The family found an improved method for converting heavy fuel into gasoline. The Father, Fred, worked in the Soviet Union helping Stalin build oil-processing units in different refineries. The experiences while he was here made him an anti-communist. In 1958, he became one of the founders of the John Birch Society that encouraged limited government. Koch Industries consist of manufacturing, refining, and distribution of petroleum, chemicals, energy, minerals, fertilizers investments and many more. Nearly 60,000 people are employed in their industries and 40,000 are in 59 other countries. $115 Billion is the annual revenue for their company. They are the second largest privately owned company and they are responsible for a large amount of pollutions such …show more content…
There were times when the brothers didn’t agree on things so they each choose a direction in life. Charles was the second son and was the one that was deemed to take over the family company. He became the VEO of Rock Island and Refining in 1967 and has been watching over the company since then. He even changed the name of the business to Koch Industries in honor of his father. In America he is best known due to the large investments in policies and political groups that he makes. He invests in groups that further the idea of a free-market agenda such as The Cato Institute and the libertarian think tank. David is the vice president of Koch Industries and also the chairman of the Americans for Prosperity Foundation. He also supports the arts and cancer research. Charles and David bought our their brothers so they could be the owners of the company. Bill Koch founded Oxbow Carbon, an energy company, Frederick was not interested in having anything to do with the oil industries. He was the only brother who did not attend school where his father went to (MIT). Instead, he graduated from Harvard and Yale. Now he is best known for his art and being a
The compelling and infectious novel of Founding Brothers; The Revolutionary Generation written by Joseph J. Ellis combines our founding fathers weakness’ and strongest abilities in just six chapters. His six chapters tell the stories of: The duel between Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr. This entertaining chapter describes how duels were undertaken and played out in that time, and helps the reader understand both men's motives. The dinner which Thomas Jefferson held for Alexander Hamilton and James
Chavis served as an assistant to Dr. Martin Luther King at a very young age. As a result, he got inspired to work for Civil Rights Movement. At the age of thirteen, when he was still a wide-eyed boy, he made his first act of protest against racial prejudice. Moreover, Chavis was very influenced from his own family members, other than Dr. Martin Luther King. His great- great- grandfather, John Chavis, who was the first black person to graduate from Princeton University. John Chavis was a revolutionary solider; he was killed in 1838 for teaching slave children writing and reading.
Simmons, Charles James (1893-1875), politician and evangelical preacher, was born on 9 April 1893 at 30 Brighton Road, Mosley, Birmingham. His father, James Henry Simmons (1867-1941), was a master painter and his mother, Mary Jane (1872-1958), a schoolteacher. They were Primitive Methodists, temperance advocates, and Liberals. His maternal grandfather, Charles Henry Russell (1846-1918), a Liberal, Primitive Methodist lay preacher and friend of Joseph Arch (leader of the Agricultural Labourers’ Union and MP), shared the family home. Simmons described him as ‘the greatest influence during my formative years’, the well-spring of the religious and political activism that was to characterize his career (Simmons, 6). Educated at Board schools, Simmons left formal education at the age of fourteen for employment in an assortment of jobs, including a tailor’s porter, telegraph messenger and salesman.
America was born and survived, its rough road into a nation, through a series of events, or moments in history. The founding brother’s book is about a few important figures during and after the American Revolution. These important figures consisted of Alexander Hamilton, Aaron Burr, John Adams, George Washington, James Madison, and Thomas Jefferson. Each of these men, contributed to the building of America in one way or another. The book breaks these contributions into a few short stories, to help understand what these important figures did.
In Founding Brothers, Joseph J. Ellis discusses how the relationships of the founding fathers shaped the United States, looking not only at what happened historically but the myths that have prevailed in modern times. I have few issues with this book one of which is that the narrative often jumps from one time and place to another, and while it provides the relevant information and keeps the reader’s attention, it can be hard to follow at times. In addition there are times were he explains the same incident more than once, which is distracting and unnecessary. Despite this Ellis supports his thesis well through stories of political and personal events between the founders, and clearly shows how it affected their treatment of each other. This shows why they fought and worked together the ways they did and why they left certain issues closed, and others open to later interpretation. I appreciate Ellis used journals, letters, newspapers and other public documents to see into the minds and lives of the founders, and the various quotes portray the depth of the founders’ feelings very well. Overall, while confusing at times, the book was engaging and displayed the Founding Fathers in a variety of lights adding to the books’ appeal.
John Lewis is an African American man born on February 21st, 1940, into a sharecropping family in Pike County, Alabama (Moye, 2004). He grew up on his family's farm, and attended segregated public schools as a child. Even when he was just a young boy, Lewis was always inspired by the happenings of the Civil Rights Movement. Events such as the Montgomery Bus Boycott or hearing the wise words of Martin Luther King Junior over the radio stimulated his desire to become a part of a worthwhile cause, and was a supporter of the Civil Rights Movement ever since ("Biography," para. 3). Lewis went to school at both the American Baptist Theological Seminary and Fisk University, both in Nashville, Tennessee. He graduated from the American Baptist Theological Seminary, and received a Bachelors degree in religion and philosophy from Fisk University. While at Fisk, he learned the philosophy of how to be nonviolent, and would soon incorporate that into his civil rights work ("John Lewis Biography," para. 3). While he was a student at Fisk University, Lewis began putting together sit-ins at local lunch counters to protest segregation. Many...
The Enron Corporation was founded in 1985 out of Houston Texas and was one of the world 's major electricity, natural gas, communications, and pulp and paper companies that employed over 20,000 employees. This paper will address some of the ethical issues that plagued Enron and eventually led to its fall.
Being in school, it helped John to begin to think a great deal of business. His father had decided that he would give his son a chance to experience the business side of life by seeking him a job in New York at Duncan, Sherman & Company in which his father was well known and such a notable man and had established a large asset within this company.
John H. Johnson was born January 19, 1918 in rural Arkansas City, Arkansas. His parents were Leroy Johnson and Gertrude Jenkins Johnson. His father was killed in a sawmill accident when little John was eight years old. He attended the community's overcrowded, segregated elementary school. In the early 1930s, there was no public high school for African-Americans in Arkansas. His mother heard of better opportunities for African-Americans in Chicago and saved her meager earnings as a washerwoman and a cook and for years until she could afford to move her family to Chicago. This resulted in them becoming a part of the African-American Great Migration of 1933. There, Johnson was exposed to something he never knew existed, middle class black people.
He founded the idea of social Darwinism, which can be defined as the theory of “survival of the fittest”. In the movie, the dad left his family on earth to go on a space mission that may save the people from starvation on earth. While looking for a new planet to inhabit, the crew ran into complications that forced them to have to be the ones to decide the fate of mankind. The astronauts had the will to choose to continue to the next possible planet even though they had to give up the hope of seeing their families again. The sacrifice the crew made shows how cultures affect people’s actions because their values guide them to choose the morally correct answer of saving human beings.
Enron was formed following a merger between two natural gas companies in 1985, Houston Natural Gas and InterNorth.3 When Enron formed, it had accumulated a large sum of debt, roughly 2 billion dollars.4 As a result of deregulation, Enron no longer had the exclusive rights to its pipelines, resulting in the company hemorrhaging money. Kenneth Lay5, the chief executive officer (CEO) of Houston Natural Gas, became Enron’s CEO. Lay knew he had to quickly come up with a new innovation to keep the company afloat. Lay hired McKinsey & Company6 to help in coming up with a business strategy for Enron. McKinsey & Company assigned Jeffrey Skilling7 to Enron’s company as a consultant. Skilling, who had a background in banking, asset and liability management, came up with a solution to Enron’s financial crisis in the gas pipeline business. He said to create a “gas bank”, in which Enron would buy gas from a network of suppliers and sell it to a network of consumers, allowing them to control the supply and price of the gas. Enron’s debt was no more, and Lay was so impressed with Skilling, that he created a new d...
John W. Gardner born 1912, had a varied and productive career as an educator, public official, and political reformer. Gardner's belief in society's potential was his guiding force, but he was wary of the dangers of complacency and inaction. Perhaps best known as the founder of the lobby Common Cause, he was the author of several best-selling books on the themes of achieving personal and societal excellence.
The founding of the United States went through a tough time to unite a whole nation. The U.S., at many times, was almost doomed to failure. Many decisions and beneficial people kept what is known as America today alive. Some of the most unexpected people to help shape the U.S. was Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton. Not like any of the other feuds between politicians at that time that ended in choice words, Burr and Hamilton ended in death. Many crucial moments occurred during the early years of America and most of the time America was simply a dream that most felt would never be accomplished. Without the influence of the men who shaped the nation, this sort of "experiment" would have failed.
Fred Koch was born in Quanah Texas a small town, where his father owned a weekly newspaper and print shop. Fred eventually attended Massachusetts Institute of Technology earning a degree in chemical engineering. His educational background in chemical engineering led him to be able to invent an improved process of extracting gasoline from crude oil. In 1929 America's major oil companies filed a lawsuit that would wallop Fred and his customers for patent infringement. Throughout the fifteen years of the lawsuit, Fred began to see and understand the way laws and policies are implemented and how these laws and policies can be manipulated by people in power. The actions by the major oil companies during the course of the lawsuit included an attempt
Enron was a Houston based energy, commodities and services company. When people hear the name Enron they automatically associate their name with one of the biggest accounting and ethical scandals known to date. The documentary, “Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room,” provides an in depth examination of Enron and the Enron scandal. The film does a wonderful job of depicting the downfall of Enron and how the corporate culture and ethics were key to Enron’s fall. As the movie suggests, Enron is “not a story about numbers, it is a story about people.”