David Koch, "freedom" crusader?
The Kochs have a new public policy push, one that doesn't involve
killing everything good. Last fall, the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers
announced a grant from Koch Industries to provide scholarships and training for public defenders. Criminal justice reform,
they say, is part of their "freedom agenda."
"The greatest infringement on individual liberty and the poor is in the criminal justice system," Koch Industries executive Mark Holden declared at a recent conference on criminal justice reform in Washington, DC. "A great way to combat poverty in a more systematic way is reducing the size of prisons and using the criminal justice system to enhance public safety. We need to make it consistent with the Bill of Rights, and honor the dignity of the individual. We need to understand that if you fall down, if you falter and make a mistake, it doesn't mean you can’t be redeemed. Getting back to those core values will be a positive change for everybody."
When ThinkProgress asked if these "core values" determine which candidates the Koch brothers support financially, Holden replied, "Yeah. This is part of our freedom agenda."
"We support candidates who advance freedom for all, and this is a key component of that. It’s very important to us," he added.
Actually, it seems more like part of their public relations agenda to try to whitewash all the really evil things they do with their billions, like
voter suppression and
anti-net neutrality and
climate change astroturfing, not to mention
killing Medicaid expansion and
manufacturing Obamacare horror stories. Because for all their supposed commitment to criminal justice reform, they're still backing Republicans with terrible records on criminal justice, as ThinkProgress
details.
For example, Gov. Scott Walker, who "authored or co-sponsored dozens of bills to make more activities crimes, increase mandatory minimum sentences, and curb the possibility of parole for many offenders" when he was in the state house, who authored bills to privatize prisons, and who "threw out laws passed by his predecessor that allowed low-level, nonviolent offenders to earn early release through work and good behavior" when he became governor. Since Walker has been governor, state spending on prisons has overtaken spending on higher education for the first time in the state's history.
Then there's Gov. Bobby Jindal, and the inconvenient fact that "Louisiana puts more of its population in prison than any other state in the nation and any other country in the world." More than two-thirds of those prisoners are doing time for drug-related and other nonviolent crimes. He has vetoed bipartisan legislation that would make more prisoners eligible for parole. Jindal has received plenty of financial support from the Kochs and their shadow network.
As has Gov. Mike Pence, whose new budget would "spend $43 million more on operations and staffing at the state's existing prisons, and allocate an additional $51 million to build new cells 'in order to meet projected increases in the corrections population.'" He's also signed legislation "mandating harsher sentences for computer-based crimes and hazing. An earlier version of the bill would have relaxed sentences for nonviolent drug crimes, but those provisions were amended due to pressure from Pence, who wanted to 'send a message that the state is tough on drug dealers.'"
What was that about the "freedom agenda" again, Mr. Holden? Looks like a lot of whitewash from here.