'Dirty Jobs' Mike Rowe Meets the Koch Brothers
This is a fluff piece trying to make an arch-conservative who is constantly pushing for deregulation and removal of environmental protections sound like a softy because he donated a bunch of money to Rowe&#x27;s foundation. I have no doubt that the Koch brothers believe the agenda they push is for the best, but that&#x27;s because they are self centered people.<p>If you dig below the surface of any of the seemingly not self interested stories told in this piece, they come from a place of total self interest. The Koch brothers employ former convicts because they know they can pay them low wages and work them hard in their factories because they&#x27;re desperate for work. The Koch brothers push for deregulation of all industry, the hair braiding license is just a seemingly &quot;common sense&quot; deregulation story.<p>Mike Rowe has long been far too cozy for my comfort to large corporations and conservative politics in general. He throws Bill Maher in here to make himself sound &quot;middle of the road&quot; or like he has views across the spectrum, but in general Mr. Rowe tends to be on the conservative side of issues, which is why it&#x27;s no surprise to me that he&#x27;s buddies with the Koch brothers.<p>EDIT:<p>I should add that you can be a conservative and be a principled person who isn&#x27;t selfish (obviously), but the Koch brothers are not that. You can also be a selfish liberal too, so I don&#x27;t mean to imply that conservatives have a monopoly on being an asshole.