Documents Shine New Light on Koch Brothers’ Delightful Efforts to Abolish the Department of Energy

A scheme to abolish the Department of Energy (DOE) helped spur a failed 1980 Libertarian Party presidential bid — and in the process laid the groundwork for Charles and David Koch's powerful network of influence — as documents from a newly published archive show.

The documents in the new KochDocs.org archive include a relatively little-noticed column penned by fossil fuel industrialist Charles Koch for the Libertarian Review in August 1977, in which Charles, who had served as a member of President Carter’s energy task force in 1976, argued against Carter’s energy policy, writing that the “only ‘certainty’ to be associated with governmental planning is that it will not work, will tend to produce results opposite to those intended, and will doom any substantial private long-range planning in energy development.”

Documents Shine New Light on Koch Brothers’ Delightful Efforts to Abolish the Department of Energy Koch%20and%20Clark

Documents Shine New Light on Koch Brothers’ Delightful Efforts to Abolish the Department of Energy Koch%20and%20Clark

Within three years, the Energy Department had been established by federal law — and its abolishment had become a central plank of the Libertarian Party’s 1980 presidential campaign, which featured Ed Clark as its presidential candidate and Koch Industries’ David Koch as his running-mate.

“There’s nothing wrong with America’s energy problems that deregulated, decontrolled private enterprise can’t cure,” a Clark campaign ad published on May 5, 1980 proclaimed.

“One of my first priorities as President would be to abolish the Department of Energy,” the ad quoted Clark as saying.

The documents shine new light not only on the Kochs’ early opposition to the formation of the Department of Energy but also on their evolution from direct participation in politics to secretive behind-the-scenes funders of the American political right.

“That election also handed the Kochs their first political setback, driving them to rethink their approach to libertarian ideas,” The New York Times reported in 2014. “Instead of replacing the Republican Party, they have helped to profoundly reshape it.”

More: https://www.desmogblog.com/2019/08/07/documents-shine-new-light-koch-brothers-early-efforts-abolish-department-energy

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Documents Shine New Light on Koch Brothers’ Delightful Efforts to Abolish the Department of Energy

Documents Shine New Light on Koch Brothers’ Delightful Efforts to Abolish the Department of Energy

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