How much do they hate the Koch brothers? So much, that when the Koch’s paid for a new hospital care centre, nurses stormed the streets.
Washington Beacon: it was the New York State Nurses’ Association, the NAACP New York State Conference, and SEIU Local 1199, among others, who marched on the soon-to-be-built David H. Koch Center at New York-Presbyterian Hospital, which was funded in part by a $100 million donation from the man one prominent liberal recently predicted would go down in history as a “famously evil person.”
The donation was the largest in the hospital’s history, and will presumably create a fair number of new nursing jobs. So why are the usual suspects up in arms? Well, the agitators were apparently agitated because this particular hospital didn’t need all the money. Oh yeah, and because it was International Women’s Day, and the Kochs are the primary funders of the “war on women’s reproductive rights … and many other issues of concern to American women.” They’re also behind “the effort to defeat and repeal healthcare to all Americans,” whatever that means.
From the twitter #kochBros
David Koch is against affordable healthcare. Why is his name on a hospital? #stopKoch
The real issue apparently is “Affordable Healthcare”. If you are dependent on big-government largess (or aiming to be that way), I guess the last thing you’d want is successful free market philanthropy.
Once upon a time people who created productive industries and gave away large sums of money were lauded, now there is no amount of money the Koch’s could give…
If you like your small hospital, you can keep your small hospital?
Oh the dilemma, The Koch’s support of climate skeptics* means the hospital gift is tainted money:
The donation will bear his name, David Koch on a new outpatient facility and he sits on the Board of Trustees at the hospital. This just goes to show what wealth is doing today in the US, sure the hospital welcomes the money and who wouldn’t but it’s strange spot to be in with the political side of where Koch goes with their campaigns, so I guess in essence we need fossil fuels to keep some hospitals going? It’s a strange world we live in today. BD
Grist are right into the irony (as they see it). The hospital is “desperate” because of the extra patients due to the trauma of Hurricane Sandy, and yet The Kochs helped made Hurricane Sandy worse!
“NewYork-Presbyterian declined to comment on whether the hospital is comfortable accepting millions of dollars from a donor whose companies create the conditions for future superstorms.”
h/t Marc Morano Climate Depot
*I’m not one.