Kenneth Langone, who wrote WSJ op-ed defending the Chamber, attended Koch event

[ProSense]

Secretive Republican Donors Are Planning Ahead

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To give prospective participants a sense of what to expect, Mr. Koch’s letter enclosed a brochure from the group’s meeting at the St. Regis Resort in Aspen, including a list of the roughly 200 participants — a confab of hedge fund executives, Republican donors, free-market evangelists and prominent members of the New York social circuit.

They listened to a presentations on “microtargeting” to identify like-minded voters, as well as a discussion about voter mobilization featuring Tim Phillips of Americans for Prosperity, the political action group founded by the Kochs in 2004, which campaigned against the health care legislation passed in March and is helping Tea Party groups set up get-out-the-vote operations.

Other sessions discussed the opportunities in the presidential election of 2012 to address threats to free enterprise and “how supporters of economic freedom might start planning today.”

Impressed by the Koch efforts for the midterms, the invitation cover letter says, Aspen participants “committed to an unprecedented level of support.”

“However,” it adds, “even if these efforts succeed, other serious threats demand action.”

The participants in Aspen dined under the stars at the top of the gondola run on Aspen Mountain, and listened to Glenn Beck of Fox News in a session titled, “Is America on the Road to Serfdom?” (The title refers to a classic of Austrian economic thought that informs libertarian ideology, popularized by Mr. Beck on his show.)The participants included some of the nation’s wealthiest families and biggest names in finance: private equity and hedge fund executives like John Childs, Cliff Asness, Steve Schwarzman and Ken Griffin; Phil Anschutz, the entertainment and media mogul ranked by Forbes as the 34th-richest person in the country; Rich DeVos, the co-founder of Amway; Steve Bechtel of the giant construction firm; and Kenneth Langone of Home Depot.

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Stop Bashing Business, Mr. President

If we tried to start The Home Depot today, it's a stone cold certainty that it would never have gotten off the ground.

By KEN LANGONE

Although I was glad that you answered a question of mine at the Sept. 20 town-hall meeting you hosted in Washington, D.C., Mr. President, I must say that the event seemed more like a lecture than a dialogue. For more than two years the country has listened to your sharp rhetoric about how American businesses are short-changing workers, fleecing customers, cheating borrowers, and generally "driving the economy into a ditch," to borrow your oft-repeated phrase.

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I'm sure that kind of argument draws cheers from the partisan faithful. But to my ears it sounded patronizing. Of course, one of the chief conceits of centralized economic planning is that the planners know better than everybody else.

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But there's a much deeper problem than whether I am personally irked or not. Your insistence that your policies are necessary and beneficial to business is utterly at odds with what you and your administration are saying elsewhere. You pick a fight with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, accusing it of using foreign money to influence congressional elections, something the chamber adamantly denies. Your U.S. attorney in New York, Preet Bahrara, compares investment firms to Mexican drug cartels and says he wants the power to wiretap Wall Street when he sees fit. And you drew guffaws of approving laughter with your car-wreck metaphor, recently telling a crowd that those who differ with your approach are "standing up on the road, sipping a Slurpee" while you are "shoving" and "sweating" to fix the broken-down jalopy of state.

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A little more than 30 years ago, Bernie Marcus, Arthur Blank, Pat Farrah and I got together and founded The Home Depot. Our dream was to create (memo to DNC activists: that's build, not take or coerce) a new kind of home-improvement center catering to do-it-yourselfers. The concept was to have a wide assortment, a high level of service, and the lowest pricing possible.

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[Parker CA]

1. Slowly, all of their ties will become clear. Maddow and LO should have a good time with this story.

[Kdillard]

2. It is like they arw not even trying anymore to hide the corruption.

[toddwv]

3. The Koch-headed Corporate Conspiracy Seems to Run Deep

I don't see how anyone but pure-blood, old-school corporatist could see this as a good thing. The middle-class has been decimated, the economy ripped to shreds and the onslaught against social programs that provide a safety net for everyone who doesn't have a few million dollars stuffed in an offshore account somewhere -- these should all be strong wakeup calls. This is another planned effect of the consolidation of the media into corporate hands.