Magenta'sBlues

For example, take Charles and David Koch, who have spent “hundreds of millions of dollars over the years demonizing government and promoting pure free-market capitalism.” The Koch brothers can hardly be viewed as avatars of the self-reliant business geniuses their ideology celebrates. They started their fortune with $300 million inherited from their father, and they “have been unashamed recipients of corporate welfare. They graze cattle and harvest timber on public lands, reaping the profits while paying minuscule fees. They use the government’s power of eminent domain to obtain routes for their thousands of miles of gas and oil pipelines. They even take advantage of direct government subsidies to produce ethanol. This last bit of public largesse is especially ironic, since ethanol subsidies are the kind of government spending that is a perennial target of the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank backed by Charles Koch since its founding in 1977.

—A brilliant contribution to the public debate about politics and the economy (via azspot)

(via anindiscriminatecollection)