You’ll Find Koch Dollars At the Root Of the Calls for Armed Revolution Against Obama

By: RmuseMay. 3rd, 2013

Politicususa

The concept of America as a representative democracy has worked relatively well for over 2 centuries, and it is ultimately superior to other forms of government that are oppressive and despotic; Americans can thank the Founding Fathers for protecting this country from becoming an authoritarian dictatorship. It is difficult to imagine many Americans agreeing to abandon democracy for another form of government, but there are a frightening number of citizens who hate America’s representative democracy with such passion that they are leaning heavily toward overthrowing the government and installing a fascist dictatorship. The group in question is not an extremist militia organization and they are not  concealing their plans from plain view, and in fact, have begun the transition to fascism from within the conservative movement with full cooperation and assistance from establishment Republicans in Congress and state legislatures around the nation.

The idea that America’s democratic form of government could fall to an authoritarian regime began taking shape shortly after the election of Barack Obama, and after a little over four years of constant propaganda by Republican politicians incensed that their reign came to an end in 2009, almost half of Republicans believe “an armed revolution might be necessary to protect our liberties.” A recent poll reveals that it is worse than it seems because more Republicans believe armed revolution might be necessary to overthrow the legally elected government than believe is not required, and GOP politicians have been hard at work inciting their base and putting the brakes on democracy since January 2009.

On Tuesday, a Fairleigh Dickinson University poll revealed that despotism is rampant among the Republican rank and file who are following the lead of Republicans in Congress who have taken extraordinary steps to bring America’s democracy to a halt through not-so-devious machinations and with stunning impunity. In the Senate, for example, the inordinate use of the filibuster has given minority Republicans control of the upper legislative chamber, and around the nation Republican-controlled states are taking extraordinary steps to bring an end to free and fair elections for non-Republican voters. If Americans are foolish enough to believe the Republican’s use of armed revolution to install a permanent Republican government is predicated on the right to unrestricted firearm possession, democracy is already doomed and all that is left is ceding control of the government to the Koch brothers and their fascist regime.

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Crossroads GPS And Americans For Prosperity Outspend All Super PACs Combined

Think Progress Justice

By Rebecca Leber  on Aug 14, 2012 at 3:50 pm

Karl Rove’s Crossroads GPS (an affiliate of the super PAC American Crossroads) and the Koch brothers’ Americans For Prosperity have spent more on TV ads than every super PAC combined, according to a ProPublica analysis of CMAG data. Unlike super PACs, these groups do not have to disclose donors. That has allowed a handful of unknown billionaires  — like Sheldon Adelson and the Kochs — to funnel millions into attack ads through outside groups.

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Swiss Bank Account (VIDEO)

Published on May 1, 2012 by BarackObamadotcom

Are you in? https://my.barackobama.com/swissbankad
“Swiss Bank Account” highlights Mitt Romney’s belief that a strong economy is built on outsourcing, loopholes and risky financial deals. As a corporate CEO, he shipped American jobs to places like Mexico and China. As governor, Romney outsourced state jobs to India, and now as a candidate for president he is pushing tax breaks for companies that ship jobs overseas.
Romney’s economic scheme stands in stark contrast with President Obama’s efforts to continue moving the country forward by rebuilding an economy that’s meant to last, by out-building, out-innovating and out-educating the rest of the world, and making the things the rest of the world buys by closing loopholes and providing incentives that are bringing jobs back to America.

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David Koch: ‘No Stopping Union Power’ If Scott Walker Is Recalled. Challenge Accepted, Dave!

Think Progress reporter Lee Fang interviewed David Koch in a sidewalk ambush last year.

February 20, 2012 10:00 AM

Crooks and Liars  By- Susie Madrak

Boy, the apple didn’t fall far from the tree, huh? What a swell family those Kochs are:

Billionaire David Koch has vowed to defend Wisconsin governor Scott Walker against the union-backed recall election underway in that state. In aninterview with the Palm Beach Post, Koch said that, “We’ve spent a lot of money in Wisconsin. We’re going to spend more.”

The we in question is Koch and his equally well-off brother Charles, who together have financed much of the conservative tea party movement through their group Americans For Prosperity.

Koch also told the Post that “there will be no stopping union power” if they win the recall election versus Walker, who jammed through legislation that strips public employee unions of their power to collectively bargain.

In the interview, Koch lavishes praise on his father Fred Koch who was a founding member of the far-right John Birch Society.

Fred Koch once wrote that the “colored man looms large in the Communist plan to take over America” and claimed welfare was designed to create a “vicious race war.”

The John Birch Society was founded in opposition to the civil rights movement, and promoted numerous conspiracy theories of a UN-led “one world” government. The group also famously opposed fluoridation of water, which it described as a communist mind-control plot.

SOURCE

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Big Koch Brothers Are Watching Us!

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BARF- Please Help The 1%

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Billionaire Buddies: Adelsons Join Forces With Koch Brothers To Take Down Obama

Think Progress- By Josh Israel  on Feb 2, 2012 at 10:45 am

In recent years, billionaire oil magnates David and Charles Koch have bankrolled the Tea Party movement, Republican candidates, and efforts to deny the existence global warming.  But less noticed have been their series of twice-yearly strategy coordination meetings for wealthy right-wing donors.  These secret confabs have attracted Republicans like Govs. Rick Perry (R-TX) and Rick Scott (R-FL), as well as former Fox News Channel talker Glenn Beck, Supreme Court JusticesAntonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, representatives from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and executives from the oil, banking, and health insurance industries.

The most recent meeting attracted two newcomers: Sheldon and Miriam Adelson.  Between them, the Las Vegas casino-owner and his wife have reportedly plowed $10 million into a pro-Newt Gingrich super PAC and have donated tens of thousands of dollars to Republican party committees and candidates already this cycle.

A Center for Public Integrity report suggests this may just be the beginning:

Adelson has recently indicated strong interest in backing other GOP allied groups, say fundraisers familiar with his giving. In 2010, Adelson wrote a seven figure check to Crossroads GPS, a non-profit advocacy group that doesn’t have to disclose its donors publicly which was co-founded by GOP super consultants Karl Rove and Ed Gillespie.

The story quotes unnamed fundraisers “familiar with Adelson,” the American Crossroads super PAC and the 501(c)(4) Crossroads GPS, as expecting Adelson to “pump a few million dollars more” into one of the Crossroads groups this year, to help defeat President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign. They also say Adelson is also considering writing a check to the American Action Network, former Sen. Norm Coleman (R-MN)’s non-profit, to help preserve the Republican majority in the U.S. House.

Between the Kochs and the Adelsons, voters around the country should expect to see what voters in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Florida have seen in recent weeks: a seemingly unending stream of dishonest attack ads, paid for by billionaire-funded super PACs and tax-exempt organizations.

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Kochtopus: The Powerful Koch Boys From Kansas

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Let’s go back in time to this great article:

The powerful Koch boys from Kansas

Bill Berkowitz

WorkingForChange

02.09.06

Last year, in a move that does not bode well for the nation’s forests, the Koch brothers of Kansas engineered a $13.2 billion buyout of forest products producer Georgia Pacific Corporation, making their company, Koch Industries, the nation’s largest privately held company.

According to the Toronto Globe and Mail, Koch’s purchase of Georgia Pacific would vault Koch past food producer Cargill Inc. as the largest privately held company in the United States, with $80-billion in revenue and 85,000 employees in 50 countries.

The Koch Boys from Kansas are smart, focused, and incredibly wealthy. For years they’ve been pushing both a libertarian and free-market agenda through tens of millions of dollars in contributions to conservative causes, candidates and organizations.

In a way, the Georgia Pacific acquisition “completes the circle” for Koch, Scott Silver told me in an e-mail interview. “The ideologues running the land management agencies are the product of the think tanks created by, and funded by, the Koch family,” Silver, the executive director of the environmental group Wild Wilderness, pointed out.

“Those ideologues are now in a position to permit Koch’s newest acquisition, Georgia-Pacific, to further rape and pillage the public’s lands. These think tanks promote the Free-Market ideal when it serves their interests to do so, but in reality, they are firmly committed to the ideal of enriching private interests at enormous direct cost to the American taxpayer.”

The Koch (pronounced “coke”) brothers, Charles, David, William and Frederick are sons of Kansas. Thirty-eight years ago, Charles took over the company from his father, company founder Fred Koch. According to a recent piece in Business Week, Charles, 70, and David, 65, now “own the bulk of the company after elbowing out their other brothers … in 1983,” buying out William and Frederick for $470 million and $320 million, respectively. In 1998, in a chilling display of family disunity, “the two sets of brothers walked silently past one another in court as William and Frederick lost a lawsuit to extract more money from Charles and David.”

In 1940, Fred Koch founded the company as an oil refiner. A graduate of MIT, he was an original member of the anticommunist ultra-conservative John Birch Society, founded in 1958. The sons did not fall far from the tree: Both Charles and David graduated from MIT and have been deeply involved in conservative politics.

According to “Axis of Ideology,” a 2004 report by the National Committee on Responsive Philanthropy, the two dominant Koch boys have “a combined net worth of approximately $4 billion, placing them among the top 50 wealthiest individuals in the country and among the top 100 wealthiest individuals in the world in 2003, according to Forbes.”

MORE HERE

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And, this article:

Koch’ed Up

2011 March 12

by Cowboy Dre

Koch Brothers Increased Wealth by $9 Billion Last Year As They Fund Laws to Make Working Class Poorer | Buzzflash

Based on a recent Forbes survey, Rachel Maddow revealed that while Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker is stripping away the financial security of workers, the Koch brothers increased their wealth by $9 billion last year. Together, Maddow notes, they would rank as the fourth-wealthiest person ($44 billion) in the world.

Meanwhile, the Koch brothers and Karl Rove, among others, are using front organizations to pit working people, who are being exploited, against unions. It’s the ultimate in class warfare: make the working class fight each other over an increasingly smaller piece of the financial pie, as the super wealthy run off with the bakery.

That’s why ads in Wisconsin – and stories on Fox – are trying to get Wal-Mart low-wage workers to resent that union members receive better benefits, which of course – on a logical level – reinforces to many of us exactly why unions are needed: to prevent the impoverishment of people who labor for a living.

What’s not mentioned in these ads, or the right-wing media echo chamber, is why the government is subsidizing the wealthy who don’t pay their fair share.
More…

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Is the Shadowy World of ALEC and the Koch Brothers Leading the GOP’s Charge to Suppress the Youth Vote?

Copyright Permission from my friend, Stephen Pitt

Is the Shadowy World of ALEC and the Koch Brothers Leading the GOP’s Charge to Suppress the Youth Vote?

Submitted by BuzzFlash on Mon, 04/04/2011 – 11:55am.

BILL BERKOWITZ FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

BuzzFlash at Truthout suggests you read the well-received first column on ALEC, “Smart ALEC: Dragging the Secretive Conservative Organization Out of the Shadows.”

Nearly forty years after a constitutional amendment conferring voting rights on eighteen year-olds was passed into law, and signed by President Richard Nixon, the American Legislative Exchange Council is doing all it can to make it difficult for young people to vote.

Nearly forty years after a Constitutional Amendment giving 18-21 year-olds the right to vote, Republican legislators across the country are trying to disenfranchise youth under the subterfuge of combatting “voter fraud.” However, as Christina Francisco-McGuire recently pointed out at progressivestates.org, instances of *voter fraud ”are so rare that one is more likely to be struck by lightening.” Amongst the legislation being pushed in various states are photo id requirements, the abandonment of election-day registration, and the redefining of student residency requirements.

“The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a conservative organization linked to corporate and right-wing donors, including the billionaire Koch Brothers, [see "Smart ALEC: Dragging the Secretive Conservative Organization Out of the Shadows" -- http://blog.buzzflash.com/node/12551] has drafted and distributed model legislation, obtained by Campus Progress, that appears to be the inspiration for bills proposed by state legislators this year and promoted by Tea Party activists, bills that would limit access of young people to vote,” Tobin Van Ostern reported in Campus Progress in early March (“Conservative Corporate Advocacy Group ALEC Behind Voter Disenfranchisement Efforts” –http://campusprogress.org/articles/conservative_corporate_advocacy_group_alec_behind_voter_disenfranchise).

Van Ostern wrote: “According to research by the Fair Elections Legal Network (FELN) and Campus Progress, in the past six years, seven states have enacted laws that disenfranchise students or make it more difficult for them to vote. This year, 18 additional states are considering similar laws, while other states are proposing voter ID laws that would depress turnout among other groups of voters — particularly those who traditionally lean left.

“These requirements run the gamut from requiring in-state driver’s licenses, to banning school IDs, to prohibiting first-time voters – essentially every college-aged voter – from voting by absentee ballot. All together, these barriers create new logistical and financial barriers for many people attempting to vote.”

Van Ostern’s investigation found that “Many of the state proposals appear to stem from model legislation known as the Voter ID Act (also known as Photo ID) that was developed by the American Legislative Exchange Council.

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Kochtopus: 2,000 Protesters Marched On Koch Industries’ D.C. Office

2,000 Protesters March On Koch Industries’ D.C. Office

Think Progress Mobile- April 4th, 2011 at 3:03 PM by Alex Seitz-Wald

Though they don’t want you to know about it, the billionaire Koch brothers are bankrolling a massive campaign to roll back progressive achievements, and today, labor, civil rights, and climate activists turned out at dozens of rallies across the country to demonstrate against the Koch’s secretive influence in American politics and to stand up for labor and civil rights.

In Washington, D.C. today an estimated 2,000 protesters marched on Koch Industries’ Washington D.C. offices and attempted to give Charles and David Koch an invitation to come out and speak with the protesters. Not surprisingly, the building’s doors were locked and no one was allowed inside. However, a representative from the real estate company which managed the building told an handful of organizers who attempted to deliver the invitation, “I’d be here with you guys if I wasn’t working right now.” Noting that he works for the building, not Koch, he said, “I don’t want to be here.”

The events were scheduled for today because it marks the 43rd anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in Memphis, TN. King traveled to Memphis to support a strike by the city’s sanitation workers, and was an ardent supporter of workers’ rights. Dr. Earl D. Trent Jr., the senior pastor at the Florida Avenue Baptist Church in Washington, told ThinkProgress that if King “were alive today, he would be right here at the forefront, no doubt.” “And that’s why we have to carry this out.”

Watch ThinkProgress’ video report:

Last Thursday, tea party activists rallied on Capitol Hill to pressure Republican lawmakers to cut government spending. Crowd estimates ranged from “dozens” to “fewer than 200,” yet the event attracted dozens of reporters and significant media interest, producing hundreds of stories in local and national press. At today’s rally, which was ten times bigger than the tea party one, ThinkProgress spotted three reporters — none from mainstream publications.

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