Koch brothers’ real plan for media domination

Mon, 22 Apr 2013 14:00:00 +0000

Why would anyone want to buy a newspaper these days? This is the question originally raised by my recent Harper's magazine investigation into the state of the newspaper industry and now resurrected by this weekend's New York Times report on the possibility of Koch Industries buying the Tribune Co.'s eight newspaper properties. The answer is that for all the problems they face, newspapers still offer something extremely valuable to a particular kind of investor -- just not what they might publicly admit to because it is more than a bit unseemly.

In public, of course, prospective newspaper buyers continue to pretend that they are primarily interested in purchasing newspapers either to 1) preserve a venerated civic institution and objective journalism or 2) to seize an honest, straightforward business opportunity.

Kochs to workers: Vote Mitt or else!

Thu, 18 Oct 2012 04:25:00 +0000

This week brought the second of two exposés that illustrate the twisted state of American labor law, which seemingly permits managers to urge and cajole their employees to donate to and even vote for their favored candidates, and workers to be fired for their political views, even if they express them only outside of work.

On Sunday, Mike Elk of In These Times revealed a political packet mailed to the 45,000 employees of a Koch Industries’ subsidiary, the Atlanta-based Georgia Pacific. The packet included a list of Koch-endorsed candidates and warned that electing the wrong people could be ruinous to the economy. The company also requires that workers get permission before running for office or joining the boards of nonprofits. One worker told Elk that a supervisor told him he wouldn’t get a promotion because he was “too political.” A local union official told Elk that he was getting calls from Georgia Pacific employees who were afraid they’d be fired for appearing in a photo with a local Democratic state Senate candidate outside their union hall, because the plant where they worked was visible in the backdrop.

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Koch brothers’ real plan for media domination

Kochs to workers: Vote Mitt or else!