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Charles Koch Says His Partisanship Was a Mistake

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Re: Charles Koch Says His Partisanship Was a Mistake

#211

Post by nokcha »

extra88 wrote: post #51
chub500 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe for the last 30 years or so (after the late Antonin Scalia) 'conservative' judge is almost synonymous with originalist. I think you may be falling victim to correlation is not causation? IE there are no liberal originalists by definition (above). If I'm wrong, could you give me an example of a liberal originalist? I would be very happy to be wrong about this. The correlation here is that conservative presid…

Conservative judges have no problem with legislation from the bench when they're the ones doing it. Again, they pretend to use an impartial "originalist" principle when decision-making but cherry-pick the "original" texts they use or ignore them when they would lead to ruling in a way conservatives don't like. How is it "originalist" to take the 2nd Amendment, which refers to "well regulated Militia," and using it to…

>How is it "originalist" to take the 2nd Amendment, which refers to "well regulated Militia," and using it to say there's a Constitutional right to owning a handgun for personal protection...?

The relation between the operative clause and the prefatory clause is that, historically, kings had effectively destroyed the militia by forbidding the keeping or bearing of arms. Justice Scalia's opinion in Heller cites a great deal of evidence that the original public meaning of the phrase "the right to keep and bear arms" included keeping and bearing arms for individual self-defense.

Re: Charles Koch Says His Partisanship Was a Mistake

#212

Post by Der_Einzige »

scoot_718 wrote: post #26

Rightwing playbook: Republicans in power: Use every loophole Democrats in power: Preach bipartisanship and the importance of fairplay.

The worst part is that Democrats eat that shit up. I can't believe that we're going to get nothing done for another 4 years because Biden believes in a weaker executive branch.

Personally, I think the president has far too much power (especially in war-powers), but Biden will need to deploy a ton of executive orders to get anything done with the legislative branch he's about to get - and he won't do it because he (along with his party and Obama) believe in fair-play, norms and institutions. The issue is that their opponents don't.

Republicans will win back the house in 2024 in no small part due to Biden being precieved as having done nothing due to his reluctance to use executive orders to legislate from the oval office like his predecessor did.

Re: Charles Koch Says His Partisanship Was a Mistake

#213

Post by StreamBright »

Der_Einzige wrote: post #206
blfr wrote: post #27

The US seems to be in the middle of another realignment, like in the 60s. The Democratic party is consolidating its support from the big corporations, while the Republican party is making inroads with the working class.

a solid 35-40% of the Democratic Party is explicitly anti-corporate, remember occupy wall-street and the success of Bernie Sanders? Remember Warren calling for breaking up big tech? Even Biden and Obama frequently deployed (light) anti-corporate rhetoric in their campaigns and presidency. Trump is a billionaire and a defender of the corporate class. His entire administration consists of ex-corporate wall-street types…

Remember what DNC did to Bernie?

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/23/us/politics/dnc-emails-sa...

Re: Charles Koch Says His Partisanship Was a Mistake

#214

Post by lazyasciiart »

Godel_unicode wrote: post #195
arshbot wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this a troll? Comparing a single point on greenpiece's agenda to literally hundreds of millions of dollars Koch dollars to climate change deniers as a whole are simply incomparable. Just in case this is somehow contestable, let me highlight a few points * Climate change deniers oppose solutions that don't involve oil/gas/coal - this means nuclear power * Koch funding > greenpiece funding * greenpeice didn't start…

Greenpeace's annual budget for activism (as opposed to fundraising, which eats roughly 1/3 of their budget) is on the order of $200 million. That's more than the lifetime spending of the Koch brothers, and Greenpeace does that volume every year. They're not some scrappy little actor, they're one of the single largest lobbying groups in the entire world.

I don't know where you are getting your numbers, but they are orders of magnitude wrong. The Koch brothers also spend about $200million/year. https://www.cnbc.com/2018/01/27/koch-brothers-network-to-spe...

Re: Charles Koch Says His Partisanship Was a Mistake

#215

Post by aniro »

bhickey wrote: post #205
aniro wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you seen how big the Chernobyl exclusion zone is? are to move your family there? Have you paid any attention to the after effects at Fukushima? Do you care to realize that we are pushing radiation with unknown effects into the largest body of water (and one of the greatest repositories of life) on Earth? That the effects will likely reverberate for a 1000 years or more? What is your solution to the problem of ac…

> Has it occurred to you that life has succeeded on the planet primarily by a fantastical luck of getting dosed with EXACTLY the right amount of radiation, carefully controlled by an atmosphere that literal took a millennia of millennia in order to develop? Well, no. We aren't in some mystical radiation balance with nature. Heritable point mutations are primarily driven by DNA polymerase errors and repair failures, n…

I gather all of that evidence was collected from Martian samples? Maybe Venus? Was it derived from DNA developed on the Moon?

What does make Earth just right for you to have developed in order to be aware, gain such knowledge, share such knowledge?

Untold eons of carefully controlled radiant energy emitted by our blessed Sun.

The Sun and its ilk are massive emitters of radiant energy. Light is a form of radiation. Heat is a form of radiation. The universe is full of lifeless rocks either burnt by the sun or left out in the cold. In fact, all the ones we know of exist in this state except this one.

I am not advocating some “mystical radiation balance with nature” so much as pointing out that “life” (as we know it) is playing the long game on controlling radiant energy doses. When we muck about with that by playing our dumb little short game without consideration for the consequences we invite disaster upon ourselves. All of this discussion about global warming is pointless if we leave large swathes of the planet uninhabitable by humans.

Re: Charles Koch Says His Partisanship Was a Mistake

#216

Post by throwawayxyz987 »

CalChris wrote: post #208

“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.“

BigTech is just as biased, if not more, only in the other direction.

https://www.vox.com/2018/10/31/18039528/tech-employees-polit...

    Employee donations to midterm candidates by party

    Netflix ($321K)     99.6% D    0.4% R
    Twitter ($228K)     98.7% D    1.3% R
    Airbnb ($107K)      97.8% D    2.2% R
    Apple ($1,218K)     97.5% D    2.5% R
    Stripe ($152K)      97.0% D    3.0% R
    Lyft ($47K)         96.1% D    3.9% R
    Google ($3,742K)    96.0% D    4.0% R
    Salesforce ($364K)  94.8% D    5.2% R
    Facebook ($1,066K)  94.5% D    5.5% R
    Tesla ($118K)       93.9% D    6.1% R
    eBay ($46K)         93.5% D    6.5% R
    PayPal ($84K)       92.2% D    7.8% R
    Microsoft ($1,480K) 91.7% D    8.3% R
    Amazon ($971K)      89.3% D   10.7% R
    Uber ($125K)        81.5% D   18.5% R
    HP ($73K)           80.0% D   20.0% R
    Intel ($353K)       78.5% D   21.5% R
    Oracle ($685K)      66.1% D   33.9% R
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/facebook-twitter-employees-...

> Twitter employees donated $347,270, or 98.99% of total federal donations, to Democrats, making individual donations of $200 or more. Meanwhile, only $3,556, or 1.01%, of federal donations from Twitter employees went to Republicans.

> Facebook employees donated $2.4 million, or 91.68% of total federal donations, to Democrats with donations of $200 or more via individuals or PACS. Only $218,576, or 8.2% of all federal donations from Facebook employees, went to Republicans.

Re: Charles Koch Says His Partisanship Was a Mistake

#217

Post by xyst »

Pirgo wrote: post #24

"Mr. Koch has written (with Brian Hooks) a new book, “Believe in People: Bottom-Up Solutions for a Top-Down World,”" Can it get any more cynical than this?

Mr. Koch just doesn't want people to desecrate his family grave when he finally bites the dust. I don't buy it for a second that he has truly changed. He will die rich while the rest of us try to clean up the mess he and his brother created.

Re: Charles Koch Says His Partisanship Was a Mistake

#219

Post by kitd »

bwanab wrote: post #156

This reminds me of George Wallace’s famous realization that his long term institutionalization of racism in Alabama was wrong when he was getting close to death’s door. It was kind of nice to hear, but lots of damage was done.

Contemplating ones deathbed is an extremely productive form of meditation IME.

Re: Charles Koch Says His Partisanship Was a Mistake

#220

Post by js2 »

ceilingcorner wrote: post #148
anarazel wrote: post #2

Main Koch PAC: https://www.opensecrets.org/outsidespending/detail.php?cmte=... Total Independent Expenditures: $41,016,106 For Democrats: $92,936 Against Democrats: $8,887,525 For Republicans: $32,035,645 Against Republicans: $0 Koch industry donations: https://www.opensecrets.org/search?order=desc&q=Koch+Industr... Edit: Added link showing recent Koch Industry donations

That’s actually not very much compared to someone like Bloomberg.

I'm glad he's spending money to help fight climate change but it's gross how much the wealthy can influence elections and policy. If I have to choose, obviously I want that money to go toward making the world a better place for everyone, but I'd rather not have to choose at all.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-07-01/billionai...

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jun/10/billio...

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