Steve Bantly: Koch brother auditions actually job interviews
A new low has been reached in American politics. The Koch brothers have announced they will be spending $900 million – funneled through their super-PAC groups – on the 2016 presidential election, and will be “auditioning” GOP candidates hoping to gain their endorsement. How patriotic. They have every right to endorse candidates, but the reality is their endorsement carries with it nearly $1 billion, capable of corrupting the democratic process.
This is the unfortunate result of the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling, equating a corporation with a human being, literally. The Constitution guarantees human rights to humans, not legal entities (ie. corporations), created by humans. As discussed in Thom Hartmann’s book, “Unequal Protection,” a corporation is a legal entity created by humans filing articles of incorporation within a state, with government explicitly granting privileges to the corporation, but not human rights. The Citizen’s United ruling equates corporate privileges with human rights, contradictory, in my opinion, since corporations are not human beings.
Corporations can have enormous wealth and power, something most individuals don’t have (except the Koch brothers), and able to spend $1 billion to select a candidate sympathetic to their corporate agenda. If their pre-selected candidate wins, they will have the best president money can buy.
Steve Bantly, Merced
This story was originally published May 7, 2015 at 6:08 PM with the headline "Steve Bantly: Koch brother auditions actually job interviews."