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What Charles G. Koch Can Teach Us About Campaign Finance Data
Lasrick writes "Lee Drutman is a political scientist with the Sunlight Foundation who does terrific work. In this article, he attempts to trace campaign donations made by one of the Koch Brothers and discovers just how difficult it is to do: 'The case of Charles G. Koch is a nice lesson in just how hard it is to determine who is breaking and who is abiding by campaign finance limits. It's hard to make accurate tallies of individual aggregate campaign contributions when the Federal Elections Commission doesn't require donors to have a unique ID, and when campaigns don't always reliably report donor names. Given this, it is unclear how the FEC would even enforce its own aggregate limit rules. The FEC's spokesperson told me that while the FEC welcomes complaints, it does not typically take enforcement initiative."'
Your SSN should not be an ID#
You don't have to track political donations just look at how the politicians vote. If you vote for bank bailouts I am going to assume you or someone you know is getting rich off it. If you vote for a hunded billion dollar Air Force fighter contract I wil assume the same.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
Obama is spying on every American with blanket data grabs and still fails to stop terrorist attacks
Obama has the IRS pry into the personal lives of anyone (and high school kids) who is trying to start a conservative non-profit
And you want to bitch about money from people supporting a candidate that DIDN'T WIN the election.
Step 1: Get the tyrant in power
Step 2: Keep the tyrant in power
Posting an article about people who are harassing conservatives for who they dare to support with their money... That's just special. I guess the IRS isn't doing a good enough job, we need to find other avenues to ensure Conservative/Republicans politicians don't get financial contributions to their campaign.
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your contributions are tax deductible.
Any other contributions get you audited by the IRS. Those are the only rules that matter these days.
Is it because the Koch is considered evil by the left while Soros is a saint?
Yet the irony is that the Koch brothers actually make something in the United States and their workforce is 80% unionized while Soros is a banker who makes money on devaluing countries currency.
Why would politicians that got elected enact laws to make it harder for them to be bribed? They specifically make the campaign finances difficult to track in order to hide the bribery.
Not only that, but we let the people being elected set their own paychecks as well.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
the real question, if you are going to have wild-ass money to surf down the halls of Congress on in the first place, is why we don't have something as reliable as DNA tagging to allow following the cash?
oh, wait... ahh, now I get it. how silly of me. so, where's my check for shutting up?
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
"... The FEC's spokesperson told me that while the FEC welcomes complaints, it does not typically take enforcement initiative."
The FBI has the means to track laundered money in the banking system. I myself don't know all the ins and outs of laundering, but I'm sure it can get complicated as it takes the Bureau manpower and time to do so. But it can be done.
It seems that the example of Koch and his pay-offs is akin to laundering. Especially if it's breaking laws. If the FEC hasn't been outfitted with means to track laundering, then they should be properly facilitated to do so. That or they should be more easily empowered to request assistance from an agency, such as the FBI, that is capable of tracking the money.
Maybe the FEC has the capability, but the quote doesn't lead me to think so. If it does and its not initiating enforcement, then why act like the Commission is anything of value to anyone?
OTOH, giving the FEC the mandate to monitor pay-offs while not giving them the capability to follow the payola is indicative of a self-serving group of whores playing dress-up as patriotic politicians.
"To stop the terrorists."
People with money generally know more about how the world works than people without money. Why shouldn't they have more of a say than the dregs of society? Want a voice? EARN IT.
I actually write campaign finance software. The problem is, people don't have unique IDs. All I can ask for is name and address. Is William Gates of Medina and William Gates of Seattle, both who gave maximum contributions, the same people? What about William Gates of Medina and Bill Gates of Medina?
This is not an easy problem to solve without requiring a national ID card.
Not sure that I completely agree with him, but I think his point was that the government shouldn't have enough power to make it worth buying.
You're kidding me, right? The rich "earned" their money the old fashioned way--they inherited it and then exploited a system that is stacked 100% in their favor to get even more. With those kinds of resources, the biggest idiot who ever lived could be wildly successful, no talent required. Where did that money come from? It came from driving the rest of us into poverty. Why else would the rich be richer than they've ever been at this very moment while the rest of the country is barely scraping by? 121% of the benefits of the recovery went to the 1%. Everything the rich have is something they inherited or stole.
You know who the dregs are? It's right-wing asshats like you who act as apologists for the very same people who are fucking you over on a daily basis. You're defending them in exchange for nothing. Do you think resources are limitless? They aren't. Let me make it really simple for your little teabagging brain: If they have more, it means you have less! I hope your ideology keeps you warm when you're starving under a bridge. Maybe your rich masters will throw you some crumbs.
In the same month that we find out the government is surveilling on Americans without warrants and the government is auditing Americans based on their political donations this scientist was paid to release a study that the government needs more! authority to uniquely identify and track Americans. The blindness of partisanship.
If the government has no power, the corporations will take over. That is a nightmare scenario because corporations have no interest whatsoever in maintaining society and ensuring quality of life (the very purpose of government). The corporation's only purpose for existence is to make as much money as possible, how do you think that is going to play out for everyone? Corporations need to be hobbled by taxes and regulation at all times to prevent them from becoming too powerful.
Money buys influence. Period.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
Oh good Lord. Liberal / progressives have *always* been the shadiest purveyors of campaign finance trickery, but all the liberal press writes about is the *much* smaller Conservative PACs.
For Christ's sake - George Soros has been pumping hundreds of millions into shady socialist activist groups and the press says nothing. George Soros funded the 'Secretary of State Project' which funded the campaigns of radical progressives for ofices of SoS so that they would have power over election results in 2008 and 2012. (Communist Mark Ritchie of Minnesota who oversaw radical progrressive Al Franken's highly controversial election recount results was a result of Soros' project).
One thing liberals are very good at it deflecting attention away from their own crimes - because they are the ones with the barrels of ink.
Go chase a fuck head socialist like Soros.
Should we all be paid the same per hour regardless of what we produce in that hour?
The Koch brothers employ 10's of thousands of people.
Obviously they're doing something for ordinary people.
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Then the terrorist have already won.
Look for and vote for the guy with no money. The guy that doesn't want the job is the most qualified. The guy that does want the job, put him in a straitjacket and lock him up in the rubber room. The same goes for anybody who re-ups in the military.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
DELAWARE CORPORATION ring a bell?
Where the "bylaws" are limited by "the government" so that the actual owners, the stockholders, are effectively neutered to the advantage of ... who exactly?
On "the other hand", I guess all those government employee pension plans invested in "the corporations" are the TRUE source of all evil since THEY are the ones demanding a payback on their "investments" above and beyond what is "reasonable and customary" (for lack of a better term).
You have something really backwards in your statement when you refuse to acknowledge that "the government" CREATED the legal fiction of "the corporation" through bribery. "The government" IS the source of the problem, and who "elects" "the government". ... silence reigns ...
Hmm, one of your more lucid moments, but the law, including the constitution, isn't written to protect the individual. It is there to protect the authority of the government and the corporations that put it into place. Concentration of government power is merely a reflection of concentration of private wealth which controls that government.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Whatever gives you that idea? Opposition to rent seeking is probably the primary defining characteristic of libertarianism, and the Koch brothers support numerous causes and organizations that strongly oppose rent seeking.
The 19th century robber barons weren't unfettered free marketeers, they were people who translated a high level of political influence and corruption into personal fortunes. This is exactly what libertarianism opposes.
Do have even the slightest idea what you're saying? Do you really think anybody who is rich is affected by income taxes at all? Rich people don't have income, they mostly just own untaxable assets. Income tax is primarily a burden on the middle class and professionals, not "the rich".
Furthermore, the 19th century was a period of great improvement in the standard of living for everybody, not a period of economic and social decline the way you falsely portray it.
Basically spinning up EC2 instances with dynamic system profiles to defeat profiling, routed through Tor to auto-click on website election ads funded by the Kochs and other asshole billionaires and increase their PPC marketing costs to stealthily drain their funds spent on buying our elections. Basically a transfer of wealth from non-productive sectors to, despite their own ethical problems, Google. I figured the transfer of wealth would be ethical as at least Google is employing smart people doing some innovative things (well, other than their ad network anti privacy shit). It was even economically viable with a great ROI for me to fund it all personally (somewhere in the range of 1,000 to one dollar spent by me at the most expensive PPC terms in aggregate)
I never pursued it due to some potential ethical considerations (is it constructive or destructive to our democracy?) But maybe someone out there doesn't share those considerations and is already doing it. cheers.
Right because corporations have so much less power today than they had in the 50s...wait, no, as government power has increased, so has corporate power. Maybe you need to re-examine your assumptions
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
I'm outta mod points anyway so I'll just clear up this lie right here. It was _not_ a 90% tax rate. It was a graduating rate where you paid the same tax on the first $50k as someone making only $50k, then you paid the same tax on the _next_ $50k as someone making $100k, and so on so forth. When you got to $1 mil/yr+ you paid 90% on the amount between $900k and $1 mil. I'm simplifying it so my numbers might be off, but that's the gist of it.
Basically at one point in time we said there ought to be limits on how much of societies limited resources we dedicate to 1 person.
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actively participated in, and is proud of (and has said it was the best time of his life) supporting Adolph Hitler's "final solution"
If you support Soros in any way while being hostile to the (libertarian, NOT conservative Republican) Koch brothers, then your sense of right and wrong is so completely inverted, and you are so totally morally degenerate, that you have nothing valid to contribute to society.
corporations have no interest whatsoever in maintaining society and ensuring quality of life (the very purpose of government).
I don't know if I agree that is the purpose of government. Wouldn't it mean that the government is completely justified in prohibiting alcohol and marijuana use? Since those cause real health issues?
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
The Koch brothers did NOT start the TEA party... but they are well-known of the right as libertarians with a small-government bent. The TEA Party, being mostly libertarian but with many conservatives saw the Koch brothers as people to approach for fund raising who would be sympathetic to their cause. In the modern media age with Democrats getting money from so many rich tech people, entertainers, and rich evil bankers like George Soros and having the support of 90% of the press, the TEA party needs SOMEBODY rich in the libertarian arena to pitch-in just to be competative in communicating ideas.
Pelosi tried repeating the "astroturf" line over and over like a mantra in 2010 in the hopes that it would succeed as a "talking point" and magically make the party go away...
This would have more validity if the the title was "What Charles Koch & George Soros can teach use about campaign finance data"
"Income equality" will happen after we achieve education equality, intelligence equality, motivation equality, health equality, physical attractiveness equality, and luck equality. So don't hold your breath.
Q: What does the "B." in Benoit B. Mandelbrot stand for? A: Benoit B. Mandelbrot
I think you've got it backwards. How exactly does a "libertarian" society built on the idea of "fuck you, I've got mine" have a way to oppose such people setting themselves up as aristocracy?
I'd be a lt more impressed if this guy had gone through all the credit card donations that the Obama campaign took without verifying their cvvs or country of origin.
It has the constitution and its explicit limit of governmental powers - rent seeking requires the ability for money spent lobbying to result in gain for that individual/company. Do away with the ability for government to play favorites in regulations and contracts, and you remove the rent seeking.
Well, the problem here is that you equate libertarianism with "fuck you, I've got mine". That's merely a testament to your ignorance.
An "aristocracy" means a form of government where all power is concentrated in a small, privileged ruling class. Libertarianism is about limiting the power of government (to the minimum necessary to enforce contracts and punish criminal offenses against persons and property). They are polar opposites.
Progressivism and socialism are trying to create an "aristocracy of intellectuals". But that fails as miserably as the older divine or economic aristocracies, because intellectuals are just as corrupt and selfish as the members of the old aristocracies. The only way to limit corruption and selfishness is to give people the liberty to walk away from it.
I see an aristocracy as the inevitable outcome of a system that concentrates power into the hands of those that already have resources and prevents others from having much say in how the place is run. Once you take more than naive overview and consider actual implications of a system designed to remove political power from all but a few (ie. "the weak majority is bringing the strong individuals down" rant from "libertarians") it becomes very clear.
If you want something to really rub it in, consider the building collapse in Bangladesh where there was the "libertarian" wet dream of no government enforcing safety standards on the building owner.
One amusing practice is to ask a "libertarian" what they think of indentured servitude, although you need to describe it in detail instead of using the name or they'll catch on before they tell you that if people are willing to sign up then they are all for it. You'll see from that why I've described it as "fuck you, I've got mine" instead of anything to do with Liberty of other people. It's also amusing to see some of them play at colonial dressup without understanding that they direct opposing the ideals of Washington's revolution.
change the law so that political donations without a proper, verifiable audit trail back to a specific individual donor is deemed to be the proceeds of crime and subject to immediate civil forfeiture.
the first whistleblower or citizen-detective who reports the improper donation gets to keep 50%
the other half gets split equally between any competing candidates - but only to independents and minor parties.
how quaint - you actually believe that?
the primary definining characteristic of US-style Libertarianism is suckering the aspirationally stupid to endorse policies that allow the rich and powerful to fuck everybody else (including their stupid supporters) over in whatever way they like with no restrictions.
it's a con-job to make you think that your interests align with theirs, that what is good for them is good for you.
No, that's precisely what Libertarianism endorses. THAT is the golden age without regulations that they want to return to.
there's some truth in that, but only because there were militant and active unions who successfully fought against oppressive and exploitative working conditions and only because progressive politics and socialism hadn't yet been completely propaganised into being seen as demonic and anti-American (look into your own history, even socialism was both a popular and effective political force in the US up until the late 1940s - it's where ALL of your great national infrastructure projects and your social support programs came from)
FFS!
WTF is wrong with you stupid fucking americans?
How do you get to believe that kind of bullshit? are you just born stupid or is it brainwashed into you?
"the government" is *NOT* the source of all evil. There are plenty of other sources that have nothing at all to do with government, and there are plenty of things that governments can and do do that aren't in the least bit evil.
why the fuck, when you hear a rich and poweful man telling you that "government and regulation is evil and bad for you" that you never, ever, not even for one moment stop to think and ask yourself "what's in it for him to say that? why does he want me to believe that?"
have you no natural suspicion? or cynicism? or has it all been channeled and misdirected via propaganda into anti-government theology?
rent-seeking, for instance, is completely unrelated to government or 'government powers'. it is what happens when a private individual or organisation uses their monopoly or near-monopoly of supply to charge whatever they think they can get away without an angry mob with pitchforks burning them down.
and that means a lot...far more than you might expect because most people will take a hell of a lot of shit from businessmen parasites and exploiters before getting angry enough to even think about doing something about it. rebellion only occurs when conditions become completely and relentlessly unbearable.
it's got nothing at all to do with governments or governmental powers.
I see that too. And that is unfortunately what progressives are trying to create.
Bangladesh has been governed for years by a left-wing, socialist party, and you see the results.
As for your characterization of libertarianism, you really need to read up on it because you are totally ignorant.
Unfortunately, you've been suckered by a con-job, believing that if you just pay ever more in taxes and make ever more rules and regulations, your life will get better and better. In fact, what you are doing is supporting rent seeking on a massive scale, both legally and financially. Just look at how Obama has handed out favors to corporations left and right.
I mean, what does it take for you to face reality? We have an intelligent, Harvard educated, multi-racial, Nobel peace price winning self-proclaimed progressive and left-wing president, and he has handed out trillions to industry and banks with nothing to show for it, uses drone kills with impunity, has worsened the war on drugs, and invades privacy on a massive scale. He dropped out of the public campaign finance system, has $40000/plate fund raising dinners with billionaires, and even made purchase of an overpriced and inferior product mandatory for every American.
How exactly is that magic progressive nirwana supposed to come about? The problem with progressives (as with Christians) is not their good intentions, it is the fact that their actions make the problems worse not better.
Don't evade the issue - it was the "libertarians" prized lack of governance that caused the problem so the type of government that was leaving the building owner alone is irrelevant.
Pretending I'm "ignorant" because I'm aware of a problem is a bit much isn't it?
You really need to look up what the terms mean that you use. It is anarchists that favor a lack of governance. Libertarians and progressives/socialists both want a functioning, strong government, they just want government do different things: libertarians want it to protect free markets and individual liberties, while progressives want it to protect and regulate classes of people and businesses.
You also keep comparing hypotheticals with the real world. You assume that more regulation prevents more building collapses, but that's obviously false. What induces people to spend the money to make things safer is not regulation, it's strict and enforceable legal liability. But regulation tends to weaken, rather than strengthen, legal liability, since the usual deal is that if businesses comply with regulation, they are exempt from liability.
You're ignorant because you keep confusing libertarianism and anarchism.
Strange going after these Koch brothers, private citizens.... But no investigation of the Obama fundraising machine that turned off the CCV and zip code verification for online donations..... Mickey Mouse donated many, many, many times... from offshore locations.... Hmmm.... nothing to see, move along folks!
You get that when the people you are asking about their ideology are not actually in charge.
Individual liberties - like the right to not be ripped off by your employer and the right to not drink polluted water? Don't make me laugh. The "libertarians" are the ones that want to do the ripping off, the polluting and "let the buyer beware" with no one for the defrauded to turn to.
The "Free" market can't. Have you stopped to consider there's a reason the Gov't did it? Maybe because no other force is strong enough to stand up to a group of 20,000 people that collectively own the everything, while the other 6 billion wallow in abject poverty?
And it worked great. Tons of economic growth in the past. I think the phrase is "Nordic Socialism". Most people, including yourself, confuse it with Soviet Era fascism and/or Chinese Kleptocracy.
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Why are you pretending that the two things are not one and the same when there's a powerful group, government or otherwise, to do the enforcing? Why pretend to be stupid? The regulations are just the fine print that defines details of the duty of care.
Because they aren't the same at all. Regulation is standards set by the government that people have to comply with, usually with a prescribed set of penalties for violating them and usually with only the executive branch having standing to challenge corporations; the same executive branch that receives massive campaign contributions. And the regulations are set by politicians and bureaucrats in backroom deals with industry, and they are enforced and applied by bureaucracies composed of revolving door employees from industry. That is the system you advocate. It's the system that has given us the current financial, banking, and health care messes.
Liability means people holding corporations responsible for actual harm inflicted, with evidence on the table, proper evidentiary procedure, a jury making the decisions, and a judge making sure that the rules are adhered to. Corporations don't get off with politically negotiated penalties ("too big to fail") or the excuse that someone else screwed up the regulations. That is the system libertarians advocate.
What you call a "rip off", namely bad working conditions or low salary, you have an easy remedy: you walk away from it and get another job.
You do have that right, and you get it by enforcing it in a court of law (often in class action lawsuits), not regulations that are written by corrupt politicians and enforced by corrupt bureaucrats.
Yes, the Koch brothers are not anarchists, they are libertarians, and they are consistently so. You reject their program because you erroneously believe it is bad for you and the US. You're wrong.
There are some libertarians who are also anarchists, just like there are some socialists who are also anarchists. But libertarianism is no more about anarchy than socialism is.
Except we're talking about your hypothetical here. You argue that a hypothetical high quality regulatory regime beats real libertarian government. And you are right: it would. The problem is that such a regulatory regime is unachievable. If you try to achieve it, you get politicians who wreck the economy, enrich their buddies in industry, trample all over civil rights, and start murdering people. You know, people like Obama.
The problem with socialism and progressivism is not that it isn't aiming for the right goals, the problem is that it is so vulnerable to corruption and human error that it doesn't work and will never work.
If you look at the history of modern libertarianism, you'll note that a lot of the early proponents were rich people who had their shit taken away by a revolutionary government. If a government has the power to take some of your stuff, it has the power to take all of it.
Wow - so the solution is to remove the power to run a country away from the people and instead give it to those that can afford the best lawyers? Can't you see how Feudal that is? Aristocrats running the place in no time - just the thing Washington fought against.
How do people get to be so naive? This would be funny if it wasn't so depressing.
How would "libertarian" politicians be any less corrupt? The civil rights bit is very strange considering that a big chunk of the "libertarian" platform is removing existing rights from employees. It's a very selfish way of thinking that shows a distinct lack of awareness of human nature and a lack of empathy, and truly a bizzare thing to expound when the example of the Tribal areas in Afganistan run along those lines is in the news daily.
"For the record - did you know that the Koch Brothers support":
.. what could be more democratic than that?, OCP
Financed a fake grass-roots movement to undermine the democratically elected government of the United Stated of America.
`Study Confirms Tea Party Was Created by Big Tobacco and Billionaire Koch Brothers'
"On January 5th, it was announced that Koch Industries had sued a Utah web host, Bluehost, seeking names of pranksters who had put out a spoof press release and then posted it on a website made to look like Koch's" link
--
anybody can buy OCP's stock
AccountKiller
Right now, the corruption results from politicians actually making decisions like giving banks and corporations hundreds of billions of dollars in "stimulus" and "bailouts" and similar boondoggles, and to force people to buy from small oligopolies (both of which Obama did). That makes it worth for corporations to spend large amounts of money on corrupting politicians. If politicians lack the power and funds to hand out such vast prizes to corporations, there's less incentive to corrupt them and less damage they can do. It's progressive policies that make it so attractive and lucrative for corporations to corrupt our politicians.
Here's a different question: how are you going to fix this problem with more regulations and more executive powers?
Court cases are not decided by lawyers, they are decided by juries and judges. There is no evidence and no reason to believe that you can buy the outcome of a trial if you just have enough money. And the kinds of cases progressives care most about are frequently done on a contingency basis, so lawyers for the little guy effectively have as much money as their opponents.
What you're really saying is that you don't trust the legal system or juries, but you are praying for some perfect progressive politician, so you just want to eliminate one of our three branches of government by handing its power over to the executive branch. That's unacceptable.
Furthermore, regardless of what the connection between money and legal outcomes may be, the question is which is worse: the influence of lawyers on juries or the influence of lobbyists on politicians. Do you want to argue with a straight face that a fancy, expensive lawyer has more sway over a jury he can't pay or tamper with than a lobbyist has over a politician or regulatory body that he can give millions to or threaten with political attacks? Get real.
Yeah, that's what I'm thinking about people like you. How can you be so naive?
"the government" is *NOT* the source of all evil.
But history has proven that it has the potential to be A source of evil and some would like to see that opportunity limited. And you are a bigot.
I don't care one way or the other about this article. The author refers to the Center for Responsive Politics (CRP) as "a respected nonpartisan nonprofit". But when I go to that group's website, I found that it received $400,000 from the Ford Foundation, $350,000 from Open Society Foundations (Soros), $150,000 from the Rockefeller Brothers Foundation, $50,000 from the Jennifer and Jonathan Allan Soros Foundation, an undisclosed amount from the Tides Foundation (Soros), $400,000 from the MacArthur Foundation, and money from other groups that could be Soros' front organizations.
Then I see that the Sunlight Foundation gets its resources from some of the same groups: the Ford Foundation, the Open Society Foundations (Soros), the Rockefeller Family Fund, the Foundation to Promote Open Society (Soros), the Open Society Institute (Soros), and so on. Its biggest contributor is the eBay billionaire Pierre Omidyar, through his Omidyar Network; Omidyar appears to take direction from George Soros, donating lots of money to groups where Soros has given smaller amounts.
Sunlight also calls itself a "nonpartisan non-profit", and that is true, but also irrelevant. The CRP and Sunlight Foundation promote a hard-left agenda -- the agenda of George Soros; they do not have to give money to politicians to have an impact on politics. And I'm certain they had no trouble getting or keeping IRS approval for their 501(c)3 or 501(c)4 tax-exempt status.
What do Charles and David Koch do for ordinary people? For starters, Koch Industries employs over 60,000 of them at high-paying jobs. And it makes products which are needed by ordinary people, or by other companies which in turn make goods that ordinary people need. So the people you hate and the company they run are a powerful force for good in this country
As for income equality, that is a socialist concept which would be out of character for anyone with a libertarian philosophy. So don't expect them to suddenly endorse the agenda of the totalitarian Left.
I agree with your depiction of the progressive ideal as "an aristocracy of intellectuals". I prefer to think of them as the equivalent of the nomenklatura in the old Soviet Union: a ruling class producing nothing, and impoverishing the working people it claims to speak for.
As for your question - Why do you think I'm advocating such a line just because I think people that want to throw away democracy and consolidate power in their own hands are untrustworthy? Talk to me and not a strawman.
So your government sucks and is on the take - big deal - that doesn't mean democracy itself is a failure.
Do you know nothing of history and the world you live in?
i never said it wasn't, or that government was perfect and spotless.
but government is only as bad as you let it be. if you abdicate citizen control over government and leave it to only the rich and powerful and the corporations then they will use it to fuck you and fuck you hard - more of the same. i guess you're used to it by now.
it's corporate evil that most needs to be limited. you can achieve that best - and your own aim of limiting government too - by taking control of the government away from them and back into the hands of citizens
no, just sick and tired of seeing the same self-sabotaging idiocy all the fucking time. you idiot yanks can't see any wrong or any evil without immediately thinking "the government did it". you've been trained well.
no other people are so thoroughly brainwashed. that deserves contempt, not praise - so that's what i give.
only an idiot american would think Obama was any kind of leftist.
you tell me to face reality? try facing some yourself instead of just eagerly reinforcing your own brainwashing.
the worst kind of idiots are those who'll praise the taste of shit just because they're told it's chocolate.
I wouldn't have to guess what you're advocating if you stated a clear position. All you're doing right now is whine and complain about corruption and accuse libertarians of being responsible for all sorts of imagined ills without rhyme, reason, or evidence.
So, specifically what are you actually advocating, and how is that going to fix the rent seeking, loss of civil liberties, and war mongering we have seen under Obama?
Well, enlighten me. Where is the evidence that the outcome of US trials is strongly influenced by spending?
I said that he is a "self-proclaimed progressive and left-wing president", not that he actually is leftist. No politician actually ever "is" a leftist, because left-wing ideology cannot actually be translated into political practice (neither can right-wing ideology).
What an apt description of your political views. You're Canadian? European? Australian?
I just hope they keep supporting Bitcoin.
Thank you, thank you, thank you!! And please realize that not all Americans are a herd of mindless sheep, sucking incessantly on their Fox-News teet
Consider what legal representation a homeless man gets versus someone like Donald Trump, and the outcomes. A society run on the basis of sorting everything out via lawyers is going to rapidly collapse into Feudal courts surrounding rich patrons.
The truly major inequality is in civil courts however which is where your idea truly fails. How are people going to afford to sue Koch for instance if their water is undrinkable downstream from one of the Koch operations if Koch gets his way and pollution controls are repealed? One person can't afford it. Ten people can afford it. A class action is going to take years and impoverish the side with the least cash reserves, so something else needs to be done. Once a lot of people band together to oppose injustice it's starting to look like a government again isn't it?
Do you see what I mean now about it just being window dressing on selfishness for some leading "libertarians" and directly opposed to what Franklin, Washington etc were trying to do. They wanted to band people together to protect against injustice when individuals couldn't do it alone. Some libertarians want to reverse that and be free to be injust to others without a group of people banded together getting in their way, and they are using the strong mythic american hero idea as a tool to do it (ie. you too can be the boss with adoring servants). Once you look at their views on pollution, safety standards and employment conditions it's very clear that it's all about being selfish and has nothing about liberty in any way - some of the things being pushed very hard is about taking away the liberty of employees. If you can't work that out due to lack of empathy from class divisions consider the likely fate of an unskilled young female relative in a "libertarian" society. Consider societies already run along those lines in Somalia and Afganistan for ideas.
The west has been pushing back against this bullshit since the 1600s so it's truly depressing to see it on the rise in the country that gave us modern democracy.
Are you reading what I'm writing? I'm advocating democracy. I think overthrowing that and replacing it with some army of lawyers for hire or similar naive idiocy (the armed wannabe-warlord "libertarian" faction) is a very bad idea.
So, in different words, you don't have any actual evidence, you are simply creating a straw man.
Through class action lawsuits. They are extremely lucrative for the lawyers involved, so the people are going to get excellent representation, and they are decided by juries. Right now, he just needs to get some friendly regulator in place at the EPA and he gets off free, with no ability for anybody to sue him.
The US was founded by classical liberals and based on classical liberal ideas. They actually explicitly and firmly stood against redistribution of wealth and tried to design a Constitution that would limit it.
People like you want to impose failed European political ideas on the US, and heaven help us if you succeed.
You're advocating a specific form of democracy, namely a European-style democracy where there is a large amount of power in the hands of corruptible politicians, as opposed to a US-style laissez faire democracy.
You can think what you want, but that doesn't make an argument. If you want to make an argument, you have to explain how shifting more and more power from the judicial branch to the executive branch is going to reduce rent seeking. And you have to explain why countries that take that approach are doing so much worse than we are.
No - I just have to point out that people like Koch are selfish pricks and that some of their useful idiots are anarchists. Wrapping it all up in a flag doesn't make it right, especially the bunch that act just like the Royalists that Washington was fighting against. It would all be funny if it wasn't taken too seriously, but people really are talking about overthrowing a system that's worked for a couple of hundred years just because of some of the inequality that's become more severe over the last thirty.
I've tried to be polite, but I really do see you as the enemy of a free society since you're a useful tool for those that want to restore the Aristocracy.
You have no rational basis for saying that; the guy is one of the top US philanthropists. His only sin is that his political beliefs differ from yours.
You're the enemy of a free society, because you want to transfer individual liberties and decision making to a large, unaccountable executive branch. The endpoint of that is what happened in the communist east bloc. Of course, given your demonstrated utter ignorance of politics, history, and economics, it is hardly surprising that you fall into the same traps as your fellow socialists and progressives.
NO - I want to stop the erosion of political power of citizens and prevent to concentration of it all in the hands of a few. You seem a bit slow and haven't worked out yet that I'm not in the USA, and I haven't said anything about the US executive branch so far let alone advocating giving it even more power (the bullshit you've tried to put in my mouth above) - personally I think that the Australian system where the leader can be removed at the will of the Parliment (Congress) is vastly better and would have saved you from lame duck Presidents sitting out their second term when even their own party wanted them gone (Nixon, Carter, Reagan, Baby Bush).
I can understand that hard times have made you feel that democracy is not working. A lot of people thought that way in Italy and Germany in the 1930s. But the answer is not populist pricks that want to cut the majority of the population out of the loop and only allow the rich to decide what gets done - and you especially don't want the sort of pricks that still think slavery is a good idea.
Koch's foundations advance the view that building basic institutions that protect the liberty of individuals to pursue their own economic interests result in greater prosperity for the larger society. That's the foundation of modern economics, not politics. The fact that people like you simply don't grasp this shows how important more education in this area is.
A key feature of fascist economics is "dirigisme", the strong ability of the state to direct private companies to operate in the interest of the people. They wanted people to have private property and engage in commerce, but they also wanted people to lose their property if it was determined that they were not using it for the benefit of the people. They called this the "third position", different from both socialism and capitalism, both of which the fascists opposed. Their big enemies were international finance and the economic dominance of big business, which they considered parasitical and unproductive.
That was the economic platform the Nazis were elected on, in the wake of a US stock market crash and economic crisis and the anti-capitalist sentiment that followed. It eventually made them the largest and most popular party in Germany, and Hitler was subsequently democratically elected dictator of Germany by parliament.
They are called "right wing populist" because they advocate ideas popular with a lot of people. Look in the mirror if you want to see a right wing populist, because that's what you are.
Democracy is working very well, and we aren't facing "hard times". I'd just like to keep it that way.
I really can't understand why you think democracy is something to discard and why you are willing to be a useful idiot for someone that would be happy for you to be their slave.
I really can't understand how anyone can embrace right wing populism and fascist economics after the 20th century, and that's exactly what you are doing.
No - obviously not. Your argument is as stupid as suggesting all Christians support Jim Jones and Charles Manson. Meanwhile since you are directly rooting for Koch you'd better look up that fascist economics then try to see if you can find a difference between that and what he's calling for - it may take you a while.
Don't accuse me of dragging fascism and right wing populism into this discussion: you did that. You just got your facts completely wrong. I suggest you do some reading.
Koch's political views: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Koch#Views_and_intellectual_development
Third Position Economics: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascism#Third_Position_economics
You're defending third position economics, I'm defending laissez-faire free market economics and small government. It's as simple as that. At least have the decency of identifying your position correctly. Heck, you even have Mussolini's language down pat, accusing people who choose capitalism of being "slaves".
No you did it. My post above about people who don't know any better being disappointed in democracy in hard times should be taken at face value. At least it appears you are starting to read about the world and will soon lose your enthusiasm for a society run by Aristocracy or warlords. Education cuts in recent years may have given you a poor grounding but you can get over it kid.
You wrote:
I have to conclude that in addition to your fascist tendencies, you're simply delusional.
You wrote:
So, in addition to your right wing populist economic views, you are also delusional.
Read it again. Use a dictionary for the hard parts.