Saving America, Koch Style

Carles Koch considers himself a patriot, you know.  He's putting his considerable fortune as a billionaire on the line to help America stop the scourge of our age: billionaires paying taxes for programs that help the rest of us awful, unworthy, non-billionaires.

Koch, speaking on a low stage in front of an elaborately manicured lawn at the St. Regis Monarch Beach luxury resort, warned about 450 assembled donors and a slew of Republican elected officials – including Sens. Cory Gardner, Mike Lee, Ben Sasse and Dan Sullivan – of a “life or death struggle for our country.”

“One of the things I ask you to think about over this weekend is will you stand together with us to help save our country. It can’t be done without you and many, many others,” said Koch, who seldom speaks in the presence of reporters.

His speech, which came after on-stage interviews by POLITICO’s Mike Allen of GOP presidential candidates Carly Fiorina and Scott Walker, marked the kickoff of a three-day gathering hosted by the deep-pocketed political and public policy network spearheaded by the billionaire industrialists Charles and David Koch.

Charles Koch – introduced by the meeting’s emcee Kevin Gentry as “our great leader” – stumbled slightly on his way to the stage, as attendees squinted into a hot Southern California sun.

“That was Harry Reid that was trying to trip me there,” Koch cracked of the Senate Democratic leader, who has waged a campaign to brand the Koch brothers as the personification of the big-money takeover of American democracy. “I didn’t see him, but I know he’s watching. No, he’s got the bad eye, he’s probably not even watching us anymore,” said Koch, alluding to exercise accident early this year that left Reid blind in one eye.

Koch went on to lambast “irresponsible government spending from both political parties that’s bankrupting out nation,” and a “foreign policy that repeats the mistakes of the past and feeds special interests at the expense of a national defense that truly makes Americans safe.” And he called on the assembled business leaders to reject “corporate welfare,” that he said is creating “a two-tier society” by “creating a permanent underclass, crippling our economy and corrupting the business community – present company excepted, of course.”

Now that's an interesting premise.  He calls it "corporate welfare" but what he's actually describing are the attacks used by Republicans on corporate taxes used to help fund Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and Obamacare.  It's almost like Koch is expecting the government to stop helping small businesses at all, so that huge conglomerates like Koch Industries can rule America completely.

And the Kochs have the candidates in their pockets to prove it.