How the Kochs and their Friends Engineered the Federal Shutdown, Part One

[applegrove]

How the Kochs and their Friends Engineered the Federal Shutdown, Part One

by Eric Zuesse at the Huffington Post

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eric-zuesse/how-the-kochs-and-their-f_b_4040698.html?utm_hp_ref=politics

"SNIP..............................


Little did the Tea Party suckers know that they were just Republican stooges. Forbes, which was another overtly conservative "news" medium, headlined, on 19 March 2010, "The Misinformed Tea Party Movement," and Bruce Bartlett analyzed there the results from a poll of Tea Party activists. It showed that they "thought that federal taxes were almost three times as high as they actually are," and that taxes had soared since Obama came into office, when in fact "No taxpayer anywhere in the country had his or her taxes increased as a consequence of Obama's policies," and, in fact, "For those making between $40,000 and $50,000 [which the questionnaire had especially focused upon], the average tax cut was $472." Bartlett didn't blame these delusional beliefs upon the aristocracy which had nurtured and promulgated them; no: he concluded: "The tea parties are simply the latest manifestation of populism."

Bartlett, as a libertarian, viewed the world through the lenses that had been supplied by the aristocracy--the creators of "libertarianism" -- the view which was obsessed with "freedom" for the rich (especially for the born-rich) to do with their money whatever they wished, including bribing whatever officials had to be bribed in order for favors of the economic system to be directed toward themselves.

Bartlett despised the serfs, and thought that their lack of freedom was deserved by them. His article referred to "my friend David Frum," as the pollster. Frum had been George W. Bush's speechwriter, and he too despised the serfs. Frum polled a crowd of several hundred Tea Party protesters at an event in Washington D.C., to which these protesters had been bussed and flown from around the country. He got 57 of them to fill out his questionnaire, which had 7 questions on it. This was a poll of the actual people who showed up at Tea Party rallies, not just of people who were phoned by some pollster and who said that they supported the Tea Party movement. This poll showed in the most reliable way of all that those crowds were composed of suckers.

But perhaps Frum and his friend Bartlett were also suckers. A month later, on April 16th, Bartlett bannered at Forbes, "The End of the Think Tank," and he wrote that the Heritage Foundation had been created in 1973 to bring a conservative political slant to think-tankdom. He ignored that American Enterprise Institute (AEI) (which had initiated the 2003 invasion of Iraq) had been created 30 years earlier for that very same purpose. However, Bartlett was clearly naïve. He wrote: "As bottom line pressure increased at think tanks, many found themselves becoming even more closely aligned with politicians and political parties. I recall one conversation I had with a very rich contributor to a think tank where I was working. He told me that the money he contributed to the organization came from the same pot of money he budgeted for political contributions. This statement came as a revelation to me." After long hacking for the aristocracy, Bartlett still wasn't aware that these outfits weren't like the Brookings Institution or other authentic think tanks: he and Frum worked at merely propaganda-factories.


..............................SNIP"

[Heather MC]

1. If people were saying this about the Democratic Party I would be

looking around to see where they hang their tin foil hats

It's so hard to be believe that two old rich fucks have nothing better to do with their money. then fund the stupidest people on the planet and put them in power.

But when you realize it's true it's scary. WHY would they do this they are obviously Richer than than the Pope or close to it
Why toss money to ruin our government

I have a theory

I think they are so dayum rich they are bored
and the Koch brothers don't really have a reason for doing this beyond the the simple fact they have nothing better to do.

Remember the movie Trading Places when Don Ameche made a bet for $1.00 they could ruin Dan Akyrod's life.

I think they are just playing a game for fun

No matter the motive it's sick and wrong
two people can hate society but they shouldn't be allowed this much power over it

[applegrove]

2. I think rich/lucky people who destroy human's quality of life rather than

build it up are desperate to fill the emptiness in their lives for sure. The Kochs have so much money they turned to politics a generation ago in the search for power. The sad story is that if they turned to finding ways to make life better for others rather than worse, they would have meaning in their lives. And each new humanistic venture would fill their hearts. I doubt very much, having read about the father a bit, that they are capable of getting a kick out of being connected to a wider world of people, some of whom would not be exactly like them. It seems all they want is power, and if that means they get power by diminishing the power of somebody poor or middle class, so much the better in their view. It is a malignancy on humanity thinking like that.

[Uncle Joe]

9. Now I'm not as pessimistic as George Carlin but I believe he laid his finger on an essential truth.

http://rense.com/general82/carrlin.htm

Carlin - The Real
Owners Of America
6-24-8

"The real owners are the big wealthy business interests that control things and make all the important decisions. Forget the politicians, they're an irrelevancy. The politicians are put there to give you the idea that you have freedom of choice. You don't. You have no choice. You have owners. They own you. They own everything. They own all the important land. They own and control the corporations. They've long since bought and paid for the Senate, the Congress, the statehouses, the city halls. They've got the judges in their back pockets. And they own all the big media companies, so that they control just about all of the news and information you hear. They've got you by the balls. They spend billions of dollars every year lobbying ­ lobbying to get what they want. Well, we know what they want; they want more for themselves and less for everybody else."

"But I'll tell you what they don't want. They don't want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. They don't want well-informed, well-educated people capable of critical thinking. They're not interested in that. That doesn't help them. That's against their interests. They don't want people who are smart enough to sit around the kitchen table and figure out how badly they're getting fucked by a system that threw them overboard 30 fucking years ago.

"You know what they want? Obedient workers ­ people who are just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork but just dumb enough to passively accept all these increasingly shittier jobs with the lower pay, the longer hours, reduced benefits, the end of overtime and the vanishing pension that disappears the minute you go to collect it. And, now, they're coming for your Social Security. They want your fucking retirement money. They want it back, so they can give it to their criminal friends on Wall Street. And you know something? They'll get it. They'll get it all, sooner or later, because they own this fucking place. It's a big club, and you ain't in it. You and I are not in the big club."

"This country is finished."

The Kochs and their ilk only have three choices in keeping with Carlin's maxim, either fund stupid, corrupt or stupid and corrupt people to power.

If Intelligent and conscientious people became empowered, the Koch's plans for transforming the U.S. into a corporate supremacist and subservient serf style nation would become threatened.

So in order to achieve their goals the Kochs and their ilk must fund one of those three categories of people to power which I listed above.

[Samantha]

10. Years ago, I heard an extremely wealthy donor discussing this

The person interviewing him asked why he would give such large sums to political candidates. He answered that he considered the donations an investment and that he expected to receive it back many times larger than the sum he donated. I believe that is part of the Koch Brothers expectations.

Also during times of recession and depression, the wealthy scarf up bargains, purchasing items at bargain-basement prices. Then when the recession ends, that item is worth a lot more than the purchaser paid for it.

Sam

[cui bono]

13. Thom Hartmann was saying on his show today that people lose compassion/empathy

when they get rich. I think he had a guest on at the time who agreed, I think there was a study...

Here, found this article:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=how-wealth-reduces-compassion

[freshwest]

3. Thank you! These guys are public enemy #1! And this is exactly what it is:

Bartlett, as a libertarian, viewed the world through the lenses that had been supplied by the aristocracy--the creators of "libertarianism" -- the view which was obsessed with "freedom" for the rich (especially for the born-rich) to do with their money whatever they wished, including bribing whatever officials had to be bribed in order for favors of the economic system to be directed toward themselves.

Bartlett despised the serfs, and thought that their lack of freedom was deserved by them. His article referred to "my friend David Frum," as the pollster. Frum had been George W. Bush's speechwriter, and he too despised the serfs.


I don't buy the part about them being naïve. I could smell the evil stench from such as a small child. And if one hasn't got that kind of awareness, anyone born in this country who read the papers founding the country, knows better, and remember, these guy had the benefit of higher education.

Their feeling they had a right to be 'hating the serfs' is anti-American as it is against the ideals of perfecting human equality. The USA they have been building denigrates that.

As far as the libertarians and their aristocratic leanings, good grief, that was obvious to anyone. When you talk to a group whose ideology is based on the ravings of serial killer groupie and ancient philosophers who had time to lay about and expound their alleged universal truths while ignoring, or actively supporting the system of war, theft, slavery and misogyny, you don't believe in the ideal of America.


Just sayin'

[rhett o rick]

4. k&r thanks for posting. nm

[YoungDemCA]

5. K&R

nt

[hedda_foil]

6. Finally, FINALLY, we can see the full blueprint for this abomination come to light.

This part was what set my spidey senses tingling.

Congressional districts are determined every ten years, based upon the decennial Census; and the key year, for the gerrymandering to come, was 2010, which was to bring the Koch-run tea-party Republicans into Congress, in a very big way. Rupert Murdoch's Wall Street Journal bannered on 12 April 2010, New Fangs for the Conservative Beast: The Heritage Foundation's new advocacy organization will pressure congressmen to do what's right," and Edwin Feulner, the president of Heritage Foundation, co-authored with Michael Needham (the head that he had appointed at its new political-pressure subsidiary Heritage Action), a description of their unprecedented new virtual PAC to drive the Republican Party farther to the right. They said: "There are 110 congressional districts in America with over 1,500 Heritage supporters apiece. Two-thirds of congressional districts in this country have over 1,000 Heritage members each. Now they will have an advocacy organization that can press Congress on their behalf. Heritage Action for America will guarantee that when a wavering congressman thinks of voting for higher taxes, increased regulation, or a weaker national defense, television ads in his home district will remind him that a vote for bigger government is a vote for less freedom. When at his district office, well-informed constituents will visit him to press the case, ... they'll remind him of his electoral promises," and they'll support an opponent to him in a Republican primary unless he relents. This would be like the Koch's PACs, though not organized as a PAC - instead, it would be a branch of this "think tank," Heritage. The operation would replace moderate Republicans in Congress with extremist ones; this was the plan. It was right up the Kochs' alley. Soon, the Heritage Foundation's new chief, the former Republican Senator from South Carolina, Jim DeMint, would be running the Republican Party at his perch in Heritage, reshaping the Party into this unwavering fascist, or pure-conservative, image.


The blog of Playboy headlined, and then quickly eliminated, a historic article by Mark Ames and Yasha Levine, on 27 February 2009, "Explaining the Rightwing PR Machine," which the authors subsequently posted at their own exiledonline.com. It documents the creation, by the Koch brothers, of what soon became known (in the mainstream "news" media) by such bogus phrases as "the Tea Party grassroots movement," but which was pure astroturf, fake all the way. They reported on "the launch event of a carefully organized and sophisticated PR campaign" on February 19th, "using the CNBC airwaves for publicity, for some of the craziest and sleaziest rightwing oligarch clans this country has ever produced. ... All of these roads ultimately lead back to ... FreedomWorks, ... funded by Koch money." Soon, this "Tea Party" would be much in the news with its suckers raising hell against Obama's "death panels" and other oligarch-manufactured "grassroots" complaints. This was a superb exemplar of the George-Orwell-warned "Big Brother" lies, which would soon engulf the major "news" media, as "news." The Ames/Levine article was perhaps the most important and most skillful piece of investigative journalism in years, but it was so hot that even Playboy would be too mainstream a news-medium to remain associated with it, even as a mere blog item.

[freshwest]

7. Thanks for that.

[adirondacker]

8. I often wonder why any Politician would accept funding from them, especially a Dem...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=439x709962

[world wide wally]

11. Sounds like sabotage in time of war to me.

[applegrove]

12. I‘ll fall off my chair if the MSM asks anybody

in the GOP about Koch involvement in anything.