[HN Gopher] Charles Koch Says His Partisanship Was a Mistake
___________________________________________________________________
Charles Koch Says His Partisanship Was a Mistake
Author : gscott
Score : 120 points
Date : 2020-11-15 09:22 UTC (13 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.wsj.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.wsj.com)
| forgot_user1234 wrote:
| I am pretty sure HN will RIP apart Koch but do read his views
| before picking up your sickle
| louwrentius wrote:
| "Dark Money" by Jane Mayer was extremely enlightening.
|
| The influence of the Koch family on politics and public opinion
| has been devastating.
|
| The Federalist Society is a conspiracy against democracy.
| chub500 wrote:
| Can you give a brief synopsis about how the federalist society
| is a conspiracy against democracy? I thought it was about
| originalism which seems to me to be pro-democracy by
| maintaining proper separation of powers etc.
| hackeraccount wrote:
| conspiracy against democracy = people pursuing political ends
| I don't like
|
| Grassroots democratic action = people pursuing political ends
| I do like
| bitwize wrote:
| "$TYCOON_I_DISAGREE_WITH is a shadowy oligarch undermining
| democracy with dark money" = facts
|
| "$TYCOON_I_AGREE_WITH is a shadowy oligarch undermining
| democracy with dark money" = unfounded conspiracy theory
| extra88 wrote:
| The Federalist Society finds, indoctrinates, and advances
| conservative lawyers and judges. That's not inherently anti-
| democratic though their level of success and influence on
| judges selection processes may be considered so. The problem
| is they also tend to be highly partisan (pro-Republican)
| which undermines the separation of powers.
|
| Often their picks ignore their "originalist" approach when it
| would be counter to their desired outcome.
|
| I'm no expert, this is from my general understanding and
| skimming Wikipedia.
| jonstewart wrote:
| Indeed. To illustrate Samuel Alito just gave a keynote
| address to the Federalist Society a few days ago. The NY
| Times and NPR have recaps:
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/13/us/samuel-alito-
| religious...
|
| https://www.npr.org/2020/11/13/934666499/justice-alito-
| pande...
|
| You can watch the whole thing for yourself here:
|
| https://youtu.be/tYLZL4GZVbA
|
| The speech is an attack on science, expertise, and common
| sense. It's a MAGA hat with a thin veneer of
| respectability.
|
| It's not clear to me to what extent such judges believe in
| this ideology, or whether they're simply craven and
| exercising a will to power, but the Federalist Society has
| spent the past several decades working to place lawyers
| with fringe jurisprudence into the judiciary, and the Koch
| brothers wrote the checks.
| dane-pgp wrote:
| > It's a MAGA hat with a thin veneer of respectability.
|
| So like a MAGA fedora?
| akudha wrote:
| I saw parts of the speech and it was crazy. This is why
| appointing judges for life makes zero sense to me. If I
| become a supreme court judge at 45 and live to 75, I have
| a full three decades to change the direction of the
| country forever. This is very very scary.
|
| There should be a term limit for everyone in government
| like presidents do - mayors, congressmen, senators,
| judges...
| TechBro8615 wrote:
| One advantage of lifetime appointments is avoiding the
| temptation for judges to become corrupted by promises of
| post-judicial careers.
| karaterobot wrote:
| The reason Supreme Court justices are appointed for life
| is so they are independent. That cuts both ways,
| protecting both people I agree with, and people I
| disagree with from having their verdicts influenced by
| outside forces. Sometimes this is inconvenient for me,
| but on the whole I prefer it over the alternative. The
| key is to hold the people who nominate and confirm these
| justices to account, since they are elected.
| lostdog wrote:
| Give them a term limit, and then send them back to their
| life appointment on the district courts (with a higher
| salary if you want to sweeten the deal a little).
| gruez wrote:
| >The reason Supreme Court justices are appointed for life
| is so they are independent
|
| Can't you just make it so it's x years appointment, but
| you can't be reappointed?
| nl wrote:
| The issue with term limits is that it gives a potential
| perception of bias related to whatever they do when they
| leave.
|
| An example of this is in agencies like the FTC, where
| people leave the regulator and end up in well paid jobs
| in the companies they are supposed to be regulating. Even
| if there was no bias in their decision making people
| point to it and it undermines confidence in the system.
| akudha wrote:
| Can't we do long terms (10-15 years) then? Instead of
| life, which could be as much as 40 years in some cases
| jasonwatkinspdx wrote:
| Not to mention it'd make the majority of turnovers in the
| supreme court an orderly scheduled event fair between
| parties.
| erik_seaberg wrote:
| They are meant to be appointing an _independent_
| judiciary applying precedent and law as written, not
| delegates whose votes are pledged to parties. Activists
| belong in Congress where the voters have some say.
| nl wrote:
| I agree with Alito on his "the state treated houses of
| worship less favorably than it did casinos" point, and I
| don't think it's anti-science to say that.
|
| To quote NYT: "Casinos were limited to 50 percent of
| their fire-code capacities, while houses of worship were
| subject to a flat 50-person limit."
|
| It seems reasonable to me that both should be limited to
| a 50-person limit, or perhaps a people-per-area limit
| (although I do understand that Churches are higher risk
| because singing spreads the virus much more than silently
| sitting at a slot machine).
| chub500 wrote:
| I believe for the last 30 years or so (after the late
| Antonin Scalia) 'conservative' judge is almost synonymous
| with originalist. I think you may be falling victim to
| correlation is not causation? IE there are no liberal
| originalists by definition (above). If I'm wrong, could you
| give me an example of a liberal originalist? I would be
| very happy to be wrong about this.
|
| The correlation here is that conservative presidents pick
| justices who object to rulings like Roe v Wade. The
| mistaken 'cause' is that it is Conservatism that leads to
| this objection when in fact it could also be that
| originalists object to legislation from the bench.
|
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Rj_MhS2u-Pk
| js2 wrote:
| Originalism is fine in theory when coupled with judicial
| restraint. However, in practice, it has become
| justification for big-C Conservative justices to actively
| impose their views, overriding the democratic legislative
| process.
|
| http://www.dorfonlaw.org/2017/08/how-determinate-is-
| original...
|
| We're not going to settle this in the comment section of
| HN, but I happen to agree with this opinion:
|
| _As the Warren and early Burger Courts faded into
| history, originalism drifted away from its critique of
| judicial activism. The political conservatives who had
| disliked the countermajoritarian output of the Warren and
| early Burger Courts developed a fondness for judicial
| activism once there was a conservative majority on the
| Supreme Court. Originalism was thus transformed from a
| shield against what its proponents saw as illegitimate
| liberal decisions striking down laws adopted by
| conservative lawmakers into a sword that could be wielded
| by conservatives to strike down laws adopted by liberal
| lawmakers.
|
| Originalism coupled with judicial restraint could not
| invalidate affirmative action, campaign finance
| regulations, or gun control. Abandoning judicial
| restraint led to an "unbound" form of originalism that
| licensed conservative judicial activism, even as judicial
| conservatives continued to complain about liberal
| judicial activism in cases involving such matters as
| abortion, the death penalty, and gay rights._
|
| http://www.dorfonlaw.org/2019/11/why-not-to-be-
| originalist.h...
|
| Do you have a non-activist originalist argument for
| Alito's on-going stance against legal protection of gay
| marriage? In Obergefell v. Hodges he stated that the Due
| Process clause protects only rights "deeply rooted in
| this Nation's history and tradition". He's making up a
| justification to allow a minority of conservative opinion
| to prevent gay people from getting married. How isn't
| that activism?
| extra88 wrote:
| Conservative judges have no problem with legislation from
| the bench when they're the ones doing it. Again, they
| pretend to use an impartial "originalist" principle when
| decision-making but cherry-pick the "original" texts they
| use or ignore them when they would lead to ruling in a
| way conservatives don't like.
|
| How is it "originalist" to take the 2nd Amendment, which
| refers to "well regulated Militia," and using it to say
| there's a Constitutional right to owning a handgun for
| personal protection (without safety requirements like a
| trigger lock or safe)? It's not, yet that's what
| conservatives decided, specifically Scalia in his
| majority opinion in District of Columbia v. Heller.
| nokcha wrote:
| >How is it "originalist" to take the 2nd Amendment, which
| refers to "well regulated Militia," and using it to say
| there's a Constitutional right to owning a handgun for
| personal protection...?
|
| The relation between the operative clause and the
| prefatory clause is that, historically, kings had
| effectively destroyed the militia by forbidding the
| keeping or bearing of arms. Justice Scalia's opinion in
| _Heller_ cites a great deal of evidence that the original
| public meaning of the phrase "the right to keep and bear
| arms" included keeping and bearing arms for individual
| self-defense.
| splintercell wrote:
| well-regulated does not mean government regulations. It
| means well-functioning. Like a well regulated clock.
| brewdad wrote:
| We have a standing army now. The 2nd Amendment is no
| longer relevant.
| lumost wrote:
| +1 to this, at the time of the constitution's signing the
| states were trending towards fragmentation into separate
| countries. New York and Massachusetts were on the brink
| of a hot war over westward territorial expansion.
|
| The founders were obviously concerned with the need for a
| military to "maintain a free state", but I'd doubt that a
| centralized military would have been palatable at the
| time.
| nobodyandproud wrote:
| Why even touch this topic?
|
| There was a mistrust of the Federal government at the
| time, and it was believed that state militias could act
| as a check against a Federal standing army which goes
| rogue.
|
| We have bigger issues than gun control at a federal
| level.
| pnw_hazor wrote:
| The Army has nothing to with personal self-defense or
| protection of civil rights. Standing armies were the part
| of the motivation for the 2nd Amd.
|
| There is plenty of 2nd Amd. scholarship that goes over
| all of this. Not saying you need to agree with the
| scholarship, but a lot of people have thought about his
| stuff and researched it deeply.
|
| Gotchas statements re: "...well regulated...", cars are
| registered why not guns, restrict people to owning
| muskets, etc., are unhelpful.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > The Army has nothing to with personal self-defense or
| protection of civil rights
|
| In the view of the theory underlying the second
| amendment, it is an existential threat to the latter
| which makes assuring that the State can meet it's
| internal and external security needs solely through small
| permanent cadres plus mobilization of the citizen militia
| of paramount importance.
|
| > Standing armies were the part of the motivation for the
| 2nd Amd.
|
| _Preventing_ standing armies was, which is presumably
| why the statement was that having one (and also standing
| paramilitary forces for internal security, which was
| actually the abuse that was the biggest fear motivating
| fear of standing armies) rendered the second amendment
| irrelevant.
| nobodyandproud wrote:
| > Preventing standing armies was, which is presumably why
| the statement was that having one (and also standing
| paramilitary forces for internal security, which was
| actually the abuse that was the biggest fear motivating
| fear of standing armies) rendered the second amendment
| irrelevant.
|
| This is inaccurate?
|
| https://en.m.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Federalist_(Dawson)/
| 45
|
| James Madison argues from the assumption of having an
| standing army, and why an armed populace makes a Federal
| tyranny unlikely.
|
| There are many (most) things I don't like about
| Republicans, but making THIS an issue is something I just
| don't understand about Democrats.
|
| Pick your battles.
| chub500 wrote:
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_j6lRdktscE
|
| Do you seriously think Scalia cared about protecting
| people's rights to bear arms beyond the text of the 2nd
| amendment? Again, what constitutes a true liberal
| originalist? These justices are not pursuing power but
| trying to interpret law - and they get accused of
| undermining democracy...
| extra88 wrote:
| > Do you seriously think Scalia cared about protecting
| people's rights to bear arms beyond the text of the 2nd
| amendment?
|
| Whatever rights to bear arms there are, they come from
| the 2nd Amendment. It is absurd to stretch an Amendment
| about "well regulated Militia" to mean D.C. can't require
| people to store a handgun with a trigger lock because it
| would impinge on their ability to use it for personal
| protection. Yet that's what Scalia in the majority
| decided.
|
| > what constitutes a true liberal originalist?
|
| You keep missing my point; if anyone was actually an
| originalist, some of their decisions would seem
| conservative, some would seem liberal, because they would
| just obediently be following what the text says. No judge
| actually does that and that alone, I'm only aware of
| conservative judges that claim they do. The term
| "originalist" was invented by conservatives so that's not
| surprising.
|
| I am not saying all conservative judges make wrong
| decisions and liberal judges make right ones. I'm saying
| conservatives attack outcomes they don't like as not
| being "originalist" instead of being honest that it's an
| outcome they don't like. They're hypocrites.
|
| But this is not really relevant to the original claim of
| the Federalist Society undermining democracy; I think it
| would go to far to say to be conservative is to be anti-
| democratic. If the Federalist Society is anti-democratic,
| it's more in their means than in their ends.
| chub500 wrote:
| Let me push back one more time. If what you're saying is
| true, and no judge no matter how much integrity they have
| can be truly originalist - what do we do? Is our judicial
| system dead? Should we even try to pick originalists or
| give up on a third branch and let it be a super
| legislature? What comes of rule of law? Doesn't this seem
| like a problem?
| sdenton4 wrote:
| Why does a legal system need to be 'originalist' to be
| valid? That seems like some pretty stiff kool-aid...
|
| Via ye olde wikipedia: 'In the context of United States
| law, originalism is a concept regarding the
| interpretation of the Constitution that asserts that all
| statements in the constitution must be interpreted based
| on the original understanding "at the time it was
| adopted".'
|
| This is the start of a very short road to bandying around
| conflicting subjective interpretations of what the
| original founders believed, rather than what's in the
| text of the constitution or the law. You can have rule of
| law without second-guessing the founders; if you get
| unintended consequences, update the law and/or
| constitution accordingly. It's meant to be a living
| document, right? In the meantime, protections for gay and
| transgender people based on equal rights laws is a
| feature, not a bug.
|
| [on edit: To put an even finer point on it, Alito's
| arguing originalism because he doesn't like the text.
| That is fundamentally against the rule of law.]
| nickff wrote:
| >"It's meant to be a living document, right? "
|
| The constitution was not originally intended to be a
| 'living' document; that theory came about in the
| progressive era as a way to change the meaning of the
| constitution without amending it.[1]
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Living_Constitution
| sdenton4 wrote:
| I meant living document in the prosaic sense, of document
| meant to be regularly updated. The amendment process is
| baked in from the start, so was clearly intended from the
| beginning.
| nickff wrote:
| Originalists are usually in favor of more frequent
| amendments to the constitution, they're only against re-
| interpreting existing text in new ways.
| stormbrew wrote:
| What a dilemma you've conjured here: "Originalists" or a
| super legislature and a dead judicial system. There is
| clearly nothing between, either we pretend that text
| written in the 1700s is directly applicable to 2020 or
| democracy is dead?
|
| Originalism is a modern invention. It was not even a
| philosophy of jurisprudence until approximately the
| 1970s.
| omnicom wrote:
| You should accept that the supreme court is a nakedly
| political body just like the other two branches. The idea
| of some impartial body of judges who can strike down laws
| or in the case of qualified immunity just make them up is
| absurd. Do you think that the fact that judges often
| split 5-4 along ideological lines is just a coincidence,
| or that conservatives put such a high importance on the
| court during the last election so they can elect an
| "originalist"? The garbage passed by Roberts about "balls
| and strikes" is insulting, and the fact that people
| blindly accept it is beyond me.
| sjy wrote:
| You could look to the legal system in the United Kingdom,
| Canada or Australia, which has the same basic structure,
| without the bizarre political pageantry surrounding the
| appointment of apex court judges. In these countries
| judges are not considered "liberal" or "conservative," at
| least not by the general public. Theories of judicial
| interpretation are treated as an obscure philosophical
| concept taught at law school, not a mainstream political
| issue that affects elections.
| nickff wrote:
| UK, Canada, and Australia all have radically different
| constitutions; very hard to compare any of them to the US
| Constitution. Broadly speaking, the UK one is more a body
| of law, the Canadian is a single document which the
| government can override, and I'm not too familiar with
| the Australian one, but it seems fairly limited compared
| with the others mentioned.
| Zigurd wrote:
| "Originalism" is not possible in practice because it
| would lead to absurd outcomes. It is reasonable to
| suspect that "originalism" is a construct in bad faith,
| to cover a preference for old bigotries and a less than
| coherent grab bag of right wing positions.
| nickff wrote:
| When we interpret contracts, we're practicing a sort of
| 'originalism', though usually on shorter timescales. Is
| contract interpretation right-wing?
| Zigurd wrote:
| So you would adhere to the _original_ language of
| property covenants forbidding sale to black people
| because that was the clear intent of the authors of those
| covenants? Hey, sanctity of contract!
|
| And do not tell me those contracts were considered
| illegal at the time they were written.
| nickff wrote:
| Contracts can be invalidated (post-hoc) by laws, and both
| (contracts and laws) can be invalidated by constitutions.
| Such provisions (in the USA) would have been rendered
| unenforceable by the Fourteenth Amendment.
| berberous wrote:
| How many of Scalia's opinions have you actually read?
|
| Humans are not perfect, and I think all judges can delude
| themselves with motivated reasoning at times, and all
| judges have some bad opinions, but having read many
| SCOTUS opinions, Scalia always struck me as one of the
| more logical and thoughtful members of the court.
| pstuart wrote:
| Originalism seems to go hand-in-hand with religious
| fundamentalism, i.e, "God said it, I believe it, that
| settles it".
|
| Edit: for the downvoters, please let me know how Scalia's
| religious beliefs were completely compartmentalized and
| had no influence on him outside of a church:
| https://www.ncronline.org/blogs/ncr-today/justice-
| antonin-sc...
| alain94040 wrote:
| I'm not sure "originalist" means anything. The
| constitution, like all legal texts, contains
| contradictions between different principles. As logic
| students know, once you have contradictions in your
| principles, you can prove anything you want.
|
| The role of a judge is to sort through these
| contradictions to decide which principles are more
| important than others, even though they are all mentioned
| in the constitution.
|
| So I don't see how there is an objective concept of
| "originalist": you have to pick some principles over
| others. Which ones you pick are a lot more guided by your
| own ideology than by the words on paper.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > I'm not sure "originalist" means anything. The
| constitution, like all legal texts, contains
| contradictions between different principles.
|
| Not just the Constitution, either. Other contemporary
| writings - the Federalist Papers, etc. - are often quote-
| mined to determine "intent". As you identify, these offer
| a _lot_ of opportunities to pick and choose stuff in
| favor of whatever ideological decision you 'd like to
| make.
| Animats wrote:
| It has meaning, but not what we see today. Interpreting
| the US Constitution as intended by its authors would
| probably have consequences like this:
|
| - A much stronger view of the Fourth Amendment: _The
| right of the people to be secure in their persons,
| houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable
| searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no
| warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported
| by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the
| place to be searched, and the persons or things to be
| seized._ That means no searches without a warrant,
| period. No general surveillance. No "drug exception". No
| "exigent circumstances" exception. Wiretapping, on a
| court order only. Which is where the US mostly was until
| the 1960s or so. This means going back to "We have you
| surrounded. Come out with your hands up".
|
| - Much more use of jury trials. Anything that involves
| even a day in jail, or a fine over $20 (might allow for
| inflation adjustment) means a jury trial. No treating six
| months in jail as a "petty offense". Longer sentences for
| demanding a jury trial would be considered a major Fifth
| Amendment violation. And no "civil forfeitures".
|
| - Religion is just another business. No tax break, no
| restrictions on lobbying, no exemptions from other
| neutral laws.
|
| - Corporations are not "persons". The history of how
| corporations got constitutional rights is strange and
| interesting. See Southern Pacific Railroad vs. County of
| Santa Clara (1886). Until then, corporations did not have
| constitutional rights; only their employees did.
|
| That's originalism.
| [deleted]
| gamblor956 wrote:
| See a transcript of Alito's speech this week.
|
| It's a hour of ranting against democracy. He didn't even hide
| the fact that he doesn't care that gay marriage or other
| issues were approved by voters; he would judicially end gay
| marriage in the name of "religious freedom." But this freedom
| only extends to particular forms of Christianity, as Alito is
| quite comfortable with restricting the religious practices of
| Muslims and Wiccans.
| catawbasam wrote:
| There is genuine work to be done reconciling gay marriage
| with the first amendment: "Congress shall make no law
| respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the
| free exercise thereof" Unfortunately Alito is more likely
| to add to the problem than to help resolve it.
| kemiller wrote:
| Hogwash. No religion is forced to perform marriages they
| don't believe in.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > There is genuine work to be done reconciling gay
| marriage with the first amendment...
|
| Why? Catholics (as an example) don't perform or
| internally honor Jewish (as an example) weddings, either,
| without it being any sort of First Amendment issue.
| sonotathrowaway wrote:
| No, he means your freedom to marry whom you choose
| infringes upon his belief that marriage is between one
| man and one woman. American evangelicals were
| instrumental in spreading their hatred of homosexuality
| in Africa and helped create laws allowing the murder of
| men accused of homosexuality, this was less than a decade
| ago. Those people are still very much alive and active
| within the conservative world, they haven't become more
| accepting.
| voltaireodactyl wrote:
| First Amendment protects you from government. Catholics
| are not the government.
|
| That's why Catholic discussion of Jewish marriages is not
| a First Amendment issue, while Supreme Court Justice
| Alito advocating against gay marriage is.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > First Amendment protects you from government. Catholics
| are not the government.
|
| Right. That's my point; there's no need to reconcile the
| First Amendment with permitting gay marriage. There's
| nothing to reconcile.
|
| The common "allowing gay marriage is an infringement of
| religious freedom" argument is bunk for that reason.
| voltaireodactyl wrote:
| My apologies, I misunderstood what point you were trying
| to make. I agree with you entirely.
| oh_sigh wrote:
| How is only allowing male <-> female marriage against
| what you wrote? Religions would still be free to let gay
| people get married, they just wouldn't be able to
| register with the state.
| dboreham wrote:
| This isn't my field, but afaik marriage is entirely a
| question of "registering with the state". Everything else
| is some sort of party or tribal celebration.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| From a legal point of view, yes. From a social point of
| view, no - but that's not what people argue about.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| Not at all. Allowing gay marriage doesn't prohibit your
| free exercise of religion. Don't approve of or believe in
| gay marriage? Don't marry someone of the same sex.
|
| No religion has the right to demand of others that they
| respect its belief.
|
| "You cannot, because my religion disapproves" is the
| religious first amendment version of "Your right to swing
| your fist ends where my nose begins".
| sroussey wrote:
| The Christian Body Temple finds it to be religious
| persecution for their members (many doctors) to be forced
| to treat fat people. Will Alito also uphold that?
|
| http://www.christianbodytemple.com/
| Pirgo wrote:
| Essential reading.
| andrewmg wrote:
| (Longtime HN lurker and FedSoc member/leader, although speaking
| for just myself here.)
|
| The Federalist Society's entire annual convention was just
| broadcast online this past week,[0] and it's pretty typical of
| the Society's activities: hosting panels, debates, and speeches
| on the law featuring a wide breadth of views. If the Federalist
| Society is some kind of "conspiracy"--one that you can join
| today, for fifty bucks!--then so is pretty much every other
| civic organization in existence.
|
| [0] https://fedsoc.org/conferences/2020-national-lawyers-
| convent...
| geofft wrote:
| Conspiracies don't have to be spoken in hushed words in
| smoke-filled rooms to be conspiracies. Nothing about
| redlining, for instance, was particularly secret, but it was
| still a conspiracy.
| tehjoker wrote:
| FedSoc has a well known reputation for being a nice civic
| organization for the legal profession and also endorsing the
| most radical right wing supreme court nominees. Without the
| broad acceptance by the legal community, it wouldn't be as
| effective.
| andrewmg wrote:
| While we might disagree over who's a "radical right wing"
| nominee, it's indisputable that the Federalist Society
| hasn't endorsed any nominee for any position.
| jcomis wrote:
| How you can post this and think you are being realistic after
| Alito's speech is mind boggling.
| jswizzy wrote:
| I don't know what you mean by voters. Since the gay marriage
| issue was decided by the courts instead of legislatures.
| pnw_hazor wrote:
| Not in free states like Washington. The voters decided.
| stevenwoo wrote:
| To be generous and read between the lines, the Supreme
| Court eventually comes around to opinions that agree with a
| majority of Americans.The idea of it as an apolitical
| organization is to ignore reality.
| jjeaff wrote:
| Technically, the courts interpreted the legislation that
| was already passed as allowing gay marriage.
|
| If there was a political, legislative will, "the people"
| could pass an amendment to the law specifying that gay
| marriage is not allowed or protected.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| It isn't a conspiracy. It is the organization most at fault
| for mitch's anti-democratic actions regarding the supreme
| court that I honestly believe has the potential to completely
| undermine our government. The supreme court's move to a
| completely partisan institution is a huge step toward a
| populist dictatorship.
| https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/supreme-revenge/
| a1369209993 wrote:
| It depends pretty much entirely on how you define
| "conspiracy". Eg "conspiracy to commit murder" (or election
| fraud or something, more topically) doesn't require secrecy
| at all (except in order to be _successful_ , maybe) while
| "conspiracy theory" (when it's not being abused to the
| point of meaninglessness to dismiss legitimate accusations)
| is specifically based on the implausability of many
| thousands of people not just keeping a secret, but
| concealing any evidence that there even _is_ a secret.
|
| Plenty of things are conspiracies in the "conspiracy to
| commit murder" sense, without being conspiracies in the
| "conspiracy theory" sense.
| [deleted]
| chmod600 wrote:
| The supreme court partisanship is overstated. It's brought
| out all the time as though the sky is falling, but
| typically when the court is tilted, side-switching
| magically appears.
|
| Roberts, Gorsuch, Kennedy, O'Connor and Souter all switched
| sides on major issues. Conservatives switch sides a lot
| more often, but perhaps because the court has been tilted
| towards Republican nominees.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| Sure, but partisanship is getting much worse. The
| precedent has now been set to completely reject any
| nomination from the opposing party. That will lead to
| even more partisanship as nominating "moderates" no
| longer makes sense. We're in for a future of nothing but
| Alito's and Thomas's.
| jjeaff wrote:
| Partisanship in the nomination process, sure, but it
| remains to be seen if the more recent nominees will be
| impartial judges. After all, several court decisions have
| already not gone the way the gop wanted.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| It does indeed remain to be seen--but those recent cases
| were completely ludicrous! That some semblance of logic
| remains does not help me sleep at night.
| chmod600 wrote:
| That's partisanship of Congress, not the Supreme Court.
|
| When it comes down to real decisions by SCOTUS, they
| usually come out more moderate and narrow than you might
| imagine.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| In the past that has been true. But if every confirmation
| from now on is as partisan as Alito and Thomas are(who as
| far as I'm aware almost never rule against republican
| causes) that will soon cease to be the case.
| chmod600 wrote:
| I don't see how Alito and Thomas show a trend here.
| Roberts joined after Thomas and Gorsuch joined after
| Alito, and both have a more independent record.
|
| Among the Democrat appointees, Kagan has a more
| independent record than Sotomayor but came afterward.
|
| I know there are counterexamples but my point is that
| there's not an obvious trend toward more partisan
| justices, or at least no evidence has been presented so
| far in this thread.
| [deleted]
| pmoriarty wrote:
| _" when the court is tilted, side-switching magically
| appears"_
|
| Two sides of a conservative position.
| chmod600 wrote:
| I mean Republican-appointed justices joining the
| Democrat-appointed justices in an opinion. Are you saying
| all nine are conservatives?
| jaggederest wrote:
| Are any of them advocating the seizure of the means of
| production for the workers? Abolish the state or private
| property? Devolve control into local worker's councils or
| other non-hierarchical means of decision-making?
|
| The US, in general, does not have any non-conservative
| judiciary. _Stare decisis_ by itself ensures that there
| is a strong conservative streak in the available pool of
| jurists. So yes, the Supreme court has center-left
| (Sotomayor), centrist (Breyer, Kagan), center-
| right(Roberts, Kavanaugh, Gorsuch), and reactionaries
| (Alito and Thomas), but nobody as far "left" as it has
| "right".
|
| Historically, for example, William O. Douglas was about
| as left as the court has gotten, and he was more in favor
| of environmentalism and ending the Vietnam war than
| really aggressive left wing concepts.
| chmod600 wrote:
| The original claim was that thr Supreme Court has become
| highly partisan. The fact that justices switch sides and
| join with appointees of the opposite party is evidence
| against that claim.
|
| Now you're bringing up a different claim, which is that
| the two major parties don't really represent a variety of
| ideas. That's a fine claim to make, but it doesn't
| contradict my point.
| jaggederest wrote:
| My point is that there is no "switch sides", because
| there are only 1.5 sides. Also, partisanship isn't the
| _only_ force determining outcomes in the supreme court,
| it 's just the most important one for many purposes.
|
| The other major shift is actually more along the axis of
| social libertarian vs authoritarian, which is not as
| clearly divided as "republican vs democrat", especially
| considering the late RBG was clearly an authoritarian in
| some respects, despite being fairly left of center.
|
| Taking any of this as evidence that the court is non-
| partisan is pretty incorrect: They're consistently
| partisan in clearly obvious ways, even controlling for
| other issues.
| CameronNemo wrote:
| >typically when the court is tilted, side-switching
| magically appears
|
| For people like me, I don't care what "side" a justice is
| on. The justices literally choose which cases they
| accept... Of course there will be some debate on them.
|
| What I find absolutely horrid is that the courts are
| packed with nominees hand selected by a group of US
| senators who not only cannot represent the majority of
| the US population/citizenry, but are also actively
| antagonistic toward people's will to determine their own
| future (see obstructionism by McConnell during the Obama
| years).
| throw0101a wrote:
| > _If the Federalist Society is some kind of "conspiracy"--
| one that you can join today, for fifty bucks!--then so is
| pretty much every other civic organization in existence._
|
| The connotation of secrecy with the work "conspiracy" is only
| one definition. "Conspiracy" and "conspire" have the same
| root:
|
| > _1. the act of conspiring_
|
| * https://www.dictionary.com/browse/conspiracy
|
| > _2. to act or work together toward the same result or goal:
| The wind and rain conspired to strip the trees of their fall
| color._
|
| * https://www.dictionary.com/browse/conspire
|
| > _A civil conspiracy or collusion is an agreement between
| two or more parties to deprive a third party of legal rights
| or deceive a third party to obtain an illegal objective.[1] A
| conspiracy may also refer to a group of people who make an
| agreement to form a partnership in which each member becomes
| the agent or partner of every other member and engage in
| planning or agreeing to commit some act._
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conspiracy_(civil)
|
| > _This is a list of political conspiracies. In a political
| context, a conspiracy refers to a group of people united in
| the goal of damaging, usurping, or overthrowing an
| established political power. Typically, the final goal is to
| gain power through a revolutionary coup d 'etat or through
| assassination. A conspiracy can also be used for infiltration
| of the governing system._
|
| *
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_political_conspiracies
| nickysielicki wrote:
| Thanks for this, I didn't realize membership was so cheap.
| Joined.
| riazrizvi wrote:
| The essence of economic conservatism is about preserving power
| for those already in power, reducing opportunity. Of course
| it's dressed up as libertarian freedom but that's just the
| doublespeak. For example, in a laissez-faire, libertarian
| education system, kids who are born into wealth get a great
| education, kids who are not start adulthood with lots of
| disadvantages, which obviously _conserves_ the status quo, and
| starves an economy by reducing its potential intellectual
| capital without benefit to the system as a whole. American
| prosperity is a direct result of our unusual democratic
| institutions that push in the direction of economic
| opportunity, through laws that enforce a more even economic
| playing field relative to other economies around the world, but
| it is always being attacked by monopoly oriented interests, and
| the inherited wealth class. This is the primary political axis
| of Democrat vs Republican.
|
| It's an argument especially relevant to the startup community
| because great startups disrupt the economic status quo. Take
| away the system that enables that and you are left with top-
| down/autocratic economic systems. They have their benefits,
| efficient use of resources, so long as it benefits the regime,
| but over time, since autocratic regimes are optimized to keep
| people in power, they can't innovate as well. The highest
| profile example recently, was Jack Ma's attempted IPO that got
| shut down because he offended Xi in a speech. Loyalty to the
| top trumps all.
| elevenoh wrote:
| 'God fearing' as he approaches death?
|
| Or political play after it looks like the dems will win the
| election?
|
| It's almost as if, at the deepest level, we're all one.
| CalChris wrote:
| "Still, his political spending remains almost entirely partisan.
| Koch Industries' PAC and employees donated $2.8 million in the
| 2020 campaign cycle to Republican candidates and $221,000 to
| Democratic candidates, according to the Center for Responsive
| Politics."
| civilized wrote:
| I bet he hasn't even stopped funding whatever kooky climate
| change deniers he can find. I'll be happy when he's dead
| throwawayxyz987 wrote:
| BigTech is just as biased, if not more, only in the other
| direction.
|
| https://www.vox.com/2018/10/31/18039528/tech-employees-polit...
| Employee donations to midterm candidates by party
| Netflix ($321K) 99.6% D 0.4% R Twitter ($228K)
| 98.7% D 1.3% R Airbnb ($107K) 97.8% D 2.2% R
| Apple ($1,218K) 97.5% D 2.5% R Stripe ($152K)
| 97.0% D 3.0% R Lyft ($47K) 96.1% D 3.9% R
| Google ($3,742K) 96.0% D 4.0% R Salesforce
| ($364K) 94.8% D 5.2% R Facebook ($1,066K) 94.5% D
| 5.5% R Tesla ($118K) 93.9% D 6.1% R
| eBay ($46K) 93.5% D 6.5% R PayPal ($84K)
| 92.2% D 7.8% R Microsoft ($1,480K) 91.7% D 8.3% R
| Amazon ($971K) 89.3% D 10.7% R Uber ($125K)
| 81.5% D 18.5% R HP ($73K) 80.0% D 20.0% R
| Intel ($353K) 78.5% D 21.5% R Oracle ($685K)
| 66.1% D 33.9% R
|
| https://www.foxnews.com/politics/facebook-twitter-employees-...
|
| > Twitter employees donated $347,270, or 98.99% of total
| federal donations, to Democrats, making individual donations of
| $200 or more. Meanwhile, only $3,556, or 1.01%, of federal
| donations from Twitter employees went to Republicans.
|
| > Facebook employees donated $2.4 million, or 91.68% of total
| federal donations, to Democrats with donations of $200 or more
| via individuals or PACS. Only $218,576, or 8.2% of all federal
| donations from Facebook employees, went to Republicans.
| iSnow wrote:
| This article isn't about BigTech. That's pure Whataboutism.
| jgalt212 wrote:
| Big money has captured the leadership of both parties. He could
| have been more effective squashing the little man had he spread
| the wealth (of his donations) a bit more broadly. e.g. Mike
| Bloomberg.
| loraa wrote:
| I wonder what Soros says...
| spaetzleesser wrote:
| He will probably try to buy off both parties now. And no doubt he
| will be successful. His real mistake wasn't partisanship but
| pouring money into organizations that distorted science like they
| did with climate change.
| StreamBright wrote:
| Now when he is done ruining the planet with pushing for fossil
| for decades, got billions on his bank accounts, god knows what
| else, he has had enough and he wants to be a good boy. I totally
| buy it.
| meowing wrote:
| Just reading how he wants to all of a sudden improve his legacy
| makes me so mad. How many thousands of peoples' legacies has he
| impacted?
| gadders wrote:
| Now we just need Soros to say the same.
| [deleted]
| anarazel wrote:
| Main Koch PAC:
|
| https://www.opensecrets.org/outsidespending/detail.php?cmte=...
| Total Independent Expenditures: $41,016,106 For
| Democrats: $92,936 Against Democrats: $8,887,525
| For Republicans: $32,035,645 Against Republicans: $0
|
| Koch industry donations:
|
| https://www.opensecrets.org/search?order=desc&q=Koch+Industr...
|
| Edit: Added link showing recent Koch Industry donations
| ceilingcorner wrote:
| That's actually not very much compared to someone like
| Bloomberg.
| jrumbut wrote:
| The interesting aspect here is not so much the amount as it
| is the one-sidedness.
|
| It shows Koch is still very actively making the same mistake.
| watwut wrote:
| Now that Trump lost, I want to be seen as the good one. Tho
| I also want to actually do the same thing I have done
| before.
|
| I mean, these guys are all sociopaths, so what should one
| expect?
| eghad wrote:
| The Koch's political funding goes far beyond just this one
| PAC fyi. Their funneling of millions into the Federalist
| Society and its individual causes serving as just one example
| that has had an outsized negative influence on the health of
| American democracy.
| 5d749d7da7d5 wrote:
| I recalled this story [0] where the Koch brothers said they
| would organize $1 billion to conservative groups for the
| 2016 election.
|
| [0] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/koch-brothers-network-
| will-spen...
| specialist wrote:
| More than amount, I'm impressed by the strategy, focus, and
| long term commitment. They've played 4D chess while my
| Democrats are amnesiacs still trying to grasp checkers.
| js2 wrote:
| Which is also disgusting. Look, I'm glad he's spending money
| to help fight climate change but it's gross how much the
| wealthy can influence elections and policy. If I have to
| choose, obviously I want that money to go toward making the
| world a better place for everyone, but I'd rather not have to
| choose at all.
|
| https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-07-01/billionai.
| ..
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jun/10/billio.
| ..
| pmoriarty wrote:
| A rat fleeing a sinking ship.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| > _At 85, the libertarian tycoon who spent decades funding
| conservative causes says he wants a final act building bridges
| across political divides_
|
| Isn't that what all the republicans are saying now that their
| presidential candidate has lost? Now that they've lost a modicum
| of power, _now_ is the time for partisanship and teamwork? Where
| was this spirit of cooperation before?
|
| This seems like a good way to spend money on his interests, while
| pretending he's building bridges, and blaming the other side when
| anything goes wrong.
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| Is there a trick to getting around the WSJ paywall?
| aazaa wrote:
| The article would have been improved by giving some insight into
| _what_ changed his mind.
|
| You don't just go from what he and his brother have done to the
| US to:
|
| > Boy, did we screw up!
|
| Without an inkling as to how or why they screwed up, there's no
| way to gauge what, if any, change to expect.
| smnrchrds wrote:
| > _The article would have been improved by giving some insight
| into what changed his mind._
|
| The article would have been improved by at least proving he has
| changed his mind. Charles Koch is 85. There is a decent chance
| he is not going to live long enough to see another Republican
| administration. It would be in the best interest of maintaining
| some political influence and making some more change for him to
| change his public position like this. If he were 60, I would
| have expected him to wait 4-8 years for the next Republican
| administration instead.
| tedivm wrote:
| I don't think he changed his mind at all, this is 100% a
| rebranding and legacy repair operation.
| pstuart wrote:
| Partisanship is a mistake in general.
| Pirgo wrote:
| "Mr. Koch has written (with Brian Hooks) a new book, "Believe in
| People: Bottom-Up Solutions for a Top-Down World,""
|
| Can it get any more cynical than this?
| chub500 wrote:
| Forgive my asking - what's cynical about this title? Should we
| not believe in people? Is the world not top-down oriented?
| Sorry - just confused.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| As the article points out the Koch's themselves, running a
| 100+ billion dollar empire, were quite happy buying
| themselves into the highest echelons of power, spreading
| their beliefs from the top down
|
| _Mr. Koch and his late brother David seeded the political
| landscape with conservative and libertarian ideas, then built
| an infrastructure to nurture them. 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._
|
| You know what would really decentralise the country and
| create a bottom-up utopia? If no single entity had the
| resources the Kochs has. But in the world of the Kochs
| privately funded authoritarianism does not count.
| simlevesque wrote:
| He spent hubdreds of millions of dollar doing the exact
| opposite. You know what they say, put your money where your
| mouth is. He's lying in plain sight.
| extra88 wrote:
| Why should anyone believe an oligarch, who has been the
| embodiment of top-down influence, wants "the people" to
| direct how society operates?
|
| His version of "bottom-up" is heavily funding astroturf
| campaigns as well as more populist groups through which he
| can control what they do.
| Pirgo wrote:
| Well obviously it's not title per se, but title in relation
| to the authors of the book.
| meowing wrote:
| Koch has spent a fortune on destabilizing public
| infrastructure in midwest cities. If he "believed in people",
| he could show it by not tearing down public transit systems
| which disenfranchises poorer people.
| xyst wrote:
| Mr. Koch just doesn't want people to desecrate his family grave
| when he finally bites the dust. I don't buy it for a second
| that he has truly changed. He will die rich while the rest of
| us try to clean up the mess he and his brother created.
| bwanab wrote:
| This reminds me of George Wallace's famous realization that his
| long term institutionalization of racism in Alabama was wrong
| when he was getting close to death's door. It was kind of nice to
| hear, but lots of damage was done.
| js2 wrote:
| Ditto for Lee Atwater.
| divbzero wrote:
| Lots of damage done, but for Charles Koch there might be time
| still to heal some of the polarization.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| I am skeptical. I think people like Koch have been fanning
| the flames for a long time, only to now see that the monster
| rose up and threatens to eat them. They'd like to put the
| genie back in the bottle, but it's too late for that.
| CameronNemo wrote:
| Also the Emmet Till accuser admitting she lied, once she was on
| her death bed.
| bhickey wrote:
| At age 84 Carolyn Bryant Donham allegedly confessed to
| instigating Till's lynching. She's still is alive today, age
| 86.
| CameronNemo wrote:
| My bad, thanks for the correction. I guess subconsciously I
| assume everyone over 80 is on their deathbed?
| kitd wrote:
| Contemplating ones deathbed is an extremely productive form of
| meditation IME.
| yumraj wrote:
| There's an old Hindi saying that comes to mind, which loosely
| translates as:
|
| _After eating 900 mice, the cat is going on a pilgrimage._
| vr46 wrote:
| Too little, too late.
| blackrock wrote:
| I say he got what he wanted.
|
| He wanted the country to burn to the ground in mindless
| squabbles, so that the Right Wing can ascend to the dominant
| viewpoint.
|
| Mission Accomplished.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| Classic end-of-life turn. Getty, etc.
|
| The Koch Family Foundation for Fossil-Free Energy would go a long
| way.
| pydry wrote:
| ... right after going all in on red and the roulette wheel turned
| up blue.
| SideburnsOfDoom wrote:
| Apologies if this is covered in the article, which I can't get
| to, but what is he doing to make amends? Or is this just empty,
| placatory words?
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| Cynically I just think he wants to play ball with the Biden
| administration now that they're talking a big talk about
| working with republicans.
| SideburnsOfDoom wrote:
| That would be my cynical take as well: Oligarch sees which
| way the political wind is currently blowing.
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| Mmhmm.
| to11mtm wrote:
| I'd think there are a few things going on;
|
| - Parts of both the right and the left would rather not
| repeat the experience they have had over the last few years.
| While part of me thinks that the Koch businesses did pretty
| well during the Trump administration, the relative chaos of
| his presidency likely didn't let them do a lot of -effective-
| lobbying.
|
| - Speaking of businesses. Koch Industries historically has
| had Petroleum and Paper as their Cash Cows. With all of the
| attention on global warming, as well as their track record on
| lobbying, Yes I would absolutely agree they are trying to
| play nice.
|
| - That said, I did find it interesting to note that Koch
| Industries has fully acquired Infor as of this year. For
| those unfamiliar, it's a player in the ERP scene and based on
| the people that I've worked with from there and their
| stories, probably a pretty good product in that space. So
| -maybe- they are in fact seeing the writing on the wall and
| trying to move to more sustainable markets. we shall see.
| wombatmobile wrote:
| > Mr. Koch is now trying to work together with Democrats and
| liberals on issues such as immigration, criminal-justice reform
| and limiting U.S. intervention abroad, where he thinks common
| ground can be found. He has partnered with organizations
| including the LeBron James Family Foundation, the American
| Civil Liberties Union and even a handful of Democratic state
| legislative campaigns. In 2019, he renamed the Koch network of
| about 700 donors as Stand Together.
|
| > Still, his political spending remains almost entirely
| partisan. Koch Industries' PAC and employees donated $2.8
| million in the 2020 campaign cycle to Republican candidates and
| $221,000 to Democratic candidates, according to the Center for
| Responsive Politics.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > Mr. Koch is now trying to work together with Democrats
|
| A pragmatic choice given that a Democrat just won the White
| House. He can sit it out, or try to work with them and
| possibly influence their position.
| zimpenfish wrote:
| Like others have mentioned, it's an empty rebranding. His
| super-PAC is still dumping money into the Georgia Senate race
| to help Perdue and Loeffler's re-election.
|
| https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/11/charles-koch-what-a-...
| flavor8 wrote:
| He's 85, his brother died recently, and he's very likely
| concerned about "legacy". According to Greenpeace, these
| assholes have poured $145,555,197 into groups that worked
| counter to climate policy changes being enacted (from 1997 to
| 2018). _Partisanship_ should be the least of his worries -
| he'll be remembered as a key figure who spurred inaction at the
| exact time that we should have been taking drastic action.
| gorbachev wrote:
| The Koch Brothers are also directly responsible for poisoning
| a generation of poor people who've had the unfortunate luck
| to live downwind from chemical factories owned by Koch
| Industries.
|
| What's even more audacious is that all the money they gained
| from killing people, a lot of them from cancer, they pretend
| to be patrons of curing cancer funding cancer research.
|
| The family puts most robber barons to shame.
| the-dude wrote:
| Is everybody you disagree with an <totally not appropiate
| here or elsewhere> ?
| shrimp_emoji wrote:
| For me, when the disagreement is about turning the planet
| into a hollow cinder for naked protection of wealth accrued
| in an unjust system and justified by Puritanical memes of
| free will and individualism, it's either a naughty word
| ascribing malice or one ascribing stupidity.
|
| (Consequentially, the difference is sadly zero.)
| the-dude wrote:
| Great stuff, you can't make this up.
| medium_burrito wrote:
| Greenpeace is directly working against nuclear energy, which
| is the best way to have clean energy in the future for a
| large portion of humanity.
| legulere wrote:
| Renewables are cheaper and faster to deploy now and getting
| cheaper.
| spodek wrote:
| Nothing beats reducing consumption.
| a-nikolaev wrote:
| Nuclear energy is still dangerous. For example, it is still
| not safe against possible natural disasters (Fukushima), as
| well as from possible terrorist attacks. Imagine a 9/11
| type of accident with a nuclear plant as its target.
| Potential danger is still extremely high, even if the
| chances of it are very small. We still cannot correctly
| estimate the risks of nuclear energy, after all these
| years.
| rurounijones wrote:
| > Nuclear energy is still dangerous. For example, it is
| still not safe against possible natural disasters
| (Fukushima),
|
| I mean, if we are going to be bringing up a single
| datapoint then allow me to raise a counterpoint.
|
| Nuclear energy is still safe. For example, it is still
| safe against possible natural disasters (Onagawa) [1]
|
| [1] https://thebulletin.org/2014/03/onagawa-the-japanese-
| nuclear...
| pydry wrote:
| It's also, like, 4x more expensive per kWh (probably 2x
| more expensive with variability taken into account) than
| wind or solar and is uninsurable without a government
| backstop.
|
| I really wonder why people are so keen on it. It made
| sense to build them 40 years ago to deal with global
| warming. Today it's only financially viable if it's
| _massively_ subsidized compared to wind /solar.
|
| What is it that makes that extra cost so worthwhile?
| iSnow wrote:
| Well, the idea of an energy source that never fails, is
| abundant and reliable has some allure. Solar and wind
| seem capricious in comparison.
|
| Nevertheless, nuclear has some big issues: try to switch
| to it now and it will take decades for the power plants
| to be build. Expensive as well and leaves a lot of toxic
| and radioactive waste.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| I don't think that changes how much the Koch's donated to
| climate change deniers.
| forest_dweller wrote:
| It highlights the very important point that activist
| groups will quite often ignore viable solutions. This is
| usually because they wish to keep on being activists and
| keep on continuing the fight.
|
| Thus it brings into question anything they claim and all
| claims should be treated with skepticism.
| aniro wrote:
| Have you seen how big the Chernobyl exclusion zone is?
| are to move your family there?
|
| Have you paid any attention to the after effects at
| Fukushima? Do you care to realize that we are pushing
| radiation with unknown effects into the largest body of
| water (and one of the greatest repositories of life) on
| Earth? That the effects will likely reverberate for a
| 1000 years or more?
|
| What is your solution to the problem of accumulating
| Nuclear waste?
|
| Has it occurred to you that life has succeeded on the
| planet primarily by a fantastical luck of getting dosed
| with EXACTLY the right amount of radiation, carefully
| controlled by an atmosphere that literal took a millennia
| of millennia in order to develop? That fucking with that
| balance by inviting disastrous and unknown consequences
| into that careful envelope might turn some people off?
|
| No. You must be right.. just a bunch of loony activists
| that are clinging desperately to the activist identity.
|
| How shallow and unconsidered an opinion. Did it make you
| feel as smug as it sounded when you typed it out?
| forest_dweller wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Greenpeace
|
| There are plenty of criticisms of greenpeace in the same
| vain. Being skeptical of any of their claims is healthy.
| dnautics wrote:
| " Do you care to realize that we are pushing radiation
| with unknown effects into the largest body of water..."
|
| Real talk: Which do you think is worse, fukushima, or one
| atmospheric nuclear test?
| aniro wrote:
| Real talk:
|
| Doses of radioactive elements from high atmosphere
| Nuclear weapons testing persist in trace amounts in all
| living things on Earth today. Dispersal of radioactive
| elements would be faster and point source radioactivity
| thereby reduced by that due to the nature of the medium
| into which it was released and the very short duration of
| the release.
|
| Fukushima because it lacks these characteristics.
|
| Blow up all the shit you want.. nuclear energy (when it
| fails, and every failure is too often) is way more
| disruptive then nuclear weapons. Evidence? See Nagasaki
| today vs Pripyat today.
| bhickey wrote:
| > Has it occurred to you that life has succeeded on the
| planet primarily by a fantastical luck of getting dosed
| with EXACTLY the right amount of radiation, carefully
| controlled by an atmosphere that literal took a millennia
| of millennia in order to develop?
|
| Well, no. We aren't in some mystical radiation balance
| with nature.
|
| Heritable point mutations are primarily driven by DNA
| polymerase errors and repair failures, not by radiation
| damage. Ultraviolet light is good at causing thymidine
| cross-linking, which can give rise to cancers, but this
| is irrelevant to heritable change. Likewise, higher
| energy particles can cut DNA, but compared to crossing
| over events during chromosomal assortment this has
| approximately no bearing on heritable change.
| aniro wrote:
| I gather all of that evidence was collected from Martian
| samples? Maybe Venus? Was it derived from DNA developed
| on the Moon?
|
| What does make Earth just right for you to have developed
| in order to be aware, gain such knowledge, share such
| knowledge?
|
| Untold eons of carefully controlled radiant energy
| emitted by our blessed Sun.
|
| The Sun and its ilk are massive emitters of radiant
| energy. Light is a form of radiation. Heat is a form of
| radiation. The universe is full of lifeless rocks either
| burnt by the sun or left out in the cold. In fact, all
| the ones we know of exist in this state except this one.
|
| I am not advocating some "mystical radiation balance with
| nature" so much as pointing out that "life" (as we know
| it) is playing the long game on controlling radiant
| energy doses. When we muck about with that by playing our
| dumb little short game without consideration for the
| consequences we invite disaster upon ourselves. All of
| this discussion about global warming is pointless if we
| leave large swathes of the planet uninhabitable by
| humans.
| cwhiz wrote:
| It changes my evaluation of the claim, which is sourced
| by Greenpeace.
|
| In the long run I have no doubt that Greenpeace will have
| caused more damage than the Koch family. We could have
| clean energy right now if it weren't for the decades of
| nuclear fear mongering, and the Koch family isn't even
| opposed to nuclear.
| arshbot wrote:
| Is this a troll? Comparing a single point on greenpiece's
| agenda to literally hundreds of millions of dollars Koch
| dollars to climate change deniers as a whole are simply
| incomparable.
|
| Just in case this is somehow contestable, let me
| highlight a few points
|
| * Climate change deniers oppose solutions that don't
| involve oil/gas/coal - this means nuclear power * Koch
| funding > greenpiece funding * greenpeice didn't start
| nuclear fear mongering, pro-oil lobbyists did - AKA
| climate change deniers.
| Godel_unicode wrote:
| Greenpeace's annual budget for activism (as opposed to
| fundraising, which eats roughly 1/3 of their budget) is
| on the order of $200 million. That's more than the
| lifetime spending of the Koch brothers, and Greenpeace
| does that volume every year. They're not some scrappy
| little actor, they're one of the single largest lobbying
| groups in the entire world.
| lazyasciiart wrote:
| I don't know where you are getting your numbers, but they
| are orders of magnitude wrong. The Koch brothers also
| spend about $200million/year.
| https://www.cnbc.com/2018/01/27/koch-brothers-network-to-
| spe...
| the-dude wrote:
| Would you please consider using _heretics_ instead of the
| energy wasting _climate change deniers_?
|
| This would emit about 60% less CO2, mind you.
| Ma8ee wrote:
| When you can't attack the message, attack the messenger.
| Duh!
| pfdietz wrote:
| Nuclear energy is working against nuclear energy, by being
| far too expensive to compete.
| the-dude wrote:
| And Greenpeace, with a 'campaign' director who used to fly up
| & down from Luxemburg to Amsterdam for his commute? [0]
|
| Dutch, no international sources available AFAIK :
|
| [0] https://www.rtlnieuws.nl/nieuws/artikel/1806716/greenpeac
| e-v...
| SideburnsOfDoom wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism
| flavor8 wrote:
| Do you dispute the figure?
| the-dude wrote:
| I object to your polarizing language.
| flavor8 wrote:
| Genuinely curious - are you seriously a fan of the Kochs?
| What do you find admirable about them?
| the-dude wrote:
| I have no opinion on the Kochs, I have too little
| information, and since I don't have any influence, I
| couldn't care less.
|
| I do care about civil discourse though.
| voltaireodactyl wrote:
| "A rose by any other name".
| flavor8 wrote:
| Well then, take it from me. They're assholes.
| brazzy wrote:
| There is a level of assholery that puts you far, far
| beyond considerations of "civil discourse".
| forest_dweller wrote:
| Don't you find it troubling that these people don't
| practice what they preach?
|
| It is as if they don't really believe it.
| d4rti wrote:
| Judging by the title of his new book, I'd suggest he is going
| for the Cameron-esque Big Society argument for reducing taxes
| this time.
|
| U.K. food bank use is at record highs [1].
|
| 1. https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/jun/03/record-
| numbe...
| cosmiccatnap wrote:
| When you ask yourself how the system is rigged this bad and why
| congress is so bought out and each policy a carefully chosen
| business strategy instead of in the interest of average citizens
| you don't have to look further than the excellent example of the
| koch brothers who, in their infinite desire for infinite profits,
| have rigged the legislature and executive branches to use as a
| crowbar on the wallets and rainy day funds of everyone.
| scoot_718 wrote:
| Rightwing playbook:
|
| Republicans in power: Use every loophole
|
| Democrats in power: Preach bipartisanship and the importance of
| fairplay.
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| The worst part is that Democrats eat that shit up. I can't
| believe that we're going to get nothing done for another 4
| years because Biden believes in a weaker executive branch.
|
| Personally, I think the president has far too much power
| (especially in war-powers), but Biden will need to deploy a ton
| of executive orders to get anything done with the legislative
| branch he's about to get - and he won't do it because he (along
| with his party and Obama) believe in fair-play, norms and
| institutions. The issue is that their opponents don't.
|
| Republicans will win back the house in 2024 in no small part
| due to Biden being precieved as having done nothing due to his
| reluctance to use executive orders to legislate from the oval
| office like his predecessor did.
| d4rti wrote:
| We're about to see the big switch in caring about deficits too.
| stefs wrote:
| you're already a week late here, they already started.
| blfr wrote:
| The US seems to be in the middle of another realignment, like in
| the 60s. The Democratic party is consolidating its support from
| the big corporations, while the Republican party is making
| inroads with the working class.
| pnw_hazor wrote:
| We are seeing the end of the nation state or at least its
| prominence.
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| a solid 35-40% of the Democratic Party is explicitly anti-
| corporate, remember occupy wall-street and the success of
| Bernie Sanders? Remember Warren calling for breaking up big
| tech? Even Biden and Obama frequently deployed (light) anti-
| corporate rhetoric in their campaigns and presidency.
|
| Trump is a billionaire and a defender of the corporate class.
| His entire administration consists of ex-corporate wall-street
| types folks and/or zealot yes-men. You may be right that the
| "inroads with the working class" are being made, but only in
| the form of the working class being convinced that their
| interests are the same as the corporate classes interests...
| though even that analysis may be wrong considering that Biden
| won by convincing voters in the rust and sun belt to vote for
| him.
| StreamBright wrote:
| Remember what DNC did to Bernie?
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/23/us/politics/dnc-emails-
| sa...
| crocodiletears wrote:
| And Gabbard [0, 1], and Yang [2] (the cited individual
| incidents do not necessarily constitute proof of candidate
| suppression in and of themselves, but are indicative of
| broader patterns throughout the primary process).
|
| [0] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/dnc-raises-debate-
| requirements-...
|
| [1] https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/18/politics/hillary-
| clinton-tuls...
|
| [2] https://www.cnn.com/2019/06/28/politics/andrew-yang-
| claims-n...
| nicetryguy wrote:
| Sure do. Debbie Wasserman Schultz was fired over it. They
| also dismantled the superdelegate system. Changes were
| made. The media was still heavily biased against Bernie
| before the pandemic; probably due to half of their
| commercials being for drug and insurance companies.
|
| I'm just looking forward to a period of relative stability
| the next four years. #MakePoliticsBoringAgain
| RickJWagner wrote:
| I think you've hit the nail on the head. It's a big part of the
| cognitive dissonance felt by much of America, I think.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Not just that, but the Republican party is openly populist
| right now. I think the Democrats are about to experience a
| significant amount of turmoil as the progressives try to take
| full control of the party. Maybe the conservatives in the
| Democratic party will join with the conservatives from the
| Republican party. Not sure how it will play out, but both
| parties seem to be evolving rapidly and both have big internal
| divides.
| sacomo wrote:
| Shouldn't have been allowed to have undemocratic control over
| that amount of political power (wealth) to begin with.
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| I feel the same way. I am a voluntarist so I do not think
| forced wealth redistribution is the answer. But it's clear to
| me that there are ways we can move to different businesses
| structures and property norms so that massive wealth has a
| tendency to be distributed throughout the population rather
| than concentrating in few hands.
|
| It's a challenge, for sure. And some proposed solutions may
| cause more harm that good. But it's absurd to me the level of
| wealth inequality we have today. That there are individual
| humans worth over a billion dollars while so many even in
| developed nations are hungry and overworked.
|
| More cooperatively owned firms and less intellectual property
| control are two voluntarist ways we can reduce this inequality.
| wombatmobile wrote:
| If rich people payed tax at the same rate as ordinary people,
| we'd be living in the same system without harmful extremes of
| inequality.
| barry-cotter wrote:
| This isn't true. To take the US tax system as an example
| it's much more progressive than the flat tax starter you're
| describing, where all income is taxed at the same rate.
| This does not stop inequality.
|
| > In 2016, the bottom 50 percent of taxpayers--those with
| adjusted gross incomes (AGI) below $40,078--earned 11.6
| percent of total AGI. However, this group of taxpayers paid
| just 3 percent of all income taxes in 2016.
|
| > In contrast, the top 1 percent of all taxpayers
| (taxpayers with AGI of $480,804 and above), earned 19.7
| percent of all AGI in 2016, and paid 37.3 percent of all
| federal income taxes. The top 1 percent of taxpayers
| accounted for more income taxes paid than the bottom 90
| percent combined, who paid 30.5 percent of all income
| taxes.
|
| https://taxfoundation.org/america-progressive-tax-system/
| AlphaSite wrote:
| I don't think everyone paying the same income tax is what
| people usually advocate for, but everyone actually paying
| the full share of the tax.
|
| I think a flat 20% above a certain rate is probably the
| most 'fair', but what needs to change is remove most
| loopholes that exist now. So everyone above a certain
| income level pays the same proportion of their income.
|
| Of course the tax base ends up really top heavy, if you
| earn most of the income, you pay most of the tax. That
| seems fair to me.
| iso1210 wrote:
| In a 2007 interview, Buffett explained that he took a
| survey of his employees and compared their tax rates to
| his. All told, he found that while he paid a total tax
| rate of 17.7%, the average tax rate for people in his
| office was 32.9%.
|
| ....
|
| So why is it that Buffett himself doesn't pay more tax?
| It's because the bulk of his income comes from dividends
| and long-term capital gains, which are taxed at a much
| lower rate than ordinary income.
|
| https://www.fool.com/taxes/2020/09/25/why-does-
| billionaire-w...
| [deleted]
| wombatmobile wrote:
| > it's much more progressive than the flat tax starter
| you're describing
|
| No, "flat tax" is not what I'm describing or advocating.
|
| Did you know that Warren Buffet paid a total tax rate of
| 17.7%, whilst the average tax rate for ordinary American
| office workers in his office was 32.9%?
| pmiller2 wrote:
| Nope. Marginal propensity to spend kills that out of the
| gate. Poor people save a much smaller proportion of their
| income than rich people, on average. Since rich people are
| rich (meaning that percentage is out of a bigger pie than
| the poor person's), _and_ their savings rates are higher
| than poor people, you just multiply that out and see that
| rich people will get richer much faster than poor people.
|
| This doesn't take into account taxes, however, which means
| that we're assuming a 0% flat tax rate. But, you see, what
| happens is that if you start imposing a positive taxation
| rate, then all that changes in the preceding argument is
| the definition of who is "rich" and who is "poor." The
| general trend is all that matters.
|
| One actual limitation to point out is that this argument
| doesn't take investment into account. Over long enough time
| periods, all major asset classes have a positive expected
| return, so, it doesn't matter precisely _what_ people
| invest in. What _does_ matter is how much they have to
| invest, and how long "long enough" time periods are.
|
| IIRC, for the stock market, "long enough" means 15 years or
| so. Since this is much shorter than a single human
| lifetime, you see that all someone who is rich enough to
| invest has to do is just keep shovelling money into their
| brokerage account, and it will pay off eventually.
|
| Poor people don't even get to that point. The hows and whys
| of that are myriad, so I won't even get into that. Just
| imagine that, instead of calling them "poor people," we
| call them "economically fragile" people. Then, what you
| start to realize is that a small bump in the road, like,
| say, an unexpected car repair, can really devastate an
| economically fragile person's finances.
|
| And, because economically fragile people don't have a lot
| of money coming in, their expenses are pretty low. That
| means that even if they follow standard personal finance
| advice and try to accumulate a 6 month emergency fund, a
| car repair costs what a car repair costs, so it's going to
| eat a much larger chunk of that emergency fund for the
| economically fragile person than the non-economically
| fragile person.
|
| Oh, and, because economic fragility is relative (meaning if
| you, and everybody else have 1 quatloo each and I have 10
| quatloos, I'm still as "rich" overall as if everybody had
| 10 quatloos each, and I had 100), that means starting poor
| and getting rich takes a long, long time, and may not ever
| happen.
|
| TL;DR: A completely flat tax rate for all citizens implies
| that the rich will get richer, and the poor will stay
| fairly poor.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marginal_propensity_to_consum
| e
| iso1210 wrote:
| What really riles me about taxation is that generally
| people who work longer/harder/smarter to increase their
| net worth get taxed far more than those who increase it
| because they have a spare 50k they put into the stock
| market.
|
| For a just society we should tax working far less than
| taxing capital and dividend gains, not the opposite.
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| But they don't pay tax at the same rate, because once they
| get wealthy they buy enough influence to tip the scales in
| their favor. Which is why I advocate for more collectively
| owned firms. Then wealth goes directly to the people rather
| than going to a rich CEO and shareholders and then the
| government and then eventually maybe the people.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| > so that massive wealth has a tendency to be distributed
| throughout the population rather than concentrating in few
| hands
|
| If you look at the data, i think you'll find that
| billionaires own a very small proportion of all wealth
| EliRivers wrote:
| Very rough numbers, a bit out of date:
|
| Allegedly about 2100 billionaires -
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World%27s_Billionaires
|
| A couple of years ago all the _millionaires_ put together
| controlled about 45% of global wealth -
| https://www.visualcapitalist.com/global-wealth-
| concentration...
|
| Since billionaires are a subset of those, then they cannot
| possibly control any more than 45%, so certainly less than
| half.
|
| Can't find a source showing just billionaires, at the
| moment, but the first source suggests that the billionaires
| have a net worth on the order of 9 to 10 trillion; if
| billionaires control 10 trillion, and about 130 trillion is
| 45% of the wealth, then billionaires are in control of
| somewhere around 4% of global wealth.
|
| As a rough calculation in sixty seconds, this does appear
| to support your assertion that billionaires control a small
| proportion of wealth. If you team them up with all the
| millionaires, they're up to almost 50%, but just the
| billionaires on their own; not so much.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| re is a very accusable article on the topic of
| millionaires in the US with some good sources.
|
| There are 19 million millionaires in the US, or 5-6% of
| the population.
|
| Hhttps://spendmenot.com/blog/what-percentage-of-
| americans-are...
| BurningFrog wrote:
| Thanks for doing the work!
|
| Another angle is that Jeff Bezos, richest man in the
| world, has $184B. That's $550 per American, or $24 per
| human.
|
| Undeniably a lot of money, but also far from a sum that
| would change the world if it got redistributed.
| rospaya wrote:
| His wealth is mostly stock, right? In fact most of the
| billionaires have their weight in stocks. In a
| theoretical situation where Bezos goes to unload all of
| his stocks to end world hunger, who would be there to buy
| it? Would the stock devalue the moment he starts selling
| it? It's complicated.
| dane-pgp wrote:
| It's possible, though, that this small proportion of wealth
| has a disproportionate effect on the political process, and
| then the political process has secondary effects on the
| wealth of non-billionaires.
|
| To pick an extreme and unlikely hypothesis, it could be
| that if there weren't any billionaires corrupting politics,
| then the economy would be run in a better way which enabled
| everyone to become millionaires.
| bipson wrote:
| Look at the data. It's the opposite way around
| hackeraccount wrote:
| How do you decide how much wealth someone can have? If you say
| let's do it democratically who's involved in that democratic
| decision? The people who's wealth is going to be ... eh,
| uncontrolled? And is it undemocratic if they decide they don't
| want that? Isn't it possible that we're actually doing what you
| want - stopping people from having undemocratic control over
| wealth but we just put the line over how much in a different
| place then you seemingly want to?
| presentation wrote:
| His argument that people should be empowered to engage with the
| democratic process is ridiculous... Just because we want people
| to engage, doesn't mean that billionaires should have orders of
| magnitude more influence when they do "engage" than other
| people do.
| dehrmann wrote:
| > political power (wealth)
|
| This last round of elections showed how money doesn't buy
| elections as easily as you'd think. Democrats massively over-
| spent Republicans, and what did it get them? A narrow Biden
| win, a smaller lead in the house, and a smaller gap in the
| Senate. Bloomberg's image and as businessman and politician is
| pretty strong, but for all his spending, the only votes he won
| in the primary were form American Samoa.
| arcticbull wrote:
| Elections are in the public interest and therefore should be
| publicly funded -- exclusively.
|
| Each registered candidate with more than a certain number of
| signatures of support should be given a budget of money and
| pre-paid airtime on all major networks by the FEC, and that's
| it. Once it's out, it's out. All other contributions (including
| in-kind) to political campaigns are tantamount to bribery and
| should just be illegal.
| bipson wrote:
| There is a approximate approach in Austria.
|
| Parties are allowed donations, but they can't spend more than
| x on election campaigns, no matter where the money is coming
| from. Time on public TV is kind-of regulated. TV ads are not
| really a thing, mostly billboards and print.
|
| Can be circumvented though, since it requires parties to
| declare spendings correctly (and labelled correctly). "Oh,
| those fancy pens that look like merch? For work if course!"
| "We didn't rent this venue, a party-friend did"
|
| Difficult to enforce with all the possible loopholes.
| AlphaSite wrote:
| It does make blatant abuse hard though.
| roenxi wrote:
| "Should" is a very easy word to throw out. Yeah, elections
| should be all those things. The problem is the follow up
| questions of "how?", "what would the unintended consequences
| be?" and "can we enforce this objectively when the situation
| gets murky?".
|
| It seems all but impossible to stop billionaires like Koch
| waging public relations campaigns. If nothing else they'll
| just buy entire media companies (c.f. Bezos and the
| Washington Post) and jump in to the fray Fox News style.
|
| It is pretty likely that no-money-in-politics rules would be
| weaponised against smaller donators. I'm sure there are a
| bunch of wealthy people who would love nothing more than
| legal tools to shut down donation-driven groups like the
| Black Lives Matter website.
| ramphastidae wrote:
| Not impossible at all. This is a solved problem in much of
| Europe. Read about France's election process. The problem
| is that elected officials in the US don't have much
| incentive to represent the will of their constituency --
| only their donors. And their donors do not want campaign
| finance reform because it eliminates their influence. This
| is not a logistics issue, it's a corruption issue.
| lumost wrote:
| It's pretty straightforward to spot billion dollar ad
| campaigns. The FCC has carried out its duty to regulate
| airtime for the better part of a century.
| usrusr wrote:
| Is it possible? Yes. That's exactly how countries with a
| post-beta implementation of democracy are doing things and
| it works well enough (it's never perfect). The only unknown
| is a migration path for the USA, so many with
| disproportionate power in the current system would fight
| that change tooth and nail.
| RickJWagner wrote:
| What about Hollywood and athletic endorsements? Would those
| be in-kind?
| nokcha wrote:
| >Elections are in the public interest and therefore should be
| publicly funded -- exclusively.
|
| That doesn't really follow. Why should something be
| _exclusively_ publicly funded just because it is in the
| public interest?
|
| >All other contributions (including in-kind) to political
| campaigns are tantamount to bribery and should just be
| illegal.
|
| What about completely anonymous donations? If the receiver
| doesn't know who is giving the money, how could it act as a
| bribe?
| arcticbull wrote:
| I can't think of anything in the public interest that
| shouldn't be publicly funded.
| civilized wrote:
| > Relentlessly putting my self-interest above any other
| consideration turned out to be not in my self-interest, and I
| regret it for this reason alone
| santoshalper wrote:
| Is that an actual quote from the article? If so, it's just
| perfect.
| [deleted]
| neonate wrote:
| https://archive.is/TDVJM
| JohnJamesRambo wrote:
| Almost drove the country to the brink of fascist anti-science
| annihilation and now wants to suck from the new power teat when
| he and other conservatives realize the majority of America
| thankfully isn't and never will be on board with that. No thank
| you, Mr. Koch that isn't forgiven with an apology. Treason has
| stronger penalties than that.
| resfirestar wrote:
| Hard to tell if this is Charles Koch actually deciding to become
| more of a philanthropist than a partisan in his old age, or just
| a veiled threat to the GOP that he's ready to jump ship in the
| event that the GOP remains the "party of Trump" after 2020. The
| latter isn't that wild an idea as the Democrats have slid into
| more Koch-friendly positions on virtually everything except
| deregulation over the past decade. They'd face a lot of
| resistance from Democrats who instinctually hate them, though.
| coffeefirst wrote:
| I wouldn't count on it meaning anything. He has a long history
| of being fairly reasonable in interviews even while he promotes
| radical ideologues.
| jasonwatkinspdx wrote:
| It's important to understand this. His personal views slant
| strongly libertarian, but his political activism is almost
| entirely motivated by return on investment, not his ideology.
| mlamat wrote:
| The damage he and his brother have done is irredeemable.
| aussiegreenie wrote:
| And in the long run we are all dead.
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