Koch Industries, other CEOs warn employees of layoffs if Obama is reelected

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/koch-industries-sends-pro-romney-packet-employees-195709471--election.html

By Dylan Stableford, Yahoo! News | The Ticket – Sun, Oct 14, 2012

Koch Industries, the Wichita, Kan.-based company run by the billionaire Koch brothers, sent a voter information packet to 45,000 employees of its Georgia Pacific subsidiary earlier this month.

In it was a letter, dated Oct. 1, from Koch Industries president Dave Robertson implicitly warning that "many of our more than 50,000 U.S. employees and contractors may suffer the consequences" of voting for President Obama and other Democrats in the 2012 elections, a list of conservative candidates the company's political action committee endorses and a pair of editorials: one, by David Koch, supporting Mitt Romney, and the other, by Charles Koch, condemning Obama.

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Last week, David Siegel, the founder and CEO of Florida-based Westgate Resorts, sent an email to employees informing them that layoffs are likely if Obama is reelected:

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As Gawker noted, Siegel and his wife were the subjects of "The Queen of Versailles," a recent documentary "about their ongoing quest to build the largest house in America." And Siegel has often claimed credit for George W. Bush's victory over Al Gore in the 2000 presidential race. ("I had my managers do a survey on every employee [8,000 total]," Siegel told Bloomberg BusinessWeek. "If they liked Bush, we made them register to vote. But not if they liked Gore.")

Siegel and the Koch brothers are not alone in issuing anti-Obama missives to employees. According to MSNBC, Arthur Allen, chief executive of ASG Software Solutions, wrote a similar email to his staffers on Sept. 30:

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http://westorlandonews.com/2011/08/25/the-multi-billionaire-koch-brothers-why-they-fight-to-pay-little-taxes/

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According to Forbes, the Koch brothers have seen their wealth rise $11 billion in recent years, making the Koch brother[s] among the richest in the country by being worth around $22.5 billion each. Much of those profits, however, are due to soaring gas prices and the fact Koch Industries has avoided compensating the public for one hundred million tons of carbon pollution the company produces each year. Other Koch companies also receive significant taxpayer subsidies, despite Koch’s supposed opposition to government spending.

Koch naturally thinks his money is better spent as he sees fit, and I don’t blame him. The very money he should be paying in taxes goes into tax-deductible organizations designed to increase his wealth and influence.

For instance, as I noted in this column in December of last year, when President Barack Obama noted in 2008 that the science underlying man-made global warming was “beyond dispute,” the libertarian Cato Institute took out a full-page ad in The New York Times to attempt to undermine what was then a statement of fact—just a warning shot in a campaign that has resonated with considerable success throughout the mainstream media.

The Cato Institute, it turns out, was begun 34 years ago with a grant from Charles and David Koch. According to the Center for Public Integrity, the Kochs gave Cato $11 million alone in the seven-year period between 1986 and 1993. Cato now enjoys over 100 full-time employees, “and its experts and policy papers are widely quoted and respected by the mainstream media. It describes itself as nonpartisan, and its scholars have at times been critical of both parties. But it has consistently pushed for corporate tax cuts, reductions in social services, and laissez-faire environmental policies.”

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