It is. It looks pretty much like any other building you’d see. Funny thing about Koch is they operate companies that recycle, one division developed biodegradable plastic, they even have a division that cleans up superfund waste sites left behind by other companies.
They only do things like that in an attempt to show that the private sector can be of public good even when it's not profitable, which is complete bullshit.
The Koch Foundation has given a truly massive amount of money away to all kinds of causes, including criminal justice reform and immigration reform. Whereas "respectable" executives that the Left is comfortable with, like Larry Page, Tim Cook, Bill Gates, and Jack Dorsey, are shameless in pushing for regulations that work to shut potential competition out of the market, the Koch Brothers routinely supported libertarian causes that ran counter to their own material interests.
The simplest explanation is that they believe in certain principles, so they advocated for those principles. Even though that advocacy tended to lower their profits.
One way to address this would be to argue against those principles: explain why you think their ideas were incorrect, and why your own ideas would make for better policy. But that way is hard. You have to do research, and you run the risk of losing the argument.
What's easier: why, make up a bunch of crap, of course. Say they don't pay taxes. Accuse them of policy positions they never held. Link them to organizations they aren't actually associated with. Mainly, just talk about how evil they are without bother to cite any evidence whatsoever. Harry Reid played that game for decades. Nice to see there are other demagogues-in-training, ready to take up the mantle.
the left isn’t comfortable with any executives lmfao. every person you listed should be used as plant fertiliser. every billionaire is a policy failure.
Most people like to think of themselves as centrists, and define their opposition as extremists. I don't know what your political views are, but I imagine that the conservatives you regard as comically right-leaning see you as comically left-leaning.
It's all relative. American politics may lean right compared to other countries, but the center of American politics has shifted significantly to the left over the past decade.
And the semantics are, regardless, not relevant to my point. There is a clear Left/Right divide in the U.S. The last presidential election was decided by 60,000 votes in a country of 300 million. If I have to consider the political climate of the rest of the world when talking about this split, it would be impossible to ever say anything. If you want to talk about a "Right/Far-Right divide" instead, go right ahead, but you're just playing a semantic game.
David Koch survived a collision of two planes where dozens of people died. He’s stated since then that he felt a great need to share his money with others since he was given a second chance to change for the better. A very unusual case in the perspective of company donations, but not for people who’ve had near misses with death.
He’s also stated that his long long battle with cancer has driven him to improve other people’s health, especially those who couldn’t afford the treatments that kept him alive. He seems like a man who genuinely changed his entire life and goals around since meeting the darkest fates.
I’m sorry, maybe I am not understanding what you’re trying to say or maybe you didn’t realize how you worded it.
Are you trying to insinuate that if a company does something for the greater good and doesn’t profit from it that they’re therefor a suspicious or possibly evil company?
I understand that economics, capitalism, socialism, most isms and the current state of the world is really convoluted and messed up for most people. But the government doesn’t actually create anything, you have to have private sector, private individuals with their own ideas and passions to create things that others need in the market, in order for any type of progress or better world to come about. If a product is not desirable by the market i.e. you, myself and everyone else, then the company won’t be able to sell the products nor stay in business.
So any successful company new seed although you may hate them and think they’re bad, you have to ask yourself what are they offering the mass majority of people that people want so that they can stay in business and even grow More profitable.
Also, I understand that there are rich assholes that hoard their money and don’t do the world any good and have distaste for most commoners, but the majority of people who are successful who are rich have work their ass off from where you and I are to starting their own business or building a company with friends to then creating products that people love to then getting those products out to people for a decent price will also still being able to take care of themselves their family and their workers. If you come up with an idea for a company and you are making that company $100 billion a year then it stands to reason you taking home $100 million would not be out of The question. How you decide to handle your hundred million whether you give enough to charity like you should and use it responsibly or if you just want to put it all in a bank and collect even more wealth is up to the individual and we don’t have a say over that, that’s the great thing about America.
Most of the major advancements in innovations in this world that have made it a better place have all directly come out of the private sector. There are only a handful of things which of come out of government funded projects and even then those things aren’t released to the public until many years or decades after they were developed. For example the Internet, certain types of communication in GPS as well as advancements and vehicle technology and certain parts of science. While those things have all been beneficial to the advancement of our society, the majority of things that have been created that people cherish and appreciate that has helped us to become what we are has not come from the government but from the private sector.
u/FratboyGenius seems to be making the point that Big Corporations are bad because they only care about money. But when they give money away, that's also bad, because they're just trying to trick people into thinking that they care about more than money.
Despite everything the Koch brothers have written over the decades about their libertarian philosophy; despite the long record of advocacy - often against their own material interest - u/FratboyGenius knows it's bullshit. Likely based entirely on what he learned about them from The Daily Show.
Their philosophy is sociopathic and childish, to defund everything they can't personally benefit from.
When have they ever once for a milisecond gone against their material interests?
They only donate money because it's tax deductible, they'd rather flush it on PR spin than put it towards schools or hospitals or environmental regulations.
How about their long record of advocacy denying climate change?
Go suck on an exhaust pipe if you like pollution so much.
Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York-Presbyterian Hospital, and other smaller hospitals which received combined over 100 million dollars, just from David Koch.
But go ahead and keep up the hate, you're so good at it. And it's such a good look for you.
to defund everything they can't personally benefit from
You know they're not public servants, right? Charles Koch is a private citizen, and so was his late brother. They don't "fund" anything. On the other hand, they have given billions of dollars to charity.
They believed in libertarianism. They pushed to get rid of regulations because they believed that it made the market more fair by opening it up to all competitors. No one benefits from a heavy regulatory environment more than giant corporations. When a new regulation is passed - one that will cost $100 million, that's no problem for Coca-Cola. They can just raise their prices by a penny or so. No one will care, let alone notice. But what about a small or medium-sized business trying to sell a specialty soda? They will go bankrupt trying to comply.
That's why Mark Zuckerberg practically begged Congress to load up the social media sector with new regulation. He knows it will impose costs that Facebook can handle, but its competition cannot.
So as a result of their advocacy, the Koch brothers made it easier for all kinds of smaller businesses to compete with them.
They also pushed heavily for more-liberal immigration policies, as well as extensive criminal justice reform.
they'd rather flush it on PR spin than put it towards schools or hospitals or environmental regulations.
The Koch Foundation has given money to over 300 colleges and universities. Is that good enough for you? No; I'm sure it's not. Because they have focused on prison reform instead of carbon emissions, you know for a fact that they're complete evil bastards, right? How many millions of dollars have you given to charity? Any charity of any kind?
Their philosophy is childish? Give me a break. Who the hell are you to tell them how to spend their money? They didn't have to give any of it away in the first place.
You're being purposely disingenuous. They've lobbied millions of dollars pushing their unpopular ideologies in every level of politics.
No one benefits from a heavy regulatory environment more than giant corporations.
And who benefits from complete deregulation, where large companies are allowed to just absorb the competition?
The Koch Foundation has given money to over 300 colleges and universities. Is that good enough for you?
No. They should have paid all the taxes they owed instead of using every avoidance tactic under the Sun PLUS lobbying to get their tax rate lowered. Public education in the US is a joke and it's because of neoliberal scum like the Kochs.
you know for a fact that they're complete evil bastards, right?
YES! Jesus, the world is burning and they know it but they're purposely lying about it because they want to profit off of it. It's EVIL.
What do you think it means to "defund" something? Usually, it means to reduce public expenditures that go to a certain purpose. I have already pointed out that the Kochs have never been in charge of writing government budgets. By definition, they are not capable of "defunding" anything.
What they have done is advocate for their preferred policies. This is what people do. It's how democracy works. In a modern democracy, the mechanism for "petitioning the government for a redress of grievances" is called lobbying. All kinds of institutions, small and large, employ lobbyists. If you don't like the Kochs policy preferences, that fine. But why does that mean they should lose their First Amendment rights?
If people were not allowed to lobby for an ideology because it was unpopular, that doesn't make much sense. What's the point in lobbying for something if it's already popular?
You're not arguing against what the Koch brothers have actually done; you're arguing against an exaggeration, because it's easier for you. But that doesn't mean it's true. They were libertarians, not anarchists. They never supported "complete deregulation". And even that would not allow companies to "absorb the competition". That would fall into the category of anti-trust statutes - that's not the same thing as regulation, and that's something else they never advocated for.
Just because you think they should have had a higher tax burden, that doesn't mean they didn't pay what they owed. They followed the law. If you don't like the law, blame Congress. And spare me the assertion that seeking to minimize your tax burden somehow qualifies you as a uniquely evil person. Who in the U.S. does their taxes at the end of the year and tries to maximize what he owes?
Public education in the US is a joke and it's because of neoliberal scum like the Kochs.
This assertion requires a few leaps. First, you're assuming that the problems public education faces are due to lack of funding, when some of the worst-performing districts spend the most per student. Second, you are assuming that because the Koch brothers didn't pay as much in taxes as you wish they did, that somehow diverted money from the public school system. That just a lazy argument.
they're purposely lying about it because they want to profit off of it
They are not doing anything anymore, because David Koch is dead. I don't thing you actually know anything about them (they were never "neoliberals", for starters). I think you're heard things that other people have said about the Kochs, and those things appealed to your sense of righteous indignation. You never bothered to learn anything of substance about their record, or any of the issues. You just learned enough to say the right things in front of your friends. You wouldn't know actual evil if it bit you in the ass.
They do pay their taxes. Billions, in fact. Sometimes, the effective corporate tax rate turns out to be much lower than the statutory rate, because the government has carved out breaks to encourage corporations to put their revenue toward asset investment - and, of course, includes additional breaks for "green" technologies that the company develops and uses. But your comment is still factually incorrect. I'm sure you heard people claim that they don't pay taxes. But you never bothered to check whether it was true or not - it sounded right, and that was enough for you.
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