Thread by @AliAdair22

Part 7.
Part 6 was rough, I’m sorry, but I meant to illustrate to you that these are people. Not stats that are “collateral damage” because it’s less expensive to pollute and pay fines (if you’re caught) than to pay the price of cleaning it up and fixing the problems.

Heard of the “Pinto Memo?” Well this is the Koch Memo

I’ll quote Gerald E. Connolly, U.S. Representative for Virginia, because he was spot on: “Koch Brothers’ direct contributions have been an investment well worth it. It’s certainly a lot less expensive than actually having to retrofit factories.”

Rep. Connolly said this in the Robert Greenwald film Koch Brothers Exposed (2012):
imdb.com/title/tt234741…
It's a great film, please see it if you can.

This website tracks the total money Koch Industries, Inc. spent on environmental violations, workplace safety or health violations, employment discrimination, labor relations violations, railroad safety violations, export control violations,...

...benefit plan administrator violations, Family and Medical Leave Act violations since 2000. What’s the number?
$736,713,660

But that number is super low. That's only the ones they were fined for because they were CAUGHT. Think of all the infractions that they weren't fined for and think of all the factories that they didn't retrofit so that they didn't do it again.

Dr. Melissa Jarrell, Associate Professor of of Criminal Justice Texas A& M Environmental Criminologist is interviewed in Koch Brothers Exposed and she says, "Koch Industries are repeat offenders of environmental crimes."

Dr. Jarrell continues, "In 2000, a federal grand jury returned a 97-count indictment against Koch Industries in Corpus Christi, TX. They were charged not only with emitting more benzene than they were allowed to, they tried to cover it up." (covered in Part 2)

"But the Bush administration worked with Koch to come up with a plea bargain. So it went from a 97-count indictment to 1 count. A potential of $350 million to just a $20 million fine. As an Environmental Criminologist, watching this case evolve, makes me sick." more Dr. Jarrell.

Dr. Melissa Jarrell: "They know they can get away with it. They’ll just wait and be fined. If they ever get caught—which in most cases they won’t get caught—because the EPA is understaffed and underfunded." Note that she said this over 6 years ago!

I'm just going to reiterate @GerryConnolly's quote. These are just fines. These factories probably all need to be rebuilt so that they meet our country's environmental standards and don't poison our people. That has to be billions of dollars. Billions and billions!

So instead of continuing to pay these fines, their objective is to spend money on campaigns so that in this case, they "own the county." The Kochs pour money in on every level, town, city, county, state and federal. That way, they get away with a lot of the violations. A LOT!

For instance, here is a list of Arkansas House of Representative members with ties to the American Legilative Exchange Council (ALEC), the Kochs' nonprofit organization that drafts model legislation that benefits them.

For instance, here is a list of Arkansas Senate members with ties to the American Legilative Exchange Council (ALEC), the Kochs' nonprofit organization that drafts model legislation that benefits them. Here's a link to see who they are in your state.
sourcewatch.org/index.php/ALEC…

It is impossible to get an accurate figure on how much Koch Industries Inc. and the individual Koch Brothers spend on elections. "A Maze of Money."

The Koch Brothers use the "triad" campaign finance scheme, which involves setting up shell corporations, which are tax exempt & funneling money there in order to avoid campaign finance disclosure laws.

Since the 2010 Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission U.S. Supreme Court decision, the formation of nonprofit corporations—in particular 501(c)(4)s (operated exclusively to promote social welfare)—have soared, making it even easier to hide political contributions.

With that said, I took the articles that I thought had the most accurate information on what the Koch Brothers were estimated to have spent—or projected to be spent—in each election cycle from 2010-2018. These are VERY rough estimates.

2018 election—projected $300-400 million—average it to $350 million
pbs.org/newshour/polit…

2016 election—projected $889 million by @nytimes—but more realistic is 2018 number ($350 million) with a 60% increase from 2016 number…so $220 million
nytimes.com/2015/01/27/us/…
pbs.org/newshour/polit…

2014 election—projected $290 million by @washingtonpost
washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/w…

2012 election—estimated $490 million by the Huffington Post:
huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/15/koc…

Honestly, I cannot find a good number for 2010, the year the Tea Party movement emerged. It's probably just as good as the other numbers, so I'm just going to make a rough guess at $300 million.

But I have information for 1998-2008 from the New Yorker & the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, roughly $250,800,000.
newyorker.com/magazine/2010/…

OK, total super rough numbers for 1998-2018:
$1,900,800,000

Remember I mentioned earlier the The Ford Motor Company “Pinto Memo,” the inter-office memo in 1973? It was written by Ford's Environmental and Safety Engineering division and it was a cost analysis.

Table 3 in the memo listed the cost of burn deaths (it cited that the NHTSA’s estimate of 2,000 to 3,500 fatalities/year from fire-involved motor vehicle crashes was overstated.) The memo estimated that Ford’s cost from exploding Pintos was only $49.5 million.

But the cost of fixing the mistakes (to comply with the “rollover requirement) that caused the fiery crashes was estimated at $137 million.

According to the memo, “the cost is almost three times the benefits.” Meaning cost of fixing is 3x the cost of human lives. It took until June 9, 1978 for Ford Motor Company to issue the recall on Pintos.

That's five years of people driving dangerous Pintos and dying when the company knew they were too dangerous to drive. Because it was cost effective.

So we've got $736,713,660 in environmental fines vs. $1.9 billion in campaign contributions. The numbers are a little closer than that because "Violation Tracker is from 2010-present and the campaign numbers go back 2 more years.

But what would that number $736 million let's say be if all those politicians didn't have ties to ALEC in each state? What about the smear campaign the Koch Brothers waged, saying the EPA "kills jobs?"

What about all the politicians and constituents that bought into their manipulated theory that #climatechange was not real?

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What about Scott Pruitt's ties to the Koch Brothers and his attempt to sue the EPA 14 times as Attorney General of Oklahoma to prevent their efforts to regulate pollution? The @Nytimes revealed connections between Pruitt and the Koch Brothers in January of 2017. (from Part 5)

What about Koch-bought politicians looking the other way when the factories violate environmental codes? What about all the times they don't get caught? What about retrofitting the factories so people don't die and updating their waste management systems?

If you add all those factors up, you really should multiply $733,172,637 by 10 = $7.33 billion. So I figure Koch Industries Inc. has a department similar to Ford that did this cost analysis, but he had the real numbers. There's a Koch Memo out there somewhere.

And they've decided that's it's more cost effective to pollute the environment than it is to keep America safe. That's not O.K. And it's another reason for the push to rewrite the Constitution. Let's take our country back on November 6, 2018.

#NoConCon
#ClimateChange is real
#WeThePeople
#BlueWave2018

Sorry adding link to Violation Tracker website:
violationtracker.goodjobsfirst.org/prog.php?paren…

h/t @ThomasRoss28 The $889 figure comes from a January, 2015 meeting of the network at the Ritz-Carlton in Rancho Mirage, CA, according to Politico& the Washington Post. They Kochs themselves are estimated to have contributed $250M of this amount, according to Common Dreams.

Source for Ritz Carlton meeting:
politico.com/story/2015/01/…
Common Dreams figure of $250 million for 2016:
commondreams.org/news/2018/01/2…
Once I get a better number for 2010, I'll adjust the total.