I Almost Thought this Story was a Joke

For a minute I thought I was reading the Onion. But this is an actual serious story from Monday's Post.

Here’s the headline:
Charles Koch invokes fight for civil rights as model for political activism

And what injustice is Mr. Koch and all of his super rich friends and far right political operatives talking about? Here it is:

The theme of helping the lower class was echoed throughout the weekend conference as network officials laid out their plans to spend $889 million by the end of 2016 on issue advocacy, higher-education grants and political activity. Huge banners positioned around the halls of the resort featured quotes from donors describing their commitment to helping the poor. Mark Holden, the general counsel of Koch Industries, led a 40-minute discussion Sunday afternoon on the network’s push for criminal justice reform at the state and federal levels.

The emphasis appears to be driven by a sense among network officials that they need to do more to win the public over to their cause, including what they call “the middle third” of the electorate that does not identify with their libertarian ideology. It underscores one of the remaining challenges for the Koch political network, one of the most potent forces in American politics: to recast its image of being a political organ for the rich.

To use a phrase one of my grandmothers’ used I had to laugh. I laughed long and loud. I laughed when I read the story in the paper on the ride to work. And I laughed again while preparing this post. Just how unbelievable is this. Recasting it's image as a political organ for the rich. How exactly do you do that? Why by "helping" poor people of course. Like they just discovered poor people exist.

Wow they want to suddenly help poor people.

You know poor people who if they just tried harder could get out of poverty.

You know poor people who are just plain lazy because they are on the government teat all of their lives.

You know poor people who get food stamps and need to be drug tested for them (even though the test cost way more money then the money saved by not giving food stamps to druggies).

You know poor people whose support programs will be done away with by Koch and their minions. Or turned into block grants and turned over to the states.

You know poor people who will be helped by these people when they pass huge tax cuts for the rich. Because nothing helps the poor more if every millionaire becomes a billionaire at government expense.

That’s the type of help they can expect.

And if they think “recasting its image” will be easy all they have to do is look at the scathing comments left in the comments section of the story.

I’d say they have a long way to go. One step might actually be to come up with ideas that actually help poor people. To further that goal they need to stop supporting candidates that view the poor as deadbeats, moochers, lazy, takers from society. I don’t expect that to happen any time soon.

So "recasting" is going to take some time. Maybe the first thing to do in "recasting" is changing the cast at the top. I think that would be a great first step.