Public Comment

In her new book, “Dark Money”, New Yorker reporter, Jane Mayer, explores how the Koch brothers and their fellow right-wing billionaires have poured money to elect Republican ideologies to shape public policy. Mayer traces the history of the family fortune beginning with industrialist, Fred Koch, the Koch’s father who built an oil refinery in Nazi Germany which was personally approved by Adolf Hitler. The fuel from the refinery was used on German warplanes. 

The Koch brothers expanded their family fortune amassing a combined aggregate of about $82 billion. They plan to spend nearly $900 million on the 2016 presidential and congressional races. Since the Supreme Court’s Citizen United landmark decision which removed limits on campaign spending, the Kochs and others such as Mellon banking and Gulf heir, Richard Mellon Scaife, chemical tycoon John M. Olin, electronics magnates Harry and Lynde Bradley have leveraged their business empires on candidates who will serve their corporate interests with the safe knowledge that the source of their donations will be kept secret. The “dark money” is also used to fund right-wing think tanks, university endowments, research to favor their right-wing agenda such as Americans for Prosperity, Citizens for a Sound Economy. Koch Industries has recently been cited as the single biggest U.S. producer of toxic waste. 

Funding from the corporate conglomerates, “The Kochtopus” is conditional on signing on to a pledge denying climate change. A staggering 156 members of Congress have already signed on to the pledge.