The family is said to have formed the organization "Americans for Prosperity", link (starts Shockwave) here.
Thursday, September 20, 2012
"Koch Brothers Exposed": Greenwald's indictment of a particular family in the top one percent
The “Koch Brothers Exposed”, directed by Robert Greenwald
(produced by Brave New America and
viewable online on Netflix) is a somewhat hysterical documentary that appears
to blame one family for manipulating the entire political system to keep the
rich ("The One Percent") not only in their palaces but in control of ordinary people.
The Koch family founded Koch Industries, a large industry
conglomerate. When I lived in
Minneapolis, I often passed the Koch-owned Pine Bend Refinery, about 17 miles
south of downtown St. Paul on Highway 52.
It’s the largest refinery in any state that does not have its own oil
reserves.
The film, of course, focuses on enormous lobbying efforts
supposedly made by the Koch family against what are often seen as progressive
initiatives by mainstream political science.
The family is said to have formed the organization "Americans for Prosperity", link (starts Shockwave) here.
The family is said to have formed the organization "Americans for Prosperity", link (starts Shockwave) here.
One speaker says, “They
don’t want to see government money spent on people whom they believe are
beneath being worthy of being taken care of.” And later, someone says “they
have a strong ‘libertarian agenda’”.
The film goes on to cover the lobbying for privatization of
Social Security (which I think should be done, but in a very carefully managed
and graduated fashion), and even quotes David Boaz of the Cato Institute on the
matter (Boaz authored “Libertarianism: A Primer” and “The Libertarian Reader”
for the Free Press in the 1990s.) Then
it turns to the issue of Scott Walker’s “attack” on public employee unions in
Wisconsin. There’s a viral joke on
Twitter now, about whether Gov. Walker (R-WI) honors Labor Day.
The most valuable sequence in the film concerns the water
pollution near Crossett, AR, resulting in a lot of illness in poor people, from
the unregulated discharges of a Georgia Pacific plant. The film could have gone into other areas,
like coal and mountaintop removal (and water table damage) if Koch has any
connection to these. But in a “libertarian world” functioning properly,
companies should be held accountable for environmental damage that they cause. Of course, given the best information on
carbon emissions and climate change, this could be very difficult to do without
“government” and regulation.
The film also accuses the Koch family of supporting efforts
to reverse school desegregation in parts of North Carolina.
The film seems to take the position that the poor are helped
only by organized government programs and unions. A much tougher challenge is to question the
moral limits of individualism and to ask, when is an individual personally his
brother’s keeper even though he didn’t “choose” anything or “contract” anything
specific to incur the responsibility.
This has a lot to do with “social capital”.
The link for the film is here.
The film can be rented on YouTube for $3.99.
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