Liberals really hate the Koch brothers. Their Koch hatred is so intense than when David Koch donated $100 million to a New York City hospital early this year, liberals protested the hospital.
It doesn’t seem to matter that the Kochs’ views on issues such as gay marriage and immigration often align with their own, liberals are convinced that an ancient evil surges through their Koch veins.
So it must be confusing when, after the overwhelming police response to protests in Ferguson, Missouri prompted many liberal to decry the increasing militarization of the American police force, they were told that Koch brothers agree with them, and have supported efforts to highlight the problem since long before the events in Ferguson. The Daily Beast reports:
Groups on the left have been among the loudest voices condemning police actions in Ferguson, Missouri, after the fatal shooting of unarmed teenager Michael Brown this month. But the Koch brothers, boogeymen of national Democrats, have long funded libertarian groups that laid the intellectual groundwork for opposing police militarization, a phenomenon that now has been discussed and denounced much more widely.
The militarization of police in particular is an issue the Koch brothers view as necessary to tackle and which they have spent years fighting, a spokesman said.
"We need to address issues such as overcriminalization, excessive and disproportionate sentencing, inadequate indigent defense that is inconsistent with the Sixth Amendment, and the militarization of police," Mark Holden, general counsel of Koch Industries Inc., told The Daily Beast. "We have deep respect for the moral dignity of each and every person and because of this, we’ve worked for decades to support those who defend the full range of individual rights."
There’s also Washington Post reporter Radley Balko, who has owned the militarized police beat for years. He got his start at Koch-funded groups such as Reason magazine and the Cato Institute, which have also covered the issue extensively. Kara Dansky, a senior counsel at the ACLU, told the Daily Beast that when it comes to police militarization, "there seems to be a convergence of interests" between liberals and the dreaded Kochtopus.
But it's unclear if the left will reach out to form an alliance on the issue, or if liberals will decide to chain themselves to the nearest armored personnel carrier in protest. Because if the Kochs, who are only looking to "screw the middle class to enrich themselves," are for something, you should probably be against it. After all, you would think that liberals would be pro-hospitals, but as we've seen, it's not that simple.