October 05, 2011 09:11 PM UTC

How Slick Is "Teflon Cory's" Teflon? We May Know Soon

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• by: Colorado Pols

As the Colorado Independent’s Troy Hooper reports:

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee wasted little time linking at least one Colorado congressman to Monday’s damning Bloomberg Markets Magazine report on Koch Industries…

“Representative Cory Gardner’s career in Congress is propped up by the most radical interests in the country who profit off business with the Iranian regime known for their sponsorship of terrorism and calls of ‘death to America,'” Jesse Ferguson of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee said in a statement sent to Colorado media outlets. “These are the same controversial Koch brothers who bankroll right-wing candidates like Representative Cory Gardner and are pushing an extreme ideological agenda that hurts the middle class and seniors while protecting their own tax break for Big Oil. Will Representative Cory Gardner continue to welcome the support from Koch Industries in light of the new investigation showing the companies profited by doing businesses with state sponsors of terrorism or is he finally ready to start rejecting it?”

Rachel Boxer, spokeswoman for Gardner, told The Colorado Independent on Tuesday morning that her office would review the DCCC statement and formulate a response. She did not return messages left for her later in the day…

From the Bloomberg report:

What many people don’t know is how the Kochs’ anti-regulation political ideology has influenced the way they conduct business.

A Bloomberg Markets investigation has found that Koch Industries — in addition to being involved in improper payments to win business in Africa, India and the Middle East — has sold millions of dollars of petrochemical equipment to Iran, a country the U.S. identifies as a sponsor of global terrorism.

Internal company documents show that the company made those sales through foreign subsidiaries, thwarting a U.S. trade ban…

We’re pretty sure that if you could tie a Democratic campaign donor, particularly one responsible for such a large amount of money donated to candidates like the Koch brothers and Cory Gardner, to profits earned illegally doing business with Iran, there would be a massive outcry on the right of high treason. But when it’s the multibillionaire Koch brothers doing it, the Koch brothers who assemble the top Republican donors and public officials together in secret twice a year to warn them of a “battle for America’s survival” against Barack Obama…while apparently doing business with an enemy in violation of sanctions…

Well, folks? Can you explain why this isn’t on the front page of The Denver Post? With a list of everybody the Koch brothers have given money to in this state? If mainstream media seriously doesn’t think Gardner’s reaction to one of his largest campaign donors doing business with a state sponsor of terrorism is a story, a head-spinning double standard is at work.