Luke Skywalker
Super Moderator
{vb:raw ozzmodz_postquote}:
Charles Koch is chairman and CEO of Koch Industries. (Robert Deutsch, USA TODAY)
Billionaire Charles Koch is planning for way beyond the 2016 election.
In a letter to donors ahead of his network’s annual summer meeting, Koch said the three-day gathering will be “devoted to issues and strategies that go far beyond the typical election cycle.”
The meeting’s title, Unleashing Our Free Society: A Strategy to Expand Opportunity for All Americans, reflects “our network’s determination to raise our efforts to a new level,” Koch wrote. Goals, he said, include driving “long-term social change” and making the world “a more peaceful and moral place.”
The industrialist and his younger brother, David Koch, sit at the helm of a political empire that advances their free-market views in elections and policy battles at the state and local level. It employs hundreds, counts millions of activists among its ranks and is building a sophisticated data-gathering operation to reach voters across the country.
This weekend, some 450 donors who have pledged to pump nearly $900 million into the network ahead of the 2016 election will gather with the Kochs and their top aides to share ideas and plot strategy.
The agenda includes sorting out the details of their budget for the next 16 months and hearing from five Republican presidential candidates — Sens. Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, former Florida governor Jeb Bush and former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina — as they weigh backing one or more candidates in the nomination battle.
Koch doesn’t consider himself a Republican but more of a<span style="color: Red;">*</span> “classical liberal”<span style="color: Red;">*</span> in the tradition of 19th-century political figures and thinkers who espoused a limited role for government.
To that end, Koch has recommended some reading material for seminar attendees: A Wall Street Journal op-ed about Victorian-era British prime minister William Gladstone, known for slashing taxes and campaigning against government waste.
Gladstone’s policies, he said, offer a “good description of the direction I believe our elected leaders should be taking our government.”
Charles Koch, David Koch, Freedom Partners Chamber of Commerce, 2016, Campaign Finance<span style="color: Red;">*</span>
Powered By WizardRSS.com | Full Text RSS Feed