Thread: The Billionaires Bankrolling the Tea Party

Op-Ed Columnist

The Billionaires Bankrolling the Tea Party

By FRANK RICH
Published: August 28, 2010
Barry Blitt

There’s just one element missing from these snapshots of America’s ostensibly spontaneous and leaderless populist uprising: the sugar daddies who are bankrolling it, and have been doing so since well before the “death panelâ€

Covert Operations

The billionaire brothers who are waging a war against Obama.

by Jane Mayer
August 30, 2010

David H. Koch in 1996. He and his brother Charles are lifelong libertarians and have quietly given more than a hundred million dollars to right-wing causes.

On May 17th, a black-tie audience at the Metropolitan Opera House applauded as a tall, jovial-looking billionaire took the stage. It was the seventieth annual spring gala of American Ballet Theatre, and David H. Koch was being celebrated for his generosity as a member of the board of trustees; he had recently donated $2.5 million toward the company’s upcoming season, and had given many millions before that. Koch received an award while flanked by two of the gala’s co-chairs, Blaine Trump, in a peach-colored gown, and Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg, in emerald green. Kennedy’s mother, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, had been a patron of the ballet and, coincidentally, the previous owner of a Fifth Avenue apartment that Koch had bought, in 1995, and then sold, eleven years later, for thirty-two million dollars, having found it too small.

The gala marked the social ascent of Koch, who, at the age of seventy, has become one of the city’s most prominent philanthropists. In 2008, he donated a hundred million dollars to modernize Lincoln Center’s New York State Theatre building, which now bears his name. He has given twenty million to the American Museum of Natural History, whose dinosaur wing is named for him. This spring, after noticing the decrepit state of the fountains outside the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Koch pledged at least ten million dollars for their renovation. He is a trustee of the museum, perhaps the most coveted social prize in the city, and serves on the board of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, where, after he donated more than forty million dollars, an endowed chair and a research center were named for him.

One dignitary was conspicuously absent from the gala: the event’s third honorary co-chair, Michelle Obama. Her office said that a scheduling conflict had prevented her from attending. Yet had the First Lady shared the stage with Koch it might have created an awkward tableau. In Washington, Koch is best known as part of a family that has repeatedly funded stealth attacks on the federal government, and on the Obama Administration in particular.

With his brother Charles, who is seventy-four, David Koch owns virtually all of Koch Industries, a conglomerate, headquartered in Wichita, Kansas, whose annual revenues are estimated to be a hundred billion dollars. The company has grown spectacularly since their father, Fred, died, in 1967, and the brothers took charge. 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.


from the issuecartoon banke-mail this.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.â€

RELATED ?

Tea Party group gets $1 million anonymous donation

http://www.alipac.us/ftopict-213001-mil ... +tea+party

All I know is the Indiana Tea party never had any major money backers for any of our tea parties.

Of course, Rich would never discuss George Soros and his "owning" the democrat party and the White House.

When someone writes such a vicious attack on a political party whether it be right or left my eyes glaze over and I don't finish the article.

I believe Americans are not so dumb they don't see these extremists attacks are full of twisted unfounded crazy logic and probably a whole lot of lies.

This person did not help the Dems by this outrageous attack except maybe other extremist like themselves.

Originally Posted by gofer

Of course, Rich would never discuss George Soros and his "owning" the democrat party and the White House.

Someone else beat him to it.

How Barack Obama Got Elected: How George Soros Financed Obama

Nov 20, 2008 ... How in the world have Black and white religious leaders shut their eyes to the truth? . . .
Geffen may have made him but George Soros owns him ...

http://howbarackobamagotelected.blogspo ... obama.html - Cached - Similar

Go look at the site "WhiteHouse For Sale" and you will see who hid the most 2008 campaign money from the public by "Bundling" it so no one knows who/where it came from. Wanna guess who got the most ??? None other then Barrack Insane Obama .

Originally Posted by USPatriot

Go look at the site "WhiteHouse For Sale" and you will see who hid the most 2008 campaign money from the public by "Bundling" it so no one knows who/where it came from. Wanna guess who got the most ??? None other then Barrack Insane Obama .

Thanks for the site info I never heard of it before.
http://www.whitehouseforsale.org/

It says:

McCain had 851 Bundlers
Obama had 605 Bundlers

McCain had 77 Lobbyist Bundlers
Obama had 17 Lobbyist Bundlers

McCain Raised $372,525,058
Obama raised $750,767,963

So it would seem that they both were trying to do the exact same thing
but Obama's people were just better at it.

That's why I didn't support either party or their candidate.

Notice JohnDoe Obama's total is almost double McCain's . So where did the money come from ? No one really knows but we know special interest wanted Obama in the WH really bad.

So the article's above are just propaganda. Crackpots calling the kettles black.