Coyote Blog

The Senate Majority Leader has decided to try to shame and silence a private citizen for daring to engage in political discourse.  Here is Harry Reid:

I believe in an America where economic opportunity is open to all. And based on their actions and policies they promote, the Koch brothers seem to believe in an America where the system is rigged to benefit the very wealthy.

Remember that this is coming from the man who has somehow become a multi-multi-millionaire over a lifetime of only holding government jobs.

Contrast this with Charles Koch's actual words, parts of which could have come out of the mouth of an occupy Wall Street protester:

I think one of the biggest problems we have in the country is this rampant cronyism where all these large companies are into smash-and-grab, short-term profits, saying how do I get a regulation, or we don’t want to export natural gas because it’s one of our raw materials … Well, you say you believe in free markets, but by your actions you obviously don’t. You believe in cronyism.

And that’s true even at the local level. I mean, how does somebody get started if you have to pay $100,000 or $300,000 to get a medallion to drive a taxi cab? You have to go to school for two years to be a hairdresser. You name it, in every industry we have this. The successful companies try to keep the new entrants down. Now that’s great for a company like ours. We make more money that way because we have less competition and less innovation. But for the country as a whole, it’s horrible.

And for disadvantaged people trying to get started, it’s unconscionable in my view. I think it’s in our long-term interest, in every American’s long-term interest, to fight against this cronyism. As you all have heard me say, the role of business is to create products that make people’s lives better while using fewer resources to do it, and making more resources available to satisfy other needs.

When a company is not being guided by the products they make and what the customers need, but by how they can manipulate the system — getting regulations on their competitors, or mandates on using their products, or eliminating foreign competition — it just lowers the overall standard of living and hurts the disadvantaged the most.We end up with a two-tier system. Those that have, have welfare for the rich. The poor, OK, you have welfare, but you’ve condemned them to a lifetime of dependency and hopelessness.

Yeah, we want “hope and change,” but we want people to have the hope that they can advance on their own merits, rather than the hope that somebody gives them something. That’s better than starving to death, but that, I think, is going to wreck the country. Is it in our business interest? I think it’s in all our long-term interests. It’s not in our short-term interest. And it’s about making money honorably.

People should only profit to the extent they make other people’s lives better. You should profit because you created a better restaurant and people enjoyed going to it. You didn’t force them to go, you don’t have a mandate that you have to go to my restaurant on Tuesdays and Wednesdays or you go to prison. I mean, come on. You feel good about that?

Harry Reid's entire job is built on a foundation of cronyism.  Most of his re-election money comes from outside his home state of Nevada, from companies hoping to score political favors from him and from the power he weilds in the Senate.  If laws were proposed to thwart Congressional cronyism, say through reducing the power of Congress to pick winners and losers, who would fight such a law, Reid or Koch?