Koch Industries Makes Billions By Demanding Bailouts And Taxpayer Subsidies? (Part 1)

REPORT: How Koch Industries Makes Billions By Demanding Bailouts And Taxpayer Subsidies (Part 1)

Think Progress- By Lee Fang on Mar 1st, 2011 at 1:00 pm

Koch Industries, the international conglomerate owned by Charles and David Koch, is not only the second largest private company in America, it is the most politically active. As ThinkProgress has carefully documented over the last three years, Koch groups have spent tens of millions to influence government policy — from financing the Tea Parties, to funding junk academic studies, to undisclosed attack ads against Democrats, to groups promoting climate change denial, to a large network of state-based and national think tanks. In an opinion column for the Wall Street Journal today, Koch Industries CEO Charles Koch fired back at his critics, who have grown more vocal as it has become clear that Koch groups are providing the political muscle for Gov. Scott Walker’s (R-WI) union-busting power grab.

In his piece, Charles portrays himself as simply an ideological advocate, and says his money to political groups is only meant to “enhance true economic freedom.” He chides special interests that have “successfully lobbied for special favors,” claiming “crony capitalism is much easier than competing in an open market.” But in reality, the focus of the Koch political machine is geared towards “crony capitalism” — corrupting government to make Charles and his brother David Koch richer. Koch’s Tea Party libertarianism is actually a thin veneer for the company’s long running history of winning special deals from the government and manipulating the market to pad Koch profits:

– The dirty secret of Koch Industries is its birth under the centrally-planned Soviet Union. Fred Koch, the founder of the company and father of David and Charles, helped construct fifteen oil refineries for Joseph Stalin before expanding the business in the United States.

MORE HERE

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Tea Partiers Help ACLU, House Dems Stop Patriot Act Renewal

Tea Partiers Help ACLU, House Dems Stop Patriot Act Renewal

TPM Muckraker

Susan Crabtree and Ryan J. Reilly | February 9, 2011, 9:27AM

The American Civil Liberties Union’s Michelle Richardson didn’t know where things stood ahead of the House’s vote expended certain provisions of the PATRIOT Act last night.

“I have no special inside knowledge on how this is going to shake down, but we’re certainly going to be watching it closely,” she told TPM ahead of the Tuesday night vote.

The big mystery was how the Tea Party-backed members would break on the first national security vote in the new Congress — and whether the libertarian leanings of members from the right could align with concerns about government overreach on the left. Richardson said they’d be “seeing if the small government beliefs that have been espoused also apply in the national security context.”

In the end, 26 Republicans broke with their leadership to oppose the bill, which still gained a majority of votes (227 to 148) but didn’t pass.

While the bill to extend certain provisions of the PATRIOT Act had the support of the White House, it was a coalition of Democrats and Republicans that stopped the legislation from reaching the two-thirds vote needed under the House’s expedited procedures. The extension could still pass with a simple majority under a different process.

Under the provisions that are set to expire, the government is allowed to set up roving wiretaps, track foreign citizens who might be acting alone in plotting attacks and gain easy access to certain types of business records.

HERE

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Rush Limbaugh says there will never be equality because:”some people are just born to be slaves”

Rush Limbaugh says there will never be equality because:”some people are just born to be slaves”

Crooks & Liars- By John Amato

October 09, 2010 07:00 AM

How dare you say there’s racism in the Teabircher movement? I’m so offended by that notion. Isn’t what Rush Limbaugh just soooooo true?

LIMBAUGH: This is a tough thing to say, because a lot of people don’t want to hear this, because it goes against everybody’s desire that we all be the same, that there be no pain in life and that there be no suffering and that everybody do well and that everybody have what they want and so forth.

But there is no equality. You cannot guarantee that any two people will end up the same. And you can’t legislate it, and you can’t make it happen. You can try, under the guise of fairness and so forth, but some people are self-starters, and some people are born lazy. Some people are born victims. Some people are just born to be slaves. Some people are born to put up with somebody else making every decision for them.

Some people, on the other hand, are born and they’re not going to take anything from anybody. They’re going to be totally in charge of their lives. They’re not going to sit around and wait for something. They’re going to make it happen. You can see this throughout the American strata — population.

Even in — well, born and raised. I think both. I think born and raised.

But you can — even in down economic times, there are people getting wealthy. In recessions and depressions, there are still people who are profiting from it. Most people are not self-starters. Most people, if you ask them as adults — think back. Who was the best teacher you ever had? They’ll tell you — it almost, without fail — that there was somebody in their life that showed them that they were capable of much more than they thought they were capable of themselves. Because most people are not self-starters. Most people don’t push themselves. They have to be pushed. To be shown

He’s absolutely correct because there were many people that were born slaves in America. They were actually slaves. My time-line may be off, but it was somewhere between the years 1619-1865. It’s fine that he got mixed up a little bit. After all he has to fill three hours a day of air time and mistakes will be made. Oh Rush, you’re so right on man. It’s so beautiful how you tell it like it is.

Combining the Tea parties, with the Tough as Nails Christians along with RushBo talkism has been an awesome combination since President Obama took office and is benefiting mankind tenfold. Heck, who needs projects like this to kick start America?

Vodpod videos no longer available.

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Tea Partiers Riding To Arizona’s Rescue

Tea Partiers Riding To Arizona’s Rescue

TPM MUCKRAKER

Zachary Roth | May 14, 2010, 1:17PM

Tea Party activists are riding to Arizona’s rescue in the state’s time of need.

Conservative activists recently launched a “Buycott”, urging people to support and do business with several Arizona-based companies, including US Airways, Best Western, and U-Haul.* And others are planning a rally to “Stand With Arizona.”

The efforts come in response to calls from progressives to boycott the state as a result of the controversial immigration law it passed last month. As we reported yesterday, the mayor of Phoenix has said the city faces a “near economic crisis” as a result of lost revenue.

Gina Loudon, a St. Louis-based Tea Party leader, who helped get the Buycott off the ground and is tracking its impact, told TPMmuckraker that it likely has generated “hundreds of thousands of dollars,” in spending for the companies involved, but said she hadn’t yet had a chance to count the receipts she’s been sent. “The numbers are probably astounding, as soon as I have time to add them up,” she said.

Loudon recently helped organize similar Buycotts of Ford and Whole Foods, after both companies came under fire from progressive activists. “I can’t imagine right now in this American economy that anybody wants a boycott of anything,” she said. “I think it’s incredibly destructive.”

Separately, grassroots conservatives activists have organized a rally for May 29 in Tempe, where participants will show support for Arizona in the face of “left-wing bullies.”

A message on the website for the Stand With Arizona campaign declares:

Arizona is under heavy fire from the left-wing bullies for trying to protect its own citizens from the ravages of illegal immigration. The entire state is being attacked as ‘racist,’ ‘nazi’ and ‘extremist.’ (Sound familiar?) The left-wing bullies believe they can target, isolate and neutralize Arizona, and thereby pressure the people of Arizona to stop enforcing the law.

It continues: “If you support Arizona’s right to pass reasonable laws for the protection of its own citizens, you are hereby invited to JOIN US on May 29th.”

Both the Buycott and the rally were promoted in an email sent last night by the Tea Party Patriots, perhaps the largest organized Tea Party faction.
* An earlier version of this post said incorrectly said that Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-AZ) called for a boycott of Arizona businesses. In fact, he called for a more limited sanction against conventions and conferences in the state.

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Republicans and Teabaggers Finally Embrace Big Government

For more than a year now, we’ve been hearing from Republicans, tea party people and Glenn Beck’s chalkboard about how big government is destroying American liberty and freedom. Much of the shrieking is literally accompanied by the yellow Revolutionary War “Don’t Tread on Me” flag.

Every tea party lawn concert and misspelled sign regatta features people dressed in colonial drag with tea bags dangling from their tri-corner hats, waving banners in support of tax cuts, liberty and freedom and against the allegedly tyrannical Obama government. They’re really scared and they want their country back from the (somehow) black liberal Nazi.

We’ve heard about how the “czars” are unconstitutional, even though the name “czars” was invented by the press as clever pseudonym for “advisers.”

We’ve heard about how the Recovery Act, which has created hundreds of thousands of jobs and cut taxes for 95 percent of working families, is unconstitutional and an attack on states’ rights and individual liberty. We’ve heard about how it’s “generational theft” for the government to spend money to solve an economic crisis. We’ve heard about how the tax cuts in the Recovery Act are just a scam and should be returned to the government in protest.

We’ve heard about the crazy conspiracy theories involving the IRS invading our neighborhoods with armed goon squads — rounding up anyone who purchased one of Glenn Beck’s dozens of McBooks. Of course this meme turned out to be entirely untrue as there is no enforcement mechanism in the health care reform law should you simply choose not to pay the tax penalty for not buying insurance.

Republican attorneys general across the nation are challenging the health care law in court because, they say, it’s unconstitutional. House minority leader John Boehner once called the bill “Armageddon” because of the tax penalty for Americans who choose not to buy insurance. Armageddon!

Throughout all of the misinformed and contradictory right-wing antics of the past year, I’ve been wondering how post-Bush Republicans and conservatives can possibly square all of their newly found affinity for freedom, liberty and the Constitution considering their eight year support for Bush era policies. Policies like illegal wiretaps of American citizens, the USA Patriot Act, suspension of habeas corpus (it’s in the Constitution) and all the rest of it.

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Rupert Murdoch: Fox News Shouldn’t Be Supporting The Tea Party Movement

Rupert Murdoch says Fox News shouldn’t be supporting the Tea Party movement. He actually said that.

Crooks & Liars- By John Amato Thursday Apr 08, 2010 7:00am

Ari over at Media Matters asked Rupert Murdoch if it’s appropriate for his network to be supporting the Tea Party movement. He said “no,” and that they shouldn’t support any party. He must have missed David Frum saying that Republicans actually work for FOX News.

You are probably puking now if you finished watching this short clip. FOX News created the Tea Party movement, period.
MORE HERE

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Will Fox News Destroy the Republican Party?

Will Fox News Destroy the Republican Party?

The Nation / By Leslie Savan

Fox news realizes that the best way to defend right-wing victories is to keep American politics in a state of chaos, with tea parties and fresh social outrages at every turn.

April 4, 2010 |

Over the past week or so, stories about conservative hypocrisies have been popping up in mainstream media like cute kitten videos on the internets. There was the Vatican blaming the news media for the pedophilia practiced by priests; the Republicans blaming the violence against Democrats on the Democrats themselves; Sarah Palin, intoning that “violence isn’t the answer,” studding a map with gunsights to target the Dems who should be gotten rid of come November; and, of course, fundraisers for the family values party trying to expense-account their visit to that faux-lesbian, bondage-themed nightclub in West Hollywood. It almost made you think the conservative movement was about to collapse under the weight of its own delusions.

But then the cable ratings came out and showed that Fox News had had its best quarter ever, and that it’s the second most-watched cable channel in prime time, right after USA Network.

And that made me think of another recent story, the purge of former Bush speechwriter David Frum from the American Enterprise Institute, largely for delivering quotes like this: “The Republicans originally thought that Fox works for us, and now we’re discovering we work for Fox. The balance here has been completely reversed, and the thing that sustains a strong Fox network is the thing that undermines a strong Republican Party.”

MORE HERE

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Glenn Beck’s World: What If the Tea Partiers Ruled the Country?

Welcome to Glenn Beck’s World: What If the Tea Partiers Ruled the Country?

Tomdispatch.com / By Chip Ward

March 29, 2010 |

Imagine a land where white, patriarchal, religiously zealous, Tea Party-type patriots rule. It’s called Utah, and what happens here should terrify you.

What if the Tea Party ruled?  Imagine a land, let’s call it Glennbeckistan, where white, patriarchal, religiously zealous, Tea Party-type patriots hold a super-majority in both houses of the legislature, sit in the governor’s mansion, and control most local governments. It’s a place so out of sync with the rest of the nation that states’ rights and even secession are always on the agenda.  It’s a place where gun-ownership trumps all other rights, climate change is considered an insidious socialist conspiracy, and a miscarriage can be investigated as a potential crime.  Welcome to Utah.

Our rightwing red-state legislature just finished its annual 2010 session.  So-called message bills challenged the federal government’s right to govern federal lands, enforce gun controls, legalize abortion, and mandate health reform.  In addition, Utah’s lawmakers cut the education budget, raised tuitions, and slashed services to the disabled.  In fairness, state legislators across the nation, faced with disastrous drops in revenue, have likewise slashed social services and balanced budgets on the backs of the poor.  In Utah, however, they also shelved pensions for public employees.  That they could take such draconian action is instructive — organized labor is weak here, unions being another manifestation of creeping socialism.  Utah’s history of labor organizing, or grass roots and civil rights organizing for that matter, is anemic compared to most of America.  This is the place, after all, where IWW radical Joe Hill was arrested and executed.

Although Utah may be unique in some ways, Republican leaders here want the rest of the nation to be more like us.  In fact, a survey of the 2010 Utah legislative session could be considered a trailer for a movie the national Republican base would like all Americans to star in.  This movie would be for the Tea Party movement what Avatar is to tree huggers.

MORE HERE

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The Heat Is On: Tea Partiers Denounce Violence

Tea party in Hartford, Connecticut in 2009

Feeling The Heat, Tea Partiers Denounce Violence

TPM Muckraker

Zachary Roth | March 26, 2010, 1:12PM

Tea Partiers and others on the right are starting to distance themselves from the recent spate of violence and racism that has characterized the opposition to health-care reform.

In a letter to President Obama and Congress released yesterday, an alliance of Florida Tea Party groups called the Tea Party movement “a peaceful movement” and declared that they “stand in stark opposition to any person using derogatory characterizations, threats of violence, or disparaging terms toward members of Congress or the President.”

A similar coalition in Colorado — where the office of Rep. Betsy Markey (D-CO) recently notified police about a phone call it received threatening violence — released a similar statement. “Tea party and similar groups across Colorado are saddened tonight to hear of threats made upon Democratic lawmakers in response to the passing their recent health insurance reform legislation, specifically … Rep. Betsy Markey,” it said.

And FreedomWorks, the Washington grassroots lobbying group that has helped co-ordinate Tea Party events put out a statement declaring “political violence is both immoral and ineffective, and will only set the movement back.”

Separately, Debbie Dooley, a co-founder of the Atlanta Tea Party and a national coordinator for Tea Party Patriots, told Fox News: “We support peaceful means,” adding, “there are so many Tea Party groups that are out there. … It’s like herding cats. It’s impossible.”

Even Glenn Beck — not known for his cool head — has counseled his followers against violence, calling it counter-productive.

As we’ve reported, the last few days have seen a spate of violent attacks on Democratic offices around the country, as well as threats against several Democrats who voted for reform. The protests over the weekend at the Capitol involved incidents of racism and homophobia.

So it’s significant that some Tea Partiers and their allies are starting to feel the need to distance themselves from the violence, for fear of being associated with it. In normal times, it might be unremarkable for activists to declare that violence is bad. But these are hardly normal times.

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Tea Party Is About Race

I was going to open this piece with an analogy about the tea party groups and why they’re treated seriously by the press and the Republicans. The analogy would go something like: “Imagine [insert left-wing activist group here] getting a serious profile in a mainstream newspaper, and imagine serious Democratic politicians appearing at their convention.”

The problem is, when I really evaluated what the various far-left activist groups are all about and compared them with the tea party movement, there really wasn’t any equivalency. At all.

Because when you strip away all of the rage, all of the nonsensical loud noises and all of the contradictions, all that’s left is race. The tea party is almost entirely about race, and there’s no comparative group on the left that’s similarly motivated by bigotry, ignorance and racial hatred.

I hasten to note that I’m taking about real racism, insofar as it’s impossible for the majority race — the 70 percent white majority — to be on the receiving end of racism. That is unless white males, for example, are suddenly an oppressed racial demographic. But judging by the racial composition of, say, the Senate or AM talk radio or the cast members playing the Obamas on SNL, I don’t think white people have anything to worry about.

This isn’t an epiphany by any stretch. From the beginning, with their witch doctor imagery, watermelon agitprop and Curious George effigies, the wingnut right has been dying to blurt out, as Lee Atwater famously said, “nigger, nigger, nigger!”

But they can’t.

Strike that. Correction. TeaParty.org founder Dale Robertson brandished a sign with the (misspelled) word “niggar.” So they’re not even as restrained as the generally unstrung Atwater anymore.

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