During Thursday’s Green News Report, we briefly discussed Charles Koch’s claim in his Wall Street Journal op-ed this week, that he and his brother David, are using their inherited fossil-fuel millions to discredit global warming science (and other inconvenient realities), simply because they are fighting “to restore a free society and create greater well-being and opportunity for all Americans.” Sure they are.
Over at the Washington Post’s “Plum Line” blog, Paul Waldman has another thought on the Koch op-ed this week, which was published at virtually the same moment as the rightwing judicial activists on the U.S. Supreme Court trashed 40 years of campaign finance law in order to allow the approximately 600 Americans who had already maxed out their previously allowed $125,000 per-election-cycle donations to political candidates and parties to be “free” to give millions to candidates and parties instead.
Waldman avers that the Koch op-ed and the SCOTUS McCutcheon decision “are parts of the same effort,” which, he argues convincingly, is “Nothing less than the construction of a new version of liberty.”
In his WSJ piece, Koch joined a growing procession of billionaire Rightwingers recently whining aloud about their perceived persecution at the hands of…well, anyone who doesn’t share their political views and who doesn’t have the “freedom” to also have billions, inherited or otherwise, in their bank accounts.
“Instead of encouraging free and open debate, collectivists [ed note: apparently he means anyone who is not a Republican?] strive to discredit and intimidate opponents,” Koch bemoans. “They engage in character assassination,” he complains, before adding parenthetically,”(I should know, as the almost daily target of their attacks.)”
“Poor” fellow. Waldman, however, sees the Koch Agonistes very differently…
The system of “free and open debate” Koch envisions is one in which the volume of your voice is determined by the amount of money you have, but no matter how loud that voice, you are exempted from any direct criticism. That would be a privilege only the wealthy would want or need.
Think about it this way. Nobody is going to run an ad saying, “Barack Obama got a ten dollar contribution from Betty Lundegard of Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Just how much do we know about Betty Lundegard? What’s her agenda?” The reason is that it couldn’t possibly matter, so no one cares. But if you pour $400 million into a campaign, then it does matter, and people will care. Betty Lundegard isn’t affecting very many people’s votes, elected officials won’t jump to take Betty’s calls. Furthermore, Betty won’t have the luxury of publishing op eds in the Wall Street Journal defending herself.
So freedom from criticism over your political spending is a freedom only the wealthy would need.
Waldman goes on to add: “With the McCutcheon decision, there is a way in which the sum total of liberty in America has been expanded. But do you feel freer? Unless you’ve got a few hundred million in the bank, the answer is certainly no.”
“In a strict sense,” he says, “Charles Koch and I both have the ‘freedom’ to donate a few million dollars directly to candidates. But in the actual world, only one of us has that freedom.”
Apparently, when you own as much “freedom” as the Koch Brothers, you can also purchase the ability not to be embarrassed in the least.
Koch’s op-ed could have been much shorter and to the point had he just quoted Abraham Lincoln instead: “Our government rests in public opinion. Whoever can change public opinion, can change the government.”
Because if Charles and David Koch — and all the other billionaire “victims” pretending they have lost “freedoms” by, like the Kochs, becoming richer than ever imaginable even just 5 or 10 year ago — had an ounce of integrity, they would simply admit that the only “freedom” they are interested in at this point is the ability to buy both public opinion and the government to go with it.
Thanks to the U.S. Supreme Court once again this week, they are now well on their way…and you aren’t. Feeling freer yet?
I think it important to note, Brad, that when the Kochs refer to “liberty,” they actually mean the “liberty” of capital and capitalists to enslave labor, to wit, the working class.
While the two rail against government assistance, their family fortune had its origins in the government largesse that entailed the massive 19th Century railroad land grants–enormous swaths of land ranging from 6-40 miles on either side of the tracks, the value of which far exceeded what was needed to cover the cost of construction.
The owners of the railroads, aka “robber barons, needed local newspaper publishers to lure settlers into purchasing land at inflated prices, and that’s where the Koch brothers’ grandfather Harry came in. After persuading the rural TX farmers to buy land at inflated prices based upon exaggerated stories about fertile land, Harry turned around and blamed farmer laziness for their ensuing economic woes.
Then there was their father Fred Koch, the founder of Koch Industries. Fred made a fortune selling an oil refining device to Stalin’s Soviet regime. He remained silent about Soviet abuses throughout the time he supervised their installation. Fred kept a close eye on the damage done during WW II, and went on a business trip to Moscow in 1957.
It was only when the Soviets shut the door on Fred’s effort to reinsert his company into Soviet refining that Fred, in 1958, became a charter member of the radical, anti-Communist John Birch Society.
Then there is the allegations leveled against Charles and David, by their brother Bill, that Koch Industries expanded its fortune by stealing oil from Native Americans and the United States government — allegations backed up by some 60 employees, and, of course, allegations that, under our two-tiered system of justice, never resulted in prosecution, let alone jail time for these “libertarian” criminals.
And the Media goes along with this because they will end up with almost all the money that is spent by these 600 people.
When all of us have several billion dollars, then and only then, would I even consider money to be included as speech. And as we all know that is unlikely to happen so, MONEY IS NOT EQUAL TO SPEECH.
The Koch Brothers have bought the Kansas State Senate outright on a new education funding bill that strips teachers of due process rights in employment : http://www.dailykos.com/story/2...ion-in-Topeka#
This is happening right now. The Kochs literally met with Senate Majority leader Susan Wagle, and ALEC member and made it clear that Rs who did not vote for the bill would be primaried.