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No sooner had Greenpeace busted the Koch brothers and their 57 subsidiary corporations for their fight against safety standards to mitigate fallout from terrorist attacks and natural disasters, the brothers responded by… acknowledging what Greenpeace reported.
The crux of the matter is the Koch brothers’ fierce lobbying effort to preserve the status quo, which benefits their ideology and corporate profits. The brothers favor an existing law that was intended to give Congress time to consider a more comprehensive framework. New legislation would give teeth and legs to the lax system we rely on to protect, in the Koch brothers’ case, 4.4 million people who live near their chemical-reliant businesses. Some of these 4.4 million innocent people are part of our Koch Brothers Exposed investigation.
My father used to say, “Sometimes by saying nothing, you say everything.” The Kochs say nothing about the many indictments against their businesses and their silence is deafening. Obviously, the Kochs did not endorse the Greenpeace report, but they didn’t even try to address it. Truthfully, they’re regurgitating the same tactics they’ve deployed against Koch Brothers Exposed and Brave New Foundation.
Our video linked their wealth to Jim Crow and school resegregation, which they didn’t like. Rather than debating us point for point, they tried retreating and changing the subject. Whether it’s school resegregation or chemical safety, the Kochs fight any fact that gets in the way of their money-making machine. We and our engaged community of activists have been informing others and spreading the word about the brothers influence on democracy, and I invite you to check out our investigation at the Koch Brothers Exposed page on Facebook.
The Koch brothers, while tacitly confirming the Greenpeace report, tried to downplay its consequences. Much of the brothers’ response hinges on a predisposition for safety. Safety, like oxygen, is good, they say. But Greenpeace rightfully observes that actions speak louder than words:
If Koch truly placed safety before profit, why haven’t they converted their dangerous facilities to safer alternatives? Companies like Clorox are already taking this step to convert all of their high-risk facilities to safer technologies.
The answer is because doing so costs money and would take a bite, however insignificant, out of the brothers’ billions.
5 Comments
Thank you for keeping an eye on those sly devils. Prescott Bush and the Koch family worked hard for Nazi Germany. They built their dynasty in the US from murder and mayhem.
Hydrofluoric acid (HF) and benzene are super nasty.
I just came across the following about the hazards of ageing refineries in Wyoming (Feb. 24, 2011) held by Hermes Consolidated, Inc. of Denver, Co. and HollyFrontier Corp. of Dallas, TX attempting the same safety avoidance:
The Big Oil executives have made a threat to public safety out of their industry, and consider public service as their enemy. As I pointed out in my post on fracking yesterday, they also threaten their own investors. Thanks for keeping them under examination.
I wouldn’t believe much of what Greenpeace has to say, without verifying it independently. Greenpeace, like MADD, SPLC, and the NRA, are best thought of as money machines. They aren’t profit making corporations, but they still exist to rake in donor dollars.
Benzene was the standard chemical for cleaning oil in machines – the giant forms pressers that took molten metal and made your boats motor, etc.
Indeed its effects are now in a race to see what actually wins the right to say it killed me. I used those chemical sprays as a poor kid glad to get a job – in major plants in the midwest in the 50′s.
They were banned long ago for such cleaning – so for Koch to not dispose of the chemical correctly, to indeed hide its production and storage, is just more of the “greed is good” Tea Party gift, apparently sanction by Obama.
But we should note that when GW Bush as Gov dismissed the 88 counts against the Koch brothers, then Bill Clinton had them hit with 91 Counts, and then GW did not chase those 91 counts – and Obama has done zero – nothing – about those problems.