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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

#251

Post by pjc50 »

aazaa wrote: post #191

The article would have been improved by giving some insight into what changed his mind. You don't just go from what he and his brother have done to the US to: > Boy, did we screw up! Without an inkling as to how or why they screwed up, there's no way to gauge what, if any, change to expect.

As I posted last time this came up, the problem to him is that the Tea Party they backed went out of their control. They wanted a nice biddable anti-government party. They got chaos.

They've not come to Jesus on global warming, they're upset they lost.

Re: Charles Koch Says His Partisanship Was a Mistake

#252

Post by ethbr0 »

santoshalper wrote: post #225
civilized wrote: post #218

> Relentlessly putting my self-interest above any other consideration turned out to be not in my self-interest, and I regret it for this reason alone

Is that an actual quote from the article? If so, it's just perfect.

I mean, that's basic libertarian epiphany in a nutshell.

Maximizing freedom for myself in a society where there are other people requires limiting everyone's freedoms in some ways.

Re: Charles Koch Says His Partisanship Was a Mistake

#254

Post by hashtagmarkup »

aazaa wrote: post #191

The article would have been improved by giving some insight into what changed his mind. You don't just go from what he and his brother have done to the US to: > Boy, did we screw up! Without an inkling as to how or why they screwed up, there's no way to gauge what, if any, change to expect.

They screwed up by putting themselves in this position where their only hope for a future is desperately trying to distance themselves from what they've done and who they are.

Re: Charles Koch Says His Partisanship Was a Mistake

#255

Post by rch »

tedivm wrote: post #204
aazaa wrote: post #191

The article would have been improved by giving some insight into what changed his mind. You don't just go from what he and his brother have done to the US to: > Boy, did we screw up! Without an inkling as to how or why they screwed up, there's no way to gauge what, if any, change to expect.

I don't think he changed his mind at all, this is 100% a rebranding and legacy repair operation.

Not even that. The EPA, public lands, etc. might be on the ropes, but they're not dead yet. This looks to me more like the next salvo to make sure they go down, and stay down.

Re: Charles Koch Says His Partisanship Was a Mistake

#256

Post by tedivm »

iSnow wrote: post #237
throwawayxyz987 wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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%…

This article isn't about BigTech. That's pure Whataboutism.

It also conflates donations from employees with that of their employers. There's a big difference between a billionaire like Koch individually spending hundreds of millions of dollars to block climate change, and thousands of individual tech employees donating small amounts of money towards their favorite causes and politicians.

Re: Charles Koch Says His Partisanship Was a Mistake

#258

Post by aniro »

pjc50 wrote: post #251
aazaa wrote: post #191

The article would have been improved by giving some insight into what changed his mind. You don't just go from what he and his brother have done to the US to: > Boy, did we screw up! Without an inkling as to how or why they screwed up, there's no way to gauge what, if any, change to expect.

As I posted last time this came up, the problem to him is that the Tea Party they backed went out of their control. They wanted a nice biddable anti-government party. They got chaos. They've not come to Jesus on global warming, they're upset they lost.

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.

Re: Charles Koch Says His Partisanship Was a Mistake

#259

Post by mrgordon »

ethbr0 wrote: post #252
santoshalper wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that an actual quote from the article? If so, it's just perfect.

I mean, that's basic libertarian epiphany in a nutshell. Maximizing freedom for myself in a society where there are other people requires limiting everyone's freedoms in some ways.

Yep some philosophers described it as “freedom to” and “freedom from”. Without freedom from others doing some things that effect you, you might be dead or otherwise severely restricted

Re: Charles Koch Says His Partisanship Was a Mistake

#260

Post by extra88 »

nokcha wrote: post #211
extra88 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 grea…

How can one be an originalist and ignore half of the sentence, "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State,"? A law requiring a trigger lock does not infringe on the forming of militia or maintaining the security of a free State.

Conservative judges, including Scalia, generally don't claim that all arms regulation is unconstitutional, they don't claim everyone has a right to own RPGs. I don't like where they draw the lines and don't think they have good reasoning for where they draw them.

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