MacRaven - Dave Haxton's Weblog

Fri, 27 Aug 2010

Truth and Fiction - if the Koch brothers are libertarians, then I'm a woolly mammoth.

I was there in 1980, working on the Ed Clark campaign in Indiana. I met David Koch. Six weeks later I quit the Libertarian Party (of which I was one of the founding members here) and never went back. We called what we encountered the "Kochtopus" (coined by SEK3, IIRC). Sure they believed in property rights - theirs - and they treated the Libertarian Party as if it were their personal property, a mere vehicle for their personal enrichment (and ego).

I had no idea these were the folks behind the Tea Party movement - but with this knowledge I know for certain to stay as far away from from it as I can (as if I needed an extra nudge away from those raving wingnuts).

The Kochs are longtime libertarians who believe in drastically lower personal and corporate taxes, minimal social services for the needy, and much less oversight of industry—especially environmental regulation. These views dovetail with the brothers’ corporate interests.

(link) [The New Yorker]

/Politics | 2 writebacks | permanent link

On 9/5/2010 08:58:55
jhc wrote

Interesting comments on this article

By Ilya Somin at the Volokh Consipracy: http://volokh.com/2010/09/02/errors-in-jane-mayers-new-yorker-article-attacking-the-kochs/. And Brian Doherty's Radicals for Capitalism (http://www.amazon.com/dp/1586483501/?tag=thevolocons0d-20) talks about the 'Kochtopus' at some length. Many libertarians were put off by the Koch brothers while others were courting them for funding. This assumes you regard Ed Crane and Cato as libertarian, for example.

On 9/6/2010 08:25:40
Dave H wrote

Thanks for the link

I'll have to check out Doherty's book, looks pretty interesting. As for Cato, well, they try. But they're still pretty much in the "dem po ole bosses" school, that actually seems to believe big business is persecuted by the State, rather than part and parcel with it. For example, search the Cato site for tax abatement: you'll find lots of articles about global warming (mostly decrying various abatement schemes to offset carbon emissions) but nary a word about the property tax abatements give to businesses to relocate or expand - those are apparently OK. Cato (and other vulgar libertarians) are of the opinion that a tax break for a particular business or class does not constitute a subsidy: I strongly disagree. As Washington famously said, "The power to tax involves the power to destroy", and the converse is equally true. In fact, I'd contend that this type of thing is the primary way that taxmoney is funneled to favored businesses today. Thanks for the comment and Be well, Dave H.

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