At Huffington Post, Peter Stone reports on a burgeoning alliance between casino billionaire Sheldon Adelson and fossil fuel billionaires Charles and David Koch. The emphasis is mine:
Historically, the Koch network and Adelson have had different top-line priorities. Kochworld has focused largely on domestic matters, with a particular emphasis on shrinking the federal government and minimizing regulatory and tax burdens on businesses. Adelson’s primary interests, meanwhile, have long been Israel, expanding defense spending and hawkish foreign policy in general. But the megadonors, conservatives say, share a number of political and ideological concerns. They have certain aims in common, from curbing union power and killing estate taxes to developing better voter-data operations and mobilizing veterans to vote. And Adelson and the Koch network also share a strong commitment to do, and spend, what it takes to win the White House in 2016 — a year that now looks like it will feature an expanded conservative focus on national security, terrorism and Middle Eastern policies.
Allow me to translate: “national security, terrorism and Middle Eastern policies” are three different ways of spelling “ISIS.” Basically, over the next 18 months these wealthy white men plan to spend more than a billion dollars on elections, with some part of that supporting the elements within the conservative movement who hype fears of terrorism and ‘the caliphate,’ who rail against Sharia law and protest outside of mosques, who propagandize for Israeli Apartheid, and so on, all while Fox News, websites, and talk radio amp the noise to eleven. It’ll be just like the worst days of the Bush administration following 9/11 — remember how much fun that all was the first time around? — except it will be directed at putting a Republican in the White House rather than coming from a Republican regime that’s already in the White House. See the difference?
The entire body of libertarian political theory rests on the false assumption that Kochs and Adelsons share exactly the same interests as the other 99.99% of Americans; convincing a majority of that majority to believe such nonsense is the highest art of libertarian rhetoric. When it comes to getting rid of estate taxes, labor laws, or environmental regulations, these guys are the most important ‘libertarians’ on the planet, but that doesn’t mean they’re genuinely interested in greater freedom for anyone other than themselves — and it doesn’t prevent them from pandering to cruel and violent sectarian impulses, or promoting zealots to positions of power, in order to get what they want. Call it a ‘one percent doctrine for the one percent.’