Koch Brothers Exposed (2012) Reviews

• Koch minions join IMDb!

  Lomedin2013-10-27

  You know that something smells fishy when you start seeing people who didn't rate anything else EVER giving this movie 1 star. People who don't even bother creating a profile here. How strange that the only people doing it so and ranting about it are these unknown characters that came out of nowhere and disappeared the same way. Allow me to review this film, in a first step, by focusing on the strange negative comments these suspicious people left. Like the one tiled "this movie lowered the IQ in the room", whose author states "(...) perfect example of how people who know nothing, (...), can be easily manipulated (...). In order to rate this movie above a 1, you would have to have a similar I.Q." I guess those people would have IQs in the range of the 130s, since that's where I stand and I'm giving it a 10. In a different comment, we read "(...) you will spend most of the following day restocking your booze supply after having angrily consumed it all attempting to finish the thing". I suppose this is the I.Q. type the other individual refers to and identifies with. I'm glad I'm not part of them so. Finally, we find in yet another example of absurd comments: "The film talks about Koch Industries being a "major polluter", but it doesn't talk about what they produce,(...) like describing Shakespeare as a major waste of paper, or Mozart as a major polluter of silence! (...) Koch Industries produce products that are used by hundreds of millions of people,(...) they donate billions of dollars to medical research (...) who needs science when you already have an angry mob?". Holy cow! Now we are comparing a couple of eco-terrorists (in the true meaning of the word, not that definition the government wants to brainwash citizens with), bribers and manipulators to Shakespeare and Mozart! This reviewer simply decides to ignore the truth and believe that, if millions of people want to waste resources given by a bunch of industries destroying their very home planet, there cannot be anything wrong with it. After all, so many people cannot be wrong... The only reason for which they give money to cancer research is because, at least one of them, is dying of cancer! And god forbid if it's a research free of wasted resources or animal suffering (including great apes). The more pain these brothers can cause the better. The final touch is given by that sentence about science and an angry mob... How ridiculous is to defend lies with science, when all the brothers do is against reason and common sense. Anyone defending the destruction of life for profit is fighting rational thought and, therefore, science. Alas, I'm not a political person, rather anti-political, so terms like libertarian, socialist, conservative, etc. don't say much to me. What it does speak volumes to me is action. And these brothers' agenda says it all. They want free market, meaning more power to the already powerful. Because they are part of it and, therefore, get something from it. And they are pushing it into schools (reminds me of the same tactics used by those claiming an "intelligent design" and denying evolution). They lobby for oil, gas and chemical industries. No surprise, they are also getting money from it. Who cares about the planet when you can put some millions in your pocket? Climate change? Yeah, right! The Koch brothers are oil suckers, earth destroyers, tea party puppets. We are talking about people who paid more than $400 million in fines, penalties and judgments from 1999 to 2003 for environmental and safety related issues. People who illegally discharge crude oil and petroleum products and get the largest civil fine ever imposed on a company under any federal environmental law. These are people who don't and won't give a damn about you, me or our home, Planet Earth, as long as they have a dollar to put in their pocket, and they will continue to lie, manipulate and hurt in order to achieve their goals. Because these people base their fortune in the destruction of life, the extermination of the lower classes, and the consummation of their orgasmic, twisted, apocalyptic fantasies. As a final statement, I will just point out how absurd it is for people to criticize this film because it shows what the Koch brothers do, without wanting to put itself in their shoes. To those complaining about this, let me ask: if this movie was about a rapist, or a pedophile, would you also want to know how great he feels about it, or a number of reasons why he enjoys it so much, even when those reasons are irrational? Would you also complain about the fact that the film doesn't show all its sources when they are widely known and readily available for anybody interested in them? Would they want the movie to sympathise with the children molester and tell the supposedly good deeds he did like opening a kindergarten or giving private lessons to kids, even when those were just a way to achieve his disturbed pleasures? The Koch brothers are, simply, evil. There's no reason to try to defend them unless you are like them. Like pedophiles, they do what they do for their personal gain, and there's no reason to try to defend what it's not logically defensible. You don't do a movie about a heartless pedophile who enjoys torturing children in order to try to put the public on the side of his perverse mentality. You just show the evil he does so people mobilize to try to stop it. This documentary does the same. No need for arguments nor numbers when you have right-in-your-face realities.

• A "greatest hits" collection of two of the most despicable Americans

  StevePulaski2012-11-03

  The Conservatives hate George Soros and the Liberals hate the Koch Brothers. Which investor is worse depends on your bias. Coming from a Libertarian, the Koch brothers and Soros seem to be in a dead race for the most despicable humans. Robert Greenwald's Koch Brothers Exposed is a documentary that was born from a viral video online, and in sixty minutes, tries to tackle the macro issue of their heavy-handed ideology and how they have harmed and may continue to harm the United States as a whole. This is a hatchet-job in every sense of the word, yet one wonders if the Koch brothers have taken a hatchet to their own job, flaunting their bigotry and fighting to strip away benefit programs from Americans who desperately need them. They've continued their attempts to abolish Social Security, raise the retirement age, and spread false claims about many government programs. They've fueled their gas tank by funding politicians, news pundits, much of the media, and several organizations, along with crippling certain environments and slanting much of the research done by universities to fit their ideology. People like this show me nothing but how corrupt, unconvincing, and outdated the two-party system of America is. Are we supposed to be proud of this and are we supposed to shamelessly canonize it? Republicans and Democrats alike have proved their incompetence by not only limiting Americans in several ways, but also, showing us that behind the scenes is where most everything takes place and that we as the 99% are fortunate to see the little brief outtakes and clips on the networks. I usually sneer and roll my eyes at random conspiracy theories I find on the internet, yet with all the talk about Republicans preventing people from voting and Democrats finding another freedom to limit, I begin to see why one would believe there's more than meets the eye. The men got so filthy rich because they inherited so much of their father's wealth, who ran a successful oil business in communist Russia. They took some money and started their own business not long after in the United States, and now have a combined net worth of $31 billion. We meet several different people living in different parts of the United States, clearly struggling to make end's meet, and usually relying on Social Security, food stamps, welfare, or something to assure they'll see the sun of tomorrow. Greenwald then shows us how the Koch Brothers, Charles and Dave, two filthy rich venture capitalists who run Koch Industries, a massive company that specializes in the production of various chemicals, live with several multimillion dollar mansions in several parts of the country. Seeing these people, already fearing for their financial position in America, be tested by a large corporation and its ambition to deprive the same kind of people of their deserved benefits is a shameful act. I've long been a supporter of Capitalism, and on the contrary to many, I think it in its most basic and moderate form isn't greed but almost common sense; what the Koch brothers are doing is simply fulfilling their greediness in the world. Even Charles Koch states that they don't care what happens because at the end of the day, it's all about profits, right? The final part of this brief excursion is we see a small local community that has been impacted negatively by the tycoons, whose factories are one of the top-ten companies in the country that pollute deadly amounts of smoke in the air. Their factories spew thick clouds of repugnant smog that can cause asthma, cancer, and at worst, death. David Koch is an outspoken prostate cancer survivor, donating millions and millions to cancer research, yet one of his many factories is now causing the problem; one of the most disgusting cases of hypocrisy I have yet to see. Koch Brothers Exposed feels like a "greatest hits" CD of the most deplorable things the brothers have done over the course of their lifetime, and because of that, the editing and overall cutting job is messy and somewhat fast-paced for a documentary. But the film proposes too many issues and too many facts to be deemed as senseless propaganda. Something truly resonated with me when I came to the conclusion that these men could potentially buy the government if they wanted to, and transport us back to the 1950's, where your freedoms were thin and your gender roles defined you as a whole. Starring: Charles G. Koch, David H. Koch, Bernie Sanders, Van Jones, and Bill McKibben. Directed by: Robert Greenwald.

• What goes around...

  poe4262012-09-18

  Is it Poetic Justice or just plain irony that one of the billionaires polluting the planet contracts Cancer? It's not the Outcome that matters, it seems, but the INcome... Mother Earth as a Cash Cow has been systematically milked dry, and we're all going to foot the bill for it in The End (which probably ain't that far off). Watching the slow but inevitable (and agonizing) demise of the people "at the end of the line" should serve as a reminder to ALL of us that NONE of us are, to coin a phrase, mere "collateral damage." (I refer you to the COLLATERAL MURDER footage...) The solution to pollution is really quite simple: anyone who pollutes the Land, Air or Sea should be sentenced to spend the remainder of his/her days right in the middle of the mess they've made. At least that way, things'd work out all around. (And to think that the Kochs were originally backed by Soviet money... Shades of Nit Romney's Bain Capital start-up money, gotten from Right Wing murder squad funders, or Karl Rove's laundering of Chinese triad money through political moneymen like Shel Addelson...)

• A Shallow and Manipulative Piece of Hack Film-making that Glorifies Hyperbole and Cheapens Truth

  migor-798652019-04-28

  Robert Greenwald does it again with yet another installment of intellectual filth that clumsily omits the whole truth from each tortured apologue in order to demonize conservatives and peddle another sickly sweet elixir of phony progressive virtue to the noncritical thinkers of the modern university-educated democrat party. Progressivism, as with all forms of collectivism is certainly a mental disorder and Greenwald spares no truth from the cutting room floor that would suggest any alternate conclusion. What is that mechanism that drives a modern progressive democrat to categorize (classify) each and every person as merely race, gender, and class? Why does the democrat need an 'enemy' (conservative} to accuse of unjustly discriminating against the rightful opportunities of 'classified' individuals? -Answer: A belief that the power of ideas is more important than the value of individual people is a core construct of the progressive democrat just as it was the framework for Marx and Engle's theories (and yes, these destroy the individual and a collectivist society built of destroyed individuals is truly a broken society), while the conservative has always held that the recognition of value of the individual person is the fiber that weaves the strongest society. Who are the REAL bigots of this age? -Answer: The very same ideological decendents of the bigots and totalitarians who created: ·The Trail of Tears ·Slavery ·Segregation ·Jim Crowe Laws ·the Klu Klux Klan ·Lynching ·Blocking The Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s This is simply the historical truth of the democrat party USA. "Come on people now, smile on your brothers (let's see everyone as a group) Everybody get together (make certain everyone is of the SAME group) Gotta love one another right now" (to be loved you MUST be a member of this group and then everything will be good) ...There is your revolution

• Less a Documentary Than Character Assassination

  Saturday8pm2013-02-17

  I'm familiar with Greenwald's work and this is the second "documentary" of his I've seen. While it's been some time since I viewed, "Wal-Mart, The High Cost of Low Prices", this investigation of the elusive Koch brothers has little balance in presentation. Regardless of whatever the Kochs are accused of, there is no side of their argument presented whatsoever. Barring this, there is little historical evidence to base the Koch's alleged political motivations. What is presented, and clearly there's evidence there, is done so snarky that it is embarrassing. Hiring a voice actor to portray a Koch gives the film its sole comedic moment, but this hardly serves us and puts pressure on Scott Walker, not the Kochs. All we have to go on is the motivations of father Fred Koch, who in turn informs the brothers' industrial / political adventures, and even this evidence has an air of hearsay. Little is said of and by lesser-known and assumed estranged brother William, who could have shed much more light on his brothers' activities. Despite the obvious rift between the brothers as documented in the film, this Koch brother seems to have aspirations not far removed from his more noteworthy siblings. Attempts to get the Kochs themselves to defend themselves before the camera comes off as a dumb stunt relegated to the end credits. Therefore, if you prefer one-sided character assassinations, go for this one. Me, I prefer a balanced approach that rewards the viewer with a richer understanding of whatever the subject is and how it seems to influence our lives. With much of the content existing in "... Exposed" intact and more of the Koch's side of the equation delved into we'd get a far more satisfying, true documentary. This video screams "shockumentary" that poisons the art and form of documentary filmmaking. Pros: Short'n'Sweet; preaches to the choir, if you like this sort of thing; an investigation into the Kochs is warranted, but; Cons: this ain't it. One-sided echo chamber it accuses the Koch machine of; asks us to follow the money - examples? Not enough historical reference or insiders to give us a fuller understanding of Koch motivations; too short and far incomplete Net: Unconvincing argument to accuse the Kochs of being active democratic subversives Disclaimer: Not a Koch follower or supporter, I simply wished to know about these guys, wanted a documentary and got a butter sandwich instead. There's plenty of Koch-type characters to go around today, who are they, what makes them tick?