It truly is fascinating to examine the Virginia Public Access Project's data to see who's giving money to whom. Jerry Kilgore, for instance, has received large amounts of money from John Gregory ($250,000) and Joseph Gregory ($50,000) of Tennessee-based King Pharmaceuticals. As we've pointed out previously, there are some "interesting" possible connections between the fact that Kilgore's "Meth Watch" program was designed to be voluntary, and the fact that Gregory-owned King Pharmaceuticals makes pseudoephedrine, the primary legal drug used to make meth. But enough on that slimy company for the moment.
Now it's time to look at an even WORSE bunch of slimeballs (and Kilgore contributors), the folks at Koch Industries, America's largest privately-owned oil company. According to Forbes Magazine -- no left wing rag, that's for sure -- in late September 2000 "a federal grand jury indicted Wichita, Kans.-based Koch Industries and four of its employees of 97 felony counts...accused of covering up the emission of a cancer-linked chemical called benzene from its Corpus Christi, Tex., refinery."
So, did the Koch brothers - David (the Libertarian Party's vice presidential candidate in 1980; member of the right-wing Cato Institute board) and Charles - go to jail for this? Pay severe fines? Do a few thousand hours of community service? Ha, of course, not...they've got (Republican) friends in high (Republican) places.
In fact, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. writes , "While peddling influence to energy tycoons, the White House quietly dropped criminal and civil charges against Koch Industries," which not coincidentally "contributed $800,000 to Bush's presidential campaign and to other top Republicans."
According to CBS News's 60 Minutes (August 15, 2001), "the Koch family of Wichita, Kansas is among the richest in the United States, worth billions of dollars. Their oil company, Koch Industries, is bigger than Intel, Dupont or Prudential Insurance, and they own it lock stock and barrel. The trouble is a former employee says the brother who controls the company grew rich through fraud and theft, stealing from the taxpayers of the United States. Bill Koch, a brother of David and Charles, even claims that Koch was "engaged in "(o)rganized crime" and that "that?s what appalled me so much... I did not want my family, my legacy, my father?s legacy to be based upon organized crime."
Bill Koch also charges that "his brother Charles made a fortune stealing oil. Much of it from beneath Indian reservations and federal lands - places like national forests....the company took more oil than it paid for by cheating on measurements. " According to Bill Koch, "one year, [Koch's] data showed they stole a million and a half barrels of oil."
According to 60 Minutes, "in federal court, 50 former Koch gaugers testified against the company...they said Koch employees had a name for cheating on the measurements. 'We in the company referred to it as the "Koch Method' because it was a system for cheating the producer out of oil," one of the employees said. Although the company denied the charges, "in December 1999, the jury found that Koch Industries did steal oil from the public and lied about its purchases ? 24 thousand times."
But it's not just theft, it's also blatant disregard for human life. According to Danny Smalley, who filed suit against Koch Industries after leaking gas from a Koch-owned pipeline exploded 200 yards from his home, burning his teenage daughter and her friend beyond recogntion, says "They [Koch] don't care for any loss of human life. Like I said, it was the buck that counted for them."
Eventually, in May 2001, according to the Center for Public Integrity, "just before the lawsuit went to trial? the Justice Department abruptly settled the case. Koch agreed to pay $20 million and plead guilty to a single count of concealment of information. In return, the Justice Department dropped all criminal charges against Koch and the four employees. Interesting that this took place just a few months AFTER their friend and campaign contributions beneficiary, George W. Bush, was elected President.
In other words, Koch's modus operandus is to commit crimes but then to evade serious punishment by "settling" (i.e., paying people off) on extremely lenient terms. Of course, Koch is aided in this strategy by its "friends" in high places, to whom they kindly give hundreds of thousands of dollars out of the goodness of their (corporate) hearts.
Now, another "friendly" politician, Virginia's own Jerry Kilgore, is receiving large sums of money ($35,000 so far) from Kansas-based Koch. The question is, why? What does Koch want from Jerry Kilgore? Or are they simply giving him wads of money because of altruism?
Now that, by the way, is the kind of tough question we would love to see addressed by our journalist friends at Media General, and elsewhere. Whoops, almost forgot, Media General is controlled by Republicans and Friends of Jerry. Guess we shouldn't be holding our breaths for THAT investigation, huh?