From:
TruthOut
Why Do
These Koch Industries Neighbors Have Cancer?
By
Robert Greenwald
Our
ongoing Koch Brothers Exposed video investigation has discovered
something so tragic it will haunt Charles and David Koch for years to
come.
While
the brothers wage war against safety precautions, every day their
factory is dumping millions of gallons of wastewater into streams
that flow near a small rural town. It’s this kind of abuse by the
top 1% of Americans that’s driving young and old to fight money in
politics, occupy Wall Street and protest in the streets. The Koch
brothers personify inequality, and people are rising up and have
identified the overwhelming corporate influence on democracy as a
corrosive stain that harms the rest of us.
Our
latest video reflects this as we follow the money and prove the Koch
brothers buy a system that makes them richer at the expense of
everyone else. Through political donations, think tanks and front
groups, the Koch brothers are able to weaken safety and oversight
laws, which leaves communities like Crossett, Arkansas behind to
suffer.
“The
Koch brothers are killing me and my family,” Norma Thompson told us
during our investigation. She’s lived near the Koch brothers’
mill for 39 years. Journey to Arkansas and watch her story: MORE
From: Mother Jones
Koch Industries Fights Chemical Plant Safety Measures—By Samantha Oltman
Cole
Young/Flickr
Among
the Koch
Industries lobbying crew'smany agenda items—climate
change denial,school
segregation, a right
wing media takeover—is the company's fight against legislation
that would raise US chemical plant safety standards to protect
against potential terrorist attacks capable of harming millions of
Americans.
A
new investigation
published by the Center for Public Integrity reveals
the extent of Koch Industries' efforts to combat safety measures
recommended by the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department
of Homeland Security:
The
Center for Responsive Politics puts Koch at the top of its list of
the 80-odd firms, local governments and other groups lobbying
Congress to shape or prevent passage of a wide-ranging chemical
security bill.…Chemical safety legislation has been one of Koch’s
most important priorities in the last four years, during which the
firm has spent $44 million lobbying in Washington on this and other
issues.
Destructive
environmental impacts and employee
health concerns used
to be the biggest risks chemical plants posed to their communities.
But after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the Department of Homeland
Security became concerned with how attacks on these plants would harm
the densely populated communities around them. The worst case
scenarios the DHS found include chemical explosions, spills, and gas
clouds that could either kill or seriously harm millions of people
living in the plants' vicinities.
But
really, how serious is the threat of a terrorist blowing up a
chemical plant on US soil? It's serious enough that the EPA keeps its
records of chemical plants' risk management plans under lock and
key—members of the public can only view 10 documents per month,
while being closely monitored by EPA officials.
Koch
Industries, the second largest private company in the US, owns 56
chemical facilities throughout the US, giving it a vested
interest in safety measures like the Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism
Standards bill. CFATS was first introduced as a temporary measure in
2007 until Congress could pass more comprehensive legislation. Since
then, lobbying funded by Koch Industries and other groups has helped
block the passage of stricter protections, including a proposal to
require inherently safer technology in chemical plants. Inherently
safer technology, also known as IST, would require chemical plants to
use safer chemicals, or less of them, often increasing costs for
plants. MORE
From: Business Insider
OCT.
2, 2011, 6:12 PM
From: Business Insider
GOP Mega-Donor Koch Brothers' Company Tied To Global Criminal Misdeeds In Bombshell Article
A
just-published bombshell article in the November issue of Bloomberg
Markets magazine implicates Koch
Industries,
the company controlled by Republican mega-donors Charles
and David
Koch,
in dozens of criminal acts around the globe over the past three
decades.
According
the report, company officials have been caught paying bribes to
win contracts, trading with Iran in violation of the U.S. embargo,
price-fixing, neglecting safety and ignoring environmental
regulations.
The
billionaire brothers are major donors to FreedomWorks, the Cato
Institute, and dozens of other conservative think-tanks and
nonprofits. They have also been tied to several independent
expenditure groups supporting Republican candidates across the
country — and last year The
New Yorker exposed the
family's efforts to oppose President Barack Obama.
In
a statement to Bloomberg Markets magazine,
a spokesperson for the company acknowledged the past mistakes, but
said the company has altered its practices and policies to avoid
running afoul of the law.
- Koch Industries allegedly made improper payments to win business in 6 countries over 8 years (through 2008) — a potential violation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. The company described them as "activities constitut[ing] violations of criminal law."
Koch Brothers Flout Law Getting Richer With Secret Iran Sales
By Asjylyn Loder and David Evans Oct 3,
2011 12:28 PM CT
Photographer: Amanda Gordon/Bloomberg
Koch Industries
Executive Vice President David H. Koch, left, poses for a photo with
Julia Koch during the opening...
In May 2008, a unit of Koch
Industries Inc., one of the world’s largest privately held
companies, sent Ludmila Egorova-Farines, its newly hired
compliance officer and ethics manager, to investigate the
management of a subsidiary in Arles in southern France. In less
than a week, she discovered that the company had paid bribes to
win contracts.
“I uncovered the practices within a few days,” Egorova-
Farines says. “They were not hidden at all.”
She immediately notified her supervisors in the U.S. A week
later, Wichita, Kansas-based Koch Industries dispatched an
investigative team to look into her findings, Bloomberg Markets
magazine reports in its November issue
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