A FESTERING HATRED OF GOVERNMENT

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 1 Comment

A provocative article by Jane Mayer on the Politico magazine website taps into some truly disturbing history that’s still erupting in the current presidential race. The Secrets of Charles Koch’s Political Ascent, subtitled “Two new documents reveal the political blueprint the billionaire developed 40 years ago, heavily influenced by the John Birch Society,” is based on her new book, Dark Money: the Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Political Right, and outlines the anarchist leanings of the Libertarian movement’s biggest donors and organizers. (Mayer is also the author of The Dark Side: the Inside Story on How the War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals.)

If you believe in the American ideals of equality and justice in a political system of checks and balances, the outsized financial influence of Charles Koch and his brother, David, is creepy enough. Their origins in the extreme right-wing anti-Communist John Birch Society, which the brothers eventually left, is scarier still. Mayer observes, “Charles’ aim, according to [Brian] Doherty, who interviewed Charles for his book, was to tear the government out ‘at the root.'” The details are chilling.

As Mayer also reports, their father, Fred was a John Birch founder who deeply shaped their thinking. Never mind that the family fortune originates from the years Fred worked in Stalin’s Soviet Union developing oil refineries, he turned into a rabid loathing for the New Deal policies of Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

Turning to another source for perspective, Mayer notes that the father’s dark shadow was not merely ideological: “The early years of Charles and David Koch’s political planning are described in Stealth, a 300-page unpublished and private history commissioned by their estranged brother, Bill Koch, and written by Clayton A. Coppin, a researcher who taught history at George Mason University. Coppin had unusual insight. He had previously been hired by Koch Industries to write the company’s history. The earlier project had given Coppin access to many of the family’s private letters and papers, as well as license to interview the Kochs and their intimates as few outsiders could.”

She observes: “Coppin saw Charles Koch’s strong political views in the context of his upbringing. In Stealth, written in 2003, Coppin suggests that Charles harbored a hatred of the government so intense it could only be truly understood as an extension of his childhood conflicts with authority.

“From his earliest years, Coppin writes, Charles’ goal was to achieve total control. ‘He did not escape his father’s authority until his father died,’ he notes.”

Paradoxically, then, the opponent of authoritarians becomes an authoritarian figure himself:

“After that, Charles went to great lengths to ensure that neither his brothers nor anyone else could challenge his personal control of the family company.”

And now, we might assume, the political sphere itself.

WHO’S HE TO ACCUSE ANYONE OF FISCAL IRRESPONSIBILITY?

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 2 Comments

The early reports have Jeb Bush as the top spender in the New Hampshire primary, at $1,200 per vote. I imagine that figure will shoot up as more bills surface, both for his campaign and his Right to Rise USA super PAC.

We’re a relatively small state. Places like Wyoming or Wyoming are geographically much bigger, with fewer residents. It’s a trade-off. Imagine what he’d rack up running in a big state like New York or California.

Well, I suppose $1,200 a pop isn’t out of line for what might be spent on a guest at a party in some of Jeb’s circles. As for a destination wedding in A-list society? We can only imagine. Maybe it would cover the flowers.

Even the most frugal of the Republican pack – Trump, at $40 a vote, and Cruz, at $18 – leave me shaking my head.

And this race is just starting. Remember, keep an eye on the money. The big donors consider it an investment, one they’ll get back.

As for the rest of us?

~*~

By the way, with Jeb and Marco Rubio, both from Florida, still in the running (more or less), anyone else wondering how’ll they fare in the primary in their own state? Would their support split (again) to allow Donald Trump and/or Ted Cruz to race to the top? Or for retired Buckeyes to swing it to Kasich?

What do the Floridians know about their guys that we don’t?

We’re all ears. And eyes.

HELPING THE UNDECIDEDS

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

That expensive Bush mailer with the fist-sized cardboard box that popped out now popped up again up in a conversation after the primary election. (For my description, see Open Up, Jeb, Just Open Up Right.)

The box was a hollow die with a candidate’s name on each of the six sides. The theme was there’s too much at risk to simply roll the dice when we go to the polls. But that’s not how the message always came across.

As one acquaintance explained, “When my girlfriend opened that up, she looked at the side that was face up and said, ‘Now I know who I’m voting for.'”

WHERE DO THEY ALL COME FROM? REALLY!

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 8 Comments

The ballots for New Hampshire’s first-in-the-nation presidential primary listed more candidates than you’ve seen in the news. They always do. We’re bound to have fringe candidates who put up the registration money, garner some signatures, and wind up getting their names printed on the ballot.

For the record, they don’t do enough to prompt news coverage, so it’s not a matter of mass-media bias. You can’t report things that don’t happen. A rally? A town hall meeting? The opening of a campaign office? Nada, nada, nada.

On my way to vote, I reflected on a mailing we received from one wannabe who failed to meet the deadline in submitting his application and certified check and was dutifully rejected, so he was now appealing for write-in votes – along with a plea for $18 donations for his booklet.

Hey, this is as basic as it gets. Somebody who can’t manage a simple deadline thinks he can function in the Oval Office?

Next!

Still, you can’t keep up with them all. Maybe you knew of six or seven on the Republican side – maybe even nine or 10, if you add a few bounced from the televised debates. But 30? And then on the Democratic slate, if you expected just two plus the recently withdrawn Martin O’Malley, you were bound to do a double-take. I counted 28.

More jarring as I went down the list was my connection of first name Vermin with surname Supreme of Rockport, Massachusetts.

What?

After voting (for a more recognizable name), I checked in with my principal political advisor. Is Vermin Supreme for real? (It might have been a typo, after all – Vernon, maybe?) Who is that?

You don’t know? He always runs. He wears a boot for a hat.

Had to check that out. After all, I want to know how he stands.

Left or right, for starters?

DIGGING OUT AGAIN

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 1 Comment

After a January that often felt eerily like early April in these parts, we’re finally back in snowy weather. Last Friday, in fact, meant digging out from 10 inches of what was forecast to be 3 to 6, max – and less in other predictions. Wanna talk about margin of error?

So here we are on our first-in-the-nation presidential primary day, digging out again on slippery terrain.

In previous contests, we’ve welcomed out-of-state volunteers as they’ve seen New Hampshire’s emphasis on face-to-face political engagement firsthand. This year, the Republicans have been conspicuously absent.

We did arrive home Sunday afternoon to find a John Kasich flyer hanging from our front-door handle. It was comforting to read later he had more than a hundred volunteers, mostly from Ohio, meeting folks here in New Hampshire. His rivals can make all the charges against him they want, but there’s no substitute for talking to constituents like these who support a candidate enough to come to our doorstep all these miles away just to give us a chance to ask questions about their impressions and reasoning based on what they’ve seen in the Buckeye State.

Of course, we’re digging out from more than snow – our mailboxes have been overflowing and our phones keeping ringing with campaign pitches. That should all pass now. We hope the volunteers return home with positive memories, no matter the final tally.

Digging the snow also has me reflecting on those horse-race surveys and analyses we’ve been reading. Even the pundits whose expectations of Sunday’s Super Bowl had Carolina winning in a romp. As I’m digging, I wonder about the weather website that had rain-only as our precipitation this round. That one was wrong as soon as the precipitation started … as snow. Others had 2 to 4 or 3 to 5 inches. The tops was 6 inches. Turns out it was around 3 inches of light, fluffy stuff. Friday’s event, right around freezing, had big wet flakes that made for a fun day of watching from the window. Yesterday’s, at a dozen degrees colder, were icier and more compact. The reality is we don’t know what to expect until all the flakes are in.

Now, we’re  off to make our own contribution to the pile.