From: catoheritageetc@msn.com   
      
    Look at Tea Party Sugar Daddies the Koch Brothers (pushing this agenda   
   for 20 years plus).   
   By DJ Pangburn Thursday, October 14, 2010  ...the Koch Brothers, the   
   sugar daddies of the Tea Party movement.  The Kochs have contributed   
   $100 million to a so-called movement of people that have no clue how   
   well they’re being played by men whose only end is corporate   
   profit.   
      
      
      
   This article will look at the Koch Brothers and their company, Koch   
   Industries, oil barons who are manipulating a rabble of confused   
   individuals in the bid to rid the country of Obama’s supposed   
   socialist vision and lower taxes. If the Tea Partiers knew that Koch   
   Industries does not pay corporate income tax, might they reconsider the   
   money they receive from the Koch brothers when they themselves are taxed   
   both by Democracts and Republicans alike? Ignorance truly is bliss for   
   the Tea Party, or Reactionaries, as I like to call them.   
      
   ..Dating back to their father’s time as chief at Wood River   
   Oil, the Kochs accelerated the acquisitions of oil pipelines until they   
   controlled (privately) a 4,000 mile matrix of pipelines that transport,   
   according to Koch Pipeline’s website, “crude oil and   
   refined products, as well as natural gas, natural gas liquids and   
   anhydrous ammonia (for fertilizer).”   
      
   Over the years, Koch Industries and its many subsidiaries have been   
   fined for a number of environmental violations. According to EPA   
   records, the Koch Petroleum Group paid the highest fine in Minnesota   
   history. The company violated the Clean Water Act by discharging   
   “aviation fuel into a wetland and an adjoining   
   waterway.”  The EPA press release says Koch Petroleum Group did   
   nothing to recover the discharged aviation fuel from the wetlands until   
   1997.   
      
   The same EPA press release also states:   
      
   “In a separate offense, Koch dumped a million gallons of   
   wastewater with high ammonia content on the ground between November 1996   
   and March 1997 and also increased its flow of wastewater into the   
   Mississippi River on weekends when Koch did not monitor its   
   discharges.”  Must have been great news for the people living   
   along the lands adjacent to the Mississippi River and the New Orleans   
   delta.   
      
   Bill Koch, who attempted but failed to take over the company, claimed   
   that Koch Industries was stealing oil from federal lands.  CBS News   
   reported on the fraud, and received a letter from the company calling   
   Bill Koch a “disgruntled family member.”  Ultimately,   
   according to CBS News, Koch Industries reaped the whirlwind a bit:   
      
   “But in December 1999, the jury found that Koch Industries did   
   steal oil from the public and lied about its purchases – 24   
   thousand times. The oil theft conviction was a heavy blow, but the   
   troubles of Koch Industries don’t stop there. If the company was   
   fattening its bottom line through theft – there is also evidence   
   Koch was pinching pennies on safety and environmental protection   
   – cutting costs with disastrous results… Former EPA   
   administrator Carol Browner announced in 2000 that she was hitting Koch   
   Industries with the largest civil penalty in the history of the federal   
   Clean Water Act: a $30 million fine… She said, Koch Industries   
   spilled over 3 million gallons of crude oil in six states.”   
      
   During the years of the Bush administration, Koch Industries’   
   criminal activities were exposed in court, where they were convicted and   
   fined for dozens of oil spills, covering up environmental violations,   
   again stealing oil from Native American lands, illegally exporting crude   
   oil from Canada to the U.S., violations of the Clean Air Act and   
   violations reported by Koch subsidiary Invista. Clearly the Koch   
   Brothers do not give a shit about the environment and the human beings   
   who make their homes around their industries. It stands to reason that   
   they probably don’t care about the Tea Party either. They are   
   merely a means to an end: the end being profit.  The ability to pollute   
   land, water and air and conduct their business criminally with impunity.   
      
   The Kochs play around in other industries.  They own Matador Cattle,   
   which, according to the “New York Observer,” utilizes a   
   New Deal program which “allows ranchers to use federal land   
   basically for free. Matador, one of the ten biggest domestic cattle   
   ranching operations, has something in the neighborhood of 300,000 acres   
   of grazing land for its cows—two-thirds of which belong to   
   American taxpayers.”  So, we the taxpayers own that land.  Koch   
   Industries grazes their cattle on it for free, and we see absolutely   
   none of the profit. For a couple of Libertarians, they sure as hell have   
   no reservations about profiting from the system.   
      
   “The New York Observer” covered seven such instances of   
   the Koch brothers’ willingness to accept corporate welfare.  The   
   only conclusion that can be made then about the Koch Brothers is that   
   they are about as Libertarian as every other crooked corporate titan in   
   the history of the United States and abroad.   
      
   As Mark Ames and Yasha Levine reported–later repeated by   
   “The Washington Post”‘s Dan Eggen and Philip   
   Rucker–the Kochs are behind the Tea Party cover group Americans   
   For Prosperity, who are anti-tax and anti-regulation.  Whose prosperity?   
   The Kochs’ prosperity.   
      
   As G. K. Chesterton once noted, “The poor have sometimes   
   objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being   
   governed at all.”   
      
   That is the aim of the Koch Brothers.  None of us enjoying being   
   governed, but the Koch Brothers only object to it because it might cut   
   into their profit margins.   
      
   Kochsuckers."   
   end snip   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)