Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Charles Koch Says His Partisanship Was a Mistake

wsj.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 483 posts

Re: Charles Koch Says His Partisanship Was a Mistake

#101

Post by meowing »

chub500 wrote: post #39
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?

Forgive my asking - what's cynical about this title? Should we not believe in people? Is the world not top-down oriented? Sorry - just confused.

Koch has spent a fortune on destabilizing public infrastructure in midwest cities. If he "believed in people", he could show it by not tearing down public transit systems which disenfranchises poorer people.

Re: Charles Koch Says His Partisanship Was a Mistake

#102

Post by sdenton4 »

nickff wrote: post #99
sdenton4 wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does a legal system need to be 'originalist' to be valid? That seems like some pretty stiff kool-aid... Via ye olde wikipedia: 'In the context of United States law, originalism is a concept regarding the interpretation of the Constitution that asserts that all statements in the constitution must be interpreted based on the original understanding "at the time it was adopted".' This is the start of a very short roa…

>"It's meant to be a living document, right? " The constitution was not originally intended to be a 'living' document; that theory came about in the progressive era as a way to change the meaning of the constitution without amending it.[1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Living_Constitution

I meant living document in the prosaic sense, of document meant to be regularly updated. The amendment process is baked in from the start, so was clearly intended from the beginning.

Re: Charles Koch Says His Partisanship Was a Mistake

#103

Post by meowing »

StreamBright wrote: post #87

Now when he is done ruining the planet with pushing for fossil for decades, got billions on his bank accounts, god knows what else, he has had enough and he wants to be a good boy. I totally buy it.

Just reading how he wants to all of a sudden improve his legacy makes me so mad. How many thousands of peoples' legacies has he impacted?

Re: Charles Koch Says His Partisanship Was a Mistake

#104

Post by stevenwoo »

jswizzy wrote: post #94
andrewmg wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(Longtime HN lurker and FedSoc member/leader, although speaking for just myself here.) The Federalist Society's entire annual convention was just broadcast online this past week,[0] and it's pretty typical of the Society's activities: hosting panels, debates, and speeches on the law featuring a wide breadth of views. If the Federalist Society is some kind of "conspiracy"—one that you can join today, for fifty bucks!—…

I don't know what you mean by voters. Since the gay marriage issue was decided by the courts instead of legislatures.

To be generous and read between the lines, the Supreme Court eventually comes around to opinions that agree with a majority of Americans.The idea of it as an apolitical organization is to ignore reality.

Re: Charles Koch Says His Partisanship Was a Mistake

#105

Post by dboreham »

oh_sigh wrote: post #97
catawbasam wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is genuine work to be done reconciling gay marriage with the first amendment: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof" Unfortunately Alito is more likely to add to the problem than to help resolve it.

How is only allowing male female marriage against what you wrote? Religions would still be free to let gay people get married, they just wouldn't be able to register with the state.

This isn't my field, but afaik marriage is entirely a question of "registering with the state". Everything else is some sort of party or tribal celebration.

Re: Charles Koch Says His Partisanship Was a Mistake

#106

Post by [deleted] »

colinmhayes wrote: post #96
andrewmg wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(Longtime HN lurker and FedSoc member/leader, although speaking for just myself here.) The Federalist Society's entire annual convention was just broadcast online this past week,[0] and it's pretty typical of the Society's activities: hosting panels, debates, and speeches on the law featuring a wide breadth of views. If the Federalist Society is some kind of "conspiracy"—one that you can join today, for fifty bucks!—…

It isn't a conspiracy. It is the organization most at fault for mitch's anti-democratic actions regarding the supreme court that I honestly believe has the potential to completely undermine our government. The supreme court's move to a completely partisan institution is a huge step toward a populist dictatorship. https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/supreme-revenge/

[deleted]

Re: Charles Koch Says His Partisanship Was a Mistake

#107

Post by alain94040 »

chub500 wrote: post #47
extra88 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Federalist Society finds, indoctrinates, and advances conservative lawyers and judges. That's not inherently anti-democratic though their level of success and influence on judges selection processes may be considered so. The problem is they also tend to be highly partisan (pro-Republican) which undermines the separation of powers. Often their picks ignore their "originalist" approach when it would be counter to t…

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…

I'm not sure "originalist" means anything. The constitution, like all legal texts, contains contradictions between different principles. As logic students know, once you have contradictions in your principles, you can prove anything you want.

The role of a judge is to sort through these contradictions to decide which principles are more important than others, even though they are all mentioned in the constitution.

So I don't see how there is an objective concept of "originalist": you have to pick some principles over others. Which ones you pick are a lot more guided by your own ideology than by the words on paper.

Re: Charles Koch Says His Partisanship Was a Mistake

#108

Post by nickff »

Zigurd wrote: post #79
chub500 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let me push back one more time. If what you're saying is true, and no judge no matter how much integrity they have can be truly originalist - what do we do? Is our judicial system dead? Should we even try to pick originalists or give up on a third branch and let it be a super legislature? What comes of rule of law? Doesn't this seem like a problem?

"Originalism" is not possible in practice because it would lead to absurd outcomes. It is reasonable to suspect that "originalism" is a construct in bad faith, to cover a preference for old bigotries and a less than coherent grab bag of right wing positions.

When we interpret contracts, we're practicing a sort of 'originalism', though usually on shorter timescales. Is contract interpretation right-wing?

Re: Charles Koch Says His Partisanship Was a Mistake

#109

Post by coffeefirst »

_23sd wrote: post #17

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'…

I wouldn’t count on it meaning anything. He has a long history of being fairly reasonable in interviews even while he promotes radical ideologues.

Re: Charles Koch Says His Partisanship Was a Mistake

#110

Post by dane-pgp »

BurningFrog wrote: post #23
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…

> so that massive wealth has a tendency to be distributed throughout the population rather than concentrating in few hands If you look at the data, i think you'll find that billionaires own a very small proportion of all wealth

It's possible, though, that this small proportion of wealth has a disproportionate effect on the political process, and then the political process has secondary effects on the wealth of non-billionaires.

To pick an extreme and unlikely hypothesis, it could be that if there weren't any billionaires corrupting politics, then the economy would be run in a better way which enabled everyone to become millionaires.

Post reply on HN