posted
Quite a read in The New Yorker. Here's an excerpt from early on in the article (bold my emphasis):
quote: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.
posted
How is that "Summit" different from what is already done by both the Democratic and Republican parties?
Sounds exactly the same.
So far it's reading as nothing more than a politically motivated family.
This bit sounds about right:
quote:Charles and David also became devotees of a more radical thinker, Robert LeFevre, who favored the abolition of the state but didn’t like the label “anarchist”; he called himself an “autarchist.” LeFevre liked to say that “government is a disease masquerading as its own cure.”
This bit seems as close to perfection as possible:
quote:According to Doherty’s book, the Kochs came to regard elected politicians as merely “actors playing out a script.”
Not a thing wrong with this:
quote:The Kochs have gone well beyond their immediate self-interest, however, funding organizations that aim to push the country in a libertarian direction. Among the institutions that they have subsidized are the Institute for Justice, which files lawsuits opposing state and federal regulations; the Institute for Humane Studies, which underwrites libertarian academics; and the Bill of Rights Institute, which promotes a conservative slant on the Constitution. Many of the organizations funded by the Kochs employ specialists who write position papers that are subsequently quoted by politicians and pundits. David Koch has acknowledged that the family exerts tight ideological control. “If we’re going to give a lot of money, we’ll make darn sure they spend it in a way that goes along with our intent,” he told Doherty. “And if they make a wrong turn and start doing things we don’t agree with, we withdraw funding.”
From what I'm seeing, this is a family capable of fighting back. The notion that they have had a widespread impact on Washington is easily seen as false by looking at legislation over the last twenty to thirty years. All of which is in direct opposition to what these brothers seem to believe.
I'm not sure I'm seeing why this article was posted other than to show how a true hate piece is written?
Posts: 2965 | Registered: Aug 2005
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by Relentless.: Yeah, but I'm not getting why these guys are worse than what is already in place? Is it because they promote a different ideology than yours?
I see that they are not fans of the global warming myth.. Maybe that's it.
and i did say that they are bad?
the TParty is supposed to be a "grassroots" movement.
Palin, Glen Beck, and Rush Limbaugh are the three main proponents of the T-Party that i am aware of. The Koch Bros are a new player to me. It's interesting, as a matter of fact? I haven't even developed a dossier on them, and i would not form one article...
global warming?
Koch Industries, Inc. (pronounced /ˈkoʊk/) is an American private energy conglomerate based in Wichita, Kansas, with subsidiaries involved in manufacturing, trading and investments. Koch also owns Invista, Georgia-Pacific, Flint Hill Resources, Koch Pipeline, Koch Petroleum Group, Koch Fertilizer, Koch Engineering, Koch Minerals and Matador Ranching Company.
of course they are against the idea that we might be ruining our planet.
they are the ones doing it. LOL...
-------------------- Don't envy the happiness of those who live in a fool's paradise. Posts: 36378 | From: USA | Registered: Sep 2003
| IP: Logged |
posted
The tea party did seem to start as a grass roots movement.. Ceased to be any of that as soon as it gathered steam and mainstream GOPers began to invade.
But that's kind of my point? What makes these guys any worse than what goes on every day with the two main parties?
Seems that it's all the same.
Posts: 2965 | Registered: Aug 2005
| IP: Logged |
posted
well, for one, Obama can't be a fascist socialist baby-killer intent on letting welfare folk outbreed the mainstream immigrant lovers who are going to take over the world and kill us with our own guns.
posted
Well as much as you all hate the Koch brothers because they support the Tea Party, at least they did not ask for a tax payer funded bailout after pillaging the nation. They actually produce things, instead of paper "assets". Waa waa waa a big corporation that employs thousands of Americans, sure lets rail on them instead of appreciate the income they provide for working families. If you are a business and support anything besides Obama et al, then you are somehow a Bush administration conspiracy to destroy the nation.
-------------------- It isn't so much that liberals are ignorant. It's just that they know so many things that aren't so. Posts: 6949 | Registered: Apr 2004
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by CashCowMoo: Well as much as you all hate the Koch brothers because they support the Tea Party, at least they did not ask for a tax payer funded bailout after pillaging the nation. They actually produce things, instead of paper "assets". Waa waa waa a big corporation that employs thousands of Americans, sure lets rail on them instead of appreciate the income they provide for working families. If you are a business and support anything besides Obama et al, then you are somehow a Bush administration conspiracy to destroy the nation.
Are you really that stupid? Come on CowSh*t. No way are you that dumb.......or are you?
-------------------- It is impossible to make anything foolproof because fools are so ingenious. Posts: 3311 | From: St. Louis | Registered: Feb 2005
| IP: Logged |
posted
That seems to be your usual response, so I actually wonder if YOU are that stupid. I have never really been impressed with your postings, and that is a prime example.
-------------------- It isn't so much that liberals are ignorant. It's just that they know so many things that aren't so. Posts: 6949 | Registered: Apr 2004
| IP: Logged |
You know, I watched an old Dateline tonight, it was from the early 1990s and they were interviewing David Glass, then CEO of Wal Mart. They were showing how Wal Mart used to "pride" itself on buying American. Well, Dateline found the child sweatshops in Bangladesh and China where the clothes were being made....there is much more to it but it was sickening. This was back then, obviously everyone knows now. They showed one of the manufacturing plants that went bankrupt because Wal Mart found a place in China to make shirts a nickel cheaper. So who is worse? Wal-Mart and their destructive practices, or the Kock family?
Posts: 6949 | Registered: Apr 2004
| IP: Logged |
posted
It was Ted Turner who talked about money being a numbers game, all about who gets on the top 400 richest people in the world. Its a game to them after a certain point.
-------------------- It isn't so much that liberals are ignorant. It's just that they know so many things that aren't so. Posts: 6949 | Registered: Apr 2004
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by glassman: Well as much as you all hate the Koch brothers because they support the Tea Party,
as much as who "hates" the Koch bros?
fro crying out loud nobody has posted anything lie that here cash...
he posted a link to an article and said it was "Quite a read"...
Hey Glass, ever since MSNBC posted a connection between Koch and the Tea Party, the left has been all over Koch. Before that it was not like this. So when they connection new communist party and socialist party movements to liberal causes, thats ok, but when it is the Tea Party...then its evil. What a double standard.
-------------------- It isn't so much that liberals are ignorant. It's just that they know so many things that aren't so. Posts: 6949 | Registered: Apr 2004
| IP: Logged |
-------------------- It isn't so much that liberals are ignorant. It's just that they know so many things that aren't so. Posts: 6949 | Registered: Apr 2004
| IP: Logged |
posted
the left has been all over Koch. Before that it was not like this.
Koch got into politics... that's politics..
i want to know who is funding hwo, on both sides, whether it's ACORN or Koch...
i also would like to know who is lying and who isn't...
what's the new communist party?
as for socialism? show me in the Constitution where it's not allowed? or communism for that matter.
last i checked? the Constituion doesn't acount for either.
Insurance is socialism in practice. you spread risk across the community. It makes no difference whether the inusrance co is for profit or not. Why? Because one persons loss is paid for by another persons premiums. Whether or not soembody takes cut off the top is totally irrelevant.
Single payer health care is coming because both sides, thi nusranc e co's and the providers have not sought to keep costs down enough. Why should htey? They have no incentive too. The customers aare the employers, not the actual consumers... There hasn't been a freemarket in health care for decades. Ever seen a hospital menu? Ever seen a doctor advertise that he/she is a batter value for the dollar? never.
the health care bill is a POS, but it's partway to what Obama was promising to do when he got elected. He didn't get it as far as he said he would. That's politics again... The town hll meetings were full of misinformed people yelling about losing their Govt Funded helathcare anyway... do you get the irony of that?
-------------------- Don't envy the happiness of those who live in a fool's paradise. Posts: 36378 | From: USA | Registered: Sep 2003
| IP: Logged |
Obama calls for universal health care Updated 1/25/2007 1:27 PM ET
By Nedra Pickler, Associated Press Writer WASHINGTON — Every American should have health care coverage within six years, Democratic Sen. Barack Obama said Thursday as he set an ambitious goal soon after jumping into the 2008 presidential race.
"The time has come for universal health care in America," Obama said at a conference of Families USA, a health care advocacy group.
"I am absolutely determined that by the end of the first term of the next president, we should have universal health care in this country," the Illinois senator said.
Obama was previewing what is shaping up to be a theme of the 2008 Democratic primary. His chief rivals, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and John Edwards, also are strong proponents of universal health care and have promised to offer their plans.
posted
"sure it feel short of what he promised. nothing ever comes out of Congress the way it goes in...."
...and it turns out that it was under siege by a heretofore unknown but massively funded astroturf campaign that effectively prevented any meaningful bipartisan dialog--not to mention fomenting hate, fear, and confusion.
If I were on the "leaderless, grassroots, take-back-America, anti-big corporate/big government/lobbyist" bandwagon, I'd be plenty pizzed off to realize we got played by some of the richest owners of one of the wealthiest private companies in the world.
posted
I don't know about played. Seems to me these guys share the same beliefs as the party they essentially created.
Posts: 2965 | Registered: Aug 2005
| IP: Logged |
quote: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.
a con from the get-go, beginning years back, designed to divide and conquer in order to preserve full-bore, rogue boar industrial practices.
posted
No I got that part. But I don't really see their message as being an anti business or anti corporation type.. And I don't really see them as portraying that.
I could be wrong, but I'm seeing them as anti government and anti lobbyist by default.
I also am reading the article full well knowing that the writer detests the group.. So I'm trying to read through the slant and giving plenty of benefit to all doubts.
Posts: 2965 | Registered: Aug 2005
| IP: Logged |
posted
Well, everything I recall, re: T-party in particular, is that it's a groundswell that just sprung up with no centralized leaders. And I think a lot of attendees were attracted by that and believed it.
And...believed *in* it.
That was, in fact, true of my neighborhood, growing up. Mike A____ once said after a fight with guys from another part of town: "We don't have any gangs, but we can get one up right quick."
Sure, we had guys with more influence in a given group setting, but nobody who was "Top Cat," certainly not when more 8 or 10 of us were gathered.
There's a certain romanticism that accompanies that ethos, no doubt. We were surrounded--well, not quite surrounded, but fronted on three sides--by communities that *did* have gangs and their attendant pecking orders, lt.s, capt.s, etc by whatever name.
We took pride in knowing that any two or three of us constituted a de facto gang, no need for "organization" per se: we grew up fighting so we didn't require "chain of command" to outfight any given gang of that era, dependent as they were on however poorly conceived notions of structure.
Puerile notions of "purity," to be sure--self- and group-images imagining being untainted by any outside influence. Yet, it worked, in its own Lord-of-the-Flies kind of way.
And because of that experience, I can relate to the ideal that many T's express: no main leader, grassroots manifestation of long-suppressed resentment of intrusion into our daily lives, etc and on and on.
Yet, once again, like merely another "life changing"-enabler, penny-stock player, they got hoodwinked. The Kochs (I'm spelling that way cuz I finally realized they themselves pronounce it like Coke, the soda pop) have been taking advantage of that angst.
They weren't open about it, and they have their own agenda.
A very recent concept (maybe from today) is one I can appreciate (even though I don't agree with several major points in the column/opinion piece): Tea Kettle peeps are venting steam; the "true" Tea Party folk have yet to find a focal point, much less an electable, effective leader.
posted
Yeah but I'm not seeing how they are "Taking advantage"? It seems that the party believes as they do, already.
Are they trying to benefit from the party's popularity by ushering in new legislation that benefits their business solely?
Not sure I got that from the article.. Mind you as I said before I was reading from the perspective that the author was very much embroiled with loathing for the whole family.
Posts: 2965 | Registered: Aug 2005
| IP: Logged |
posted
I can see evidence of that sort of crime on both the left and right main parties.. Lefties have been hoodwinked into believing whole heartedly the whole global warming nonsense.
Righties have been mindlessly coerced into backing liberty destroying legislation like the patriot act all while screaming "Liberty and Freedom" as loud as they can.
Those two instances I would call "taking advantage".
Posts: 2965 | Registered: Aug 2005
| IP: Logged |
UBBFriend: Email this page to someone!
Printer-friendly view of this topic
![[Wink]](wink.gif)
