After looking at the graph and thinking about how this happened, I started thinking about who those 400 wealthy Americans were. Sure, I knew that Bill Gates was there, and Warren Buffet, Oprah, Steven Speilberg, Steve Jobs and those guys at Google. It didn't surprise me that four Walton siblings were in the top 15. But who were some of the others that weren't quite so famous and what had they done to amass their fortunes? Yesterday, my curiosity was rewarded when I found an article about Charles and David Koch. Have you ever heard of them? Me either.
Well, they happen to share the #19 space on the Forbes 400 richest people in the world, with each of them posting a cool $14 billion apiece. These two senior citizens got started when they inherited a successful business from their wealthy father. But more importantly they inherited his idealogy. You see Fred Koch founded the John Birch Society.
The brothers run Koch Industries, headquartered in Wichita, Kansas with over 70,000 employees in 60 countries and more than $100 billion in sales each year. Pretty impressive, right? Then why haven't we heard about them or their company?
They prefer to operate below the radar because it allows them to spread their anti-government, corporate-controlled vision of how to reshape America. They've been at it for awhile and they are really good at it. You'll want to learn more about these brothers. Trust me.
Today, I found this article from Climate Science Watch that explains how the "brothers Grimm" influence the global warming debate while financially supporting climate change deniers.
UPDATE: And Greenpeace recently came out with this article published in Huffington Post.
Keep your eyes on the Koch brothers. They are reshaping America and it's not for our benefit.
David Koch involvement with the tea party:
ReplyDeletehttp://washingtonindependent.com/62318/tea-party-patrons-point-new-recruits-toward-2010
Thanks Billy,
ReplyDeleteI missed that.