Monday, December 29, 2014

Good News: Charles Koch and George Soros Working Together For Criminal Justice Reform

Koch and Soros working together on anything is likely to be good news.  Working together on such an important issue is particularly heart-warming.

The [Wichita] Eagle reports that Koch has unofficially teamed up with progressive mega-donor George Soros and the American Civil Liberties Union to address prison reform. Koch has also earned praise from outgoing U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, who told The Marshall Project that Koch's donation to the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, which funds training for attorneys who represent those in need, was a positive force. 

3 comments:

Mac said...

I see that you are using the descriptors used in the article, but to be intellectually honest, if Koch is a "conservative mega-donor," then Soros ought be described as a "liberal mega-donor." I know that liberals, and organizations such as the ACLU and the NACDL (of which I was a member), don't like the "L" word. They think "progressive" makes them look oh, so much better than their "reactionary" counter-parts. Soros and ACLU and NACDL and others of their kind are liberals, pure and simple. You can dress a liberal pig in a progressive smock, but he is still a pig. And by the way, the biggest interest of the NACDL is to get more money for defense attorneys, rich and poor. Johnnie Cochran was a member of the NACDL.

Gruntled said...

My experience as a researcher is that Baby Boomers prefer the term "progressive," where older generations would use "liberal". They tend to cover most of the same spectrum of actual beliefs.

Mac said...

Interesting. I am a genuine baby boomer and, other than in the context of "Fighting Bob" La Follette and those of his generation, I had never heard any modern usage of "progressive" in the political arena until liberals in the Democratic Party realized that they were losing much of the middle class. Their adoption of "progressive" seemed to me to be a combination of intellectual weakness (they were constantly losing at the polls) and political cowardice.