I have a simple idea. Every time the Koch Brothers are mentioned on Daily Kos directly following their name in parenthesis it should read:
(Koch Ind: Brawny, Angel Soft, Quilted Northern)
The fact remains that as the elusive Koch Brothers have been getting more press in the MSM as well as heavy coverage here, people, including most liberals still don’t know who they are. It is rarely discussed or mentioned what businesses they own . Most articles simply refer to them as billionares or that they inhereted their fathers oil company. But their consumer products are seldom cited.
The three brands I mentioned are by no means their core sources of revenue. As a matter of fact they are a small fraction of their businesses. However, Brawny, Angel Soft and Quilted Northern are some of the most recognizable names in their portfolio and ones that can be made toxic and symbiotic with the Tea Party.
The Koch Brothers (Koch Ind: Brawny, Angel Soft, Quilted Northern) released a statement today that they have no intention of backing down. We can hit them in their wallet and make their funding of the Tea Party literally cost them. Or at the very least we can stop funding them ourselves.
For the passed two years other calls for boycotting their products have graced the pages and rec list here. Yet everytime I see someone mention their brand names I always see many people say “OMG I had no idea, I use that all the time.”
My idea is instead of calling for a boycott is to simply make people realize when they are at the grocery store and picking up toilet paper to think for second, and choose a different brand. One that doesn’t fund the Tea Party.
Last night during the Rachel Maddow in the New York media market a Brawny commercial ran. They want your money.
Koch Industries (Brawny, Angel Soft, Quilted Northern) has a broad reach of products that Americans use daily. They are one of the largest privately held companies in the world. Which not only means that the vast majority of all profit goes directly to the two Brothers, but it also means most of their business practices and financials are not released to the public as is required with publicly-traded companies.
You may be sitting at home or at work while reading this. If you look at your walls there is a good chance that were built with Georgia Pacific lumber and building materials… including the sheetrock. If you print this diary out you may be printing it on Georgia-Pacific printer paper and you helped fund the Tea Party. Maybe you are wearing a piece of clothing made with Lycra®. When you bought that you helped fund the Tea Party. If you installed Stainmaster® carpeting… you gave some of your money to the Tea Party.
The Koch Brothers are not backing down. Making these assholes names and the names of their brands as toxic as their tactics can decrease their bottomline. With Citizens United we need to be more conscious than ever as consumers and citizens. Every single dollar that they lose as a result of your awareness, is one less dollar they can use to buy our government.