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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."'
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.
Work Safe Porn
Really strange - the lefts HATRED of brothers promoting freedom with their own money.
For the record - did you know that the Koch Brothers support:
Decriminalizing drugs,
Legalizing gay marriage,
Repealing the Patriot Act,
Ending the police state,
Cutting defense spending.
They call this being way right wing?
Where in the Constitution is there a right to privacy for individuals?
4th Amendment prohibition against unreasonable search and seizure, and the 9th Amendment which clearly says that just because a set of rights are enumerated doesn't mean those are the only ones you have, and the 10th Amendment which says that the only powers the Federal government has are those delegated to it, and that all others are reserved to the States (where not prohibited) or the People.
So, the real question which you should have asked is where in the Constitution was the government given the power to snoop through all your crap in the first place.
I was raised on the command line, bitch
"Nemo me impune lacesset"
Seriously, did you even read the article? (I know, I know, this is /., what on earth am I thinking.) That's a rhetorical question, of course - you wouldn't ask the question you asked if you'd read the article. Then again, that seems to also be true of quite a few people who replied to you, so you're hardly alone.
Koch is the subject because an earlier article, by the same author, had listed Koch as one of nearly 600 people who appeared to have exceeded campaign contribution limits. Turns out this was incorrect - an error due in large part to the disasterously poor state of data on contributions by major donors. The whole damned article is both exonerating Koch and explaining where the original analyis went wrong. It's about Koch because Koch's company took the time to contact the author, work with him to identify where and how some of the erroneous data came about, and help set the record straight. If one of the other nearly 600 donors listed had done the same, this follow-up article might easily have been about someone other than Koch.
It's got nothing to do with "evil", "good", "bad", etc, except inasmuch as the FEC data is manifestly "bad", and woefully inadequate for even the FEC themselves to determine who may be breaking campaign finance laws. If you want to get upset about the article, get upset about the real point - that nobody has sufficient information to tell whether major contributors on either side of the political aisle are breaking the law. (And there were plenty of Dem donors in the original article if you take the time to read it. I apologize in advance to you that Soros wasn't on the list. Well, that's not true - there's two Soroses (Sori?) on the lists - just that <Jedi>these are not the Soroses you're looking for</Jedi>)
So untwist your knickers, grab a beer, chill out, then try actually reading the article.
A marriage is always made up of two people who are prepared to swear that only the other one snores.
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.