Talk:Koch Industries

A few notes:


 * I deleted the Thomas Frank excerpt (posted below) mainly because leaving it there implies that the "Kochtopus" tag was a term used by "wags". From what I can see it was a term coined in the early 1980's by Murray Rothbard during a factional battle within the Libertarian Party. ("Big News! Lib. Forum Reorganized!" "LP/10: A Mixed Bag," "The Kochtopus: Convulsions and Contradictions," "Hayek's Denationalised Money," "Against a Government Space Program," "Errata," "Consolation for Activists." The Libertarian Forum, Vol. 15 Nos. 5-6 (August 1981-January 1982). There is more disvussion on the politics of Rothbard here.

The original posting that I edited out was: "The Kochs influence is so well known in Washington," Thomas Frank reports, "that wags refer to their intellectual empire as 'the Kochtopus.'" (What's the Matter with Kansas?, 82)

It would be good to include a reference to the term Koctopus but it would be best if the origins and context of it were right.


 * I deleted the ref to the Triad Management Services as a front group - an overly broad use of the term as it is, as far as I understand, a consulting/advisory company/service rather than an advocacy group. While there are a few refs to TMS around 1998 do we know if it still operates and its relationship fo Koch entities. It would be good if any ref to TMS in this was either more up to date than 7 year old info or put any refs to TMS in the past tense.

As I'm not esp familiar with the topic maybe this is something Sheldon knows about.--Bob Burton 20:04, 5 Mar 2005 (EST)

Looking into a citation re: Fred Koch co-founding the John Birch Society, that appears to be unclear. Koch's website claims he was an early "supporter", not a founder, which is consistent with a book by Sara Diamond titled Roads to Dominion: Right-Wing Movements and Political Power in the United States--see page 324. Wikipedia cites Forbes and Hoovers in stating that Fred Koch was a JBS co-founder, which are generally considered solid sources but they are not as specific as Diamond's citation of The Blue Book of the John Birch Society, which states Fred Koch became a JBS Council member in 1964 rather than one of the original 26 members. Lee Fang at ThinkProgress has referred to Fred Koch as a "board member" rather than a founder. This conflicting info should be made transparent, it is problematic to continue allow this to set in as conventional wisdom in the Koch Industries story unless there is a more clear indicator that Fred did indeed help found JBS.

This section needs revision and substantiation:

ALEC vs. regional climate accords, 2011 - hidden involvement in at least 6 states
For more detail, see the "Climate Change" section of ALEC. "The...Koch brothers and their dirty-energy buddies are now bent on dismantling one of the nation’s last hopes for doing anything about climate change in the near term: regional climate accords. Today, a total of 32 states are active participants or observing members in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative in the Northeast, the Midwestern Greenhouse Gas Reduction Accord, or the Western Climate Initiative. [ But ] that number will get a lot smaller if the American Legislative Exchange Council — a D.C.-based conservative advocacy organization funded by Koch family foundations, ExxonMobil, and other oil companies and big corporations—gets its way. ALEC offers legislative templates to state lawmakers who don’t want the hassle of writing their own conservative bills....[and] has produced 800 to 1,000 pieces of so-called “model legislation.” [access to which is restricted]... which makes it difficult to trace a bill’s language back to ALEC.

But...it looks like the template has been getting a lot of use lately. Language that regurgitates all of the right’s favorite—and in many cases fallacious—anti-cap-and-trade talking points has cropped up in nearly identical form in resolutions or bills in at least six states...Last year in Michigan...This year...in Montana, New Mexico, Oregon, and Washington...New Hampshire."