New York Billionaires Behind The Tea Party Movement
Posted in Liberaland by Alan • August 23, 2010, 3:20 PMET
The myth of the tea party being a grassroots movement takes another hit, as the New Yorker‘s Jane Mayer looks a the Koch brothers, Charles and David, who fund much of the tea party movement (via Glynnis MacNichol).
The Kochs operate oil refineries in Alaska, Texas, and Minnesota, and control some four thousand miles of pipeline. Koch Industries owns Brawny paper towels, Dixie cups, Georgia-Pacific lumber, Stainmaster carpet, and Lycra, among other products. Forbes ranks it as the second-largest private company in the country, after Cargill, and its consistent profitability has made David and Charles Koch—who, years ago, bought out two other brothers—among the richest men in America. Their combined fortune of thirty-five billion dollars is exceeded only by those of Bill Gates and Warren Buffett.
The Kochs are longtime libertarians who believe in drastically lower personal and corporate taxes, minimal social services for the needy, and much less oversight of industry—especially environmental regulation. These views dovetail with the brothers’ corporate interests. In a study released this spring, the University of Massachusetts at Amherst’s Political Economy Research Institute named Koch Industries one of the top ten air polluters in the United States. And Greenpeace issued a report identifying the company as a “kingpin of climate science denial.” The report showed that, from 2005 to 2008, the Kochs vastly outdid ExxonMobil in giving money to organizations fighting legislation related to climate change, underwriting a huge network of foundations, think tanks, and political front groups. Indeed, the brothers have funded opposition campaigns against so many Obama Administration policies—from health-care reform to the economic-stimulus program—that, in political circles, their ideological network is known as the Kochtopus.
Mayer’s article discusses some ugly family roots. Father Fred did business with Stalin, but later came to regret it, and became one of the original members of the John Birch Society.
He wrote admiringly of Benito Mussolini’s suppression of Communists in Italy, and disparagingly of the American civil-rights movement. “The colored man looms large in the Communist plan to take over America,” he warned. Welfare was a secret plot to attract rural blacks to cities, where they would foment “a vicious race war.” In a 1963 speech that prefigures the Tea Party’s talk of a secret socialist plot, Koch predicted that Communists would “infiltrate the highest offices of government in the U.S. until the President is a Communist, unknown to the rest of us.”
Mayer’s piece discusses the links between Fred’s views and those of his sons. Buried deep in the article is an example of how money trumps everything. David Koch, a prostate cancer survivor, has given generously to cancer research.
Koch’s corporate and political roles, however, may pose conflicts of interest. For example, at the same time that David Koch has been casting himself as a champion in the fight against cancer, Koch Industries has been lobbying to prevent the E.P.A. from classifying formaldehyde, which the company produces in great quantities, as a “known carcinogen” in humans.
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Koch Industries founded Americans for Prosperity, formed as a successor to Citizens for a Sound Economy. Fred Koch co-founded the John Birch Society. In the mid-1970s the Kochs started to fund a network of libertarian organizations including the United States Libertarian Party, for which David ran as the vice presidential nominee in 1980.[47][48] The Kochs withdrew their financial support of the Libertarian Party after an acrimonious 1983 convention,[49] but continue to support libertarian institutions independent of the party such as the Cato Institute, and more recently have been major contributers to the Tea Party movement.
To advance the work of the Republican Governors Association, Koch Industries made a $1 million donation to the group in 2010
Suzie-Que's Truth and Justice Blog 
Why does this not surprise me?
The tea party grew from the Ron Paul revolution which I was a part of. And yes, the Ron Paul revolution was/is grass roots. Ron Paul earned $6 million in donations in a single day and the individual donations averaged $50. That IS grass roots. The media, yes, including Fox News railroaded him out of the Presidential race as he was gaining MUCH momentum. Fox took over the tea party when Obama became President. However, Ron Paul will run again in 2012 and there will be even more people who will be receptive to him after learning what are the true and limited duties of the office of the President.
Mike-
This article is about who is currently behind the Tea Party movement- not who started it. The Koch brothers funded the Becky rally- they also make big contributions to the GOP. Don’t you get it Mike?
Make all the excuses that you want about why Ron Paul lost. The people of this country wanted Obama and that is why he is the President.
Obama was selected, not elected. You don’t come out of nowhere, with no experience running anything and become President. The media brainwashed the people, along with the big players behind the scene and put obama into office.
That’s bullshit and you know it Mike! The people of this country VOTED for President Obama!
I didn’t vote for the bum. Saw right through his “yes we can” and “hope” facade. Just another politician with a bunch of rambling talk about nothing. He did not address the Federal Reserve ONCE during his campaign. That was a dead giveaway that this guy was just another puppet. If you want to restore prosperity to this country, the Fed, along with its enforcement arm, the IRS, must be shut down. He spoke nothing about shutting down the corrupt and bloated Department of Education either. The guy’s a fake, but he’s more than a fake, he’s hell bent on changing this country, in a bad way.
Mike sounds like he is very rich and does not have to struggle for a living. He also does not have anyone with pre=existing conditions who cannot get or cannot afford the private inflated health insurance available. Not everyone earns $100,000 or more. The majority (with two people working) earn around $30,000 if they are lucky. We have government to protect the people. If Mike has noticed, since deregulation came about on business , especially banks and wall street, the economy has tanked. I really don’t believe it was because of high taxes. Most people and business were doing fine before the tax cuts.
Shoddy business deals and greed are more to blame than government!!