To become a member of the Koch Brothers’ elite, you must make a commitment to give at least “$100,000 per year to Koch-linked groups.” Among your resulting perks, you can attend strategy sessions like the one that was held at the St. Regis hotel in Manhattan last Thursday and Friday. Elected Republicans will give you inside information and for the most part accept any kind of direction you want to provide for them.
At the Friday session, Vice-President Mike Pence had a priority list that would look quite odd in any other setting.
“I truly believe the future of this Congress depends on them working with our president to pass the tax cut this year,” he said. “And honestly, our entire agenda depends on this Congress stepping forward and delivering on their promise to the American people.”
Pence, who has close ties to the [elite Koch Brothers’] network, said that “cutting taxes is the single-most important policy for the future of America.” “But we need all your help to get it passed,” the vice president added. “I want to thank this network for everything you’ve already done to support this plan. … We’re grateful for all of your support. … But I’m here today, on behalf of our president, to encourage you to do even more. To get this tax cut across the line … we need every ounce of your energy and enthusiasm.”
…“Use your voice,” Pence said. “Use the stature that you enjoy in your communities and your state and all across this country to share the opportunity that we have with this tax relief legislation. You talk to your employees, talk to your suppliers, your fellow business leaders to get them on board. And of course, we need you to talk to your elected officials about just how important this moment is in the life of this nation.”
It’s not clear if Mike Pence believes that cutting taxes is genuinely the single-most important policy for the nation’s future or if President Trump is correct in thinking he’s more interested in overturning Roe v. Wade and “hanging” all the homosexuals in the country. What does seem clear is that Pence is happy to blame Republicans in Congress if they fail to deliver the tax cut that members of the Koch Brothers’ elite network are seeking.
A lot of recent polling has shown that the American people and, in particular, Republican voters are blaming congressional Republicans much more than the president for gridlock and inaction in Washington DC. The reporting on this has a certain flavor that tends to indict the voters for being misinformed about where the real responsibility lies. In truth, though, I don’t think the electorate’s intuition is too far off. Congressional leaders have failed the president through a combination of overpromising and lacking the courage to explain what they could realistically accomplish. They wasted Trump’s first year in office in a doomed effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act and that set them back in their effort to do tax reform.
I have a hard time laying all the blame at McConnell and Ryan’s feet, however, because the president should have assembled a team that could tell him when he’s been bullshitted. He didn’t. And the donors just don’t want to hear the truth. Their behavior at the St. Regis meetings indicated that they still think they can bully through a tax reform and that the main resistance is “moderate” Republicans in Congress.
The network didn’t support Trump during the 2016 campaign but has supported his agenda this year. It was striking how little criticism there was of Trump, but the anger directed toward moderate Republicans in the Senate was palpable.
So, they have a plan.
Koch officials briefed their benefactors on plans for a massive pressure campaign that will include television ads and events in the states of targeted members. “It’s the most significant federal effort we’ve ever undertaken,” said Tim Phillips, the president of Americans for Prosperity, which is part of the network.
Their problem isn’t really “moderate” Republicans, though. Their problem on health care was that a lot of states expanded Medicaid and don’t want to give it up. Their problem on tax reform is that they can’t craft a plan that won’t hurt some states disproportionately, so it’s almost impossible to get unanimity from their caucuses in Congress.
But the Koch Brothers’ elite is going to invest a lot of money trying to create unanimity. And they won’t blame themselves if it doesn’t work. If anyone tries to tell them ahead of time that it won’t work, they’ll take it as evidence of insufficient commitment. In that sense, they’re no smarter or informed than the president.
There’s a good reason the moderate Republicans aren’t to blame: There ARE NO MODERATE REPUBLICANS.
I had to watch that address for work. Afterwards, I took a huge and satisfying shit. While doing so, I imagined the toilet bowl was everyone at the event.
Just out of curiosity, how many people that attend events like this are part of the “Koch Elite” network?
Would it be possible for Dems to raise enough money to have 15-20 people join this group, attend the meetings, and try to push things to the left?
This is great analysis, except for the part about how you “have trouble laying all the blame at McConnell and Ryan’s feet”. Because I have no such trouble.
McConnell has been the linchpin in a now 9-year-long scorched earth strategy that whose doctrine stated that everything the Black Guy did had to be opposed unequivocally all the time. As such, he is largely responsible for the strategic box the GOP has put themselves in regarding the ACA, which, in turn, is how they wasted this whole year.
Meanwhile Ryan has been the GOP’s Fraudulent Wonderboy Wonk for years now, predating his Speakership, making him probably their current leading figure in the Voodoo Economics department. Furthermore, he accepted the mantle of the Speakership even knowing that he was going to have to spend it being a veritable sommelier of bullshit.
Now it isn’t literally 100% their fault, but they have to shoulder the blunt of the blame, not because of the last 9 months, but because of the last 9 years.
I’m sure the Republicans can solve their tax cut problem by throwing enough money at it.
Of course that would blow up the deficit which will be very troubling to Republicans because if there is one thing they stand for it’s making sure that future generations are not saddled with the burden of debHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.
(Couldn’t get through that sentence with a straight face.)
It is a terrible thing that debt, except when it isn’t like when we need us some tax cuts. But don’t you all worry bout it now cause we soon enough gonna cut some of those excess expenses in medicare and such. Gotta get that deficit under control you know.
Since the Repub Congress is essentially braindead, no one can say how it “works”. It’s now idiotically looking to an incompetent unqualified fool for cues as to what next to do. The spectacle of Congressional Repubs waiting for the imbecile’s outline on tax “reform” when of course they should have been drafting and enacting their own legislation and telling the electoral college figurehead to sign it. As if Trumper would ever veto something Repubs passed!
Instead they seem hostages to the American madman, who has now gratuitously created another unplanned conflagration for them to disastrously fumble about with—the destruction of Obamacare via executive sabotage. This when it is absolutely clear that Ryan and McConnell and their team of malevolent rightwing simpletons simply have nothing to propose on health insurance whatsoever. Heckuva job, Trumper! Your ADD Repub Congress can’t even focus on a tax cut, for Christ’s sake, and you throw the health care bomb back into the bunker. Priceless!
As for these Koch “elites”, they are the true parasites of the nation, the Great Satan, much worse for their part than any hereditary aristocrats in 1789 France. I wonder how many had their millions handed to them by Daddy (as our Nepotist-in-Chief did) while thinking themselves the very image of Murican Meritocracy? But ultimately, it doesn’t matter much how one obtained one’s wealth when one uses it to destroy the nation and its government. Some real “patriots” here….
I suppose one has to be optimistic when the American Fascist party has incorporated so many incompetents and dogbrains into itself that it’s nip and tuck whether they can pass their trademark Irresponsible Tax Cut(tm). I have little doubt that they will accomplish it, mostly because it is the stigmata of “conservatism” and will be another calamity for the nation. But the fact that these Kochturdian “elites” have to marshal all their monetary forces to accomplish a fucking tax cut (from Repubs!) is rather dark comedy.
Ultimately, the Plutocrat class must be destroyed if the nation is to live.
Kochturdian elites!!!
Thank you.
Much like Congress in Brazil?
I just love how they say this is so good for us all:
When what they really mean is, it is good for them greedy bastards. They have more money that they can spend in their lifetime, but damn lets get us some more. Screw all those brown people in PR. Let them drink sewage. Gotta save us some money. And the country supports the bullshit.
I don’t know if it’s worse if they DO believe it. I can’t tell sometimes they seem to.
You forget.
It’s their America. They own it. They operate it.
The rest of us are just mooching squatters.
Once you realize what they mean with the words that they say, it becomes clear that they most definitely believe it.
Cutting taxes for themselves…they being the only Americans, then it’s clearly good for the country.
The rest of us can either work for them at their whim, or fuck off and die.
Oh, they believe exactly what they say.
n1 – I think you nailed it. My apologies for the long post but I believe Mr. Carlin nailed it in a way that most people can relate to. Seriously – What did he got wrong or miss?
“But there’s a reason. There’s a reason. There’s a reason for this, there’s a reason education SUCKS, and it’s the same reason it will never, ever, EVER be fixed.
It’s never going to get any better, don’t look for it, be happy with what you’ve got.
Because the owners, the owners of this country don’t want that. I’m talking about the real owners now, the BIG owners! The Wealthy… the REAL owners! The big wealthy business interests that control things and make all the important decisions.
Forget the politicians. They are irrelevant. The politicians are put there to give you the idea that you have freedom of choice. You don’t. You have no choice! You have OWNERS! They OWN YOU. They own everything. They own all the important land. They own and control the corporations. They’ve long since bought, and paid for the Senate, the Congress, the state houses, the city halls, they got the judges in their back pockets and they own all the big media companies, so they control just about all of the news and information you get to hear. They got you by the balls.
They spend billions of dollars every year lobbying, lobbying, to get what they want. Well, we know what they want. They want more for themselves and less for everybody else, but I’ll tell you what they don’t want:
They don’t want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. They don’t want well informed, well educated people capable of critical thinking. They’re not interested in that. That doesn’t help them. Thats against their interests.
Thats right. They don’t want people who are smart enough to sit around a kitchen table and think about how badly they’re getting fucked by a system that threw them overboard 30 fucking years ago. They don’t want that!
You know what they want? They want obedient workers. Obedient workers, people who are just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork. And just dumb enough to passively accept all these increasingly shitty jobs with the lower pay, the longer hours, the reduced benefits, the end of overtime and vanishing pension that disappears the minute you go to collect it, and now they’re coming for your Social Security money. They want your retirement money. They want it back so they can give it to their criminal friends on Wall Street, and you know something? They’ll get it. They’ll get it all from you sooner or later cause they own this fucking place! It’s a big club, and you ain’t in it! You, and I, are not in the big club.
By the way, it’s the same big club they use to beat you over the head with all day long when they tell you what to believe. All day long beating you over the head with their media telling you what to believe, what to think and what to buy. The table has tilted folks. The game is rigged and nobody seems to notice. Nobody seems to care! Good honest hard-working people; white collar, blue collar it doesn’t matter what color shirt you have on. Good honest hard-working people continue, these are people of modest means, continue to elect these rich cock suckers who don’t give a fuck about you….they don’t give a fuck about you… they don’t give a FUCK about you.
They don’t care about you at all… at all… AT ALL. And nobody seems to notice. Nobody seems to care. Thats what the owners count on. The fact that Americans will probably remain willfully ignorant of the big red, white and blue dick thats being jammed up their assholes everyday, because the owners of this country know the truth.
It’s called the American Dream,because you have to be asleep to believe it.”
– G. Carlin
Oh yeah, one of the most cognizant bits I’ve ever heard, and hard to beat in terms of accuracy, and tragic hilariousness.
they are not “the country”.
The only way for a President to get any really hard legislation through Congress is to be willing to do 2 things:
1. Rally the public in favour of the need for that legislation (ex: health care reform). Trump never does that. Instead he attacks and belittles everybody who isn’t already doing what he wants. His biggest fans (like Jeff Sessions) suffer the most ridicule, so nobody wants really to be his friend. There is just about nobody in Washington who is really loyal to the President, thus leaks, embarrassing failures nobody tells him about before-hand, and endless knifing in the back.
Hell, even Steve Bannon is not really in Trump’s corner and is ready to knife him if that can advantage Steve Bannon. And it will. When the right time comes, the alt-right wing will disavow Trump. Not now, not while there’s still a chance Trump can somehow win out. But, soon enough.
2. Then when Congressmen are going to take hard votes that will get them blame in their states & districts, support them. Help them.
Trump throws them under the bus rather than take any blame himself, so they have zero loyalty to him. Thus, he has absolutely no persuasive power with Congress. Zero. He can threaten Senators like he did Jeff Flake, but the only result of that is that the Democrats are leading that Senate race and are quite likely to win. So, Trump’s behaviour will wind up costing them a seat.
Of course he doesn’t care. The base still loves him, so it’s irrelevant if they hate Congress and don’t vote for them.
“Their problem on health care was that a lot of states expanded Medicaid and don’t want to give it up.”
Most of the republicans were willing to give it up. So I don’t see how this applies.
Republicans have a problem saying straight-forwardly to the American people exactly what they are going to do that doesn’t use what Democrats have done as a foil to hide the bad parts of what the GOP is going to do.
Democrats have a problems putting forth a strong and straight-forward opposition to what it is that Republicans are going to do and proposals that are not based on Republicans policies as foils.