I have no idea who is behind the analysis, but it is impressive. It provides a great insight into beltarians and what they are all about-RW.
Well, well. David Koch has decided to spill the beans about his increasingly testy lawsuit against the Cato Institute, and it ain't pretty.
It's full of unusual gusto for the typically tight-lipped Koch Empire, and much of it of course is PR. But one of David's more damning charges pins last year's (in)famous New Yorker by Jane Mayer about the Brothers Koch squarely on Ed Crane, the CEO of Cato. Mr. Crane, it would now appear, was the anonymous "top Cato Institute official" who offered up unpleastantries about the Kochs to Mayer on a silver plate.
So why is this revelation important? We'll get to that in a moment, but first let's establish something about Cato's side of the current lawsuit PR war. As may be observed here and here, Boss Crane & Co. have staked their entire defense of Cato on the charge that Koch control = Bad News, because the Kochs allegedly want to make the ideologically white-as-snow "libertarian" Cato Institute into an arm of the Republican Party in order to defeat Obama in November.
There are many obvious faults in Crane's argument. The line about defeating Obama doesn't exactly mesh with the Kochs' now-revealed offer to put off the suit until after the election, which Crane himself rebuffed. Crane also doesn't have a decent answer as to why the "Republican" Koch name taints Cato's "independence" but there's no reason to be worried about all those other anonymous multimillionaire donors (hint: his name begins with George and ends with Soros) who are threatening to "pull the plug" if the Kochs prevail in court. But above all, there's the matter of hypocrisy because Cato's board is stuffed full of hackish Republican Party bigwigs and has been. For decades.
Hell, Ed Crane put Rupert Murdoch on the board of Cato in 1997, and he sat there until at least the early 2000's. I'll repeat that. Ed Crane put Rupert "Mr. Fox News" Murdoch, the official media empire mogul of the Republican Party, on Cato's Board of Directors. So cry me a river, Ed, if you're suddenly worried about Koch-backed GOP infiltration coming from some little known Republican campaign floozie addition to the Cato board. Not to be outdone, Cato's own staff has a long track record of making campaign donations to such "libertarian" luminaries as George W. Bush, Rudolph Giuliani, Mike Huckabee, John Warner, William Weld, John Thune, Evan Bayh, Johnny Isakson, and the Republican PAC "Club for Growth." Cato also seems to have a fetish for the king of special interest influence-peddling himself, Big Ben Bernanke. But remember, Cato's an ideologically pure "libertarian" organization, right?
Read the rest here.
I don't see why you try to say that Cato is somehow unlibertarian when you support Ron Paul, who just wants marriage, and other social issues decided at the state level, because we know how much States rights have worked in the past right.
ReplyDeleteAnon @3:47
ReplyDeleteRon Paul doesn't want marriage to be a state "thing". He and many others believe it is most properly handled by the church or whatever spiritual entity you want to use. Before anyone brings up the divorce and property aspects just remember that a church can serve up standard form prenups and contracts for those contingencies.
I'm not sure what other social issues are out there. And I'd think it really is best to handle these things on a local level. Think about the difference between Central Texas, Northern Idaho, Southern Florida and the Great Lakes region. They'd all handle things differently.