He Created Tea Party Monster

[GayatfootofCross]

Tea Party and the Right

Charles Koch’s Frankenstein Problem: He Created the Tea Party Monster — and Now He’s Horrified With the Results

The Koch network gave rise to the rabid right. But now Charles Koch wails about a 'lack of substance and civility.'

By Sean Illing / Salon

October 27, 2015

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http://www.alternet.org/tea-party-and-right/charles-kochs-frankenstein-problem-he-created-tea-party-monster-and-now-hes

 

Charles Koch.
Photo Credit: CBS

I’m a big fan of irony, which is why I enjoyed this Wall Street Journal profile of Charles Koch so much. In an interview with Patrick O’Connor, Charles – evidently the more diplomatic half of the two most politically active Koch brothers – spoke somberly about the tone of the 2016 presidential race and of political discourse more generally. “It’s mainly about personalities and ‘your mother sucked rotten eggs,’” he lamented to O’Connor.

On the one hand, I understand Charles’s frustration. After all, he and his brother are looking to invest $750 million on this election. When a man, his brother, and 450 wealthy donors build a national network of umbrella organizations in order to dictate political outcomes via dark money, they expect to get the results they want.

Here’s the problem: The Koch brothers, whether they know it or not, got exactly what they paid for. If the tone of our politics has sunk to Cro-Magnon levels, it’s because the process has been flooded with money and propaganda and rabid right-wingers who’ve coarsened the discourse and made compromise impossible.

Everything about our politics took a dark turn around the time of Obama’s election in 2008, which is precisely when the Koch brothers’ political machine exploded into being. As O’Connor writes:

In 2003, Mr. Koch convened about a dozen like-minded conservatives in Chicago with the goal of becoming more overtly political. Those efforts took hold early in Barack Obama’s presidency amid voter unease with the bank bailout signed by President George W. Bush and with the passage of the Affordable Care Act. Groups financed by the Kochs and their alliance spent more than $400 million in 2012…In that year’s presidential election, Americans for Prosperity and two other Koch-financed groups spent a total of more than $50 million on television ads.

The “lack of substance and civility” about which Charles complains began in earnest with the rise of the Tea Party between 2009 and 2010. To the extent that the Tea Party is a centralized movement, it is so because it has been mobilized by the groups Americans for Prosperity and Freedom Works, both of which are Koch-financed. As it happens, these groups were formerly a single organization, called Citizens for a Sound Economy, which was founded in 1984 by, you guessed it, the Koch Brothers.

The Tea Party, from the very beginning, was designed for disruption, and it was a pet project of the Koch brothers (they actually created the first national website for the movement). Charles Koch says he’s interested only in advancing “free-market, small-government ideals,” but what he’s done is manufacture a faux-populist movement that has whipped the conservative base into an anti-government frenzy.

In the process of serving his narrow and self-interested ideological ends, he allowed the worst elements of the conservative movement – the xenophobes, the nationalists, and the theocrats – to hijack the Republican Party. Initially this worked, because it sent obstructionists to Congress whose only mission was to shut the government down. But, over time, it’s created a political climate in which it’s nearly impossible to govern. And it’s prepared the way for someone like Donald Trump (whose campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, is a product of Americans for Prosperity), who exists only because he’s been able to tap into the sentiments let loose by the Tea Party movement.

Hence the incredible irony of a Charles Koch bemoaning what’s become of our political process, a process he, as much as anyone, helped engineer.

[phkrause]

Its just amazing to me the waste of money and for what??

[GayatfootofCross]

2 hours ago, phkrause said:

Its just amazing to me the waste of money and for what??

Hi!

Greed and Control knows no bounds!

[joeb]

Why, gatfotc, do you not condemn George Soros too?  He has created organization after organization that are overtly political and funds them out of his own pocket.  You find it morally repugnant that conservatives will dare put their money behind their beliefs, but yet give someone like George Soros, who is truly evil, a pass.  Why? 

[Gene Fortner]

On 10/29/2015, 7:45:19, phkrause said:

Charles Koch’s Frankenstein Problem: He Created the Tea Party Monster — and Now He’s Horrified With the Results It's just amazing to me the waste of money and for what??

Pk,

 

Obama, his admin, and the GOP establishment created the Tea Party, Koch had nothing to do with it.

[Gene Fortner]

The rest of the  story

 

Koch Brothers

John Stossel | 2015.02.24

Lots of people sure hate the Koch brothers.

The Kochs get death threats like this: “If I had a chance to murder a Koch brother in cold blood, I would surely take it.”

It is disgusting when big shots use their money to get handouts from government — ethanol subsidies, limits on sugar imports, loan guarantees for Boeing or special deals from Rahm Emanuel. That’s government helping well-connected rich people, handing them money that once belonged to taxpayers.

But the Kochs aren’t like that. The brothers made their billions by growing their businesses. That’s a good thing. That’s real wealth creation, jobs for people and products people want.

The Kochs oppose subsidies, even for their own company. They’d get rid of them if everybody else would.

I should disclose that I’ve spent time with both David and Charles Koch. They’ve paid me to speak at a few of their events. I happily took the money and gave it to charities.

But anyone who understands libertarianism knows I’d agree with the Kochs even if I’d never met them. They are pro-immigration, anti-drug war. They want less defense spending. They got praised by Attorney General Holder for their campaign to jail fewer people.

Why is the left so mad at them? It’s definitely not because they’re the only big spenders in politics.

During the last presidential election, it was reported that the Kochs spent $60 million. Tom Steyer, the big environmental activist, spent $70 million a few years later.

Yes, groups affiliated with the Kochs spent $400 million. But the Huffington Post reports that labor unions spent much more: $1.7 billion. Union spending dwarfs Koch spending.

The unions, unlike the Kochs, promote economic ignorance. They push rigid hiring rules, limits on firing lazy workers, “buy American” campaigns, taxes on imports and other ideas that stifle growth. They push inefficiency on a grand scale, and politicians usually go along.

 

In 2013, Koch companies in the United States directly employed about 60,000 people in 49 states and the District of Columbia, paying compensation and benefits totaling nearly $4.8 billion according to a recent study by Harrah Analytics, an independent economic research firm.

 

Koch companies also bought goods and services from local businesses, and their employees spent paychecks for food, shelter, entertainment and more. This combined spending translated to Koch companies supporting a total of more than 201,000 jobs and earnings of about $11.8 billion, Harrah Analytics determined in its study.

 

http://www.kochind.com/files/JobsStudyinfographicJune2014.pdf

 

Koch derangement syndrome

By Jennifer Rubin

Right Turn has reported on the occasionally extreme lengths to which the left, aided by George-Soros backed outlets and unwary mainstream reporters, has gone to vilify the billionaire Koch brothers, who give to conservative causes. Two more items jumped out at me, showing just how flimsy and silly the attacks are.

Bloomberg reports that the “scandal” involving Koch financial support for Florida State University faculty positions turned out to be a big zero:

Florida State University’s president said Friday that a faculty investigation into the hiring of two new economics professors revealed nothing inappropriate in the hires, but he conceded that the wording in an agreement tied to a $1.5 million donation from a billionaire libertarian’s charity opened the door for “undue influence” on the process.

 

Nothing happened, but it could, you see. That’s the best the Kochs’ opponents could come up with. For good reason, the university president feels vindicated. “President Eric Barron said he’s opposed to any memorandum of understanding that gives an appearance that a donor would have a role in the annual evaluation of a faculty member. Barron said a Faculty Senate investigation found no evidence the school compromised its integrity on the new hires in the economics department.”

As yet I haven’t seen stories from the breathless leftist Web sites that hyped the story acknowledging that this was, in essence, a scandal without a scandal.

At times, it does get fairly funny. This is not a headline from the Onion: ”Koch brother spread influence via blueberry farmer.” Dastardly! What’s next — the nation’s strawberry supply? The “substance” of the piece is even weirder:

Gordon Colby, who manages 5,000 acres of Maine blueberries, says he’d never heard of any billionaire brothers being involved when he decided to join a group lobbying for less government regulation.

“I don’t even know who the hell David and Charles Koch are,” Colby, 63, said in an interview. “I don’t know about the Kochs, don’t know who is funding Americans for Prosperity. But I like what they are doing on the local level.”

A blueberry stooge? Actually, Colby doesn’t give a fig about the Kochs; he just doesn’t like government regulation. The evidence for this berry scheme is that the Koch brothers give to Americans for Prosperity, one of many Tea Party-type groups. That’s it. When the farmer pleads, “I’m a farmer and I just want to farm,”the report zings him for not “providing specifics.” Good grief. Do you think the ACLU is spreading influence through shoe salesmen? Daily Kos through garage mechanics? (What I do know is that Soros is spending oodles of money on NPR.) At some level, this is insulting, both to readers and to the citizen activists who have views of their own and now have outlets through which to petition their government.

The irony of this is that very few voters know or care who the Koch brothers are. They do know that we have 9.2 percent unemployment and a president who wants to raise taxes in a dismal economy. So, I guess we shouldn’t be surprised that the liberal spin machine would rather talk about college professors and blueberries.

By Jennifer Rubin | 01:30 PM ET, 07/18/2011

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/post/koch-derangement-syndrome/2011/03/29/gIQAxJ9zLI_blog.html