This should surprise absolutely no one…
Charles G. and David H. Koch, the influential and big-spending conservative donors, appear to have a favorite in the race for the Republican presidential nomination: Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin.
On Monday, at a fund-raising event in Manhattan for the New York State Republican Party, David Koch told donors that he and his brother, who oversee one of the biggest private political organizations in the country, believed that Mr. Walker would be the Republican nominee.
“When the primaries are over and Scott Walker gets the nomination,” Mr. Koch told the crowd, the billionaire brothers would support him, according to a spokeswoman. The remark drew laughter and applause from the audience of fellow donors and Republican activists, who had come to hear Mr. Walker speak earlier at the event, held at the Union League Club.
Two people who attended the event said they heard Mr. Koch go even further, indicating that Mr. Walker should be the Republican nominee.
Zach, thanks.
One has to hope that Chief Justice John Roberts and the other four-justices who allowed this, are deeply ashamed.
“The true cost of Citizens United: The Roberts Court’s darkest hour revisited
Five years ago, conservatives on the high bench changed American elections forever. Here’s what happened next ”
http://www.salon.com/2015/01/24/the_true_cost_of_citizens_united_the_roberts_courts_darkest_hour_revisited/
The Koch brothers were born on third-base (each inherited more than a billion from Daddy), but act like they hit triples. They never would have gotten all that inheritance if Daddy hadn’t hooked up with Joe Stalin’s Soviet Union in the 30’s.
“Inside the Koch Brothers’ Toxic Empire
Together, Charles and David Koch control one of the world’s largest fortunes, which they are using to buy up our political system. But what they don’t want you to know is how they made all that money”
“…It was a boom business. That is, until Universal sued in 1929, accusing WinklerKoch of stealing its intellectual property. With his domestic business tied up in court, Fred started looking for partners abroad and was soon doing business in the Soviet Union, where leader Joseph Stalin had just launched his first Five Year Plan. Stalin sought to fund his country’s industrialization by selling oil into the lucrative European export market. But the Soviet Union’s reserves were notoriously hard to refine. The USSR needed cracking technology, and the Oil Directorate of the Supreme Council of the National Economy took a shining to Winkler-Koch – primarily because Koch’s oil-industry competitors were reluctant to do business with totalitarian Communists….”
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/inside-the-koch-brothers-toxic-empire-20140924?page=3
This is really good news.
Also not surprised, pleasantly. The Koch’s are long time advocates of freedom, so it is no surprise that they like Walker, who took RESPONSIBILITY for freeing state employees and more importantly, Wisconsin taxpayers, from the expensive, corrupt, and counterproductive grip of the unions.
The amazing thing is that so many of our citizens seem to either be oblivious or totally OK with the fact that a very small, select group of ultra-wealthy donors are basically hand picking candidates.
That is obviously a far greater problem on the left MaseMan as there is only one viable candidate who will remain the only viable candidate unless her various scandals become even too much for liberals, an unlikely scenario. Meanwhile, there are numerous candidates among Republicans fighting for the nomination, which suggests at this time at least that the winner has yet to be “hand picked.”
Denis, proving yet again that you’re not a conservative. The only “viable” candidates are those with the support of the elites. Wall Street CEO’s will be protected. We will continue to occupy foreign countries. What’s encouraging is that a few states have made progress against Big Pharma and have legalized pot.
Among everything else that’s wrong with the Trans-Pacific Partnership, possibly the worst part is the investor–state dispute settlement (ISDS), because it outsources U.S. sovereignty. They learned this trick from the Wall Street banks and other oligopoly credit issuers. When you have a problem with your deposit at a Wall Street bank, you can’t take them to a US court, not local, not state, not federal. You signed a long agreement which stipulates that any disagreements are adjudicated in administrative courts which the Wall Street banking cartel controls.
“How Pending “Trade” Deals Would Undermine Zoning and Local Land Use Rules”
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2015/04/pending-trade-deals-undermine-zoning-local-land-use-rules.html
“Free Trade Isn’t about Trade. It’s About Bureaucrats—and Guns.”
http://www.thenation.com/article/202409/free-trade-isnt-about-trade-its-about-bureaucrats-and-guns
T-PP gives multi-nationals the right to sue states if they don’t import enough of their junk. Any environmental damage done by imports, that’s adjudicated in the multi-nationals administrative courts.
AFAIK, T-PP will make it illegal to stamp anything “Made In America.”
Walker also freed the state from jobs that pay a living wage and in the process freed the state from participating in the national economic recovery and he freed up exploitation of our environment and freed us from using renewable clean energy and he freed Wisconsin taxpayers to be exploited by failing to pay down debt as it came due adding to interest costs to the extent that 25% of road revenue now goes to debt repayment and on top of that borrowed to date $5 billion for future generations to pay for. Yup nothing about Walker turns out to be free; someone always pays for his policies in the long run and it turns out to be the people of Wisconsin not his corporate and wealthy donors!
Jerry, thanks so much for a terrific comment. National security is built on local security. The foundation of local security is the tripod of fresh water, safe food, and sustainable energy. Lake Michigan and up north (Lake Superior) offer tremendous wind resources which should be harnessed. Floating wind turbines is probably going to be the way to go. Germany’s no farther north than Wisconsin and they lead the world in solar. Biomass, done right, should be a huge source of renewable energy for Wisconsin.
It is amazing, or I should say tragic, that a man with so little or no relevant education, so unfeeling to human basic needs, so corrupted by his billionaire sponsors, so perverse in his tactics, so dishonest in his speech, so immoral using a false principle that “the end justifies the means,” and so lacking in past practical employment to justify governance of a state, that Walker’s political advancement can only be explained, sadly, by the ignorance or apathy or suppression of the Wisconsin voter.
As I have stated previously, Walker is a zealot with a false conscience. In other words, he actually believes he is doing good or that his actions are a necessary evil to achieve a greater good or his erroneous perception that the end result is a good. Such rationalism as Walker’s violates a basic moral or religious principle. It is likened to the false cry, “We have to bomb the village to save the village.”
Walker has done more damage to our state and its citizens than any other elected official in our history. In other words, he is the worst of the worst.
Pink slips sent to 35 DNR employees, 28 from the science services division today. Now we can get the real science reports from Monsanto, Ely-Lilly, Beyer, whomever heads the big pharma monopolies right now with no contradictory, challenges or dissenting studies.
Mr Action Scotty (St. Norbert’s poll says a strength of his) sends in the WI Guard to demonstrate he is an action man (to his supporters) to stop the spread of bird flu as the manpower to get a couple million poultry to pee in a cup before being released to wholesalers and processors for human consumption. Private biological labs will confirm the test results for the industry.
What here would the Kochs be opposed to?