A long association with Holocaust deniers is even uglier than their Third Reich connections
This is a valuable and interesting article, but there’s an offhand remark that really jumps out at me as incorrect:
“…dictatorship doesn’t really square with limited government.”
That’s not remotely the case, as practiced by today’s libertarians & conservatives. Limited government is simply their framing for limiting democracy, and placing control in the hands of an oligarchy.
You can call it neo-feudalism instead, if you like, but its point and purpose is to undermine the power of regular people in favor of an elite. Ultimately that goal is better served by fascism and even dictatorship, as long as that elite can remain in control, and it’s why we’re seeing a worldwide authoritarian movement funded by the Kochs and others just like them.
The Koch network has informed donors that it won’t back Donald Trump’s 2020 reelection campaign — and that it won’t fund any other presidential candidates either. The Washington Post reported Thursday that people familiar with conversations said the network run by billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch have “quietly relayed” to donors their decision in recent months.
The Koch’s and their #KochNetwork were #NeverTrump EXCEPT when it came to tax cuts for the rich and corporations — and of course SCOTUS justices; Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh!
In spite of the network’s decision to stay out of the presidential race, it will still support candidates for Senate and governor through its various groups like Americans for Prosperity.
Here’s what happens when the Koch’s turns a Republican into a #KochSucker: “Marco Rubio voted 98 percent of the time with Koch brothers”, PolitiFact #PaulRyanToo
Koch network Spokesman James Davis told the Post the organization plans to “significant investment to support policy champions in Senate, House and state races, build broad-based policy coalitions, and to launch a major new initiative to fight poverty in America.”
From the Washington Post
The snub of the president is likely to reinforce the personal divide between Trump and Koch.
At a meeting of top Koch network donors last summer, senior network officials criticized the “tremendous lack of leadership” in Trump’s Washington, saying “the divisiveness of this White House is causing long-term damage.”
The April 2022 ruling included an unusual legal theory — and new disclosures seen by HuffPost shed some light.
☝️😡
“What was eye-catching was her explanation of why. In her ruling, Mizelle wrote she had consulted the Corpus of Historical American English, an academic search engine that returns examples of how words and phrases are used in select historical texts. Mizelle searched “sanitation,” a crucial word in the 1944 statute that authorizes the CDC to issue disease-prevention rules, and found it generally was used to describe the act of making something clean. “Wearing a mask,” she wrote, “cleans nothing.”
Searching large linguistic databases is a relatively new approach to judicial analysis called legal corpus linguistics. Although it has gained in popularity over the last decade, it is barely discussed outside of an enthusiastic group of right-wing conservative legal scholars. Which raises the question: How did this niche concept wind up driving such a consequential decision in the country’s health policy?
Now, new disclosures seen by HuffPost shed some light. Just weeks before she issued the ruling, Mizelle had discreetly attended an all-expenses-paid luxury trip from a conservative group whose primary mission is to persuade more federal judges to adopt the use of corpus linguistics. For five days, Mizelle and more than a dozen other federal judges listened to the leading proponents of corpus linguistics in the comfort of The Greenbrier, an ostentatious resort spread out over 11,000 acres of West Virginia hillside.
The newly formed group that picked up the tab, the Judicial Education Institute, received more than $1 million in startup funding from the billionaire libertarian Charles Koch’s network and DonorsTrust, a nonprofit that has funneled millions in anonymous donations to right-wing causes and has been dubbed “the dark money ATM of the conservative movement.”
Trump appointed Mizelle to the federal bench in late 2020 over objections from the American Bar Association that she had not been practicing law long enough to be qualified. A search of her other rulings found she had never previously applied corpus linguistics.
Neither Mizelle nor the Judicial Education Institute responded to requests for comment.
In response to the new disclosure, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee who chairs the subcommittee on federal courts and oversight, called for more disclosure surrounding when judges attend ideological educational retreats.
“The multi-pronged billionaire-funded scheme to influence the judiciary includes flying amenable judges to luxury resorts to bathe them in the latest fantastical right-wing legal theories,” he said in a statement to HuffPost. “At the very least, the public ought to know when judges are attending lavish ‘seminars’ promoting the agenda of partisan special interests. The Judicial Conference should take a close look at tightening its rules to ensure transparency around such junkets.”
Americans for Prosperity Action, which is staying out of the presidential race after backing Nikki Haley during the primaries, is already kn
This is just one of many ways that Republican oligarchs influence elections with their unlimited dark money. The Koch and Walton families will each spend about a billion dollars supporting every Republican candidate for office in a presidential election year. The Republicans have been doing this since the ‘60s with their political foundations. Democrats have nothing even close to this level of organization or funding.
There are dozens of other Republican oligarch mega-donors doing the same; Mercer, Crow, DeVos, Prince, Thiel, Leo, Mellon, Stephens, Navarro, Buckley, Brodie, Murdoch…all donating millions each and these are just some of the better known right-wingers. Many siphon money through right-wing political foundations to cover their tracks.
Tell everyone about Project 2025. This isn’t getting enough attention. TV News barely mentioned it and too few read the news online or in print. Let everyone know what’s in store for them if Trump and the Republicans return to power. Koch, Walton, and the oligarchs fund the Heritage Foundation and all the right wing legislation we protest. Boycott their businesses.
Americans for Prosperity Action said it had to “take stock” after Haley’s loss in South Carolina.
Americans For Prosperity Action, the powerful conservative group supporting Nikki Haley in the Republican presidential primary, will no longer spend money on behalf of her campaign.
In an email to staff obtained by POLITICO, Americans For Prosperity CEO Emily Seidel said Sunday that the group’s political arm, AFP Action, had to “take stock” of its spending priorities after Haley’s loss in the South Carolina primary. The Koch-aligned group, Seidel said, will now focus its efforts on competitive Senate and House races.
