AlterNet: There Are Many More Koch Brother Secret Sins

-by Robert Greenwald

October 3, 2011- The Bloomberg news investigation into Charles and David Koch has uncovered unlawful and unpatriotic environmental crimes, political donations and business decisions benefitting Iran. There are so many secret sins committed by the Koch brothers no one story can cover it all.

But this is the story everyone will be talking about. We’ve documented many of the Koch brothers’ attacks on middle class families, and detailed their commitment to ending public education and resegregating communities.

The Koch brothers have smeared us and journalists who investigate their misdeeds. But the totality of evidence is clear: through our Koch Brothers Exposed film series, as well as reports in the New Yorker and now Bloomberg Markets magazine, there exists beyond a shadow of a doubt the Koch brothers’ culpability for the onslaught against Social Security, the environment, our public education system and much more.

The Koch brothers use their $50 billion personal wealth to distort and shape policy to grow their corporate profits. The Koch brothers hate public service, and work to deny the government and public sector any chance at success and social good. So when a Southern school board began blazing a trail by growing academic achievement in a diverse community, the brothers acted to reverse the community’s gains.

The video is about a school district that sets the agenda for communities across the nation. Wake County, NC was unique for its ability to grow successful outcomes for students with varying ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds. The achievement gap between race and class continued shrinking, and educators everywhere attributed the success to how the school board assigned students to school.

The Koch brothers are keen to let their think tanks and front groups do their dirty work for them. They have donated more than $5 million to Americans for Prosperity, a Tea Party group that allied with like-minded organizations in North Carolina. The Koch brothers put their money to work, and the result was external groups laying the groundwork for a long, subtle campaign to elect a new school board majority.

The Koch-supported candidates won and promptly began reversing the student assignment plan. They favored one that would lead to segregated schools. The Koch brothers’ plan to resegregate schools hit a roadblock when students, parents, teachers, and civil rights leaders united to stop the return to Jim Crow.

Bloomberg’s findings about the Koch’s approving sales to anti-American agents in Iran, bribing African officials and the Koch way of stealing oil from Native Americans and lying to regulators is truly disturbing, but there’s so much more to the Koch legacy of sin.

The Koch-supported school board members in North Carolina face an election this month. An anonymous campaign flier, which could come back to Koch-supported groups, accuses the NAACP of indoctrinating local anti-resegregation candidates. It’s drawn scrutiny from state officials.

The Kochs’ wealth has been behind similar smear campaigns and stunts in Michigan and Wisconsin.

FULL STORY HERE: