My comment + Nancy Maclean, author of Democracy in Chains, interviewed.

(c) by Mark Dempsey

I've been told George Soros' left-wing funding balances the Kochs' political machine, as though that somehow balances political right (capital) with political left (labor), but this is "straining at a gnat while swallowing a camel." 

The Kochs inherited their fortune thanks to their father, Fred Koch, a clever chemist who invented many processes still used today to get the most useful products from crude oil--a substance that bears only a slight resemblance to what you pump into your car's gas tank. And Fred Koch built refineries all over the world, including for Hitler and Stalin.  He loved the Germans, and hated the Russians. In fact he loved the Germans so much he hired a German nanny to raise his sons, including Charles and David, the politically active sons. I have no idea whether that nanny was a stern disciplinarian, but she was literally a Nazi--a member of Hitler's political party. So...the Kochs were literally raised by a Nazi.

Fred Koch's distaste for government had at least part of its origins in his battle to get paid for his patented refinery processes in the U.S. There, the Rockefellers' Standard Oil dominated the markets to the point of monopoly. Rockefellers started using Fred Koch's processes in their refineries. When Fred Koch discovered this, he demanded they pay patent royalties to him. Rockefellers refused, and Fred Koch sued...and lost! A few years after that court case, Koch discovered that Rockefellers had bribed the judge. He re-sued and won this time, but retained his skepticism that government could ever do anything good. So Fred Koch founded and funded several of the most extreme right-wing political groups, including the John Birch Society. Read Maclean's interview below for a list of more such organizations Koch founded or helped found.

Soros is a currency speculator, a capitalist's capitalist. So yes, he's to the left of Kochs. But Attila the Hun is to their left, too. And Soros did spend millions attempting to influence public policy. In 2016, he was one of Hillary Clinton's principal funders. How much: his total political spending was $20 million (scheduled to double for 2020).

How much did the Kochs spend? Answer: $889 million. Roughly 44 times what Soros spent. In addition, Kochs and Soros are both close enough that both Soros and Kochs are promoting programs for an end to the U.S. carceral state, i.e. "justice reform."

A genuine lefty like Bernie Sanders is shut out of the "Overton Window"--the claim that the political spectrum ranges from Soros on the left to Koch on the right.

Misinforming the Majority: A Deliberate Strategy of Right-Wing Libertarians

[Truthout, July 9, 2017] (Interview of Nancy MacLean, author of Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America)

Charles Koch supplied the money, but it was James Buchanan who supplied the ideas that made the money effective. An MIT-trained engineer, Koch in the 1960s began to read political-economic theory based on the notion that free-reign capitalism (what others might call Dickensian capitalism) would justly reward the smart and hardworking and rightly punish those who failed to take responsibility for themselves or had lesser ability. He believed then and believes now that the market is the wisest and fairest form of governance, and one that, after a bitter era of adjustment, will produce untold prosperity, even peace. But after several failures, Koch came to realize that if the majority of Americans ever truly understood the full implications of his vision of the good society and were let in on what was in store for them, they would never support it. Indeed, they would actively oppose it.

So, Koch went in search of an operational strategy — what he has called a “technology” — of revolution that could get around this hurdle. He hunted for 30 years until he found that technology in Buchanan’s thought. From Buchanan, Koch learned that for the agenda to succeed, it had to be put in place in incremental steps, what Koch calls “interrelated plays”: many distinct yet mutually reinforcing changes of the rules that govern our nation. Koch’s team used Buchanan’s ideas to devise a roadmap for a radical transformation that could be carried out largely below the radar of the people, yet legally. The plan was (and is) to act on so many ostensibly separate fronts at once that those outside the cause would not realize the revolution underway until it was too late to undo it. Examples include laws to destroy unions without saying that is the true purpose, suppressing the votes of those most likely to support active government, using privatization to alter power relations — and, to lock it all in, Buchanan’s ultimate recommendation: a “constitutional revolution.”

Today, operatives funded by the Koch donor network operate through dozens upon dozens of organizations (hundreds, if you count the state and international groups), creating the impression that they are unconnected when they are really working together — the state ones are forced to share materials as a condition of their grants. For example, here are the names of 15 of the most important Koch-funded, Buchanan-savvy organizations each with its own assignment in the division of labor: There’s Americans for Prosperity, the Cato Institute, the Heritage Foundation, the American Legislative Exchange Council, the Mercatus Center, Americans for Tax Reform, Concerned Veterans of America, the Leadership Institute, Generation Opportunity, the Institute for Justice, the Independent Institute, the Club for Growth, the Donors Trust, Freedom Partners, Judicial Watch — whoops, that’s more than 15, and it’s not counting the over 60 other organizations in the State Policy Network. This cause operates through so many ostensibly separate organizations that its architects expect the rest of us will ignore all the small but extremely significant changes that cumulatively add up to revolutionary transformation. Gesturing to this, Tyler Cowen [an economist, not progressive YouTuber, Brian Tyler Cohen], Buchanan’s successor at George Mason University, even titled his blog “Marginal Revolution.”