Comment by qPM9l3XJrF | Hacker News Reader

Comment by qPM9l3XJrF | Hacker News Reader

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>In July 2015 Charles Koch and his brother were praised by President Obama and Anthony Van Jones for their bipartisan efforts to reform the criminal justice system.[67][68] For roughly a decade Koch has been advocating for several reforms within the prison system, including the reduction of recidivist criminals, easing the employment process for rehabilitated persons, and the defense of private property from asset forfeiture.[68][69] Aligning with groups such as the ACLU, the Center for American Progress, Families Against Mandatory Minimums, the Coalition for Public Safety, and the MacArthur Foundation, Koch believes the current system has unfairly targeted low-income and minority communities all while wasting substantial government resources.[68][70]

>In February 2016, Koch penned an opinion piece in The Washington Post, where he said he agreed with presidential candidate Bernie Sanders about the unfairness of corporate welfare and mass incarceration in the United States.[71]

>In June 2019, the Charles Koch Foundation announced the foundation of anti-war think tank Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, cosponsored by George Soros' Open Society Foundation.[72] He is a board member at the Mercatus Center, a market-oriented research think tank at George Mason University.[73]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Koch

On one hand you have "penned an opinion piece in The Washington Post" and on the other you have pouring of tens / hundreds of millions of dollars into climate change denial (and setting up network of fellow billionaires who poured their money into same causes).

Koch is an honest libertarian, so his Deregulate All The Things efforts are accompanied by things like this.

But.

If you look at where he's been putting his money into supporting candidates, they are overwhelmingly Republicans that align with the former to the exclusion of nearly everything else.

It would have been very VERY easy for Koch to have got bipartisan support for serious criminal justice reform if he had wanted to, but that would have used up political capital (Republicans generally prefer to be the 'tough on crime' candidate) he otherwise used to support his economic interests instead.

That's the main problem I have with libertarians: They lend their wholehearted and deep pocketed support to Republicans on business issues and opposing 'big government', but fail to call them out on social issues (you know, the whole 'equality before the law' thing), and practically never lend equivalent support to Democrats where they would be aligned, just lip-service. It's hypocritical.

Having to date focused largely on feathering his nest, he now wants to put a bit of 'compassionate conservatism' shine on his image and legacy. I'm not inclined to let him gloss over the awful things he's accomplished.

Can you suggest some Democratic candidates that would appeal to a libertarian?

There is no shortage of D candidates that would like to end the War on (Some) Drugs, for example. Libertarians are very much on board with Decriminalize All the Things.

Curtailing domestic warrantless surveillance is another issue that many liberal candidates support.

Libertarians generally dislike military spending as much as they dislike social security, so progressive candidates that would shrink the DOD ought to be a good fit.

Any particular D candidate that I could suggest will also have positions that Libertarians don't agree with, which is part of my point. Disagreeing with conservative stances on non-fiscal/regulatory issues doesn't stop them from supporting those candidates, but the converse practically always stops them from supporting Ds.

It's almost as if they don't actually care about individual freedom and liberty at all, but just about their freedom to make a buck without anyone getting in the way of them exploiting workers, polluting the environment, etc.

Huh. Imagine that.

Koch is either a massive failure if he really cares about things like the prison industrial complex and entirely failed to make even the smallest change despite billions of dollars, or he's just a massive liar. One option seems much more likely than the other given his large GOP support

> That’s the main problem I have with libertarians

If they’re with Republicans on reducing regulation, and with Republicans on social issues, they’re just called Republicans.

It's more like they are with Republicans on deregulation, and mumble mumble don't rock the boat mumble mumble on social issues.

His brother funded both the New York dinosaur and Smithsonian human evolution exhibits, both of them excellently done, and featuring evolution front and center.

I note, however, that the Smithsonian put their climate change exhibit immediately outside of their human origins exhibit with his name. I've always wondered if that was some kind of dig.

A demon, indeed.

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