Time magazine is out with its list of Most Influential People, and each of those people gets a custom blurb about why they are so great and why the world loves them. Charles and David Koch are on the list, because money, and through some twist of fate that may or may not have involved sexual favors being exchanged, the task of blurbing why the Koch brothers are God's gift to America fell to ... Sen. Rand Paul. (Right now, somewhere in Wisconsin, Gov. Scott Walker is once again crying into his soup.)
Sen. Paul, who would benefit greatly if the Koch brothers find him favorable and choose to shower him with their blessings, delivers the blowjob as only a true professional could.
What is underappreciated is their passion for freedom and their commitment to ideas. Unlike many crony capitalists who troll the halls of Congress looking for favors, the Kochs have consistently lobbied against special-interest politics.
Of course, the Koch duo has become conspicuous in politics for their funding of
entire webs of interconnected organizations in a decades-long drive to loosen environmental and other government regulations that affect their own businesses, and toward the crafting of tax policies that favor their businesses and their own pockets specifically. Rather than declaring them to be against special-interest politics, you might more accurately describe them as being uninterested in any politics that does not affect their own wallets, and hostile to any government activity
that does not specifically advantage them. One of the two is allegedly a supporter of marriage equality, for example, but if the brothers have contributed ten dollars in change to
that cause between them it is a well-kept secret. An army of think-tanks, however, stands at the ready to explain to both Congress and the press why building a pipeline from any one set of Koch-financed properties to another is such a fine patriotic idea that Congress should hang its heads in shame for not having thought of doing it sooner.
But no, the Koch brothers do not troll the halls of Congress looking for favors. The Koch brothers are wealthy enough to fund congressmen who will do it on their behalf. The Koch brothers are wealthy enough that prospective presidential candidates write love letters to them in the magazines of the day, and consider themselves damn lucky to get the chance to do it.
Head below the fold to hear more on this lovefest.
For decades they have funded institutes that promote ideas, not politics, such as Cato and the Mercatus Center. [...] The Koch brothers’ investment in freedom-loving think tanks will carry on for generations, reminding all of us that ideas and convictions ultimately trump all else.
The hilarious bit about that is that the Koch takeover of the Cato Institute could be described as nothing less than open warfare. It was a hard-fought and bitter battle between the previously independent and libertarian-minded Cato and the two brothers, who were largely seen within Cato itself as seeking to restructure the think-tank into an outlet that would more closely hew to their own business interests. They
sued the institute in order to secure that control (more specifically, they sued to try to wrestle shares in the institute from a widow who had inherited them from her husband). The fight was bitter, with Cato members issuing press releases blasting the Kochs, and resulted in the ouster of the Cato CEO
in favor of a more Koch-friendly leader.
Rand Paul likely was not aware of this because he, like the Cato Institute, no longer keeps up with true libertarian thinking. He, like the Cato Institute, is more focused on writing bold declarations of why the Koch brothers are God's own gift to America.
Seriously, though? I think we'd all love to know how Rand Paul scored the "write why Charles and David Koch are so awesome" gig above the literally dozens of other likely contenders. That's like being able to print up your own winning lottery ticket.