Georgia Pacific KOCH

=primary 921pfas, superfund, david dunlap swamp thingformaldehyde
class action= promoted to 2ndary mebbe prematurely 4/16, nope 8/19 KIAAR tag
AG ~ CPP
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</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://www.politico.com/story/2019/02/04/former-koch-official-runs-epa-chemical-research-1136230">https://www.politico.com/story/2019/02/04/former-koch-official-runs-epa-chemical-research-1136230</a></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">no lnx</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Former Koch official runs EPA chemical research</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Previously undisclosed documents obtained by POLITICO show David Dunlap began working on the issue almost immediately upon arriving at EPA in October.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">By ANNIE SNIDER 02/04/2019 </div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The Trump administration has placed a former Koch Industries official in charge of research that will shape how the government regulates a class of toxic chemicals contaminating millions of Americans’ drinking water — an issue that could have major financial repercussions for his former employer.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">David Dunlap, a deputy in EPA’s Office of Research and Development, is playing a key role as the agency decides how to protect people from the pollution left behind at hundreds of military bases and factories across the country.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">President Donald Trump has not nominated anyone to run the office. That effectively allows Dunlap to avoid the Senate confirmation process while overseeing a central part of EPA's work that could impose cleanup costs on companies that have used the chemicals, including major Koch subsidiary Georgia-Pacific. The paper and pulp conglomerate is already facing at least one class-action lawsuit related to the chemicals.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Previously undisclosed documents obtained by POLITICO show Dunlap began working on the issue almost immediately upon arriving at EPA in October. He had spent the previous eight years as Koch Industries' lead expert on water and chemical regulations, a position that typically includes helping companies to limit regulatory restrictions and liability for cleanups.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Democratic lawmakers and environmentalist say the prevalence of administration officials who came from the chemicals industry contributes to its hands-off approach to the chemicals, which are appearing in drinking water supplies across the country to rising public alarm. Known as per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, the chemicals have been linked with kidney and testicular cancer, as well as other ailments.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Both Republicans and Democrats have urged a stronger approach from acting EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler — who faces a confirmation vote in the Senate Environment Committee Tuesday — but he has stopped short of using all the tools in the agency's arsenal.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Just last week, POLITICO reported the agency has decided against setting drinking water limits for the two most well-understood chemicals in the class in a forthcoming plan for the chemicals, and the new documents show Dunlap was involved in high-level meetings preceding that decision.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Sen. Tom Carper of Delaware, the top Democrat on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, said Dunlap’s hiring adds to his concerns about the Trump administration's handling of the issue.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">“Coming on the heels of Mr. Wheeler’s failure to commit to setting a drinking water standard for PFAS, this potential conflict of interest within the agency paints a bleak picture about EPA’s priorities on chemical safety with respect to these particular substances. I look forward to learning more about Mr. Dunlap’s role in the development of EPA’s PFAS management plan,” Carper said in a statement.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Dunlap’s ethics agreement bars him from “participating in any particular matter involving specific parties” related to Koch Industries, but the agency’s ethics officials have typically taken a narrow interpretation of such prohibitions. And while Dunlap voluntarily recused himself from work on formaldehyde, which Georgia-Pacific produces, the agreement includes no mention of PFAS.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Koch Industries spokesperson David Dziok said that Dunlap worked on a broad set of issues related to water and chemicals during his time with the company, but that "PFAs were not part of the portfolio he managed."</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Dunlap did not respond to a request for comment. EPA did not answer specific questions about Dunlap’s involvement in the agency’s work and his potential conflict of interest.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div>Dunlap's calendars, obtained by POLITICO under the Freedom of Information Act, show he participated in at least nine PFAS meetings in his first six weeks on the job, including an Oct. 22 briefing with Wheeler, chief of staff Ryan Jackson and other top political officials. At the time, agency leaders were writing a wide-ranging chemical management plan in which they decided not to set a drinking water standard for the two specific chemicals — PFOA and PFOS. That plan has been under review at the White House since December.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">While those two older chemicals are no longer used in the U.S., EPA estimates that there are between 5,000 and 10,000 similar chemical compounds, used in everything from nonstick cookware to water resistant jackets to microwave popcorn bags. Industry has argued that the newer compounds are less dangerous to human health, but scientists say there is reason to worry that the entire class of PFAS compounds poses a risk. Public health advocates are pushing EPA to regulate the chemicals as a class, arguing that evaluating each one individually will take decades, if it happens at all.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The calendars also show Dunlap helping to shape EPA's approach to these newer compounds that are still in use. He participated in an Oct. 31 call with career staff in his division on two chemicals, GenX and PFBS, for which they were preparing health assessments. Research has shown those new chemicals can also be dangerous, and that those dangers may be greater when people are exposed to them in combination with other chemicals, as they often occur in drinking water. Environmental groups have said the chemicals should be evaluated together to account for those risks, but EPA took the opposite approach when it released the GenX and PFBS health assessments two weeks later.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div>Then on Nov. 5, Dunlap was scheduled to join a call with staff scientific leads to discuss the next slate of chemicals for which they would prepare health assessments. Dunlap's former employer has a stake in which chemicals EPA focuses on: A company spokesperson said Georgia-Pacific may still be using PFAS in its products, as it has in the past, but she would not say which specific chemicals it uses. There are very few legal requirements for companies to tell the public or regulators which chemicals they use in their processes and at which factories.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">In response to questions about Dunlap's role, an EPA spokesperson said, "Addressing PFAS is an Agency-wide effort with David Ross, the EPA’s Assistant Administrator for the Office of Water, serving as the EPA staff lead on addressing PFAS."</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">However, the research overseen by Dunlap lays the groundwork for any regulatory decisions Ross is coordinating. EPA officials have underscored the importance of research to their PFAS work in a number of public presentations, including briefings to the agency's Science Advisory Board and at meetings in affected communities.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">[Exclusive: Trump EPA won't limit 2 toxic chemicals in drinking water</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">By ANNIE SNIDER]</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Georgia-Pacific, which manufactures products like Brawny paper towels and Dixie cups, has not only used PFAS in some of its food packaging products, but has also owned facilities where the chemicals were disposed, creating a cleanup liability that could prove costly.</div><div>
</div><div>The company is already facing a class-action lawsuit from citizens in the town of Parchment, Mich., where last summer state officials discovered the chemicals in drinking water at concentrations as much as 26 times higher than EPA’s recommended limit. That contamination was traced to a paper mill that Georgia-Pacific previously had a stake in.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Georgia-Pacific spokesperson Karen Cole said the company believes that “only a very small percentage of our food wrap and related products — if any” contain the chemicals today, and noted that PFOA and PFOS were phased out of use in food wrappers "several years ago." She said Georgia-Pacific does not apply the PFAS itself, but gets paper from a supplier that in some cases has previously treated it with PFAS.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">“We are currently evaluating past manufacturing practices to better understand any potential previous use of these materials,” she said by email.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">In his LinkedIn profile, Dunlap describes himself as the “lead and subject matter expert” on water and chemicals issues for Koch’s entire suite of companies during his eight years there. Even if he did not directly manage the company's work on PFAS, it would be “hard to believe that he had not touched any decisions on PFAS with that broad of a scope of responsibilities," said Erik Olson, who leads the Natural Resources Defense Council’s public health work.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Olson said Dunlap’s oversight of EPA’s research on the chemicals raises red flags. “You want an independent, hardheaded scientific review of these issues; you don’t want somebody who is already taking the industry party line,” he said.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div>According to federal disclosures, Koch Industries spent at least $90,000 in 2018 lobbying on issues related to chemicals. The American Chemistry Council, the chemicals industry’s largest lobbying group, which Georgia-Pacific has worked through in the past to influence policy on toxic chemicals, spent $9 million last year lobbying lawmakers, EPA and other agencies, including on PFAS issues.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The Food and Drug Administration governs the use of chemicals in food wrappers, and has approved 21 PFAS blends for such use, according to Tom Neltner, the chemicals policy director for the Environmental Defense Fund who has conducted research on paper mills’ use of the compounds. But he said the greater liability that paper companies like Georgia-Pacific may face comes from manufacturing waste that contains the chemicals, such as leftover paper trimmings.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">That waste can end up in landfills or compost that is used to grow fruits and vegetables, Neltner said.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">"There's a legitimate threat there and, from my perspective, the conflicts of interest that [Dunlap] has having worked as a regulatory compliance director at Georgia-Pacific raises questions about whether he can make those objective decisions or should be recused," he said.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div>Moreover, Georgia-Pacific may well have cleanup responsibility for other sites like the one in Michigan. During the time it operated the manufacturing plant, from 2000 to 2015, Georgia-Pacific closed a landfill that had also been used by other companies, including at least one that the company says it believes used a 3M-patented PFAS. The class-action lawsuit filed by citizens alleges that Georgia-Pacific did not properly close the landfill to prevent the chemicals from leaching into nearby water. Georgia-Pacific is currently working with the state of Michigan to trace the chemicals' movement through groundwater.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div>Under the Superfund law, a company can be held liable for cleanup even if it wasn’t primarily responsible for the contamination.</div></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"></div><div>=</div><div><a href="https://www.desmog.com/2010/09/07/koch-industries-funds-attack-science-linking-formaldehyde-and-cancer/">https://www.desmog.com/2010/09/07/koch-industries-funds-attack-science-linking-formaldehyde-and-cancer/</a></div><div>
</div><div>kevin g</div><div>
</div><div>further revelations have come to light since the recent controversial expose in the New Yorker about <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/08/30/100830fa_fact_mayer?currentPage=all" target="blank" rel="noopener external noreferrer" data-wpel-link="external" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">Koch Industries, surrounding New York billionaire David Koch</a> and his company’s involvement in the industry-led effort to downplay the links between formaldehyde and cancer.</div>In 2008, the president of one of Koch Industry’s subsidiaries sat as the Chair of a pro-Formaldehyde lobby group called the Formaldehyde Council. The subsidiary, Georgia-Pacific, is also a long-time funder of the Formaldehyde Council.Among other things, the Formaldehyde Council tried to downplay the negative health impacts of formaldehyde in trailers set up for victims of the Katrina disaster.Prior to the recent media attention, the <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/08/23/charles-koch-david-koch-b_n_690825.html" target="blank" rel="noopener external noreferrer" data-wpel-link="external" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; background-color: transparent; box-shadow: none;">New York social elite knew David Koch </a>mostly for his commendable charitable donations to groups like the American Ballet Theater and the American Museum of Natural History.Learning that he, through his role as senior executive and Chairman of Koch Industries, also bankrolls far-right groups and causes that regularly question President Obama’s U.S. citizenship and deny climate science surely piqued their interest in Koch’s other side.One baffling conflict mentioned by journalist Jane Mayer in her New Yorker article is David Koch’s generous funding of cancer research, while simultaneously his companies and their lobbying groups fight against federal efforts to regulate the known human carcinogen formaldehyde.David Koch was diagnosed with prostate cancer in the early 1990s, and since then has become a major financier of cancer research, donating hundreds of millions of dollars to respected cancer research centers such as Sloan-Kettering, M. D. Anderson Cancer Center, New York-Presbyterian Hospital, M.I.T. and Johns Hopkins University, as Mayer notes.For his commendable charitable work, David Koch was appointed to the National Cancer Advisory Board,a committee of the <a href="http://www.cancer.gov/" target="blank" rel="noopener external noreferrer" data-wpel-link="external" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">US National Cancer Institute</a>, in 2004 by President George W. Bush <a href="http://deainfo.nci.nih.gov/advisory/ncab/ncabpublicroster.pdf" target="blank" rel="noopener external noreferrer" data-wpel-link="external" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">and remains a member today </a><a href="http://deainfo.nci.nih.gov/advisory/ncab/ncabpublicroster.pdf" target="blank" rel="noopener external noreferrer" data-wpel-link="external" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">[pdf].</a>Our research has uncovered very strong ties between <a href="http://www.gp.com/" target="blank" rel="noopener external noreferrer" data-wpel-link="external" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">Georgia-Pacific</a>, a company co-owned by David Koch through Koch Industries, and a political lobby group called the <a href="http://www.formaldehyde.org/" target="blank" rel="noopener external noreferrer" data-wpel-link="external" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">Formaldehyde Council </a>that is involved in efforts to downplay the dangers posed by formaldehyde to human health.Formaldehyde is classified as a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carcinogen" target="blank" rel="noopener external noreferrer" data-wpel-link="external" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; background-color: transparent; box-shadow: none;">“Group 1 Carcinogen” </a>which is defined as an agent that “is definitely carcinogenic to humans” by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), and <a href="http://www.osha.gov/pls/oshaweb/owadisp.show_document?p_table=standards&p_id=10078" target="blank" rel="noopener external noreferrer" data-wpel-link="external" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; background-color: transparent; box-shadow: none;">“a complete carcinogen”</a> in the words of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). The National Toxicology Program also recently revised its characterization of formaldehyde to that of <a href="http://www.niehs.nih.gov/news/newsletter/2009/december/spotlight-expert.cfm" target="blank" rel="noopener external noreferrer" data-wpel-link="external" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; background-color: transparent; box-shadow: none;">“known human carcinogen.”</a>But this determination by top scientists and researchers has not stopped Formaldehyde Council Inc. from trying to convince lawmakers on Capitol Hill that the links between Formaldehyde and cancer are highly overstated. Executive Director of the Formaldehyde Council,<a href="http://www.formaldehyde.org/about/" target="blank" rel="noopener external noreferrer" data-wpel-link="external" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;"> Betsy Natz</a> recently wrote a letter<a href="http://formaldehyde.org/base/pdf/newsroom/FCI_Statement_on_Presidents-Panel-On-Cancer_Report.pdf" target="blank" rel="noopener external noreferrer" data-wpel-link="external" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;"> to the President’s Panel on Cancer [pdf] </a>arguing that:<blockquote style="box-sizing: border-box;">“Despite today’s statement, scientists agree that formaldehyde does not pose a health risk at typical levels of exposure. Americans should feel confident in the knowledge that formaldehyde-based products are safe.”</blockquote>On their website, the Formaldehyde Council tries to downplay the powerful carcinogen through slick key messaging like,<blockquote style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">“the bottom line is that formaldehyde doesn’t stick around very long so it doesn’t accumulate in the human body or in the environment.”</blockquote>In 2009, Natz tried to downplay concerns regarding <a href="http://www.nola.com/news/index.ssf/2009/07/fema_trailer_formaldehyde_resp.html" target="blank" rel="noopener external noreferrer" data-wpel-link="external" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; background-color: transparent; box-shadow: none;">dangerous levels of Formaldehyde detected</a> in Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) trailers provided to victims of Hurricane Katrina. Natz told the New Orleans Times-Picayune that,<blockquote style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">“Americans should feel confident in the knowledge that formaldehyde-based products, such as composite wood panels produced and certified to be low in emissions by domestic manufacturers, are safe.”</blockquote><a href="http://www.guidestar.org/FinDocuments/2007/521/947/2007-521947500-0455135c-9O.pdf" target="blank" rel="noopener external noreferrer" data-wpel-link="external" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">According to IRS filings [pdf],</a> the Formaldehyde Council was formed in 1995 with the mission to,<blockquote style="box-sizing: border-box;">“encourage accurate scientific evaluation of Formaldehyde and Formaldehyde-based materials and to communicate sound scientific information relating to the uses, benefits and sustainability of these products.”</blockquote>The Council’s operating budget in 2008 was $2.7 million and it reported $2 million in “membership dues and assessments.”David Koch’s company, Georgia-Pacific, one of the largest manufacturers of Formaldehyde in the United States, is listed on the <a href="http://www.guidestar.org/FinDocuments/2007/521/947/2007-521947500-0455135c-9O.pdf" target="blank" rel="noopener external noreferrer" data-wpel-link="external" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; background-color: transparent; box-shadow: none;">Formaldehyde Council’s website</a> as a “member” since at least 2004.In IRS filings for 2008, <a href="http://www.gp.com/chemical/message.html" target="blank" rel="noopener external noreferrer" data-wpel-link="external" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; background-color: transparent; box-shadow: none;">Richard Urschel, the President of Georgia-Pacific’s chemical division</a> is listed as the Chair of the Formaldehyde Council. In 2006, Urschel served as the Council’s Vice-Chair. According to the Council’s stated by-laws only “Tier 1” members can have a place on the Board of Directors, and in order to become a Tier 1 member a company must pay $200,000 in annual dues to the Council.<div>
</div><div>=</div><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/08/the-safety-crisis-at-koch-industries-georgia-pacific/">https://www.alternet.org/2019/08/the-safety-crisis-at-koch-industries-georgia-pacific/</a>no lnx
The safety crisis at Koch Industries’ Georgia-Pacific
Written by Christopher Leonard / ProPublica August 8, 2019This story is adapted from the forthcoming book “Kochland: The Secret History of Koch Industries and Corporate Power in America.”
This story was co-published with Fortune. In March of 2014, Jim Hannan joined a group of executives at Georgia-Pacific to discuss a burgeoning crisis.
Hannan was CEO of Georgia-Pacific, reporting to Charles Koch, the CEO of Koch Industries, which had bought the paper and pulp company in 2005. Hannan, a longtime Koch employee, had been doing a stellar job by some standards — the maker of Brawny paper towels and Quilted Northern toilet paper was paying down debt and delivering higher profits. But there was a hitch: The workplace was becoming more dangerous.
In 2013, two Georgia-Pacific employees had been killed on the job. Injuries had continued to rise, and Hannan was upset. During the meeting, Hannan berated his leadership team. “The last six months is unacceptable,” he said, according to notes taken by someone who observed the meeting.Hannan suggested that the future of the company was on the line.
“If we can’t keep safe, why invest?” Hannan asked.Senior managers and executives at Koch were aware of the growing safety problem for years, company documents obtained by ProPublica show.“What happened?” Hannan asked in the 2014 meeting, according to the notes. All divisions of Koch industries operate using Charles Koch’s philosophy called Market-Based Management. MBM, which at Koch Industries is used to address all business questions from sales to safety, should have been solving this problem. But it was not.Indeed, the dangers only got worse. When Hannan held the meeting in early spring, no workers had yet died that year. By the end of the year, six Georgia-Pacific employees were killed on the job. Accidents kept rising in the years after. More worrisome, the accident rate also increased during that period, meaning that each employee faced a higher chance of being hurt on the job, according to internal Koch documents.One internal Koch presentation showed that Georgia-Pacific’s safety record in 2016 by one measure ranked in the bottom half of U.S. paper and pulp companies. Most important, Georgia-Pacific’s safety record was worse than its major competitors’, including Weyerhaeuser and Pratt Industries.The story of Georgia-Pacific’s safety crisis, revealed in internal corporate documents obtained by ProPublica, interviews with executives and workers, and Koch’s own data, shines a rare light on the inner workings of Koch Industries, one of the nation’s largest and most secretive corporations. The company is adept at making brilliant investments, streamlining operations and boosting profits. But in the shadow of this success, work has become more dangerous for many Georgia-Pacific employees.Asked a series of detailed questions about its safety record for this article, Koch Industries and Georgia-Pacific did not dispute the numbers and internal documents, in some cases providing updated figures. They declined to make any employee available to comment on this article or to address specific questions about what might be driving the rise in injuries.But Georgia-Pacific points out that it has taken measures to fix the problem. It invested billions in modernizing equipment, much of it aimed at making the factories safer. It taught employees safety procedures, and it enforced the rules strictly, the company said.In its quest to fix the crisis, however, Georgia-Pacific stopped short of one thing: slowing down production and risking profits.Instead, Koch’s leaders “turned to the MBM® framework to help,” Hannan wrote in the July 2016 issue of Koch Industries’ internal newsletter.
Hannan wrote that his team tried to identify the most dangerous hazards and tried to better educate the workforce about dangers on the job. He said this process helped cut the number of injuries, which did fall slightly between 2014 and 2015. But the number of accidents jumped again and rose steadily from 2015 until at least the end of 2017.Charles and David Koch’s political activities, and their company’s inclination to be private, have concealed an epic corporate success story. Charles has been CEO of Koch Industries for more than 50 years, responsible for building a juggernaut with annual revenue of around $100 billion, Forbes estimates, more than that of Facebook, Goldman Sachs and U.S. Steel combined.Their success has made the Koch brothers some of the most powerful and wealthiest people in the world. The two are worth an estimated $101 billion, according to Forbes, a combined fortune larger than that of Bill Gates or Warren Buffett.People know Koch Industries as an energy company because of its large holdings in oil refineries, pipelines and commodities trading. But it is more like a giant portfolio of companies, akin to a private-equity firm. The Kochs buy up companies like Georgia-Pacific and load them up with debt. To make their gamble pay off, Koch pushes them to cut costs and boost productivity.Georgia-Pacific has been one of the Koch conglomerate’s shining successes. Koch paid roughly $21 billion for Georgia-Pacific in 2005. Koch bought the company in part with borrowed funds that it put onto Georgia-Pacific’s balance sheet. This reduced risk for Koch — if the deal went south, the losses could be contained within the Georgia-Pacific division. But in keeping with its track record with other acquisitions, the company’s finances improved dramatically. Georgia-Pacific’s debt was rated as junk when Koch bought the company — by 2013, Koch had brought the debt rating up to an A+, just two notches below Standard & Poor’s top grade of AAA. Georgia-Pacific earned $623 million in profit in 2004, the year before Koch bought it. Now it earns an average of more than $1 billion a year.To make the deal pay off, Koch had to boost production and profits at Georgia-Pacific, paying down the debt as it went along. This job has largely fallen to Hannan. He would attribute his success to Charles Koch’s MBM philosophy. Charles Koch has published two books that outline his investment and management strategy, and he makes his workers and executives live by his creed.Few embraced the teachings more than Hannan, who was promoted to CEO of a large division of the company called Koch Enterprises in 2017 and now oversees the new CEO of Georgia-Pacific. He is trim, athletic and arrives at work in the Koch executive uniform — sport coat, button-down shirt, no tie. He is fluent in the highly detailed code taught to every new Koch recruit during multiday seminars after they are hired. To an outsider, the ideas may seem fairly quotidian, the kind of slogans that are widely embraced by companies all over the world. MBM’s tenets like “integrity” and “compliance” and “value creation” are printed on coffee cups in the company break rooms, and its guiding principles are taped to cubicle walls at headquarters. But to insiders, these words hum with an almost religious cadence. The philosophy aims to re-create the laws of a free-market system within Koch Industries. Managers are treated like property owners whose holdings expand when they make good decisions.Hannan was hired as chief financial officer of Koch’s minerals division back in 1998, and he later worked in a group that made private-equity style acquisitions. Hannan scouted Georgia-Pacific in 2003 when Koch was planning to buy its pulp mill division, a deal that later led to Georgia-Pacific’s acquisition. When he visited Georgia-Pacific’s headquarters in Atlanta, he saw the large executive suites located next to a private dining room with white tablecloths, fine china and floor-to-ceiling windows with a commanding view of the city. All Hannan said he could recall thinking, as he looked around, was: “Too lavish.” When Koch bought the company, it turned the executive suites into meeting rooms and moved the leadership team down one level, into smaller offices.During an interview in 2016, Hannan’s CEO office reflected his campaign against glitz. On the 50th floor of the Georgia-Pacific tower, he had a big desk and a small conference table surrounded by tasteful wooden chairs. He had prominently displayed a paper Dunkin’ Donuts coffee cup on a polished wood credenza directly across from his desk. The insulated cups, made by a company he encouraged Koch to purchase years earlier, were a bust because they were too expensive. He liked to keep the reminder of his failure in front of him, every day.When asked in the interview what kept him up at night as CEO, Hannan didn’t mention the competition, profits or productivity. He leaned forward and said that what worried him most was that one of his employees might be hurt on the job.“There is nothing worse than getting a phone call at 2 in the morning and saying somebody has been seriously injured or killed in one of our facilities,” he said. “And that is something we cannot let happen. And so we invest an enormous amount of resources” to prevent accidents.Nonetheless, something wasn’t working.At first, the safety data looked promising. Georgia-Pacific’s safety record had been spotty before Koch arrived. During the early 1990s, Georgia-Pacific was reporting six worker deaths a year, according to an internal Koch Industries presentation. But under Koch ownership, safety initially improved. By 2010, Koch was using an internal injury-tracking system, called TRAX, that gave the company a granular view of workplace accidents, with an annual tally of everything from electrocutions to bruises, burns and amputations. TRAX showed improvement in the early years.But the good news was short-lived. Accidents began to rise, and it became apparent that some of the improvement may have had to do with the slower pace of the company’s business after the slowdown in the economy after 2008. Much of Georgia-Pacific’s business is tied to the housing industry and overall economic growth.After 2013, as economic growth gained steam and business started to pick up at Georgia-Pacific, working conditions started to become more unsafe every year. As demand for the company’s products increased, deaths also began to rise, as did the number of injuries. Injuries jumped sharply between 2013 and 2014, from 527 to 644. And a measure to track the amount of time lost to injuries, called the DART rate, jumped 37%. (A Koch spokesperson disputed the notion that increased economic growth and new orders at Georgia-Pacific contributed to workplace injuries but did not provide an alternate explanation.)The company’s internal tracking system also was sending out klaxons. The total number of accidents increased by 30% between 2010 and the end of 2017, according to the most recent full-year TRAX data available to ProPublica. (ProPublica asked Koch to provide data for 2018 and 2019, but the company declined.)After Hannan’s emergency meeting in the spring of 2014, Georgia-Pacific suffered a spate of worker deaths. In April of that year, at Georgia-Pacific’s plant in Corrigan, Texas, a fire broke out in a silo that captured wood dust. After employees rushed to put the fire out, the silo exploded, engulfing the employees in flames and killing 56-year-old Charles Kovar and 58-year-old Kenny Morris. On July 24, a 63-year-old employee named Lydia Faircloth was leaving her shift at the company’s mill in Cedar Springs, Georgia, around midnight. She crossed the floor in a crosswalk marked for pedestrians but was hit by a truck, driven by her co-worker, and died from severe internal injuries. In August, a 41-year-old employee named Robert Wesson was killed when a machine crushed his skull after he got too close to it.Many of the nonfatal accidents were serious, too. In 2014, nine employees lost limbs or body parts (suffering injuries marked as “amputations” in the TRAX database).Things kept getting worse. Between 2015 and the start of 2018, the DART rate jumped 25%. One hundred and fifty-four employees suffered heat burns in 2014, up from 134 the year before, and 126 the year before that. The number of electrical shocks jumped to 19 in 2014 from one the year before.
The accidents have continued in more recent years. In October of 2018, an employee at a plant near Mount Jewett, Pennsylvania, was killed after he fell 90 feet from the roof while performing maintenance there. In May of this year, a fire at a Georgia-Pacific mill in Oklahoma broke out and five employees were treated for injuries.
Workplace safety is a hellishly complex issue at a place like Georgia-Pacific. The company operates gigantic mills and distribution centers where thousands of employees work their shifts around huge machines that can kill a person in an instant due to even slight miscalculations. But it is unclear what exactly is making the company more dangerous.
It’s not that Koch Industries doesn’t emphasize safety. Employees are drilled to follow the company’s “10,000% compliance” policy, which requires them to follow 100% of the safety rules 100% of the time (100 multiplied by 100 being 10,000). David Hoffmann, who worked as a compliance attorney at Koch from 2005 to 2010, said Koch Industries’ adherence to safety rules was almost religious. Hoffmann and his boss would travel to Koch chemical plants and threaten to shut down operations if they weren’t satisfied that conditions were safe. At Georgia-Pacific, Koch has written hundreds of pages of new safety rules and threatens to fire workers who disobey them. But that approach may sometimes be counterproductive. The company imposes a dizzying set of guidelines, codified in a series of papers accessible through the company’s internal computer network, on the daily life of workers. One “work standard” paper, as employees call them, dictated how employees should conduct themselves when taking on “non-routine” work outside their typical operating procedure. It was more than 20 pages long. Another work standard, dictating how employees should shut down machines to repair them, was about 25 pages long. One employee estimated that the total number of work standards reports were 1,000 pages combined. Having such complicated standards can be counterproductive, according to current and former employees.
When Travis McKinney joined the Georgia-Pacific warehouse more than a decade ago, about 135 people worked there. Now there are about 60 employees, he said. And Koch has notified workers that the company plans to eliminate 20 more jobs this year as it tries to automate more of the warehouse. Overall, the company cut the number of unionized workers in half, and it reduced the total workforce by 36% to roughly 35,000. The workers who are still there are doing more work, during longer hours, with fewer days off than ever before, McKinney said.
“They really preach the gospel that we want everyone to be safe, but in the end, it’s all about productivity,” McKinney said.Rather than slow down the factories or increase the workforce, internal company memos show that executives focused on changing employees’ “hearts and minds” and getting them to more tightly embrace the teachings of MBM.At a Georgia-Pacific warehouse complex in Portland, Oregon, Koch boosted productivity by using a software program called the Labor Management System, which precisely directed the movements of forklift drivers during their shifts. When drivers like McKinney reported to work, they logged onto the system and were told which bay to drive to and which pallet to pick up. The LMS directed their movement for the rest of this shift. It also recorded how quickly they delivered each load, comparing their performance against internal benchmarks.
Koch used the data to push employees to work harder. For years, Koch ranked each driver into three tiers: “green” for the top performers, “yellow” for the middle and “red” for the laggards. The results were publicly posted. If a driver ranked in the red zone for too long, he or she could be fired. Drivers sped up to keep their rankings high, according to multiple employees interviewed over several years. They were also expected to adhere to Koch’s detailed safety policy.
The LMS system and Koch’s 10,000% compliance doctrine were contradictory forces that guided McKinney’s work. He hurried to keep pace with the LMS, and he tried to remember every workplace safety rule along the way.
“People aren’t wanting to slow down. They want to stay productive,” McKinney said. “When you work someone like that, they’re going to be tired and make mistakes.”
Koch’s investments to boost productivity are evident at Georgia-Pacific’s sprawling mill outside Savannah, Georgia, one of the largest tissue and paper towel mills in the United States. On a visit in 2016, the mill was highly mechanized, and its cavernous interior was clean and pleasant to walk through. The space resembled an industrial Santa’s workshop, a complicated maze of automatic machines that rolled, spun and packed countless rolls of toilet paper. Automated forklifts drove between the machines, guided by laser beams aimed at the floor in front of them. Employees monitored the machines and fixed them when there was a problem.
One side effect of automation is that Georgia-Pacific workers are less specialized. Until Koch bought the company, employees like Dana Blocker often had narrow job descriptions that might lead them to operate only one specific piece of equipment. A person was a “winder operator,” for example, or a “wrap operator.” Labor unions at Georgia-Pacific stubbornly protected these rigid job designations. Though sometimes the unions were inflexible, such traditions helped keep them safer, multiple current and former employees said. Being confined to a certain job helped workers reinforce their expertise with a specific machine. Knowing the quirks and dangers of such machines was vital.
When Koch took over Georgia-Pacific, those job distinctions were largely dissolved. The remaining employees have seen their job descriptions transformed. Under Koch, Blocker oversaw a wide variety of machines and processes.
“Now you’re a technician, expected to go out and run all the equipment on the line. So, no one is tied to one piece of equipment. You have to run the entire process,” Blocker said. Generalists have to learn the quirks of multiple pieces of machinery.
Jeffrey Pfeffer, a professor of organizational behavior at Stanford’s graduate business school, said workplace injuries and illnesses often rise when owners push employees to do more work with less support. Workers suffer more health problems and injuries when they work longer shifts, lose control of their activities on the job and have more stress trying to balance their job obligations with family life.
“People don’t do their best when they’re exhausted,” Pfeffer said.
Debra Roberts, who has worked at the warehouse since 2012, knows exhaustion only too well. She was forced to work 14 days in a row in late 2017, she said. If she declined to show up, she would have faced discipline or firing. During that stretch of back-to-back shifts, she was driving down an aisle when a coworker pulled out of a bay crashing into her forklift. As it turned out, he had also been working a 14-day string of shifts, she said.
“You’re just not on your game after working all those days in a row,” Roberts said. “You’ve got no downtime. And your body gets wore out … your reflexes aren’t as sharp as they should be.”
Luckily, no one was injured in that accident. But last summer, Roberts said the situation got worse. She was forced to work 30 days in a row. She said she asked her bosses for a day off but was denied. When she was informed at the end of her 30th day that she could stay home the following day, she broke down in tears.
“I was so exhausted. It was just like … relief,” she recalled. “On my day off, all I did was sleep.”
In the past, the federal government has cracked down on Koch for transgressions in its various divisions and the violations have been widely publicized, prompting the company to change its behavior. In 2000, for example, Koch Industries paid a then-record federal fine of $30 million to settle an EPA case over more than 300 oil spills from Koch’s pipeline networks. Also that year, Koch’s refinery in Minnesota was fined $6 million for a criminal violation after managers dumped polluted water into nearby wetlands. Both cases generated national headlines. The civil fines and negative publicity prompted Charles Koch to develop the 10,000% compliance doctrine, according to the compliance specialist Hoffmann and multiple other Koch executives.
But the crisis of workplace injuries at Georgia-Pacific has followed a different path. Federal regulators ruled that Koch Industries had violated dozens of federal worker safety regulations at its Georgia-Pacific facilities, but the fines for doing so were relatively paltry. Neither the worker deaths and injuries, nor the fines garner much media attention.Georgia-Pacific was fined $5,000 for violations related to the death of Robert Wesson, according to Occupational Safety and Health Administration records. The company was fined $14,000 for violations related to the burning deaths of Charles Kovar and Kenny Morris. It was fined $35,050 for a series of violations dubbed “serious” by OSHA related to the death of Lydia Faircloth.Critics have assailed the limits on OSHA’s power to crack down on dangerous workplaces for years. The size of OSHA fines is determined by Congress through its budgetary authorization of OSHA. Congress capped OSHA penalties as part of the Budget Reconciliation Act in 2015, according to an agency spokeswoman. The maximum penalty for a “serious” citation is $13,260, and the maximum penalty for a “willful or repeat” citation is 10 times that.
Koch Industries responded to the Georgia-Pacific safety crisis by re-emphasizing the need of employees to follow the guidelines of Market-Based Management.
Charles Koch has written that MBM and safety can go hand in hand. “At Koch, we reject the notion that serious injury or the loss of life is an inevitable reality for employees of a large manufacturing company,” Koch wrote in his 2015 book about MBM, called “Good Profit.”
“This is why we have since improved our application of MBM to ensure that we always strive to go beyond standard industry practice on safety when appropriate, and only employ leaders and other employees who do so,” he wrote.
An undated internal Koch Industries presentation, which includes data up through June of 2017, referred to the crisis in terms that military commanders might use to describe a large-scale insurgency.
The “Headline Discussion” of the presentation said that Koch needed to “Engage Hearts & Minds” of employees to reverse the increasingly dangerous conditions. “Are we putting too much emphasis on ‘we are improving’ versus we are not satisfied with where we are and our rate of improvement?” the presentation asked. The presentation noticed that serious injuries were “flat to increasing” between 2016 and 2017, in spite of the company’s efforts.
The presentation that noted that Georgia-Pacific was more unsafe than the company’s major competitors was a direct challenge to Koch’s senior leadership. None of the companies that ranked ahead of Koch subscribed to MBM, yet they all did better than Koch.
Koch’s response was to renew its commitment to Charles Koch’s philosophy and to reduce risk by “applying 5 MBM® dimensions throughout organization,” according to the internal safety presentation.
The leadership team set out an ambitious goal. It sought to achieve “zero significant incidents” at Georgia-Pacific in the future. One chart showed a “Georgia-Pacific Safety Risk Glide Path” that would gradually reduce accidents to a level near zero by 2035. A different chart noted that every 10% decrease in serious incidents would yield between $5 million and $25 million for the company. Koch declined to elaborate on how it arrived at that calculation.
A chart, titled “Georgia-Pacific 20 Year Bet,” was written in the classic style of MBM materials. It featured colored boxes connected by dark lines in a wheel-and-spoke formation. The box in the center read “Critical Risk Focus Areas,” and the connected boxes listed various Georgia-Pacific operations and risk hazards like “Combustible Dust” and “Electrical Safe Work Practices” (electrical shocks had skyrocketed at Georgia-Pacific, rising from one in 2010, to 23 in 2015 and 31 in 2017). It said the company workers must change their mindset and “Go from Have To — To Want To” in terms of staying safe.
In spite of this approach, workplace accident rates continued to accelerate that year.<div>
</div><header class="entry-header" style="box-sizing: inherit; float: left; height: auto; margin: 0px auto; max-width: 100%; padding: 5px 0px 10px; position: relative; width: 486.5px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><h4 class="entry-title" itemprop="headline" style="box-sizing: inherit; font-family: " futura="Futura" lt="LT" w01="W01" medium="Medium" sans-serif="sans-serif" line-height="line-height" margin="margin" px="px" font-size="font-size"><a href="https://www.exposedbycmd.org/2019/03/25/kochs-georgia-pacific-hit-another-environmental-penalty/" style="box-sizing: inherit; background: 0px 0px; transition: all 500ms ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none; outline: 0px; float: left;">Koch’s Georgia-Pacific Hit with Another Environmental Penalty</a></h4>by <a href="https://www.exposedbycmd.org/author/don-wiener/" class="entry-author-link" itemprop="url" rel="author" style="box-sizing: inherit; background: 0px 0px; transition: all 500ms ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none; float: none;">Don Wiener</a> | <time class="entry-time" itemprop="datePublished" datetime="2019-03-26T07:43:51-05:00" style="box-sizing: inherit;">March 26th, 2019</time></header><div class="entry-content" style="box-sizing: inherit; float: left; margin: 0px auto; max-width: 100%; width: 486.5px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">U.S. EPA fines paper company $79,000 for illegal stormwater discharges.</div>


Charles and David Koch
The shadow of the Koch brothers has fallen across the US political landscape for decades, as they have made huge donations in an attempt to push the Republicans further to the right.
Charles and David Koch control Koch Industries, the second largest privately held company in the US. In 2005, they bought the paper and pulp giant Georgia-Pacific for $21bn.The Kochs took their new holding private, and in doing so shut the door on public access to information about its internal workings. The Paradise Papers open that door, giving a glimpse of how Georgia-Pacific conducts its affairs offshore.
Within months of the company being acquired by the Kochs, it relocated millions of dollars of profits from high-tax jurisdictions such as the US and UK to low-tax environments in Luxembourg and the offshore haven Bermuda.
At the center of the money shuffle was Georgia-Pacific Britain Ltd, a subsidiary leasing paper production equipment, which was incorporated in Bermuda but controlled and managed out of the UK.
Shortly after the Kochs bought Georgia-Pacific, the subsidiary found itself under pressure from UK tax authorities to settle a dispute over the leasing of a paper mill, at which point directors began discussing the possibility of “exiting the UK”.
In the ensuing months, the management of Georgia-Pacific Britain passed from the UK to Bermuda.
Two huge loans were made from Georgia-Pacific’s parent companies in the US to the Bermuda subsidiary, amounting to $522.1m.
A debt of $636.6m to the Bermuda subsidiary was also written off by Nekoosa Papers, which operated Koch paper mills in the US, in return for two new dollar loans of a similar value. Georgia-Pacific Britain went into liquidation in 2008.
Jack Blum, a lawyer specializing in offshore tax issues, likened the complex money flow set up under the structure to three-dimensional chess. “This is a brilliant piece of tax planning, done by very expensive lawyers,” he said.
“Companies working through steps recommended by the lawyers to minimize tax, putting profits as far away from the tax collectors as you can go. The lawyers … waltz through any number of pathways to make money disappear in this jurisdiction and show up in another jurisdiction where they pay no taxes.”
The Koch brothers have spent years building up a network of rightwing donors as an alternative power base to the Republican National Committee. In the 2016 presidential election, they invested about $250m trying to sway the US Senate and other contests, and have pledged to pump up to $400m into the midterms next year.
Despite minimizing their tax contribution to government coffers, the brothers, each worth an estimated $49.2bn, project themselves as patriots and claim through their primary organising body, Americans for Prosperity, to be focused on increasing the wealth of all citizens.
The Guardian reached out for comment to Koch Industries and Georgia-Pacific but they did not respond.=ref<a href="https://thinkprogress.org/koch-epa-industry-david-dunlap-chemical-water-1f08cfa2fb01/">https://thinkprogress.org/koch-epa-industry-david-dunlap-chemical-water-1f08cfa2fb01/</a>The Environmental Protection Agency has hired a former Koch Industries staffer who worked on water and chemical policy to fill a key role within the agency, continuing a Trump administration trend of appointing company insiders to oversee the industries they are meant to regulate.David Dunlap, a former Koch chemical engineer who has served as director of policy and regulatory affairs with the right-wing corporation since 2010, is joining the EPA as deputy assistant administrator for research and development. Prior to his eight years with Koch, Dunlap <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/dunlap-david-78981834/" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; word-break: break-word; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(144, 141, 255);">worked</a> for the Chlorine Institute overseeing health and environmental safety, in addition to roles with both the Uniform and Textile Service Association and Ogden Environmental.“As a chemical engineer, Mr. Dunlap has worked on environmental issues for nearly 30 years with a focus on assessing risk,” read a statement from EPA chief of staff Ryan Jackson. “His extensive experience on regulatory issues will be pivotal in our mission to protect human health and the environment.”<a href="https://www.desmogblog.com/koch-industries-inc-holdings-investments" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; word-break: break-word; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(144, 141, 255);">Koch Industries</a> is a massive conglomerate overseen by the Koch brothers, major conservative donors who have spent decades undercutting U.S. climate and environmental policies — the brothers’ fortune was made largely from fossil fuels but has since expanded to chemicals and manufacturing.In April, Senate Democrats <a href="https://thinkprogress.org/democrats-send-letter-to-trump-about-koch-influence-a325904aa03c/" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; word-break: break-word; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(144, 141, 255);">indicated</a> that they would probe the influence of the brothers on Trump administration policies, specifically with reference to the EPA and the Department of the Interior. The Kochs have appeared to take credit for the rollback of the Clean Power Plan, among other Obama-era initiatives targeted by the Trump administration.<div class="related-contentwrapper" style="box-sizing: inherit; padding: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 2rem; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://thinkprogress.org/democrats-send-letter-to-trump-about-koch-influence-a325904aa03c/" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; word-break: break-word; border: none; display: flex;" /><div class="related-contentbody" style="box-sizing: inherit; width: 513px;"><a href="https://thinkprogress.org/democrats-send-letter-to-trump-about-koch-influence-a325904aa03c/" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; word-break: break-word; border: none; display: flex;"></a><a href="https://thinkprogress.org/democrats-send-letter-to-trump-about-koch-influence-a325904aa03c/" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; word-break: break-word; border: none; display: flex;"></a><a href="https://thinkprogress.org/democrats-send-letter-to-trump-about-koch-influence-a325904aa03c/" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; word-break: break-word; border: none; display: flex;" /><a href="https://thinkprogress.org/democrats-send-letter-to-trump-about-koch-influence-a325904aa03c/" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; word-break: break-word; border: none; display: flex;" /><a href="https://thinkprogress.org/democrats-send-letter-to-trump-about-koch-influence-a325904aa03c/" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; word-break: break-word; border: none; display: flex;" /><a href="https://thinkprogress.org/democrats-send-letter-to-trump-about-koch-influence-a325904aa03c/" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; word-break: break-word; border: none; display: flex;" /><a href="https://thinkprogress.org/democrats-send-letter-to-trump-about-koch-influence-a325904aa03c/" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; word-break: break-word; border: none; display: flex;" /><a href="https://thinkprogress.org/democrats-send-letter-to-trump-about-koch-influence-a325904aa03c/" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; word-break: break-word; border: none; display: flex;" /><a href="https://thinkprogress.org/democrats-send-letter-to-trump-about-koch-influence-a325904aa03c/" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; word-break: break-word; border: none; display: flex;" /><h3 class="related-contenttitle" style="box-sizing: inherit; line-height: 2rem; margin: 0px;"><a href="https://thinkprogress.org/democrats-send-letter-to-trump-about-koch-influence-a325904aa03c/" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; word-break: break-word; border: none; display: flex;"></a><a href="https://thinkprogress.org/democrats-send-letter-to-trump-about-koch-influence-a325904aa03c/" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; word-break: break-word; border: none; display: flex;"></a><a href="https://thinkprogress.org/democrats-send-letter-to-trump-about-koch-influence-a325904aa03c/" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; word-break: break-word; border: none; display: flex;"></a><a href="https://thinkprogress.org/democrats-send-letter-to-trump-about-koch-influence-a325904aa03c/" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; word-break: break-word; border: none; display: flex;"></a><a href="https://thinkprogress.org/democrats-send-letter-to-trump-about-koch-influence-a325904aa03c/" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; word-break: break-word; border: none; display: flex;"></a><a href="https://thinkprogress.org/democrats-send-letter-to-trump-about-koch-influence-a325904aa03c/" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; word-break: break-word; border: none; display: flex;" /><a href="https://thinkprogress.org/democrats-send-letter-to-trump-about-koch-influence-a325904aa03c/" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; word-break: break-word; border: none; display: flex;" /><a href="https://thinkprogress.org/democrats-send-letter-to-trump-about-koch-influence-a325904aa03c/" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; word-break: break-word; border: none; display: flex;" /><a href="https://thinkprogress.org/democrats-send-letter-to-trump-about-koch-influence-a325904aa03c/" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; word-break: break-word; border: none; display: flex;" /><a href="https://thinkprogress.org/democrats-send-letter-to-trump-about-koch-influence-a325904aa03c/" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; word-break: break-word; border: none; display: flex;" /><a href="https://thinkprogress.org/democrats-send-letter-to-trump-about-koch-influence-a325904aa03c/" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; word-break: break-word; border: none; display: flex;" /><a href="https://thinkprogress.org/democrats-send-letter-to-trump-about-koch-influence-a325904aa03c/" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; word-break: break-word; border: none; display: flex;">[Scope of Koch influence on Trump climate policy under scrutiny]</a></h3></div></div>A spokesperson for Koch Industries <a href="https://www.courthousenews.com/epa-names-former-koch-industries-figure-chief-of-research/" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; word-break: break-word; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(144, 141, 255);">told</a> Courthouse News on Monday that Dunlap is “not working for Koch Industries in any capacity” at this time, indicating that he has officially left his prior position with the company.Dunlap’s predecessor, Richard Yamada, left the EPA in September after only 15 months in the position. Yamada was largely seen as one of the chief drivers behind a<a href="https://thinkprogress.org/pruitt-secret-science-epa-lamar-smith-f5efd1dab736/" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; word-break: break-word; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(144, 141, 255);"> deeply controversial “secret science” policy proposal</a> attempting to limit the use of private data in scientific studies. Such efforts have been a pet cause of retiring Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX); Yamada previously had a role working with Smith to draft similar legislation prior to interest from the Trump administration.And during former EPA administrator Scott Pruitt’s tenure, the <a href="https://www.desmogblog.com/heritage-foundation" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; word-break: break-word; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(144, 141, 255);">Heritage Foundation</a> — which has received numerous donations from the Koch brothers over the years — <a href="https://www.eenews.net/stories/1060076559" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; word-break: break-word; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(144, 141, 255);">hosted a closed-door meeting</a> with Pruitt and others to discuss the policy.In his new role, Dunlap will help to oversee a number of crucial programs. The risk assessment program that produced a health study linking formaldehyde to cancer, for instance, falls under the EPA’s research and development arm. Trump administration officials <a href="https://www.politico.com/story/2018/07/06/epa-formaldehyde-warnings-blocked-696628" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; word-break: break-word; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(144, 141, 255);">have blocked that report</a>, seemingly due to pressure from the chemical industry. Formaldehyde is a prevalent chemical throughout the United States and is often found in items like particle boards and crease-resistant fabrics.Georgia-Pacific Chemicals LLC, a Koch Industries subsidiary, is one of the largest formaldehyde producers in the country, and has lobbied against the study’s release <a href="https://www.politico.com/newsletters/morning-energy/2018/10/02/senate-to-run-lwcf-revival-359188" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; word-break: break-word; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(144, 141, 255);">according to Politico</a>. As a former Koch employee, Dunlap will now be in a position to direct the study’s future, amid a heavy industry lobbying effort.The EPA is in the midst of a controversial streamlining effort; last week, the agency announced that the Office of the Science Advisor will be closing. Meanwhile, Dunlap’s appointment <a href="https://insideepa.com/daily-news/epa-taps-koch-industries-chemical-engineer-lead-research-office" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; word-break: break-word; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(144, 141, 255);">will provide a measure of political leadership</a> within the EPA while allowing the Trump administration to avoid a Senate confirmation hearing.<div class="related-contentwrapper" style="box-sizing: inherit; padding: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 2rem; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://thinkprogress.org/pruitt-secret-science-epa-lamar-smith-f5efd1dab736/" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; word-break: break-word; border: none; display: flex;" /><div class="related-contentbody" style="box-sizing: inherit; width: 513px;"><a href="https://thinkprogress.org/pruitt-secret-science-epa-lamar-smith-f5efd1dab736/" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; word-break: break-word; border: none; display: flex;"></a><a href="https://thinkprogress.org/pruitt-secret-science-epa-lamar-smith-f5efd1dab736/" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; word-break: break-word; border: none; display: flex;"></a><a href="https://thinkprogress.org/pruitt-secret-science-epa-lamar-smith-f5efd1dab736/" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; word-break: break-word; border: none; display: flex;" /><a href="https://thinkprogress.org/pruitt-secret-science-epa-lamar-smith-f5efd1dab736/" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; word-break: break-word; border: none; display: flex;" /><a href="https://thinkprogress.org/pruitt-secret-science-epa-lamar-smith-f5efd1dab736/" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; word-break: break-word; border: none; display: flex;" /><a href="https://thinkprogress.org/pruitt-secret-science-epa-lamar-smith-f5efd1dab736/" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; word-break: break-word; border: none; display: flex;" /><a href="https://thinkprogress.org/pruitt-secret-science-epa-lamar-smith-f5efd1dab736/" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; word-break: break-word; border: none; display: flex;" /><a href="https://thinkprogress.org/pruitt-secret-science-epa-lamar-smith-f5efd1dab736/" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; word-break: break-word; border: none; display: flex;" /><a href="https://thinkprogress.org/pruitt-secret-science-epa-lamar-smith-f5efd1dab736/" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; word-break: break-word; border: none; display: flex;" /><h3 class="related-contenttitle" style="box-sizing: inherit; line-height: 2rem; margin: 0px;"><a href="https://thinkprogress.org/pruitt-secret-science-epa-lamar-smith-f5efd1dab736/" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; word-break: break-word; border: none; display: flex;"></a><a href="https://thinkprogress.org/pruitt-secret-science-epa-lamar-smith-f5efd1dab736/" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; word-break: break-word; border: none; display: flex;"></a><a href="https://thinkprogress.org/pruitt-secret-science-epa-lamar-smith-f5efd1dab736/" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; word-break: break-word; border: none; display: flex;"></a><a href="https://thinkprogress.org/pruitt-secret-science-epa-lamar-smith-f5efd1dab736/" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; word-break: break-word; border: none; display: flex;"></a><a href="https://thinkprogress.org/pruitt-secret-science-epa-lamar-smith-f5efd1dab736/" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; word-break: break-word; border: none; display: flex;"></a><a href="https://thinkprogress.org/pruitt-secret-science-epa-lamar-smith-f5efd1dab736/" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; word-break: break-word; border: none; display: flex;" /><a href="https://thinkprogress.org/pruitt-secret-science-epa-lamar-smith-f5efd1dab736/" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; word-break: break-word; border: none; display: flex;" /><a href="https://thinkprogress.org/pruitt-secret-science-epa-lamar-smith-f5efd1dab736/" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; word-break: break-word; border: none; display: flex;" /><a href="https://thinkprogress.org/pruitt-secret-science-epa-lamar-smith-f5efd1dab736/" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; word-break: break-word; border: none; display: flex;" /><a href="https://thinkprogress.org/pruitt-secret-science-epa-lamar-smith-f5efd1dab736/" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; word-break: break-word; border: none; display: flex;" /><a href="https://thinkprogress.org/pruitt-secret-science-epa-lamar-smith-f5efd1dab736/" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; word-break: break-word; border: none; display: flex;" /><a href="https://thinkprogress.org/pruitt-secret-science-epa-lamar-smith-f5efd1dab736/" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; word-break: break-word; border: none; display: flex;">[Politics-driven ‘secret science’ initiative isn’t going over well with EPA staff]</a></h3></div></div>Recent battles over agency nominees with industry backgrounds have proven bruising for the White House, although the administration has largely succeeded in its efforts to appoint officials <a href="https://thinkprogress.org/ferc-chairman-tied-to-industry-34a9af1be02d/" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; word-break: break-word; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(144, 141, 255);">with strong ties to the companies and sectors</a> they now oversee. That includes acting EPA administrator Andrew Wheeler, who <a href="https://thinkprogress.org/andrew-wheeler-epa-regulations-stand-test-of-time-61172b68ec52/" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; word-break: break-word; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(144, 141, 255);">previously served as a coal lobbyist</a>.Green groups and advocates argue that revolving door between industry and the federal government has taken a toll on environmental regulations. The Trump administration has overseen an onslaught of environmental regulation rollbacks, many directly benefiting fossil fuel industries, chemical companies, and corporate interests more broadly. Most recently, the EPA has indicated <a href="https://thinkprogress.org/epa-rollback-mercury-rule-trump-obama-health-coal-e66b43ec1501/" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; word-break: break-word; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(144, 141, 255);">that it will propose easing limitations on the toxic chemical mercury</a>, in a victory for the coal industry.<div>=</div><div><a href="https://www.exposedbycmd.org/2018/06/19/alec-deadly-asbestos-agenda-benefits-koch-industries">https://www.exposedbycmd.org/2018/06/19/alec-deadly-asbestos-agenda-benefits-koch-industries</a></div><div>
</div><div>The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) <a href="https://www.alec.org/article/legislator-of-the-week-missouri-representative-bruce-degroot/" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: inherit; background: 0px 0px; transition: all 500ms ease-in-out; text-decoration-line: none;">named</a> Missouri Republican state Rep. Bruce DeGroot as a “Legislator of the Week” in June.Why is ALEC so fond of DeGroot? Because he has cheerfully championed ALEC legislation to restrict the right of terminally ill, asbestos victims to sue over mesothelioma. In doing so, DeGroot is helping the many U.S. companies, including ALEC funders Koch Industries and Nationwide Mutual Insurance Company, that have asbestos-related liability.<h2 style="box-sizing: inherit; line-height: 1.2; margin: 0px 0px 10px; text-transform: uppercase; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">NATIONWIDE, NOT ON YOUR SIDE</h2>Mesothelioma is an aggressive type of lung cancer caused by exposure to asbestos. Even though the dangers of deadly asbestos have been known for over 100 years, <a href="https://www.asbestos.com/companies/" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: inherit; background: 0px 0px; transition: all 500ms ease-in-out; text-decoration-line: none;">industry</a> worked hard to bury evidence that workers were being harmed by asbestos exposure. Three thousand people are diagnosed each year with <a href="https://www.maacenter.org/mesothelioma/" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: inherit; background: 0px 0px; transition: all 500ms ease-in-out; text-decoration-line: none;">mesothelioma</a> in the United States and most die within a year or two. Most victims are public servants, veterans, firefighters, even teachers exposed to asbestos in schools.In addition to being an ALEC politician, Degroot is an attorney for an insurance defense firm, Brown & James, which represents dozens of insurers who, in turn, have as <a href="https://www.brownjames.com/content/114/representative-clients.aspx" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: inherit; background: 0px 0px; transition: all 500ms ease-in-out; text-decoration-line: none;">clients</a> companies responsible for mesothelioma-related claims. One of the firm’s clients is Nationwide. Sources tell the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) that Nationwide was actively pushing the bill in Missouri, although it was not <a href="https://house.mo.gov/billtracking/bills181/sumpdf/HB1645C.pdf" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: inherit; background: 0px 0px; transition: all 500ms ease-in-out; text-decoration-line: none;">publicly listed</a> as a supporter of the bill.In many states, a legislator who introduced a bill benefitting his firm’s clients could face ethics charges or worse. In Missouri, “it is unseemly, to say the least, and one of the reasons we need ethics reform in this state,” said deputy director Sharon Geuea Jones of the Missouri Association of Trial Lawyers.Nationwide has long been a <a href="https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/ALEC_Corporations" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="background-image: initial; background-position: 0px 0px; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; box-sizing: inherit; transition: all 500ms ease-in-out; text-decoration-line: none;">corporate sponsor of ALEC</a>. In 2014 and 2015, for example, Nationwide incurred asbestos-related losses of $148 million and $98 million respectively, giving it one of the largest asbestos liabilities of any insurer for those years, according to <a href="https://www.casact.org/community/affiliates/cagny/0516/Cavanaugh-Makuc.pdf" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="background-image: initial; background-position: 0px 0px; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; box-sizing: inherit; transition: all 500ms ease-in-out; text-decoration-line: none;">Casualty Actuaries of Greater New York</a>.<h2 style="box-sizing: inherit; line-height: 1.2; margin: 0px 0px 10px; text-transform: uppercase; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">ALEC PROTECTIONS FOR ASBESTOS COMPANIES</h2>At ALEC, corporate lobbyists and politicians vote as equals behind closed doors on “model” bills that advance corporate interests over consumers’ interests. DeGroot’s bill, <a href="https://legiscan.com/MO/text/HB1645/2018" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: inherit; background: 0px 0px; transition: all 500ms ease-in-out; text-decoration-line: none;">HB 1645</a> or “The Asbestos Transparency Act,” bears a striking similarity to ALEC’s “<a href="https://www.alec.org/model-policy/asbestos-claims-transparency-act/" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: inherit; background: 0px 0px; transition: all 500ms ease-in-out; text-decoration-line: none;">Asbestos Claims Transparency Act</a>.” The Missouri House passed the bill in March, but the Senate has yet to take action.The bill would force victims of asbestos to search out bankrupt companies that made asbestos, not just companies still in business. The problem for the injured is that many companies that made asbestos or had asbestos products have sought bankruptcy protection and are now in trusts. These trusts are more difficult to sue, their assets are harder to determine, and the victims often die before their case is heard. The bill would also limit the time victims have to bring a case after diagnosis, even though it takes more time to prepare for a suit against bankrupt companies.DeGroot can’t say enough about how awesome ALEC’s cookie-cutter corporate legislation is. “ALEC and ALEC model policy are a great resource. ALEC was able to put me in touch with an expert who was willing to travel to Missouri to testify in support of one of the bills I filed, Asbestos Transparency Trust,” <a href="https://www.alec.org/article/legislator-of-the-week-missouri-representative-bruce-degroot/" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: inherit; background: 0px 0px; transition: all 500ms ease-in-out; text-decoration-line: none;">DeGroot said in an ALEC interview</a>.That “expert” was <a href="https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Mark_Behrens" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="background-image: initial; background-position: 0px 0px; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; box-sizing: inherit; transition: all 500ms ease-in-out; text-decoration-line: none;">Mark Behrens</a>, a partner of the Kansas City law firm <a href="https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Shook,Hardy%26_Bacon" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="background-image: initial; background-position: 0px 0px; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; box-sizing: inherit; transition: all 500ms ease-in-out; text-decoration-line: none;">Shook, Hardy & Bacon</a>. The firm has a national reputation for representing deadly industries like Big Tobacco. Behrens travels around the country lobbying on behalf of ALEC’s many asbestos bills, but tells the public that he is representing other clients like the U.S. Chamber Institute for Legal Reform.<h2 style="box-sizing: inherit; line-height: 1.2; margin: 0px 0px 10px; text-transform: uppercase; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">EMOTIONAL FLOOR DEBATE</h2>A cheerful DeGroot opened floor debate saying inaccurately that the bill simply stopped “double dipping” by asbestos victims, but the issue quickly turned emotional.The first legislator to speak was Republican Rep. Steve Cookson, who is suffering from liver cancer. “I have been up here for eight years and most bills that we talk about are about protecting somebody’s money.… This bill is designed to protect out of state companies and insurance companies.”Cookson went on to say that in the past he had been supportive of some tort reform bills. “I reflect back now, and you know I have a personal situation going on right here. I think a lot more about life and death. I would ask you, did you ever contemplate the way you want to die?” he asked of DeGroot.“Well that is a bit personal,” responded DeGroot with a nervous laugh.“Well, so do you want to die a slow death where you lay there in the bed and suffocate to death?” asked Cookson.“I wouldn’t like that, no,” said Degroot.Cookson went on to say that for the time he had left in the legislature, he wanted to make sure he was on the side of those “laying in the hospital for a long long time suffering, surrounded by their families…. I can’t bring myself to be in support of anything that would compromise a person’s ability to be made whole, and their family to be made whole because they had to leave this world in a horrible fashion in an abbreviated time they would have been expected to live.”The ALEC bill offered by DeGroot would mean that many victims would not live to see their day in court. As one opposing legislator, Rep. Jay Barnes explained, “<a href="https://themissouritimes.com/48953/asbestos-bankruptcy-transparency-act-perfected-by-house/" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="background-image: initial; background-position: 0px 0px; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; box-sizing: inherit; transition: all 500ms ease-in-out; text-decoration-line: none;">the best evidence in an asbestos case is the plaintiff, and when they die, that goes away</a>.”Similar bills based on the ALEC model have passed in 15 states: Ohio, Oklahoma, Wisconsin, West Virginia, Arizona, Texas, Utah, Tennessee, South Dakota, North Dakota, Iowa, Mississippi, Michigan, Kansas, and North Carolina.<h2 style="box-sizing: inherit; line-height: 1.2; margin: 0px 0px 10px; text-transform: uppercase; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">KOCH INDUSTRIES LIMITS ITS EXPOSURE TO MESOTHELIOMA LAWSUITS</h2>Koch Industries is the largest privately held company in America, with multiple subsidiary firms. When Koch acquired the paper company Georgia-Pacific LLC in 2007, it also became responsible for Bestwall LLC, which up until 1977 made a <a href="https://www.asbestos.com/companies/bestwall-gypsum.php" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="background-image: initial; background-position: 0px 0px; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; box-sizing: inherit; transition: all 500ms ease-in-out; text-decoration-line: none;">joint compound that contained asbestos</a>. And because mesothelioma symptoms only appear after 10 to 50 years, Koch knew that when it purchased Georgia-Pacific, it also became responsible for thousands of asbestos lawsuits.Koch Industries is a big financial supporter of ALEC and has served on the ALEC private enterprise board for many years, including in 2007 when the ALEC board approved the Asbestos Claims Transparency Act. Subsequently, in 2017, Koch Industries put Bestwall into bankruptcy to limit its exposure to mesothelioma lawsuits.An affiliate of Koch’s Georgia-Pacific, Bestwall, joined “scores of U.S. manufacturers that have filed for bankruptcy due to asbestos litigation, and comes as the U.S. Congress mulls a bill that plaintiffs’ lawyers say would discourage asbestos claims,” wrote <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-georgiapacific-asbestos-bankruptcy/georgia-pacific-unit-seeks-bankruptcy-in-wake-of-asbestos-cases-idUSKBN1D21LP" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="background-image: initial; background-position: 0px 0px; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; box-sizing: inherit; transition: all 500ms ease-in-out; text-decoration-line: none;">Reuters</a>. The misnamed <a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/906" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="background-image: initial; background-position: 0px 0px; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; box-sizing: inherit; transition: all 500ms ease-in-out; text-decoration-line: none;">FACT Act</a> is supported by ALEC, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and companies with billions of dollars of liability for asbestos claims, including Koch Industries.Koch now argues that Bestwall was only a minor user of asbestos, but construction workers were exposed to multiple sources of asbestos, and since many of the responsible parties no longer exist, victims’ lawyers are forced to sue more than one company.Koch complains it is spending $160 million a year defending its subsidiary against asbestos lawsuits. It could have set up a trust fund from the beginning when it acquired Bestwall to pay victims with that money instead of fighting every lawsuit, and is now slowing the process by putting the company into bankruptcy.Americans for Tax Fairness estimates that the Kochs will get <a href="https://americansfortaxfairness.org/analysis-koch-brothers-get-1-billion-tax-cut-law-helped-pass/" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: inherit; background: 0px 0px; transition: all 500ms ease-in-out; text-decoration-line: none;">$1.4 billion from the Jobs and Tax Cut Act of 2017</a>, money that could be used to pay asbestos victims before they die.Instead, Koch and its allies are working hard to pass laws that run out the clock.</div><div>
</div><div></div><a href="http://www.alternet.org/right-wing/arkansas-versus-koch-brothers">http://www.alternet.org/right-wing/arkansas-versus-koch-brothers</a>guard ukdocumentary <a data-link="" href="https://www.companytownfilm.com/" name="in body link" id="in body link" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Company Town</a> opened in New York City on Friday night, for a short run at Cinema Village on East 12th Street. Introducing a sold-out screening, New York state attorney general Eric Schneiderman said co-directors Natalie Kottke-Masocco and Erica Sardarian had captured one of the “quiet tragedies that are taking place all across America all the time”.The film tells the story of Crossett, Arkansas, a small town dominated by a huge <a data-link="" href="https://www.gp.com/" name="in body link" id="in body link" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Georgia-Pacific</a> paper mill owned by the <a data-link="" href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/koch-brothers" name="in body link" id="in body link" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Koch brothers</a>, Charles and David, hugely influential Republican donors with a deeply contentious – activists would say appalling – record on the environment. People who live in Crossett blame the mill for the heedless dumping of cancer-causing chemicals they say pollutes drinking water and shortens already straitened lives.“This is a story that never gets told,” Schneiderman said, “and it takes tremendous commitment to get to the quiet tragedies that are taking place all across America all the time.“The environmental movement really has not done as good a job perhaps as we should have done carrying the essential message that people who are poor and without power are always on the front lines of pollution and environmental justice.”Kottke-Masocco, who describes herself as “a documentary film-maker and an activist”, went to Crossett in 2011 to work on a section of <a data-link="" href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/05/20/koch-brothers-movie_n_5353595.html" name="in body link" id="in body link" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Koch Brothers Exposed</a>, a film by Robert Greenwald. Learning of attempts by local pastor David Bouie to hold the Kochs and Georgia-Pacific to account, she stayed on the story. With Cheryl Slavant, a local environmental activist and “riverkeeper”, Bouie is a key presence in the resulting movie.In some of the film’s most striking passages, Kottke-Masocco and Sardarian show officials from the <a data-link="" href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/epa" name="in body link" id="in body link" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Environmental Protection Agency</a> (EPA) floundering in the face of impassioned pleas from locals, inertia from state government and Georgia-Pacific and the Kochs’ predictable refusal to engage.Company Town was alarming enough when it premiered at the LA film festival in June 2016. In November, Donald Trump was elected president. In office, he appointed former Oklahoma attorney general Scott Pruitt <a data-link="" href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/feb/21/epa-scott-pruitt-trump-environment-economy" name="in body link" id="in body link" style="text-decoration-line: none;">to lead the EPA</a>. Federal environmental regulations have come under <a data-link="" href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/jun/06/climate-change-work-trump-epa" name="in body link" id="in body link" style="text-decoration-line: none;">withering assault from within</a>.“It’s made the film more urgent,” Kottke-Masocco told the Guardian. “It’s made the story more urgent, it’s made Crossett’s issue more important and urgent. We actually scrambled the last two months and updated the title cards in the film to make them more significant.“We want people to understand the gravity of Trump taking office because the EPA is threatened more than ever under Scott Pruitt, a man who as Oklahoma attorney general <a data-link="" href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/01/14/us/politics/document-Pruitt-v-EPA-a-Compilation-of-Oklahoma-14.html?mcubz=0&r=0" name="in body link" id="in body link" style="text-decoration-line: none;">sued the EPA 14 times</a> … this is a person who has a total neglect for the environment and for public health and is now in charge of protecting our citizens. So Crossett is more important than ever.”Schneiderman has pursued the president on fronts including the Trump University fraud case, which was settled for <a data-link="" href="https://ag.ny.gov/press-release/statement-ag-schneiderman-25-million-settlement-agreement-reached-trump-university" name="in body link" id="in body link" style="text-decoration-line: none;">$25m</a>; a lawsuit by <a data-link="" href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/sep/06/daca-states-lawsuit-trump-dreamers-immigration" name="in body link" id="in body link" style="text-decoration-line: none;">15 states</a> over the decision to rescind protection against deportation for young undocumented migrants; and <a data-link="" href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/aug/31/robert-mueller-paul-manafort-investigation-eric-schneiderman" name="in body link" id="in body link" style="text-decoration-line: none;">reported</a> co-ordination with special counsel Robert Mueller in the investigation into links between <a data-link="" href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jun/27/trump-lawyer-jay-sekulow-obamacare-repeal-christian-nonprofit" name="in body link" id="in body link" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Trump aides</a> and Russia.The story of Crossett has been reported in depth by <a data-link="" href="http://www.newsweek.com/2016/04/29/crossett-arkansas-georgia-pacific-factory-pollution-446954.html" name="in body link" id="in body link" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Newsweek</a>, the <a data-link="" href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/a-whistle-blower-accuses-the-kochs-of-poisoning-an-arkansas-town" name="in body link" id="in body link" style="text-decoration-line: none;">New Yorker</a>and other outlets, to whom Georgia-Pacific and Koch Industries have issued strongly worded <a data-link="" href="http://www.kochfacts.com/kf/statement-on-greenwald/" name="in body link" id="in body link" style="text-decoration-line: none;">denials</a>. Company Town has received positive reviews by the <a data-link="" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/07/movies/company-town-review.html?mcubz=1&r=0" name="in body link" id="in body link" style="text-decoration-line: none;">New York Times</a> and the <a data-link="" href="http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/review/company-town-1034890" name="in body link" id="in body link" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Hollywood Reporter</a>.Schneiderman said the film showed what can happen when people with “no power, no money”, like Bouie, Slavant and the whistleblower Dickie Guice, a former Georgia-Pacific safety co-ordinator, range themselves “against the most malevolent, powerful forces in our country … with the courage to stand up and step up”.“To those who say, ‘Oh my goodness, things are so difficult right now,’” he said, “I’ll say that when you see these people, we can all keep going.“The federal government depends on the states, you see in the movie the EPA is very dependent on states to enforce the law. The [federal government] can’t enforce their laws, we see this in <a data-link="" href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/aug/31/federal-judge-blocks-texas-ban-on-sanctuary-cities-in-blow-for-trump" name="in body link" id="in body link" style="text-decoration-line: none;">the sanctuary city fight</a>, they can’t enforce their immigration laws without state and local government.“The filmmakers have, and I say this as a state law enforcement official, captured the way the rich and powerful bend government to their will. And the film sends a powerful message, that we need our state actors to stand up, particularly these days if the federal government is not going to do its job. The state actors are critical.“So this is an incredible story of courage and of wrongdoing but also a story about how we need to take our government back and our country back.”
<a href="http://www.alternet.org/environment/evidence-mounting-koch-industries-paper-plant-poisoning-people-arkansas-video">http://www.alternet.org/environment/evidence-mounting-koch-industries-paper-plant-poisoning-people-arkansas-video</a>he economic pulse of Crossett, a small town of some 5,500 people in west Arkansas, has long been measured through the paper and pulp processing plant owned by the Atlanta-based Georgia-Pacific. A subsidiary of Koch Industries, Georgia-Pacific is one of the world's largest manufacturers of pulp and paper products, including paper towels (like Brawny) and toilet paper (like Angel Soft).A bulwark of the blue-collar community, Georgia-Pacific has provided generations of families with a steady stream of well-paid jobs replete with health packages and retirement plans. The plant in Crossett employs around 1,200 people, over three-quarters of whom are from the town or surrounding Ashley County. Many speculate that without the plant, Crossett would simply wither and die. But others fear that the plant has already been slowly poisoning those who live there for decades.“People are afraid—afraid and scared to say something,” said David Bouie, who worked at the plant for about 10 years, his wife for over 25 years. They live in Crossett, and suffer respiratory and sinus problems, sore throats, nausea and allergies—symptoms, he says, that are shared among many of his neighbors.“They don’t want to be part of something that could see the mill go away,” Bouie, 69, said. “But we don’t want the mill to go away, we just want it to be fixed and to operate within compliance of the law.”According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s <a href="https://www3.epa.gov/enviro/facts/tri/ef-facilities/#/Release/71635GRGPCPAPER" style="text-decoration: none;">Toxic Release Inventory</a>, Georgia Pacific emits approximately 1.5 million pounds of pollutants every year, including highly toxic chemicals like dioxins, formaldehyde and naphthalene. Then there’s the 45 million gallons of wastewater Georgia-Pacific is permitted to release every day....

<h1 class="title">Koch Social Media Policy May Be Unlawful; Employers Still Have Broad Leeway to Limit Employee Speech</h1>

<div class="meta">by <a href="http://www.prwatch.org/users/35275/brendan-fischer" title="View user profile.">Brendan Fischer</a> — October 16, 2012 - 8:41am</div>

<ul>

<li class="vocabulary-2">Topics: <a href="http://www.prwatch.org/topics/us-government/election-2012">Election 2012</a>, <a href="http://www.prwatch.org/topics/corporations">Corporations</a>, <a href="http://www.prwatch.org/topics/democracy">Democracy</a>, <a href="http://www.prwatch.org/topics/politics">Politics</a></li>

</ul>

</div>

<ul>

<li class="vocabulary-9">Projects: <a href="http://www.prwatch.org/projects/alec-exposed">ALEC Exposed</a></li>

</ul>

</div>

<div class="content clearfix"><a class="da2a_button" href="http://www.addtoany.com/share_save?linkurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.prwatch.org%2Fnews%2F2012%2F10%2F11801%2Fkoch-social-media-policy-may-be-unlawful-employers-still-have-broad-leeway-limit-&linkname=Koch%20Social%20Media%20Policy%20May%20Be%20Unlawful%3B%20Employers%20Still%20Have%20Broad%20Leeway%20to%20Limit%20Employee%20Speech" id="da2a_1"><img src="/630aadd8-6448-5ab3-84e8-32854b10973b.png"/> Share this</a>

The Koch Industries policy limiting employee speech on social media may be unlawful in light of recent decisions by the National Labor Relations Board, but employers still have broad leeway to impose their political views on workers and punish those who disagree.

On October 14, Mike Elk at In These Times <a href="http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/14017/koch_industries_sends_45000_employees_pro_romney_mailing" title="reference on reported" target="blank">reported</a> on how Koch Industries sent a mailer to 45,000 employees of its Georgia-Pacific subsidiary urging them to vote for Mitt Romney and other Republicans, warning that if they don't, they "may suffer the consequences." At the same time, the Kochs were limiting employees' speech through a <a href="http://www.inthesetimes.com/Koch/gpsocialmedia.pdf" title="reference on social media policy" target="blank">social media policy</a> that threatened Georgia Pacific workers with disciplinary action or termination if their Facebook posts or tweets "reflect negatively" on the company's reputation or are "disparaging." The policy applies even to social media usage outside of working hours, and Elk reports that the policy has deterred some employees from speaking freely in their online posts.

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<div class="print-breadcrumb"><a href="http://www.alternet.org/">Home</a> > Classic Koch: How California's Prop. 32 Could Enrich Two Billionaires</div>

<div class="byline environment"><a href="http://www.laane.org/frying-pan/">Frying Pan News</a> [1] / By <a href="http://www.alternet.org/authors/matthew-fleischer">Matthew Fleischer</a> [2]</div>

<h1 property="dc:title" datatype="" class="node-title">Classic Koch: How California's Prop. 32 Could Enrich Two Billionaires</h1>

</div>

<div class="story-date">September 21, 2012  |  </div>

On September 14 the Web exploded with news that billionaire industrialists Charles and David Koch had donated $4 million in support of Proposition 32. A San Francisco Chronicle editorial noting the donation labeled the brothers “conservative ideologues” – a moniker often applied to the Kochs. This description, however, gives the Kochs far too much credit for their supposed philosophical purity—particularly as it relates to the Prop. 32 battle.

Despite their reputations as libertarian true believers, the Koch brothers are nothing if not practical businessmen, who have no trouble taking advantage of government subsidies when it bolsters their bottom line. (Koch Industries, for instance, was for years heavily invested in the $6 billion, federally subsidized ethanol industry.) That bottom line runs up and down the state of California, where Koch Industries has hundreds of millions of dollars invested through its subsidiary Georgia-Pacific—a gypsum, pulp paper product and packaging company that operates 11 facilities in California with more than 1,100 employees and $190 million in annual payroll and benefit expenses.

Other Koch subsidiaries, such as Flint Hills Resources—a petrochemical company–stand to make a killing should California reverse its strict carbon emission standards. Koch Industries has an array of powerful lobbyists working for its interests in Sacramento and a nearly decade-long history of major donations to California politicians in support of the Kochs’ business agenda. The brothers’ latest crusade, to pass Prop. 32 and reduce the political voice of unions in California, stands to vastly increase their personal fortunes—at the expense of the rest of us.

For years prior to becoming the piggybank of the conservative movement, Koch Industries quietly channeled money to various California lawmakers through its Georgia-Pacific subsidiary.

In February of 2005, then-California Assemblyman Greg Aghazarian introduced legislation to put a one-year statute of limitations during which people suffering disabilities resulting from asbestos exposure could sue manufacturers. Georgia-Pacific—which for decades used asbestos in its wallboard products–lobbied on the bill’s behalf and subsequently donated to Aghazarian’s reelection campaign in December of 2005, shortly after the Koch’s took control of the company. Georgia-Pacific continued to lobby for the bill throughout 2006, until it was ultimately shelved.

Between 2009 and 2010, Georgia-Pacific funneled donations of $1,000 or more to the campaigns of 25 different California state Senators and Assembly members—including the Howard Jarvis-approved Senator Sam Blakeslee, offshore oil drilling advocate Assemblyman Martin Garrick, and Assemblywoman Diane Harkey, whose <a href="http://votesmart.org/candidate/key-votes/70764/diane-harkey/30/environmental-issues">environmental voting record</a> [3] looks like John Galt’s Christmas list.

The company retains the services of the powerful lobbying firm <a href="http://www.mchughgr.com/ourteam/gavinmchugh.html" target="blank">McHugh</a> [4], <a href="http://www.mchughgr.com/ourteam/dawnkoepke.html" target="blank">Koepke</a> [5] & Associates. The firm spent much of the past few years attempting to gut provisions of California’s Green Chemistry Initiative–a 2008 law protecting California citizens from exposure to toxic industrial chemicals–on behalf of an Orwellian-named consortium of chemical companies (including Georgia-Pacific) called the Green Chemistry Alliance.  see <a href="http://cicc.org/">http://cicc.org/</a> BS

“Frankly, the Green Chemistry Initiative is pretty sensible,” California Sierra Club Director Kathryn Phillips, who helped lobby for the bill, tells Frying Pan News. “It’s important, but it’s not a radical departure. It’s going to be slowly implemented. It’s using a scientifically established lists of toxic chemicals. It’s not pulling new chemicals in. But now that the regulations are on the verge of being adopted they’re pick, pick, picking away at it.”

Georgia-Pacific, incidentally, is registered with the California Secretary of State’s office as a limited liability company (LLC). This means none of its political activity will be hampered by <a href="http://voterguide.sos.ca.gov/pdf/">Prop. 32’s proposed restrictions</a> [6] should the measure pass, as it only “[p]rohibits unions and corporations from contributing directly or indirectly to candidates and candidate-controlled committees.” An LLC is not considered a corporation nor, certainly, a union.

The Kochs’ most conspicuous foray into California politics—prior to their Prop. 32 support –came in 2010, when the Koch Industries subsidiary Flint Hills Resources donated $1 million to <a href="http://crooksandliars.com/karoli/koch-industries-war-california">support Proposition 23</a> [7]. Had voters ratified it, Prop. 23 would have overturned California’s landmark climate change prevention statute, AB 32. Flint Hills didn’t chip in out of climate change denial. The company has a substantial investment in Canadian tar sands oil, whose extraction and consumption creates a Sasquatch-sized carbon footprint. Robust clean emissions standards, Koch Industries complained on its website, “would cripple refiners that rely on heavy crude feedstocks.”

In addition to their attempts to cripple the state’s environmental laws, the Kochs seem to have a keen interest in opening up California’s waters to new offshore drilling. The Koch-backed American Future Fund, which supplied the recent $4 million lump-sum to Prop. 32, is a vociferous <a href="http://www.nctimes.com/news/local/columnists/sherman/article_57f884dc-a4a1-5f5b-98df-a4493b9ff497.html">“drill, baby, drill” backer</a> [8]. In 2008, the group went after Colorado Congressman <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2008/07/24/174097/udall-cuba-drilling/">Mark Udall </a> [9]in a series of ads for supposedly “blocking American energy” by refusing to support opening up protected waters for oil exploration. The pressure appeared to get to Udall, as he ultimately switched his position.

In August of 2008, the Koch-backed FreedomWorks organization also helped fund such <a href="http://exiledonline.com/teagagged-tea-party-protest-silenced-over-organizers-links-to-2008-drill-here-drill-now-astroturf-campaign/">pro-drilling, proto-Tea Party outfits</a> [10] as the Sam Adams Alliance and DontGo Movement. The combined Astroturf efforts of these groups helped convince the U.S. House and Senate to lift longstanding federal restrictions on new offshore oil and gas drilling.

Had the British Petroleum spill in the Gulf of Mexico not occurred in 2010, forcing Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger (a <a href="http://cal-access.ss.ca.gov/Campaign/Committees/Detail.aspx?id=1007775&view=expenditures&session=2005">major recipient</a> [11] of Georgia-Pacific campaign contributions) to rescind his efforts to open up California waters to new oil exploration, there’s a good chance the Koch’s national efforts would have been successful here too.

Now, with lessons of the BP spill two years in hindsight, the idea of offshore drilling in California has resurfaced. Koch Industries recently donated $5,000 to the Congressional campaign of Santa Barbara Republican <a href="http://m.vcstar.com/news/2012/may/24/fundraising-hits-17-million-in-county-race/">Tony Strickland</a> [12]—who, in various campaigns over the years, has <a href="http://votesmart.org/candidate/16765/tony-strickland">routinely advocated</a> [13] opening up waters off the coast of California to <a href="http://articles.latimes.com/2010/may/26/local/la-me-treas-controller-20100526">drilling</a> [14].

Though they don’t yet appear to have their feet in the door financially, there’s no reason to suspect that, with their army of lobbyists at the ready and history of campaign contributions in the state, the Kochs couldn’t maneuver to profit off of California’s offshore oil.

It certainly wouldn’t be the first time Koch Industries took advantage of California’s public resources.

Georgia-Pacific, for instance, <a href="http://articles.latimes.com/2011/aug/24/local/la-me-state-property-20110824">leases public land</a> [15] along the San Joaquin River in Northern California. In 2011, it was discovered that, for years, the understaffed California State Lands Commission failed to monitor and appropriately raise rents on Georgia-Pacific’s lease as well as other public properties under their watch. This error cost taxpayers a cool $8 million. Such are the benefits of small government.

Georgia-Pacific has also taken advantage of taxpayer-funded <a href="http://articles.latimes.com/2009/sep/23/business/fi-toyota23">worker training subsidies</a> [16]provided by California’s Employment Training Panel. Between December of 2005 and December of 2007, Georgia-Pacific received $680,394 in taxpayer subsidies under the ETP program. One could attempt to explain these subsidies as the legacy of the previous owners–the Kochs <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/15/business/15place.html">bought the company</a> [17] for $13 billion in 2005. But in 2009, Georgia-Pacific went back to the taxpayer well, requesting $25,200 to train workers at its San Leandro gypsum paper mill and Antioch wallboard plant.

The Koch brothers are no weekend fishermen when it comes to reeling in legislators and government officials. They are the moneyed heads of a sophisticated and organized political machine that serves to back one thing and one thing only—their profits. Since 2010, the brothers have reportedly sank anywhere from $2.5 to $20 million into developing an advanced <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/nov/07/koch-brothers-database-2012-election">conservative voter database</a> [18] called <a href="http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0612/77453.html">Themis</a> [19]—which, by many press accounts, was crucial in defeating the effort to recall Wisconsin’s Governor Scott Walker.

“Our geo-targeting looks at everything from voting data to Census data to consumer-purchasing information,” Americans for Prosperity President Tim Phillips told USA Todayof Themis last month. “We know their magazine subscriptions. In some cases, we know the websites they prefer to surf.”

This level of detail will help the Kochs maximize efficiency in rallying conservative support for any conceivable California initiative—distinguishing Christian values voters from small-government libertarians and plastering them with targeted political marketing in the blink of an eye.

The Kochs’ massive donation to the Prop. 32 cause was not a principled ideological stand. It was an investment – an extended warranty on their California possessions. It was also a signal that there is money to be made in California, both from its natural resources and from its taxpayers. Should Prop. 32 pass and smother the political voice of a key anti-corporate foe to the Koch agenda, the Kochs and their political influence machine should have little trouble recouping those funds–and then some.

Seen this way, $4 million is a drop in the bucket.

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<div class="tags">See more stories tagged with:

<div class="field-item odd"><a href="http://www.alternet.org/tags/california" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel">california</a> [21],</div>

<div class="field-item even"><a href="http://www.alternet.org/tags/environment-0" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel">environment</a> [22],</div>

<div class="field-item odd"><a href="http://www.alternet.org/tags/proposition-32" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel">proposition 32</a> [23]</div>

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<div class="print-source_url">Source URL: <a href="http://www.alternet.org/environment/classic-koch-how-californias-prop-32-could-enrich-two-billionaires">http://www.alternet.org/environment/classic-koch-how-californias-prop-32-could-enrich-two-billionaires</a></div>

Links:

[1] http://www.laane.org/frying-pan/

[2] http://www.alternet.org/authors/matthew-fleischer

[3] http://votesmart.org/candidate/key-votes/70764/diane-harkey/30/environmental-issues

[4] http://www.mchughgr.com/ourteam/gavinmchugh.html

[5] http://www.mchughgr.com/ourteam/dawnkoepke.html

[6] http://voterguide.sos.ca.gov/pdf/

[7] http://crooksandliars.com/karoli/koch-industries-war-california

[8] http://www.nctimes.com/news/local/columnists/sherman/article_57f884dc-a4a1-5f5b-98df-a4493b9ff497.html

[9] http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2008/07/24/174097/udall-cuba-drilling/

[10] http://exiledonline.com/teagagged-tea-party-protest-silenced-over-organizers-links-to-2008-drill-here-drill-now-astroturf-campaign/

[11] http://cal-access.ss.ca.gov/Campaign/Committees/Detail.aspx?id=1007775&view=expenditures&session=2005

[12] http://m.vcstar.com/news/2012/may/24/fundraising-hits-17-million-in-county-race/

[13] http://votesmart.org/candidate/16765/tony-strickland

[14] http://articles.latimes.com/2010/may/26/local/la-me-treas-controller-20100526

[15] http://articles.latimes.com/2011/aug/24/local/la-me-state-property-20110824

[16] http://articles.latimes.com/2009/sep/23/business/fi-toyota23

[17] http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/15/business/15place.html

[18] http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/nov/07/koch-brothers-database-2012-election

[19] http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0612/77453.html

[20] http://www.alternet.org/tags/koch-0

[21] http://www.alternet.org/tags/california

[22] http://www.alternet.org/tags/environment-0

[23] http://www.alternet.org/tags/proposition-32

[24] http://www.alternet.org/%2Bnew_src%2B

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rs on new film:

He makes a strong circumstantial case. The film brings us to Penn Road in Crossett, Arkansas, a low-income black community where, by all appearances, the residents who haven't already died from cancer are stuck at home, tethered to oxygen tanks. Could all this death and illness have anything to do with the stream of stinking toxic waste water out back oozing downstream from the Koch-owned Georgia-Pacific plant? The residents sure think so. A woman named Dolores Wimberley sobs at the grave of her non-smoking, non-drinking 43-year-old daughter, who died of lung cancer, and says, "I feel that Georgia Pacific and Koch is responsible for my daughter’s death."

Koch Industries vehemently <a href="http://www.kochfacts.com/kf/category/brave-new-foundation/">denies any responsibility</a> for the cancer deaths in Crossett and touts its environmental record as "exemplary." As <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2011/03/01/147376/koch-polluter-bailout">ThinkProgress </a>and <a href="http://articles.latimes.com/2011/feb/06/nation/la-na-koch-brothers-20110206">others</a> have documented, it is not: Koch Industries has been named one of the <a href="http://www.peri.umass.edu/toxic_press/">top ten worst polluters </a>in the country and found criminally liable in more than one pollution-related case, including one involving the discharge of (carcinogenic) benzene. And, wouldn't you know, the company has lobbied hard to prevent the E.P.A. from classifying formaldehyde, produced in huge quantities by none other than Georgia-Pacific, as a "known carcinogen" in humans.

Read more: <a href="http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/national-affairs/the-koch-brothers-exposed-20120420#ixzz1shgVC4o1" style="">http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/national-affairs/the-koch-brothers-exposed-20120420#ixzz1shgVC4o1</a>

=

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carcinogens <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/12/arkansas-koch-industries-plant-high-rates-of-cancer_n_1007148.html?utm_campaign=101311&utm_medium=email&utm_source=Alert-green&utm_content=FullStory">http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/12/arkansas-koch-industries-plant-high-rates-of-cancer_n_1007148.html?utm_campaign=101311&utm_medium=email&utm_source=Alert-green&utm_content=FullStory</a>

Everyone in the city calls it 'the crud,'" said David Bouie in an interview with The Huffington Post. "When you mention 'the crud,' everybody knows it's the crud that's coming from the mill that causes people to get sick."

Behind closed doors, Crossett doctors will acknowledge their patients are suffering adverse consequences from air and water pollution, David Bouie told HuffPost. But when Bouie asked them to put that in writing, the doctors refused.

In an industry-run town, Kottke explained, people are ostracized for speaking out. They are watched and followed. "Georgia-Pacific security will stroll down the street -- something I saw first hand when I was there," said Kottke. Of the silencing effect she added, "I think it's fear, that's what I gathered. When I was behind closed doors, it was pretty profound how open they were. It's at a point where they're ready to talk."

<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgia-Pacific">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgia-Pacific</a>

<h2>Selected brands</h2>

<ul>

<li>Angel Soft toilet paper</li>

<li>Brawny paper towels</li>

<li>Dixie plates, bowls, napkins and cups</li>

<li>Mardi Gras napkins and towels</li>

<li>Quilted Northern toilet paper</li>

<li>Soft 'n Gentle toilet paper</li>

<li>Sparkle napkins</li>

<li>Vanity fair napkins</li>

<li>Zee napkins</li>

</ul>

<h2>[<a title="Edit section: Environmental record" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Georgia-Pacific&action=edit&section=4">edit</a>] Environmental record</h2>

Georgia-Pacific publicly reports on its environmental performance through its Environmental and Social Responsibility report which is available on its web site.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgia-Pacific#cite_note-3">[4]</a> Based on year 2000 data,<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgia-Pacific#cite_note-4">[5]</a> researchers at the Political Economy Research Institute of the <a title="University of Massachusetts" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Massachusetts">University of Massachusetts</a> named Georgia-Pacific as the fifteenth-largest corporate producer of <a title="Air pollution" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_pollution">air pollution</a> in the <a title="United States" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States">United States</a>. In that year, Georgia-Pacific facilities released more than 22,000,000 pounds of toxic chemicals into the air.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgia-Pacific#cite_note-5">[6]</a> Georgia-Pacific has also been linked to some of the United States' worst <a title="Toxic waste" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxic_waste">toxic waste</a> sites.[<a title="Wikipedia:Citation needed" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Citation_needed">citation needed</a>]

Like all large manufacturers, each year the <a title="United States Environmental Protection Agency" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Environmental_Protection_Agency">U.S. Environmental Protection Agency</a> (EPA) requires Georgia-Pacific to report publicly quantities of certain chemicals that facilities release into the air, water and onto land. For the most recent reporting period – 2006 (as of Spring 2008) – the company showed a 12 percent decrease in these releases from 2005. From 2000 to 2006, Georgia-Pacific has reduced its total releases and transfers of these specified compounds by 26 percent.

In 1995, the company drew criticism for allegedly pressuring the <a title="Senate Judiciary Committee" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Senate_Judiciary_Committee" class="mw-redirect">U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee</a> to approve legislation that would allow Georgia-Pacific to "avoid installing pollution gear at many of its plants."<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgia-Pacific#cite_note-6">[7]</a> In 1996, Georgia-Pacific agreed to pay for at least US$26,000,000 in environmental measures and $6,000,000 in fines to settle allegations that particle emissions from its facilities endangered people and crops in the southeastern United States.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgia-Pacific#cite_note-7">[8]</a>

Georgia-Pacific is also involved in several <a title="Environmental remediation" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_remediation">remediation sites</a>, many of which were <a title="Landfills" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landfills" class="mw-redirect">landfills</a> used by other manufacturers, municipalities and other businesses, and individuals. Two of the primary remediation sites - the <a title="Fox River (Wisconsin)" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fox_River_%28Wisconsin%29">Fox River</a> in Wisconsin and <a title="Kalamazoo River" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalamazoo_River">Kalamazoo River</a> in Michigan - involve the cleanup of <a title="Polychlorinated biphenyl" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polychlorinated_biphenyl">PCBs</a>.

Many years ago, GP predecessor companies and others recycled wastepaper, including <a title="Carbonless paper" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbonless_paper" class="mw-redirect">carbonless paper</a>, into other paper products. At the time, carbonless paper was made with a chemical containing PCBs. The PCBs were washed from the paper and discharged in the mills' wastewater to the rivers.

In 2007, the EPA announced legal agreements among the itself, <a title="Michigan" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michigan">Michigan</a>, Georgia-Pacific, and Millennium Holdings requiring the companies to clean up an estimated $21,000,000 worth of environmental damage to the Plainwell Impoundment Area. Another settlement required an additional $15,000,000 of environmental work on the <a title="Kalamazoo Superfund Site" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalamazoo_Superfund_Site">Kalamazoo River Superfund Site</a>.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgia-Pacific#cite_note-8">[9]</a>

Georgia Pacific is the world's largest recycler of paper waste.[<a title="Wikipedia:Citation needed" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Citation_needed">citation needed</a>]

<h2>[<a title="Edit section: References" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Georgia-Pacific&action=edit&section=5">edit</a>] References</h2>

<li id="cite_note-0"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgia-Pacific#cite_ref-0">^</a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://nndb.net/company/779/000117428/" class="external text">"Crown-Zellerbach"</a>. Notable Names Database. Soylent Communications. 2009. <a rel="nofollow" href="http://nndb.net/company/779/000117428/" class="external free">http://nndb.net/company/779/000117428/</a>. Retrieved 2010-02-04.<span title="ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Abook&rft.genre=bookitem&rft.btitle=Crown-Zellerbach&rft.atitle=Notable+Names+Database&rft.date=2009&rft.pub=Soylent+Communications&rft_id=http%3A%2F%2Fnndb.net%2Fcompany%2F779%2F000117428%2F&rfr_id=info:sid/en.wikipedia.org:Georgia-Pacific" class="Z3988"> </li>

<li id="cite_note-1"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgia-Pacific#cite_ref-1">^</a> Koch Industries newsroom</li>

<li id="cite_note-2"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgia-Pacific#cite_ref-2">^</a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.gp.com/newsroom/newsreleases/1_11_10.html" class="external free">http://www.gp.com/newsroom/newsreleases/1_11_10.html</a></li>

<li id="cite_note-3"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgia-Pacific#cite_ref-3">^</a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.gp.com/aboutus/csrr/environment/performance.html" class="external text">GP Environmental Performance</a></li>

<li id="cite_note-4"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgia-Pacific#cite_ref-4">^</a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.peri.umass.edu/Technical-Notes.264.0.html" class="external text">Political Economy Research Institute Toxic 100 Corporate Toxics Information Project Technical Notes</a> retrieved 12 Nov 2007</li>

<li id="cite_note-5"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgia-Pacific#cite_ref-5">^</a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.peri.umass.edu/Toxic-100-Table.265.0.html" class="external text">Political Economy Research Institute</a></li>

<li id="cite_note-6"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgia-Pacific#cite_ref-6">^</a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=990CE6D71139F932A15756C0A963958260" class="external text">"Tall Timber and the EPA," New York Times, May 21, 1995</a></li>

<li id="cite_note-7"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgia-Pacific#cite_ref-7">^</a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9A00E6D91F39F93AA25754C0A960958260" class="external text">"U.S. and Georgia-Pacific Settle Environmental Case," New York Times, July 19, 1996</a></li>

<li id="cite_note-8"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgia-Pacific#cite_ref-8">^</a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://yosemite.epa.gov/opa/admpress.nsf/4b779454038214c1852572a000651fe2/7d33aaa01e7959bb85257290004fcd4c%21OpenDocument" class="external text">Environmental Protection Agency</a></li>

</ol>

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Koch Industries is also a major polluter. During the 1990s, its faulty pipelines were responsible for more than 300 oil spills in five states, prompting a landmark penalty of $35 million from the <a title="Environmental Protection Agency" href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Environmental_Protection_Agency" class="mw-redirect">Environmental Protection Agency</a> (EPA). In Minnesota, it was fined an additional $8 million for discharging oil into streams. During the months leading up to the 2000 presidential elections, the company faced even more liability, in the form of a 97-count federal indictment charging it with concealing illegal releases of 91 metric tons of benzene, a known carcinogen, from its refinery in Corpus Christi, Texas. Koch Industries was ranked number 10 on the list of Toxic 100 Air Polluters by the <a title="Political Economy Research Institute" href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Political_Economy_Research_Institute">Political Economy Research Institute</a> in March, 2010. <a title="http://www.peri.umass.edu/toxic_index/" rel="nofollow" href="http://www.peri.umass.edu/toxic_index/" class="external autonumber">[1][2]</a>

In a study released in the spring of 2010, the University of Massachusetts at Amherst’s Political Economy Research Institute named Koch Industries one of the United States' top ten air polluters. <a title="" href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Koch_Industries#cite_note-10">[11]</a>

<a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Koch_Industries">http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Koch_Industries</a>

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wsj

<a href="http://blogs.wsj.com/environmentalcapital/2008/02/12/georgia-pacific-vs-the-tree-huggers/">http://blogs.wsj.com/environmentalcapital/2008/02/12/georgia-pacific-vs-the-tree-huggers/</a>

==

Has Koch Industries’ investment in Marco Rubio paid off?

By Kyle Daly | 03.14.11 | 1:23 pm

http://washingtonindependent.com/106351/has-koch-industries-investment-in-marco-rubio-paid-off

On Friday, The American Independent reported that Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) received more Koch Industries money than any other candidate for U.S. Senate in the 2010 election, and many of his other major contributors have personal and professional ties to the Koch brothers as well. So how have Rubio’s backers fared so far in terms of getting a return on their investment?

As far as introducing new legislation, Rubio has been fairly quiet. So far, he has been responsible for one piece of legislation, an amendment to an air traffic control bill that would prevent the expansion of flight itineraries in countries that sponsor terrorism. Since becoming a senator in January, Rubio has voted in opposition of the implementation of health care reform through a number of resolutions and amendments, and has voted for extending provisions of the PATRIOT Act and blocking Transportation Security Administration employees from collective bargaining (of course, the involvement of the Koch brothers in the national fight over collective bargaining is well documented). That’s the extent of his U.S. Senate voting record, but he’s been vocal about his support for other bills, and it’s there that his benefit to Koch Industries comes into focus.

Koch Industries has three major operations in Florida: Georgia-Pacific, Flint Hills Resources and Koch Chemical Technology Group. Of those, the paper company Georgia-Pacific has come into the most heated conflict with environmental regulations. Flint Hills is an oil refinery operation that has been fined by the Environmental Protection Agency for violations of the Clean Air Act in the past, though it was also commended by the EPA in 2005 for cutting emissions. Koch Chemical Technology primarily makes pollution control equipment that can be used to ensure compliance with EPA regulations.

Rubio has stated his opposition to cap-and-trade regulations that would reward companies for limiting emissions and tax those that don’t. Cap and trade could have a major impact on the Flint Hills operation in Rubio’s backyard, but it could have even larger repercussions for Koch Industries outfits in other states. Koch Industries has spent hundreds of millions in the past in fines for EPA violations and costs incurred in bringing factories up to emissions standards.

And as a pitched battle continues to heat up in Florida over Georgia-Pacific’s objections to EPA water standards, Rubio has made known his opposition to the same. The sugar conglomerate Flo-Sun, another major backer of Rubio’s campaign, has also had its own battles with the EPA over water pollution standards. Rubio has couched his opposition to regulations in terms of job creation, but opponents have argued that failing to enact environment regulations could ultimately cost jobs for Florida in some of its flagship industries (more on that later).

It’s unclear how Rubio’s constituents feel about his vigorous opposition to EPA regulation, as no polls have been conducted by an independent body to find out. The only poll available is one showing 68 percent of Floridians and climbing oppose EPA water regulations; however, the poll simply asked if Floridians would oppose water quality regulations if they resulted in a $700 increase in the average home water bill. That number was based on industry estimates of industrial wastewater regulation costs that the EPA has disputed.

In November, the Florida Independent obtained an internal email from Phil Coram, a deputy director of water resource management with the Florida Department of Environmental Protection. Coram stated that industry estimates were overblown because they were based on the wrong assumption that all wastewater sites would have to comply with regulations; that they left out the fact that many companies would have cheaper options than expensive conversions for managing their wastewater; and that “some of their math is wrong.” This is coming from within a state agency that has itself been accused of kowtowing to industry interests.

On Rubio’s own site, he uses a Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services figure stating that the wastewater regulations in question would cost over $1.1 billion annually. Such an annual cost, though a great deal higher than EPA estimates, would result in an annual water bill increase of around $157 if divided evenly among all households in Florida — far lower than $700, but even the lower figure doesn’t account for the fact that industrial facilities use a lot more water than individuals, nor does it account for the vast number of seasonal households in Florida whose owners live elsewhere for large parts of the year. Indeed, the EPA figures reported by the St. Johns Riverkeeper may not be far off: an increase more on the order of $40 to $71 a year for the average taxpayer.

Meanwhile, the Florida Independent today reports that failing to implement wastewater regulations would result in a proliferation of toxic algae that would have devastating effects. The brunt of these effects would be felt by individuals living near waterways and by small businesses in the food, hospitality and tourism industries that stake their livelihoods on the integrity of Florida’s environment.

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