are businessmen. They know what the going rate is. They're not going to give you anything more than that. The cheapest person overall was David Koch.

Wow! We would load up his trucks, two vans usually, every weekend for the Hamptons. You know, I mean, multiple trips, multiple guys, in and out, in and out, heavy bags. We would never get a tip from Mr. Coke. We would never get a smile from Mr. Coke. $50 check for Christmas. A check.

A check, too, yeah. I mean, at least he could give us cash. So, fun follow-up on that from Jane Meyer's story. When PBS aired that Park Avenue documentary, David Coke resigned from the WNET board of NY Public Television and told one friend about the film, quote,

it's going to cost them $10 million. What? He just said, fuck y'all, I'm taking my money away from you after that? Yeah, basically. Wow, what a fucking real piece of work. This dude sucks. and i guess just like uh while we're winding down here one other fun story uh charles coke's son a man named chase uh in high school ran a red light in kansas and killed a 12 year old boy

he was he pleaded guilty to vehicular manslaughter, and he was sentenced to, I believe, 100 hours of community service, probation, and ordered to pay for the boy's funeral. So, justice. But not the most expensive casket, or the nicest location, or even a burial plot.

He was ordered to write the family a $50 check after they had helped unload his Christmas supplies. And Chase Coke, with no self-awareness, Charles talked about how his son had really worked his way up in the company and has since, I believe, been promoted to president of the fertilizer portion of Coke Industries. Wow.

One of the other Coke kids makes these designer shirts. Yeah, this is going around the internet. The XL designer shirts and in one of his promo videos for these shirts, he's talking about who could wear it where and these shirts are horrendous by the way. They're shirts that have outlandish

outrageous designs and nobody logical would ever wear them. But he's talking about where people wear them. You can wear them in the boardroom, the discotheca, the yacht, and it's like fat billionaires. You're selling this to fat billionaires? That's what you're just trying to do? What's great, too, is that that kid also looks just like Kim Jong-un. Yeah.

Oh, yeah. There's a... I was thinking, so the guy who had to pay for the funeral, I can just imagine him in the funeral parlor where they're like, and this is our premium casket. And he's like, do you have something cheaper? And they're like, well, I mean, this is our kind of lower end. It's not that great. And he's like, yeah, okay, I'll take that one.

And then you cut to the funeral and the pallbearers are carrying the kid. and then the bottom comes out and the kid hits the ground did you know all right we get it did you know he changed his name to Chase after he chased down that kid? Oh, man. But yeah, I mean, I guess kind of the summary here is that the Koch brothers and their affiliated network of millionaires and billionaires, again, the Mercers were big sponsors of this. They've really become a political party unto themselves who spent, than $880 million in 2016, almost as much as the Republican and Democratic parties each spent. So they are the third political party in America.

And it's so important that people understand how all these different ideological things are tied into the self-serving, bottom-line, anti-global warming, anti-regulation, anti-EPA, whatever interest of a small group of millionaires and billionaires. When it comes to reality, although people have cancer, the actual family of cancer is the Koch family. They truly are a tumor and a parasite. Hey, how much do you think that a 12-year-old boy Chase Koch ran over would fetch on the functioning market for children? Very Rothbard. Yeah, I guess that is the cost of a 12 year old boy under Murray Rothbard.

The cost of the funeral. Right, right. Oh man. So, on that, where are the grub stakers? I'm Andy Palmer. I'm Sean P. McCarthy. Steve Jeffers. Yogi Poliwag.

And, you know, Coke Industries, you want to buy us out, we'll talk. We'll see you next week. Yeah. Good billionaires. Thanks for listening.

We'll see you next week. Cocaine. If you want to get down, you want to leave this out on the ground. Cocaine. She don't lie, she don't lie, she don't lie. Really?