If you doubt the cause of global warming, believe the public schools are failing, or label people as liberals because they do not support all far-right conservative Tea Party candidates and issues, then you may be a patsy of the billionaire Koch brothers.

The definition of “patsy”:

1. A person who is easily cheated, victimized, etc.

2. A person who is gullible and easy to take advantage of

3. A person who is tricked or swindled.

Before the 2012 Presidential election, I had never heard of the Koch brothers. A few months ago, as the election heated up, I started to learn who these billionaire brothers were and how dangerous they were to freedom and the quality of life as it exists in America today.

I think that most of the votes that will be cast for Mitt Romney will reveal how many easy to fool patsies there are in the United States. These patsies are the people that are targeted by the Koch brothers and their billionaire allies.

I find it interesting that Koch is pronounced the same as Coke, because Coke (the sugary drink called Coca-Cola) is responsible for many lifestyle diseases today and cocaine, also known as coke, is an addictive drug, a destroyer of lives and a killer. In fact, in 1891, cocaine was part of the formula for Coca Cola. Source: Snopes

In 1999, Bill Koch blew the whistle on Koch Industries when they stole nearly 2 million barrels of oil from American Indian reservations. Source: Bloomberg

Bloomberg reported, “Koch Industries is obsessed with secrecy, to the point that it discloses only an approximation of its annual revenue—$100 billion a year—and says nothing about its profits.”

“One Koch brother fought against the civil rights movement, and Charles and David Koch have supported the Tea Party.

Note: The Tea Party movement has sponsored protests and supported political candidates since 2009, after Barack Obama was elected president of the US. Many of the issues that the Tea Party movement protests existed under Caucasian presidents. Where was the Tea Party movement then?

“In 1980, David Koch ran for vice president on the Libertarian ticket, pledging to abolish Social Security, the Federal Reserve System, welfare, minimum wage laws and federal agencies—including the Department of Energy, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Central Intelligence Agency.

“A Bloomberg Markets investigation found that Koch Industries—in addition to being involved in improper payments to win business in Africa, India and the Middle East—has sold millions of dollars of petrochemical equipment to Iran, a country the U.S. identifies as a sponsor of global terrorism.

“From 1999 through 2003, Koch Industries was assessed more than $400 million in fines, penalties and judgments.”

What I have quoted from Bloomberg’s story on Koch crimes is not the entire list. You will have to click on the link to Bloomberg to discover the rest. It is a VERY long list.

Besides the Bloomberg report on the Koch brothers’ crimes, there is also the Koch brothers’ campaign against global warming and public education.

According to the environmentalist group Greenpeace, organizations that the Koch brothers help fund such as Americans for Prosperity, the Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute and the Manhattan Institute have been active in questioning anthropogenic global warming (environmental pollution and pollutants caused by human activity).

Jane Mayer wrote in The New Yorker  that, “Greenpeace issued a report identifying the company as a ‘kingpin of climate science denial.’  The report showed that, from 2005 to 2008, the Koch brothers vastly outdid Exxon Mobil in giving money to organizations fighting legislation related to climate change, underwriting a huge network of foundations, think tanks, and political front groups.

“Indeed, the brothers have funded opposition campaigns against so many Obama Administration policies—from health-care reform to the economic-stimulus program—that, in political circles, their ideological network is known as the Kochtopus.”

Watch Rush Limbaugh defend his buddies, the Koch brothers.
Rush Limbaugh’s net worth is $350 million.

Where did the Koch wealth come from that is now funding an assault on America’s democracy?

Between 1929 and 1932, Fred C. Koch (1900 – 1967) was paid $5 million dollars by Stalin’s Soviet government to built 15 cracking units for the USSR’s oil industry. Fred then returned to the US and used this blood money  to built Koch Industries, one of the most successful oil companies in US history.

Note: $5 million dollars in 1932 is equal to $81,329,760.40 today.

During his time in the Soviet Union, Koch came to despise communism and Joseph Stalin’s regime, writing in his 1960 book, A Business Man Looks at Communism, that he found the Soviet Union to be “a land of hunger, misery, and terror”.

I cannot argue with what Fred Koch discovered in Russia. If you have seen the BBC documentary Behind Closed Doors, you would have to agree too. But Stalin has been dead since 1953, and Russia has not been a communist country since 1991—twenty-one years.

In fact, there are four current communist/socialist countries: The People’s Republic of China, Republic of Cuba, Lao People’s Democratic Republic and the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. And all of these countries have adopted capitalist economic policies. North Korea is no longer a communist country. The Workers’ Party of (North) Korea removed and disavowed all Marxist-Leninist and communist references in the constitution and government.

However, back in the United States, Fred Koch was a founding member of the John Birch Society, and he claimed that the Democratic and Republican Parties were infiltrated by the Communist Party, and he supported Mussolini’s suppression of communists. He wrote that “The colored man looms large in the Communist plan to take over America,” and that “Welfare was a secret plot to attract rural blacks to cities, where they would foment a vicious race war.”

Note: Today, about 1.5 million Americans collect Welfare from the government and Black Americans make up about a third of that number. The other 39.5 million black people have worked to support themselves just like all other ethnic/racial groups in the US. The cost of Welfare is about 1% of the national budget.

Fred Koch had four sons to carry on his political legacy: Frederick R. Koch (net worth of $25 billion), Charles G. Koch ($31 billion), David H. Koch ($25 billion) and William (Bill) I. Koch ($4 billion).

After their father died, the brothers fought over the family fortune for almost twenty years to see who would control the wealth.

So, are you a patsy of the Koch brothers?

Discover Greed is Universal – a human trait or The Earning Power of Predictions

_______________________

Lloyd Lofthouse is a former U.S. Marine and Vietnam Veteran,
who taught in the public schools for thirty years (1975 – 2005).

Where to Buy

Lofthouse’s first novel was the award winning historical fiction My Splendid Concubine [3rd edition]. His second novel was the award winning thriller Running with the Enemy followed by his award winning memoir Crazy is Normal.

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