Anti-war Libertarians Charles and David Koch Love Profiteering Off America’s War Machine

Class War For Idiots / Koch Whores / March 25, 2011

By Yasha Levine

So by now you’ve probably heard that Charles and David Koch are really really dedicated to libertarianism. They’re not just interested in screwing Americans with regressive 18th century economic policies, but also support noble positions that even far-leftists should be able to get behind. One of the big ones is: they are opposed to war and empire.

Well, at least that’s what libertarians say.

The Kochs “opposed the Iraq War” and “want to substantially cut military spending,” recently wrote David Bernstein, a libertarian lawyer and author of a political thriller called You Can’t Say That! The Growing Threat to Civil Liberties from Antidiscrimination Laws. In fact, Dave thinks that the Kochs support so many left-leaning social policies that they are actually not libertarians at all, but “liberaltarians”:

The Kochs would appear to be the perfect liberaltarians–they support gay marriage, drug legalization, opposed the Iraq War, want to substantially cut military spending, and gave $20 million to the ACLU to oppose the Patriot Act (compared to a relatively piddling $43,000 to Scott Walker’s election campaign).

Then there’s Justin Raimando, the “conservative-paleo-libertarian” editorial director of Antiwar.com, who gave the billionaires two thumbs up, writing last summer: “The Kochs, and Cato, have been staunch opponents of the Af-Pak war, as well as the escalation of the war on our civil liberties that George W. Bush started and Obama has continued.” Nick Gillespie, the leather-jacket-wearing libertarian editor in chief of Reason.com, even links to an anonymous self reddit post that pretty much says the same thing.

So you’re probably asking yourself three questions: “1) Is what they’re saying true? 2) Can I trust a libertarian law professor from George Koch-Mason University? 3) What in God’s name is a ‘conservative-paleo-libertarian’?”

Luckily for you, we here at the The eXiled are used to doing the heavily investigative lifting. So after spending about 45 minutes looking through the evidence and tallying up the results, we can finally answer question #1. The other two you can figure out for yourself.

Data pulled from publicly-accessible federal contract databases shows that over the past 15 years, the Kochs have milked the U.S. war machine for about $170 million, all while funding libertarian groups, organizations and media outfits with anti-war positions. In just four years, from 1996 through 1999, Koch Industries picked up around $85 million in contracts to supply the Department of Defense with fuel.

Isn’t that noble of them?

Over the next decade, as U.S. interventionist policy spun out of control after 9/11 and our military got bogged down in two hopeless wars, Koch Industries showed no sign of slowing down or reducing its business dealings with the America’s statist-imperialist military machine. In fact, the Kochs found a new to way to make a profit. On top of getting lucrative fuel contracts with the DoD, Koch Industries also started supplying the army with food.

From 2000 to 2004, the company pulled in $2 to 6 million a year in contracts to supply the DoD with fuel, chemicals, food, paper supplies, water purification systems and few other assorted knickknacks But after acquiring the paper and pulp giant Georgia-Pacific, Koch Industries’ contracts with the DoD went through the roof. From 2005 to 2006, Koch Industries raked in nearly $68 million worth of contracts to supply the Defense Commissary Agency with “Subsistence/Food Items for Resale” through their Georgia-Pacific subsidiary located in Atlanta, Georgia. By the end of the decade in 2010, the Kochs had secured a total of $84.7 million in defense contracts.

And the kicker? 80% of these contracts were of a “non-competitive type”.

Mark Ames just published a post about all the Koch whores who tried to discredit our investigative scoop linking the Tea Party with the billionaire Kochs, and how our pathetic news media helped them lead the witch hunt, while being consistently wrong about the Kochs. That trend continues today with people like Ezra Klein, who in a recent column tries to downplay the importance of the Kochs, clearly not knowing what he’s talking about.

For example. In the post, Klein wrote:

Sometimes they are part of the coalition that succeeds, as in the case of energy policy. Sometimes they are part of the coalition that fails, as in the case of foreign policy. In the end, they’re probably more important than the Coors family but vastly less important than the Chamber of Commerce.

Yep, as their war profiteering clearly showed, the Kochs “failed” in the case of foreign policy. That’s one hundred seventy million taxpayer dollars worth of war profiteering failure. Gee, I bet the Kochs are horrified at the prospect of the US war machine grinding on in Afghanistan and Iraq for another decade. Quick, they need to pay a libertard to write something radical for Cato Unbound!

Want to know more? Check out Dylan Ratigan giving us props for breaking the Koch/Tea Party/Evil Oligarchs story first:

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17 Comments

Add your own

1. Mike | March 25th, 2011 at 3:47 am
“…they’re probably more important than the Coors family but vastly less important than the Chamber of Commerce.”
Actually that sounds pretty accurate, except that only dumbfucks use that kind of logic. See the Kochs are billionaires—as in people—and the Chamber of Commerce is an organization that is run on behalf of billionaires. The Kochs are a part of Chamber of Commerce.
There’s a cohesive group of a couple dozen other billionaire families with major influence in the USA (out of a few hundred total billionaires worldwide). They own or control/manage major privately held companies like Koch Industries as well as publicly traded companies like Wal-Mart.
There’s also a couple million millionaires that want to join the billionaire club. Due to their existing relative wealth and privilege and their upwardly mobile aspirations, they often share a common class interest with the real owners like the Kochs. Some millionaires are petite bourgeoisie small businessmen who can live off of the capital they own. Others are high level professionals (MDs, attorneys, engineers, military brass, upper-middle managers, etc) that may do real work to earn their salary, but have privilege and autonomy that most wage workers lack.
The other 98% of us are working class and it’s time we realized it.
2. Ifonly | March 25th, 2011 at 4:34 am
So you’re opposed to the Kochs using the government to maintain and expand their economic empire? Well, gee. If only there was an ideology that outright opposed the intervention that sustains the Kochs and other crooks. I guess you’ll just have to keep supporting the same interventionist mindset while complaining that the system you support is being exploited instead of offering a real alternative. And who knows? Maybe you can single out a crook or two in order to personalize your hatred while generally ignoring the legion of others that exploit the system you support. That’d really be pissing in the wind.
3. Joseph Shoemaker | March 25th, 2011 at 4:41 am
I read an article by Neil McClusley (Cato Institute) on dissolving teachers, and unions in general, in The Philadelphia Inquirer. When I asked McCluskey who paid his salary, he asked what did that have to do with the logic in his article. I saw two of your exiledonline associates on The Dylan Radigan program and agreed wholeheartedly their reality about the Koch brothers.
4. Sweatyjim | March 25th, 2011 at 5:10 am
We in thisFree nation of ours,have a saying and it goes like this
AMRICA LOVE IT OR LEAVE IT
If I may change that Just a bite (Ok)
AMERICA LOVE IT,LIKE IT IS OR LEAVE IT AND LEAVE IT LIKE IT IS.
5. Derp | March 25th, 2011 at 7:45 am
Derp derp! The Koch brothers just paid me money to temporarily interrupt my vacation to say- suck my balls! How dare you complain about them being a part of the American process? Only a Communist wouldn’t want them in there! Sir, are you Communists? Clearly only a Communist would not enjoy sucking on Koch! For as long as you guys keep bashing the Koch me and my right-wing buddies who accept money from the Kochs without disclosing it will keep accusing you of being America-hating Commies since everyone knows that the Kochs represent Real America!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GGuhZvO1DKg
Sweatyjim, Ifonly- you my niggers! Let’s continue to bitch at the Exiled for talking shit about our sugardaddies! It’s okay for them to lobby 100’s of millions but it’s not okay for people to talk smack about them!
Derp derp!
(full disclosure- I have been sucking on Koch since 2009. I’m not gay, but come on! How can anyone resist the Kochs?)
6. derpotism | March 25th, 2011 at 9:58 am
lfonly’s right, we need to lean more towards social democracy or socialism, seeing as how libertarianism and most right wing ideologies have been proven to be morally bankrupt.
7. Reality | March 25th, 2011 at 10:16 am
I have to say that it’s the superficiality and shallowness of libertarian groups, organizations and media outfits with anti-war positions.
I’m poetically corporate, I’d rather be one who shovels grounds for the Kochs in conspiracy theories.
BTW, George Soros’ and Warren Buffett’s will be really hard.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to post comments like these.
8. Lavrentij "Anarchy99" Lemko | March 25th, 2011 at 10:55 am
Keep an eye on this turkey:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Stone
… he may have had a hand in bringing down Client 9
At least Elizabeth Warren doesn’t wear black socks (as far as I know).
9. floodingupeconomics | March 25th, 2011 at 11:54 am
@Mike
“The other 98% of us are working class and it’s time we realized it.”
Maybe these charts might help:
http://floodingupeconomics.wordpress.com/2011/01/06/u-s-fy-2009-annual-income-distribution-by-percentiles/
http://floodingupeconomics.wordpress.com/2011/01/05/u-s-annual-income-divided-into-thirds/
10. Reality | March 25th, 2011 at 4:44 pm
Thank you.
11. Down and Out of Sài Gòn | March 25th, 2011 at 8:57 pm
The Koch brothers remind me of Randolph and Mortimer Duke from Trading Places. They were very civil to Billy Ray Valentine (Eddie Murphy’s character) face to face, but referred to him as a “nigger” behind his back.
The Kochs are not nice guys, and any protestations by them or on their behalf should be greeted with suspicion.
12. HS | March 26th, 2011 at 11:06 pm
Ah the non-competitive contract. Whenever you see that you know some serious looting is going on. The government seems to be the Kochs’ partner in crime and are willing to fuck us over, while the non-government suck ups only cheer them on.
I can’t really accept socialism or government control as an answer though. If the government is fucking us over on the Kochs’ behalf, then more government control might well lead to more wealth for them and burdens for us.
13. José Cruz | March 27th, 2011 at 12:11 am
A country with so many people who profess outloud joy for cattleness short of declaring it their national identity, well, is just that now is not a good time to remain stubborn and ignorant.
14. woundedduck | March 27th, 2011 at 10:34 am
From the Koch Industries website “careers” page:
Koch companies work continuously to recruit top talent around the globe. In hiring, recruiting and retention of employees, we are guided by Thomas Jefferson’s belief that virtue is as important as talent.
Ha-ha.
15. Socialist | March 27th, 2011 at 2:00 pm
“lfonly’s right, we need to lean more towards social democracy or socialism, seeing as how libertarianism and most right wing ideologies have been proven to be morally bankrupt.”
Social democracy was a compromise – and also a strategy – against the Soviet Union in the Cold War.
Now that the West won the Cold War, social democracy serves no purpose from the point of view of the establishment. Social democracy, the labour movement, workers right – all things are liquidated in the post-Cold War West.
16. Robert | March 27th, 2011 at 10:35 pm
What every should be paying attention to, is how much money the Koch(head) boys are willing to spend to build up their public image, of course whilst spending ten times that on corrupting democracy.
It should be obvious how ego driven they are and how much public derision and more importantly the public’s work in exposing them and bringing them to justice, cripples their inflated egos.
17. God_damned_red | March 31st, 2011 at 9:34 am
Just a heads up, the idiots running ABC have just finally figured out that members of the tea party have been taking farm subsidies.
Thanks Exiled this is old news to me.