Vol. CCLVII, No. 1 October 5, 2012
The New Hampshire Gazette
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The Nation’s Oldest Newspaper™ • Editor: Steven Fowle • Founded 1756 by Daniel Fowle
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PO Box 756, Portsmouth, NH 03802 • editors@nhgazette.com • www.nhgazette.com
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The Fortnightly Rant
Picking the Slate For Us More than 1.3 million people live in New Hampshire, and 460,000 of them voted in the 2010 election. That election produced the most radical Right Wing majority ever seen in the State House. But, according to some, it was not radical enough. So, two men are doing their best to push the State House even further to the Right — even though they’ve never lived here. The two are brothers: David and Charles Koch. David lives in New York, and Charles lives in Wichita. They can afford to spend their money making our state government more radical because they’ve got plenty of it — more than most of us can even comprehend. Fat City State New Hampshire is the nation’s 6th most prosperous state, with a per capita income of $31,422, according to the Census Bureau. Roughly speaking, then, the total annual income of all New Hampshire residents is about $58.1 billion. David and Charles Koch are worth more than that. Forbes estimates their wealth to be about $31 billion each. And Koch Industries, their privately-held company and the second-largest in the country, has annual revenues of another $100 billion — more than $190,000 every minute of the year. Who Built That? The Koch brothers were born on home plate and think they’re Babe Ruth. Harry Koch, their grandfather, was a Dutch immigrant who must have had a few resources himself. He founded the Quanah (TX) Tribune-Chief in the 1890s, and
shortly thereafter helped found the Quanah, Acme and Pacific Railway. Harry put his son Fred C. Koch through MIT, where he earned a degree in chemical engineering. In 1927 Fred, a clever lad, figured out a better way to turn oil into gasoline. The oil giants of the day resented competition from the upstart and tried to bury Fred’s company, Winkler-Koch, under a mountain of lawsuits. Eventually Fred prevailed in court, but the litigation made it impossible for the company to work in the U.S. for a time — so he turned to the Soviet Union. The U.S.S.R. paid Winkler-Koch millions to build 15 oil-cracking plants and train their operators. When the contract was completed in 1933, Koch returned to the U.S. with half a million dollars in ready cash. With that sum he built a small empire. Stalin had liquidated about 7 million Ukrainians while Koch was developing the Soviet Union’s oil industry, but Koch did not publicly condemn Communism until the late 1950s. Then he made up for lost time, helping to found the John Birch Society and funding other Right Wing causes. Apologists for the Koch brothers love to point out that their company has grown a thousand times larger since Fred’s death in 1967. But can anyone who inherited a company with 100 million 1950 dollars in revenue truly claim, “I built that”? Their Most Important Product Wikipedia provides a list of Koch’s thirteen primary products, from asphalt and chemicals to natural gas, plastics, petroleum, and paper. But the online encyclopedia left out one of the brothers’ most
important products: propaganda. Why is it so important? Because next to lobbying, propaganda provides the highest available return on investment. Lobbying is the process of telling legislators what you want. Propaganda is a tool for getting receptive legislators. The Koch brothers have a long history of funneling some of their excess income — which might otherwise be wasted by Uncle Sam — into “charitable” organizations such as Americans for Prosperity, which they founded in 2003, and its predecessor, Citizens for a Sound Economy, which they founded in 1984. Americans for Prosperity [AFP] claims to be “an organization of grassroots leaders who engage citizens in the name of limited government and free markets on the local, state, and federal levels.” In fact, AFP is a top-down outlet for dispensing Koch propaganda. It happily accepts donations from deluded wage-slaves
but most of its funding comes from the Kochs. AFP’s State Director for New Hampshire is Corey Lewandowski, last seen in these pages on June 29th whining about the anonymity of the donor who reimbursed Durham for the cost of President Obama’s visit in June. We’ll let Zandra Rice Hawkins, Executive Director of Granite State Progress, take it from here: “According to the Secretary of State’s website, the group The New Hampshire Advantage Coalition, which was previously led by New Hampshire Republican political operative Mike Biundo and others, closed down on February 15, 2011. Less than a year later Corey Lewandowski, State Director of Americans for Prosperity… filed new paperwork to re-open the organization. Lewandowski and the Koch brothers used the group as a vehicle for attack ads against pro-worker House candidates in tight primaries, heavily attacking the candidates, their policies and
their very character.” Granite State Progress compiled a list of fourteen moderate Republican candidates it believes were targeted by The New Hampshire Advantage Coalition for not being Right Wing enough to meet the Koch brothers’ standards. Half of them — Todd Weeks, Peter Bolster, William Remick, Russell C. Day, Tony F. Soltani, David A. Welch, and Julie Brown — were defeated in the Primary by candidates further to the Right. Misery Hates Company And it’s not just here — we’re not that special. The Washington Post’s T.W. Farnam reported on Monday that AFP is “fully engaged in … local issues and races in 35 states, with a $100 million budget that is three times the 2010 figure.” But look on the bright side: if state legislatures across the country are even crazier in their next sessions than they were in the last, at least we’ll know whom to thank.
decided to close it at 10 p.m. in order to evict the Occupy Movement’s nonviolent general assembly. Eight members of the Veterans Peace Team and two members of Occupy Faith were arrested for refusing to leave. Since that day, a small metal sign has been posted at the park stating that it closes at 10 p.m. This October 7th, the veterans have a permit for sound equipment lasting until 10 p.m., but they intend to remain overnight. “At 9:30 p.m. participants will lay flowers for the fallen. “Speakers at the vigil will oppose a single additional day of U.S. warmaking in Afghanistan. Speakers will include Leah Bolger, Margaret Flowers, Glen Ford, Mike Hastie, Chris Hedges, George Packard, Donna Schaper,
Kevin Zeese, and Michael Zweig. Dr. Cornel West has also been invited. “Vietnam vet Paul Appell says, ‘War veterans, loved ones of the fallen, and certainly those living in war zones do not have the option of closing down their memories at 10 p.m. There is a good reason why suicide is an attractive option for many. It is truly the only sure way of ending the memories. For a memorial to shut down at some convenient time for the city is an insult to all those who do not have the luxury of shutting down their war memories at a specific time. I know that many want us war vets to go out of sight and not bother them, except when we are needed for some parade. Some of us are not going away at 10 p.m. or any other time. If they do not like it,
maybe they should have thought of that before they sent us to war.’ “Tarak Kauff, U.S. Army, 19591962, Veterans For Peace Board member and one of the organizers of VFP’s Veterans Peace Team, says, ‘We will be there standing together and if necessary getting arrested again for our right to remember the fallen, to oppose and ‘abolish war as an instrument of national policy,” and to affirm our right to do so in a public place of remembrance that has great meaning for all veterans.’ “The plan is not for a mass demonstration. In fact, many are explicitly not invited. Non-veterans are enthusiastically welcome, including associate members of
News Briefs
Well, Someone Noticed … No one else seemed inclined to take notice, so we turn to Veterans for Peace, which sent the following communiqué in observance of the impending start of the 12th year of the Afghan War: “Dedicated and disciplined nonviolent military veterans are planning a peaceful vigil in New York City that will as likely as not result in their wrongful arrest and prosecution. “The time will be 6 p.m. on October 7, 2012, as the United States and NATO complete the eleventh year of the current occupation of Afghanistan and launch the twelfth. The crowd at the Republican National Convention cheered for complete immediate withdrawal, but the nominee’s plans don’t include it. The crowds at rallies for President Obama’s
reelection cheer for both the continuation of the war and its supposed status as ‘ending,’ even though the timetable for that ‘ending’ is longer than most past wars, and a massive occupation is supposed to remain after the occupation ‘ends.’ Veterans For Peace, an organization dedicated to the abolition of war, is hoping to inject a discordant note into this happy discourse — something that the ongoing reports of deaths just don’t seem to manage. “The place will be Vietnam Veterans Memorial Plaza, 55 Water Street, New York City. It was there that some of the same veterans gathering this October were arrested last May First. The memorial is normally open around the clock, but on that day the New York Police Department
News Briefs to page two