More on David Koch

See Billionaire David Koch, Who Used His Wealth to Reshape U.S. Politics, Dies at 79 by Melanie Grayce West and John McCormick of The WSJ. Excerpts:

"he was a liberal on social issues such as abortion and same-sex marriage"

"The Kochs, though, have been critical of Mr. Trump’s policies on trade and immigration."

"He donated more than $1.3 billion of his fortune to charity, including gifts to the State Theater of New York at Lincoln Center—renamed the David H. Koch Theater—New York-Presbyterian Hospital and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, all in Manhattan."

See Don’t Hate Koch Because He Was Generous by Chandra Bozelko. She is is vice president of the National Society of Newspaper Columnists and author of the blog Prison Diaries. Excerpts:

"David Koch is dead. Long live cooperation across ideological lines.

When Koch Industries invited me to the 2015 Bipartisan Summit on Criminal Justice Reform in March 2015, I was a year out of prison and working for a liberal organization. Koch’s interest in criminal justice, like mine, developed from personal experience with the criminal legal machine. A grand jury indicted one of his companies, which owned a Texas refinery, on 97 felony environmental violations. It took six years and millions of dollars to defend. David Koch and his brother Charles wondered how people without their resources could handle the government coming at them with all its weight.

By giving money to reform organizations, the Kochs made it easier for conservative politicians to support the movement, enabling many of the legislative changes we see today at both the federal and state levels—including the federal First Step Act of 2018 and Florida’s Amendment 4, a ballot initiative to restore voting rights for felons. Cash bail reform received an infusion of funds from Koch Industries last year.

But David’s greatest contribution was to disprove the notion that people can’t work together without agreeing on everything.

This pernicious view was put forth by Washington Post critic Phillip Kennicott in a 2017 article. He called on arts groups to refuse contributions from the Kochs because their “campaign to discredit climate science” is a “threat to our planet.” Other activists and organizers convinced themselves that because the brothers opposed many government programs on philosophical grounds, their grants were clandestine ways to undermine public programs—forgetting that dissent is a two-way street and the Koch charities had to put aside any differences in opinion to make the gifts in the first place.

But insisting on homogeneity of thought is a surefire way to arrest progress. Think of what gains would be lost if health-care providers, charities and advocacy groups—including New York-Presbyterian Hospital, the Thurgood Marshall Scholarship Fund, Lincoln Center, the National Association of Defense Attorneys—boycotted the Koch brothers and their donations."

See David Koch’s Righteous Profits by William McGurn of The WSJ.

"In the denunciations that have appeared since his death, David Koch has been caricatured as an executive for a company that fought anything that might affect its profits. The truth is more complicated.

Begin with climate. David’s brother Charles, the company’s CEO and chairman, has acknowledged that the Earth has been warming for a century, that there has been a corresponding rise in CO2, and that man-made forces have contributed to this rise.

The Kochs’ offense has been to insist that those proposing “solutions” demonstrate they can deliver what they promise, whether it be “green jobs” or significant reductions in emissions. Solutions also mustn’t be self-defeating, such as U.S. tax incentives that would send, say, the manufacture of chemicals and fertilizer to China, where the use of coal in production would mean higher CO2 emissions. Above all, solutions should include an honest accounting that is upfront about the real costs, and weighs them against expected benefits."

"ven Joe Biden, the Democrat supposedly representing the moderate view, makes clear there will be no place for fossil fuels in a Biden administration. Which highlights a curious dichotomy: While fossil-fuel execs such as David Koch are assailed as moral monsters, no one raises any moral questions about a Green New Deal that cannot be implemented in any of its iterations without significantly reducing the standard of living for millions of Americans."