If they’d really wanted a better image, they would have stayed in the LP –
Koch Brothers Brave Spotlight to Try to Alter Their Image @ NYT.
If they’d really wanted a better image, they would have stayed in the LP –
Koch Brothers Brave Spotlight to Try to Alter Their Image @ NYT.
David Koch wants people to know that he disagrees with Mitt Romney, the candidate for whom Koch is raising hundreds of millions, on defense cuts, gay rights, and taxes. Koch’s profession of contrary positions on those issues merits him nothing. The candidate on whom Koch lavishes vast sums, if elected, will do all he can…
On a day when all America is talking about the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to uphold the Affordable Care Act, I’m thinking about the Koch-Cato war, now resolved. Bob Levy explains the dispute and its resolution: In the end, this was a win for Cato, and an abandonment of the shareholder structure through which the…
The Cato Institute and prominent Republican donors Charles and David Koch are set to settle their legal fight over control of the libertarian think tank…. The settlement involves an agreement to dissolve the shareholder agreement. In addition, Crane is expected to retire under a deal that allows him to select his successor, though the Koch…
Every four years, it’s sure to be a libertarian, and a Libertarian, year. It may sometimes be the former, but it has never been the latter. Hope rises yet again, this time in the candidacy of former New Mexico governor Gary Johnson, now seeking the LP 2012 nomination. If recent polls are right, he has…
The Tea Party activists at FreedomWorks have now condemned Charles and David Koch’s war to control the Cato Institute. Though they value independence themselves, they’ve received Koch money, and funding like that softens resolve. To their credit, FreedomWorks stayed true to their oft-professed belief in independence: The work of the Cato Institute – producing top…
Of course they do – there was not the slightest chance that men accustomed to having their way, and defining the world in the grandiose way they prefer, would relent. So, it’s a second lawsuit to control Cato, this one insisting that the libertarian Cato Institute is impermissibly packing its ranks with….libertarians. Not any libertarians,…
At CNN, a Charles Koch-backed Cato Institute board member insists that the Kochs have always supported libertarianism, and that they want an independent Cato. Kevin Gentry must think that libertarians, and lots of other people, are particularly gullible. We’re not. If Gentry thinks the Kochs have always been true to libertarianism, he might want to…
Over at the Huffington Post, Dan Froomkin states succinctly the difference between serious libertarianism and the conservatism of the Koch brothers: The Cato Institute is a Washington think tank with a long history of rigorous scholarship in the name of championing individual liberty It’s known for taking positions outside the conservative mainstream on issues like…
Charles Koch recently released a statement about the Koch Brothers’ lawsuit to control the Cato Institute, and chairman of Cato Bob Levy’s issued a point-by-point response That Levy answers Charles Koch’s statement with such specificity tells three things. First, Koch’s professions of an enduring commitment to libertarianism are platitudes easily disputed. Second, that years of…
It’s well-past time to acknowledge Charles and David Koch as former libertarians. ABC does as much in a story about them. One can expect their efforts to control the libertarian Cato Institute for the benefit of the Republican-friendly Americans for Prosperity will only lead to more descriptions like this: While the case is pending in…
Over at Politico, one can read paragraph after paragraph of think-tank spokesmen insisting that they would never, ever be impressionable from the Koch brothers. Their statements would be more credible if (1) they were all on the record, and (2) if those who were on the record didn’t pretend the Cato-Koch conflict was something far-removed…
Is there no one who can tell Charles Koch that he’s become an embodiment of grandiosity? All that money, but no hireling to tell him that he’s arrived at self-parody? I remarked on his rapid descent Wednesday, of Koch’s over-the-top insistence that trying to take control of Cato was about defending ‘the rule of law.’…
Liberal Ezra Klein understands what’s at risk in the battle over Cato. Writing at Bloomberg, Klein (a self-described technocrat) nicely summarizes what’s at stake in the Kochs’ battle to control the Cato Institute: The Koch brothers’ fortune is estimated at more than $60 billion, a couple thousand times Cato’s annual operating budget. The brothers have…
You may have seen that the Charles Koch Institute sent an email defending the Kochs’ attempt to size control of the Cato Institute. As one would expect, the Kochs’ describe their lawsuit in self-righteously and sanctimoniously, as a defense of the very rule of law: ….Charles and David are absolutely committed to libertarian principles and…