As the scion of a family fortune built on selling oil technology to both Hitler and Stalin, Charles Koch knows a thing or two about the dangers partisanship can pose to achieving one’s goals. But with perhaps his greatest success still clinging to the illusion of a second term, Charles Koch is in what Douglas Belkin describes as “a yearslong process of rebranding,” because “Mr. Koch, it seems, doesn’t want to be forever known as a hard-driving partisan.” In his new book, he apparently even laments his past partisanship, writing: “Boy, did we screw up! What a mess!”
Well golly gee Mr. Koch, sir, don’t be too hard on yourself! All you did was use your fortune and influence to build an army of pseudo-intellectual puppets to carry your anti-government crusade to the point where it successfully installed a racist bully into the presidency, who is now actively denying the democratic outcome of the election he lost! No biggie, lol! Oh and about that pesky Tea Party business that the Koch network most certainly orchestrated, he claims “we did not create the tea party.” So he’ll admit some culpability, but clearly isn’t coming clean with the full truth.
In response to a question about the “successful, long-term movements,” from Belkin, Charles Koch (“he tells me to call him Chuckie”) says that the key is to “unite a diversity of people behind a common goal. That’s our approach today.”
You know, people who pretend to be scientists, unbiased reporters, or professors, all united in preventing regulations on Koch products. After describing how Koch’s new book and professed philosophy is all about bottom-up people-power instead of top-down dictation, Belkin notes that “Koch-aligned ventures fund more than 1,000 faculty members at more than 200 universities, helped bankroll think tanks such as the Cato Institute and the American Enterprise Institute, and supported the American Legislative Exchange Council (a nonpartisan organization of similarly minded state legislators) to write bills that were introduced and championed by Republican state lawmakers across the country.”
That seems like a lot of top-down direction, Chuckie!
And it’s still happening! Just the other day a local Massachusetts news station picked up a story about a “new study” on a Northeastern regional cap-and-trade program focused on cars called the Transportation Climate Initiative. Apparently, the report from the Tufts University Center for State Policy Analysis found the program would cost drivers twice as much as previously estimated.
But what it didn’t tell readers was that the fancy-sounding Tufts University Center for State Policy Analysis is… you guessed it! Yet another new Koch-funded anti-regulatory propaganda production facility!
Weird how despite Chuckie’s newfound belief in diversity and bottom-up thought, all the many people who his money trickles down to always say the things that help his profits, and never anything that might hurt them?
(At least, not intentionally?)