Kochs win again as their boy, Marc, short-circuits Trump MAGA with an anti-populist spending bill

President Donald Trump must have been distracted, while rubbing his gold-plated putter, when the Cabinet and the West Wing top birds were being anointed, because only golf daydreaming easily explains:

• H. R. McMaster, James Mattis, Rick Perry and Wilbur Ross – Bilderberg Group participants.
• Gary Cohn, Dina Habib Powell and Steven Mnuchin – Goldman Sachs
• Rex Tillerson – Exxon-Mobil
• Kenneth I. Juster – Trilateral Commission

These officials are all establishment globalists, and Trump campaigned as a populist nationalist. Each appointee should be considered a slippery swamper, and because of that, some are now out of office or headed that way.

But one name emerges from this growing Alligatorinae list – the most threatening to any “Make America Great” effort by Trump – Marc Short.

Marc is a devoted creature of the Koch Brothers, whose donations of hundreds of millions of dollars to GOP campaigns has acquired them a cadre of loyal public officials, including the Vice President.

Named chief of staff of the House Republican Conference in 2009 by Mike Pence, Marc stayed until 2011, when he was hired by Freedom Partners, a Koch-funded chamber of commerce in Arlington, Virginia. Marc was the organization’s President from 2011 to 2016.

It was a great gig for Marc, promoting the ideals of the Koch dudes and their late father, Fred, who founded the anti-government John Birch Society. Privatize, privatize was the motto, including plans to end Medicare and Social Security.

Freedom Partners is organized as a chamber of commerce and includes about 200 members. Unlike the Pawnee (Indiana) chamber dues of $30 a month, each Freedom member pays a minimum $100,000 annually. Records show that in 2012 alone, the organization raised $256 million.

A majority of the Freedom Partners board is usually made up of long-time employees of the Koch brothers.

The Washington Post described the organization as “carefully constructed with extensive legal barriers to shield its donors” and said it operated “de facto banks…feeding money to groups downstream.”

Marc was paid $1,110,328 in 2015 alone by the nonprofit, and received another $48,444 in “other compensation from the organization and related organizations”, according to IRS filings.

In January, last year, Trump named Short the Director of Legislative Affairs and Assistant to the President. He left the good life to make about $172,000 in public office.

But perhaps the Short goal is no longer money, but power. He now directs coordination between the U.S. Congress and the White House. As liaison, he represents the President’s interests and is charged with promoting only the Trump agenda.

That coordination (or lack of it) brought about the recent Omnibus Bill.  Nearly every Trump request was ignored by Congress, and hundreds of pork goodies were included in the final legislation. It appeared that the President had no clue what was being discussed by the final four of Addison Mitchell McConnell, Charles Ellis Schumer, Nancy Patricia D’Alesandro Pelosi, and Paul Davis Ryan Jr.

When the Congressional honchos finished their pork allocation frenzy, Short personally signed off on the deal and later acted surprised at Trump’s objections and threat of veto.

Question now: how long does Short have in office?