If you have not read this book, you must. A large portion of it concerns the two Koch bros. and their organizing a cult of billionaire oligarch followers, and the profound effects it has had on the U.S. govt and democratic system. One of the upshots of it is that if you want to deny the Koch + anarcho-oligarchs domination, Trump has to be the GOP nominee - as painful as that sounds.
I thought the Koch’s were just selfish, greedy, whack radical conservatives. Wrong. They are in fact, mere brutal, common criminals. They cheat, have cheated their customers (big time), their family (2 brothers esp.), employees, all levels of govt., caused massive, wanton, environmental damage and seem to have seized on every opportunity to cheat and lie.
Their actual programme for the U.S. is breathtaking; eliminate all min. wages, welfare, unions, most Fed. govt agencies (not even sure if any would survive) and replace the entire constitution with a single sentence to protect property.
For those people who so casually say 'yeah, but what has Obama really done…" this is the book to read. Makes you question what Hitler and Stalin could have done if they only were (dollar) billionaires.
Is there anywhere where I could get a copy of this “programme”?
In any case, minimum wage, welfare, unions, and federal government agencies still exist. With the exception of unions, all have expanded in recent years. (Unions are shrinking because most workers prefer not to be part of one.) So plainly, if the Koch Brothers’ program is what you say it is, it is not having any effect on policy. What exactly are the “profound effects” that you refer to?
Yeah. The hysterical claims that get tossed around about the Koch Brothers are really funny.
Koch Industries is on the list of top donors. It’s at number 48 on the list, so there are 47 organizations that gave more money to politicians in that cycle.
Most of the biggest spenders in politics are unions. Seven of the top ten contributors were unions.
Big money overwhelming favors Democrats, not Republicans. Of the 25 organizations that donated the most, 18 gave all or almost all of their money to Democrats.
I wonder whether Jane Meyer mentioned these facts in her book?
I beg to differ. There is nothing “not credible” there. In fact Jane Mayer is a respected writer for the New Yorker, has given terrific interviews about the book, and the book itself has garnered very positive reviews including from the New York Times. The basic story isn’t even particularly new – a lot of what Mayer talks about is already well known, but she does contribute a lot of new detail and pulls it all together into a particularly compelling narrative about big money in general and the Kochs in particular. I’ve quoted some of the stuff from that Salon interview before.
Not you, no, nor anyone who isn’t part of the “donor group”. In case you weren’t aware, the Koch “donor conferences” are so exceedingly confidential that not even the attendees are publicly acknowledged, and all attendees are warned to keep all materials, notes, etc. strictly confidential. And even so, some of the more sensitive sessions are limited only to specially vetted trusted attendees. Occasionally stuff gets leaked, like this list of attendees accidentally left behind in a hotel room, or this high-level agenda outline.
Maybe you should read the Mayer book before talking about it. Or start by reading the Salon interview I linked so you at least have some clue of what we’re discussing.
What’s actually funny is trying to convince us that somehow all the big money favors the party that is the most hostile to it, and the poor Republicans who are the most friendly to the 1% have to go begging and getting by on penny handouts.
You know, maybe there’s a difference between the listed amounts explicitly and legally donated to political campaigns and the vastly greater amounts that are spent hatching and supporting all manner of strategies to influence political outcomes, public beliefs and even fundamental public values (as in the Kochs insinuating themselves into the formulation of college curricula and infiltration of PBS), and the whole thrust of public policy. There’s a reason Mayer’s book is called “Dark Money”. And it’s not the first time these sordid issues have been discussed.
Yes, it’s the voters’ fault if we listen to the Kochs. But it’s also the voters’ right to point out the Kochs are wrong.
Some on the left want to prevent the Kochs from getting their message out. That’s wrong-headed and un-American. The better approach is books like this one that take the Kochs head-on and defeat them in the public space. But I’m afraid too many people will dismiss it as a political hack instead of something defensible.
I clicked on the “high-level agenda outline” that you linked to. What I read did not match up with what Iamnotivan said. Among the items that are on the agenda:
7:30 - 11:30 Golf <For golf participants only>
Moving on to events of a slightly more political nature, we have items such as:
Free Speech: Defending First Amendment Rights
Online Education: Disruptive Technology in Higher Ed
Small-Group Discussion - Over-criminalization: Removing Legal Barriers to Opportunity
Exactly zero items on the agenda mention minimum wage, welfare, or unions. Instead, it would seem that the Koch Brothers’ aims include protecting the American people’s First Amendment rights, improving affordable education, and reducing the number of people in prison. Thank you for linking to that evidence.
I haven’t read the book, but the title “Dark Money” strongly implies that there is something wrong with spending money on speech, and that it should be regulated. But perhaps it doesn’t say that. And I don’t know if the OP would advocate it either.
Hillary Clinton will have a fundraiser tomorrow where couples pay $353,400 to sit at the table with her. You imply that the 1% support the Republicans, so I guess it’s the poor and middle class who are paying $353,400 to spend an evening with Hillary.
OK. But what if the Kochs succeed in their objectives – and the combined billions that they and their donor associates are spending on everything from basic issue advocacy to controlling the agenda of higher education suggests that they have a good chance of doing so? What if they do create the kind of dystopian world that they envision, a world that is run by and for the moneyed classes? We’re halfway there already. Saying it was “the voters’ choice” is a useless tautology, a pathetically naive bleat in the darkness, as if democracy itself was so innately perfect that it could never be undermined by self-interested powers. Shaping the voters’ perceptions is precisely what the highly secretive Koch “donor summits” are all about.
So your first line, “bullshit”, is wrong, and the rest is a pointless truism.
“Dark money” is a reference to a specific methodology of funneling money to political and advocacy organizations in ways that are not traceable to the original donors. One of the most common ways of doing this is through a variety of intermediate donor organizations which either have explicit advocacy objectives or, like Donors Trust or Donors Capital, are “donor directed” whereby donors can control how their money is spent while maintaining complete anonymity. Among other things it allows advocacy financing by one or a few wealthy individuals to be disguised as an ostensible grassroots movement, via so-called “astroturf” organizations. “Dark money” isn’t a value judgement but a factual descriptor of the secrecy and lack of accountability in which wealthy supporters of particular causes are able to operate to manipulate public perceptions.
Not only that, but the title of the seminar is “American Courage” and the subtitle is “Our commitment to a free society”. Clearly, anyone opposed to the Kochs must be opposed to courage and a free society. Ain’t euphemisms wonderful? Hitler and his gang had tons of them. I guess all that courageous freedom must be why attendees are ordered never to speak a word about what’s really said at those summits. Which is, incidentally, the subject of what Jane Mayer spent nearly a decade researching and writing about. And which, if you can’t be bothered to read the book, she briefly touches on in that interview I linked.
So George Clooney and his pals are Democrats? What a shock!
Where did I say that Republicans exclusively owned the money game? As a matter of fact Jane Mayer, the very person we’re talking about here, was instrumental in exposing the Clintons’ rather cynical selling of the presidency and some of George Soros’ shenanigans. A fact which might be noted by those accusing her of being partisan. But a few anecdotes does not a trend make. The real story here is the extent to which big money primarily promotes right-wing causes, for entirely obvious reasons.
The Koch Brothers aside, there has definitely been a movement within the elite ranks to do away with most New Deal era programs and protections that we take for granted. The National Labor Relations Board has at times operated without its full five member panel, owing to conservative obstructionism on appointments. There is also a real possibility that a 5-4 or 6-3 tilt on the Supreme Court bench in favor of economic conservatives would create very plausible legal scenarios in which things like minimum wages, social security, medicare, and collective bargaining gets revisited by the court.
As to points two and three, big spenders are unions mainly because unions are rightly concerned about their future, particularly as conservatives sharpen their attacks on public sector unions, which are the backbone of organized labor now that private unions have effectively been shut down and had their jobs sent overseas. They’re spending for their survival. I’m not always on board with what unions do, but they are right to be concerned.
Please. George Soros is a boogeyman just like the Koch brothers who makes a lot of ignorant people soil themselves in fear.
If you look at the link that ITR Champion already posted you’ll notice that on the list of all the big money groups that donate money to politicians, Soros is at #17, meaning he gives a lot more money than the Koch brothers, who are # 48, but there are 16 other groups that give vastly more money than he does.
Hell, most of those groups, including 4 of the top 5 are unions but how many of the people who soil themselves in fear about money in politics whine about teachers having too much power.
Some on this Board seem to regard teachers’ unions as public enemies who are entirely to blame for strapped local budgets and declining school performance.
And others think that all of our troubles are due to corporations, or the biggest horned devil of them all, “money in politics” GASP(aka the right to own and operate a printing press that publishes messages critical or supportive of politicians and political candidates).
