Bernie Sanders is right about at least one thing, argues libertarian billionaire Charles Koch in a Washington Post op-ed Friday. Koch wryly notes that Sanders "often sounds like he's running as much against me as he is the other candidates," but values the senator's emphasis on combating corporate welfare and crony capitalism:
The senator is upset with a political and economic system that is often rigged to help the privileged few at the expense of everyone else, particularly the least advantaged. He believes that we have a two-tiered society that increasingly dooms millions of our fellow citizens to lives of poverty and hopelessness. He thinks many corporations seek and benefit from corporate welfare while ordinary citizens are denied opportunities and a level playing field.
I agree with him. [Washington Post]
Koch lays blame on Democrats and Republicans, government and big business alike, arguing that all four have backed market favoritism which creates a "cycle of control, dependency, cronyism, and poverty."
As for their own businesses, the Kochs have long lobbied against even the aspects of corporate welfare that benefit their bottom line, like the ethanol mandate. Until their efforts succeed, however, Koch Industries avails itself of some incentives to avoid "competitive disadvantage in the current marketplace" where other corporations have no such scruples. Bonnie Kristian
The second and final presidential debate was supposed to have a section devoted to national security, and perhaps that's what a few unilluminating questions about North Korea and foreign election meddling were intended to be. Or perhaps, as I first assumed given the topical order, that section was cut for time. Either way, this bare minimum of attention to foreign policy is inexcusable for an examination of the two candidates running to be commander-in-chief in a country addicted to perpetual war.
Our Constitution assigns power to initiate military conflict to Congress, and Congress, as a matter of habit, does its best to abdicate that responsibility in favor of unaccountable executive war-making. The Constitution also gives the president authority to prosecute wars already underway. As it happens, we have several.
The war in Afghanistan is our nation's longest ever, now in its 19th year and long since lost to any sort of American "victory." It was given no substantive attention tonight, nor was it discussed in the first debate.
The war in Iraq was also not addressed. That failed regime change project has cost us about $2 trillion, created the power vacuum that led to the rise of the Islamic State, and has a civilian death toll estimated in the hundreds of thousands. Too boring for a debate, perhaps?
Yemen, where the United States is enabling the world's worst humanitarian crisis, was ignored. So too recent (and in some cases ongoing) U.S. military interventions in Syria, Libya, Somalia, and more than two dozen locations in North and Sub-Saharan Africa.
These are literally matters of war and peace, life and death. They are also matters in which one of these men soon will have considerable discretion to leave or stay the course of two decades of inhumane and counterproductive foreign policy. That discretion requires interrogation. It didn't get it tonight. Bonnie Kristian