Introduction: The Tea Party movement has garnered tremendous media attention, most of which has focused on superficiality–images of “the angry voter,” false or misleading statements about Obama, and the assumption that somehow “they” are responsible for the discomfort felt by the adherents to the Party.
What has not received much publicity until recently is the fact that what appears to be a broad-based, “populist”, “grass-roots” movement is actually driven in considerable measure by institutions financed by the very wealthy and dedicated to advancing the interests of that element of society. That advance is at the considerable expense of Tea Party adherents, many of whom will succumb to the outgrowths of the philosophy they have embraced.
Labeling Obama alternately “a Muslim” and/or “a Marxist” (failing to understand the contradiction), attacking him for raising taxes (85% of Americans are paying lower taxes under Obama) and for “trying to take away” their guns (he signed into law a bill allowing the carrying of loaded firearms on public park lands), the Tea Party rank and file are moving in the direction of “intensifying politics of free-market fundamentalism at the very historical moment that proves the failure of such an ideology.”
Epitomizing the political dualism embodied in the Tea Party movement is the political machine put together by the billionaire Koch brothers, David Koch in particular. (David Koch is pictured above, at right.) Son of one of the prime movers of the John Birch Society, David Koch was a driving force behind the genesis of the Libertarian Party in the early 1980’s, running for Vice-President in 1980 against Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush.
The formidable array of think tanks and NGO’s, journalists and political pundits who owe their careers to the brothers and their institutions, together constitute the machine termed “The Kochtopus.”
The foundation of the Kochs political philosophy–embodied in the political realities underlying the Tea Party–is one of “corporatism” or “the Corporate State” as Mussolini put it. Indeed, Birch Society kingpin Fred Koch openly admired Mussolini’s supposed “suppression” of the communists. (In fact, communism was already waning in Italy when Mussolini took over. See Miscellaneous Archive Show M42.)
In this context, one should never forget the inclusion of Nazis and fascists in the Republican Party at a fundamental level.
Indeed, Charles Koch has opined that America could be on the verge of “the greatest loss of liberty and prosperity since the 1930s.” The reference is, of course, to the New Deal. Many of this country’s top industrialists and financiers attempted to overthrow Roosevelt in 1934, hoping to set up a dictatorship like Mussolini’s. The Bush family appear to have been involved with the plotting of the ’34 coup.
This translation of Corporatism into a broad-based political movement is a manifestation of classical fascism. Even former close friends and associates of the Kochs admit that the brothers have confused “freedom” with what will maximize their corporate profits.
Program Highlights Include: The Koch brothers’ founding of the Mercatus Center–an archetypal Kochtopus element; the Mercatus Center’s profound influence on Bush (II) administration policy; the Koch brothers manipulation of environmental regulations; the effect of that manipulation on regulation of formaldehyde–a carcinogen produced by Koch Industries; David Koch’s role in financing cancer research–one of a number of roles that places him in a position of conflict of interest.
1. Despite their attempts at cultivating the image of patrons of the arts and benefactors to society, the Kochs are, in fact, at the epicenter of the anti-Obama movement. The brothers main commercial undertaking is Koch Industries, a conglomerate with major participation in the fossil-fuels and chemical industries, in particular.
. . . In Washington, Koch is best known as part of a family that has repeatedly funded stealth attacks on the federal government, and on the Obama Administration in particular.
With his brother Charles, who is seventy-four, David Koch owns virtually all of Koch Industries, a conglomerate, headquartered in Wichita, Kansas, whose annual revenues are estimated to be a hundred billion dollars. The company has grown spectacularly since their father, Fred, died, in 1967, and the brothers took charge. The Kochs operate oil refineries in Alaska, Texas, and Minnesota, and control some four thousand miles of pipeline. Koch Industries owns Brawny paper towels, Dixie cups, Georgia-Pacific lumber, Stainmaster carpet, and Lycra, among other products. Forbes ranks it as the second-largest private company in the country, after Cargill, and its consistent profitability has made David and Charles Koch—who, years ago, bought out two other brothers—among the richest men in America. Their combined fortune of thirty-five billion dollars is exceeded only by those of Bill Gates and Warren Buffett. . . .
“Covert Operations” by Jane Mayer; The New Yorker; 8/30/2010.
2. As major polluters and members of the ultra-rich, the Kochs stand to benfit from a frustration of the Obama political agenda.
. . . The Kochs are longtime libertarians who believe in drastically lower personal and corporate taxes, minimal social services for the needy, and much less oversight of industry—especially environmental regulation. These views dovetail with the brothers’ corporate interests. In a study released this spring, the University of Massachusetts at Amherst’s Political Economy Research Institute named Koch Industries one of the top ten air polluters in the United States. And Greenpeace issued a report identifying the company as a “kingpin of climate science denial.” The report showed that, from 2005 to 2008, the Kochs vastly outdid ExxonMobil in giving money to organizations fighting legislation related to climate change, underwriting a huge network of foundations, think tanks, and political front groups. Indeed, the brothers have funded opposition campaigns against so many Obama Administration policies—from health-care reform to the economic-stimulus program—that, in political circles, their ideological network is known as the Kochtopus.
In a statement, Koch Industries said that the Greenpeace report “distorts the environmental record of our companies.” And David Koch, in a recent, admiring article about him in New York, protested that the “radical press” had turned his family into “whipping boys,” and had exaggerated its influence on American politics. But Charles Lewis, the founder of the Center for Public Integrity, a nonpartisan watchdog group, said, “The Kochs are on a whole different level. There’s no one else who has spent this much money. The sheer dimension of it is what sets them apart. They have a pattern of lawbreaking, political manipulation, and obfuscation. I’ve been in Washington since Watergate, and I’ve never seen anything like it. They are the Standard Oil of our times.” . . .
3. As indicated above, the brothers learned their political philosophy from their father Fred Koch, a seminal member of the John Birch Society.
. . . . In 1958, Fred Koch became one of the original members of the John Birch Society, the arch-conservative group known, in part, for a highly skeptical view of governance and for spreading fears of a Communist takeover. Members considered President Dwight D. Eisenhower to be a Communist agent. In a self-published broadside, Koch claimed that “the Communists have infiltrated both the Democrat and Republican Parties.” He wrote admiringly of Benito Mussolini’s suppression of Communists in Italy, and disparagingly of the American civil-rights movement. “The colored man looms large in the Communist plan to take over America,” he warned. Welfare was a secret plot to attract rural blacks to cities, where they would foment “a vicious race war.” In a 1963 speech that prefigures the Tea Party’s talk of a secret socialist plot, Koch predicted that Communists would “infiltrate the highest offices of government in the U.S. until the President is a Communist, unknown to the rest of us.”. . .
4. Disclaimers to the contrary notwithstanding, the Tea Party movement is deeply involved with the Kochtopus.
A few weeks after the Lincoln Center gala, the advocacy wing of the Americans for Prosperity Foundation—an organization that David Koch started, in 2004—held a different kind of gathering. Over the July 4th weekend, a summit called Texas Defending the American Dream took place in a chilly hotel ballroom in Austin. Though Koch freely promotes his philanthropic ventures, he did not attend the summit, and his name was not in evidence. And on this occasion the audience was roused not by a dance performance but by a series of speakers denouncing President Barack Obama. Peggy Venable, the organizer of the summit, warned that Administration officials “have a socialist vision for this country.”
Five hundred people attended the summit, which served, in part, as a training session for Tea Party activists in Texas. An advertisement cast the event as a populist uprising against vested corporate power. “Today, the voices of average Americans are being drowned out by lobbyists and special interests,” it said. “But you can do something about it.” The pitch made no mention of its corporate funders. The White House has expressed frustration that such sponsors have largely eluded public notice. David Axelrod, Obama’s senior adviser, said, “What they don’t say is that, in part, this is a grassroots citizens’ movement brought to you by a bunch of oil billionaires.”
In April, 2009, Melissa Cohlmia, a company spokesperson, denied that the Kochs had direct links to the Tea Party, saying that Americans for Prosperity is “an independent organization and Koch companies do not in any way direct their activities.” Later, she issued a statement: “No funding has been provided by Koch companies, the Koch foundations, or Charles Koch or David Koch specifically to support the tea parties.” David Koch told New York, “I’ve never been to a tea-party event. No one representing the tea party has ever even approached me.”
At the lectern in Austin, however, Venable—a longtime political operative who draws a salary from Americans for Prosperity, and who has worked for Koch-funded political groups since 1994—spoke less warily. “We love what the Tea Parties are doing, because that’s how we’re going to take back America!” she declared, as the crowd cheered. In a subsequent interview, she described herself as an early member of the movement, joking, “I was part of the Tea Party before it was cool!” She explained that the role of Americans for Prosperity was to help “educate” Tea Party activists on policy details, and to give them “next-step training” after their rallies, so that their political energy could be channeled “more effectively.” And she noted that Americans for Prosperity had provided Tea Party activists with lists of elected officials to target. She said of the Kochs, “They’re certainly our people. David’s the chairman of our board. I’ve certainly met with them, and I’m very appreciative of what they do.”
Venable honored several Tea Party “citizen leaders” at the summit. The Texas branch of Americans for Prosperity gave its Blogger of the Year Award to a young woman named Sibyl West. On June 14th, West, writing on her site, described Obama as the “cokehead in chief.” In an online thread, West speculated that the President was exhibiting symptoms of “demonic possession (aka schizophrenia, etc.).” The summit featured several paid speakers, including Janine Turner, the actress best known for her role on the television series “Northern Exposure.” She declared, “They don’t want our children to know about their rights. They don’t want our children to know about a God!”
During a catered lunch, Venable introduced Ted Cruz, a former solicitor general of Texas, who told the crowd that Obama was “the most radical President ever to occupy the Oval Office,” and had hidden from voters a secret agenda—“the government taking over our economy and our lives.” Countering Obama, Cruz proclaimed, was “the epic fight of our generation!” As the crowd rose to its feet and cheered, he quoted the defiant words of a Texan at the Alamo: “Victory, or death!”
Americans for Prosperity has worked closely with the Tea Party since the movement’s inception. In the weeks before the first Tax Day protests, in April, 2009, Americans for Prosperity hosted a Web site offering supporters “Tea Party Talking Points.” The Arizona branch urged people to send tea bags to Obama; the Missouri branch urged members to sign up for “Taxpayer Tea Party Registration” and provided directions to nine protests. The group continues to stoke the rebellion. The North Carolina branch recently launched a “Tea Party Finder” Web site, advertised as “a hub for all the Tea Parties in North Carolina.”
5. Epitomizing the construct of the Kochs’ political apparatus is the Mercatus Center, established at a private university in Virginia. It has asserted tremendous influence on policy, particularly in the administration of George W. Bush, for whose election the Kochs worked very hard.
. . . In the mid-eighties, the Kochs provided millions of dollars to George Mason University, in Arlington, Virginia, to set up another think tank. Now known as the Mercatus Center, it promotes itself as “the world’s premier university source for market-oriented ideas—bridging the gap between academic ideas and real-world problems.” Financial records show that the Koch family foundations have contributed more than thirty million dollars to George Mason, much of which has gone to the Mercatus Center, a nonprofit organization. “It’s ground zero for deregulation policy in Washington,” Rob Stein, the Democratic strategist, said. It is an unusual arrangement. “George Mason is a public university, and receives public funds,” Stein noted. “Virginia is hosting an institution that the Kochs practically control.”
The founder of the Mercatus Center is Richard Fink, formerly an economist. Fink heads Koch Industries’ lobbying operation in Washington. In addition, he is the president of the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation, the president of the Claude R. Lambe Charitable Foundation, a director of the Fred C. and Mary R. Koch Foundation, and a director and co-founder, with David Koch, of the Americans for Prosperity Foundation.
Fink, with his many titles, has become the central nervous system of the Kochtopus. He appears to have supplanted Ed Crane, the head of the Cato Institute, as the brothers’ main political lieutenant. Though David remains on the board at Cato, Charles Koch has fallen out with Crane. Associates suggested to me that Crane had been insufficiently respectful of Charles’s management philosophy, which he distilled into a book called “The Science of Success,” and trademarked under the name Market-Based Management, or M.B.M. In the book, Charles recommends instilling a company’s corporate culture with the competitiveness of the marketplace. Koch describes M.B.M. as a “holistic system” containing “five dimensions: vision, virtue and talents, knowledge processes, decision rights and incentives.” A top Cato Institute official told me that Charles “thinks he’s a genius. He’s the emperor, and he’s convinced he’s wearing clothes.” Fink, by contrast, has been far more embracing of Charles’s ideas. (Fink, like the Kochs, declined to be interviewed.)
At a 1995 conference for philanthropists, Fink adopted the language of economics when speaking about the Mercatus Center’s purpose. He said that grant-makers should use think tanks and political-action groups to convert intellectual raw materials into policy “products.”
The Wall Street Journal has called the Mercatus Center “the most important think tank you’ve never heard of,” and noted that fourteen of the twenty-three regulations that President George W. Bush placed on a “hit list” had been suggested first by Mercatus scholars. Fink told the paper that the Kochs have “other means of fighting [their] battles,” and that the Mercatus Center does not actively promote the company’s private interests. But Thomas McGarity, a law professor at the University of Texas, who specializes in environmental issues, told me that “Koch has been constantly in trouble with the E.P.A., and Mercatus has constantly hammered on the agency.” An environmental lawyer who has clashed with the Mercatus Center called it “a means of laundering economic aims.” The lawyer explained the strategy: “You take corporate money and give it to a neutral-sounding think tank,” which “hires people with pedigrees and academic degrees who put out credible-seeming studies. But they all coincide perfectly with the economic interests of their funders.” . . .
6. David Koch has spent millions to fund cancer research. With his industrial concerns producing known carcinogens, such as formaldehyde, this constitutes a conflict of interest–a type of conflict that often results in resolutions that satisfy the major donors.
. . . And he became a patron of cancer research, focusing on prostate cancer. In addition to his gifts to Sloan-Kettering, he gave fifteen million dollars to New York-Presbyterian Hospital, a hundred and twenty-five million to M.I.T. for cancer research, twenty million to Johns Hopkins University, and twenty-five million to the M. D. Anderson Cancer Center, in Houston. In response to his generosity, Sloan-Kettering gave Koch its Excellence in Corporate Leadership Award. In 2004, President Bush named him to the National Cancer Advisory Board, which guides the National Cancer Institute.
Koch’s corporate and political roles, however, may pose conflicts of interest. For example, at the same time that David Koch has been casting himself as a champion in the fight against cancer, Koch Industries has been lobbying to prevent the E.P.A. from classifying formaldehyde, which the company produces in great quantities, as a “known carcinogen” in humans.
Scientists have long known that formaldehyde causes cancer in rats, and several major scientific studies have concluded that formaldehyde causes cancer in human beings—including one published last year by the National Cancer Institute, on whose advisory board Koch sits. The study tracked twenty-five thousand patients for an average of forty years; subjects exposed to higher amounts of formaldehyde had significantly higher rates of leukemia. These results helped lead an expert panel within the National Institutes of Health to conclude that formaldehyde should be categorized as a known carcinogen, and be strictly controlled by the government. Corporations have resisted regulations on formaldehyde for decades, however, and Koch Industries has been a large funder of members of Congress who have stymied the E.P.A., requiring it to defer new regulations until more studies are completed.
Koch Industries became a major producer of the chemical in 2005, after it bought Georgia-Pacific, the paper and wood-products company, for twenty-one billion dollars. Georgia-Pacific manufactures formaldehyde in its chemical division, and uses it to produce various wood products, such as plywood and laminates. Its annual production capacity for formaldehyde is 2.2 billion pounds. Last December, Traylor Champion, Georgia-Pacific’s vice-president of environmental affairs, sent a formal letter of protest to federal health authorities. He wrote that the company “strongly disagrees” with the N.I.H. panel’s conclusion that formaldehyde should be treated as a known human carcinogen. David Koch did not recuse himself from the National Cancer Advisory Board, or divest himself of company stock, while his company was directly lobbying the government to keep formaldehyde on the market. (A board spokesperson said that the issue of formaldehyde had not come up.)
James Huff, an associate director at the National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences, a division of the N.I.H., told me that it was “disgusting” for Koch to be serving on the National Cancer Advisory Board: “It’s just not good for public health. Vested interests should not be on the board.” He went on, “Those boards are very important. They’re very influential as to whether N.C.I. goes into formaldehyde or not. Billions of dollars are involved in formaldehyde.” . . .
7. When citizens have become sickened by pollutants produced by the Koch brothers and their ilk, they will have less chance of receiving adequate treatment if the Kochtopus has its way. The brothers have been implacable opponents of health care reform.
. . . Americans for Prosperity also created an offshoot, Patients United Now, which organized what Phillips has estimated to be more than three hundred rallies against health-care reform. At one rally, an effigy of a Democratic congressman was hung; at another, protesters unfurled a banner depicting corpses from Dachau. The group also helped organize the “Kill the Bill” protests outside the Capitol, in March, where Democratic supporters of health-care reform alleged that they were spat on and cursed at. Phillips was a featured speaker.
Americans for Prosperity has held at least eighty events targeting cap-and-trade legislation, which is aimed at making industries pay for the air pollution that they create. Speakers for the group claimed, with exaggeration, that even back-yard barbecues and kitchen stoves would be taxed. The group was also involved in the attacks on Obama’s “green jobs” czar, Van Jones, and waged a crusade against international climate talks. Casting his group as a champion of ordinary workers who would be hurt by environmentalists, Phillips went to Copenhagen last year and staged a protest outside the United Nations conference on climate change, declaring, “We’re a grassroots organization. . . . I think it’s unfortunate when wealthy children of wealthy families . . . want to send unemployment rates in the United States up to twenty per cent.”
Grover Norquist, who holds a weekly meeting for conservative leaders in Washington, including representatives from Americans for Prosperity, told me that last summer’s raucous rallies were pivotal in undermining Obama’s agenda. The Republican leadership in Congress, he said, “couldn’t have done it without August, when people went out on the streets. It discouraged deal-makers”—Republicans who might otherwise have worked constructively with Obama. Moreover, the appearance of growing public opposition to Obama affected corporate donors on K Street. “K Street is a three-billion-dollar weathervane,” Norquist said. “When Obama was strong, the Chamber of Commerce said, ‘We can work with the Obama Administration.’ But that changed when thousands of people went into the street and ‘terrorized’ congressmen. August is what changed it. Now that Obama is weak, people are getting tough.”
As the first anniversary of Obama’s election approached, David Koch came to the Washington area to attend a triumphant Americans for Prosperity gathering. Obama’s poll numbers were falling fast. Not a single Republican senator was working with the Administration on health care, or much else. Pundits were writing about Obama’s political ineptitude, and Tea Party groups were accusing the President of initiating “a government takeover.” In a speech, Koch said, “Days like today bring to reality the vision of our board of directors when we started this organization, five years ago.” He went on, “We envisioned a mass movement, a state-based one, but national in scope, of hundreds of thousands of American citizens from all walks of life standing up and fighting for the economic freedoms that made our nation the most prosperous society in history. . . . Thankfully, the stirrings from California to Virginia, and from Texas to Michigan, show that more and more of our fellow-citizens are beginning to see the same truths as we do.”
While Koch didn’t explicitly embrace the Tea Party movement that day, more recently he has come close to doing so, praising it for demonstrating the “powerful visceral hostility in the body politic against the massive increase in government power, the massive efforts to socialize this country.” Charles Koch, in a newsletter sent to his seventy thousand employees, compared the Obama Administration to the regime of the Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chávez. The Kochs’ sense of imperilment is somewhat puzzling. Income inequality in America is greater than it has been since the nineteen-twenties, and since the seventies the tax rates of the wealthiest have fallen more than those of the middle class. Yet the brothers’ message has evidently resonated with voters: a recent poll found that fifty-five per cent of Americans agreed that Obama is a socialist. . . .
so riddle me this? how can Obama be a Socialist and in the pockets of the bankers simultaneously??? Oxymoron if ever saw one.
Why do you refer to Chaves with the corporate framimg ‘strongman’? He ekection was more above board tham Bush’s? BTW I really really enjoy and often resource the fruits of your labors here. Thank You very much.
[...] Dave Emory has been working as well on the Koch brothers case for some time. In particular, FTR #726 is of great interest to get acquainted more with these shadowy figures of American politics. What [...]
“Americans Elect” is a nonprofit corporation registered as a third party in the United States which plans to use an internet-based nominating process to field a third-party corporatist ticket for the 2012 U.S. presidential election.
Despite being registered as its own political party, Americans Elect describes its approach as nonpartisan. From the pool of candidates selected in secrecy by oligarchs, people who register online will openly vote for their candidate of choice from that list.
Americans Elect claims to have gained ballot status in Arizona, Kansas, Nevada, Michigan, Florida, Ohio, Alaska, Utah, Colorado, Mississippi, California, Rhode Island and Arkansas.
The organization is attempting the process of being accredited in every US state, allowing it to place candidates on presidential ballots nationwide.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Americans_Elect
Side comment: The result of this third-party electoral manipulation, in my opinion, is to engineer a 2012 presidential vote that will not reach the minimum number of electoral votes (270) required to win the election.
This would (in accordance with the U.S. Constitution) throw the election into the (majority-Republican) House of Representatives, who would decide the presidency.
This was last done in the U.S. election of 1824, in which John Quincy Adams was chosen president.
However, in my opinion, the goal is not to elect a Republican president. The goal has been to create a split Republican vote, to (a) elect a default unpopular Democratic president who can be a patsy scapegoat that will leverage popular support for a military coup, and (b) eliminate Rove/Cheney fingerprints on a subsequent military purge, intelligence community purge, and executions of key dissidents (ala the Phoenix Program), using a Tea Party Cat’s Paw such as a President Palin who would be sworn in after a mass-casualty disaster in Washington, D.C. by “domestic Al Qaeda sympathizers” who would wipe out national-level Democrats in a single event.
The consortium “Americans Elect” is being little-covered (so far) in the U.S. press, but has significantly wealthy backers. Who, of course, wish to remain secret.
http://www.salon.com/2011/12/21/we_cant_know_whos_behind_americans_elect_because_we_might_make_fun_of_them/
http://www.salon.com/2011/12/09/the_slick_schtick_of_americans_elect/
Good Show and Happy New Year (!) R. Wilson!
Note that in the Americans Elect imbroglio, we find Peter Ackerman and his brother Elliot.
Check out the series on the Arab Spring.
Peter Ackerman is the funder of Gene Sharp and deeply involved with the events surrounding that great outcropping of “democracy.”
So it is more than a little interesting to see him looking to have an (ahem) American Spring.
To you and all the other contributors, thanks and keep up the good work.
Program production will resume sometime in 2012, when circumstances permit.
In the meantime, I will continue to post on this site.
Happy New Year,
Dave
@R. Wilson: That actually seems plausible, although I seriously doubt that the vast majority of Americans would support an actual military coup.
There may be some hope, however, as that some Republicans are beginning to become disillusioned with the GOP and may end up voting instead for someone such as Ron Paul, which could very well backfire on the U.R. given that the GOP has been their favorite party since those scumbag Dixiecrats started taking over in the late ’60s, and also given that many Democrats still have a very bad memory of 2000, when Nader’s game helped cause the tie that allowed Bush to steal the election.
In any case, it may be a while before things get any better.....but at least people are waking up.
@Dave: Hope to see you in time for the next WFMU marathon!
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/nov/07/koch-brothers-database-2012-election?fb=optOut&mid=56481
Koch brothers: secretive billionaires to launch vast database with 2012 in mind
David and Charles Koch, oil tycoons with strong right-wing views and connections, look set to tighten their grip on US politics
Ed Pilkington in New York
guardian.co.uk, Monday 7 November 2011
The secretive oil billionaires the Koch brothers are close to launching a nationwide database connecting millions of Americans who share their anti-government and libertarian views, a move that will further enhance the tycoons’ political influence and that could prove significant in next year’s presidential election.
The database will give concrete form to the vast network of alliances that David and Charles Koch have cultivated over the past 20 years on the right of US politics. The brothers, whose personal wealth has been put at $25bn each, were a major force behind the creation of the tea party movement and enjoy close ties to leading conservative politicians, financiers, business people, media figures and US supreme court judges.
The voter file was set up by the Kochs 18 months ago with $2.5m of their seed money, and is being developed by a hand-picked team of the brothers’ advisers. It has been given the name Themis, after the Greek goddess who imposes divine order on human affairs.
In classic Koch style, the project is being conducted in great secrecy. Karl Crow, a Washington-based lawyer and Koch adviser who is leading the development, did not respond to requests for comment. Nor did media representatives for Koch Industries, the brothers’ global energy company based in Wichita, Kansas.
But a member of a Koch affiliate organisation who is a specialist in the political uses of new technology and who is familiar with Themis said the project was in the final preparatory stages. Asking not to be named, he said: “They are doing a lot of analysis and testing. Finally they’re getting Themis off the ground.”
The database will bring together information from a plethora of right-wing groups, tea party organisations and conservative-leaning thinktanks. Each one has valuable data on their membership – including personal email addresses and phone numbers, as well as more general information useful to political campaign strategists such as occupation, income bracket and so on.
By pooling the information, the hope is to create a data resource that is far more potent than the sum of its parts. Themis will in effect become an electoral roll of right-wing America, allowing the Koch brothers to further enhance their power base in a way that is sympathetic to, but wholly independent of, the Republican party.
“This will take time to fully realise, but it has the potential to become a very powerful tool in 2012 and beyond,” said the new technology specialist.
Themis has been modelled in part on the scheme created by the left after the defeat of John Kerry in the 2004 presidential election. Catalyst, a voter list that shared data on supporters of progressive groups and campaigns, was an important part of the process that saw the Democratic party pick itself off the floor and refocus its electoral energies, helping to propel Barack Obama to the White House in 2008.
Josh Hendler, who until earlier this year was the Democratic National Committee’s director of technology in charge of the party’s voter files, believes Themis could do for the Kochs what Catalyst helped do for the Democrats.
“This increases the Koch brothers’ reach. It will allow them to become even greater co-ordinators than they are already – with this resource they become a natural centre of gravity for conservatives,” Hendler said.
{ ... }
By dint of the secrecy surrounding the project, it is not known which bodies have signed up for the database. But it is a reasonable guess that groups that are highly influential within the tea party movement such as Americans for Prosperity and Freedomworks, as well as right-wing think tanks like the Heritage Foundation, will be among the participants. Between them, they have tentacles that extend to millions of voters.
Lee Fang, a blogger at the Center for American Progress, thinks the combination of the Kochs’ capital and their new voter files could have an immense impact in 2012. “This will be the first major election where most of the data and the organising will be done outside the party nexus. The Kochs have the potential to outspend and out-perform the Republican party and even the successful Republican candidate.”
And then there were three:
It’s never too late to ask overdue questions:
eek! Something sleazy and filthy is emerging from the shadows! It’s a vampire!
Oh wait, no, false alarm. It’s just David Koch.
The Koch brothers want you all to know that they’re now super concerned with corporate welfare. If you haven’t heard from them about their concerns yet, don’t worry. You will:
Note that this isn’t that other notorious secret US far-right elite meeting that took place right after Obama’s 2009 inauguration where GOP heavyweights planned their upcoming four year “insurgency”(their words). That meeting happened the night of the inauguaration. The Koch’s meeting — where they planned to “get very very ugly” — happened a few day later.
Continuing...
We can all be sure that two of the top power mongers in the nation are really terrified of Obama. They are helpless citizens that don’t control a vast private global business empire and propaganda/thinktank network. And they certainly don’t control the vigilante justice squad that recently kidnapped a senior Koch Industries executive that they suspected of corruption. Nope
Skipping down...
Yes, yes, the Koch brothers are just like the American revolutionaries. A couple of modern day George John Washington Galts, those two. Granted, they didn’t invent Galt’s electrostatic motor, but their dad, Fred, made his fortune improving the process of “cracking” crude oil (and then sold the technology to Stalin after the US oil barons used buried Fred in fraudulent patent infringement lawsuits to lock Fred out of the US markets at the height of the deregulatory fever of the roaring ’20’s. Pesky regulations!). So at least Fred totally gets partial-Galt credit. Fred’s kids? Eh.... Stll, with a pair of Koch Industries muppets possibly about to take the White House if everything goes well for them on election day, it’s understandable that our oligarchs might feel that they’ll be able to convince the American public to “touch the cheese” one last time. That old moldy piece of cheese that never completely degrades but just sits there getting increasingly stale.
Now the cheese will aquire a new mold patch with an faux-anti-corporate-welfare greenish hue. Growing greener and moldier. Until it inevitably washes away and the unfortunate survivors of the cheese-touch era can finally move on.
Classical Fascism:
Talk host Michael Savage calls for “Nationalist Party”
“During an interview on “Aaron Klein Investigative Radio” on Sunday, conservative radio host Michael Savage said that the United States needs a third, nationalist party.
“There is no Republican Party,” he said in remarks first carried by the WND political news site. “It’s an appendage of the Democrat machine, as we’ve all just seen.”
Savage criticized the current leaders of the Republican and Democratic parties, calling Speaker John Boehner “drunk” and President Obama a “quasi-pseudo-crypto Marxist,” according to BuzzFeed.
During the interview, Savage pointed to the tea party as a candidate should there be a “charismatic leader” as well as party restructuring.
(snip)
“I could do it if I was 20 years younger. I would do it right now. But I’m not 20 years younger and I don’t have 20 years left in me. This is going to require enormous resource and enormous energy,” he told Aaron Klein.
However, he did accept the role as an educator through his show, teaching listeners what nationalism is really about, WND reports.
“Nationalism is the only thing that can save America, and a new nationalist party that has a very strict firewall that does not permit the radical fringe of racism,” he said. “Borders, language, culture – it defines every nation on the planet, the flag, the language, the borders. And what is it the internationalists do? They want to dissolve the borders, they want to introduce multiculturalism, they want to introduce a Tower of Babel of languages.”
http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/michael-savage-nationalist-third/2013/01/07/id/470352
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Angry old bastard.
I’m sure the Confederacy would go for it, splitting the Republican vote.
Still, unnerving at the least...
“However, he did accept the role as an educator through his show, teaching listeners what nationalism is really about”
Whoa...
Mussolini much?
Texas tea party leader promotes Fascist Party as ‘pro-Constitution, pro-America’
By David Edwards
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/03/19/texas-tea-party-leader-promotes-fascist-party-as-pro-constitution-pro-america/
A tea party leader in Texas is defending his promotion of the American Fascist Party as something he thought was “pro-Constitution, pro-America.”
James Ives, who was listed as the president of the Greater Fort Bend County Tea Party in 2011, confirmed to The Texas Tribune on Monday that he had made a promotional video for the American Fascist Party and advocated tea party principles on a Fascist Party message board.
In the video, a man who looks like Ives sits in front of a Fascist Party logo wearing a uniform with yellow shoulder patches. Another photo shows a uniformed man sitting in front of a fascist cross. The blog that inspired Norwegian mass shooter Anders Behring Breivik describes fascist solar crosses as “symbolic representations buried deep in the regions of the brain where the primal responses to stimuli are rage, awe, and fear.”
But Ives says that he was simply curious when he came to the Fascist Party as an “amateur political science student and frustrated novelist” in the early 2000s.
“From my point of view, it was all pro-Constitution, pro-America,” Ives explained to the Tribune. “I never did anything… There really weren’t enough people involved to be a gathering, let alone a rally. It was basically a scattering of people across the continent just complaining.”
The tea party leader claimed that he his participation in the Fascist Party was part of an effort to write a novel about what he thought was a cabal. But instead of writing that novel, Ives wrote on the message board about how building the Fascist Party in America was “our spirit, our calling.”
“It will be our greatest challenge, and our sweetest victory, to finally surpass this dark menace, this numbing threat from the shadows, and replace it with the pure sunbeam that is our Fascist Faith, our Fascist Truth,” Ives wrote.
Republican state Sen. Dan Patrick pledged not to host Ives on his radio show in the future if the links to the Fascist Party proved to be true.
Patrick called the tea party leader’s involvement with the fascist movement “very disturbing, no matter how far in the past it is.” The state senator insisted that Ives had “never been on our payroll, never been an employee.”
(Watch this video from James Ives, uploaded in 2006.)
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There is indeed a video with the article, but it’s a real hack job. Some symbols and pictures of the guy dressed up as a fascist leader with cheesy bubble-gum music in the background.
I guess “Serpents” need to learn to crawl before they can “Walk”.
It looks like the Koch brothers are expanding their personal “free-speech” empires to include a media empire. Considering that Citizens United made it certain that the dynamic duo would be buying up massive volumes of media ad space for years to come, the Koch’s latest attempt at democratic civil indecency is probably a decent investment:
David Koch can’t figure out why people think he’s a greedy monster so he’s starting a public relations campaign focused on promoting ideas that uplift the poor. Ideas like getting rid of the minimum wage:
@Pterrafractyl–
With regard to the Paul family, father and son, and the Koch family, NEVER lose sight of the fact that these are the interests that loom large in the wings of Fast Eddie Snowden’s One Man Band.
The notion that the little scumbag is somehow interested in human rights and the welfare of American citizens is a joke.
Don’t expect the so-called human rights groups dancing to the tune of Eddie the Friendly Spook to latch on to the salient realities, however.
Don’t expect the so-called progressive forces to reach clarity on this, either.
“Obama’s a Neocon!”, they shriek.
One of the interesting things about that dynamic is the fact that so many of those who profess to be “for the people” end up siding (in some cases unintentionally) with the most brutally inhuman elements.
GOP slashes unemployment benefits to those who have lost work because of the depression they deliberately engineered under Dubya (see FTR #412, “The Engineer Intends to Wreck the Train.”)
GOP slashes food stamps and medicaid, thereby instituting “Clausewitzian economics” on those affected. “War (or perhaps extermination) by other means.”
Of course, the so-called progressive forces will NEVER come to terms with the realities concerning the assassinations of JFK, MLK, RFK or the Nazification of the GOP, the reality of AIDS or the other material covered here.
These are also the same creatures that failed to come to terms with Operation Green Quest, which should have put the GOP bigwigs, including Norquist and Rove down in Guantanamo as enemy combatants.
Fun,fun, fun!
Best,
Dave
Fred Koch: Oil Man Against Communism. And Civil Rights:
Oh my. Check out Rich Lowry’s recent justification for opening the campaign-finance floodgates in US politics: Campaign finance restrictions are analogous to censoring Thomas Paine:
That’s right, there’s no reason to fear that the Kochtopus’s embrace might strangle the meaningful debate democracy needs to live. It’s just Common Sense.
Well here’s a bit of good news: Oklahoma passed a new energy bill and it sounds like it’s designed to promote alternative energy sources. That’s unexpected:
Well that sure sounds helpful. So how is this bill going to encourage alternative energy source? Ah. It’s going to force people to pay a fee for the right to sell electricity generated by solar panels to the utility company. Yes, people in Oklahoma with solar panels that have extra power that can be sold back to the grid are going to have to pay those utilities for that “privilege”:
Ah, yes, the Koch brothers are behind this. We should probably have expected that by now:
That was some nice sentiments at the end: “But rooftop solar customers are voters, and policymakers ultimately have to listen to the public”. Yeah, the guys that hatched a currently very successful plan to tax the sun across the US are really concerned about what the voters think. LOL! Still, it was a pleasant thought.
Looking back at the values Fred Koch Sr imparted onto his sons — a love of the fascism, homophobia, visions of Red Scaring race wars, faith in social Darwinism — and comparing them to our contemporary political zeitgeist, you have to wonder if the Law of Attraction has some special cosmic loophole where it actually applies to oligarchic clans:
Oh wait. Of course there’s a loophole, although it’s not very cosmic...
Judicial Junkets. Yep, they’re legal:
Remember folks: If the Koch’s can’t finance junkets for judges the First Amendment dies.
You have to wonder what kind of donation a stunt like this pays?:
Yeah, it’s true. The Koch Brothers are helpless private citizens that must be protected from the hateful words of Harry Reid. How will they defend themselves from these viscious assaults? Clearly, a vast, legally secret network of front groups that only a billionaire could afford will be necessary. Clearly:
Well, it looks like we should get used to a lot more congressional Koch-coddling coming up this year because, unlike most political issues, you can’t easily run a massive ad campaign in opposition to a amendment to regulate massive ad campaigns without risking an irony blowback. So proxies like the Tea Party Patriots are going to be required to really force this issue into the public sphere. And there’s a lot at stake for not just the Kochs but any individual with a lot of money to spend that they would prefer to spend in secret. Campaign finance systems this out of balance aren’t just some spontaneous event. Many horrible mistakes are required and must be protected. At all costs:
Sure, maximum spending laws might exclusively benefit the ultra-wealthy but hey, freedom isn’t free, right?
Check out the guy that took down Eric Cantor, the House Majority leader, in the GOP primary. Yes, the House majority leader just lost to some random guy that just might be crazier than Cantor as part of the GOP base’s ongoing primal scream:
Yes, David Brat, the new GOP Dragon Slayer that’s suddenly become a symbol of the GOP’s ongong Cruzification, is an economics professor with a particular focus on spreading the Gospel of Ayn. Also, he wants prevent the return of Hitler:
And here’s a bit more on Brat’s views on usury and the role of the church in the modern society:
Yes, the GOP’s new Dragon Slayer is an Ayn Rand worshiping Catholic Calvinist with complicated feelings about usury that wants to replace economic regulations on the economy with the “angel/devil on your shoulders” regulatory regime because otherwise Hitler will rise again. Plus, according to Brat, corporations and markets are people. Neat!
As Eric Cantor learned this week, when Dark Money attacks you may not see it coming:
“We’re living in a brave new world of dark money politics, and in this day and age, doing what Eric Cantor did — hanging out with the Chamber of Commerce, K Street, and Wall Street — only gets you so far. If you want to win these days, you need to win the support of the Kochs, their libertarian billionaire friends, and their allies in the talk radio world.” So in less than a decade we created a post‑K Street era that makes Jack Abramoff and the K Street Project seem quaint in comparison.
Still, the overall state of affairs in the US electoral system could be worse than legalized unlimited secret political spending. For instance, we could have a system of legalized unlimited secret political spending and a plague of still-unverifiable electronic voting machines. So, yeah, it could be a lot worse because it is a lot worse.
Pterrafractyl,
Fascinating posts on Brat. I find it especially interesting to read about his forays into the subject of Usury.
Usury is a subject that seems to jump out quite frequently when studying fascism. In John Roy Carlson’s “Under Cover,” I seem to remember the author describing a certain undercurrent of anti-usury sentiments in the flowering fascist underworld of the early-mid 20th century. Lo and behold, it has reared its head yet again in our time. However, with your posts on Brat, it appears that there is — at least the appearance of — differences of opinion on the matter in that camp.
Take one Michael Hoffman, non-economist author of the 416 page “Usury in Christendom: The Mortal Sin that Was and Now Is Not.” Here, Hoffman (a fellow traveler of Adam Parfrey, Ernst Zundel, and occasional speaker at events in Sandpoint, Idaho) wildly swings away at the practice of usury among Christians, and lambasts conservative Ayn Rand followers such as Brat.
But while Hoffman remains marginal (which could be his role as counterculture fascism activist — he certainly exploits “occultism”), the real money is invested in guys like Brat and the media mouthpieces listed above.
These elements do share an anti-Semitic streak though, which is a calling card of sorts to pick out birds of a feather. Anyway, your research into this is fascinating, but at the same time troubling.
Here’s a great piece on how Friedrich Hayek’s ideological disdain for the poor and democracy helped created the current far right dominated political dynamic across the Western world in profoundly ironic ways:
“What a wondrous irony it is that three ultra-rightists, Lord Acton, Bastiat and von Hayek, should combine so perfectly to explain our current plight in which plunder by elite CEOs has become “a way of life”. Yep.
@Pterrafractyl–
Note that, in T.H. Tetens’ “Germany Plots with the Kremlin,” (https://spitfirelist.com/books/germany-plots-with-the-kremlin/) there are documents that discuss the Third Reich’s plan to use intelligence assets in the West to craft propaganda designed to assure, among other things, that FDR would not get re-elected. This in 1944.
That was the same year in which von Hayek published “The Road to Serfdom,” in which he equated FDR, Stalin and Hitler and cemented his arguments against democracy.
The distinct possibility that he was working for Third Reich intelligence is one to be seriously considered.
Check out the last item of discussion in FTR #786. (https://spitfirelist.com/for-the-record/ftr-786-the-adventures-of-eddie-the-friendly-spook-part-16-the-obverse-oswald-update-and-summary-analysis/)
Best,
Dave
@Dave: In the forward to the 1956 copy of The road to Serfdom, Hayek wrote “I had given little thought to its possible appeal to American readers when writing it.” So maybe that’s the case and he was just targeting a British audience. But according to this biography of Hayek (Friedrich Hayek: A Biography; Alan O. Ebenstein; 2003, p128) Hayek hurried to finish the book early in order to get it published by the the winter of 1943:
So it’s pretty clear that Hayek both wanted to make an impact and really did make that impact. Almost immediately. And with the help of “leading papers, journals, and magazines”, at least in the UK.
It’s also worth noting that if his desire to “get it out before the winter” was referring to the winter of 1943 and if he did really want to make a political splash the UK elections were mostly in 1945. For the US elections in 1944, on the other hand, the timing and of the exposure of The Road to Serfdom was pretty significant. The UK edition was published in March of 1944. In the US it wasn’t as readily accepted in the media, but after getting rejected by a several publishers the book was published by the University of Chicago in September 1944, with a glowing review by libertarian journalist Henry Hazlitt on the front page of the Book Review Section in the New York Times (September 24,1944). It was similar to the review Hazlitt gave to Hayek’s mentor, Ludwig von Mises six years earlier in 1938:
So whether or not Hayek was specifically attempting to provide ammunition for anti-FDR forces in 1944, the roll out of the book in the US and UK media sure was well positioned to do just that.
In related news, check this out: In January of this year the central banks of Germany, Austria, and Switzerland all joined together to create a new prize for research in economics, the Carl Menger Prize for Research. Menger was the founder of the Austrian school of economics.
@Pterrafractyl–
Good find! Important against the background of what you’ve researched for us is the book “The Nazis Go Underground.” https://spitfirelist.com/books/the-nazis-go-underground/
The plans for the von Clausewitzian postwar and the resurgence of Germany began in earnest after the battle of Stalingrad, concluded in February of 1943.
That would be exactly when von Hayek was penning his anti-FDR, anti-democracy screed.
Best,
Dave
@Sampson: Part of what makes Brat’s writings on usury interesting is that he seems to be trying to coming up with a moral argument that will simultaneously appease hardcore Christian Reconstructionists that want to see all forms of usury outlawed (by a church-dominated government) and Wall Street. At least, when Brat says:
it sure sounds like he’s arguing that we should adopt Laissez-Faire laws and restrict regulations to the moral regulation of one’s conscience. It’s a fascinating method of threading the libertarian/Dominionist needle because the only law that would have to be enforced under this system is that you show obedience to your preacher of choice. It’s like the Koch brother’s economic paradise achieved through decentralized theocracy:
It’s still unclear where exactly Brat is on the “Ayn Rand Seven Mountains Dominionism” spectrum but it’s pretty clear that what he’s engaged in one of the seemingly endless attempts to find a moral justification for economic systems built for predation. So Wall Street must be pretty pleased by what it sees in the right’s new ‘populist’ dragon slayer, although you have to wonder if the banksters fully realize how much more potential dragon slaying might be deemed necessary.
This weekend the Koch brothers hosted their big donor network event where they roll out their plans for big new initiative focusing on opposition to energy regulations. And what do we find today? The GOP has just started talking about the kind of manuevers in the Senate designed to gut energy industry regulations that sound awfully close to same techniques used in the past to create a shutdown-showdown scenerio this fall. Now that’s service:
Of course, if the GOP really did trigger a shutdown right before the midterms you’d have to wonder why given the kind of voter reaction we can expect. Maybe it could all a giant distraction...a strain of crazy that’s sort of orthogonal to the GOP’s Benghazi/Obamacare freakout that may not play so well with the voters this fall. Could it be a GOP-led distraction to distract from the GOP? Hey, it could happen.
With the ongoing fracking boom, more and more local communities are finding that they can shake, rattle, and roll their way to prosperity, whether they want to or not:
Yes, communities with no histories of earthquakes are discovering that their New Normal includes things like sinkholes, cracked foundations, and a dominant industry that seems to always want more studies into the dangers of fracking while it proceeds to frack the town. And, “of all the problems with fracking, fixing earthquakes is one of the easier ones”. And that might be true. For example, fixing the problem of preventing the fracking industry from overriding local objections is clearly a much more intractable problem:
Note that it’s apparently a new idea amongst regulators and communities that some places should be off-limits to drilling.
Continuing...
As the article points out, “courts have generally ruled that states can trump local ordinances”. “Frack, baby, frack” doesn’t happen on its own. But there’s also clearly a backlack coming. Or, more specifically, many small backlashes. Town by town:
Yes, “if the fracking ban is adopted, it’s unclear whether the law would hold up in court” because you can be pretty sure that any community that bans fracking is going to get sued. And as the article points out, “most of the mineral rights are held by estates and trusts outside Texas”. So the success of any local attempts to ban fracking is probably going to be determined, in part, by the political influence of the interests that own those underground mineral rights.
On the other hand, if the Koch/ALEC-led campaign to get the the states wage a battle against the federal government and the Bureau of Land Management is completely successful, it’s unclear why that Koch-backed hijacking of states governments couldn’t be easily translated into a state attack on local fracking bans.
And, of course, since the Koch’s have also decided to extend their influence peddling to local elections around the country, is unclear why any locality is going to be considered off-limits to meddling by the Kochs are any other powerful outside interests. After all, “frack, baby, frack” and isn’t the only rule of the day. “Bribe, baby, bribe...and then threaten” is part of the status quo too. And don’t forget the unprecedented earthquakes.
If you thought the story about Maine’s governor holding secret meetings with Sovereign Citizens was rather eyebrow-raising, the official Texas Republican Party Platform now declares that all federal enforcement activities “must be conducted under the auspices of the county sheriff with jurisdiction in that county.” Cliven Bundy may have left the GOP , but that doesn’t mean he abandoned the GOP’s heart. This spirit of Bundy lives on in Texas:
Beyond the obvious lesson that the GOP has been completely radicalized and is intent on dismantling life as we know it ASAP (sorry robot armies of the future, there’s a line), one of the key lessons we can take from news like this is that the Texas GOP isn’t just crazy. The Texas GOP is becoming so crazy that’s there’s no way it will be able to uncrazy itself for a long, long time. You can’t shut off “Taliban mode” overnight.
So beyond the ominous implications this has for the entire US, you really have to wonder what this is going to mean for the people of Texas now the GOP is openly embracing governmental negligence as the state credo. What can the residents expect? That’s hard to say, although we can be pretty sure the results, given enough time, should be explosive. Literally explosive:
Are you impressed with Texas’s new “anti-terrorism” plan as part of the state’s ‘Sovereign Citizen’ shift? No, not the part about restricting local residents’ access to the information about what dangerous chemicals might be stored near their homes. That seems rather dubious. No, the part about refusing any new safety regulations for small fertilizer operators just a year after the West Texas fertilizer plant explosion. It’s brilliant! Because how on earth can terrorists threaten a state populace with violent explosions when violent explosions are just an everyday expected part of life? If some terrorist group targeted a fertilizer plant and blew it up, well, how could anyone say that’s a terrorist attack? It could have just been one of the ticking time bombs of under-maintained chemical facilities that went off. When Texas Congressman Pete Sessions talked about the GOP adopting the Taliban as a model back in 2009, who would have thought the comment was that literal? Or that self-directed? Still...it’s brilliant and very, very brave!
So where did Texas’s Attorney General get his bold new idea? He’s running for governor so it would be useful to know how the man thinks. Was this hatch during a recent Taliban-style secret meeting? Maybe he came up with it while planning the next showdown with the BLM. Where indeed...:
“In addition, the company flew Abbott on a company jet in August to an invitation-only gathering in New Mexico that offered wealthy donors an opportunity to meet and mingle with GOP elected officials and leaders of conservative groups supporting the Koch agenda of less government regulation and disclosure.” Where indeed...
What kind of gift to you give to someone that already has everything? No, not a handmade gift. That’s just lame. Also, the recipient of your gift views you with contempt so, really, they aren’t really interested in anything you can provide. Well, there is one thing...fawning obedience:
“Moguls complain about their feelings because that’s all anyone can really threaten.” Aint that the truth.
Well, this has got to be just about the worst reason ever to avoid implementing new renewable energy sources, but the article does make a valid point: Greater power grid complexity might allow for a wider variety of energy sources, but when the energy industry doesn’t take adequate protective steps to address vulnerabilities that arise from that new complexity, the greater diversity of energy sources will also come with a greater diversity of grid hacks:
As the article points out, the threats of compromised industrial control systems (e.g. Stuxnet) and disrupted power grids aren’t going to fade away as technology advances. They might even get worse. While this may not actually be a valid reason to avoid the introduction of renewable energy technologies (by that logic, no new technology that expands complexity and risk should be implemented), it’s still a lesson worth keeping in mind that new risks are indeed emerging if we transition to a smart grid society. Because it’s not just your local power grid that’s poised for greater technical complexity and risks associated with green energy and smart grid technology. Think closer to home:
Yes, the “internet of things” is coming, it’s potentially hackable, and it’s going to consist of your things. Your ‘smart’ things in your home and also the home itself. It’s a reminder that the added risks associated with sane actions like hooking up renewable energy to the electrical grid pale in comparison to the added complexity and risks associated with wiring up all the utilities and random items in our homes in a giant observational network. The risks associated with the renewable energy sector can be wildly overstated.
And the larger topic of renewable energy-associated smart grid technology creating new risks in the energy sector sector that infects the whole grid should also be a reminder that the biggest risks associated with renewable energy technology disrupting the energy grid don’t actually come from the renewable energy technology. Imagine that.
Here’s a peak at the future of the US far right, or at least the future the far right would like to see: Cyber-Koch Heads:
And here’s a piece by Mark Ames that takes a closer look at the typically terrifying politics on display at “Reboot” and strange history of libertarianism, Silicon Valley, Reason magazine, the Koch brothers that shows why the “Reboot” conference was a very logical choice for showcasing a very irrational movement:
The rest of Mark Ames’s piece goes into that intertwined history of libertarianism, Reason magazine, Silicon Valley, and the Koch brothers. It’s definitely worth a read. Especially the parts about Reason magazine’s championing of South Africa as a libertarian paradise. And don’t miss the follow up piece on the 1976 “special issue” (yikes!).
Here’s an article that highlights a key aspect of the concerns over the Koch-dominated Canadian tar sands flowing through the Keystone XL pipeline and the dangers posed to major US ground water sources from an oil spill: Tar sands oil has so many chemicals added to it that it sinks in water:
“We have a very powerful municipal tool in home rule that lets us stop projects that are adverse to the community...I think every community should have something like it. It’s become so that corporations can go to planning board meetings and get everything they ask for. But we are the ones that have to live here.” Good luck with that!
In other news...
Lee Fang points us towards a little snapshot of the New Citizens United Normal:
And here’s a look at some of the consequences of the New Citizens United Normal Let’s just say that, based on the well-financed electoral successes highlighted above, the potential consequences don’t just threaten to blow up any semblance of fairness in the US electoral process. The consequences of opening the dark money floodgates will probably include actual explosions too:
And if the explosions don’t get you...
If the victimhood was, itself, capable of being victimized we can be pretty sure the Koch brothers would have done it by now since discrediting the very notion of victimhood appears to be once of their goals:
So it looks like the AFP is planning on culling candidates without a good anti-government sob story and then proceeding to swell their victimized campaigns with paid operatives. Oh joy. The GOP is planning on boldly executing the exact same strategy it always uses. Let’s hope there’s at least going to be more flair to the GOP’s victimhood campaign this time around just to spice things up. It shouldn’t be too hard to pull off. At this point, pretty much everything should be a muse.
Oh look. A Koch-backed anti-environmental group decided to make a joke campaign equating EPA regulations to torture. It was a somewhat appropriate joke considering the intense global pain and suffering that’s going to be experienced by life on earth planet as a result of out of control human activity and collapsing ecosystems, but only if you assume “The American Energy Alliance” told this joke out of a dark sense of self-referential ironyn:
Another arm of the Kochtopus, this one slithering around the Roman Catholic Church, shows itself at the Church’s Napa Institute:
http://ncronline.org/news/faith-parish/your-face-catholicism-napa-institute-gathers-us-church-s-well-heeled-and-high
(Please copy and paste link if it’s not active — or search the story on the National Catholic Reporter)
Some gems from the story:
“The aim is a mobilization to better equip these Catholics for their role in “the next America,” a phrase used by Philadelphia Archbishop Charles Chaput in a 2010 essay in the journal First Things. The essay inspired the formation of the Napa Institute.
“The next America” is broadly defined as a secular culture with little time for religious questions and even less interest in hearing what Catholic teaching might bring to bear in the public forum.
A central institute mantra is that attendees are being instructed and inspired, fine-tuned and focused to boldly defend Catholic principles in the civic arena. Marquee issues include defense of religious freedom, traditional marriage and the unborn...
“The founding president of the Denver Legatus Chapter, John Saeman, and his wife, Carol, raised eyebrows in late November when they penned a Washington Post op-ed that said their belief in Pope Francis’ vision of Catholic social teaching motivates their activities in Catholic charities and also motivates their financial support for Freedom Partners, a nonprofit founded by billionaires Charles and David Koch to defend the free market system.
“For us, promoting limited government alongside the Kochs is an important part of heeding Pope Francis’s call to love and serve the poor,” the Saemans wrote.”
I posted this here, but it would very well be posted on any of this website’s Vatican links as well. Plenty of hay is made about Francis’ pleas for the poor, but what, if anything, is he really doing — or can he do — to reform the Vatican Bank and its money-laundering past? I also notice that in the story, several Popes from the 20th century are mentioned, but certainly not JP1, who was like Francis 1.0, only more to the left. I find that interesting...
Auto dealers in middle Tennessee have reason to celebrate today: Nashville’s bus rapid transit proposal is officially dead:
“Opponents found allies from Republican state lawmakers, who passed legislation that would have made the Amp’s approval and implementation harder to reach.”
And don’t forget two plucky billionaires on a mission to overrule local governments everywhere. They also ‘helped’. ‘Helping’ others is what they do. They just can’t help themselves!
Just what a mega-city facing a mega-drought like Sao Paulo needs: an infestation of Libertarian Koch-heads intent on letting the market solve all of Brazil’s problems:
You have to love the denials of any invisible Koch hands given that:
Putting aside the fact that the Kochs founded the Cato Institute and hold continue to hold enormous sway over the organization, note that it wasn’t just that a couple members brought back techniques from the Atlas Leadership Academy. Fabio Ostermann, one of the movement’s leaderswas a Koch Summer Fellow at the ironically names ‘Institute for Humane Studies’ (via Google translate):
Also note that Ostermann’s Koch Summer Fellow internship at the Institute for Humane Studies (Charles Koch is chairman of the board) immediatedly followed his internship at the Atlas Network. And this was back in 2009, so he’s not exactly new to the Koch-head scene.
And then there’s the Koch-heads of “Students for Liberty”:
So that was like a ‘Who’s Who’ of Libertarian sugar daddies. But remember, all those spunky Libertarians in Brazil have NOTHING to do with the Koch brothers other than being inspired by their awesomeness. And maybe attending their leadership schools. And maybe interning as a Koch Summer Fellow. And maybe coordinating with a Koch-funded “student” group that hands out awards for things like:
But no, the Koch’s aren’t trying to get Brazil’s middle-class to impeach Dilma Rouseeff so a right-wing government can give the Kochs even more access to Brazil’s resources. Not, the Kochs are just so inspirational that people can’t stop themselves from thinking and acting like a Koch-head. It’s a shockingly common affliction.
cover on Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous is getting a reboot. Hopefully it covers stuff like this:
“Koch is the younger brother of Charles, David and Frederick Koch.”
Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous is getting a reboot. Hopefully it covers stuff like this:
“Koch is the younger brother of Charles, David and Frederick Koch.”
Did you hear the great news? A powerful new civil rights movement has taken the US political class by storm and now has unparalleled power and influence across throughout not just Washington DC but in state capitals all over. And the best part is that this new movement has already accomplished an enormous amount of their agenda with minimal resistance. For years! But there’s always more work to be done because until everyone is free to dump toxic sludge in rivers without fearing the consequences (at all) no one is truly free:
Wow, so at the same private conference where the Kochs compared themselves to Frederick Douglass, Susan B. Anthony and Martin Luther King Jr., government officials from Chile also gave a presentation on the country’s economic and political history:
It sure would be interesting to learn more about which periods of economic and political history were discussed.
And while this is obviously a PR scam on the part of the Kochs, if they’re are going to claim the MLK-league mantle of social reform, let’s hope they at least succeed in actually pushing through some significant criminal justice reforms. They certainly have all the money they’ll need to advance the cause. Now all they’ll need is the will. In particular, the will to actually prioritize criminal justice reform over the rest of their pro-plutocracy agenda. It should be a very doable task too. All they’ll have to do to demonstrate a real commitment to their professed civil rights agenda is oppose nearly all of the candidates they have ever supported and continue to support:
“The Kochs’ criminal justice hypocrisy goes far beyond their personal vendetta against the government after losing the Corpus Christie lawsuit. That’s because beyond the string of recent comments by Holden and other Koch-funded political operators about the positive PR benefits of their criminal justice efforts, the Kochs continue to support a long line of Republicans whose policies have worsened the system they now say must be dismantled. That list includes 2016 presidential candidates Gov. Scott Walker, ex-Glorida Gov. Jeb Bush and Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal. It also includes governors Larry Hogan of Maryland, Susana Martinez of New Mexico, Mike Pence of Indiana and Doug Ducey of Arizona. All have enlarged or sustained their states’ prisoner populations.”
It’s just like how, for years, MLK donated massive amounts of money to George Wallace and the Dixiecrats all while leading the civil rights struggle! That totally happened.
It turns out there’s a fun new civics merit badge that everyone should be striving to earn. Unfortunately, you probably aren’t going to even know you earned it even if you do. Regardless, the “Getting Tracked By The Koch Brothers’ Private CIA” merit badge is the kind of achievement all civic-minded Americans should be striving to earn:
“Connor Gibson, a Greenpeace researcher who focuses on the Koch network, said he visits its component groups’ offices once a year to pick up their tax filings, and he speculated he could have been the operative photographed by the competitive intelligence unit. While he said he’s never sought to conceal his identity during such visits, he added “If the Kochs consider me an opponent, I’m flattered.””
It sounds like someone just earned a merit badge!
And as jaw-dropping as a private political CIA run by two of the biggest power-mongers in the world might be, when you read:
keep in mind that the existence of this particular Koch private intelligence operation may have been unknown to both the outside world and maybe even many of the Koch’s own political operatives, but stories about the Koch’s spying on their opponents are nothing new:
“That’s the thing about the Kochs’ style,” he wrote. They always “keep you wondering.”
They sure do.
The fact that the Koch dynasty’s early fortune was built, in part, on a contract to build oil refineries for Stalin’s Soviet Union is no secret. And given the cynical behavior of the Koch clan it’s not really a surprise either. Well, it turns out Jane Meyer has a new book out on the Kochs that contain another 1930’s secret of that nature. It’s even less surprising:
“But the book is largely focused on the Koch family, stretching back to its involvement in the far-right John Birch Society and the political and business activities of the father, Fred C. Koch, who found some of his earliest business success overseas in the years leading up to World War II. One venture was a partnership with the American Nazi sympathizer William Rhodes Davis, who, according to Ms. Mayer, hired Mr. Koch to help build the third-largest oil refinery in the Third Reich, a critical industrial cog in Hitler’s war machine.”
Well, something needed to refine all that oil the Nazis were importing. And someone also had to finance those imports. The Nazis had a lot of needs. And help.
Here’s something to keep in mind with the ongoing pressure the Trump administration is putting on AT&T and Time Warner to sell off CNN if their merger is to get federal approval: Remember the Koch brothers’ failed attempt to buy Tribune Media (owner of The Chicago Tribune and Los Angeles)? It looks like the Kochs might get their piece of the media landscape after all: Time Inc., the publisher of publications like Time, Fortune, Money and Sports Illustrated which was spun off from Time Warner in 2014, has been repeatedly pursued in the last few years by Meredith, publisher of Family Circle and Better Homes and Gardens. The last round of failed talks ended when Meredith failed to the secure sufficient financing from banks. And that, of course, is where the Kochs come in:
“An obstacle that stalled negotiations earlier this year was Meredith’s inability to secure sufficient financing from banks. With the addition of the Kochs, with their deep pockets and apparent desire to make themselves players on the media landscape, that problem could vanish.”
Yeah, if financing is a problem for the Meredith/Time Inc. merger, having the Kochs enter the picture is going to make that problem go away very fast:
And instead of Meredith’s financing problem, we’re all left with the much larger problem of just how much additional damage can the Kochs’ propaganda machine do to the US and the world with these media acquisitions. As the article puts it, it’s not clearly how much influence, if any, the Kochs will have:
But let’s keep in mind that buying big media companies hasn’t exactly been a great way to make money in recent years. In other words, the Kochs probably aren’t considering injecting $500 million in a Meredith/Time Inc. conglomerate because it’s an awesome direct investment. But it is a potentially indirectly profitable investment if it can be used as a platform for pollute minds with Koch-style fascist Libertarian memes.
So the Kochs are shopping for media. It’s something to keep in mind as the AT&T/Time Warner merger plays out. Especially after the reports the Rupert Murdoch has twice inquired about buying CNN in the past 6 months. Because if Murdoch was trying to buy CNN, and now we have the White House trying to force the sale of CNN, that suggests that there’s a concerted push to put that network in far-right hands. Which is the kind of thing that makes the Kochs sudden rekindled interests in the media markets that much more chilling:
“According to one of the sources on Friday, Murdoch called Stephenson twice, unprompted, on May 16 and Aug. 8 and on both occasions asked if CNN was for sale. Stephenson replied both times that it was not, according to the source.”
Ok, so if that source for the article is correct we know Rupert Murdoch has a real interest in CNN. And we also know the White House appears to be trying to force the sale of CNN as the price of the merger. But we also know that Murdoch buying CNN could easily become a major controversy because he already owns Fox and that will look horrible. And that’s part of why it’s so unsettling to see that the Koch brothers are suddenly interested in major media investments. It just happens to be at the moment Time Warner is getting squeezed into selling CNN.
And note how there doesn’t appear to be a law outright prohibiting the ownership of Fox News and CNN, so it’s possible Rupert Murdoch really could end up owning CNN:
It begs the tragic question: what’s worse, Rupert Murdoch buying CNN or the Kochs? And if your response is, “the Kochs, because I’ve seen Fox News and nothing could be worse than that,” don’t forget that the Kochs actually helped start Reason Magazine back in 1968 by financing the foundation of the the Reason Foundation, so we do have some media-ownership in Reason Magazine to look over to get a sense of who would be a worse CNN owner. So Murdoch or the the Kochs? Which is worse? Yes, Fox News is a promoter of hate and disinformation, and yet the answer isn’t obvious.