The Koch brothers have been involved with Libertarian causes for decades, ever since David Koch discovered a campaign finance loophole that would allow him to donate unlimited sums of money to a political candidate, so long as he was on the ticket. So he bought himself a $2 million spot on the Libertarian party’s 1980 ticket as the VP candidate, running on a platform of extreme deregulation, which would benefit Koch Industries and further line the brothers’ pockets. Fast forward to 2015, and the brothers are sponsoring a bizarre Libertarian movement in New Hampshire aimed at taking over and demolishing the state government.
The Free State Project‘s goal is to move 20,000 libertarians to the state and effectively overrun the state government and possibly even secede from the United States. Despite its extreme rhetoric, the Free State Project has deep connections to the Koch brothers. The New Hampshire chapter of Americans for Prosperity, the Kochs’ political arm, was a sponsor for the organization’s “Moved by Liberty” forum held March 5-8, 2015 in Manchester. The event also featured speakers from the Cato Institute, the Josiah Bartlet Center and Charles Koch Institute (all Koch-funded organizations).
Their support of the Free State Project is just another example of the extremes the Koch brothers will go to in order to rake in more money through deregulation. From the project’s beginning it has encouraged its members to secede. It also works to elect candidates that want to make deep cuts to important infrastructure such as highways and public education, just like Koch-favored candidates in states like North Carolina and Kansas.
While the Free State Project may be selling what it sees as a Libertarian utopia, its sponsors, the Koch brothers, are much more interested in the profits they will gain in the economic free-for-all it would create.