Right-wing activist David Koch dead at 79: report

[Chicago1980]

Source: The Raw Story

Right-wing activist David Koch dead at 79: report

Published 9 mins ago on August 23, 2019 By Travis Gettys

David Koch, the billionaire industrialist and conservative activist, has reportedly died.

Sources close to the family confirmed the 79-year-old Koch, who retired from the privately owned Koch Industries last year, passed away, according to New Yorker reporter Jane Mayer.

Koch took over as president of Koch Engineering in 1979, and became co-owner of Koch Industries four years later with his older brother, Charles Koch.

He was ranked the 11th-wealthiest person in the world upon his retirement, with an estimated net worth of $51 billion, and both he and his brother donated much of their fortune to conservative political candidates and causes.

Read more: https://www.rawstory.com/2019/08/right-wing-activist-david-koch-dead-at-79-report/

[stonecutter357]

1. thoughts and prayers.

[barbtries]

2. i literally said out loud,

Thank Goodness!

one less.

[ChazII]

4. Was Koch a Mason?

I asked because of the Square and Compass.

[stonecutter357]

7. The Square and Compass are on my sig line .

[ChazII]

21. Thanks

I am slow this morning. I guess I have Masons on the brain. Finished up with Grand Chapter for OES, this weekend Corn Fest for Shriners among others.

[ArizonaLib]

32. He was an engineer so I bet anything he was.

My great grandfather (father's maternal side) was a mason. It had not occurred to me before your question. Cheers.

[atreides1]

3. One down

One to go!!!!

[avebury]

17. This! nt

[at140]

5. RIP regardless of agenda...nt

[Bengus81]

35. That's what asshats like the Koch's do--give a little

They chipped in $5M to help renovate the field house for Wichita State basketball. Five mill to them is like five bucks to you and me and then they do everything they can to destroy public schools and poo-poo climate change. Anytime ONE word is said about them around here about the destruction they cause people start in AGAIN about the $5mill they donated ten years ago.

BFD..........

[dalton99a]

51. +1. The super rich put their names on buildings with loose change in the sofa

for publicity and tax write-offs

[at140]

75. I stop picking on anyone after they are dead and gone

for one thing, it is too late and second, I am deathly afraid of ghosts.

[sharedvalues]

6. Few have done more to harm America than the Koches

RIP.

Let he be remembered as someone who harmed our country (though his brother is worse.)

[Divad123]

86. Ding,Dong, the B***h is dead!

I can smell the bacon burning....

[LuvNewcastle]

8. Burn in Hell, asshole!

Or come back as a cockroach.

[Meadowoak]

11. He was a cockroach for the last 79 years.

[Scurrilous]

59. ...

[pecosbob]

9. All I have to say...

[poli-junkie]

80. Thanks for that!

[BeyondGeography]

10. That Clarence Darrow line about obituaries comes to mind

[Glorfindel]

12. Never speak ill of the dead, I've been told. Very well, I'll just quote Clarence Darrow:

"I have never killed any one, but I have read some obituary notices with great satisfaction."

[moose65]

14. Hahaha!

That reminds me of what Bette Davis supposedly said when Joan Crawford died: "I was taught to only speak good of the dead. She's dead. Good."

[JudyM]

23. My dad told me that was Moms Mabley's line. It's a great one, either way.

[Roy Rolling]

25. Churchill For the Win

“I’m unable to attend his funeral but I certainly approve of it”. Or something like that.

[KansasKali]

13. One down

[Newest Reality]

16. Yet, their

malignant legacy will live on and continue to inject venom into our zeitgeist. The corporations and numerous front organizations influencing policy won't just go away.

Ah, but there is schadenfreude in impermanence and that you can't take it with you.

[moose65]

15. I hate to dance on someone's grave, but...

Now that $51 billion won't do you any good, will it David? And to think of all the good you could have done with it while you were alive. Such a colossal waste.

[Clash City Rocker]

22. He who dies with the most toys...is still dead

[UpInArms]

18. All people bring joy

Some when they enter, some when they leave

[PatSeg]

30. Yes, that is fitting

Too bad he couldn't leave sooner, he would have caused less damage.

[DaDeacon]

19. This seems fitting

[still_one]

24. Remember when Lawrence O'Donnell Thanked Koch Brothers For Donating To

Hospital That Saved Him, the doctors nurses, and MSNBC support he received

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/lawrence-odonnell-returns-to-his-show_n_5524850

[zentrum]

26. Prostate cancer is mentioned.

But who knows? Justice would demand that it be some pollution induced cancer.

Just what he brought to the world--pollution and cancer.

Blood dollars--every one of those 51B.

[mountain grammy]

27. How's Charles doing?

[FoxNewsSucks]

50. Hopefully following his brother really soon nt

[vercetti2021]

28. Adios

Rest in hell son of a bitch

[PatSeg]

29. I remember thinking awhile back,

"Well the Koch Brothers are old and they can't live forever". I was beginning to wonder though. Somehow the evil ones seem to go on and on and on.

[ret5hd]

33. Well, this one had at least 3 kids, so i'm sure the "legacy" will continue.

[SoCalNative]

67. Actually the kids

are far more oriented towards the liberal side of things.

[ret5hd]

71. That is REALLY good to hear.

[PatSeg]

87. Well, that's hopeful then

[ArizonaLib]

39. I always tell my daughters not to wish someone dead or that they retire

For some reason that someone winds up living well beyond expectancy or never (seemingly never) retiring. It doesn't really happen, but it feels like it does. Charles and David Koch always remind me of the 2 old guys on the Muppets who are always making snarky comments.

[rooboy]

31. Feels almost as good as Dick Cheney will. n/t.

.

[Bengus81]

41. And Rush,and O'Reilly and even Trump..........

[Girard442]

34. No reason to believe Koch was Epsteined...

...but if he was, I wouldn’t shed any tears.

[Bengus81]

42. Nah,he knew a year ago it was about over.........

He dropped out of the day to day DESTRUCTION of public schools,environment issues etc--all the stuff that his equally OLD brother so loves to try and destroy.

[theaocp]

36. Best death I've read about so far today.

Happy Friday!

[Cirque du So-What]

37. Rumor is...

a fleet of armored cars will be accompanying the funeral procession.

[turbinetree]

38. Meet the heir to the right wing crown.................from the father /brother Bill..............

[CentralMass]

56. I feared that at least one of them had procreated.

[turbinetree]

72. They did a bunch of times.........................

[SunSeeker]

65. What a miaerable waste of space he is. Reminds of Kim Jong-un.

[Baitball Blogger]

40. None of us escape God's final verdict.

But I hope Koch spends a few months sweating it out in God's courtroom.

[DBoon]

45. An elderly woman challenged the god Thor to arm wrestling

Thor was astonished when he simply could not defeat her

Even Norse gods cannot defeat old age and death

[DBoon]

43. how long before we see accusations that Hillary murdered him?

nothing is too insane anymore

[bluestarone]

44. Good deal. Just wondering, i heard one was better then the other

Was there much difference between the two?

[Sugar Smack]

46. A useless eater bites the dust.

[BlueStater]

47. He was a climate change denier, at least publicly.

That alone is enough for me to hold his dead ass forever in contempt.

Rot, bitch.

[dalton99a]

48. The asshole used his money to poison, destroy, and inflict pain and suffering on others.

Burn in hell

[Maggiemayhem]

73. Thanks for saying g it for me

Their money paid for most of the brainwashing rhetoric that has infected this country and beyond.

[FoxNewsSucks]

49. Good riddance.

If only we can be rid of his vile brother and all of their political machinery.

[AllyCat]

52. Donated their money to conservative political causes.

That says all we need to know about how he lived his life right there. Not the poor, not the oppressed, not the sick. He gave his fortune to lock up kids in cages, stop healthcare for the poor, and keep people begging for scraps, even when they worked. Thoughts and prayers.

[raccoon]

53. "All your money won't another minute buy."

“All your money won’t another minute buy.”

Kansas, Dust in the Wind

Good riddance!

[kwassa]

54. Charles is the evil mastermind, and he is still around.

[Dorn]

55. Koch John Birch

My father, a life long republican, would scorn whenever he heard a hint of the John Birch society. The Koch family is the John Birch society. Always remember Republicans of old hated the JBS and Koch is JBS.

[wasupaloopa]

57. Good, I am glad. If I could I would piss on his grave.

Maybe i’ll find it and get in the line to do it.

I don’t want to hear about respecting the dead.

I hope is brother and family go soon too. Maybe take a ride on a 737 together.

They are greedy self serving evil vile people.

[ffr]

58. He should ask the devil for his money back.

Immortality for selling his sole was a hoax.

[Thekaspervote]

60. Oh dotard.. your friend is on the line, he says bring shorts, it's really really hot here

[Texin]

61. Well... ya know they had/have children and then there are the children's children.

And you can pretty well bet that the rotten apples don't fall far from the trees. I'm sure between the two of them, they sired enough offspring just like them to keep up the evil for millennia.

[eppur_se_muova]

62. If only he'd been at the controls of Rupert Murdoch's helicopter at the time ...

(Yeah, I know that couldn't happen, but I keep having these fantasies of say, Cheney, Murdoch, the Kochs, and Limbaugh all going off on a hunting trip together ... and not coming back.)

[truthisfreedom]

63. How old's his brother?

[Meadowoak]

79. 84

[shanti]

81. Older than he was, at 83 n/t

[Coventina]

64. I am grave dancing without a single bit of shame or regret!

Hooray!!!

The Kochs have done nothing but kill this planet.

The death of one is a happy day indeed!

[lastlib]

77. ...

[malthaussen]

66. Ultimately, this is the way the younger generation wins.

Outlive the bastards.

That presumes, of course, that there will be any world left by the time the last one croaks.

-- Mal

[kimbutgar]

68. Rest in hell David

[CentralMass]

76. He'll be on the board down there.

[not fooled]

69. One of history's great megalomainacs

injecting libertarian crackpot ideas into the public discourse and engineering a hard-right turn of much of the nation's politics.

Millions will die as a result of his and his brother's successful decimation of responsible policy making regarding the climate.

Evil old bastard.

[jb5150]

70. I'd go piss on his grave ..

but I hate standing in lines.

[Eliot Rosewater]

74. Personally contributed, on a daily basis, in the elimination of BILLIONS

of human beings.

[onethatcares]

78. ALEC

that rat bastard created more misery with that than most of everything he did.

I hope the fire is blistering hot in hell for him.

[BigDemVoter]

82. He's dead?

Good.

[Flaleftist]

83. Buh bye

[BigmanPigman]

84. I hope Mitch and the fucking moron

will follow his steps ASAP.

[KY_EnviroGuy]

85. Will tRump order the flags to be lowered?

We all have suffered from Koch Foundation evil and that's a grand thing in the world of the GOP...........

[Raine]

88. Best news I've had all day

actually best news all week!

[orangecrush]

89. Drinking a big glass of icewater

in his memory.

There sure won't be any where he is going.

[dalton99a]

90. David Koch Was the Ultimate Climate Change Denier

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/23/opinion/sunday/david-koch-climate-change.html

David Koch Was the Ultimate Climate Change Denier
How a playboy billionaire built a political army to defend his fossil fuel empire.
By Christopher Leonard
Aug. 23, 2019

...

This machine has been employed to great effect to ensure that no government action is taken to control greenhouse gas emissions. In the early 1990s, President George H.W. Bush made it clear that he would support a treaty to limit carbon emissions. The Republicans even had a market-based solution to tackle the problem, a system called “cap and trade” that put a price on pollution and allowed companies to buy and sell the right to pollute. Cap and trade had been used to great effect to reduce power plant pollution and acid rain. But in 1991, the Cato Institute, a Koch-funded think tank, held a seminar in Washington called “Global Environmental Crises: Science or Politics?” This was part of a decades-long effort to cast doubt about the reality of climate change.

David Koch worked tirelessly, over decades, to jettison from office any moderate Republicans who proposed to regulate greenhouse gases. In 2009, for example, a South Carolina Republican, Representative Bob Inglis, proposed a carbon tax bill. Koch Industries stopped funding his campaign, donated heavily to a primary opponent named Trey Gowdy and helped organize teams of Tea Party activists who traveled to town hall meetings to protest against Mr. Inglis. Some of the town hall meetings devolved into angry affairs, where Mr. Inglis couldn’t make himself heard above the shouting. Mr. Inglis lost re-election, and his defeat sent a message to other Republicans: Koch’s orthodoxy on climate rules could not be violated.

Mike Pence, who was then a congressman in Indiana, and others soon signed a “carbon pledge” circulated by Americans for Prosperity, which effectively prohibited the government from putting a price on carbon emissions. Those efforts and others effectively derailed the effort to pass a cap and trade plan for greenhouse gas emissions in 2009 and 2010. In 2009, the level of atmospheric carbon concentration hovered around 370 parts per million. In the decade since, levels have surpassed 400 parts per million, the highest level recorded in human existence.

Since the 2016 election, and in the face of more urgent scientific warnings about climate change and a growing popular movement for action, the Koch network has tried to build a Republican Party in its image: one that not only refuses to consider action on climate change but continues to deny that the problem is real. Just this week, Senator John Cornyn, Republican of Texas, dismissed data about climate change by pointing out on Twitter: “It’s summer.” In doing so, he reflected the politics of a party — and a world — that has been profoundly shaped by David Koch.

[cp]

91. Good fucking riddance