September 20, 2019 • 52 mins
When philanthropist, business magnate and political activist David Koch passed away, the media scrambled to address his legacy - but what is that legacy, exactly? Join Ben and Matt as they explore the life of David Koch, and the bizarre, insidious ways the political engine he helped create still welds enormous influence on the U.S. after his demise.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hello, welcome
(00:24):
back to the show. My name is Matt Nol isn't
here today, but he'll be back shortly. They call me Ben.
We are joined as always with our super producer Paul
Mission Controlled decond. Most importantly, you are you. You are here,
and that makes this stuff they don't want you to know.
Thank you so much for tuning in, fellow conspiracy realists.
(00:47):
Today's episode is is a bit of a retrospective, but
it involves a bit of the future as well. And
this episode may be divisive to some of our listeners.
We always hope our episodes are divisive. That means we're
doing something right. Yeah. Ultimately, this episode is the It's
(01:07):
about the line between freedom and wealth and what that
means is freedom? Wealth is wealth? Freedom? What are we
all struggling to do here with our jobs and trying
to prosper Like, what's the end of the goal. So
as we as we explore today's strange tale, as we
(01:28):
dig through the rabbit hole, peel back layers of the
figurative onion. We'd like to hear from you, as long
time listeners know you do not have to wait till
the end of the episode to let us know your thoughts.
If the spirit so moves you, you can pause and
call us directly. We are one eight three three st
d w y t K. So keep that in mind. Uh.
(01:50):
And there there may be some things that feel a
little bit high level because we are exploring the life
and times and the long shadow of a man named
David Coke ko c H. Who is David Coke? Great question?
Here are the facts. David Hamiltons Coke was born on
(02:11):
May three in Wichita, Kansas. His dad, Fred Coke fred C. Coke,
was a chemical engineer and his paternal grandfather a fellow
in whom Harry Coke was a Dutch immigrants. He was
a newspaperman. He was one of the founding shareholders of
a railway interest now David Hamilton's. Coke was the third
(02:35):
of four sons. He had two older brothers, Charles Coke
and Frederick Coke, and then he had a fourth brother,
This is an interesting story. Had a fourth brother named
Bill Bill is technically the youngest of the four Coke Boys.
He was born nineteen minutes after David. Yes, they're twins.
That's right, um, And then we just can kind of
(02:58):
continue following Dave It's life as he attended Deerfield Academy.
This is in Massachusetts. Is a it's a prep school. Uh.
It's a very nice place, has a very good reputation. Right.
Deer Field Academy is a gathering place for quite a
few influential people or the children of influential people who
(03:20):
will go on to inherit their parents position. People like
King Abdullah the second Al Hussein of Jordan's Rockefellers go there,
and of course cokes go there. There you go. And
another place that highly influential people go is where David
ended up. Next, he went to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
(03:44):
and there he earned a Bachelor's of Arts and Sciences.
Then he went on to earn a Masters of Science
in chemical engineering. Both of those he was He's a
tall guy who was a tall guy about uh six
and afy tall, and he was known for being pretty
good at basketball. During his time, he averaged twenty one
(04:06):
points per game over the course of three years. I'm
throwing in this fact to humanize him a little bit.
So now with that and he was pretty good. Yeah,
just him as a person. Let's talk about his career.
Coke joined Coke Industries, the family business, working for his
older brother Charles. David started out as a technical services
(04:29):
manager and nine years later nine he becomes the president
of the company's engineering division and it's renamed Chemical Technology Group.
All the while, ever since the death of the patriarch,
fred S. Cooke, there's been growing tension between the four brothers.
(04:49):
This came to a head in June of three when
Frederick and Bill, the younger twin and the older brother,
when their shares of the company were bought out for
one point one billion dollars. And this bitter feud has
a lot of stuff going on, like they didn't speak
for years after the conclusion of this stuff. Uh. The
(05:12):
family felt betrayed by Bill, who essentially blew the whistle
on some sketchy behavior by Coke Industries and Native American land.
And Bill is the youngest of the two twins, David
nineteen minutes younger, and all three of them attempted to
blackmail their brother Frederick based on what they suspected about
his sexual orientation. Yeah, so the money change the family
(05:38):
dynamics anyway, without going too far into the Shakespearean tension
between the siblings. Long story short. By two thousand and ten,
David and Charles Coke controlled the company. Each of them
owned forty two per cent of Coke Industries. Wow, that's
(05:59):
really high. It's a high number in uh, something as
high stakes as Coke Industries. UM. And then on June five,
two thousand eighteen, were jumping quite a bit ahead here,
but David Coke announced he was going to retire from that,
from his position within the company. UM, but he was
he would end up staying on a little bit as
(06:19):
like kind of a from two eighteen well into two nineteen,
as kind of a ceremonial position within the company. But
he was officially stepping down due to health concerns because
he had cancer. That's correct. Yes, David Coke was diagnosed
with prostate cancer way back in nine. Like anyone who
(06:41):
is diagnosed with something's terrible as prostate cancer, he definitely
has the motivation to pursue every possible avenue of treatment.
Unlike many people diagnosed with prostate cancer, he also has
the means to pursue these treatments. He goes through uh chemotherapy,
he goes through radiation treatments, he gets surgery. This all
(07:03):
fails to completely eliminate the cancer, and it keeps returning.
And so it comes to pass that, after a long
battle with prostate cancer, David Coke passes away in New
York on Southampton, New York on auguste He's seventy nine
years old, and according to the official statements of his
(07:26):
loved ones, his relatives in the press, there is no
definitive cause of death that was cited yet, but you know,
most people are reasonably assuming or speculating that this was
somehow related to his ongoing cancer battle. Sure, at this
level of wealth, the Coke estate, just David Coke's part
(07:50):
of it can function in many ways as though the
person who helmed it is still very much alive. The
institutions and systems that David Coke helped create pass away
when he passed away. But what sort of systems did
he create? How much money are we talking? Let's take
a break for a word from our sponsor, and assuming
(08:12):
that Coke Industries doesn't buy us in the next in
the next few minutes, let's continue to explore the story.
And we're back and we are also now owned by
Coke Industries, who are also owned by Illumination Global Unlimited.
(08:34):
So we're straight. Everything's fine, We're back in the family.
But what is Coke Industries? This is how we this
is the best way for us to answer the questions
about wealth. Here's the gist. The thing we call Coke
Industries today began way back in ninety as the Wood
River Oil and Refining Company. This was co founded by
Fred C. Coke. In nineteen sixty seven, in honor of
(08:58):
Fred Coke, it was renamed Coke Industries since then, that's
been the shorthand way to refer to this enormous conglomerate.
And when we say enormous conglomerate, we're talking about a
disquietly number of things. Yeah. Yeah. According to the Securities
(09:19):
and Exchange Commission, Coke Industries is what you would call
a private conglomerate. They've got all kinds of different things
and companies that they control, and uh, everything from petroleum
and chemicals, the production of that and the the distribution
of those chemicals through pipelines. There's some ranching going involved.
(09:42):
There's some chemical chemical tech occurring here. There's all kinds
of commodity training, minerals. How do you get them, where
do you find them? What do you do with those minerals?
Capital markets and fibers. Fibers are in everything you guys, Uh,
financial services, you've got paper, the pulp that you need
to build the paper, as well as business development, which
(10:04):
is interesting in its own right because that's how you
get a lot of the other companies to become or
come to fruition right exactly. Today, Coke Industries is the
second largest private company in the United States. What's number one,
you may ask. It's a company called Cargill, which we
can save for a different episode. Coke Industries has an
(10:25):
annual revenue of a hundred and ten billion dollars and
it has around a hundred employees. So two things about
those numbers, Uh, that one ten billion dollars is indicates
a growth trend because in it was a hundred billions,
So they went up by tim bill and those one
(10:46):
d and twenty employees. Those that number may not factor
in contractors, freelancers, so on. So depending on how we
define employee, that number could be a little higher. It's
also active in sixty countries, which means that it is
probably selling something to you. You have almost certainly boughts
(11:12):
or used a product created by Coke Industries, because in short,
they sell a ton of stuff. Oh, you've certainly encountered them.
I remember ages ago when we were doing this show,
we did a check up to see what Coke Industries owned,
and we listened off some things, including things like if
(11:33):
you're just walking through a grocery store, let's say, if
you're in the United States or maybe in another country,
you may you may see things like quilted Northern, or
soft and gentle or brawny, maybe angel soft sparkle. Do
any of those catch catch your ear because it's probably
a paper product that you used to clean something or
(11:54):
wipe your hands on. Uh, there's a lot of those.
Mardi Grass. Another one Dixie, as in ups from Dixie.
They also own Georgia Pacific, which is the largest manufacturer
of plywood and core gated boxes and containers in the US. UH.
They produce all sorts of textiles and plastics to the
(12:17):
world's largest producer of lycra. They produced stain Master, solar Max,
all of Polly shield, oxy clear. They make gasoline, diesel,
jet fuel, asphalts, fracking chemicals, ethylene. I'd just like to
point out here that they own a lot of the
raw materials that end up becoming a lot of the
(12:38):
other products. That's kind of what Coke Industries does here
when you're talking about, you know, getting crude oil to
then process for a whole bunch of different kinds of
textiles and plastics, right, or you're talking about Georgia Pacific
getting all the wood that you need to create all
of the other paper products and other things like that. Um,
it's it's smart business, I guess, like essentially controlling, um,
(13:03):
controlling the processes which you need to make an end thing.
Right of production? Yeah, owning thanks, owning the means of production.
They own the means of production. Yes, got it. Uh,
but yeah, it's it. You can really see it illustrated here.
And it's no secret that after a certain threshold of scale,
(13:24):
whether we're talking or whether we're talking fame, infamy or
just finance, right after this certain threshold, any entity becomes
inherently controversial. So it's it's true, right, It follows logically
that Coke Industries has had a troubled legal history, congressional investigations,
(13:46):
d o J, consent decrees, civil lawsuits, felony convictions, and
so on. One of the biggest controversies that's getting a
lot of attention now, especially from politicians on the left
side of US politics, will be the active role that
coke industries plays in pollution and climate change denial. Yeah. Again,
(14:09):
like you said, Matt, what's good for business versus what's
bad for business? Yeah. Absolutely, And in the end, there's
there are so many profits to protect for the people
that run this massive industry or it's not even industry,
is that they conglomerate. Um, there's so many moving parts.
You you have to or you're at least incentivized to
(14:30):
deregulate as much as you possibly can and do what
you have to do to make sure that those profits
go up by three percent each year. But they've had,
you know, as part of their legal troubles in the past.
If you go back to you get a really interesting
look into a specific thing that they were accused of doing.
(14:50):
And then I found out that they were doing where
they were apparently stealing oil from Native American reservations within
the United States. Yeah. Yeah, this comes from an excellent
book called cooke Land by an author named Christopher Leonard,
in which he traces the twist and turns of this
(15:12):
nefarious tale. So, as you said, this stuff hits the
fan in November, and it's the result of an investigation
that was launched in October of seven by the Senate
Select Committee on Indian Affairs. They were inspired by a
series of articles in the paper the Arizona Republic that said, hey,
(15:33):
big oil is stealing oil from Native Americans who own
these various oil wells. Here's how the scam worked. Companies
would pick up crude oil from the wells and they
would take it to the quote unquote marketplace. But when
they did this, they falsified their receipts, their invoices to
make it look like they had a picked up less
(15:55):
oil than they actually did. So they were getting a
big they were skimming off the top or b that
the oil was of a lower quality than it actually was,
therefore worth less on the marketplace. Therefore we're paying less.
Look at that and throughout this whole controversy, because it
was a controversy for for the cokes and for coke industries. Uh,
(16:17):
this is when David really becomes and the Coke brothers
I guess as a whole or as a duo. Uh.
It gets them and meshed within the politics. The like
forward facing politics, right, this is a big stage for them. Yeah.
So the company later admits in court that it collects
(16:38):
about ten million dollars worth of crude oil each year
without paying for it over the course of this scam.
And this is just one illustration of what what big
businesses do. It's important to say that Coke Industries is
by no means unique in this sort of thing, and
(16:58):
that's why countries and state actors have legislative mechanisms in
place that are, in theory meant to prevent these kinds
of shenanigans. But despite the ongoing controversies, this family business
made David Coke an even wealthier man. And we have
some we have some stats about his uh, about his
(17:22):
his position in financial society. At the time of his passing. Yes,
according to Forbes, he was number eleven on the list
of wealthiest men on the planet. He had a total
asset amount of forty two point two billion dollars. Again,
according to Forbes, UH, and he had an estimated net
worth of da fifty point five billion dollars. And let's
(17:48):
pause here for a second, Matt, because that is a
huge number. We're throwing a lot of huge numbers out here,
and that makes it a very easy number to glide
over without fully understanding or rocking it. There's a guy
named Sam par writing for a website called The Hustle,
and he did a great walk through if I've combined
a couple of different things here to make it. To
(18:10):
help us imagine just one billion dollars in our head.
All right, let's start with a one dollar bill. Pretty cool, right,
Imagine it's a crisp new one straight from the ment.
Now stack a hundred of those together. This makes a
stack about an inch high. That's ten thousand dollars. And
when you look at it, it's just the stack. It's
(18:30):
not that impressive. If you add enough stacks together, you'll
get a million dollars. Also, weirdly enough, not as impressive
as it may seem in film, because when you stack
it that way, when you add it up that way,
it's not enough to fill up an average briefcase, I mean,
like a carry on for a plane. It's still a
lot of money, and a billion is much different. A
(18:52):
billion gets us into the realm of imaginary scenarios. Right.
So let's say you save one dollars a day. That's awesome,
great job doing that. It will take you ten million
days around a little over twenty seven thousand years to
(19:12):
save up one billion dollars. Wow. And well, also if
you try and visualize I remember seeing videos with this before,
we try and visualize what a billion dollars looks like.
So if you were going to do that, if you're
gonna look at it, it would be a four square
mile area or what would be the equivalent of two thousand,
(19:34):
five hundred and fifty five acres of just money. Yeah,
if you put if you took that billion and made
it one dollar bills, right, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, you
would also have more money than several entire countries. You
would be you know, you would have more than their
g d P for instance. Oh but let's talk about
(19:55):
what you can buy with a billion bucks? Okay, yeah,
with just one million dollars per the A j C.
You can buy six point seven f thirty five a
fighter jets. Oh yeah, you can also if you bargain
a little bit, get into sports. Oh yeah, you can
get a NFL team for a billion bucks, Oh for sure,
you can almost almost by Let's say I don't know
(20:20):
a palace. Yeah, Buckingham Palace is just one point four
billion dollars. After all, these are all crazy things to buy, right,
So that's a billion dollars. David Coke as an individual,
as one guy, directly controlled enough wealth to do this
fifty times over. Yeah, and remember that's assets and money,
(20:43):
you know, cash, money, accounts, all those things, all of
it together, um, in property in particular, it becomes very important.
So what to do with all this scratch, all this cheddar,
all these gains, this real superpower, genuine superpower, this very
real version of time travel, which is a nice, nice
(21:05):
easter egg there for some of our long time listeners,
well done that. David Coke is a man of principle
as he saw it, and he his most well known
spending fits into two broad categories, first philanthropy and second politics.
In terms of philanthropy, we see a I guess well
(21:28):
and yeah, well intentioned but imperfect person. He's been on
the Chronicle of Philanthropy's list of the world's top fifty
philanthropists consistently since two thousand six. In a two thousand
thirteen interview with The Wall Street Journal, he called himself
a sugar daddy for charity, his words, not ours. He
(21:50):
said he had a moral obligation to help. He said
he preferred to donate his money to outstanding institutions rather
than use it on buying a bigger house or a
fifty million dollar painting. And again is a direct quote
from him. I get it. That feels like the right
thing to do. Uh. He conducted most of his visible
philanthropy through his foundation, named the David H. Coke Charitable Foundation. Uh.
(22:15):
They save the money on creative names and pass those
savings to you. I guess you've probably heard that mentioned
a couple of times in passing from you. Know, this
is brought to you and thanks thanks to impart by
that foundation. And they're doing good work. They're they're giving, Uh,
they're giving to institutions and causes that are making pioneering breakthroughs,
(22:37):
especially in the medical space. Yes, and sometimes it is
difficult to square these things when depending on what you
think about David Coke or the Koch Brothers. Um knowing
that this is a real side of him and his
spending and his wealth and his family's wealth. Um, this
charitable side, it is real, and it's you can't deny it. Well,
(23:00):
I have some I don't want to call him hot takes,
but I have some observations on that. Well, we'll get
to him in a second. Right, It's you're right, Matt,
objectively not bad. So he gave over a billion dollars
to charity throughout his life, so over or right around
one of his assets he donated to things like the
(23:24):
Lincoln Center of the American Museum of Natural History. In
terms of medical causes, he started the Coke Institute for
Integrative Cancer Research at M I T. New York Presbyterian Hospital,
M D. Anderson Cancer Center, JOHNS. Hopkins, Stanford University Hospital,
Mount Sinai, the Hospital for Special Surgery. Good stuff, great stuff,
(23:47):
saved lives, right in arguably. Here's the thing though, Here's
the thing that some of his critics will point out,
and that I have to admit, has some sand People
who people who argue that Coke industries business practices have
raised the rates of cancer in their communities. Right, people
(24:09):
who have never smoked, never drank, gay lung cancer left
and right, they say, you know why is if this
guy really wants to fight cancer, why doesn't he change
what his company is doing? Why is he why is
he donating after the fact? You know what I mean?
Quite a good point. I was I I thought it was.
(24:30):
I thought it was a good point. Additionally, he cites
a close call he had an aircraft accident with inspiring
him to become a philanthropist. But also if you look
at the specific acts of philanthropy that he's responsible for,
a lot of them do center on cancer. And again,
(24:53):
he was diagnosed inertly has a personal reason to be
very interested in that, a personal identification with it. So again,
objectively inarguably good things, but you can see why people
would criticize even that part of this person's life. And
(25:14):
that's not even talking about the other huge category of
donations for the Coke industries, for David Coke himself, for
his brother as well, and all their related uh name brands.
And that is the realm of politics. And we're gonna
get into that right after a quick word from our sponsor.
(25:37):
So politics, you you become a billionaire, and two things happen.
People keep trying to draw you into politics, right, and
you are, as we said, inherently going to be a
controversial figure to some. That is literally the most fair
way to say it. Yeah, on the bottom of that
spectrum is you're going to get frequent calls when there's
(26:00):
an election coming up. Right, So, David Coke did become
involved in politics. In fact, he ran for vice president
once back in nineteen eighty. He did not run on
the GOP ticket, He did not run on the Democratic ticket.
He ran as a libertarian along with the presidential candidate,
(26:22):
Ed Clark. So they had a very i would say
nowadays for most people who are familiar with the concept
of libertarianism. They had They had a pretty much by
the book libertarian platform. Let's get rid of minimum wage laws,
let's get rid of corporate taxes, agricultural subsidies, let's give
(26:44):
the FED the boot, a cavalcade of federal agencies. Interestingly enough,
the FBI and the CIA were on that list, and
I thought, wow, you guys are not gonna win this election.
We don't want any policing either here or abroad. Right.
They also, uh, they all so wanted to get rid
of Social Security. But and some of our fellow listeners
(27:05):
are already well aware of this. The ticket had some
things that could be seen as surprisingly socially progressive, especially
for that time and in era. Yeah, specifically if they
were seeking equal rights for the l g B, t
q I a group, and they wouldn't have referred to
(27:26):
it as that in but yes, they were looking for
equal rights for all people. They wanted to end the
drug war, which you know is if anything is progressive,
that feels like one of the top things. Um. And
especially you have to remember that if you're thinking about
a conservative person or group of people with so much wealth,
(27:49):
you don't imagine that those two things would exist on
a ticket, or or as policies on a ticket. Mm hmm.
And it's strange because it is. It is surprisingly progressive,
or appears to be so if you just look at
that one facet of it. But things like cutting a
(28:11):
ton of federal agencies, that's a harder pill for a
lot of people to swallow. But it's one of those
it's one of those things that sticks out in some
of our minds so strongly that maybe we don't even
think about the other things. We just know, oh, those
those guys represent this one thing that I really like,
But all the rest I'm not even going to pay
attention to right, Yeah, the danger of single issue voting. Yeah,
(28:35):
so it didn't work out. They did not win. They
were positive in terms of, uh, they're surprised at just
how much of the vote they did get, which was
small but measurable, I believe. Yeah. Yeah, and they we're like, hey,
that's actually pretty great. But not winning that election did
(28:57):
not spell the end of political involvement for David Coke.
Quite the opposite. You see, he and his brother Charles
had already been active in politics behind the scenes for
a long time, and they escalated their operations over the
following decades because they have been working on this kind
of stuff since the seventies. Coke's political spending, both through
(29:18):
his institutions and his donations, was nothing if not thematically consistent.
It was very much aligned with his deeply held libertarian
beliefs as far as we know. In in the money
that we can trace, which which is a pretty small
slice of the pie, the tip of the financial iceberg. Here,
the Cokes have collectively spent at least one hundred million
(29:40):
dollars building this massive political machine, sometimes called the Coke
Toopus um. This machine is meant to bring mainstream US
and maybe over a larger swath of the mainstream West
in general. Um much more in line with their own
(30:01):
right leaning libertarian beliefs. Critics have accused the Cokes of
buying influence. That part is true. That is how lobbying works.
Lobbying is legal in this country, especially the kind of
lobbying that the Koch brothers and several other groups of
billionaires and people representing billions of dollars put through as law.
(30:26):
Right exactly. Shout out to alec Yeah, shout out to
citizens United. So critics have also said that the Cokes
are using this political machine they've built to manipulate elections
and government policies like you're pointing out, Matt, under the
cover of vague and nice sounding words like liberty, freedom, patriotism.
(30:51):
Two supporters of one or more of these endeavors. This
is in line with their own ideological beliefs. Two critics.
This is a shell game with the ultimate end being
something very much like neo feudalism. There is not a
state that functions the way that states are supposed to
(31:13):
function in democracies or representative democracies, etcetera. But what is
this machine? Exactly? Is this business as usual or is
this a vast conspiracy? And perhaps most importantly, what happens
to the engine once the driver has passed away. Here's
(31:34):
where it gets crazy. It gets handed down to the
next in line in succession, just like that TV show HBO.
What's is the TV show Secession? Okay, that makes sense.
So yeah, there's I'm being facetious. Let's let's get into No,
I think you're absolutely right. Actually we both know you're
(31:54):
absolutely so, Yes, there is a conspiracy of foot. The
shue here is that people will maybe disagree with the
characterization of the conspiracy or focus on smaller parts of
the whole. Probably the best or most well known of
the coke critics is the investigative journalist and author Jane Mayer.
(32:20):
In her book Dark Money, The Hidden History of Billionaires
Behind the Rise of the Radical Right, she explores the
coke system and what she sees as its ultimate aim,
which is instituting policies that directly benefit coke industries and
protect it from the consequences of the widespread pollution creates.
(32:42):
So also, it's weird because it's it's also advancing the
libertarian ambitions or ideologies of the Cooke Brothers and their affiliates.
But at the same time it's helping their bottom line
in a very easily provable way, like a one to
(33:02):
one match. If you look at if you look at
how different members of the House of Representatives vote or
what they prioritize, and that's that's again, that's legal, that's lobbying.
It is and it is certainly um heartening to think
of it in those terms, the the way Jane Mayor
(33:24):
describes it in in Dark Money, just about how and
it's kind of what we talked about before, just how
the consequences of their actions in their industries and they're
the way they're attempting to free those up to do
whatever they want to do um, however long they want
to do and however much they want to do UM.
In the end having those things also hurting the people
(33:48):
that surround those industries. I mean that is um that
this is where we get into that territory. Really is
dark money. It's it's scary, right, dark money is dark
in that it is untraceable, right, well, it's untraceable, but
it's also like dark thematically, like it's uh, I don't know,
not evil is a strong word but it's uh has
(34:11):
ill intentions. Yeah, dark money typically does not refer to
anonymous donors on a mission to give every kid a
library with him walking distance or you know, free lunch. Yeah,
or prevent any of those kids from ever developing prostate cancer. Right, right,
that's the issue. So there's this other journalist, Peter Overbee
(34:32):
writing for MPR, and I like the way that he
phrased this. It's also is clearly coming from a specific stance, right,
he says. Quote. The Coke political network remains famous and
infamous for its secret funding and fiercely negative advertising, which
often aimed at then President Barack Obama and other Democrats.
(34:53):
Their group, Americans for Prosperity, was funded with Cooke Brothers
money as well as contributions from other rich don as
they recruited, and although David Coke denied giving money to
Tea Party candidates, in two thousand ten, the Koch brothers
efforts helped the Republicans win a net gain of sixty
three seats in the House of Representatives. So, again, agree
(35:15):
or disagree with the aims of those representatives, the aims
of the Cokes. The point here, the takeaway here is
that the system they created works, you know what I mean,
the secret seminars they have, which is a real thing.
The secret seminars they have do result in actionable plans
and they do make a difference to your life if
(35:36):
you live in the US. Well, they also we're working
to target specific uh I guess you would say types
of people within the United States. UM. And they were
doing this in a lot of different ways. But some
of some of these groups aimed directly at veterans, some
directly at senior citizens at UM this latinos or women
(36:00):
and a lot of this stuff. It's strange how it
would appear on the surface to not necessarily be political,
like a lot of the ways that they would kind
of get in the door. UM. I don't know. But
but again what we what we do know is that
they were exploiting stuff. And this is a commonality that
(36:21):
will see throughout a couple of other things with the cokes,
like UM loopholes in pollution standards, with the e p A,
loopholes in UM production standards, things like that. But in
this case, it was a lack of transparency within the
US law and also we enforce them by the I R.
S and the Supreme Court had made some decisions in
(36:42):
the past that created some serious loopholes or or at
least places for abuse. And then, of course the other
controversial causes, one of the big ones in the news
today being climate change denial organizations. Examples of this would
include ending studies and then directing those studies to to
(37:05):
spend the perspective or spend the data right. In an
interview once upon a time, one of the Koch brothers
argued that climate change was actually good for humanity, and
that it would create more arable land to grow food,
or that it would help drive innovation. It's really gonna
clear up greenland for all the all the stuff we
need to do on it. Finally, right, So the big
(37:28):
question here why is there not more accountability or transparency
for this web and others like it. I would also
add a further question, if this is truly the right
thing to do, if this is truly something for the
greater good, then why does it need to occur in secret?
Why does the money need to be dark? If we
are if we are helping humanity, you know what I mean?
(37:50):
So it's more like a surprise for humanity. There we go, Well,
far be it for us to ruin a good surprise
party right. According to my Arm, it's because these groups
are considered charities, so they don't need to disclose the
names of their donors, and she describes them as kinds
of secret banks that affect American politics in a huge
(38:12):
way without most people understanding who is behind them. Critics
of the Coke's operation don't stop at calling it dark money.
You'll hear them accuse the Koke Brothers of everything from
actively conspiring to subverting democracy to enacting a slow motion,
decades long coup Tata God. And they certainly do again
(38:35):
behave in a conspiratorial manner. A lot of the things
that they support are things that the average US resident
would be against or have have some serious concerns about.
At the very least the Koke Brothers hold are held
(38:56):
the Coke Organization's a better ways say, held twice a
year min ours. They are carefully carefully hidden, sequestered, quarantined
from the public. The guest list and the substance of
the conversation at hands are closely guarded secrets. At one point,
they even erected white noise machines that created static facing
(39:20):
the outside UH due to concerns about people eavesdropping on
what they're saying. And again, if what you're doing is
the greater good, is the surprise that much more important
than the substance of your actions? No, certainly not. Man um. Well,
here's the crazy thing. It's not just a you know,
a small group of influential people, right who end up
(39:43):
at these places, who go to these seminars. There was
an leaked guest list and it was somewhere in the
in the realm of four hundred and four and fifty people,
and not just any people. We are talking about the
wealthiest conservatives in America and they get together and they
hang out. Who knows what they're doing. They could be
swapping recipes, They could be planning, you know, strategic ways
(40:07):
to use their gathered moneies, their fortunes too, I don't know,
influence politics, change the way we have to do things.
And it could all be quantum leap fan fick, you
know what I mean? Absolutely, I mean that is not
beyond the real possibilities. It's a good show. Wow, So yeah,
(40:29):
but that that's what that's what we know. We know
the demo of the attendees, and we know some of
would appear to be the results because we can see
some other donations that these attendees make. And there's a
fantastic right up on this if you like more information
about it. Uh. Again, a pretty biased source, but it's
(40:52):
worth the read. It's called high Tower low Down dot
org and this I wasn't familiar with this source beforehand,
but they have. They have a pretty good walk through
of the mechanisms and some of the organizations that are
the faces for these donations. Yes, but as a heads up,
as and as Ben said, some of the language in
(41:13):
there from the author is a you can feel it.
You can feel the bias immediately and inherently. This author
probably does not attend those twice a year meetings. And
I'm going to go out on a LM. Matt, I
don't think. I don't think this person is a fan yeah,
of the Coke Depus. And one thing this author does
point out that was intriguing for me was that they're
(41:37):
they're really outlining the whole Citizens United changes to packs
and super PACs and viewing money as essentially a vote
or or voting with your money. Right, This concept of
being able to make unlimited campaign donations to any candidate
whatsoever for any reason. Um, the author equates that to
(42:01):
essentially a coup within the United States. Yeah, and I
believe the author of this is Jim Hi Tower, who
builds himself as America's number one populist. Oh, that's his
picture at the top and he uh. He is an author,
public speaker, and self described political spark plug. Twice he
(42:24):
was served as the Texas Agricultural Commissioner, So he definitely
has a anti corporate stance, be aware of that. But
with that in mind, they trace the nuts and bolts
of the organism of the Coke depuses functions pretty well.
And that's that's where we go. That's the thing. So
(42:46):
when David Coke passed away, there were quite a few
people on Twitter, on a social media and the present
so on who were more or less lauding, dancing on
the guy's grave, happy that he was gone because they
saw that as our species saw that as a way
(43:08):
to prevent further damage, right or further enactment of these policies.
The thing is, for everyone, everyone who is whistling in
that particular graveyard, most of the people are celebrating this
guy's death, are doing so because they object to the policies,
the institutions, the machines that he helped create. And those machines,
(43:33):
those policies, those institutions, they are alive and well, they
are doing just fine. They are set to continue. The
money is too good. We know a little bit about
what comes next. Well, yeah, it's it's the succession thing
we were talking about. According to the source Business Insider,
(43:54):
there is somebody who is ready to take over the
heir to the throne, if you will, and it is
David Coke's nephew. It's his brother, Charles son, Chase Coke.
He's at least being positioned, let's say, as being the
one to take over next. But again, according to Business Insider,
Chase has something different in mind. He wants to shift
(44:17):
focus of the company away from a lot of these
conservative politics, a lot of the um things. He wants
to shift away from support of a lot of the
things that his his uncle David had been wanting to
do as well as his dad Charles. And apparently he
isn't much of a fan of Donald Trump. Right, Well,
(44:37):
the Charles Coke was not much of a fan of
Donald Trump either, because you know, the policies are the
current administration have at times clashed with the ideologies of
the Coke libertarianism. Right, oh yeah, open, open trade with everybody.
Let's all exchange all of the money so that I
(44:58):
can make more billions. Yes, sorry, that's put it crudly,
but yeah, yeah, Well, the thing is that he is
apparently trying to how to political phrase it, They said,
Chase Coke wants to steer the conservative juggernaut his family
created toward a kinder, gentler libertarianism. Interesting, it sounds nice,
(45:20):
but what does that mean? Kinder gentle or libertarianism. In
addition to recruiting donors to the Coke Network, he's been
doing things like anti poverty initiatives. He's been trying to
grow relationships with high profile individual influencers Dion Sanders from
(45:44):
the NFL. He's getting down with him, uh, or he's
trying to build some kind of bridge and you know,
guide their philanthropy so that they can work together and
guide their philanthropy and towards causes that they're both concerned with.
And so the steps that Chase Coke is taking or
(46:05):
is expected to take in the future are seen as separate,
drawing a brighter line between what they do, and the
mainstream Republican party, and not all the donors are happy
with this. They see the change as um not on
board with why they got into the game in the
(46:26):
first place. Still again, Chase Coke maybe driving the machine,
but it's still the same machine, maybe taking some different
turns and some different routes. But it remains to be
seen how different this will actually become. And there is
(46:48):
in this case, uh and an active conspiracy. It's inarguable,
it's not a theory. The network created by the Coke
brothers conspire through some backdoor things that were not very
transparent that we're opaque, and they did this to bring
their own um, their own belief system into the mainstream
(47:12):
and to do their best to push conversation and thought
in public policy toward that. So it's a real conspiracy.
The difference here, or the big differentiation here is for
some people that is a that is a conspiracy towards
the greater good. For other people, that is a conspiracy
(47:33):
to enrich the elite at the cost of not only
every other living human being, but the planet upon which
those human beings live. Well, yeah, and and if if
you look at this story individually, it's it's about a
family consolidating power, right, Yeah, a single family, not just
a whole bunch of elite people out there. It's it's
(47:54):
the Coke family. And when you have an error coming
through like Chase, who has been relatively unknown for forty
two years or so, Um, it's interesting too. Then thrust
somebody like that into the spotlight and you know, have
some some changes to what may happen or what the
(48:15):
forward facing ideology is of your conglomerate or whatever, because
there is change in the air. Um. It's really interesting
because it is just one small group of people who
are all related by blood, who are managing to have
these massive waves within our culture and society. So what
(48:35):
do you think, folks? Is this all on the up
and up? Is this how the game is played? Is
this exceptionally evil or unethical? And if so, whatever your answer,
maybe why I would love to hear from you. If
you controlled, let's say a hundred billion dollar giant conglomerate,
would you fight to uh to have the rules and
(48:58):
regulations put forth by the government in which you operate.
Would you find to have those weekend so that you
could make more billions? Would you do that I don't know.
Put in that position, it feels like maybe we would
if we knew that that money was all like for
our family and for the future of our children. It's weird.
(49:20):
It's a weird proposition. Well again, you know, nobody thinks
they're the bad guy, nobody thinks they're the antagonist in
the story, where all the protagonists of our own stories,
we all feel like we in general know the best
way to do something or have a good idea about
how to go about it. So with that in mind,
(49:41):
we also have to we also have to note that,
in a purely financial sense, a lot of organizations of
this size are similar to sharks. They have to keep swimming,
they have to keep eating, otherwise they will perish. I mean,
that's the that's the part of the concept, right, And
(50:01):
does that make it correct? I mean absolutely not. No,
But sharks are scary, right, right, But it's I still
think it's a good comparison because yeah, scary scary. Sharks
are scary indeed, But yeah, we we want to know
what you think. And then additionally, if this is a
(50:22):
little further away from the coke conspiracy, but additionally, if
you had let's say, let's keep the stakes small, just
two billion dollars US. What would you do? What? What
can you think of doing that would have the largest
long term positive beneficial impact on humanity or the planet.
(50:44):
I would love to hear that. Let's let's pitch each
other ideas. Uh, Matt, Maybe you and I Mission Control
can get back in the booth next time and have
a section where we suggest some of our own ideas. Yeah,
and why would you do that? If you could just
buy a US in F thirty five as a right
good math to Uh? Yeah, let us know. You can
(51:07):
find us on Facebook, you can find us on Instagram.
You can find us on Twitter. You can find me
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But if you happen to find yourself in Facebook land,
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(51:28):
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(51:49):
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(52:17):
Stuff they Don't Want You to Know is a production
of I heart Radio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts
from my heart Radio, visit the i heart radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hello, welcome
(00:24):
back to the show. My name is Matt Nol isn't
here today, but he'll be back shortly. They call me Ben.
We are joined as always with our super producer Paul
Mission Controlled decond. Most importantly, you are you. You are here,
and that makes this stuff they don't want you to know.
Thank you so much for tuning in, fellow conspiracy realists.
(00:47):
Today's episode is is a bit of a retrospective, but
it involves a bit of the future as well. And
this episode may be divisive to some of our listeners.
We always hope our episodes are divisive. That means we're
doing something right. Yeah. Ultimately, this episode is the It's
(01:07):
about the line between freedom and wealth and what that
means is freedom? Wealth is wealth? Freedom? What are we
all struggling to do here with our jobs and trying
to prosper Like, what's the end of the goal. So
as we as we explore today's strange tale, as we
(01:28):
dig through the rabbit hole, peel back layers of the
figurative onion. We'd like to hear from you, as long
time listeners know you do not have to wait till
the end of the episode to let us know your thoughts.
If the spirit so moves you, you can pause and
call us directly. We are one eight three three st
d w y t K. So keep that in mind. Uh.
(01:50):
And there there may be some things that feel a
little bit high level because we are exploring the life
and times and the long shadow of a man named
David Coke ko c H. Who is David Coke? Great question?
Here are the facts. David Hamiltons Coke was born on
(02:11):
May three in Wichita, Kansas. His dad, Fred Coke fred C. Coke,
was a chemical engineer and his paternal grandfather a fellow
in whom Harry Coke was a Dutch immigrants. He was
a newspaperman. He was one of the founding shareholders of
a railway interest now David Hamilton's. Coke was the third
(02:35):
of four sons. He had two older brothers, Charles Coke
and Frederick Coke, and then he had a fourth brother,
This is an interesting story. Had a fourth brother named
Bill Bill is technically the youngest of the four Coke Boys.
He was born nineteen minutes after David. Yes, they're twins.
That's right, um, And then we just can kind of
(02:58):
continue following Dave It's life as he attended Deerfield Academy.
This is in Massachusetts. Is a it's a prep school. Uh.
It's a very nice place, has a very good reputation. Right.
Deer Field Academy is a gathering place for quite a
few influential people or the children of influential people who
(03:20):
will go on to inherit their parents position. People like
King Abdullah the second Al Hussein of Jordan's Rockefellers go there,
and of course cokes go there. There you go. And
another place that highly influential people go is where David
ended up. Next, he went to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
(03:44):
and there he earned a Bachelor's of Arts and Sciences.
Then he went on to earn a Masters of Science
in chemical engineering. Both of those he was He's a
tall guy who was a tall guy about uh six
and afy tall, and he was known for being pretty
good at basketball. During his time, he averaged twenty one
(04:06):
points per game over the course of three years. I'm
throwing in this fact to humanize him a little bit.
So now with that and he was pretty good. Yeah,
just him as a person. Let's talk about his career.
Coke joined Coke Industries, the family business, working for his
older brother Charles. David started out as a technical services
(04:29):
manager and nine years later nine he becomes the president
of the company's engineering division and it's renamed Chemical Technology Group.
All the while, ever since the death of the patriarch,
fred S. Cooke, there's been growing tension between the four brothers.
(04:49):
This came to a head in June of three when
Frederick and Bill, the younger twin and the older brother,
when their shares of the company were bought out for
one point one billion dollars. And this bitter feud has
a lot of stuff going on, like they didn't speak
for years after the conclusion of this stuff. Uh. The
(05:12):
family felt betrayed by Bill, who essentially blew the whistle
on some sketchy behavior by Coke Industries and Native American land.
And Bill is the youngest of the two twins, David
nineteen minutes younger, and all three of them attempted to
blackmail their brother Frederick based on what they suspected about
his sexual orientation. Yeah, so the money change the family
(05:38):
dynamics anyway, without going too far into the Shakespearean tension
between the siblings. Long story short. By two thousand and ten,
David and Charles Coke controlled the company. Each of them
owned forty two per cent of Coke Industries. Wow, that's
(05:59):
really high. It's a high number in uh, something as
high stakes as Coke Industries. UM. And then on June five,
two thousand eighteen, were jumping quite a bit ahead here,
but David Coke announced he was going to retire from that,
from his position within the company. UM, but he was
he would end up staying on a little bit as
(06:19):
like kind of a from two eighteen well into two nineteen,
as kind of a ceremonial position within the company. But
he was officially stepping down due to health concerns because
he had cancer. That's correct. Yes, David Coke was diagnosed
with prostate cancer way back in nine. Like anyone who
(06:41):
is diagnosed with something's terrible as prostate cancer, he definitely
has the motivation to pursue every possible avenue of treatment.
Unlike many people diagnosed with prostate cancer, he also has
the means to pursue these treatments. He goes through uh chemotherapy,
he goes through radiation treatments, he gets surgery. This all
(07:03):
fails to completely eliminate the cancer, and it keeps returning.
And so it comes to pass that, after a long
battle with prostate cancer, David Coke passes away in New
York on Southampton, New York on auguste He's seventy nine
years old, and according to the official statements of his
(07:26):
loved ones, his relatives in the press, there is no
definitive cause of death that was cited yet, but you know,
most people are reasonably assuming or speculating that this was
somehow related to his ongoing cancer battle. Sure, at this
level of wealth, the Coke estate, just David Coke's part
(07:50):
of it can function in many ways as though the
person who helmed it is still very much alive. The
institutions and systems that David Coke helped create pass away
when he passed away. But what sort of systems did
he create? How much money are we talking? Let's take
a break for a word from our sponsor, and assuming
(08:12):
that Coke Industries doesn't buy us in the next in
the next few minutes, let's continue to explore the story.
And we're back and we are also now owned by
Coke Industries, who are also owned by Illumination Global Unlimited.
(08:34):
So we're straight. Everything's fine, We're back in the family.
But what is Coke Industries? This is how we this
is the best way for us to answer the questions
about wealth. Here's the gist. The thing we call Coke
Industries today began way back in ninety as the Wood
River Oil and Refining Company. This was co founded by
Fred C. Coke. In nineteen sixty seven, in honor of
(08:58):
Fred Coke, it was renamed Coke Industries since then, that's
been the shorthand way to refer to this enormous conglomerate.
And when we say enormous conglomerate, we're talking about a
disquietly number of things. Yeah. Yeah. According to the Securities
(09:19):
and Exchange Commission, Coke Industries is what you would call
a private conglomerate. They've got all kinds of different things
and companies that they control, and uh, everything from petroleum
and chemicals, the production of that and the the distribution
of those chemicals through pipelines. There's some ranching going involved.
(09:42):
There's some chemical chemical tech occurring here. There's all kinds
of commodity training, minerals. How do you get them, where
do you find them? What do you do with those minerals?
Capital markets and fibers. Fibers are in everything you guys, Uh,
financial services, you've got paper, the pulp that you need
to build the paper, as well as business development, which
(10:04):
is interesting in its own right because that's how you
get a lot of the other companies to become or
come to fruition right exactly. Today, Coke Industries is the
second largest private company in the United States. What's number one,
you may ask. It's a company called Cargill, which we
can save for a different episode. Coke Industries has an
(10:25):
annual revenue of a hundred and ten billion dollars and
it has around a hundred employees. So two things about
those numbers, Uh, that one ten billion dollars is indicates
a growth trend because in it was a hundred billions,
So they went up by tim bill and those one
(10:46):
d and twenty employees. Those that number may not factor
in contractors, freelancers, so on. So depending on how we
define employee, that number could be a little higher. It's
also active in sixty countries, which means that it is
probably selling something to you. You have almost certainly boughts
(11:12):
or used a product created by Coke Industries, because in short,
they sell a ton of stuff. Oh, you've certainly encountered them.
I remember ages ago when we were doing this show,
we did a check up to see what Coke Industries owned,
and we listened off some things, including things like if
(11:33):
you're just walking through a grocery store, let's say, if
you're in the United States or maybe in another country,
you may you may see things like quilted Northern, or
soft and gentle or brawny, maybe angel soft sparkle. Do
any of those catch catch your ear because it's probably
a paper product that you used to clean something or
(11:54):
wipe your hands on. Uh, there's a lot of those.
Mardi Grass. Another one Dixie, as in ups from Dixie.
They also own Georgia Pacific, which is the largest manufacturer
of plywood and core gated boxes and containers in the US. UH.
They produce all sorts of textiles and plastics to the
(12:17):
world's largest producer of lycra. They produced stain Master, solar Max,
all of Polly shield, oxy clear. They make gasoline, diesel,
jet fuel, asphalts, fracking chemicals, ethylene. I'd just like to
point out here that they own a lot of the
raw materials that end up becoming a lot of the
(12:38):
other products. That's kind of what Coke Industries does here
when you're talking about, you know, getting crude oil to
then process for a whole bunch of different kinds of
textiles and plastics, right, or you're talking about Georgia Pacific
getting all the wood that you need to create all
of the other paper products and other things like that. Um,
it's it's smart business, I guess, like essentially controlling, um,
(13:03):
controlling the processes which you need to make an end thing.
Right of production? Yeah, owning thanks, owning the means of production.
They own the means of production. Yes, got it. Uh,
but yeah, it's it. You can really see it illustrated here.
And it's no secret that after a certain threshold of scale,
(13:24):
whether we're talking or whether we're talking fame, infamy or
just finance, right after this certain threshold, any entity becomes
inherently controversial. So it's it's true, right, It follows logically
that Coke Industries has had a troubled legal history, congressional investigations,
(13:46):
d o J, consent decrees, civil lawsuits, felony convictions, and
so on. One of the biggest controversies that's getting a
lot of attention now, especially from politicians on the left
side of US politics, will be the active role that
coke industries plays in pollution and climate change denial. Yeah. Again,
(14:09):
like you said, Matt, what's good for business versus what's
bad for business? Yeah. Absolutely, And in the end, there's
there are so many profits to protect for the people
that run this massive industry or it's not even industry,
is that they conglomerate. Um, there's so many moving parts.
You you have to or you're at least incentivized to
(14:30):
deregulate as much as you possibly can and do what
you have to do to make sure that those profits
go up by three percent each year. But they've had,
you know, as part of their legal troubles in the past.
If you go back to you get a really interesting
look into a specific thing that they were accused of doing.
(14:50):
And then I found out that they were doing where
they were apparently stealing oil from Native American reservations within
the United States. Yeah. Yeah, this comes from an excellent
book called cooke Land by an author named Christopher Leonard,
in which he traces the twist and turns of this
(15:12):
nefarious tale. So, as you said, this stuff hits the
fan in November, and it's the result of an investigation
that was launched in October of seven by the Senate
Select Committee on Indian Affairs. They were inspired by a
series of articles in the paper the Arizona Republic that said, hey,
(15:33):
big oil is stealing oil from Native Americans who own
these various oil wells. Here's how the scam worked. Companies
would pick up crude oil from the wells and they
would take it to the quote unquote marketplace. But when
they did this, they falsified their receipts, their invoices to
make it look like they had a picked up less
(15:55):
oil than they actually did. So they were getting a
big they were skimming off the top or b that
the oil was of a lower quality than it actually was,
therefore worth less on the marketplace. Therefore we're paying less.
Look at that and throughout this whole controversy, because it
was a controversy for for the cokes and for coke industries. Uh,
(16:17):
this is when David really becomes and the Coke brothers
I guess as a whole or as a duo. Uh.
It gets them and meshed within the politics. The like
forward facing politics, right, this is a big stage for them. Yeah.
So the company later admits in court that it collects
(16:38):
about ten million dollars worth of crude oil each year
without paying for it over the course of this scam.
And this is just one illustration of what what big
businesses do. It's important to say that Coke Industries is
by no means unique in this sort of thing, and
(16:58):
that's why countries and state actors have legislative mechanisms in
place that are, in theory meant to prevent these kinds
of shenanigans. But despite the ongoing controversies, this family business
made David Coke an even wealthier man. And we have
some we have some stats about his uh, about his
(17:22):
his position in financial society. At the time of his passing. Yes,
according to Forbes, he was number eleven on the list
of wealthiest men on the planet. He had a total
asset amount of forty two point two billion dollars. Again,
according to Forbes, UH, and he had an estimated net
worth of da fifty point five billion dollars. And let's
(17:48):
pause here for a second, Matt, because that is a
huge number. We're throwing a lot of huge numbers out here,
and that makes it a very easy number to glide
over without fully understanding or rocking it. There's a guy
named Sam par writing for a website called The Hustle,
and he did a great walk through if I've combined
a couple of different things here to make it. To
(18:10):
help us imagine just one billion dollars in our head.
All right, let's start with a one dollar bill. Pretty cool, right,
Imagine it's a crisp new one straight from the ment.
Now stack a hundred of those together. This makes a
stack about an inch high. That's ten thousand dollars. And
when you look at it, it's just the stack. It's
(18:30):
not that impressive. If you add enough stacks together, you'll
get a million dollars. Also, weirdly enough, not as impressive
as it may seem in film, because when you stack
it that way, when you add it up that way,
it's not enough to fill up an average briefcase, I mean,
like a carry on for a plane. It's still a
lot of money, and a billion is much different. A
(18:52):
billion gets us into the realm of imaginary scenarios. Right.
So let's say you save one dollars a day. That's awesome,
great job doing that. It will take you ten million
days around a little over twenty seven thousand years to
(19:12):
save up one billion dollars. Wow. And well, also if
you try and visualize I remember seeing videos with this before,
we try and visualize what a billion dollars looks like.
So if you were going to do that, if you're
gonna look at it, it would be a four square
mile area or what would be the equivalent of two thousand,
(19:34):
five hundred and fifty five acres of just money. Yeah,
if you put if you took that billion and made
it one dollar bills, right, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, you
would also have more money than several entire countries. You
would be you know, you would have more than their
g d P for instance. Oh but let's talk about
(19:55):
what you can buy with a billion bucks? Okay, yeah,
with just one million dollars per the A j C.
You can buy six point seven f thirty five a
fighter jets. Oh yeah, you can also if you bargain
a little bit, get into sports. Oh yeah, you can
get a NFL team for a billion bucks, Oh for sure,
you can almost almost by Let's say I don't know
(20:20):
a palace. Yeah, Buckingham Palace is just one point four
billion dollars. After all, these are all crazy things to buy, right,
So that's a billion dollars. David Coke as an individual,
as one guy, directly controlled enough wealth to do this
fifty times over. Yeah, and remember that's assets and money,
(20:43):
you know, cash, money, accounts, all those things, all of
it together, um, in property in particular, it becomes very important.
So what to do with all this scratch, all this cheddar,
all these gains, this real superpower, genuine superpower, this very
real version of time travel, which is a nice, nice
(21:05):
easter egg there for some of our long time listeners,
well done that. David Coke is a man of principle
as he saw it, and he his most well known
spending fits into two broad categories, first philanthropy and second politics.
In terms of philanthropy, we see a I guess well
(21:28):
and yeah, well intentioned but imperfect person. He's been on
the Chronicle of Philanthropy's list of the world's top fifty
philanthropists consistently since two thousand six. In a two thousand
thirteen interview with The Wall Street Journal, he called himself
a sugar daddy for charity, his words, not ours. He
(21:50):
said he had a moral obligation to help. He said
he preferred to donate his money to outstanding institutions rather
than use it on buying a bigger house or a
fifty million dollar painting. And again is a direct quote
from him. I get it. That feels like the right
thing to do. Uh. He conducted most of his visible
philanthropy through his foundation, named the David H. Coke Charitable Foundation. Uh.
(22:15):
They save the money on creative names and pass those
savings to you. I guess you've probably heard that mentioned
a couple of times in passing from you. Know, this
is brought to you and thanks thanks to impart by
that foundation. And they're doing good work. They're they're giving, Uh,
they're giving to institutions and causes that are making pioneering breakthroughs,
(22:37):
especially in the medical space. Yes, and sometimes it is
difficult to square these things when depending on what you
think about David Coke or the Koch Brothers. Um knowing
that this is a real side of him and his
spending and his wealth and his family's wealth. Um, this
charitable side, it is real, and it's you can't deny it. Well,
(23:00):
I have some I don't want to call him hot takes,
but I have some observations on that. Well, we'll get
to him in a second. Right, It's you're right, Matt,
objectively not bad. So he gave over a billion dollars
to charity throughout his life, so over or right around
one of his assets he donated to things like the
(23:24):
Lincoln Center of the American Museum of Natural History. In
terms of medical causes, he started the Coke Institute for
Integrative Cancer Research at M I T. New York Presbyterian Hospital,
M D. Anderson Cancer Center, JOHNS. Hopkins, Stanford University Hospital,
Mount Sinai, the Hospital for Special Surgery. Good stuff, great stuff,
(23:47):
saved lives, right in arguably. Here's the thing though, Here's
the thing that some of his critics will point out,
and that I have to admit, has some sand People
who people who argue that Coke industries business practices have
raised the rates of cancer in their communities. Right, people
(24:09):
who have never smoked, never drank, gay lung cancer left
and right, they say, you know why is if this
guy really wants to fight cancer, why doesn't he change
what his company is doing? Why is he why is
he donating after the fact? You know what I mean?
Quite a good point. I was I I thought it was.
(24:30):
I thought it was a good point. Additionally, he cites
a close call he had an aircraft accident with inspiring
him to become a philanthropist. But also if you look
at the specific acts of philanthropy that he's responsible for,
a lot of them do center on cancer. And again,
(24:53):
he was diagnosed inertly has a personal reason to be
very interested in that, a personal identification with it. So again,
objectively inarguably good things, but you can see why people
would criticize even that part of this person's life. And
(25:14):
that's not even talking about the other huge category of
donations for the Coke industries, for David Coke himself, for
his brother as well, and all their related uh name brands.
And that is the realm of politics. And we're gonna
get into that right after a quick word from our sponsor.
(25:37):
So politics, you you become a billionaire, and two things happen.
People keep trying to draw you into politics, right, and
you are, as we said, inherently going to be a
controversial figure to some. That is literally the most fair
way to say it. Yeah, on the bottom of that
spectrum is you're going to get frequent calls when there's
(26:00):
an election coming up. Right, So, David Coke did become
involved in politics. In fact, he ran for vice president
once back in nineteen eighty. He did not run on
the GOP ticket, He did not run on the Democratic ticket.
He ran as a libertarian along with the presidential candidate,
(26:22):
Ed Clark. So they had a very i would say
nowadays for most people who are familiar with the concept
of libertarianism. They had They had a pretty much by
the book libertarian platform. Let's get rid of minimum wage laws,
let's get rid of corporate taxes, agricultural subsidies, let's give
(26:44):
the FED the boot, a cavalcade of federal agencies. Interestingly enough,
the FBI and the CIA were on that list, and
I thought, wow, you guys are not gonna win this election.
We don't want any policing either here or abroad. Right.
They also, uh, they all so wanted to get rid
of Social Security. But and some of our fellow listeners
(27:05):
are already well aware of this. The ticket had some
things that could be seen as surprisingly socially progressive, especially
for that time and in era. Yeah, specifically if they
were seeking equal rights for the l g B, t
q I a group, and they wouldn't have referred to
(27:26):
it as that in but yes, they were looking for
equal rights for all people. They wanted to end the
drug war, which you know is if anything is progressive,
that feels like one of the top things. Um. And
especially you have to remember that if you're thinking about
a conservative person or group of people with so much wealth,
(27:49):
you don't imagine that those two things would exist on
a ticket, or or as policies on a ticket. Mm hmm.
And it's strange because it is. It is surprisingly progressive,
or appears to be so if you just look at
that one facet of it. But things like cutting a
(28:11):
ton of federal agencies, that's a harder pill for a
lot of people to swallow. But it's one of those
it's one of those things that sticks out in some
of our minds so strongly that maybe we don't even
think about the other things. We just know, oh, those
those guys represent this one thing that I really like,
But all the rest I'm not even going to pay
attention to right, Yeah, the danger of single issue voting. Yeah,
(28:35):
so it didn't work out. They did not win. They
were positive in terms of, uh, they're surprised at just
how much of the vote they did get, which was
small but measurable, I believe. Yeah. Yeah, and they we're like, hey,
that's actually pretty great. But not winning that election did
(28:57):
not spell the end of political involvement for David Coke.
Quite the opposite. You see, he and his brother Charles
had already been active in politics behind the scenes for
a long time, and they escalated their operations over the
following decades because they have been working on this kind
of stuff since the seventies. Coke's political spending, both through
(29:18):
his institutions and his donations, was nothing if not thematically consistent.
It was very much aligned with his deeply held libertarian
beliefs as far as we know. In in the money
that we can trace, which which is a pretty small
slice of the pie, the tip of the financial iceberg. Here,
the Cokes have collectively spent at least one hundred million
(29:40):
dollars building this massive political machine, sometimes called the Coke
Toopus um. This machine is meant to bring mainstream US
and maybe over a larger swath of the mainstream West
in general. Um much more in line with their own
(30:01):
right leaning libertarian beliefs. Critics have accused the Cokes of
buying influence. That part is true. That is how lobbying works.
Lobbying is legal in this country, especially the kind of
lobbying that the Koch brothers and several other groups of
billionaires and people representing billions of dollars put through as law.
(30:26):
Right exactly. Shout out to alec Yeah, shout out to
citizens United. So critics have also said that the Cokes
are using this political machine they've built to manipulate elections
and government policies like you're pointing out, Matt, under the
cover of vague and nice sounding words like liberty, freedom, patriotism.
(30:51):
Two supporters of one or more of these endeavors. This
is in line with their own ideological beliefs. Two critics.
This is a shell game with the ultimate end being
something very much like neo feudalism. There is not a
state that functions the way that states are supposed to
(31:13):
function in democracies or representative democracies, etcetera. But what is
this machine? Exactly? Is this business as usual or is
this a vast conspiracy? And perhaps most importantly, what happens
to the engine once the driver has passed away. Here's
(31:34):
where it gets crazy. It gets handed down to the
next in line in succession, just like that TV show HBO.
What's is the TV show Secession? Okay, that makes sense.
So yeah, there's I'm being facetious. Let's let's get into No,
I think you're absolutely right. Actually we both know you're
(31:54):
absolutely so, Yes, there is a conspiracy of foot. The
shue here is that people will maybe disagree with the
characterization of the conspiracy or focus on smaller parts of
the whole. Probably the best or most well known of
the coke critics is the investigative journalist and author Jane Mayer.
(32:20):
In her book Dark Money, The Hidden History of Billionaires
Behind the Rise of the Radical Right, she explores the
coke system and what she sees as its ultimate aim,
which is instituting policies that directly benefit coke industries and
protect it from the consequences of the widespread pollution creates.
(32:42):
So also, it's weird because it's it's also advancing the
libertarian ambitions or ideologies of the Cooke Brothers and their affiliates.
But at the same time it's helping their bottom line
in a very easily provable way, like a one to
(33:02):
one match. If you look at if you look at
how different members of the House of Representatives vote or
what they prioritize, and that's that's again, that's legal, that's lobbying.
It is and it is certainly um heartening to think
of it in those terms, the the way Jane Mayor
(33:24):
describes it in in Dark Money, just about how and
it's kind of what we talked about before, just how
the consequences of their actions in their industries and they're
the way they're attempting to free those up to do
whatever they want to do um, however long they want
to do and however much they want to do UM.
In the end having those things also hurting the people
(33:48):
that surround those industries. I mean that is um that
this is where we get into that territory. Really is
dark money. It's it's scary, right, dark money is dark
in that it is untraceable, right, well, it's untraceable, but
it's also like dark thematically, like it's uh, I don't know,
not evil is a strong word but it's uh has
(34:11):
ill intentions. Yeah, dark money typically does not refer to
anonymous donors on a mission to give every kid a
library with him walking distance or you know, free lunch. Yeah,
or prevent any of those kids from ever developing prostate cancer. Right, right,
that's the issue. So there's this other journalist, Peter Overbee
(34:32):
writing for MPR, and I like the way that he
phrased this. It's also is clearly coming from a specific stance, right,
he says. Quote. The Coke political network remains famous and
infamous for its secret funding and fiercely negative advertising, which
often aimed at then President Barack Obama and other Democrats.
(34:53):
Their group, Americans for Prosperity, was funded with Cooke Brothers
money as well as contributions from other rich don as
they recruited, and although David Coke denied giving money to
Tea Party candidates, in two thousand ten, the Koch brothers
efforts helped the Republicans win a net gain of sixty
three seats in the House of Representatives. So, again, agree
(35:15):
or disagree with the aims of those representatives, the aims
of the Cokes. The point here, the takeaway here is
that the system they created works, you know what I mean,
the secret seminars they have, which is a real thing.
The secret seminars they have do result in actionable plans
and they do make a difference to your life if
(35:36):
you live in the US. Well, they also we're working
to target specific uh I guess you would say types
of people within the United States. UM. And they were
doing this in a lot of different ways. But some
of some of these groups aimed directly at veterans, some
directly at senior citizens at UM this latinos or women
(36:00):
and a lot of this stuff. It's strange how it
would appear on the surface to not necessarily be political,
like a lot of the ways that they would kind
of get in the door. UM. I don't know. But
but again what we what we do know is that
they were exploiting stuff. And this is a commonality that
(36:21):
will see throughout a couple of other things with the cokes,
like UM loopholes in pollution standards, with the e p A,
loopholes in UM production standards, things like that. But in
this case, it was a lack of transparency within the
US law and also we enforce them by the I R.
S and the Supreme Court had made some decisions in
(36:42):
the past that created some serious loopholes or or at
least places for abuse. And then, of course the other
controversial causes, one of the big ones in the news
today being climate change denial organizations. Examples of this would
include ending studies and then directing those studies to to
(37:05):
spend the perspective or spend the data right. In an
interview once upon a time, one of the Koch brothers
argued that climate change was actually good for humanity, and
that it would create more arable land to grow food,
or that it would help drive innovation. It's really gonna
clear up greenland for all the all the stuff we
need to do on it. Finally, right, So the big
(37:28):
question here why is there not more accountability or transparency
for this web and others like it. I would also
add a further question, if this is truly the right
thing to do, if this is truly something for the
greater good, then why does it need to occur in secret?
Why does the money need to be dark? If we
are if we are helping humanity, you know what I mean?
(37:50):
So it's more like a surprise for humanity. There we go, Well,
far be it for us to ruin a good surprise
party right. According to my Arm, it's because these groups
are considered charities, so they don't need to disclose the
names of their donors, and she describes them as kinds
of secret banks that affect American politics in a huge
(38:12):
way without most people understanding who is behind them. Critics
of the Coke's operation don't stop at calling it dark money.
You'll hear them accuse the Koke Brothers of everything from
actively conspiring to subverting democracy to enacting a slow motion,
decades long coup Tata God. And they certainly do again
(38:35):
behave in a conspiratorial manner. A lot of the things
that they support are things that the average US resident
would be against or have have some serious concerns about.
At the very least the Koke Brothers hold are held
(38:56):
the Coke Organization's a better ways say, held twice a
year min ours. They are carefully carefully hidden, sequestered, quarantined
from the public. The guest list and the substance of
the conversation at hands are closely guarded secrets. At one point,
they even erected white noise machines that created static facing
(39:20):
the outside UH due to concerns about people eavesdropping on
what they're saying. And again, if what you're doing is
the greater good, is the surprise that much more important
than the substance of your actions? No, certainly not. Man um. Well,
here's the crazy thing. It's not just a you know,
a small group of influential people, right who end up
(39:43):
at these places, who go to these seminars. There was
an leaked guest list and it was somewhere in the
in the realm of four hundred and four and fifty people,
and not just any people. We are talking about the
wealthiest conservatives in America and they get together and they
hang out. Who knows what they're doing. They could be
swapping recipes, They could be planning, you know, strategic ways
(40:07):
to use their gathered moneies, their fortunes too, I don't know,
influence politics, change the way we have to do things.
And it could all be quantum leap fan fick, you
know what I mean? Absolutely, I mean that is not
beyond the real possibilities. It's a good show. Wow, So yeah,
(40:29):
but that that's what that's what we know. We know
the demo of the attendees, and we know some of
would appear to be the results because we can see
some other donations that these attendees make. And there's a
fantastic right up on this if you like more information
about it. Uh. Again, a pretty biased source, but it's
(40:52):
worth the read. It's called high Tower low Down dot
org and this I wasn't familiar with this source beforehand,
but they have. They have a pretty good walk through
of the mechanisms and some of the organizations that are
the faces for these donations. Yes, but as a heads up,
as and as Ben said, some of the language in
(41:13):
there from the author is a you can feel it.
You can feel the bias immediately and inherently. This author
probably does not attend those twice a year meetings. And
I'm going to go out on a LM. Matt, I
don't think. I don't think this person is a fan yeah,
of the Coke Depus. And one thing this author does
point out that was intriguing for me was that they're
(41:37):
they're really outlining the whole Citizens United changes to packs
and super PACs and viewing money as essentially a vote
or or voting with your money. Right, This concept of
being able to make unlimited campaign donations to any candidate
whatsoever for any reason. Um, the author equates that to
(42:01):
essentially a coup within the United States. Yeah, and I
believe the author of this is Jim Hi Tower, who
builds himself as America's number one populist. Oh, that's his
picture at the top and he uh. He is an author,
public speaker, and self described political spark plug. Twice he
(42:24):
was served as the Texas Agricultural Commissioner, So he definitely
has a anti corporate stance, be aware of that. But
with that in mind, they trace the nuts and bolts
of the organism of the Coke depuses functions pretty well.
And that's that's where we go. That's the thing. So
(42:46):
when David Coke passed away, there were quite a few
people on Twitter, on a social media and the present
so on who were more or less lauding, dancing on
the guy's grave, happy that he was gone because they
saw that as our species saw that as a way
(43:08):
to prevent further damage, right or further enactment of these policies.
The thing is, for everyone, everyone who is whistling in
that particular graveyard, most of the people are celebrating this
guy's death, are doing so because they object to the policies,
the institutions, the machines that he helped create. And those machines,
(43:33):
those policies, those institutions, they are alive and well, they
are doing just fine. They are set to continue. The
money is too good. We know a little bit about
what comes next. Well, yeah, it's it's the succession thing
we were talking about. According to the source Business Insider,
(43:54):
there is somebody who is ready to take over the
heir to the throne, if you will, and it is
David Coke's nephew. It's his brother, Charles son, Chase Coke.
He's at least being positioned, let's say, as being the
one to take over next. But again, according to Business Insider,
Chase has something different in mind. He wants to shift
(44:17):
focus of the company away from a lot of these
conservative politics, a lot of the um things. He wants
to shift away from support of a lot of the
things that his his uncle David had been wanting to
do as well as his dad Charles. And apparently he
isn't much of a fan of Donald Trump. Right, Well,
(44:37):
the Charles Coke was not much of a fan of
Donald Trump either, because you know, the policies are the
current administration have at times clashed with the ideologies of
the Coke libertarianism. Right, oh yeah, open, open trade with everybody.
Let's all exchange all of the money so that I
(44:58):
can make more billions. Yes, sorry, that's put it crudly,
but yeah, yeah, Well, the thing is that he is
apparently trying to how to political phrase it, They said,
Chase Coke wants to steer the conservative juggernaut his family
created toward a kinder, gentler libertarianism. Interesting, it sounds nice,
(45:20):
but what does that mean? Kinder gentle or libertarianism. In
addition to recruiting donors to the Coke Network, he's been
doing things like anti poverty initiatives. He's been trying to
grow relationships with high profile individual influencers Dion Sanders from
(45:44):
the NFL. He's getting down with him, uh, or he's
trying to build some kind of bridge and you know,
guide their philanthropy so that they can work together and
guide their philanthropy and towards causes that they're both concerned with.
And so the steps that Chase Coke is taking or
(46:05):
is expected to take in the future are seen as separate,
drawing a brighter line between what they do, and the
mainstream Republican party, and not all the donors are happy
with this. They see the change as um not on
board with why they got into the game in the
(46:26):
first place. Still again, Chase Coke maybe driving the machine,
but it's still the same machine, maybe taking some different
turns and some different routes. But it remains to be
seen how different this will actually become. And there is
(46:48):
in this case, uh and an active conspiracy. It's inarguable,
it's not a theory. The network created by the Coke
brothers conspire through some backdoor things that were not very
transparent that we're opaque, and they did this to bring
their own um, their own belief system into the mainstream
(47:12):
and to do their best to push conversation and thought
in public policy toward that. So it's a real conspiracy.
The difference here, or the big differentiation here is for
some people that is a that is a conspiracy towards
the greater good. For other people, that is a conspiracy
(47:33):
to enrich the elite at the cost of not only
every other living human being, but the planet upon which
those human beings live. Well, yeah, and and if if
you look at this story individually, it's it's about a
family consolidating power, right, Yeah, a single family, not just
a whole bunch of elite people out there. It's it's
(47:54):
the Coke family. And when you have an error coming
through like Chase, who has been relatively unknown for forty
two years or so, Um, it's interesting too. Then thrust
somebody like that into the spotlight and you know, have
some some changes to what may happen or what the
(48:15):
forward facing ideology is of your conglomerate or whatever, because
there is change in the air. Um. It's really interesting
because it is just one small group of people who
are all related by blood, who are managing to have
these massive waves within our culture and society. So what
(48:35):
do you think, folks? Is this all on the up
and up? Is this how the game is played? Is
this exceptionally evil or unethical? And if so, whatever your answer,
maybe why I would love to hear from you. If
you controlled, let's say a hundred billion dollar giant conglomerate,
would you fight to uh to have the rules and
(48:58):
regulations put forth by the government in which you operate.
Would you find to have those weekend so that you
could make more billions? Would you do that I don't know.
Put in that position, it feels like maybe we would
if we knew that that money was all like for
our family and for the future of our children. It's weird.
(49:20):
It's a weird proposition. Well again, you know, nobody thinks
they're the bad guy, nobody thinks they're the antagonist in
the story, where all the protagonists of our own stories,
we all feel like we in general know the best
way to do something or have a good idea about
how to go about it. So with that in mind,
(49:41):
we also have to we also have to note that,
in a purely financial sense, a lot of organizations of
this size are similar to sharks. They have to keep swimming,
they have to keep eating, otherwise they will perish. I mean,
that's the that's the part of the concept, right, And
(50:01):
does that make it correct? I mean absolutely not. No,
But sharks are scary, right, right, But it's I still
think it's a good comparison because yeah, scary scary. Sharks
are scary indeed, But yeah, we we want to know
what you think. And then additionally, if this is a
(50:22):
little further away from the coke conspiracy, but additionally, if
you had let's say, let's keep the stakes small, just
two billion dollars US. What would you do? What? What
can you think of doing that would have the largest
long term positive beneficial impact on humanity or the planet.
(50:44):
I would love to hear that. Let's let's pitch each
other ideas. Uh, Matt, Maybe you and I Mission Control
can get back in the booth next time and have
a section where we suggest some of our own ideas. Yeah,
and why would you do that? If you could just
buy a US in F thirty five as a right
good math to Uh? Yeah, let us know. You can
(51:07):
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You can find us on Twitter. You can find me
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(51:28):
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(51:49):
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(52:17):
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Noel Brown
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On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang
Ding dong! Join your culture consultants, Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang, on an unforgettable journey into the beating heart of CULTURE. Alongside sizzling special guests, they GET INTO the hottest pop-culture moments of the day and the formative cultural experiences that turned them into Culturistas. Produced by the Big Money Players Network and iHeartRadio.
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.