Monday, January 27, 2014
Things Go Dirtier With Koch
A friend from my hometown posted this on his facebook page:
"David and Charles Koch are in the process of hosting their biannual conservative training session for billionaires in Indian Wells, California. The effort this year is to raise millions to mislead the public about Obamacare and to use that information to defeat vulnerable Democratic representatives and senators in the upcoming mid-term elections. They have rented out the entire Hotel Esmerelda (558 rooms), closed the restaurants to the public for three days, and shut down the recreational facilities (see the picture). They have also surrounded the grounds and nearby golf course with telephone laden security guards, all dressed in black (see my new friend). It was truly eerie watching this unfold."
If anyone can refute this, feel free to do so. But I don't think anyone will.
"Though the donors will funnel tens of millions of dollars into the election this year, they will not have to disclose a single cent. Using an elaborate array of foundations, nonprofits, and other legal entities, the Koch network sponsored bus tours, attack ads, think tanks, and hired Tea Party organizers to shape the midterm elections two years ago.
Now it appears they are expanding the effort. The most that the public knows about these meetings has been culled from leaked audio tapes, reporting from journalists like Ken Vogel, and from an invitation I exclusively reported back in October of 2010. The document I posted over a year ago explained that during the meetings, strategy is discussed, from legislative campaigns to judicial elections, and money is raised from an assortment of executives from the oil, banking, manufacturing, and real estate industries." --SOURCE
Now what was all that whining about we hear from the GOOPers about George Soros?
Do they really know nothing about the conservative corporatist fascists plotting in their own backyards to forever alter our democracy? The low-information voters were fed the lie that it is President Obama who would "fundamentally change" America, while, covertly, the billionaire Koch brothers are doing that very thing. The Koch brothers cynically turn us against each other, while plotting to buy up every legislator they can to make this country into their own private empire. It won't matter who the president is. America will belong to the Kochs.
We know all about the right of freedom to assemble, and all that pious nada dada, but when the Kochroach brothers gather their cronies, there is an eerie reminder of capo confabs when organized crime gathered in remote and secret places to plot nefarious misdeeds.
ReplyDeleteFor over 30 years, the most powerful corporatists in America have bought off politicians to win special subsidies, outright grants, perks and privileges, and preferred tax status to further their obdurate self-interest at the expense of country and countrymen. Last week, this news report revealed: The world’s 85 wealthiest people have more money than half the world population.
The super-rich have hidden away over $21 trillion in secret tax havens. Yet, Republicans complain of budget deficits and national debt and lend sympathy to those who would cut the social safety net - rather than stake a rightful claim to tax revenues that the sociopaths have cheated from us.
When the value of labor falls to subsistence wages and the middle class slouches towards poverty, the sharks demand even more perks and privileges. Predatory capitalism is not capitalism; it’s feudalism.
Shaw was absolutely right some time ago when she said: Republicans are epic for voting against their own economic self-interest. In the marketplace of ideas, free speech is only as deep as one’s pocketbook, and the plutocracy speaks far louder than you or me, and the deep blue sea.
What the plutocrats do just as successfully as making money is fund stink tanks that spin messages to atomize and splinter the electorate into partisan camps when all people should be finding common cause.
You're right, it is indeed feudalism and that seems to be the natural state of mankind since history began. Democracies are amazingly fragile and depend on a rational and informed citizenry. That's something we are not and less so as time goes by. Our main exposure to events and our almost exclusive source of interpretation is controlled by a very few players, just as it was in the dark ages and Medieval times when the lord of the manor and the parish priest monopolized it all.
ReplyDeleteI think Democracy as we pretend exists is going to disappear in America and what remaining influence we retain in the world will have to depend more on threats and bullying while any respect we have still will be replaced by fear and loathing.
We are cracking down to an unprecedented extent on monies kept abroad by people born in America, whether or not they ever lived here, to the point where most foreign banks will not let Americans in the door, but I'm quite sure this doesn't apply to those 85 people. Not much does and "do as thou wilt" is the only law they recognize.
An amusing story. Once when trying to buy a book from Amazon in Germany, I was accidentally registered as a vendor and of course the Treasury Department's new rules require them to report everything I do and to obtain my tax ID number. They're still threatening, howling and yelling for me to file reports even after I went on their website and changed my status to buyer. I never sold or offered anything for sale. The catch is that the only way to report my tax number is to register as a seller.
Since 9/11 the power of the Feds, to search, grab, interrogate and seize without warrant has expanded beyond what most people imagine and we can't do a damned thing about it. So much for Democracy.