Na última semana, a Suprema Corte do estado americano do Nebraska rejeitou uma contestação constitucional às desapropriações em prol do oleoduto Keystone, abrindo caminho para a tomada de terras particulares (inclusive de aquíferos vulneráveis) para completar a extensão do duto até o Texas. Organizações lobistas financiadas pelos Koch estão em peso por trás do projeto Keystone (entre outras ações, elas financiam campanhas de propaganda contra os políticos que se opõem ao projeto). Oleodutos de longa distância, obviamente, dependem da concessão e do acesso preferencial dado pelo estado a grandes trechos de terra não-utilizada, além do uso de expropriações para tomar as terras de proprietários particulares que se recusam a vendê-las. Em geral, as indústrias de extração de petróleo e de carvão dependem há muito tempo do acesso privilegiado a terras estatais ou da remoção de populações de terras ricas em recursos naturais.

Em notícias relacionadas, o boletim da Seismological Society of America desta semana publicou uma pesquisa que atribuía uma série de 77 terremotos em Ohio — inclusive um que foi forte o bastante para ser sentido por humanos — ao fraturamento hidráulica. São resultados de uma pesquisa que ocorreu ao longo dos últimos anos que associa um alto número de terremotos que ocorreram em Oklahoma e no Texas ao fraturamento. Os terremotos em Ohio ocorreram todos ao longo de uma falha geológica devido aos deslizes ocorridos pelo processo de fraturamento, no qual enormes quantidades de água em alta pressão e substâncias químicas são injetadas no solo para fraturar a pedra de xisto e liberar o gás para extração. Aliás, a injeção de milhões de litros de misturas químicas em formações rochosas instáveis e permeáveis também não é lá muito bom para os lençóis subterrâneos.

Esse é o tipo de coisa que simplesmente não poderia ter sido feita sob o direito comum que vigorava nos estados americanos até mais ou menos os anos 1830. Sob o direito comum tradicional, você era responsável por aquilo que fizesse para prejudicar seu vizinho, ponto. Mas a partir do começo do século 19, as legislações estaduais fizeram amplas modificações nos padrões de responsabilização legal para torná-los mais amigáveis ao comércio — não apenas fazendo com que os pleiteantes em processos tivessem que provar negligência além de terem sido prejudicados, mas tratando “práticas comerciais e empresariais comuns” como escudos contra acusações de negligência. Se os padrões originais ainda estivessem em vigor, aqueles responsáveis por operações de fraturamento ou remoção do topo de montanhas que envenenassem os lençóis de todas as comunidades que compartilhassem um aquífero, ou causassem um aumento da incidência de câncer devido à poluição, ou mesmo destruíssem o ecossistema de todo um vale, seriam obrigados a compensações totais por um júri civil e provavelmente não acabariam com mais do que a roupa do corpo. E atividades como o fraturamento e a construção de oleodutos, que têm riscos não-negligenciáveis de causar poluição ao ar e à água — mesmo se tais riscos fossem “práticas comuns” — provavelmente não poderiam recorrer a seguros.

O enfraquecimento do direito comum nas cortes estaduais juntamente com os mínimos padrões regulatórios estabelecidos pela Agência de Proteção Ambiental dos EUA (EPA) sob as provisões legislativas de limpeza do ar e da água são tratados como escudos contra processos civis e criminais — a expressão “em conformidade com todos os padrões regulatórios” é uma defesa legal válida mesmo que comunidades tenham de fato sido prejudicadas pelas ações. Além de tudo isso, as regulamentações corporativistas que estão em vigor impõem limitações de responsabilização legal artificialmente baixas em coisas como derramamentos de petróleo em costas, vazamentos de oleodutos e acidentes nucleares, tornando essas atividades artificialmente lucrativas.

Logo, quando Charles Koch diz que ele é favorável à “liberdade econômica”, ele quer dizer que é favorável à liberdade de empresas de extração de combustíveis fósseis, refino e transportes — com proteção total do governo — para roubar, envenenar e prejudicar os outros sem consequências. Desse “libertarianismo” nós não precisamos.

Traduzido por Erick Vasconcelos.

Over two hundred years ago free market economist Adam Smith pointed out that, when businesspeople get involved in government, it’s to protect themselves against competition and rob the public. That’s just as true of the Kochs as of the rest of them.

“Instead of encouraging free and open debate,” he writes, “collectivists strive to discredit and intimidate opponents. … Rather than try to understand my vision for a free society or accurately report the facts about Koch Industries, our critics would have you believe we’re ‘un-American’ and trying to ‘rig the system,’ that we’re against ‘environmental protection’ or eager to ‘end workplace safety standards.'”

In an effort to supply those missing facts and elevate the public debate, Koch immediately launches into what amounts to a corporate press release (probably actually written for him by his company’s flacks) consisting entirely of bullet points (“Did you know …?”). It starts out “Koch companies employ 60,000 Americans, who make many thousands of products that Americans want and need,” and only degenerates further into Official Happy Talk from there. “Koch employees have earned well over 700 awards for environmental, health and safety excellence since 2009″ — many of them from the EPA and OSHA! “EPA officials have commended us for our ‘commitment to a cleaner environment’ and called us ‘a model for other companies.'”

As for charges that Koch Industries tries to shape federal regulations in its own interests, Koch indignantly notes: “Far from trying to rig the system, I have spent decades opposing cronyism and all political favors …”

On closer examination, the Gospel According to St. Charles appears to have been heavily redacted in transmission. Let’s start with all those awards and praise from the EPA and other government agencies. I have to say, just as an aside, that it’s probably not all that hard to get an environmental award from the EPA; all Koch Industries would have to do is call up the same EPA inspectors who had sex with BP management before the Deepwater Horizons spill. Even so, the claims are still misleading. PolitiFact.com evaluated the claims and found them “mostly false”: All the quotes of praise and commendation were cherry-picked from specific projects by specific Koch Industries subsidiaries or companies working on contract for them, and simply edit out a much broader record of negligence, malfeasance and outright criminality.

Among the many awarded damages for negligence and malice associated with Koch Industries oil pipelines and refineries: A fine in Minnesota for knowingly discharging aviation fuel into a Minnesota wetland and adjoining waterway, releasing benzene from a Texas refinery, and a $30 million settlement in 2000 for 300 oil pipeline leaks in six states.

So when it comes to his defense on environmental performance, Koch is a lot like Lincoln’s anecdotal Jesuit who, accused of murdering ten men and a dog, triumphantly produced the dog in court.

As for Koch’s claim about opposing all forms of cronyism and market rigging, that’s much less ambiguous. He’s flat-out lying.

For starters, most oil drilling in the continental U.S. is carried out on vacant land to which original title was preempted by the federal government, and then preferentially granted to politically connected mining, logging and oil interests. Or retained as federal property and leased out on a preferential basis for drilling. This saves industry from the inconvenience of having to deal with the ordinary people who might otherwise have homesteaded the vacant land first. And according to Bill Koch, a third Koch brother who was squeezed out by the other two, Koch Industries has a history of stealing more oil than it paid for from drillers on federal lands and Indian reservations by using falsified measurements. Koch employees privately referred to this cheating as the “Koch method.” In the ’80s alone this amounted to 300 million gallons of oil, with a profit of $230 million.

Also, considering the number of miles of pipelines Koch Industries owns, and considering his support for the Keystone XL pipeline project, it’s fair to say Charles Koch supports one very big form of cronyism and market-rigging — i.e., government facilitating pipeline projects by stealing land from ordinary people and giving it to the oil industry.

Another form of cronyism Koch supports is so-called “tort reform,” which amounts to the government rigging the legal system — via liability caps, indemnities against liability, loser pays provisions, etc. — to protect them against paying damages to the victims of their leaks, spills, frauds and coverups.

Over two hundred years ago free market economist Adam Smith pointed out that, when businesspeople get involved in government, it’s to protect themselves against competition and rob the public. That’s just as true of the Kochs as of the rest of them.

This is stupid, first of all, because it’s historically illiterate. Free market libertarianism has its origins in the classical liberalism of two hundred years ago. And historically, much of that movement was quite left-wing. There was a great deal of overlap between the early free market and socialist movements. The English free market thinker Thomas Hodgskin wrote several books arguing, at great length, that land rent, profit and interest were extorted from labor through artificial property rights enforced by the state. Benjamin Tucker, at one time the leading figure in the American individualist anarchist movement, shared Hodgskin’s view of rent and profit, and considered himself a socialist. Dyer Lum, a contributor to Tucker’s Boston anarchist circle and magazine, Liberty, was heavily involved in the radical Chicago labor movement, edited The Alarm with and after Albert Parsons, had ties to future Wobblies and wrote the radical, 1892, pamphlet “Philosophy of Trade Unions” for the American Federation of Labor. Henry George regarded land rent as parasitic and favored taxing the site value of land to prevent landlords from soaking up the entire surplus wealth of society; his followers — like Albert Nock, Ralph Borsodi and Frank Chodorov — have been a significant strand of the libertarian movement ever since.

It’s true that the mainstream of libertarianism fell under right-wing domination in the 20th century, and frequently shilled for big business interests, for more historical reasons than I have space to go into. But the Right and big business apologists have never had uncontested hegemony over the libertarian movement. And there are a growing number of left-wing libertarians in recent years, like those of us at Center for a Stateless Society (the organization which pays me to write this), who use free market conceptual tools to critique corporate power.

The “Koch shills” talking point is also stupid from the standpoint of what the Koch brothers actually promote. What the Kochs and their pet think tanks call “free markets” and “free enterprise,” by and large, is just a smokescreen for their particular economic interests. And they use the state just as obsessively to promote those interests as any other corporate capitalist.

For example, a recent report released by the International Forum on Globalization shows that the Koch brothers are heavily invested in the Alberta tar sands, and stand to make up to $100 billion in profits if the KeystoneXL pipeline is completed (“Koch brothers could make $100 billion out of KeystoneXL pipeline,” Undernews, Oct. 25). The Koch brothers and the think tanks they fund all constitute one big Amen corner in favor of this project.

Is the Keystone project anything a principled libertarian could possibly condone? Let’s see …  The construction of that pipeline has entailed the use of eminent domain to condemn land from Alberta to Texas — much of it in violation of treaties with Indian nations. Demonstrators have fought pitched battles with cops and hired company thugs to prevent construction of the pipeline across stolen land in Oklahoma and Texas. In Canada, members of the Mi’kmaq nation were clubbed and gassed by RCMP cops in full militarized riot gear, trying to stop the evil pipeline company from building on land stolen from the First Nations. You know — just like in “Billy Jack.”

Fracking in Alberta also depends on the use of the state’s minimalist, least-common-denominator regulatory standards, drafted in collusion with polluting industry, to preempt traditional common law standards of liability and protect oil companies from legal action by the surrounding communities whose groundwater and air they’ve poisoned.

Anyone who advocates such things is no libertarian. The Koch brothers are not libertarians.

Let’s get something straight: The “pot-smoking Republican” kind of libertarian isn’t a libertarian at all. He’s just a Republican. And frankly, I suspect he really doesn’t even like pot that much.

See, Republicans don’t really believe in free markets or economic freedom. They represent one wing of the economic ruling class, and actively seek to promote its interests through the state — just like the Democrats. The Democrats represent the “Yankee” wing of the economic ruling class, in Carl Oglesby’s framework — finance capital and large, capital-intensive, globally-oriented industry. The Republicans represent the “Cowboy” wing — medium-sized, labor-intensive, domestically-oriented industry, extractive industries and “provincial notables” like Sun Belt real estate speculators.

And although Cowboys like the Kochs cloak their statist rent-seeking in “free market” rhetoric, they are the enemies of free markets and of anyone who sincerely believes in them.

Update Note:

This article  denies that the Kochs are major players in Alberta tar sands extraction and claims they stand to lose money if the project opens their U.S. oil interests to competition.

Whether or not that is so, it does not alter the facts that the Kochs support the Keystone project, or that the project is feasible only with massive land theft via eminent domain and regulatory preemption of common law liability for polluters. Whether or not the Kochs tip their hat to condemning eminent domain in principle, the fact remains that a project like Keystone is as closely tied to the state and its land thefts as were, say, the land grant railroads. So the Kochs’ defense is a bit like Lincoln’s Jesuit who, accused of killing ten men and a dog, triumphantly produced the dog in court.

Suggestions that alleging Koch financial interests in the project entail making it “all about the Kochs,” or that opposition to the project comes only from “liberals,” are strawman attacks. There are plenty of principled REASONS for free market advocates to oppose a corporatist project like Keystone without “liberals” ever coming into the picture.