Couple of weeks ago I posted a note called "Who is Howard Rich? He's buying your government:"
http://www.dailykos.com/.... In it, I mentioned Rich's involvement with the National Libertarian Party, based at the time in San Francisco. Rich fell out with the party leadership in the early 1980s. In that post, I noted that I'd perused Libertarian Party newsletters which have been catalogued online at the Ludwig von Mises Institute in Alabama.
Since then, as I've Googled `til I'm dizzy to find out who might be helping Rich bankroll his long march through the Midwestern and Western states, pushing his initiatives for TABOR and regulatory takings, I've been pulled back to those Libertarian newsletters at the Mises Institute. In them is documented a relationship that I believe is key to Rich's long-term agenda. So tonight, let's let various sources of information introduce you to Charles and David Koch.
First, the ties that bind.
In the 1970s, Rich was an "operator," for lack of a better word, in Libertarian Party politics at the same time that first Charles, then David Koch became important players - and more importantly, sponsors - of the party. Murray Rothbard, then-editor of the Libertarian Forum, tells us that Rich had worked his way into the upper echelon of Lib affairs by the time that Ed Clark was chosen the party's nominee for U.S. president in 1980, and David Koch was the party's nominee for vice president. Among the eight-member steering committee for the Clark-Koch ticket was "Howie Rich of New York, in charge of ballot drives and floor manager for the Clark forces at the Los Angeles convention." (http://www.mises.org/...)
But the election of 1980 proved disastrous for the party, largely because electoral expectations had been so inflated by Clark - who had pulled five percent of the California electorate in an earlier statewide election there, the party's best showing anywhere to date - and because the addition of Koch to the ticket portended an unprecedentedly healthy cash flow for the campaign. Indeed, Rothbard reports following the election, when the Clark-Koch team netted fewer than one million votes nationwide, "If reports are correct, David Koch spent $2.1 million of his own money to achieve one percent of the total vote. But to achieve victory, surely he would have to have spent at least as much per vote as did Jay Rockefeller procuring his re-election victory in West Virginia this year: a mere $50 per vote. At that rate, we figure that for a measly $2 billion of his personal fortune, David could buy us victory in 1984!"
(http://www.mises.org/...)
Rothbard doesn't hold back. The Clark-Koch campaign was a "four-fold disaster," he declares, even - and especially - in the area of fundraising. In narration that rings loud and familiar to Kos readers following Howard Rich's money trail through the states, Rothbard tells us, "Despite David Koch's generous contribution of $2 million, the campaign raised only $1 million from other sources."
"...[nominee] Clark and [communications director Ed] Crane regularly told the news media that `most of our funding is coming from small contributors,' when in fact David Koch was providing about two-thirds of the money," he writes. Meanwhile, Rich's main task was to coordinate the ballot drives - shades of things to come - to win ballot positions for the Libertarian Party nominees, and he did a lackluster job of it by at least one report.
"In late December of 1979, Ballot Drive Co-Ordinator Howie Rich told Colorado LP Chairman John Mason that it was absolutely imperative that Colorado complete its ballot drive by December 31, because `Colorado will be the 30th state, and it's really important that we make it in 30 by the end of the year'," Rothbard says. "That same day he said this to Mason, he told Paul Grant - then a National Committee member - that the drive had been completed in only 21 states!"
Of course, Rothbard's view of Rich, Koch and their faction of the party may be jaded, and he explains why in 1981. "On Black Friday, March 27, 1981, at 9:00 a.m. in San Francisco, the `libertarian' power elite of the Cato Institute," which he says includes Ed Cato President Ed Crane, and his protégé, Cato's co-founder and benefactor Charles Koch, "revealed its true nature and its cloven hoof. Crane, aided and abetted by Koch, ordered me to leave Cato's regular quarterly board meeting, even though I am a shareholder and a founding board member of the Cato Institute." (http://www.mises.org/...)
Following the failure of Crane's handpicked candidate to win a national office at the party convention in 1983, Rothbard doubled back to sting Rich once more. Counting votes at the event had proven a crucial task for Crane's operatives, which included Howard Rich. Rothbard writes, " `How is Howie as a counter,' one of us asked. `Pah,' replied one of our Mavens, `Howie can't count his change'."
Rothbard's reporting includes one more anecdote to illustrate David Koch's philosophy regarding finance and politics. To ensure his candidate's nomination, the convention floor was visited in person by the party's most recent vice presidential nominee, or, in Rothbard's words, the "very visible and imposing appearance of multi-millionaire David Koch. Koch, moving around the delegations with Randolph and MacBride, laid it on the line: If Ravenel were nominated, he was prepared to give $300,000 to the Party for ballot drives." When a delegate asked Koch whether he would support such ballot drives if Ravenel's opponent were nominated instead - for the sake of unity - he balked. "Certainly not. I only contribute to first-class candidate," he reportedly said.
While Koch's gambit failed, Rothbard celebrated the failure. "Actually, while all support to the LP is to be welcomed, it will not harm the Party in the long run to be no longer dependent on the Koch family; it will not harm us to make it on our own in the real world," he writes. "There was getting to be a danger of the Libertarian Party's becoming a perpetual welfare client of the Koch family." (http://www.mises.org/...)
A year later - the last year of publication for that version of the Libertarian Forum, Rothbard penned a circumspect analysis of the Libertarian Party's rise and fall, taking us back to the pre-Rich, pre-Koch days of the party, analyzing their impact on its development, then charting the fallout - which he attributes in part to a machine called the "Kochtopus." (http://www.mises.org/...)
In a long item titled "The State of the Party: Implosion," Rothbard declares three reasons for the party's decline: cultural change, "the Reagan phenomenon, and the vagaries of the Kochtopus." Excerpts, in order, tell an abbreviated tale:
"The Kochtupus began when Charles G. Koch, young multi-millionaire scion of the Wichita-based Koch oil empire, was converted from a passive Lefevrian view of libertarian strategy... to an activist stance," he writes. "The Kochian burst into ideological, and even political, activism at the end of 1976 launched the `Kochtupus'."
"What was the guiding vision of the new Cato Institute, and of other institutions that were rapidly created, during 1977, to form the massive new Kochtupus? The idea was that CK would (as he indeed did) pour millions into creating institutions that would find and gather the best and the brightest of the libertarian movement, mobilized by the supposed organizing ability of Eddie Crane. The object was to promote a consistent ideology of hard-core and uncompromising radical libertarianism... For a movement that had long languished in abject poverty, this was a dazzling vision indeed..."
But, Rothbard tells us, the dazzlement didn't last long. He says that Charles Koch's overweening demand for loyalty and control of all party processes hobbled its growth - and the growth of its new Koch-funded arms - and caused a rapid shift in direction. Focus moved from growth and development to immediate, all-out power: Charles recruited his younger brother, David, into the party movement; David was then installed on the Libertarian Party's national ticket. Putting David on the ticket meant the Kochs could, and did, contribute $2.1 million to the campaign - a king's ransom in the politics of 1979-80.
Of course, the Clark-Koch ticket didn't make a dent against the Reagan-Bush ticket of 1980, and the Kochs ratcheted back their financial support almost as quickly as they'd ratcheted it up, which Rothbard didn't lament.
But who are the Kochs, apart from their connection to Rich?
Bill Berkowitz of MediaTransparency.org reported in December 2005 that "the Koch (pronounced "coke") brothers, Charles, David, William and Frederick are sons of Kansas. Thirty-eight years ago, Charles took over the company from his father, company founder Fred Koch. According to a recent piece in Business Week, Charles, 70, and David, 65, now `own the bulk of the company after elbowing out their other brothers ... in 1983,' buying out William and Frederick for $470 million and $320 million, respectively. In 1998, in a chilling display of family disunity, `the two sets of brothers walked silently past one another in court as William and Frederick lost a lawsuit to extract more money from Charles and David'."
There's more, found here: http://www.mediatransparency.org/...
"According to `Axis of Ideology,' (PDF Executive Summary) a 2004 report by the National Committee on Responsive Philanthropy, the two dominant Koch boys have `a combined net worth of approximately $4 billion, placing them among the top 50 wealthiest individuals in the country and among the top 100 wealthiest individuals in the world in 2003, according to Forbes.'
"Between 1999 and 2001, they gave more than $20 million to a host of conservative organizations; `most of their contributions go[ing] to support organizations and groups advancing libertarian theory, privatization, entrepreneurship and free enterprise,' `Axis of Ideology' pointed out...
" `David, who is executive vice-president and a board member, ran for Vice-President on the Libertarian Party ticket in 1980 and both Charles and David are directors of the free-market advocating Cato Institute and Reason Foundation,' Business Week recently pointed out. In an interview with National Journal, David Koch described his philosophy this way: `My overall concept is to minimize the role of government and to maximize the role of the private economy to maximize personal freedoms.'
Berkowitz finds one element of the Koch brothers' activities fascinating: their surprisingly low profile. "Koch [Industries] is a huge company -- bigger than Microsoft, but few people have heard of it," said Bob Williams, a project manager at the Center for Public Integrity, and the co-author of the report `Koch's Low Profile Belies Political Power: Private Oil Company Does Both Business and Politics With the Shades Drawn.'
Through a press release that Berkowitz quotes, Williams says Koch Industries is "politically active, in campaign contributions, lobbying and, probably most importantly, founding and funding right-leaning libertarian think tanks."
Their great wealth and diverse interests put the Kochs "amongst the most powerful and influential movers and shakers promoting privatization in America," even powerful enough to directly influence the present Bush administration. Over the past several decade, Berkowitz writes, "their money created an extensive infrastructure of Libertarian and Free-Market think tanks from which President Bush has drawn to staff the highest rungs of the land management agencies."
The article that Berkowitz quotes, authored by Bob Williams and Kevin Bogardus, can be found here http://www.publicintegrity.org/.... In it, the pair point out that "Koch is the leading campaign contributor among oil and gas companies for the 2004 election cycle, giving $587,000 so far. Next came Valero Energy at $568,000."
"Since 1998, Koch is the fourth biggest campaign oil and gas industry giver, behind ChevronTexaco, El Paso Corp. and Enron Corp," they write. "Despite its size and political largesse, Koch is able to dodge the limelight because it is privately-held, meaning that nearly all of its business dealings are known primarily only by the company and the Internal Revenue Service. In fact, it is the second largest private company in the country, trailing only food processing giant Cargill."
Despite their penchant for flying under the radar, Google delivers a month's worth of easy research on the Koch's business activities and interests, and I'll outline a few of them in a follow-up.