Koch Brothers’ lawbreaking: bribery and dealings with Iran

by David Safier

This will be my last post on the Bloomberg News story, Koch Brothers Flout Law Getting Richer With Secret Iran Sales. I've broken my coverage of the story into four posts (here are one, two and three), because each individual instance of corporate greed and illegality deserves coverage. But the overall "preponderance of evidence" conclusion is what's most important. The Koch Brothers are motivated by greed, not love of country, respect for the law or any moral values. Their libertarian, Tea Party philosophy is little more than their way of making sure they pay less taxes and get away with more illegal activity.

The secret sales to Iran by the Koch Brothers' multinational corporation have gotten the most press, yet they are probably the only instance in the Bloomberg article of the Brothers K doing something perfectly legal. Until 2007, the Koch Brothers sold equipment to Iran using its companies which aren't based in the U.S. They scrupulously avoided any association with their U.S.-run businesses, avoiding our trade ban. This made what they did legal, and similar to what a number of other U.S.-based corporations were doing. Legal, yes, but it puts their much-ballyhooed patriotism in question. If the Koch Brothers are selling equipment to Iran and making money off the deal, they are violating the spirit of this country's political and economic censure of Iran. As so often happens when corporate profits come into play, flag waving is a smokescreen for a corporations' one and only true allegiance: The Bottom Line.

Koch Brothers' enterprises engaged in bribery in India and Algeria. Again, this is corporate business as usual, albeit illegal business as usual. Once again, it indicates corporations are amoral animals which tend to do whatever it takes to make a profit. The Koch Brothers are poster children for the need for government regulation and regular monitoring by government agencies. If corporations are people, as Romney says, most of them are raving egomaniacs, and some of them are sociopaths who are blind to the harm they do to others and care about nothing but their own immediate self interest.

When I hear the Koch Brothers philosophy, I hear the ka-ching of cash registers. When I see their spending on conservative causes and groups — ALEC, the Tea Party, all kinds of astroturf work — I see them spending one dollar with the hopes of making ten, or a hundred, from their investment.

Compare this to people like George Soros and Warren Buffett. I don't see any direct economic gain to Soros from his economic support of progressive causes, and all Buffett will get from his Buffett Rule is higher taxes. Their long term interests may be served by helping to create a more economically equitable and stable country, and they may sleep better at night for their efforts. But in terms of the causes they support, people like Soros and Buffett are polar opposites of the Koch Brothers.