“Frederick Douglass, Susan B. Anthony, Martin Luther King … Charles Koch?”: Why the Koch Brothers Are Heroes In Their Own Minds
When Charles E. Wilson appeared before a Senate committee in January 1953 as President Eisenhower’s nominee to become Secretary of Defense, he was asked whether his large holdings of stock in General Motors, where he had been president and chief executive, might cause some conflict of interest. “I cannot conceive of one,” he replied, “because for years I thought what was good for our country was good for General Motors and vice versa. The difference did not exist. Our company is too big. It goes with the welfare of the country.” While Wilson is often misquoted as saying that what’s good for GM is good for America, a quote often used as a symbol of corporate arrogance, his intent seemed at least somewhat more benign. But however you interpret it, Wilson was almost certainly sincere in believing that when you get right down to it, the country and its largest corporation, as GM was then, rise and fall together.
Koch Industries is not quite as big as General Motors was then, at least not relative to the rest of the economy. But the two men who control it, Charles and David Koch, seem just as sure that what’s good for them is good for America. They probably wouldn’t put it that way, and maybe they don’t even think about it that way. All they know is that the things they believe are right and true, which in at least one way makes them no different from you or me.
This weekend, the Kochs, who plan to spend nearly a billion dollars of their money and their friends’ money to elect a Republican president in 2016, held a confab where they could gather to discuss their plans to move America in a direction they find more amenable. When Charles addressed the plutocrats, he told them to give themselves a hearty pat on the back:
Charles Koch on Sunday compared the efforts of his political network to the fight for civil rights and other ‘freedom movements,’ urging his fellow conservative donors to follow the lead of figures such as Frederick Douglass, Susan B. Anthony and Martin Luther King Jr.
‘History demonstrates that when the American people get motivated by an issue of justice that they believe is just, extraordinary things can be accomplished,’ Koch told 450 wealthy conservatives assembled in the ballroom of a lavish oceanfront resort [in Dana Point, California].
‘Look at the American revolution, the anti-slavery movement, the women’s suffrage movement, the civil rights movement,’ he said. “All of these struck a moral chord with the American people. They all sought to overcome an injustice. And we, too, are seeking to right injustices that are holding our country back.”
Other reports note that Charles talked a good bit about the disadvantaged and downtrodden, and how they will be the true beneficiaries of the expansion of liberty that is the Kochs’ fondest dream.
You can call that ridiculous, and you wouldn’t be wrong. But while Democrats see the Kochs as cartoon villains, twirling their moustaches as they contemplate a future with low top-end marginal tax rates, I assure you that they believe themselves to have only the purest motives for their political action.
Ask any liberal activist why it’s a threat to democracy when the Kochs spend millions to elect their favored candidates, but less so when liberal billionaires do the same thing, and you’ll get two answers. The first is that “We can’t unilaterally disarm,” which is also what you hear from candidates who support campaign finance reforms but would like to get money from super PACs. It’s reasonable enough, if not particularly high-minded. The second answer, and perhaps the more common one, is that when the Kochs advocate for things like low taxes for the wealthy and loose regulation on corporations, they’re being self-interested, while a liberal billionaire who takes the opposite position is acting altruistically.
It’s an answer that is simultaneously true, at least to a degree, and unsatisfying. First of all, there are times when the Kochs advocate on issues that don’t have anything to do with their bottom line. And if they succeed in helping a Republican get elected president, only a portion of what that president does will affect them directly, even if they wind up being pleased with almost all of it.
Secondly, it runs the risk of devolving into a caricature that doesn’t help us understand the Kochs. Right now, Charles is probably asking himself why anyone would make a fuss about his speech. After all, he believes that the liberty embodied in unfettered capitalism is a source of prosperity and human flourishing. How could anyone think otherwise?
Of course, there’s a difference between telling yourself, “We’re advocating for the right things,” and telling yourself, “This thing we’re doing is as noble as anything anyone in our nation’s history has done.” But perhaps grandiosity isn’t surprising in a man whose fortune is estimated to be over $40 billion.
We all justify our actions and rationalize our decisions, and no one thinks they’re the villain of their own story. We all believe we’re good people, that we have a strong moral sense, and that the world would be a better place if it were ordered in the way we’d like. If would be shocking if the Kochs thought differently about themselves.
My point isn’t that we should automatically forgive people for their outrageous claims of moral rightness, any more than we ought to excuse outlandish claims of suffering and oppression (see War on Christmas, The). But it’s useful to appreciate that when someone like Charles Koch looks in the mirror and says, “You know, I really am a lot like Martin Luther King,” he may be utterly wrong in a hundred ways, but it isn’t a surprise that he feels that way. It’s human nature.
By: Paul Waldman, Senior Writer, The American Prospect, August 2, 2015
“No Longer May Liberty Be Denied”: Liberals Just Had An Amazing Week At The Supreme Court
The conservative Roberts Supreme Court just gave American liberals the most joyous judicial week they could have asked for.
In a span of just two days, the rightward-leaning court all but settled Obamacare as the law of the land; reaffirmed key components of housing discrimination law meant to protect minorities; and granted gay Americans the right to get married in any state they wish.
The string of progressive victories left officials hugging and high-fiving at the White House, gay couples crying tears of joy on the courthouse steps, and hardline conservatives wondering on Twitter whether their erstwhile judicial heroes were now traitors.
To recap:
In King v. Burwell, decided Thursday, the court ruled 6-3 to reject a lawsuit brought by conservatives that would have stripped Obamacare subsidies from people who purchased their health coverage on the federal exchanges. A ruling in the plaintiffs’ favor threatened to unravel the system created by the Affordable Care Act, potentially causing millions to lose their health care coverage and wreaking havoc on state insurance markets.
The ruling marked the second time in three years the court had rejected an existential threat to Obamacare. As in the previous case, 2012’s NFIB v. Sebelius, Chief Justice John Roberts joined the liberal wing of the court, this time along with Justice Anthony Kennedy, to keep the president’s signature law intact. Justice Antonin Scalia, writing in a typically scathing dissent, lambasted the majority’s reasoning as “interpretive jiggery-pokery” and “pure applesauce.”
In Texas Dept. of Housing v. Inclusive Communities, also decided Thursday, the court handed a victory to civil rights groups with a 5-4 decision that upheld so-called disparate impact claims. Joined by Kennedy, who often plays the swing vote, the liberal justices ruled that someone suing under fair housing law doesn’t need to prove that a developer or the government knowingly discriminated — only that the policy had a disparate impact, something that can often be demonstrated with statistics.
Had the conservative wing prevailed, plaintiffs bringing claims would have had the far more difficult task of proving intentional discrimination, which typically isn’t documented by those who practice it. Civil rights groups so feared an unfavorable ruling in such a case that the Obama administration sought to keep the question of disparate impact away from the Roberts court.
Finally, in Obergefell v. Hodges, issued Friday, the justices ruled 5-4 to legalize same-sex marriage nationwide, marking a triumph for the gay rights movement decades in the making. The liberal justices, who were joined again by Kennedy, determined that the Constitution grants anyone, regardless of their sexual orientation, the right to marry, effectively invalidating the bans against same-sex unions that still exist in 13 states. “No longer may this liberty be denied,” Kennedy wrote in his highly quotable decision for the majority.
Scalia penned another memorably incredulous dissent, opening by saying he chose to write separately from Roberts in order to “call attention to this Court’s threat to American democracy.” Insisting his concern was not the merit or lack thereof of gay marriage, he wrote that the majority’s “pretentious” and “egotistic” opinion lacked “even a thin veneer of law” and was chock full of “mummeries and straining-to-be-memorable passages.” “[W]hat really astounds is the hubris reflected in today’s judicial Putsch,” he seethed.
The good news for liberals wasn’t confined to just the high-profile cases. In Friday’s Johnson v. United States decision, which was overshadowed by the Obergefell case, the court ruled 8-1 that a section of the Armed Career Criminal Act, which is used to extend prison sentences, is “unconstitutionally vague.” The ruling may compel Congress to address the language of the law as thousands of prisoners seek to have their sentences reduced.
The majority opinion in the Johnson case was written by Scalia, giving progressive court watchers another reason to celebrate. As ThinkProgress’s Ian Millhiser explains, the Johnson opinion makes Scalia one of just two justices who’ve penned as many as eight majority opinions this term. If tradition is any indication, then Scalia probably won’t be writing another majority opinion before the court breaks, likely leaving the duty to one of his less conservative colleagues.
By: Dave Jamieson, The Blog, The Huffington Post, June 26, 2015
“Scott Walker Would Be A Very Dangerous President”: Vicious And Vindictive, With An Attack Dog’s Contempt
Joe Nocera has a piece today in the New York Times confirming what many of us have been saying for a while now, including here at the Washington Monthly and at the Political Animal: Scott Walker isn’t a terribly attractive presidential candidate for the GOP, but he would make a vicious and vindictive President.
Walker’s shtick has been to make up for personal lack of charm and charisma with a bluntly cynical eye to maximizing his appeal to the right-wing base not improving their lives, but rather by aggressively making punching bags of traditional liberal targets. These include labor unions, teachers, universities in general, people who work for a living, women who need abortions, and so on.
And why? Not even because it helps him with big donors, although that certainly doesn’t hurt. It’s mostly just a matter of spite, political gamesmanship and riling up his base as a warrior against anything and anyone Rush Limbaugh and Fox News have ever hated. As Nocera notes:
To put it another way, Walker busted the public employee unions not because he had to but because he could.
Similarly, there was no deep desire on the part of the business community to have Wisconsin become a right-to-work state, even though it would most likely bring about lower labor costs. Kaufman quotes a leader of the Wisconsin Contractors Coalition, who told him that “right-to-work is going to compromise my quality, my competitiveness.” That’s because the unions have long served to screen workers and keep them up to date on new technologies.
No, what motivated Walker, clearly, was politics. Unions, which have long been traditional Democratic allies, have been in steep decline — except for public employee unions, which now make up just under half of all union workers. By crippling them, Kettl told me, “Walker is trying to put a stake in the heart of a strong piece of Democratic support that has long been a thorn in the side of the Republicans.”
Once they reach the Oval Office, presidential candidates tend to keep doing what got them there in the first place. In Walker’s case, that would constitute an all-out assault on both the economic and social fronts, including and especially wage and worker protections. While the entire Republican Party has gone off a radical cliff over the last few decades and its current crop of candidates is no exception, most of the current aspirants to the nomination are simple demagogues, plutocrats and also-ran Congressional pretenders. Walker, on the other hand, isn’t just an egotistical bluffer seeking to capture billionaire donor dollars for his friends. He’s a committed soldier with an attack dog’s contempt and commitment to destroy his political opponents.
A Walker presidency would be a very dangerous thing indeed–not just for the left, but for the entire country. As demographic changes shrink the GOP base further and further, a man who gains his power by stoking the angers of a shrinking minority of angry conservatives by sticking the maximum possible pain on the majority of the country and the few remaining pillars of the middle class could be a serious threat to democracy.
By: David Atkins, Political Animal Blog, The Washington Monthly, June 13, 2015
“The Paradox Of Fundamentalism”: In Its Most Extreme Forms, The Religious Pushback Is Genuinely Frightening
The rise of fundamentalism and religious ultra-orthodoxy has taken much of the West by surprise. But the shock is not limited to the world’s well-off democracies.
For most of the 20th century, secular and usually left-leaning advocates of national liberation in the Third World fought twin battles: against Western colonialism, and against what they saw as the “backward” and “passive” religious traditionalists among their own people.
Suddenly, those supposedly backward believers are no longer passive. They are fighting to reimpose the faiths of their forebears. And in its most extreme forms, the religious pushback is genuinely frightening. That the Islamic State is, in certain respects, even more extreme than al Qaeda justifies our alarm.
Ultra-orthodoxy in more benign forms is also on the rise in democratic countries with long traditions of religious tolerance. Marx derided religion as an opiate that was destined to fade away. What happened to make faith one of the most dynamic forces in the world?
The political philosopher Michael Walzer has spent an exemplary life grappling with the intellectual mysteries at the crossroads of modernity, religion, democracy and justice. His latest book, The Paradox of Liberation: Secular Revolutions and Religious Counterrevolutions, examines the history and trajectory of national liberation movements in Israel, India, and Algeria. It could hardly be better timed. It asks why the secular revolutionaries, far from marginalizing religion to the private sphere through what they saw as “consciousness raising,” actually produced a backlash, calling forth often radical forms of religious assertion.
National liberation, he writes, “is a secularizing, modernizing, and developmental creed.” Its champions seek not only to free their countries from colonization but also to free their own people from what they see as the burdens of old religious understandings.
The people are not always eager to go along. “Raising consciousness is a persuasive enterprise,” Walzer writes, “but it quickly turns into a cultural war between the liberators and what we can call the traditionalists.”
Many who rose against colonial rule were themselves shaped by ideas first propagated in the lands of their colonial masters — France in the case of Algeria, Britain in India and Israel. The new leaders were simultaneously opposed to Western imperialism and avid westernizers within their own societies.
“I am the last Englishman to rule in India,” Jawaharlal Nehru, the father of Indian independence, told John Kenneth Galbraith, the U.S. ambassador to India in the Kennedy years. Indeed, Nehru was a product of some of Britain’s finest upper-class institutions — the Harrow school; Trinity College, Cambridge; and the Inns of Court.
Thus, while secularizing leaders were generally on the left, they were often viewed by the traditionalist, religious masses as elitists. Religious revivals that followed independence, Walzer writes, “were fueled by the resentment that ordinary people, pursuing their customary ways, felt toward those secularizing and modernizing elites, with their foreign ideas, their patronizing attitudes, and their big projects.”
One of the many virtues of Walzer’s subtlety is that he helps us understand that while the ideologies of today’s fundamentalists and ultra-orthodox are rooted in ancient or medieval ideas, these movements are, in a peculiar way, thoroughly modern. Their resistance to secularization “soon becomes ideological and therefore also new: fundamentalism and ultra-orthodoxy are both modernist reactions to attempts at modernist transformation.”
Reactionary religious politics was, in part, a response to the governing failures of secular ideologues who had been inspired by various forms of nationalism and socialism. But even where secularists succeeded in building working societies (Israel and India), their ideologies lacked the deep cultural roots capable of inspiring the same level of loyalty religious commitments can command. And so, over time, Walzer writes, young people “drifted away, moving toward the excitements of global pop culture or toward the fervency of religious revival.”
Walzer is too good a philosopher to write a simple handbook for a liberal revival. Instead, he outlines a useful long-term project: Liberationists should continue to press for religious reform, but they also need to reform themselves by engaging seriously with the religious traditions of the people they propose to liberate.
This means challenging religious reactionaries for their support of various forms of oppression, notably the subjugation of women, and maintaining a strong defense of democracy and free expression. But it also means engaging traditions from the inside, taking into account their contributions and ending the cycle of pure acceptance or pure rejection of religious insight.
In battling extreme religious orthodoxy, liberal secularists will be more successful if they embrace a certain wariness of their own orthodoxies.
By: E. J. Dionne, Jr., Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, June 3, 2015
“The GOP’s Next Big Cause”: How State Legislative Districts Are Drawn
The next King v. Burwell is on its way. I don’t mean another court case that could undermine the Affordable Care Act. I mean a case that follows this pattern:
First, a conservative advocate comes up with a novel legal theory, one few people had considered before, to accomplish a Republican goal. Though it flies in the face of either logic, history, and common sense (as is the case in King) or settled precedent (as in this case), Republicans everywhere quickly realize its potential and embrace it wholeheartedly, no matter how many silly arguments they might have to make along the way. And in the end, five conservative justices on the Supreme Court might or might not give the GOP a huge and unexpected victory.
The case is called Evenwel v. Abbott, and it’s about how state legislative districts are drawn. Before your eyes glaze over, understand that it could have a profound effect on the balance of power not only in the states but in Congress as well:
Decades after the Supreme Court set “one person, one vote” as the standard states must meet in creating legislative districts that equitably distribute political power, the justices agreed Tuesday to decide exactly which persons should count.
The court, in accepting a Texas case brought by a conservative advocacy group, will consider whether states and localities may continue to use a place’s total population as the basis or must make redistricting decisions based on the number of citizens who are eligible to vote.
A shift from using total population would have an enormous impact in states with large immigrant populations because of the greater numbers of children and noncitizens. It would most likely transfer power from urban areas to more rural districts. The court will schedule the case for the new term that begins in October.
The analogy with King v. Burwell isn’t perfect, because that was a completely new issue, while this question has come before the courts from time to time. But most people who aren’t redistricting law experts have probably never even considered whether you could exclude children and immigrants from counting population in order to determine legislative districts.
But I promise you: before long, every Republican is going to decide that they firmly believe, as the most fundamental expression of their commitment to democracy and the vision of the Founding Fathers, that only eligible voters should count when tallying population to determine district lines.
One thing to watch out for as this plays out is the role of the conservative media. If I’m right, very soon you’re going to see Fox News hosts and radio talkers like Rush Limbaugh doing segments on this case, in effect instructing conservatives on what’s at stake and how they should think about the issue. That consistent drumbeat won’t only affect the conservative leaders and rank-and-file, it could even affect the Supreme Court justices, who will hear the arguments being made in the media in support of these plaintiffs. After a while, a legal theory that sounded absurd will begin to seem at the very least to be mainstream. In short order, there will be universal agreement on the right. And it could have a real impact on political power even if the plaintiffs lose.
That’s because the Supreme Court could rule a few different ways. They could hold that states must use total population. Or they could do what the plaintiffs ask, which is to require states to use only the number of eligible voters. Or they could maintain the status quo, which is that states can choose whatever method they like in determining population. If that’s the route they take (which would be in line with prior cases), it would open the door for a state-by-state Republican effort to change redistricting laws.
As it happens, the defendant in this case is the state of Texas, which wants to keep its current system. Let’s say the Court rules that things should stay as they are. That would allow states to use only eligible voters in counting population; it just happens that no state has done that before now. By the time the ruling comes down, however, Republicans will have woken up to the fact that here is a handy way to increase their power by diluting the representation of areas with large immigrant populations. If you had a state with a lot of immigrants but which was ruled by Republicans — like, just to pull an example at random, Texas — changing the way population is counted will suddenly seem like an urgent priority. Other states with large immigrant populations where Republicans are in charge, like Florida, Arizona, Georgia, and North Carolina, could get on board as well.
While this case only concerns state legislative districts, as law professor Rick Hasen writes, “you can bet that if the challengers are successful in this case, they will argue for the same principle to be applied to the drawing of national congressional districts.”
It’s too early to tell how the Supreme Court might rule, though most legal observers were surprised they decided to hear the case at all. If Democrats are smart, they’ll make the (perfectly true) argument that this is a naked attempt to take representation away from areas where there are lots of Latinos. That might give Republicans pause in trying to pursue this change if the Court allows it.
On the other hand, when faced with a choice between pleasing their base and enhancing their power on the one hand, and avoiding alienating Latinos on the other, Republicans always chosen the first. That could make this just one more way that Republicans manage to entrench themselves at the state level while making it exceedingly difficult for them to win another presidential election in the near future.
By: Paul Waldman, Senior Writer, The American Prospect; Contributor, The Plum Line, The Washington Post, May 27, 2015
Share This Blog
Unknown Feed- An error has occurred; the feed is probably down. Try again later.
mykeystrokes.com 