Together,
Charles and David Koch control one of the world's largest fortunes,
which they are using to buy up our political system. But what they don't
want you to know is how they made all that money
JohnButts@JBMedia - Reports:The enormity of the Koch fortune is no mystery. Brothers Charles and
David are each worth more than $40 billion. The electoral influence of
the Koch brothers is similarly well-chronicled. The Kochs are our
homegrown oligarchs; they've cornered the market on Republican politics
and are nakedly attempting to buy Congress and the White House. Their
political network helped finance the Tea Party and powers today's GOP.
Koch-affiliated organizations raised some $400 million during the 2012
election, and aim to spend another $290 million to elect Republicans in
this year's midterms. So far in this cycle, Koch-backed entities have
bought 44,000 political ads to boost Republican efforts to take back the
Senate.
What is less clear is where all that money comes from. Koch
Industries is headquartered in a squat, smoked-glass building that rises
above the prairie on the outskirts of Wichita, Kansas. The building,
like the brothers' fiercely private firm, is literally and figuratively a
black box. Koch touts only one top-line financial figure: $115 billion
in annual revenue, as estimated by Forbes. By that metric, it
is larger than IBM, Honda or Hewlett-Packard and is America's
second-largest private company after agribusiness colossus Cargill. The
company's stock response to inquiries from reporters: "We are privately
held and don't disclose this information."
But Koch Industries is not entirely opaque. The company's troubled
legal history – including a trail of congressional investigations,
Department of Justice consent decrees, civil lawsuits and felony
convictions – augmented by internal company documents, leaked State
Department cables, Freedom of Information disclosures and company
whistle-blowers, combine to cast an unwelcome spotlight on the toxic
empire whose profits finance the modern GOP.
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