Koch Brothers $100 Billion in Annual Revenue – Friends or Enemies of American Middle Class?

"Wood Oil Industries was co-founded by Fred Koch in 1940, it has since been renamed Koch Industries. Fred Koch among many other oil refinery developments was known for the process that refined crude oil, and this had created a lot of friction with other large oil companies across America.

Apparently, Koch’s refining process was for whatever reasons, making other large oil companies uncomfortable, so much so, they threatened to sue for patent infringement. He decided to avoid the legal hassles and moved to Russia during the 1920′s and 30′s using his methods there, helping to build Russia’s oil infrastructure and teaching the Russian engineers to run a more efficient oil refining operation. He made a fortune.

Eventually he returned to America with his new found wealth to concentrate on his empire. He had four sons, Frederick, William, David and Charles. After the death of their father, David and Charles eventually bought out Frederick and William in 1983 for 1.1 billion dollars. By 1967 Charles Koch had been appointed President of Koch Industries and wanted Koch industries to grow and grow fast. His plan was to reinvest all profits back into the company. His plan worked and the company grew so fast, that between the years 1966 to 2008, it shot from $100 million to $100 billion in annual revenues. An astounding 1000 percent increase.

Now Koch Industries is into everything. Koch Industries is a privately owned energy empire, refining more than 800,000 barrels of crude daily as well as buying and selling the most asphalt in the country. They are involved in ranching, manufacturing, forestry, oil. Their portfolio is huge reading like the Who’s Who of big business: Names like Georgia Pacific, Invista, Koch Pipeline Company LP, Flint Resources LP, Koch fertilizer, Koch Agriculture Company, operating three different ranches totaling 425,000 acres, controlling 15,000 head of cattle.

Koch Industry today, employs 50,000 in America, and 20,000 offshore. In the last two years, David and Charles Koch combined net worth has jumped from $16.1 billion to $42 billion making them the wealthiest of the wealthy in New York today. Question is how did their wealth jump so much from 2008 to 2011?

Since 2008, while they were enjoying their billions, they laid off 8,000 people across America, also laying off and closing down companies overseas, while demanding taxpayer bailouts for their refineries. Doing so, as they were enjoying some of the best business returns ever, but apparently, that wasn’t good enough.

The layoffs, bailouts and plant closures earned them another $11 billion. It’s just never enough is it? These two are measuring wealth by how much money they have. Too bad, it’s actually measured by so much more than money, something that many billionaires have a hard time understanding. They take and take and take, facilitated by greed and corrupt officials in high office, looking for a handout.

The brothers, David and Charles, are a couple of globalist big business types who will fire thousands just to become richer. These two are as equally dangerous as George Soros. They just play it differently, with a different set of friends that in the end want to control how America does business. Doing nothing more than to create more power for themselves. You see, the greed never ends. It’s just never enough money.

In 2000, the younger brother William talked publicly about his older brothers Charles and David business acumen. They had a huge falling out and made their split over their inheritance. William appeared on 60 minutes to vent his frustrations, to tell the world that Koch Industries was a criminal enterprise cheating the US tax payers over oil sales; interesting read, especially while coming straight from a family member.

“It was – was my family company. I was out of it,” he says. “But that’s what appalled me so much… I did not want my family, my legacy, my father’s legacy to be based upon organized crime.”

They will try and sell you something different, telling you that their actions prove otherwise. How these two have turned on America by laying off 8000 people and off shoring jobs and cash is the same old story we have heard from other big business that have turned against the American people. These two were more fortunate to have been given a great start by their father, and have turned their inheritance into a fortune. Without America, and their father’s wealth, these two would be something entirely different.

They have financed many think tanks and organizations, to the tune of $100 million dollars, such as the Heritage foundation, the Cato Institute and the Americans for Prosperity. They try and come up with ways to facilitate low corporate and personal taxes, eliminate services that help the poor, anti-union, population control, and sending American jobs to poor countries amongst other things. These two pretend to be strong Tea Party supporters, and indirectly look to the George Soros globalist agenda to make them more money. This seems to be the order of the day for your average American billionaire. Unfortunately, as pointed out by their younger brother in the above link, they decided to make hundreds of millions of dollars the easy way, by stealing it from the American tax payer.

Charles and David Koch have also used their money to lobby Washington to enable corporations to donate to campaigns. Basically, giving them the same rights as an individual donating money. By doing so, they can now donate huge sums by writing a check straight from the corporation. What is going on here basically, is that corporations are allowed to spend freely on whatever campaigns who will push the agenda in which that corporation feels is in their best interest.

This, in my opinion, wrongly gives the corporation the same 1st Amendment rights as a single person who is also campaigning for or against the same issues. But, the corporation is made up of many individuals, board of directors, employees, etc. They are speaking for all of them! Most of which have no clue of what the hell is going on! You see these two like to play it cute. It’s all about the money."

[link to fromthetrenchesworldreport.com]