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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

#341
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.

Liberals and conservatives will rarely condemn the violence of their pet terrorists. As far as violence is concerned, that's the problem with conservatives and liberals. They generally lend tacit support to violence against people they dislike. All with a wink, wink and a nudge, nudge.

That's why we end up with dead police who walk into ambushes, dead black guys who make the mistake of relaxing in their own apartments when lady cops burst in guns blazing, burned stores, dead little old ladies who go to bible studies while black, and dead walmart shoppers who made the mistake of being minority while looking for a San Antonio Spurs dart board at the wrong time.

Extremists are just dangerous people. We should really be bringing the hammer against all these groups wherever we find them, but again, they are protected by their patrons. So they walk the streets tatted and masked up waving around AR's because they know their benefactors will not allow our counter-terrorism units to do what military sense would demand in a sensible world.

Re: Charles Koch Says His Partisanship Was a Mistake

#342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[dead]

Re: Charles Koch Says His Partisanship Was a Mistake

#343

I looked a bit at what Charles Koch has been saying recently, and this doesn't look like a change of opinion; it looks like a change of tactics. He's de-emphasizing the partisan tug-o-war stuff, which looks less promising now than it did during (for example) the early days of the Tea Party, and focusing on the less fought-over parts. It's a reasonable approach if he wants to get things done, but not the about-face th…

>In July 2015 Charles Koch and his brother were praised by President Obama and Anthony Van Jones for their bipartisan efforts to reform the criminal justice system.[67][68] For roughly a decade Koch has been advocating for several reforms within the prison system, including the reduction of recidivist criminals, easing the employment process for rehabilitated persons, and the defense of private property from asset fo…

A demon, indeed.

Re: Charles Koch Says His Partisanship Was a Mistake

#344
> Despite Koch's calls for unity, his political contributions largely favored GOP candidates in the 2020 election cycle, with $2.8 million donated to Republicans and just $221,000 for Democratic candidates, the Journal reported.

This tells you all you need to know.

Re: Charles Koch Says His Partisanship Was a Mistake

#345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure if I'm being overly cynical - but isn't this just a tactic to consolidate the gains he managed to win by discouraging the other side from using his methods? Similar to how challengers decry bureaucracy, but once they become incumbents, wield it as a cudgel to swat down upstarts.

We saw this in the Portland mayoral race. The only on-ballot challenger to the incumbent used political tactics that overcame what would normally be exclusionary credentials. It was so successful, I was taken aback by it. At one point I had a chance to speak with the candidate by phone, and I spoke about my concerns about the divisive rhetoric. The candidate said it was only something they had to do to "fire up my ba…

> my concerns about the divisive rhetoric.

When you have a two-party system, you get binary outcomes - ie. divisiveness.

It doesn't even make sense to expect something else.

Re: Charles Koch Says His Partisanship Was a Mistake

#346
post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It highlights the very important point that activist groups will quite often ignore viable solutions. This is usually because they wish to keep on being activists and keep on continuing the fight. Thus it brings into question anything they claim and all claims should be treated with skepticism.

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…

The current trajectory of temperature increase is at least 4~5°C (rather optimistic) in 2100, which would mean that a pretty wide area surrounding the equator will, year-round or for significant parts of the year, have a wet-bulb temperature at or above 35°C. It is the limit at which human life (and mammal life in general) is entirely impossible, due to over-heating.

That unlivable area will include most of India, Indonesia, Nigeria, Brazil, etc. Hong-Kong and Taiwan, whether you consider them as part of China or not, will anyway not be livable anymore by then. What do you think will happen when India, a country of 1.3B armed with nuclear weapons, realize it literally has to move somewhere else for survival? Do you think all these people will agree to die in silence, peacefully so as to not inconvenience you?

On top of that grim outlook, agriculture has only been possible relatively recently in human history. Until about 10,000 years ago the climate was not stable enough to reliably grow crops, year after year. That stability is probably already gone. Note that the issue for agriculture (and forests, etc.) is less the actual temperature and more the rain/weather patterns (and evaporation, that links back to temperature).

There is absolutely no guarantee that we will be able to adapt our crops fast enough for agriculture to keep up, especially if there is too much instability around the globe. Without stable crops the number of people that can survive on Earth is not very large. China has recently launched a 'Clean Plate' campaign against food waste. As you can imagine it's not because food is plentiful... but because of excess rain, causing crop failures.

Radioactivity is scary and dangerous in high enough dose. Chernobyl and Fukushima are horrible disasters that should have been avoided, but sadly weren't. But compared to the threat of global warming, risks from nuclear power plants are small, known and manageable. To say it differently, rice from Fukushima may be dangerous, but it's still safer than certain death from lack of rice.

I'm not saying we should be building nuclear power plants everywhere, at all. In any case there's not enough U235 at hand to fill the energy needs of mankind. But I would much prefer we spend fewer resources on closing existing nuclear power plants, and more resources on tackling global warming (looking at my home country, France, and our lignite addicted neighbor, Germany).

Source (in French): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xgy0rW0oaFI

Re: Charles Koch Says His Partisanship Was a Mistake

#347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The article would have been improved by giving some insight into what changed his mind. The article would have been improved by at least proving he has changed his mind. Charles Koch is 85. There is a decent chance he is not going to live long enough to see another Republican administration. It would be in the best interest of maintaining some political influence and making some more change for him to change his pu…

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

I agree that it would be impossible to prove anything. However, it would have been nice to express skepticism.

Re: Charles Koch Says His Partisanship Was a Mistake

#348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

A communist nation that realized that the communist way of state ownership and central planning doesn't work and implemented private ownership and a market-based, capitalistic approach to their economy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_economic_reform

Re: Charles Koch Says His Partisanship Was a Mistake

#349
I read the new book Kochland last year. I was expecting an expose of an evil robber baron. Instead the author had a begrudging respect for the talents of the Kochs. As s privately held company they dont have to generate quarterly or annual reports for the shareholders. They can focus on long term projects. The company's value increased from a quarter billion dollars at Fred Sr.s passing to a third of a trillion now.

Re: Charles Koch Says His Partisanship Was a Mistake

#350

I looked a bit at what Charles Koch has been saying recently, and this doesn't look like a change of opinion; it looks like a change of tactics. He's de-emphasizing the partisan tug-o-war stuff, which looks less promising now than it did during (for example) the early days of the Tea Party, and focusing on the less fought-over parts. It's a reasonable approach if he wants to get things done, but not the about-face th…

>In July 2015 Charles Koch and his brother were praised by President Obama and Anthony Van Jones for their bipartisan efforts to reform the criminal justice system.[67][68] For roughly a decade Koch has been advocating for several reforms within the prison system, including the reduction of recidivist criminals, easing the employment process for rehabilitated persons, and the defense of private property from asset fo…

Koch is an honest libertarian, so his Deregulate All The Things efforts are accompanied by things like this.

But.

If you look at where he's been putting his money into supporting candidates, they are overwhelmingly Republicans that align with the former to the exclusion of nearly everything else.

It would have been very VERY easy for Koch to have got bipartisan support for serious criminal justice reform if he had wanted to, but that would have used up political capital (Republicans generally prefer to be the 'tough on crime' candidate) he otherwise used to support his economic interests instead.

That's the main problem I have with libertarians: They lend their wholehearted and deep pocketed support to Republicans on business issues and opposing 'big government', but fail to call them out on social issues (you know, the whole 'equality before the law' thing), and practically never lend equivalent support to Democrats where they would be aligned, just lip-service. It's hypocritical.

Having to date focused largely on feathering his nest, he now wants to put a bit of 'compassionate conservatism' shine on his image and legacy. I'm not inclined to let him gloss over the awful things he's accomplished.

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