The rebranding of the 1% is all talk and no action

Following up on this post where Ryan admitted he was wrong to call the poor takers, see this Jane Mayer article on the rebranding of the 1%. It appears to be excerpted from the last chapter of her book Dark Money. Like I noted in the previous post on Ryan, it's all spin designed to appeal to people subconsciously with no intention whatsoever to change the actual 'free-market' policies that degrade people. From the article:

"Lombardo believed that the key to creating a positive brand was to reach the public’s 'subconscious mind,' as he wrote in O’Dwyer’s, the public-relations trade journal. The most effective 'pathway' to the subconscious, he argued, was 'storytelling,' in part because it tapped into emotions. He expanded on this in a Koch Industries newsletter. 'Building a brand is telling a story,' he explained, adding, 'It is about giving people a sense of who you are, what you believe in, and what you are doing to improve their lives.'”


"But Fink had a solution. 'This is going to sound a little strange,' he acknowledged. 'So you’ll have to bear with me.' The Koch network, he said, needed to present its free-market ideology as an apolitical and altruistic reform movement to enhance the quality of life—as 'a movement for well-being.' The network should make the case that free markets forged a path to happiness, whereas big government led to tyranny, Fascism, and even Nazism."

"David Uhlmann, who is now a law professor at the University of Michigan, argues, 'The Koch brothers are not interested in criminal-justice reform because they suddenly became interested in the number of poor and minority Americans who are in prison. By their own admission, they became interested because they were prosecuted in Corpus Christi. They and their allies want to take us back to 1970, before the regulatory state.'”

"More questions about the Kochs’ motives arose last fall, when criminal-justice-reform legislation working its way through Congress changed dramatically. In October, the Senate Judiciary Committee passed a sentencing-reform bill that had bipartisan support. Several weeks later, the House Judiciary Committee added provisions that, environmental and consumer-safety advocates say, would weaken the government’s ability to prosecute an array of corporate crimes. According to critics, the new measures would unreasonably raise the standard required for the government to hold corporate executives criminally liable for wrongdoing; the government would have to prove that the executives hadn’t just committed a crime but knowingly done so, even in instances of dire consequence to the public, such as lethal pollution and unsafe food or drugs."

"Uhlmann, the former Justice Department official, warned, 'For thirty years, Congress has insisted that companies know their legal obligations, and that they fail to do so at their own peril. This legislation would erode the venerable principle that ignorance of the law is no defense.' He went on, 'While we need to reduce the Draconian sentences imposed on nonviolent drug offenders, the Kochs are using criminal-justice reform as a Trojan horse for their efforts to weaken environmental, health, and safety regulations.'”

"Mike Paul, the head of Reputation Doctor, isn’t surprised that the Kochs’ rebranding has encountered troubles. 'You can’t just use spin to make it look like you’re doing the right thing,' he says. 'Ultimately, the currency that the Kochs are after is trust. And it’s won only by showing consistency, transparency, and evidence of real change.'”