Saul Alinksy, the original community organizer, wrote a book entitled, “Rules for Radicals.” Rule #4 states, “Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.” Cut off the support network and isolate the target from sympathy. Go after people and not institutions; people hurt faster than institutions. (This is cruel, but very effective. Direct, personalized criticism and ridicule works.)” Unfortunately that rule has been used excessively by many of the American political left. The latest example has to do with the Keystone Pipeline.
Two people the American political left loves to hate are the Koch Brothers. Yesterday John Hinderaker posted an article at Power Line describing how the political left is using the Koch Brothers as an excuse to oppose the Keystone Pipe Line. So what is the connection between the Keystone Pipeline and the Koch Brothers? Well, before I go into that, I would like to mention the connection between the Keystone Pipeline and Warren Buffett. Warren Buffett controls Berkshire Hathaway which owns Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroad. Burlington Northern Santa Fe will be shipping oil by rail if the pipeline is not built. The railroad expects to “eventually” be shipping 1 million barrels of oil per day.
But, back to the Koch Brothers. A website called Grist claims that the Koch Brothers will make “as much as $100 billion in profits if the controversial Keystone XL pipeline is given the go-ahead by President Obama.” So let’s look at the claim. First of all, the construction of the Keystone Pipeline would result in Koch Industries paying more for oil–not less. (See the article at Power Line for details). The article at Power Line also deals with the claim that the Koch Brothers own a good part of the acreage the oil for the pipeline will come from. Actually, it turns out that the Koch Brothers lease the acreage and that if the pipeline is built, it will take 476 years for the Koch Brothers to break even after the construction of the Pipeline.
The article at Power Line concludes:
So what is going on here? Rich liberals hire kids–recent college graduates, or maybe college or high school students–to produce idiotic “research reports” that can be dismantled by anyone familiar with arithmetic, let alone the oil and gas industry, of which these kids obviously know nothing at all. The claims these reports make are completely divorced from reality, but liberals don’t seem to care. The Huffington Post headlines: “Keystone XL Pipeline Could Yield $100 Billion For Koch Brothers.” PolicyMic: “Actually, You Probably WILL Guess Who Stands to Make $100 Billion Off the Keystone XL Pipeline.” TruthDig: “Koch Brothers Stand to Make $100 Billion From Keystone Pipeline.” And, of course, the Kos Kidz are all over it.
This isn’t just stupid, it is insane. It is also, unfortunately, a good example of what modern liberalism has come to. No regard for truth, just blind hatred.
Rules for radicals at work.
