All Things in Moderation

Looks like the Koch brothers may have a little trouble on their hands. This Bloomberg News piece is a little long for my taste and so it loses some of it’s explosive value but it does give us an inside view of their corporate business culture. Does anyone else find it odd that so many large corporations are just allowed to pay their penalties and fines and then just go on about their merry way as if they’ve been absolved of their crimes and misdemeanors?

Internal company documents show that the company made those sales through foreign subsidiaries, thwarting a U.S. trade ban. Koch Industries units have also rigged prices with competitors, lied to regulators and repeatedly run afoul of environmental regulations, resulting in five criminal convictions since 1999 in the U.S. and Canada.

From 1999 through 2003, Koch Industries was assessed more than $400 million in fines, penalties and judgments. In December 1999, a civil jury found that Koch Industries had taken oil it didn’t pay for from federal land by mismeasuring the amount of crude it was extracting. Koch paid a $25 million settlement to the U.S.

Phil Dubose, a Koch employee who testified against the company said he and his colleagues were shown by their managers how to steal and cheat — using techniques they called the Koch Method.

The New York Times had a piece up yesterday dealing with the new voter ID laws being passed in so many states. My favorite line in the piece calls them a solution in search of a problem.

Five states passed laws this year scaling back programs allowing voters to cast their ballots before Election Day, the Brennan Center found. Ohio passed a law eliminating early voting on Sundays, and Florida eliminated it on the Sunday before Election Day — days when some African-American churches organized “souls to the polls” drives for members of their congregations. Maine voted to stop allowing people to register to vote on Election Day — a practice that had been credited with enrolling some 60,000 new voters in 2008. Voters in Maine and Ohio are now seeking to overturn the new laws with referendums.

The biggest impact, the Brennan Center said, will be from laws requiring people to show government-issued photo identification to vote. This year, 34 states introduced legislation to require it — a flurry of activity that Jennie Bowser, a senior fellow at the National Conference of State Legislatures, called “pretty unusual.” Before this year, only two states, Indiana and Georgia, had “strict” photo identification requirements for voters, according to the conference. This year, five more states — Wisconsin, Kansas, South Carolina, Tennessee and Texas — passed laws to join their ranks.

Under the Texas law, licenses to carry concealed handguns would be an acceptable form of identification to vote, but not student ID cards.

A new immigration law in Alabama has parents withdrawing their children from school in fear.

McKendrick said he understands the pressures that the families are under and the fear that the new law has created.

“You may hear information and not be sure how valid it is,” he said. “I can understand why parents would be leery of anything that they hear and just try to protect their children and stay in this country.”

Lost class time isn’t the only thing worrying school officials. Funding for Alabama schools is dependent on the number of students it has, and Thompson said a mass exodus would dry up funds, which would hurt all students. She estimated that the district would lose $2 million if the 231 students who were absent on Thursday decided to stay away for good.

“When one student drops out, it affects the funding for the entire system,” she said.

And from the Left Coast Bureau:

The protests are spreading.

Filed under: Koch Industries, Koch Method, trade ban, voter ID laws | Tagged: Occupy Los Angeles | 14 Comments »