Learning about billionaire libertarians and their mind boggling perspective of injustice

The Koch Family. Phew. I'm already tired, fam.

The book I am reading right now - Dark Money - is not flattering to the family, particularly the two that at the helm of Koch Industries: Charles and the now deceased David. This book is a dizzying portrait of how some very wealthy people classify government regulations as injustice.

Um. Are you kitten me right meow?

Let's pause. The perspective of the ultra wealthy is surreal and distorted, albeit fascinating, in ways I completely overlooked or underestimated. My mind is blown by the idea that a billionaire has any clue what injustice is, but here we are.

Today, I learned what Charles Koch thinks is not just. This person, just like his father before him, hates government and the regulations the government imposes on companies and business. All of it. He hates taxes. He hates environmental regulations. He hates the idea of being transparent in his business dealings.

Koch Industries has been burned by quite a few lawsuits and settlements. In one case, a guy worked with benzene all the time and the company tested his blood annually. The company was supposed to share the results with employees if there were alarming levels, but Koch Industries didn't tell this guy for like two years. The worker got sick with leukemia, kept going to work, but when he got too weak to work, he was friggin' let go with six months pay (basically his sick bank). The widow thought the company would take care of them. Not even close. Thankfully she fought. The day before they were to go to court, the company settled.

In another case, the company didn't update an aging gas line which resulted in a couple people trying to start their truck and EXPLODING INTO A HUGE FIREBALL. The father of the driver won a $296 million dollar settlement. Instead of addressing the bad pipelines, Koch Industries just sold it. In another case, a whistle blower went to report Koch industries when they reported a completely falsified report on how much pollution was being created by a facility.

Okay, so this guy Charles Koch, the main dude at Koch Industries, is listed ninth on the Bloomberg Billionaires list. His company has annual revenue of $110 BILLION dollars. And this is the person who feels that the government making his company report alarming blood results to coworkers is not just. He doesn't think he should have to worry about bad gas lines his company is profiting off of. This guy's company ripped off Native Americans by purposefully mis-measuring oil taken from indigenous lands. This guy thinks having his pollution-spewing, employee-killing, ethically questionable company regulated is injustice.

This would be laughable if it wasn't straight up terrifying.

30 Days of Gratitude: Day 9 - Whistleblowers

Being from Detroit, I'm no stranger to whistleblowers and I'm grateful for them. Ultimately, it was after former police officers Gary Brown and Harold Nelthrope becoming whistleblowers that led the corrupt mayor, Kwame Kilpatrick, to resign from office.

Yesterday I was catching up on podcasts and heard this episode of Democracy Now! about how Edward Snowden was a patriot. While it might not be a popular opinion to some, I agree with that. This podcast had on four other whistleblowers to talk about their trip to Russia to meet Snowden and give him an award. It was enlightening to hear their stories. You don't think about what these people had to sacrifice to take on an entire government. This is some real spy stuff!

In the past, I've shouted out to Anonymous, too. Snowden was a single man that caused all sorts of chaos. Anonymous is a whole bunch of men and women who have similar abilities and who can take on even bigger powers in bigger ways. Like I mentioned in another post of gratitude, it's good to know that SOMEONE (even if they are indeed anonymous) has the little guy's back.