NEWS AND
VIEWS
THIS LATEST
TRUMP OVERSTEP ISN'T JUST SAD. IT'S INFURIATING. I DO HOPE THAT CONGRESS, AND
AFTER THEM THE SENATE, WILL VOTE FOR IMPEACHMENT OF THE PRESIDENT SINCE PELOSI
HAS FINALLY ALLOWED THE ISSUE ON THE FLOOR. THIS TIME TRUMP TRIED TO PUT IN A
FIX ON THE 2020 ELECTION BLATANTLY, AGAIN INVOLVING A FOREIGN GOVERNMENT, BY
MEANS OF WHAT IS BEING CALLED EXTORTION. HE THREATENED TO WITHHOLD MILITARY AID
TO UKRAINE, MOST LIKELY TO BE USED AGAINST OUR ERSTWHILE FOE RUSSIA, IF THEIR
NEW PRESIDENT DOESN'T "INVESTIGATE" SENATOR BIDEN'S SON FOR CORRUPT
ACTIVITIES, AND TURN THE "DIRT" COLLECTED OVER TO OUR CURRENT
PRESIDENT SO HE CAN ENGINEER HIS REELECTION IN 2020. AS IN THE CASE OF THE
TRUMP ADMINISTRATION'S RECENT ATTEMPT AT INVALIDATING THE MEDICAL CARE
EXCEPTION OF DESPERATELY ILL PEOPLE FROM FOREIGN NATIONS; HE HAS STEPPED BACK
AWAY FROM HIS BIZARRE AND FRIGHTENING THREAT, AND ALLOWED CONGRESS TO SEND THE PROMISED
FUNDS TO UKRAINE.
HIS WAY OF
MAKING A DEAL IS TO BLUFF AND BULLY. IF THAT DOESN'T WORK, HE GIVES IN AND
DENIES THE WHOLE THING HAPPENED. THE MEDIA DESCRIPTIONS OF THE TRUMP FAMILY'S
ACTIONS IN GENERAL AS BEING TOO SIMILAR TO MOB TACTICS ARE NOT SLURS, BUT AN
ACCURATE DEPICTION. WE SHOULD BE GRATEFUL FOR OUR WHISTLEBLOWERS, AND NOT CALL
THEM DISLOYAL OR TREASONOUS, AS TRUMP DID. AS ONE NEWS REPORTER SAID,
GOVERNMENT WORKERS OWE THEIR FEALTY* TO OUR NATION AND NOT TO A PRESIDENT OR
OTHER PERSON IN POWER.
Trump’s comments on Ukrainian aid make matters
worse
09/23/19
12:43 PM—UPDATED 09/23/19 01:10 PM
By Steve Benen
Just this morning, I wrote an
item about Donald Trump too often making comments that undermine his
own best interests, effectively admitting wrongdoing when he doesn’t have to.
Little did I know he’d soon after do
it again.
President
Donald Trump on Monday defended his conversation with Ukrainian President
Volodymyr Zelensky, calling it a “perfect” discussion, while suggesting he
had tied vital military funding for Ukraine to that country’s handling of
corruption – which he has alleged Vice President Joe Biden’s family was engaged
in there.
“We
want to make sure that country is honest. It’s very important to talk about
corruption. If you don’t talk about corruption, why would you give money to a
country that you think is corrupt?” Trump told reporters when asked what he had
spoken about with Ukraine’s new president in a July phone call.
“It’s
very important that, on occasion, you speak to somebody about corruption,” he
said, moments after telling reporters: “let me just tell you – let me just tell
you. What Biden did was wrong.”
Putting aside the
fact there’s no evidence whatsoever of
Biden having done anything wrong, and the fact that the president has an unfortunate record of making all kinds
of false allegations against his perceived political foes, this was the
first time the public has heard Trump make a connection between his call with
the Ukrainian president, U.S. financial/military aid, and Trump’s electoral
scheme.
The
original Republican line was that nothing happened. The second line was that
Trump may, in fact, have talked to a foreign government about intervening in an
American election. And the brand new line is that Trump, while talking to a
foreign government about intervening in an American election, referenced the
$250 million the United States committed to Ukraine.
Or to put this in broader strokes, we’re
witnessing the transition from “the accusation isn’t true” to “the accusation
is true, but there’s nothing actually
wrong with misdeed in question.”
Around the time the president
was moving the ball forward, one of his personal attorneys, Rudy Giuliani, sat
down with Fox Business’ Maria Bartiromo
and said he couldn’t be
entirely sure Trump didn’t threaten to cut off aid to Ukraine unless
Zelensky went along with the Republican’s scheme.
BARTIROMO:
Did the president threaten to cut off aid to the Ukraine?
GIULIANI:
No, no, that was a false story.
BARTIROMO:
One hundred percent?
GIULIANI:
Well, I can’t tell you if it’s 100 percent.
Why Team
Trump allows Giuliani to appear on television is a bit of a mystery to me.
THIS IS A
VERY INTERESTING WORD AND NOT SO COMMONLY USED ANYMORE, "FEALTY."* IT
IS A LEGAL CONCEPT THAT GOES BACK TO THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES. THE MOST RECENT
CASE OF THIS FEUDAL SYSTEM THAT I'M AWARE OF IS THE SOUTHERN TENANT FARMER
SETUP, IN WHICH VERY POOR FARMERS, MOSTLY BLACK, HAD TO GIVE PART OF THEIR CROP
TO THE LANDOWNER, WHILE THEY LIVED ON THE LAND AND FARMED IT. FOR ALL I KNOW,
IT MAY STILL GO ON TODAY.
Homage and
fealty
FEUDALISM
Alternative Titles: homagium, hominium
Homage and fealty,, in European
society, solemn acts of ritual by which a person became a vassal of a lord in feudal society.
Homage was essentially the acknowledgment of the bond of tenure that
existed between the two. It consisted of the vassal surrendering himself to the
lord, symbolized by his kneeling and giving his joined hands to the lord, who
clasped them in his own, thus accepting the surrender.
Fealty was an
oath of fidelity made
by the vassal. In it he promised not to harm his lord or to do damage to his
property. Although homage had to be rendered directly to the lord, fealty could
be given to a bailiff or steward. The lord
then performed a symbolic investiture of the new vassal, handing over to him
some object representing his fief. The whole procedure was
a recognition of both the assistance owed by the tenant to his lord and the
protection owed by the lord to the tenant.
THE MAIN
WAY I HAVE USUALLY HEARD THIS WORD "HOMAGE" USED IN RECENT TIMES IS
THE FINAL DEFINITION BELOW, PRONOUNCED WITHOUT THE H SOUND, AND WITH AN ACCENT
ON THE LAST SYLLABLE, IN THE USAGE OF A SMALL SECTION OF A MORE FAMOUS PIECE OF
MUSIC IN A NEWER ONE, FOR INSTANCE. ARTISTICALLY INCLINED PEOPLE, OR SIMPLY
THOSE WHO HAVE STUDIED FRENCH, ALSO TEND TO PRONOUNCE THE WORD IN A FRENCH
MANNER, WITH THE FINAL G SOUNDING LIKE "ZZHHUH." IT SOUNDS MORE
SOPHISTICATED AND BEAUTIFUL THAN HARD GERMANIC SOUNDS, BUT IT IS MORE DIFFICULT
FOR ME TO HEAR CLEARLY AND UNDERSTAND. IT DESTROYS THE "SKELETON" OF
THE WORD, WHICH IS FORMED BY THE CONSONANTS.
homage
hom·age | \ ˈä-mij , ˈhä-, sense
2b is often ō-ˈmäzh \
Definition of homage
b: the relationship between a feudal
lord and his vassal
c: an act done or payment made in
meeting the obligations due from a vassal to a feudal lord
2a: expression of high regard : RESPECT bowed
in homage to the king—often used with pay Her work
pays homage to women artists of the past.
b: something that shows respect or
attests to the worth or influence of another : TRIBUTE his long
life filled with international homages to his unique musical
talent— People
BELOW IS
THE STEVE BENEN SUMMARY OF YESTERDAY'S INTERESTING STORIES.
Monday’s Mini-Report, 9.23.19
09/23/19
05:30 PM
By Steve Benen
Today’s edition of quick hits:
* Acting
Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire is scheduled to testify before the House Intelligence Committee
on Thursday, at which point “the dam could break” on impeachment.
* Cairo:
“Egypt braced for more unrest this week after two nights of protests resulted
in hundreds of arrests in the most
significant political challenge in years to President Abdel Fattah Al Sisi, who
is facing corruption accusations.”
* The done
deal isn’t done: “The trade agreement President Trump told Congress he had
reached with Japan last week is now hung
up amid Japanese concerns that Trump will still move to penalize their auto
shipments to the United States, according to two people familiar with the
negotiations.”
* In case
you missed this on Friday night: “The United States is deploying military forces to the Middle East after Saturday’s drone
attacks on major oil sites in Saudi Arabia that the administration of
President Donald Trump has blamed on Iran.”
* Yet
another unflattering NRA story: “The National Rifle Association’s board retroactively approved numerous
financial arrangements benefiting top officials of the gun-rights group, their
relatives or close friends, according to board minutes reviewed by The Wall
Street Journal.”
* A scary
story: “An Army soldier was arrested for allegedly passing on bomb-making instructions to fellow ‘radicals’ and sought to
blow up cell towers and news stations, authorities announced Monday.”
* FAIR
Act: “The House just passed a groundbreaking bill that would restore
legal rights to millions of American workers and consumers. Lawmakers voted
225-186 Friday to pass the Forced
Arbitration Injustice Repeal (FAIR) Act, a far-reaching bill that bans companies from requiring workers and
consumers to resolve legal disputes in private arbitration – a quasi-legal
forum with no judge, no jury, and practically no government oversight.”
* The funny thing is, this was a relatively tame
press conference: “Despite being
subjected to a daily diet of Trump headlines, I was unprepared for the
president’s alarming incoherence.”
See you tomorrow.
IS IT
POSSIBLE THAT SOMETHING RATIONAL AND GOOD IS FINALLY HAPPENING?
'The dam
could break' on impeachment this week
Analysis:
Democrats had been holding back as they ready a slew of charges against
President Donald Trump. The Ukraine affair may force them forward.
Sept. 23,
2019, 4:16 PM EDT
By Jonathan
Allen
PHOTOGRAPH -- For President Trump, at the United
Nations on Monday, how impeachment would affect his re-election chances appears
of bigger concern than any actual charges. Saul Loeb / AFP - Getty Images
Impeachment is getting a jump-start.
Sure, some intervention — divine, political or
otherwise — could still stop the House from voting on the political equivalent
of an indictment on crimes against the nation.
But House Democrats have been pulling together a
wide-ranging case to impeach President Donald Trump on a series of alleged past
and ongoing crimes against the country — a set of charges that
goes far beyond the Mueller report — and all signs point to a possible public
inflection point later this week, when acting
Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire testifies before the House Intelligence Committee.
"The dam could break on Thursday," said
one senior House Democratic aide, whose boss has not endorsed impeachment.
HERE WE ARE
AGAIN WITH ANOTHER OF THOSE DUMB AND DANGEROUS COP STORIES THAT HAVE BEEN
SHOWING UP INSIDE SCHOOL SYSTEMS AROUND THE COUNTRY. WHEN I WAS YOUNG, THE IDEA
OF HAVING AN ARMED POLICEMAN STATIONED IN A SCHOOL WOULD HAVE BEEN BEYOND
BELIEF AND INDICATIVE OF POOR MANAGEMENT. I THINK THE ORIGINAL FUNCTION OF
THE PRACTICE MUST HAVE BEEN TO GUARD AGAINST A SCHOOL SHOOTING, BUT TEACHERS
AND SCHOOL ADMINISTRATIONS HAVE BEEN USING THEM FOR ORDINARY DISCIPLINE
MATTERS. THAT PRACTICE SHOULD BE MADE ILLEGAL IN MY VIEW, BECAUSE AS THE SITUATION STANDS, SCHOOLS HAVE BECOME UNSAFE PLACES FOR CHILDREN TO STUDY, AND ADDING A STRANGE AND FRIGHTENING SITUATION ISN'T HELPFUL.
VIDEO --
TWO 6 AND 8 YEAR-OLD KIDS WERE "ARRESTED" FOR MISBEHAVING (THROWING A
"TANTRUM" AND KICKING AN OFFICIAL) BY THE SCHOOL RESOURCE OFFICER.
HIS SUPERIOR SAID THAT HE "OVERSTEPPED HIS AUTHORITY." I DO HOPE THAT
IS THE CASE. I'M AFRAID THAT THE SCHOOLS THEMSELVES HAVE GONE OFF THE RAILS,
HOWEVER. SEE THE NYT ARTICLE, AND THE CBS NEWS VIDEO. https://www.cbsnews.com/live/.
Officer
Under Investigation After Arresting Children, 6 and 8, Chief Says
A
6-year-old girl was arrested and handcuffed after having a tantrum at an
Orlando, Fla., school, her grandmother said.
Published Sept.
22, 2019 Updated Sept. 23,
2019, 9:02 a.m. ET
PHOTOGRAPH -- Meralyn Kirkland with her 6-year-old
granddaughter, who was arrested by a school resource officer at a charter
school in Orlando, Fla., on Thursday. CreditCreditWKMG-TV News 6
An Orlando, Fla., police officer is under
investigation after he arrested two children, ages 6 and 8, in separate
episodes at a school on Thursday, the police said.
The
officer, Dennis Turner, has been suspended pending the outcome of an
internal investigation, Orlando Rolón, the police chief, said in
a statement.
Officer Turner was working as a school resource
officer at a charter school when he arrested the children, Chief Rolón said.
Officer Turner was assigned to the Reserve Officer Program. Details of
the program were unavailable, but The Orlando Sentinel reported that it is made up of retired officers from the
Orlando Police Department.
Departmental policy requires officers to get a
supervisor’s approval when arresting
anyone under age 12.
During the arrest of the 8-year-old, the
transporting officer was unaware that Officer Turner had failed to get a
supervisor’s approval, the chief said.
The child was processed through the Juvenile Assessment Center and released
to a relative shortly after, Chief Rolón said.
The gender of the child and what led to the arrest
were not disclosed. The police did not release the children’s names.
The
officer who transported the 6-year-old to the center verified that Officer
Turner had not received approval for the arrest and immediately halted the
process. According to Chief Rolón, the child was returned to school
before being processed.
Editors’ Picks
“As a
grandparent of three children less than 11 years old, this is very concerning
to me,” he said.
Meralyn Kirkland told the television station WKMG that the 6-year-old,
her granddaughter Kaia, was arrested after having a tantrum at the charter
school, Lucious and Emma Nixon Academy.
Ms. Kirkland said she received a call informing
her that Kaia had kicked a staff member at the school, had been charged with battery and was on her way to the Juvenile
Assessment Center.
Ms. Kirkland said she tried to explain to Officer
Turner that her granddaughter had sleep apnea, a sleep disorder, and that they
were working to resolve it.
She told the station that Officer Turner had
responded, “Well, I have sleep apnea, and I don’t behave like that.”
“No 6-year-old child should be able to tell
somebody that they had handcuffs on them and they were riding in the back of a
police car,” Ms. Kirkland said.
Officer Turner served on the police force for
23 years and retired in June 2018, according to the department. By the end of his career, he was earning more than $100,000 a year,
according to a database of public officials’ salaries maintained by The Orlando Business Journal.
Officer Turner was charged with aggravated
child abuse in 1998
in connection with his 7-year-old
son, The Orlando Sentinel reported. He was suspended pending the
outcome of the investigation, The Sentinel reported, but the disposition of the case was unclear on Sunday.
In 2016,
he was reprimanded for using excessive force after stunning a man five times with a Taser during
an arrest, the newspaper reported.
Neither Officer Turner nor Ms. Kirkland could be
reached for comment on Sunday.
Administrators
at the charter school, which serves students from kindergarten through fifth grade,
did not respond to calls or emails on Sunday.
Dr.
Victor M. Fornari, the vice chairman for child and adolescent psychiatry at
Northwell Health’s Zucker Hillside Hospital in Glen Oaks, N.Y., said it was
hard to argue that children as young as 6 or 8 could merit being arrested.
The
mental health system — not the criminal justice system — is the one commonly
relied on in a situation like this, he said.
“Arresting
them and putting them under handcuffs is traumatizing,” he said. “There’s no
clinical benefit to the child or society.”
MY QUESTION
HERE IS WHETHER OR NOT TAX RATES OF 1%, 2%, EVEN 4% WILL BE HIGHER THAN THOSE
PAID BY THE MIDDLE CLASS, WHO DON'T HAVE THAT HUGE "CUSHION" TO FALL
BACK ON IN TIMES OF NEED. ALSO, $50 MILLION IS MORE MONEY THAN A FAMILY SHOULD
BE ALLOWED TO KEEP FOR THEIR OWN NEEDS AND PLEASURES. A GOOD MODEL, IN MY VIEW, IS THAT OF THE GREAT OLD ACTOR DANNY THOMAS, WHO FOUNDED A HOSPITAL FOR CHILDREN WITH CANCER WHICH APPLIES CUTTING EDGE TREATMENTS, AND THE FAMILY IS NOT CHARGED FOR ANY OF IT. NOW THAT'S A PHILANTHROPIST.
PERHAPS
SOME MANDATORY CHARITIES COULD BE SET UP TO PROVIDE HOUSING, READING MATERIAL
AND A COMPUTER FOR EVERY HOUSEHOLD, WARM NEW CLOTHING, INTELLECTUALLY
STIMULATING ENTERTAINMENT FOR CHILDREN, A SWIMMING POOL AND BASKETBALL COURT
FOR EVERY NEIGHBORHOOD, A SUPERVISED BOYS AND GIRLS CLUB FOR AFTER SCHOOL, A
FOOD BANK, A GOOD PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION SYSTEM, A GOOD GROCERY STORE NEAR EVERY
NEIGHBORHOOD, AND SO ON.
THERE'S
MORE INVOLVED HERE THAN JUST MONEY; IT'S A MATTER OF FAIRNESS AND PROSPERITY
FOR DEPRESSED NEIGHBORHOODS. OF COURSE, THERE'S THAT OLD APHORISM, "NOBODY
EVER SAID THAT LIFE IS FAIR." WELL, THERE'S NO REASON WHY THE GAPS CAN'T
BE ADJUSTED, IF ENOUGH OF OUR CITIZENS GET BEHIND THAT EFFORT AND DEMAND WHAT
THEY NEED. I AM ENVISIONING A KIND OF CITY PLANNING FOR THE POOR TO MIDDLE
CLASS PEOPLE WHICH WOULD WORK TO ELIMINATE RACE OR CLASS BASED DECREPIT HOUSING
AND NEIGHBORHOODS WHICH BREED HUMAN FAILURE IN SO MANY WAYS. WE ARE CITIZENS,
TOO.
THE ARTICLE
PLACED UNDER THIS ONE MAKES ME CURIOUS AS TO WHETHER SOME OF THE
BILLIONAIRES ARE NOT PAYING ATTENTION TO THE TREND OF OUR TIMES, ESPECIALLY
SINCE 2015 OR SO.
Jeff Bezos would pay $9 billion a year in
wealth taxes under Bernie Sanders’ plan
PUBLISHED 4 HOURS AGO, SEPTEMBER 24, 2019, UPDATED
2 HOURS AGO
POINTS
- Sen. Bernie Sanders announces a wealth tax that would hit multibillionaires like Jeff Bezos especially hard.
- Rival presidential candidate, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, has a plan that would impose a tax of 2% of wealth over $50 million and 3% on wealth over $1 billion.
- Sanders’ plan starts at a lower wealth level – taxing those worth $32 million at 1% – so his tax would hit about 180,000 families while Warren’s would affect about 75,000 households.
- The sliding scale of the Sanders plan quickly escalates for wealth over $500 million, which would be taxed at 4%.
- Here are estimates for the wealth tax bills for several billionaires under this proposal.
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos announces Blue Moon, a
lunar landing vehicle for the Moon, during a Blue Origin event in Washington,
DC, May 9, 2019.
Saul Loeb | AFP | Getty Images
Jeff Bezos would pay about $9 billion in taxes
this year under Sen. Bernie Sanders’ proposed wealth tax.
As part of his presidential primary campaign and
efforts to outflank the rise of Sen. Elizabeth Warren,
Sanders announced a wealth tax that would hit multibillionaires like Bezos
especially hard. The Amazon CEO would pay more in annual wealth taxes than the net
worth of the 50 richest Americans as listed by Forbes.
“I don’t think billionaires should exist,” Sanders told The
New York Times. If his tax plan were put into effect, billionaires would lose
half their wealth in 15 years, provided all other factors (like their stock
prices or business values) remained constant.
While Warren’s proposal also taxes billionaires at
a higher rate than multimillionaires, Sanders’ plan, announced Tuesday, is far
more punitive to those at the very top — reflecting the strong support for
taxing the rich among certain voters.
Warren’s plan would impose a tax of 2% of wealth
over $50 million and 3% on wealth over $1 billion. Sanders’ plan starts at a
lower wealth level – taxing those worth $32 million at 1% – so his tax would
hit about 180,000 families versus about 75,000 households under Warren’s
proposal.
The sliding scale of the Sanders plan also quickly
escalates for wealth over $500 million, which would be taxed at 4%. Wealth over
$10 billion would be taxed at a rate of 8% — more than four times the highest
wealth-tax rates that European countries once imposed. The high rates at the
top are the main reason Sanders projects his tax would raise $4.35 trillion
over 10 years, compared with Warren’s, which is estimated to raise $2.6
trillion.
Here are some examples of the annual wealth tax
bill that some of today’s top billionaires would pay, in addition to whatever
income taxes, property taxes and payroll taxes they already pay.
2019 wealth tax bill estimates
- Jeff Bezos — $9 billion
- Bill Gates — $8.6 billion
- Warren Buffett — $6.6 billion
- Mark Zuckerberg — $5.8 billion
- Larry Page — $4.8 billion
- Charles Koch — $4.8 billion
- Larry Ellison — $4.7 billion
- Sergey Brin — $4.6 billion
- Rob Walton — $4.2 billion
- Jim Walton — $4.2 billion
Note: Estimates are based on the net worth of each
individual as reported by the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
LOVE THEM
OR HATE THEM, THIS IS A REALLY INTERESTING AND INFORMATIVE ARTICLE ON THE KOCH
FAMILY. THE FATHER, FRED KOCH, FOUNDED THE INFAMOUS JOHN BIRCH SOCIETY, AND THE
BROTHERS WERE RELATED TO THE FOUNDING OF THE TEA PARTY MOVEMENT. THEIR EQUALLY INFAMOUS INTERNET
ORGANIZATION CALLED THE AMERICAN LEGISLATIVE EXCHANGE COUNCIL, OR ALEC, WRITES
BOILERPLATE LAWS TO BE CUSTOMIZED BY INDIVIDUAL STATES FOR THE PRODUCTION OF STATUTES
AIMED AT LIMITING MINORITY VOTING, PARTICULARLY BY BLACK AND HISPANIC PEOPLE, STAND
YOUR GROUND LAWS, AND REDUCING THE EFFECTIVENESS OF ROE V WADE AND EVEN LIMITING THE AVAILABILITY OF BIRTH
CONTROL. NICE GUYS, HUH?
DAVID KOCH DIED ON AUGUST 28, 2019. ON THE ORGANIZATION ALEC, SEE: https://www.exposedbycmd.org/alec/.
DAVID KOCH DIED ON AUGUST 28, 2019. ON THE ORGANIZATION ALEC, SEE: https://www.exposedbycmd.org/alec/.
David Koch, Billionaire Who Fueled
Right-Wing Movement, Dies at 79
A
man-about-town philanthropist, he and his brother Charles ran a business
colossus while furthering a libertarian agenda that reshaped American politics.
Aug. 23,
2019
Image -- The industrialist and philanthropist
David H. Koch at a dinner party on the opening night of the New York City
Ballet season in 2008. The Lincoln Center theater where the troupe performed
had been renamed in his honor that year after he had pledged $100 million to
it.CreditCreditGetty Images
David H. Koch, an industrialist who amassed a
multibillion-dollar fortune with his brother Charles and then joined him in
pouring their riches into a powerful right-wing libertarian movement that
helped reshape American politics, died on Friday at his home in Southampton, N.Y.
He was 79.
Charles G. Koch announced the death in a
statement, which noted that David Koch had been treated for prostate cancer in
the past. “Twenty-seven years ago,” the statement said, “David was diagnosed
with advanced prostate cancer and given a grim prognosis of a few years to
live. David liked to say that a combination of brilliant doctors, state of the
art medications and his own stubbornness kept the cancer at bay.”
RELATED
Hitching his star to the soaring ambitions of
Charles, his older brother, David Koch (pronounced coke) became one of the
world’s richest people, with assets of $42.2 billion in 2019 and a 42 percent
stake in the family enterprise, Koch Industries, a Kansas-based energy and
chemicals conglomerate. He also became a nationally known philanthropist and
the early public face of the Koch political ascendancy, as the Libertarian
Party’s candidate for vice president in 1980.
Three decades after David Koch’s public steps into
politics, analysts say, the Koch brothers’ money-fueled brand of libertarianism
helped give rise to the Tea Party movement and strengthened the far-right wing
of a resurgent Republican Party.
A gregarious, socially prominent New Yorker who
loved the ballet, Mr. Koch saw his name emblazoned on cornices at Lincoln
Center for the Performing Arts, the American Museum of Natural History and
NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital — the Manhattan institutions on which some of his
$1.2 billion in charitable gifts were bestowed.
Image
Mr. Koch, left, the Libertarian Party’s
vice-presidential candidate, appeared at a rally in Los Angeles in 1980 with
the party’s presidential candidate, Ed Clark. At right was Mr. Clark’s wife,
Alicia Garcia Clark.CreditRandy Rasmussen/Associated Press
He was a familiar figure at society galas, a
6-foot-5 former college basketball star who long held the single-game scoring
record — 41 points — for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology team, the
Engineers. He also had what New York magazine called a “seemingly
limitless storehouse of Elks club-inflected jokes, which are often followed by
his loud, wheezy honk of a laugh.”
In addition to Southampton, Mr. Koch had palatial
homes on Park Avenue in Manhattan, in Aspen, Colo., and in Palm Beach, Fla. He
kept a yacht in the Mediterranean for summer getaways and rented it out for
$500,000 a week. His friends and acquaintances included Bill and Melinda Gates,
Prince Charles and Winston Churchill’s grandson Winston Spencer Churchill.
He had both bad experiences and good luck. He
survived a 1991 plane crash that killed 34 people at Los Angeles International
Airport. He broke down in tears on a witness stand in Kansas during a civil trial that nearly tore his family
apart over money. And for years, he and Charles faced, and denied, accusations
of having exploited libertarian principles for self-serving purposes.
They insisted that they adhered to a
traditional belief in the liberty of the individual, and in free trade, free
markets and freedom from what they called government
“intrusions,” including taxes, military drafts, compulsory education, business
regulations, welfare programs and laws that criminalized homosexuality,
prostitution and drug use.
An Electoral Force
Since the 1970s, the Kochs have spent at least
$100 million — some estimates put it at much more — to transform a fringe
movement into a formidable political force aimed at moving America to the far
right by influencing the outcome of
elections, undoing limits on campaign contributions and promoting conservative
candidacies, think tanks and policies.
But they said they had not given money to any Tea
Party candidates. “I’ve never been to a Tea Party event,” David Koch told New
York magazine in 2010. “No one representing the Tea Party has ever even
approached me.”
Still, he and his brother acknowledged roles in
founding and contributing money to Americans
for Prosperity, the right-wing advocacy group that was widely reported to have
provided logistical backing for the Tea Party and other organizations in
election campaigns and the promotion of conservative causes.
Among the groups they supported was the American Legislative
Exchange Council, an organization of conservative state legislators and
corporate lobbyists. Alec, as the group is known, drafts model state
legislation that members may customize for introduction as proposed laws to cut taxes, combat illegal immigration, loosen
environmental regulations, weaken labor unions and oppose gun laws.
As part of their longstanding crusade for lower
taxes and smaller government, the Koch brothers in recent years opposed dozens
of transit-related initiatives in
cities and counties across the country, a review by The New York Times found. Campaigns coordinated and
financed by Americans for Prosperity fought state legislation to fund
transportation projects, mounted ad campaigns and public forums to defeat
transit plans, and organized phone banks
to convince citizens that public transit was a waste of taxpayers’ money.
By early 2017, Charles and David Koch, with a combined net worth of more than $100
billion, had become the leaders of a libertarian juggernaut loosely allied
with the Republican Party, which, after eight years in the wings, again
controlled the White House, both houses of Congress and many state
legislatures.
Under the administration of Donald J. Trump,
the Koch brothers’ prospects in Washington seemed improved, at least
superficially. But beneath the surface lay substantive political and personal
differences between the Kochs and Mr. Trump. While the Kochs did not endorse him, David Koch attended his election
night victory party and later met with the president-elect at his Mar-a-Lago
resort in Palm Beach. The Kochs contributed heavily to Vice President Mike
Pence’s two campaigns for governor of Indiana, and counted a half-dozen close
allies among the president’s cabinet choices and Republican advisers.
“The Kochs will be key figures in any discussion
about what direction the party takes after 2016,” The Times reported in September that year, “and they are
determined to steer it toward their free-market vision.”
That proved prophetic. As the 2018
congressional elections approached, the
Kochs’ frustrations with Mr. Trump broke into an ugly and open exchange between
Charles Koch and the president. Charles denounced Mr. Trump’s restrictive
trade and immigration policies as divisive, and threatened to withhold the
family’s support for Republican candidates who opposed the free-trade,
government-shrinking policies at the heart of the Koch political philosophy. Mr. Trump struck back on Twitter, calling the Koch political
apparatus “overrated” and “a total joke in real Republican circles.”
Politics and Profits
Critics
accused the Kochs of buying influence and using their political machine to
manipulate elections and government policies under a guise of patriotism and
freedom. Those efforts, the critics said, cloaked an agenda to cut taxes and federal regulations
governing business, the environment and other interests, primarily to benefit
the Koch family and its enterprises.
Jane
Mayer, the New Yorker writer and a critic of the Koch brothers, said
in her book “Dark Money: The Hidden
History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right” (2016), that
the libertarian policies they embraced benefited Koch chemical and fossil fuel
businesses, which were among the nation’s worst polluters, and paid millions in fines and court judgments for hazardous-waste
violations.
“Lowering
taxes and rolling back regulations, slashing the welfare state and obliterating
the limits on campaign spending might or might not have helped others,” Ms.
Mayer wrote, “but they most certainly strengthened the hand of extreme donors
with extreme wealth.” The Koch brothers rejected the allegations.
Koch money also funded initiatives to undercut climate science and to counter efforts to
address climate change. As Ms. Mayer put it in her book, “The Kochs
vehemently opposed the government taking any action on climate change that would hurt their fossil fuel profits.”
In
interviews after the book was published, Ms. Mayer said that investigators
who she believed were hired by the Koch brothers had tried to intimidate her by
digging up false information, including accusations of plagiarism, to
smear her reputation.
While the brothers portrayed themselves as equal
partners promoting libertarian ideas, Charles
was the major decision maker, just as he was the dominant voice in Koch
enterprises, according to Daniel Schulman’s 2014 biography, “Sons of
Wichita: How the Koch Brothers Became America’s Most Powerful and Private
Dynasty.”
There were other differences. Charles has lived most of his life in a walled compound in Wichita,
Kan., a secretive kingpin surrounded by lawyers, public relations retainers and
security guards. By all accounts he
reads economics, history and political philosophy, listens to opera, eats lunch
in the company cafeteria with his employees and rarely gives press
interviews.
David, by
contrast, was an extrovert who attended several dinner parties a week and
bantered with reporters, politicians and friends in New York society. His
outgoing personality was on display in a nationally televised interview with Barbara
Walters on ABC in 2014. His vice-presidential run with Ed Clark, an oil
company lawyer nominated as the Libertarian presidential candidate, drew
nearly a million votes.
PHOTOGRAPH -- Mr. Koch and his brother Charles, center, greeted
Samuel Ramey, a bass with the New York City Opera, at an event at Lincoln
Center in 2009. David Koch was a socially prominent figure in New
York.CreditPatrick McMullan, via Getty Images
Brothers Against Brothers
David
Hamilton Koch was born in Wichita on May 3, 1940, the third of four
sons of Fred Chase Koch, an oil engineer and entrepreneur, and the former Mary
Clementine Robinson, a Wellesley College graduate and the daughter of a Kansas
City physician.
David and his brothers — Frederick, seven years older; Charles, five years older, and
David’s twin, William — grew up in Wichita under the discipline of an emotionally distant father, who taught them to
fight and compete with one another. That spirit carried into adulthood, engendering feuds and lawsuits that became
public displays of avarice and fraternal malice.
Fred
Koch made millions in the 1920s and ’30s by inventing a process to
extract more gasoline from crude oil and by
building refineries in the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany and elsewhere in Europe
and the Middle East. Fiercely anti-Communist, he co-founded the right-wing John Birch Society and created the
Wichita company that became Koch Industries.
After Fred Koch’s death in 1967, his sons
inherited significant stakes in the company. Charles became chairman, chief executive and the strategist behind
its expansion into chemicals, pipelines and consumer goods, eventually making
Koch Industries the nation’s
second-largest private conglomerate, with interests in 60 countries, more
than 100,000 employees and annual revenue of more than $100 billion.
Image-- David Koch in 2011. As his health
declined, he stepped away from his political and business interests in
2018. CreditGretchen Ertl for The New York Times
David graduated from the exclusive Deerfield
Academy in Massachusetts and studied
chemical engineering at M.I.T., earning a bachelor’s degree in 1962 and a
master’s in 1963. He worked for engineering firms in Cambridge, Mass., and
New York City before joining the family company in 1970 as a technical services
manager. But he did not settle in Wichita, as Charles had.
Instead, he founded a Koch Industries office in
New York City, where he had already put down roots. He was known as a playboy
whose penthouse parties were attended by models. In 1979, he was named
president of his own division, Koch Engineering, which later morphed into Koch
Chemical Technology Group. He became executive vice president of the parent
company in 1981.
The
oldest brother, Frederick, was the only sibling who took no active role in the
family business; he attended Harvard and Yale and became a collector and patron
of the arts. He was estranged from his father, who disowned and partly disinherited him, but Frederick’s shares
in Koch Industries made him wealthy and proved critical later in a family fight
for control of the company.
After earning a doctorate in chemical
engineering, David’s twin, William,
joined the company as a consultant in 1971, but never fit in. He moved from
one job to another and complained that Charles was devoting too much money to
libertarianism. In 1980, William
attempted a boardroom coup to seize control of the company. It failed, and he
was dismissed.
In a series of lawsuits that dragged on for years, William
and Frederick claimed that Charles and David had cheated them out of $2 billion
in a 1983 settlement that paid $1.1 billion for their 5.5 million shares of
Koch Industries. Accusations of
instability, greed and nefarious conduct peppered the trial, and at one point
David sobbed as he testified of family tensions* so bitter that private
investigators had been hired to pilfer trash and bribe janitors to dig up dirt.
In 1998, a federal jury in Topeka, Kan.,
finally ruled that the plaintiffs were owed nothing more, and in 2001 Charles, David and William
reconciled, signing a settlement whose terms were not disclosed. They shared a
meal for the first time in nearly two decades.
Setbacks and a Retirement
On Feb. 1, 1991, a Boeing 737 USAir flight from
Columbus, Ohio, to Los Angeles, carrying 89 people, including David Koch, crashed into a small commuter plane on landing. All 12 people
on the commuter plane and 22 passengers on the jetliner were killed. In a
smoky, crowded cabin, Mr. Koch pried open an exit and leaped to the tarmac,
escaping with cuts and burned lungs.
He learned he had prostate cancer in 1992. He had
surgery and radiation and hormone treatments that kept the disease in check for
decades. All his brothers had prostate cancer and were said to have been cured.
Image
PHOTOGRAPH -- Mr. Koch flashed a victory sign at
the opening of the David H. Koch Plaza at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in
2014. He had given $65 million for its restoration.CreditDamon Winter/The New
York Times
Mr. Koch stepped away from his political and business
interests in June 2018. In a letter to employees of Koch Industries announcing
his brother’s retirement, Charles Koch said that David’s deteriorating health
had made it impossible for him to continue working. The letter did not disclose
the nature of his illness. David’s
presence in social and political circles, which once ran at the highest levels,
had been declining for several years.
A bachelor until he was 56, Mr. Koch married Julia
Flesher, a former Adolfo fashion assistant, in 1996. They had three children:
David Jr., Mary Julia and John Mark. All survive him.
Mr. Koch’s
philanthropies went mostly to medical, educational and cultural institutions.
He listed gifts of more than $395 million in recent decades. The largest was
$150 million to Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center to build the David H.
Koch Center for Cancer Care in a 23-story structure in Manhattan.
At Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, the
ballet venue became the David H. Koch Theater in 2008 after he pledged $100
million. Another $100 million went to NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital for an
ambulatory center, and he gave $65 million to the Metropolitan Museum of Art,
where he was a trustee, for the reconstruction of its plaza along Fifth Avenue.
Both were named after him.
A
dinosaur buff as a boy, Mr. Koch also gave millions to the American Museum of
Natural History in New York for the David H. Koch Dinosaur Wing and to the
National Museum of Natural History, part of the Smithsonian in Washington, for
the David H. Koch Hall of Fossils, which opened in
June.
“David is more of a philanthropist in the
classic sense of the word,” Mr. Schulman, the Koch biographer, said in a “Fresh Air” interview on NPR in 2014. “He
funds medical research, science; he funds the arts. Charles’ lifelong mission
has been to change the political culture and mainstream libertarian
ideas.”
Correction: Aug. 23, 2019
An earlier version of this obituary, using
information from a family spokesman, misidentified Mr. Koch's place of death.
It was at his home in Southampton, N.Y., not at his home in Manhattan.
Robert D. McFadden is a senior writer on the
Obituaries desk and the winner of the 1996 Pulitzer Prize for spot news
reporting. He joined The Times in May 1961 and is also the co-author of two
books.
WHAT DOES BERNIE LIKE ABOUT PRESIDENT TRUMP? HE COUNTS THE WAYS.
Bernie Sanders Reveals The Only Thing He ‘Admires’
About Donald Trump
It was a struggle, but the 2020 presidential
candidate eventually managed to find one positive thing to say about the
president.
Sen.
Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) has very reluctantly acknowledged two
traits that he “admires” about President
Donald Trump.
While speaking at a youth forum at Drake
University in Des Moines, Iowa, on Sunday, the 2020 presidential candidate was
asked by a student, in the interest of smoothing political divisiveness, to
name one “genuine thing” that he admires about the president.
Miming being punched in the gut, Sanders was not
exactly enthusiastic about answering the question. “His hair, I’m really
impressed by the color of his hair,” he quipped at first.
He continued by telling the student he probably
wouldn’t be too happy with his actual answer.
Sanders acknowledged his respect for several of
his Republican colleagues in the Senate, explaining it’s not odd for them to
sit down to lunch together, and that they don’t “hate each other” ― despite
holding differing views.
However, he decried Trump as a racist, sexist,
homophobe, xenophobe and religious bigot, saying that he would do anything he
could to tackle that type of behavior.
He was greeted by a round of applause, but the
moderator pressed him to name just one “single thing” that he could say that he
admires.
“He gets up at 3 o’clock in the morning to tweet.
So I’m impressed by people who get up at 3 o’clock in the morning,” Sanders
replied.
The event also featured presidential candidates Rep.
Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii), Sen.
Michael Bennet (D-Colo.), Andrew Yang, former Rep. Joe Sestak and businessman Tom Steyer.
Watch a clip of the event from the Des Moines
Register below:
SANDERS TALKS ABOUT TRUMP'S HAIR AND HIS DIVISIVENESS.
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