Glenn Greenwald ain't no Libertarian, Part 1: Defending Social Security and Medicare

[muriel_volestrangler]

225. We've had the Koch stuff dealt with already

In this thread? Another of the "We Must All Hate Greenwald" threads? Who knows. Here it is:

I am not now, nor have I ever been, employed by the Cato Institute. Nor have I ever been affiliated with the Cato Institute in any way. The McCarthyite tone of the denials is appropriate given the McCarthyite nature of the lie.

In seven-plus years of political writing, I have written a grand total of twice for Cato: the first was a 2009 report on the success of drug decriminalization in Portugal, and the second was a 2010 online debate in which I argued against former Bush officials about the evils of the surveillance state.

I not only disclosed those writings but wrote about them and featured them multiple times on my blog as it happened: see here and here as but two examples. In 2008, I spoke at a Cato event on the radicalism and destructiveness of Bush/Cheney executive power theories.That's the grand total of all the work I ever did for or with Cato in my life. The fees for those two papers and that one speech were my standard writing and speaking fees. Those payments are a miniscule, microscopic fraction of my writing and speaking income over the last 7 years. I have done no paying work of any kind with them since that online surveillance debate in 2010 (I spoke three times at Cato for free: once to debate the theme of my 2007 book on the failure of the Bush administration, and twice when I presented my paper advocating drug decriminalization).

I have done far more work for, and received far greater payments from, the ACLU, with which I consulted for two years (see here). I spoke at the Socialism Conference twice - once in 2011 and once in 2012 - and will almost certainly do so again in 2013. I'll speak or write basically anywhere where I can have my ideas heard without any constraints. Moreover, I'll work with almost anyone - the ACLU, Cato or anyone else - to end the evils of the Drug War and the Surveillance State. And I'll criticize anyone I think merits it, as I did quite harshly with the Koch Brothers in 2011: here.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/01/30/1182442/-Glenn-Greenwald-Responds-to-Widespread-Lies-About-Him-on-Cato-Iraq-War-and-more

So, no, he doesn't "take paychecks from Koch". He has had 2 articles, both on civil liberties, published by Cato. Yes, he is now employed by Omidyar; explain how that makes him a Libertarian, when his political views are clearly not Libertarian. Yes, he makes attacks from the left; that's my whole fucking point - he's not Libertarian.

Obama offered the chained CPI social security; the Republicans were too right wing (and/or dumb, from their point of view) to take it. A huge number of DUers were really worried about it. Are you saying they were all secret Libertarians, 'specializing in attacks from the left'?