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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

#321

Post by jahewson »

CryptoPunk wrote: post #297
harimau777 wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that the Libertarianism/free-market policies simply don't work. They've failed to address the growing inability to normal people to have financial security and a reasonable quality of life. At some point, continuing to advocate those policies in the face of their outcomes becomes negligence at best.

The statistical evidence shows that the US has become dramatically more social democratic since the 1960s, so any problems that have emerged can be attributed to social democracy, not libertarianism. See the effect of public sector unions and collective bargaining on public education: https://academic.oup.com/qje/article-abstract/111/3/671/1839... (copy-pasting) Every Western nation has massively increased social wel…

Apples and oranges here, the US is not a developing nation. The single largest contributor to the decrease in global poverty you cite is a communist country.

Re: Charles Koch Says His Partisanship Was a Mistake

#322

Post by chipotle_coyote »

lazyasciiart wrote: post #214
Godel_unicode wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Also, the numbers for Greenpeace are wrong, according to their annual reports.

https://www.greenpeace.org/usa/about/annual-reports-and-fina...

Their expenditures for all their "program services" (their various activism campaigns) was $27.4M in 2019 and $26.3M in 2018. If the Koch Bros. spend about $200M a year on activism, they're actually substantially outspending Greenpeace. Which, well, is to be expected: Greenpeace is a non-profit that's very often taking positions opposing major corporations.

(Greenpeace is actually a collection of quasi-independent groups around the world, but since the Koch's activism is primarily focused in the US, it makes sense to compare them to Greenpeace USA.)

Re: Charles Koch Says His Partisanship Was a Mistake

#323

Post by bondolo »

qPM9l3XJrF wrote: post #306
aniro wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. They whipped the mob into a frenzy with lies and bullshit so they could use its power to get what they wanted. Then they lost control of it. It is the loss of control they regret, not whipping it up in the first place.

Reminds me of the Democrats not condemning mob violence until it started to hurt them in the polls.

How much of that was spin and framing against the Democrats or did anyone seriously believe that they were in favour of mob violence?

New rule: if you don't condemn child rape every Monday morning then until you do it is assumed that you are in favour.

Tiny furors like the "who's wearing an American flag lapel pin" are is too often motivated by political opportunity rather than any real question of where the parties stand on topics. And yes, Democrats do it to Republicans as well, just generally not as frequently. Republicans seem to love their mostly meaningless and unsurprising performative doxologies.

Re: Charles Koch Says His Partisanship Was a Mistake

#324

Post by CameronNemo »

chmod600 wrote: post #281
CameronNemo wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>typically when the court is tilted, side-switching magically appears For people like me, I don't care what "side" a justice is on. The justices literally choose which cases they accept... Of course there will be some debate on them. What I find absolutely horrid is that the courts are packed with nominees hand selected by a group of US senators who not only cannot represent the majority of the US population/citizenr…

"Packed" is a loaded term in the context of the courts. I assume you just mean there are a lot of Republican apointees. Part of the job of the Senate is to represent the minority. They typically aren't the starting place for major legislation, but often slow down or heavily amend it. You could argue that the minority should have no power at all, I suppose. Democrats used a similar argument to remove the judicial fili…

Minority in the Senate means something completely different from reality. Count how many people voted for D senators and how many people voted for R senators. Then count how many judicial appointments D presidents have made and how many R presidents have made (in the last 20 years).

The math is transparent.

The filibuster is just something the senate made up. It does not exist in the constitution, so it is not a true obstacle. The R senators would have gotten rid of it anyway. It doesn't even protect the Senate "minority".

And the Senate's job is to prevent people from determining their own future. It was championed by anti-democracy activists like Alexander Hamilton. I hope it no longer exists by the time I perish.

Re: Charles Koch Says His Partisanship Was a Mistake

#325

Post by Wowfunhappy »

qzw wrote: post #320
Wowfunhappy wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can an article "prove" that someone has changed their mind?

Wait for actions instead of reporting whatever they self-proclaim? But that would take longer and lose the “newsworthiness”.

I think you're being overly harsh on the Wall Street Journal. The headline is "Charles Koch _Says_ His Partisanship Was a Mistake".

There's a valid discussion to be had about whether Charles Koch is full of crap, but I don't think it's wrong for newspapers to report on what people with power say.

Re: Charles Koch Says His Partisanship Was a Mistake

#327

Post by p1necone »

pydry wrote: post #207
rurounijones wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nuclear energy is still dangerous. For example, it is still not safe against possible natural disasters (Fukushima), I mean, if we are going to be bringing up a single datapoint then allow me to raise a counterpoint. Nuclear energy is still safe. For example, it is still safe against possible natural disasters (Onagawa) [1] [1] https://thebulletin.org/2014/03/onagawa-the-japanese-nuclear...

It's also, like, 4x more expensive per kWh (probably 2x more expensive with variability taken into account) than wind or solar and is uninsurable without a government backstop. I really wonder why people are so keen on it. It made sense to build them 40 years ago to deal with global warming. Today it's only financially viable if it's massively subsidized compared to wind/solar. What is it that makes that extra cost s…

The impression I get is that people are still hung up on nuclear not getting widely adopted decades ago when it was the best option. So they're still trying to make that argument now despite there being better options because they feel wronged.

Re: Charles Koch Says His Partisanship Was a Mistake

#328

Post by forest_dweller »

aniro wrote: post #248
forest_dweller wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Greenpeace There are plenty of criticisms of greenpeace in the same vain. Being skeptical of any of their claims is healthy.

I am highly skeptical of them. It was not my intent to defend them. I do not consider nuclear energy a viable alternative to the hydrocarbon economy. I have considered it and I have dismissed it. You will not change my mind unless you can produce it off planet. I have dismissed it as a non-viable option (apparently the "non-viable" part is inconceivable to you.) This dismissal is not tied to my need to coddle and pro…

Apparently you are the arbiter of Energy production. I am sorry for questioning your wisdom /sarcasm.
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