(no subject)

[randomness]

Long and informative piece on the Koch brothers pulling back from this year's presidential race.

Koch allies say the brothers took tremendous interest in Bernie Sanders’ unlikely success — particularly his resonance with young voters who represent the future of the electorate — and drew stark conclusions about their own efforts. “Dumping hundreds of millions of dollars into elections doesn’t persuade enough people to achieve lasting change,” one Koch confidante says. “To achieve lasting change, the effort has to begin much earlier.”

Comments

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

There are other limits to how much he can squeeze the ones who are still living in Russia as well. For one thing, if he squeezes too many of them they may all get together and decide he's too much of a problem. Then *he* will be going away.

Another limit is that if he starts squeezing any one of them the rest may flee and take their money with them, which is even worse.

I think the only way he'll get a couple of billion out of the oligarchs is if he convinces enough of them it's a good idea to spend that money on the American election. I'm pretty sure even Putin doesn't think this is a good idea.

My suspicion is that Putin is looking forward to conning Trump out of a pile of money, not the other way around.