While perusing the Koch’s Daily Signal yesterday, we came across what might arguably be one of the most fantastically stupid things ever written: a column “in defense of wealth.” The piece is basically an argument for why wealth should be redistributed instead of hoarded--but, of course, that’s not how it’s written.
Instead, the piece impies poor people are evil, in that “failing to develop wealth...is a sin against our creator.” No mention is made as to the structural and systemic barriers the working class faces.
But the fact that the Signal feels the need to defend wealth is important as a sign- it seems the Koch class is getting worried about all this socialist talk in the air. After all, the network has spent hundreds of millions of dollars over the past few decades fearmongering about how socialism poses a threat to American Freedom™. No surprise, then, the Koch network is itself rebranding as part of a supposedly shifting strategy.
Yesterday morning, James Hohmann at the Washington Post broke the news that the Kochs’ political network, formerly known as the Seminar Network, will be reformed under the name the Stand Together Foundation. Its focus will apparently be on social issues like poverty, addiction and homelessness. These, of course, are all things one could very easily argue have been exacerbated--if not outright caused--by the Koch’s years of advocacy for slashing government spending on the social safety net.
The new effort, which bundles together a minimum of $100,000 donations from some 700 members, will, per a letter from Charles Koch, “stand together to help every person rise.”
It will be lead by Brian Hooks, whom Hohmann ironically describes as not coming “from the partisan background” of his predecessors, because he was the executive director of the Kochs’ Mercatus Center at GMU. You know, the economics center that exists to provide the pseudo-academic cover for the Koch’s preferred polluter profits over people policy model. One of the 350 colleges the brothers fund to push their economic justifications for libertarian policy. Super non-partisan…
So yes, many of the small groups the Kochs are giving relatively small bits of money to are likely great local organizations that do wonderful work (though they’re probably not confronting the systems of socio-economic oppression that the Kochs’ “philanthropy” has long strengthened.) And the Kochs probably aren’t actually shifting directions: Hooks notes that their “North Star hasn’t changed.” We can likely expect more of the same sort of free market fundamentalism that uses the government to shift profits to the industry and costs onto the public.
What is changing, however, are the words the Kochs use. Apparently the Koch problem isn’t that they routinely subvert democracy to their benefit, but that their now-named “philanthropic community” was called a “network.” Seems that was too explicit in describing how their supposed charity work was actually a business investment. Now, Hohmann reports that the people who give the Koch groups money to advocate on their behalf will be known as “partners,” so as to avoid the transactional connotation of “investors,” Hook explained.
The new slogan is “greater your good.” If there was any question as to the Kochs’ commitment to education, apparently it’s not going to involve support for grammar lessons.
For those wondering what the Kochs might do if they were actually serious about helping people other than themselves and their industry friends, consider the actions of fellow billionaire Robert F. Smith on Sunday. At a commencement speech for the historically black male college of Morehouse, Smith shocked graduates and their families by announcing that he’s using millions of dollars of his own wealth “to create a grant to eliminate [their] student loans!”
Looks like Smith didn’t need to pass his money through the Koch “community” to figure out how to effectively greater his good.
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