The New York Times on Wednesday reported the shocking news that the “rare coalition” on criminal justice reform that included liberal groups and the right-wing billionaire Koch brothers is falling apart.
But as The Intercept’s Lee Fang wrote earlier this month, the ostensible alliance over liberalization of America’s criminal justice laws was based on a misunderstanding of the Koch brothers’ fundamental political goal.
That goal is, quite consistently, to advance their own corporate interests.
So, while the Kochs and the liberal groups used similar language in their critique of the criminal justice system, when it came down to actual legislation, the Kochs were focused on reducing criminal prosecutions of corporations, not people.
Koch and the House Republicans turned out to be pushing a bill that critics describe as a “Get Out of Jail Free” card for white-collar criminals.
Members of Washington’s elite media crave stories about bipartisanship, so groups like the pro-Clinton Center for American Progress garnered positive media attention for finding common ground with the Kochs earlier this year.
Now, CAP president Neera Tanden is issuing statements that “the bill is not aimed at addressing the aspects of the criminal justice system that are the drivers of mass incarceration and inequality and should not be part of any genuine discussion of criminal justice reform.” To the contrary, she says: “The bill would make it much more difficult to enforce bedrock regulatory safeguards — such as environmental, health, and consumer safety protections — and leave communities of color disproportionately vulnerable to unscrupulous, fraudulent, and predatory business practices that exacerbate existing inequality in our communities.”
There are some conservatives truly devoted to criminal justice reform — and there’s even a truly united left-right coalition on some specific criminal justice issues, like prison rape.
But, as Fang wrote, even while the Kochs were talking criminal justice reform, their money was notably continuing to finance election-year efforts that promote tough-on-crime politics.
Of the 38 federal lobbyists employed by Koch, one is registered to work on criminal justice issues; the rest work on projects more important to Koch Industries.
And if that wasn’t clear enough, Fang described how Koch’s interest in criminal justice reform was sparked not by the plight of overcrowded prisons or racial disparities in law enforcement, but by federal and state probes of the company’s own environmental crimes.
Top photo: Activists hold a protest near the Manhattan apartment of billionaire and Republican financier David Koch in 2014.
Without a doubt, (as if any really existed) the Koch brothers are the embodiment of Corporate corruption. These two men represent everything Americans should be united against.
When I first heard of this alliance with the devil, I questioned their motives immediately. After all, these are the most manipulative men on earth, using front-groups to push free-market ideologies in schools, ethnic minority communities, immigrant communities, and elsewhere.
At every turn, the Koch brothers use their power and influence to craft a government and economy that represents themselves and no one else. So to have ever believed that these two Corporate crooks ever took an interest in the plight of over-incarcerated minority communities was naive to a fault.
It is also astonishing to me, that neither of these two men, nor the groups they fund, have committed crimes in their quest for power. Surely they have? Yet, no one, Democrat or Republican have even attempted to investigate, let alone build a case and prosecute them for corruption related crimes.
Until someone decides to stand up to these criminals, or the tide of the public turns on them, this kind of manipulative coercion will continue to have devastating effects on our political and economic discourse. They will continue to hire themselves a congress, and perhaps, soon a President, to do their bidding. When will this blatant criminality come to an end?
Who are “the 38 federal lobbyists employed by Koch”?
If they are listed somewhere could somebody please provide a link. Thanx.
Congrats, guys, you totally broke NoScript for everyone at some point in the past week or two on this site. New trackers and perms (including for mp4s) too.
Please fix the NoScript issue. Literally one can’t load the comments or even more articles (or do much else without great difficulty now without globally enabling scripting. This is a travesty.)
the kochs just want everything their way and NO!
here’s an actual analysis of the issue that is less concerned with partisan smears =
https://reason.com/blog/2015/11/25/doj-tries-to-poison-liberals-against-jus
when the Koch’s pass away, who will be the new bogeyman?
The farcical “War on Drugs” has been lost. Time for Plan B. Stop pouring billions of taxpayer money into “for
Just when I thought they weren’t complete sociopaths, their true intentions are revealed. Fucking scumbags.
Is anyone really surprised by this revelation. However, they did bring focus to the criminal justice system, and as a result shined a very bright light on the need for a discussion of reform beyond tapping a legislative app. The real reform has to take place on the state and local level. Alternative sentencing program needs to be developed and implemented by those who have a comprehensive knowledge of the problems; not corporate monarchs.
As far as corporate criminality is concerned – those laws should be reviewed as need arises; after all, that is what democracies do as they refine the laws to reflect evolving realities. Though, the Kochs will have a bias, and it is reasonable to assume that they would like to end all regulation, that is not a realistic eventuality. In a real sense they are participating in the democracy. Unfortunately their participation requires the rest of us to monitor their proposals to assure the the interest of the rest of us is not jeopardized by their actions. Unfortunately, democracy is not a spectator sport, and the Kochs are forcing us to play – but that is what all factions do!
It’s obvious what the Koch brothers were after. They act like they want to help, and they do. The problem is they want to help themselves!
what a singularly uninformative article. If the article explained the actual proposal readers could try to guess the sponsors motivations themselves. Instead the article states as fact the authors opinions of the sponsors motives and never describes the actual proposal at all. A useless waste of time.
“…and never describes the actual proposal at all.”
Well… yes- and no: there are a few link-outs that touch on it- but, ya, the article seems aimed at a reader already familiar with the topic. A lost opportunity to educate, for sure.
Its not as if a pro-Clinton group would find it hard to share common concerns, like keeping billionaires out if prison, fostering corporate crime, and eliminating corporate regulation, with plutocrats and crypto-fascists. That, and eternal war, are Hillary’s platform in a nutshell.
No surprise that the Clinton would join up with the likes of the Koch.
FACTS: Charles Koch has/had a lifetime membership in the John Birch Society. The patriarch, Fred, was also a prominent and active member of JBS. Fred also made the family nest egg by building oil refineries for Stalin, after being effectively blacklisted by the existing U.S. Oil industry at the time.
I’m shocked
That anyone believed this shit in the first place.
And yet, George Soros is a really great guy. What a pathetic attempt at a commentary.
He is. He gave Lech Walesa $5 million to start Solidarity . Repeating his name over and over again like Bill Oreilly does doesn’t make him a enemy. What poor people has the Koch’s helped ?
Is our political system that much different from the original signers of the Constitution? The system didn’t favor the many over the few. It was written for the land owners, slave owners and the rich. So now we are wage slaves, poor, and of color and have very little say in what is done to us by the elite. The corporate lobbyist are writing our laws and the elected officials scramble for dollars during the two years between elections.
Do corporations really need the help in reducing criminal prosecutions? Considering what companies like BP, Monsanto, and Google have gotten away with and continue to get away with, I think it’s pretty evident that the bigger of these conglomerates already wield more power than the white house.
You make it sound as if the white house isn’t
a branch of the corporate system of “government.”
The belief in corporate personhood is now established law
and it is the parallel of the belief in “super-delegates” and
the electoral “college” which are both
relied upon by the corporate white house controllers.
The white house, the congress, and the supreme court
are not independent from or really opposed to corporate corruption.
They are there to protect it, no matter how much some of
their members pretend otherwise.
The word “corporation” is not seen in the constitution, but
privatized (and privatizing) corporate power is the
primary agenda/dogma of the shared state religion of
democrats, republicans, and libertarians.
Mr. Froomkin is again
trying to cover up the fact that the democrats are
partners with the republicans.
While he gives a glimpse into how the Center for American Progress
is typical of one way the democrats depend upon
their lack of integrity and posturing
just like their beloved republican colleagues,
he leaves out the fact that the co-sponsors of this bill
included John Conyers and Sheila Jackson Lee.
We are told it is a republican bill when it is a bill
with democrat collusion.
Linking to the bill text is good … but you should also read it. This is a grab bag of weird, radical ideas, some of which may be worth considering, others deserving derision:
5-6. Advocacy = Guilt. If you “counsel” the commission of a crime, you are a principal. If you attempt to “hinder” the person’s “trial”, you can go to jail for 15 years. While presumably accessory after the fact already has a law, this new restatement offers a new chance for First Amendment nullification. Maybe (per part 21) the idea is that anyone can be tried twice for such things, once in state and once in federal court.
7. Failure to report any felony you know about = 3 year prison term.
8. 2 to 3 times the prison sentence if you involve someone under 18 in a crime. If you’re tough on crime, this sounds great … until your 18-year-old high school senior goes out and does some mischief with his friends, and gets hammered under a Romeo-and-Juliet law.
9. Ignorance is a defense, however. But that’s only ignorance that something is unlawful (not ignorance that you could get twice the prison sentence above, or that throwing a firecracker in a mailbox lands you in federal prison rather than getting a criminal mischief ticket) and only if a “reasonable person under similar circumstances” would not know it is unlawful. This almost sounds like it makes sense, except that I assume that peasants doing peasant things are never going to get exempted, and the white-collar crooks, even those whose living would seem like “similar circumstances”, will find a way to get off.
20. States get territorial waters to the limit of the “territorial sea”, and control all federal land inside them. I think this is a huge fuck-you to Indian tribes doing gambling or considering marijuana sales, but I don’t know for sure.
22. Huge extension of extraterritoriality. I think that selling drugs is “extraterritorial”, so this section means that everything in this law – like counseling or hindering prosecution – becomes extraterritorial. So for example, if a Bolivian bureaucrat refuses to give an American imperator the current address for a cocalero who sells coca for tourists to chew while they’re in the Andes, they can drag his ass to the U.S. and put him in jail for 15 years.
Any one who find this information to be a surprise doesn’t pay attention.
I am disappointed with The Intercept’s continued oversimplified, black-and-white portrayal of the Koch brothers and the issues surrounding them. Mr. Fang’s characterization of them is unnecessarily ideologically biased (for him, there is no legitimate reasons one could possibly have for preferring a banking regulatory scheme other than the one Mr. Fang prefers). I expect better from The Intercept.
Not that it necessarily proves anything, but from a glance at the research proposals regarding criminal justice reform that the Charles Koch Foundation claims to be interested in funding, none is specifically about white collar crime. Rather, most concern the issues that affect non-billionaires, such as prison populations, the CJ system’s effect on poverty and different demographics, police militarization, and civil asset forfeiture: http://www.charleskochfoundation.org/requests-for-proposals/criminal-justice-and-policing-reform/
The Kochs, from all reports, have been pretty consistent on criminal justice reform. Yes, that means white collar, non-violent offenders. It also means non-violent drug offenders, primarily minorities in those cases. I am aware the facts don’t fit your narrative but thankfully the American people are smarter than you give them credit for.
No they’re not. And how many of them read the Intercept? Or the Guardian, etc.
the koch’s have a philosophy that is very much at odds with the one persistently represented by the MSM and also the conspiracy types.
i encourage all to do a little self guided scholarship and make a dispassionate conclusion as to their motives. the company is private and they donate ONLY money that would otherwise land in their pockets. so no one can accuse them of NOT putting their money where their mouth is which i would CERTAINLY DO if in had that kind of scratch.
i dream of having the dough to support a candidate i like the way they do. i dream of the day i can elect a libertarian and a free marketeer to dish out the whammy to the crony capitalists and the big fascist machine banks.
those who are against the koch’s simply because they are rich are stupid and ignorant BOTH
I know it’s a popular strawman, but I’m not against the Koch’s because they’re rich. I oppose them because they cheat, lie, and do their best to destroy or corrupt any entity in their way. They, like most of the people at their level of wealth, accumulate most of that wealth by manipulating the market instead of honestly participating in it. And they do their best to make markets more vulnerable to their manipulation.
Someone who really respects the power of honestly trading value for value — as libertarians claim to, and some actually do — would find the Kochs behavior as disgusting as I do.
I know no-one who dislike the kochs simply because they’re rich. Are they paying you to try and redirect the discussion at hand?
We’re against the Kochs precisely because of their crony capitalism and support of big fascist machine politics…
Mr Froomkin, before you wet yourself over Mr Fang’s article you should know that Koch industries is one of the only large employers that does not ask about criminal backgrounds in its hiring process. They actually put their money where their mouths are on this topic … unlike most of liberal America.
While this doesn’t excuse their countless other evil acts, it’s something that the USA really need more of to combat crime. Giving ex-cons a chance at jobs is a win win for everyone.
It doesn’t surprise me that the world’s criminals can agree in principle about the need to eliminate jails, but then get bogged down in the details of implementing such a plan. I hope this doesn’t put an end to bipartisan cooperation on other issues.
bipartisan cooperation in pursuit of illegitimate and usurped power is hardly admirable.
when i see the term i GROAN and KNOW that the hogs will feed and the trough will be mine!
There is no such thing as illegitimate power. Those who usurp power declare themselves to be legitimate. It is only those who lack power who are illegitimate.
Never you worry. When it comes to destroying lives and livelihoods in the service of reaping staggering profits, “bipartisan” ardor knows no bounds.