Obama should stay out of the free market and focus instead on controlling the free market! If that header makes no sense, welcome to the wonderful wacky world of religio-conservative politics. Where consistency and logic take a back-seat to anything that might benefit poor downtrodden zillionaires and multinational corporations, err, I mean multinational people, you know, the non-alive kind of “people” that happened to be publicly owned by shareholders …
When it comes to the cost of healthcare Obama should stay the hell out of it! Intervening in any way, including using methods praised and enacted by conservatives in the recent past, is an unforgiveable constitutional violation, downright treason in fact, or at least an act worthy of impeachment proceedings. When it comes to the price of a gallon of gas, why hasn’t Obama singlehandedly stepped in with all his executive power to bend the free market to His will?
Does anyone see a little ole inconsistency in those two ideas? The crazy thing is both of them are being pushed by the same guys. Which of course would be our black-hearted evil incarnate, fellow Americans, known as the Koch Brothers.
They were born into wealth and power, wealth originally created in league with one of the 20th century’s greatest monsters, Josef Stalin. They are insiders, posing as the most generous of benefactors while secretly, behind the scenes and by any measure, they are shameless and immoral, they profit from war, sell toxins and pollutants by the trainload. They have arguably tricked the Pharisees and the faithful into praising their name, and far from being satisfied with having so, so much, they work tirelessly, one could say almost demonically, to ransack every last cent and shakedown every single politician they can get to. It’s hard to imagine a more evil duo, that acts as a single entity, hurting so many people. If I actually believed in any of the various End-o-the-World evangelisms, I’d bet good money on long odds that the Koch Brothers are the real anti-Christ over any extant world figure alive right now.
Rather interesting considering that the Koch brothers are reputed to be non-believers.
I’ve a serious question for legally and/politically astute types: if a corporation has the property of personhood, how does the fact that it is owned by one or more other persons not constitute slavery?
If a corporation is to be afforded Constitutional protections, such as those proposing it should receive protection under the Fifth Amendment would have, then how can it not be constituted protection under the Thirteenth?
I was kinda wondering that myself Brownian. I’m sure there’s some fanciful sophistry that affords corporations only the benefits of being people with out any of the responsibilities or consequences that could work against those benefits. I bet there are talented lawyers lined up to make that very argument for a reasonable fee :)
Forget Reductio ad Hitlerum; this is a comparison that theists should consider using.
“So, you’re an atheist, eh? Didja know the Koch brothers are atheists?”
“Gah! You take that back! Ya-a-a-rgh!” [Physically attacks.]
Yeah, I hadn’t considered that issue until prompted by the bit of yours I quoted (I’m Canadian, so I don’t naturally think in terms of the US Constitution), but I wonder if there are well-reasoned arguments for why some amendments should apply and not others.
Even without invoking the constitution, the concept of personhood conflicts with the concept of self-determination when it comes to corporations. The rights of a collection of individuals as a collection cannot be the rights of those individuals as individuals—they’re not compatible.
The big differences between people as people and corporations as people?
Real people don’t live forever and can’t get rid of all their debts by changing their name.
Although I do like the slavery thing. The voting question also comes up occasionally.
btw shouldn’t “downright reason in fact” be “downright treason in fact”
Well, to be fair, it isn’t just the Koch brothers that are the anti-christ. They are just at the top (or nearly at the top) of the demon hierarchy…
… wealth originally created in league with one of the 20th century’s greatest monsters, Josef Stalin.
Daddy Koch teamed up with Uncle Joe?
Where can we find out more?
Richard, yes on the “t”, thank you. Pierce, Daddy Koch made his nut early on, while everyone else was reeling the Great Depression, by building cracking plants on the USSR and running training camps for Soviet engineers, and getting paid a mint for it. About 100 million in todays dollars if my math is correct. He used that money to buy oil property and other businesses here in the US at rock bottom prices right as the depression peaked. Bingo, huge payday.
If you read the literature, the way Koch friendly orgs spin it is he purpotedly developed an intense dislike for communism and a prideful love for capitalism, because of this “horrible” experience with Stalinism. It’s kinda funny: how horrible could being the head guy paid to do what you love to do and becoming filthy rich be exactly?
One even funnier footnote: Koch’s original cracking process — whcih was really good, way more efficient — got jacked up in court by the big oil companies of the day. They sued the daylights out of him, even got caught bribing a judge in one case. The USSR was one of his only options to prove his new idea would work on an industrial scale. So Daddy Koch “hates” the system that came to his aid and “loves” the corrupt corporatacry that damn near ran him out of the US penniless and on a rail. Making it a hard claim to swallow in my book.
So, we can thank him for Allied victory in WWII. In 1931, Stalin said (First Conference of Workers, 1931):
He was dead on, of course. By the time Hitler launched Operation Barbarossa in 1941, The Soviet Union was able to outproduce Nazi Germany in weaponry and so survive (the two crises of the war in the east came before significant arms arrived from the western Allies). I’d assume Daddy Koch played an important part in that astoundingly rapid – and astoundingly brutal – industrialisation.
Had father Koch not sired the twin anti-Christs, I would have no reason to lament his earthly existance. But he did, so …