Koch brothers prepared to unleash nearly $1bn leading up to 2016 election

[Peace&Freedom]

Can you actually cite a specific piece of legislation they pushed that is pro-big business or pro-big military? Maybe that have. I haven't seen it.

The Kochs operate through funding lots of organizations, who in turn act as fronts to lobby for the Big Biz/MIC legislation. As Gary North put it:

Tyler Cowen is the director of the Mercatus Center of George Mason University.

The multi-billionaire industrialist Charles Koch is on the Board of Directors of the Mercatus Center.

The Kochs gave $3.7 million to the Center, 2007-2011. They are its major supporters...

In the fall of 1962, Harper sent me a copy of Murray Rothbard's masterpiece, Man, Economy, and State. Harper had arranged its publication through a subsidy to the publisher.

The Kochs have a reputation of being staunch libertarians. Then why fund an organization run by someone who believes that government spending on the military is a source of economic growth? This is Keynesianism, pure and simple. This is big government conservatism...

http://www.garynorth.com/public/12580.cfm

[Krugminator2]

The Kochs operate through funding lots of organizations, who in turn ct as fronts to lobby for the Big Biz/MIC legislation. As Gary North put it:

What? What am I reading? The Mercatus Center is great. The work they do is outstanding. Along with the economics department at George Mason, it may be the best thing the Koch's fund.


Heck, Tyler Cowen is pretty good too. Tyler Cowen isn't a Keynesian. I have read is blog for probably 10 years. It was one of the first things I saw when I learned about libertarianism. He wrote a weird article about war and productivity last year, but he is definitely on the free market side of things.

[NIU Students for Liberty]

You do realize that CATO was originally called The Charles Koch Foundation, right? The 2012 dispute revolved around the ownership of the shares of a founding board member who died - the board was attempting to wrest control away from the Koch's - not the other way around.

You do realize that Cato was originally intended as a libertarian think tank and not a front for the Koch brothers Republican lobbying efforts, right?

[NIU Students for Liberty]

AFP in NH has donated countless to libertarians causes. It organizes testimony in favor of liberty legislator and opposed to anti-liberty legislation. It sends out campaign materials about how statist incumbents vote the wrong way. I could go on and on but I'm not trying to reveal anything.

If you have even been involved with YAL, the Koch network has been helping YAL for a couple years now.

In NJ, the former AFP leader is supposed to be a liberty Republican. He ran for Congress and won. Hint, hint

Maybe the Koch network isn't working for freedom where you live, or maybe you don't know about? They keep bring Rand Paul to give speeches where I live

I'm quite familiar with the involvement of the Koch brothers in Students for Liberty (can't say the same for YAL). And yet they're the reason why I cut off ties with SFL because of their effort to sway the organization to Republican efforts that really had nothing to do with libertarian causes.

Also, will anyone care to respond to my previous points about their donations to both the Romney campaign and his PAC in BOTH elections? Or their meddling with Cato in recent years that included instituting members of the McCain and Bush campaigns to the board of directors?

[Peace&Freedom]

I'm quite familiar with what the involvement of the Koch brothers in Students for Liberty (can't say the same for YAL). And yet they're the reason why I cut off ties with SFL because of their effort to sway the organization to Republican efforts that really had nothing to do with libertarian causes.

I can confirm this syndrome from local efforts (Queens, NY) I've made to advance libertarian activism on campuses. Two years ago, I recruited a young party member who attended St. Johns to be the college outreach coordinator for the local LP, tasked to find libertarians on campuses and help them establish college clubs or events. After just a few months, he suddenly quit the LP with no explanation, and when I ran into him later he eventually explained he had been talked out of working with the LP by SFL and GOP groups on campus, in order to work solely with the latter.

A second young person we appointed, who was attending a different campus, reported as being similarly approached. Monetary offers or jobs may have been part of the mix, but I didn't get that part confirmed. Has anybody connected up with YAL experienced this? It's one thing for a young person to get involved with several liberty groups, and then decide on one path, quite another for one group to be actively interfering with or sabotaging other groups.

I stand by my impression that the Kochs represent the libertarian-neocon arm of politics, attempting (by infiltration through funding) to control the liberty movement. As Justin Raimondo put it:

...the Koch brothers, [are] two formerly libertarian billionaires who have become the deus ex machina of clueless "progressive" commentators who cannot otherwise explain the explosion of anti-government anti-authoritarian populism currently upending politics. ...Indeed, if only the Brothers Koch, and the plethora of organizations their money has funded, were that radical! Unfortunately, they are not: a stodgy, boring conservatism marks both their methods and their politics, and always has.

http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2...st-the-regime/

[Keith and stuff]

I'm quite familiar with the involvement of the Koch brothers in Students for Liberty (can't say the same for YAL). And yet they're the reason why I cut off ties with SFL because of their effort to sway the organization to Republican efforts that really had nothing to do with libertarian causes.

I didn't even realize the Koch network helped SFL. That's great news and really cool, considering their are some leftists in it, and most of the SFL student leadership that I've met are anarchists.

I don't know about national campaigns and such. Often times, rich people donate to candidates for access.

Maybe the Koch network is really pro-liberty or not so depending on region and who the state chairs of the organizations in that area are? In NH, the largest part of the Koch network is very pro-liberty. It pushes excellent bills, punished incumbents that do wrong, and works hard to give liberty activists jobs and incentives. Another part of it is run by typically conservative folks and mainly seems to focus on giving out free food and beer to college kids and their friends like pushing candidates like Rand Paul. Another part of it is just an economic liberty think tank. Then there is the Vets group. I have no idea what they do.

[ThePaleoLibertarian]

Yeah, I don't like the Kochs much. If they do good, pro-liberty things with their money, good for them. That doesn't mean they're trustworthy on the whole. Siding with Monsanto (maybe the absolute worst example of international, corporate capitalism there is) on just about anything is very disturbing. This is a company that wants to be able to patent its Frankenstein seeds, and use IP laws to sue farmers who get the seed blown on to their land. One of the worst things that can conceivably happen to the movement is to become the tools of cronyist big wigs.

Rothbard broke from the libertarian party, because he didn't like the Koch brothers' influence on the organization. Now, I am no Rothbardian, but if you read up on why the split occurred, it's clear that Murray had a point; both politically, and personally. I love the free market, but as a traditionalist, reactionary and a anti-state nationalist, I am not at all fond of (many) people who currently call themselves capitalists. So many of the capitalist class have naught to with the free market in any sense. Being pro-market is not the same as being pro-business, and in fact those positions are very often opposed. Milton Friedman--hardly a radical--understood this fro god's sake.

[P3ter_Griffin]

The Kochs' idea of privatization is the government paying private companies to do public services, speaking from experience as a resident of a Koch bought governorship (WI). Walker has never been about liberty, I think the Kochs at best, at least on the state level, are about reducing taxes by (their version) privatizing government, and at worst are complete corporatists. I don't know of any national politicians they have bankrolled.

[TommyJeff]

If the Koch Brothers back Rand.....

How likely is this scenario?

[invisible]

How likely is this scenario?

It could be the entire reason why Rand voted in favor of the keystone pipeline boondoggle, and made statements in support of the TPP (and fast-tracking it). Maybe there was some sort of deal made. These would appear to be two major blemishes on his record, but he must have found them worthwhile for some reason that hasn't really been fully explained yet.

[KingNothing]

These are actually ringing endorsements to anyone with a brain.

[Ronin Truth]

How many CONgresscritters can a billion $ buy these days?

[philipped]

Has anybody connected up with YAL experienced this? It's one thing for a young person to get involved with several liberty groups, and then decide on one path, quite another for one group to be actively interfering with or sabotaging other groups.

One person suggested to me basically off the record at a REC debate to look into starting a College Republicans club at the education institution I currently attend. I brushed it off. He'll agree with me on "growing the GOP", but be the chair of the Florida Federation of Young Republicans and actively support Jeb Bush. WAAAACK. Who knows if he requests and recruits support by those in the FFYR...talk about weak sauce.

But outside of that, no GOP-tied or KOCH tied group has suggested make a switch or offered payed work for any affiliated or unaffiliated work. I'll tell them buzz off cuz YAL is the set of principles I not only incline to the most.