If there's one thing I can't stand, it's companies that claim to be "socially responsible" while they shove a knife into the backs of women across the nation. Eden Foods qualifies. It pretends it's a crunchy company, full of organic goodness and "social responsibility" but really, it's run by a libertarian who just doesn't like government regulations very much.

Michael Potter, Eden Foods' CEO, didn't care for the birth control mandate in Obamacare, so he paired up with the Thomas More Center, a conservative legal services non-profit, in order to weasel out of it on religious grounds.

Check out the image at the top. That small print up in the right hand corner says "Organic, Independently Owned, Socially responsible, And UNDER ATTACK. As if slapping the term "organic" on your packaging somehow makes your product magically attractive to liberals who object to eating pesticides with their green beans.

At any rate, Mr. Pious Potter's religious sensibilities were so rocked by the meanness of the birth control mandate that he felt compelled to go to court, where he swore his faith would just be too harmed by having to include birth control as a benefit to employees under the Affordable Care Act. Uh huh. Sure.

Salon interviewed Mr. Potter about his Catholicism and fervent religiosity, and they had quite a conversation. It began this way:

“I’ve got more interest in good quality long underwear than I have in birth control pills,” the unfamiliar voice on the phone said to me.

Oops, who was that masked man? It was Mr. Potter, calling the reporter to offer a comment to an earlier story about his quiet lawsuit. And then he went on...

It wasn’t that he was upset about my reporting or what his company was doing. He was just sorry my request for comment had gone unanswered due to an oversight. I accepted the apology, and asked why he said he didn’t care about birth control, since he filed a suit about it and all.

“Because I’m a man, number one and it’s really none of my business what women do,” Potter said. So, then, why bother suing? “Because I don’t care if the federal government is telling me to buy my employees Jack Daniel’s or birth control. What gives them the right to tell me that I have to do that? That’s my issue, that’s what I object to, and that’s the beginning and end of the story.” He added, “I’m not trying to get birth control out of Rite Aid or Wal-Mart, but don’t tell me I gotta pay for it.”

Oh, I see now. It's not about being Catholic or having a religious objection. At least, it's not if you're talking to a publication that is read by a mostly-liberal readership who might actually be a large chunk of those who consume your product. No, what it's about is having to pay for birth control coverage. Never mind that it's cheaper than maternity coverage. Oh, he had an answer for that contradiction too:

Potter replied, “One’s got a little more warmth and fuzziness to it than the other, for crying out loud.”

I guess that depends on who you ask. Women might disagree.

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As information continues to come to light about the attempted hostile takeover of the Cato Institute to make it into a tool of their political empire, the plan both confirms and exposes the ultimate realization of the Powell memo, which set out to create an indestructible infrastructure to support and sustain the far right as the dominant political force in this country. There was only one purpose to this infrastructure: Consolidation of political power to benefit business in the name of "free enterprise."

As we now know, that infrastructure extends from right wing radio networks to non-profits like Citizens United and Americans for Prosperity. Although the Cato Institute was funded with Scaife, Olin and Koch money, it has managed to remain true to libertarian principles in their purer form.

But no more. With the death of one of the founding board members and shareholders, the Kochs have made a move to pack the board with their ideological counterparts and take majority control of Cato in order to use it as an "ammo shop" for AFP, as Susie wrote about Sunday.

Dave Weigel has more details:

“They said that a principle goal was to defeat Barack Obama,” remembered Levy. “The way David [Koch] put it was, ‘We would like you to provide intellectual ammunition that we can then use at Americans for Prosperity and our allied organizations.’ AFP and others would apply Cato's work to advance their electoral goals.”Levy asked them: “What gives you the impression that [Cato isn’t] providing intellectual ammunition?” He says now: "I never got a satisfactory answer. The only answer that makes sense was that Cato needed to be more responsive to their needs. We would take closer marching orders. That’s totally contrary to what we perceive the function of Cato be.”

Cato’s leadership didn’t respond to this directive, nor did they change anything about the think tank. The Kochs began to change it for them. In February, they nominated 16 people for four slots on Levy’s board. Levy and others were aghast at some of the names. One nominee, Tony Woodlief, a former leader of several Koch-funded groups, had blogged in the past about “sanctimonious libertarians” who refused to get serious about policy. “Libertarianism in practice largely consists of a homogeneous group of people talking to one another about a narrow set of things that matter most to them (legalized drugs, lower taxes), and hoping that the rest of America will wake up and elect them to office,” he sneered in a 2002 post. “The majority of Americans are not, in fact, ‘live and let live’ types.” John Hinderaker, a lawyer and founder of the blog PowerLine, had backed the Iraq war and called George W. Bush a “man of extraordinary vision approaching to genius.

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I can't think of a more appropriate way to begin the Republican caucus day in Iowa, than with Chris Matthews' closing segment of Hardball Monday night. This stinging rebuke should haunt Mitt Romney for years to come.

'"Let Me Finish" tonight with this", Matthews begins:

This Republican caucus in Iowa has the looks of a travesty, a victory of dollars over democracy, financial equity over equality.

Romney is destroying the only opponent he fears for the nomination, with the relentless wealth-driven advertising campaign the voter can only escape if he turns off his television set. He`s doing it without his fingerprints on the ads, without his face or his name attached to it. He`s doing it while he stands before crowds, reciting their verses from "America the Beautiful".

If there`s ever been a more cynical use of money and media, it is hard to recall it. And so, what exactly will Tuesday nights results mean, will they mean that Iowa likes Romney? Or will it say that the voters of Iowa have been used to destroy his most formidable national opponent?

What it looks like Iowa will say, in the headlines at least, is what it says often, that it likes the candidate who adheres most closely to the evangelical line. In this case, they have a perfect vessel, Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania. He`s pro-life, he educates his children at home, he`s opposed to same sex marriage. He is to the evangelicals and other Christian conservatives, one of them.

So, if Santorum gets up around the high 30s tomorrow night, that will be about right.

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Here's an interesting new documentary by Al Jazeera's Bob Abeshouse on the Kochtopus. There's nothing in it that hasn't been reported elsewhere, but it's quite a nice roundup of the different tentacles and how they influence politics. This comment by Jane Mayer leads it off:

"It was very hard to figure out -- in fact, impossible to figure out -- how much money they've spent on American politics. It was easily 100 million dollars since 1980."

The clause in the middle is highlighted because it truly is impossible to figure out. I believe the number is much, much higher than $100 million. She's underestimating by a long shot. For example, this report published in April of this year by the Center for American Progress (PDF) shows about $75 million spent on the top 17 organizations. The entire list goes on for two columns across two pages. Still, I can attest to Mayer's' claim about the impossibility of knowing exactly how much. They give through donor-advised funds like Donors' Trust in order to disguise the source, and they aren't the only ones. It just happens that they're the front guys this time, just like Scaife was back in the Clintons' day.

Tim Phillips makes an appearance claiming that Americans for Prosperity is just fighting for the average middle class person. One of the more encouraging parts comes toward the middle when Abeston interviews Wisconsin families and union members just after Scott Walker introduced his union-busting bill.

It is remarkable to see any media actually reporting this, and it is certainly expected that US media companies would stay far back from it. Kudos to Al Jazeera for making it and showing it.

So it seems Charles Koch wrote an editorial while I was away. An editorial for the Rupert Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal, where he spends an entire column saying a whole lot of nothing. An editorial where he misstates facts, figures, and twists up truth into his weird alternate reality.

I feel compelled to respond to him.

Dear Charles Koch,

In your March 1st editorial, you make the following statements:

Years of tremendous overspending by federal, state and local governments have brought us face-to-face with an economic crisis. Federal spending will total at least $3.8 trillion this year—double what it was 10 years ago. And unlike in 2001, when there was a small federal surplus, this year's projected budget deficit is more than $1.6 trillion.

This is a direct consequence of the costs of two wars which until 2008, were not added to the balance sheets. Funny how you fail to account for where the deficits arose, but are quick to point to their existence.

Several trillions more in debt have been accumulated by state and local governments. States are looking at a combined total of more than $130 billion in budget shortfalls this year. Next year, they will be in even worse shape as most so-called stimulus payments end.

Ironic that you would give any credit to the stimulus for helping states, given the enormous funds you've laid out to criticize any lawmaker who supported it. What hypocrisy is this? State and local governments are looking at shortfalls because tax revenues have not kept pace with expenditures. This is not the fault of individuals living in those states or municipalities. It is the direct effect of the failure of corporations to pay their fair share to do business in states, and the failure of those same corporations to employ workers in those states, causing those workers to rely upon governmental safety nets to get them by while their jobs are outsourced to countries where corporate profits can increase.

For many years, I, my family and our company have contributed to a variety of intellectual and political causes working to solve these problems. Because of our activism, we've been vilified by various groups. Despite this criticism, we're determined to keep contributing and standing up for those politicians, like Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, who are taking these challenges seriously.

Let's talk about your "activism", because it goes far beyond just political philosophy. You fund groups who actively seek to promote lies about the current President's place of birth, his legitimacy as a United States citizen, and undermine the mandate he received from voters in 2008. That's not "standing up" for anything.

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Twin Satans Charles and David Koch are planning a little get-together in January, but don't worry, we won't be invited, because it's only for very, very rich folks who made a down payment on their ownership of this country during this midterm season and want to up the ante for 2012.

A secretive network of Republican donors is heading to the Palm Springs area for a long weekend in January, but it will not be to relax after a hard-fought election — it will be to plan for the next one.

Koch Industries, the longtime underwriter of libertarian causes from the Cato Institute in Washington to the ballot initiative that would suspend California’s landmark law capping greenhouse gases, is planning a confidential meeting at the Rancho Las Palmas Resort and Spa to, as an invitation says, “develop strategies to counter the most severe threats facing our free society and outline a vision of how we can foster a renewal of American free enterprise and prosperity.”

[...]

With a personalized letter signed by Charles Koch, the invitation to the four-day Rancho Mirage meeting opens with a grand call to action: “If not us, who? If not now, when?”

The Koch network meets twice a year to plan and expand its efforts — as the letter says, “to review strategies for combating the multitude of public policies that threaten to destroy America as we know it.”

For an idea of who would attend such a meeting, see the list of donors to the RGA. That's a start. Of course, Mr. Koch is shameless about taking credit for that. Forget about digging into undisclosed contributions. Just allocate them proportionately to those who attend these little liberty get-togethers for the rich, privileged owners of our government.

It's one thing to know in your gut how much they plot this kind of activity and another thing entirely to see it in black and white. They believe they've already won the November midterms, and are already planning for the 2012 elections. Nothing would make me happier than seeing them take a $200 million loss on their investment.

Yes, there is a class war going on, one that they're winning right now. So get out and vote, please. Because the only thing that their money can't buy is YOUR vote.

Bonus: Think Progress gives us a nice list of the 2010 attendees who cozied up in Aspen this January to bring us the midterms.

Reverend Manny and the Twilight Empire: How Americans for Prosperity spent its summer and Koch's millions

TalkLeft: Federal Court Grants Injuction Against Stem Cell Research

ProPublica: For Mosques, 'Anywhere but There' means nowhere

Norwegianity: Fine thuning their campaign strategies

The Roger Ailes we like on Libertarian bull pucky

Law & Disorder: Your fears confirmed: "up to" broadband speeds are bogus

The Tea Party hero, Rand Paul, had a very unstable couple of days. On Wednesday 'Baby' Paul flamed out quicker than a defective Roman candle with Rachel Maddow. His performance was so utterly enlightening about his beliefs -- and thus truly terrifying. His advisers burned the midnight oil to figure out how far he would run back what he really believes so that he could appear as somewhat normal.

His weak ass flip flop on Civil Rights before the sun came up on Thursday shows you how America views Paul's ideology. His defense is that we're all just conflators.

Evil liberals only wanted to bring up a case that he was too young to remember. Heck, I'm not even bring up his wretched 2002 letter to the Bowling Green Daily News. Things looked bleak so he needed a friend. Hello, Laura Ingraham. He told her that it was a poor political decision to go on Maddow's show because she's a conflater too and he won't be visiting her show for a while.

Rand Paul: You're right. And it was a poor political decision. Probably won't be happening any time in the near future. Yeah, because they conflate things and want to say ...

He was exposed to America for his 'Only Open for Big Business Club' principles that were passed down to him by Poppa Paul. And I'm no fan of those beliefs. Show me a liberal and I'll show you someone who really does care about civil liberties.

Michael Tomasky lets it all hang out in his post about Poppa Paul and Baby Paul even before this flameout occurred: Intellectual consistency can be overrated. Read the whole article because it's very funny.

When we write about libertarianism, most liberals feel compelled to say something like, you know, I disagree with that viewpoint, but I respect that it's principled and intellectually consistent.

I say balderdookey. Libertarianism is kookoo. There can be no such thing as a basically stateless society (except for national defense and barest administration of law, I think are the exceptions they typically allow for). It's just ridiculous. Civil society would collapse without the state.

I've written this before, a few months ago. Conservatives, and libertarians, seem to think that we have regulations in this society because we have a bunch of underemployed pencil pushers sitting around dreaming up ways to make small business people's lives miserable.

It's ridiculous. We have regulations because throughout history people in various pursuits did really sleazy and unethical things. They swindled investors, they dumped toxins into bodies of water, they made children work long hours for slave wages. Et cetera. And so laws were passed and regulations were written.

And unfortunately such is man's endless capacity for sleaze and unethicality that this process will never end: as technology presents new ways to be sleazy, we'll always need to invent new ways to prevent sleaze from happening.

---

We all support a few libertarian-ish principles; we all agree that the state should have some limits. For example, I think it's perfectly fine for the state to make fast-food joints post nutrition information. But I would oppose the state having the right to ban the Quarter Pounder. So we all get that kind of thing.But big-L Libertarianism is vapid. I hope in the next few months it is properly exposed as such.

Baby Paul's staff will do everything they can to cover up his beliefs as much of it as he can and then to Luntzify them. Grab the popcorn.

Just when I thought things couldn't get any more bizarre today, this gem crossed my Twitter stream, courtesy of Media Matters. Really, some folks ought to think before hitting the "tweet button." From the hatriot Neal Boortz, known as Talkmaster on Twitter, this little pair of gems:

Yes, it really DOES say that. Not content to leave that little bomb in the stream, he followed up with this:

While Media Matters was content to show this insanity with no further comment, I'm not. Small business is better off today than it was under Bush. This is fact. Their taxes are lower, they get an immediate tax credit for providing health benefits to their workers, and they finally get some parity with the big corporations.

Neal Boortz calls himself a libertarian, but he's really just a fool with a big mouth and a microphone.

I wonder if he's ever researched his company's past. If so, he'd know the founder of Cox Radio was Franklin D. Roosevelt's running mate in 1920. FDR would NOT approve, and I somehow believe Mr. Cox would not either.

Litbrit: The Rational Actor's Libertarian Fête

Open Thread below....