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Charles Koch Says His Partisanship Was a Mistake

wsj.com

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Re: Charles Koch Says His Partisanship Was a Mistake

#11

Post by wombatmobile »

SideburnsOfDoom wrote: post #4

Apologies if this is covered in the article, which I can't get to, but what is he doing to make amends? Or is this just empty, placatory words?

> Mr. Koch is now trying to work together with Democrats and liberals on issues such as immigration, criminal-justice reform and limiting U.S. intervention abroad, where he thinks common ground can be found. He has partnered with organizations including the LeBron James Family Foundation, the American Civil Liberties Union and even a handful of Democratic state legislative campaigns. In 2019, he renamed the Koch network of about 700 donors as Stand Together.

> Still, his political spending remains almost entirely partisan. Koch Industries’ PAC and employees donated $2.8 million in the 2020 campaign cycle to Republican candidates and $221,000 to Democratic candidates, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

Re: Charles Koch Says His Partisanship Was a Mistake

#12

Post by SideburnsOfDoom »

TaylorAlexander wrote: post #9
SideburnsOfDoom wrote: post #4

Apologies if this is covered in the article, which I can't get to, but what is he doing to make amends? Or is this just empty, placatory words?

Cynically I just think he wants to play ball with the Biden administration now that they’re talking a big talk about working with republicans.

That would be my cynical take as well: Oligarch sees which way the political wind is currently blowing.

Re: Charles Koch Says His Partisanship Was a Mistake

#14

Post by TaylorAlexander »

wombatmobile wrote: post #10
TaylorAlexander wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel the same way. I am a voluntarist so I do not think forced wealth redistribution is the answer. But it’s clear to me that there are ways we can move to different businesses structures and property norms so that massive wealth has a tendency to be distributed throughout the population rather than concentrating in few hands. It’s a challenge, for sure. And some proposed solutions may cause more harm that good. Bu…

If rich people payed tax at the same rate as ordinary people, we'd be living in the same system without harmful extremes of inequality.

But they don’t pay tax at the same rate, because once they get wealthy they buy enough influence to tip the scales in their favor. Which is why I advocate for more collectively owned firms. Then wealth goes directly to the people rather than going to a rich CEO and shareholders and then the government and then eventually maybe the people.

Re: Charles Koch Says His Partisanship Was a Mistake

#15

Post by TaylorAlexander »

SideburnsOfDoom wrote: post #12
TaylorAlexander wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cynically I just think he wants to play ball with the Biden administration now that they’re talking a big talk about working with republicans.

That would be my cynical take as well: Oligarch sees which way the political wind is currently blowing.

Mmhmm.

Re: Charles Koch Says His Partisanship Was a Mistake

#16

Post by arcticbull »

sacomo wrote: post #5

Shouldn't have been allowed to have undemocratic control over that amount of political power (wealth) to begin with.

Elections are in the public interest and therefore should be publicly funded -- exclusively.

Each registered candidate with more than a certain number of signatures of support should be given a budget of money and pre-paid airtime on all major networks by the FEC, and that's it. Once it's out, it's out. All other contributions (including in-kind) to political campaigns are tantamount to bribery and should just be illegal.

Re: Charles Koch Says His Partisanship Was a Mistake

#17

Post by _23sd »

Hard to tell if this is Charles Koch actually deciding to become more of a philanthropist than a partisan in his old age, or just a veiled threat to the GOP that he's ready to jump ship in the event that the GOP remains the "party of Trump" after 2020. The latter isn't that wild an idea as the Democrats have slid into more Koch-friendly positions on virtually everything except deregulation over the past decade. They'd face a lot of resistance from Democrats who instinctually hate them, though.

Re: Charles Koch Says His Partisanship Was a Mistake

#20

Post by presentation »

sacomo wrote: post #5

Shouldn't have been allowed to have undemocratic control over that amount of political power (wealth) to begin with.

His argument that people should be empowered to engage with the democratic process is ridiculous... Just because we want people to engage, doesn't mean that billionaires should have orders of magnitude more influence when they do "engage" than other people do.
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