Monday, May 20, 2013

David Koch Expose: How He Tips at Christmas

Last fall, public television ran a documentary on the rich in NYC called, "Park Avenue". I haven't seen the film but it appears to be a left wing hate piece about capitalism, with a serious failure to differentiate between crony capitalists and decent, hardworking, free market capitalists.

That said, a good piece of the documentary appears to focus on David Koch. Jane Mayer writes:
Among the wealthiest residents of 740 Park is David Koch, the billionaire industrialist, who, with his brother Charles, owns Koch Industries, a huge energy-and-chemical conglomerate[...] A large part of the film, however, subjects the Kochs to tough scrutiny. “Nobody’s money talks louder than David Koch’s,” the narrator, Gibney, says, describing him as a “right-wing oil tycoon” whose company had to pay what was then “the largest civil penalty in the E.P.A.’s history” for its role in more than thirty oil spills in 2000. At one point, a former doorman—his face shrouded in shadow, to preserve his anonymity—says that when he “started at 740” his assumption was that “come around to Christmastime I’m going to get a thousand from each resident. You know, because they are multibillionaires. But it’s not that way.” He continues, “These guys are businessmen. They know what the going rate is—they’re not going to give you anything more than that. The cheapest person over all was David Koch. We would load up his trucks—two vans, usually—every weekend, for the Hamptons . . . multiple guys, in and out, in and out, heavy bags. We would never get a tip from Mr. Koch. We would never get a smile from Mr. Koch. Fifty-dollar check for Christmas, too—yeah, I mean, a check! At least you could give us cash.”
The documentary resulted in Koch leaving the board of the New York public television station WNET, which aired the film.

Here's a trailer.


3 comments:

  1. If that's the best they could against the Koch's than the documentary is going to be lame.

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  2. Just attempted to watch this and gave up after about 40 minutes (valiant effort I must say). Synopsis: Koch, Paul Ryan and other "libertarians" are evil because they want to reduce taxes and remove regulations.

    The word crony is never uttered and no true libertarians (Ron Paul anyone?) are never mentioned.

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