Remember the days, before the Internet, cable news cycles, grassroots movements conceived in the boardrooms of PR firms and propaganda machines masquerading as think tanks? Now it seems like a distant mythical time of simplicity. It is probably the case that the past often seems less unsettled, less scary than the present, because it’s possible to know how it ended . All the same, when I was a teenager in the 80s, major institutions like the press and the government did at least appear to have standards of decorum and ethics, that seem absent today.
My father was an architect and I remember him telling me once, that he could not accept a job, because for some reason it would have caused the appearance of impropriety. In the 80s architecture jobs were few and far between, so foregoing a job for an abstract notion that had vaguely to do with his firm's image must have sucked.
But back in the day, people did things like that once in a while. Sometimes they even cared about the dignity of institutions where they worked. What a difference 20 years can make.
The New York Times reports that two of the richest men in America, the Koch brothers have been holding massive strategy sessions for the ultra-wealthy, and sympathetic media like Fox News and politicos like Jim DeMint. The gatherings are based on the need to "review strategies for combating the multitude of public policies that threaten to destroy America as we know it.” By threatening policies they mean public healthcare, campaign finance disclosures and limitations, banking reform, consumer protection, environmental protection etc. etc.
That the Koch brothers are holding these strategy sessions should not surprise anyone familiar with their past. They founded the Cato Institute which champions the “economic theory” that when taxes are lowered, the government magically receives more money from taxpayers. Their massive fortunes come from logging, oil, mining, and fertilizers, which are probably the four most environmentally damaging industries in existence. Is it surprising that they equate liberty with debunking the myth of global warming?
This doesn't bug me so much. The Koch brothers are free to use their many billions of dollars to throw as many ultra-posh, ultra-conservative soirées as they choose. More power to ‘em.
The thing that’s sad for this country is that some of the attendees of their right-wing shindigs are members of the Supreme Court of the United States: Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas.
Recently the Supreme Court ruled that the bulk of existing campaign-finance legislation is unconstitutional. Suddenly enormous, anonymous piles of cash can go straight into the service of "strategies for combating the multitude of public policies that threaten to destroy America as we know it."
One of the organizations that may further these strategies with the help of huge piles of secret funding is called “Liberty Central.”
Liberty Central’s website asks the websurfer if they are "ready to restore the greatness of America" and promises to connect them “with grassroots conservative and libertarian organizations."
Because of the Supreme Court's ruling on campaign finance we’ll never know who gave the money to start up liberty Central, which the Washington Post reports was mostly a single donation of $500,000.
We do, however, know who the leader of this intrepid group of libertarians is. It is Clarence Thomas’s wife, Ginni Thomas.
Given their shared views on things like polluter's rights and corporate freedom of speech, one wonders if liberty Central might not be looking towards the Koch Brothers for a little tiny fraction of those billions of dollars that they spend on conservative causes.
In another era a judge whose wife's business would be materially affected by a ruling before the court might have recused himself, but not these days. Clarence Thomas was content to sit on the bench and vote with fervor to allow his wife to take in as many anonymous donations as possible.
Nor does he seem to feel that it demeans the dignity of the court to attend formal partisan gatherings, that are centered on strategies for wealthy private institutions to change government policy.
But that's the era we live in, an era when many of those in power advocate for and benefit from lowering the barriers to conflict of interest in business and government.
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