Stanley Crouch writes in his New York Daily News column that the billionaire Koch brothers, known for supporting conservative causes, may have overreached by reportedly supporting Herman Cain’s run for the GOP presidential nomination through a group called Americans for Prosperity. He writes that Cain is running a campaign that has no boots on the ground.
Though everyone talks about money, few know how powerful it can be. One of the largest private corporations in the nation, Koch Industries, is run by Charles and David Koch, who inherited a small company from their father, Fred, when he died in 1967.
Fred Koch was a founder of the John Birch Society, a coven of anti-Communists and intellectual louts. The Koch brothers' success allows them to further their father's work: They know well what money is, how to make it and what it can do when focused on ruthless ideology.
The annual revenue of their business is about $100 billion, but all anyone outside of those at the top of the company know about its workings is next to nothing.
Their business talent is mixed with a vision that does not actually understand American capitalism at its best, the goal of which is fusing the profit motive with ethics. They obviously believe that free market means no more than making money as hard and as fast as one can. This has resulted in the Koch brothers losing many millions in court for breaking environmental protection laws, releasing carcinogens, fostering dangerous working conditions that lead to deaths and for breaking the laws against price-fixing and bribery, among many other transgressions. Chapter and verse are available from The New Yorker, Politico and Bloomberg. It's all there, and the details are dismal.
Read Stanley Crouch's complete column at the Daily News.