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"The corporations don't have to lobby the government anymore. They are the government."
January's Lowdown
Yes we can manage this country without the corporate priesthood--the cooperative movement shows us how
We're being told by today's High Priests of Conventional Wisdom that everyone and everything in our economic cosmos necessarily revolves around one dazzling star: the corporation. This heavenly institution, the HPCW explain, has such financial and political mass that it is the optimal force for organizing and directing our society's economic affairs, including the terms of employment and production.
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Washington besieged by an occupying force of corporate lobbyists
300 ex-Congress critters are among the hired guns who kill progressive reforms
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THE KOCHS GO A-LOBBYING
Petrobillionaire brothers Charles and David Koch are not only the creators and funders of a web of right-wing think tanks and front groups (Lowdown, Feb. 2010), but also major lobbiers. Koch Industries regularly ranks as the top oil-company donor to congressional campaigns. The Koch boys--plus their family members, PACs, executives, and lobbyists --have already put $868,400 behind their favored candidates in this fall's congressional races.
And Koch Industries deploys a permanent team of influence peddlers to press its agenda on Capitol Hill and in federal agencies. In the past three years alone, Koch spent more than $37 million on lobbying, including $12,340,000 last year. Its 2009 force was made up of 5 in-house lobbyists, plus 40 hired guns from 10 K-Street firms.
Koch's lobbying team is headed by Matt Schlapp, who was director of the White House Office of Political Affairs for the Bush-Cheney regime. He replaced Elizabeth Stolpe, who (follow the spinning yo-yo here) went to work for Bush as associate director for environmental protection.
Koch needs such insiders because it is a serial polluter. In 2000, it was indicted for concealing illegal releases of 91 metric tons of cancer-causing benzene from its Texas oil refinery. It faced $352 million in fines, as well as possible jail time for executives.
No sweat, though. Koch put $800,000 into Bush's presidential election that year, and, in 2001, Bush's attorney general, John Ashcroft, put together a deal that dropped 88 of the 97 charges and fined Koch $20 million--pocket change for the $100-billion-a-year corporation.