Paul Ryan's choice: Koch brothers or his constituents?
http://host.madison.com/ct/news/opinion/editorial/paul-ryan-s-choice-koch-brothers-or-his-constituents/article_a77a1a86-3bcd-5bc3-9911-2fb16d98e568.html
When the city of Kenosha was preparing to formally petition Congress to take the necessary steps to get corporate money out of politics and to restore grass-roots democracy, the congressman who represents the community was meeting secretly with the Koch brothers to plot election strategies and policy agendas.
Kenosha is the largest city in Wisconsin’s 1st Congressional District, which Congressman Paul Ryan has represented since 1999 — thanks to heavy infusions of cash from out-of-state special interests. With Congress out of session for the August recess and Ryan expected to head home to meet with constituents, members of the Kenosha City Council decided to deliver a message. They voted overwhelmingly to ask Ryan and other Wisconsin representatives to amend the Constitution to bar corporate cash from buying elections.
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Ryan has been among the prime beneficiaries of the money-in-politics moment ushered in by the high court's Citizens United ruling. As the House Budget Committee chairman, he has collected millions of dollars from individuals and groups that stand to benefit from initiatives such as Social Security privatization and schemes to “reform” Medicaid and Medicare. The congressman has become a favorite of many of the biggest donors in the country, including billionaire industrialists Charles and David Koch.
The Koch brothers, prime funders of conservative causes and Republican politicians, were enthusiastic backers of placing Ryan on the 2012 Republican ticket. That move ended in a fiasco that saw Ryan fail to deliver Wisconsin for the ticket led by Mitt Romney. Ryan lost not only his hometown of Janesville but many of the other communities in his district, including Kenosha.
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