According to Bloomberg Billionaires Index, Charles Koch (pronounced “coke”) is the 15th richest person in the world with a fortune estimated at 63.1 billion dollars. Koch Industries, the privately held company he and his brother David ran (David died in 2019 — which, I bet, shocked him; David thought he was rich enough to outrun death) and which Charles still oversees did an estimated $115 billion in business in 2020. As we know, rich as he is, rich as his company is, for a Koch, there’s never enough where money is concerned. The Kochs were never just in it for the money. They’re in it for the power too. The Kochs — believing that they’re rich because God wants them to be rich — intend to save America “from itself”. That is, they intend to stop America from becoming the great country it could become in favor of the slowly dying white elephant Republicans want us to be.
The Kochs have never made a secret of their intention to alter American politics to their liking. That means fewer Americans will get to vote since most Americans don’t really want what the Koch brothers want. The Kochs (and the Mercers and the rest of the RW Money Monkeys) saw something post Reagan. While Newt Gingrich declared a loud, angry culture war on the left, the Kochs quietly went about literally altering America’s political landscape. They recognized that the GOP faced real demographic peril. A rapidly diversifying America would soon undermine white peoples’ hold on political power. Unwilling to share that power, the Kochs and the rest of the RW’s money decided to put their money on thievery. They might not be able to win elections on the strength of their ideas but they could definitely win on the persistence of their cheating.
The Republicans put money into voter suppression efforts to support their work gerrymandering districts so that they could pick their voters (rather than the other way around). The Republicans knew the White House was lost for good (except for cycles where they could manipulate the Electoral College). The House of Representatives, with its elections every two years was way too hard to control. The GOP could live with that. The Senate was always more important to Republicans because of the Senate’s strange, arcane rules including the filibuster. Even if they didn’t control the Senate majority, the filibuster gave outsize power to a minority so long as they could keep their filibuster going. So long as there weren’t 60 Democrats in the Senate, the Republicans felt they had nothing to fear from the Democrats.
The biggest fish to the Koch Brothers thinking was the judicial branch, especially the Supreme Court. Control the SCOTUS and the rest of the lifetime appointed federal judiciary and a minority party like the republicans could throw their weight around like they owned the place. The Kochs tasked Mitch McConnell — who’s received a lot of Koch money over the years — with seizing the judiciary. To that end, Moscow Mitch denied Obama more than a hundred judges including a SCOTUS seat. Funny irony? As we (now) know, Attorney General Merrick Garland has begun to investigate and prosecute Republicans for their involvement in the January 6 insurrection. Republicans are going to regret that Garland is AG, ready and willing to prosecute the snot out of them. He’d have been far less dangerous to them if only the Republicans had given him a hearing and even voted on whether or not Garland should be AG.
The one question that remains is WHEN did the Kochs suspect that Russia was working toward the same goal — the end of American democracy? At some point, the Kochs had to know that they and Vladimir Putin were working together. At some point, the Kochs KNEW what they were doing was flat out treasonous.
The Kochs spread their money around with corrupt intent. If you think America will be better if fewer Americans vote — especially if they’re Black or brown — you’re un-American. If you think you’re better just because you’re rich? You’re a flaming asshole. And you’re wrong, too.
Our news media keeps ascribing Joe Manchin’s reluctance to get rid of the filibuster to his “love of tradition”. Horse shit! Joe Manchin couldn’t give a rat’s ass about tradition. He’s a pirate. He’s looking to get rich however he can. The reason Manchin can’t quit the filibuster is because he can’t quit Koch money either.
Joe Manchin doesn’t have a soul or anything like that. He does have a bank account however. And plenty of corruption to spread around. The GOP is riddled with Koch whores just like Joe Manchin. It’s long past time we expose every last one of them.