Tea Party Funded by Stalin's Money

I can't make up this stuff. Koch Industries, with its ties to the John Birch Society, climate science denial, and the Tea Party, built its wealth in the Stalinist Soviet Union. Back in the 1920s, grandfather Fred Koch developed some new refining technology that didn't fly in the American market. Koch thus made money selling his technology to the Communists:

In 1929, after hosting a delegation of Soviet planners in Wichita, Kansas, Winkler and Koch signed a $5 million contract to build 15 refineries in the Soviet Union. According to Oil of Russia, a Russian oil industry trade magazine, the deal made Winkler-Koch into Comrade Stalin's number-one refinery builder....

At the time, the Soviet Union's oil industry was a total mess. Equipment built by Western engineering firms was always breaking down or didn't work at all. Western engineers were constantly being accused of espionage or sabotage, real or imagined, and booted out of the country. Soviet workers suspected of colluding with the foreigners were simply taken out back and shot. Winkler-Koch made sure it was running a tight, efficient operation. Unlike his Western competitors, Koch pleased his Soviet clients by ensuring top quality and helping the cause of socialism [Yasha Levine, "The Roots of Stalin in the Tea Party Movement," AlterNet.org, 2010.04.17].

As Levine writes, if Koch harbored anti-communist sentiment, he kept quiet about it for decades, until the late 1950s, after doing lots of business and making his fortune working with Stalin to help the Soviet Union become a great industrial nation.

That explains it: the Russians love tea.

Speaking of Communism, How Was Your Thanksgiving?

The Rooted Pasque of Sioux Falls draws our attention to a fragment of social history with a South Dakota connection on Letters of Note, a fascinating blog that highlights old letters. On August 17, 1939, Robert S. Benson and Clarabelle Voight wrote to the White House to protest President Roosevelt's decision to move Thanksgiving back a week to expand the holiday shopping season. Writing on letterhead from a Groton, S.D., insurance agency, the writers recommend FDR stop acting as if he were "running a Russia or communistic government." They also suggest he be committed to Yankton.

A note on cultural perspective: the writers refer to themselves as representatives of the "people of the Northwest." Interesting: if this letter did indeed come from South Dakota, it suggests a different geographical perspective from the current local perception of South Dakota as part of the Midwest.

¿Vacaciones en Cuba? ¡Sí!

Argus Leader online poll, results as of ~7:40 CDT, 2009.04.14

That Sioux Falls paper runs a reader poll on its homepage this morning: "Would you consider taking a vacation in Cuba?" The results as of breakfast time surprise me: 7 out of 10 mostly Midwesterners, just emerging from a hard snowy winter, say they wouldn't even consider vacationing in a warm, sunny island just 90 miles from Florida.

Call me weird, but if I had more vacation money (we might be able to afford a drive to Winnipeg for our exotic foreign travel this year), and if President Obama would open that door a crack further, I'd sign up New Year's in Cuba in an instant. Beaches, bicycling, music, history... what a destination!

And who's afraid of big bad Communists? My first overseas trip was to the Soviet Union in March, 1991. Fascinating, amazingly educational experience. And ten months later—poof! Communism collapses!

I'm ready to do my part again to bring down the Iron Curtain, Mr. President. Keep easing those travel restrictions, and send me to Havana! ¡Quiero bailar in Cuba!