To give you an idea of just how laughably bad this Bloomberg hit piece (short version: the Koch Brothers are icky small-government people who have this big corporation that doesn’t give money to causes that the authors like is a evil lobbying corporation and here’s a list of bad things that they’ve done, including selling stuff to IranIranIranIRANIRANIRAN) was: not only did the notoriously neoconservative* house organ The Atlantic rip its allegations to shreds – Bloomberg probably didn’t want to see sentences like “Ironically, Koch Industries’ response to the article does a better job of laying out these allegations than the article itself.” – but the Bloomberg piece can’t even count on its own affiliates to have its back. To give just one example: Bloomberg Businessweek’s editorial board felt obligated to point out that the supposedly most damning portion of the original article – a subsidiary’s involvement in selling oil drilling equipment to Iran – concedes that Koch Industries was engaged in perfectly-legal activities that the company voluntarily ended when made aware about them. They also felt obligated to note that companies like General Electric – Hi, GE CEO Jeffrey Immelt! Having fun working for the Obama administration? – and Caterpillar have also engaged in similar activities. Continue reading Today’s Bloomberg’s Two-Minute Hate: The Koch Brothers!