| |  |
--
OPINION AND EDITORIAL | |
OUT FROM THE SHADOWS: THE LIBERTARIAN BILLIONAIRE OIL BOYS BEHIND THE “GRASS ROOTS” TEA PARTY MOVEMENT
And the wider movement to bring down Obama
August 28, 2010
In the latest edition of the New Yorker Mayer, with meticulous research and an eye for keen detail, has brought the shadow players, the big money men, the string pullers and big time manipulators behind much of what is happening today in American right wing politics out into the blazing sun with a long investigative report called “Covert Operations: The Billionaire brothers who are waging war against Obama.”
And we’re pretty sure the Koch brothers – the billionaire brothers she writes about - are not likely happy campers about it since the two mega-wealthy right wing Libertarians have dedicated so much time, money and energy into being secret players behind the scenes; shadow manipulators who never (but never) are connected to the ground level dirty work their money does.
These are museum and opera board member types, the polo-playing crowd who at all costs must keep their hands clean, their nails manicured and their high-end social connections intact. They don’t ever get down to ground level kickin’ and a gougin’ in the mud and the blood and the beer.
So who really are the Koch brothers?
Well it would appear – from the facts of their own past – they are two very sick puppies. No, make that sick anarchists who pose as normal human beings by day.
Certifiable, under handed, self centered, vindictive ultra-rich nut cases who want nothing less than to tear down the entire U.S. government.
Here Mayer discusses how in 1979 brother Charlie talks brother David into running for public office on the Libertarian ticket:
“As their fortunes grew, Charles and David Koch became the primary underwriters of hard-line libertarian politics in America. Charles’s goal, as Doherty described it, was to tear the government “out at the root.” The brothers’ first major public step came in 1979, when Charles persuaded David, then thirty-nine, to run for public office.
They had become supporters of the Libertarian Party, and were backing its Presidential candidate, Ed Clark, who was running against Ronald Reagan from the right. Frustrated by the legal limits on campaign donations, they contrived to place David on the ticket, in the Vice-Presidential slot; upon becoming a candidate, he could lavish as much of his personal fortune as he wished on the campaign.
The ticket’s slogan was “The Libertarian Party has only one source of funds: You.” In fact, its primary source of funds was David Koch, who spent more than two million dollars on the effort.
Many of the ideas propounded in the 1980 campaign presaged the Tea Party movement. Ed Clark told The Nation that libertarians were getting ready to stage “a very big tea party,” because people were “sick to death” of taxes. The Libertarian Party platform called for the abolition of the F.B.I. and the C.I.A., as well as of federal regulatory agencies, such as the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Department of Energy.
The Party wanted to end Social Security, minimum-wage laws, gun control, and all personal and corporate income taxes; it proposed the legalization of prostitution, recreational drugs, and suicide. Government should be reduced to only one function: the protection of individual rights. William F. Buckley, Jr., a more traditional conservative, called the movement “Anarcho-Totalitarianism.”
Is that nutty enough for you? Welcome to the brains and the money behind the Tea Party movement.
Mayer’s piece is a must read and can be found HERE
Mayer has done what all good journalists have done over the years: she followed the path of the money.
She lays out the case inch-by-inch, source-by-source, dollar trail by dollar trail.
As one blogger with the handle Prairie Weather put it:
“One sad, dangerous delusion to be found in genuinely grass-roots members of the Tea Party is that they own their movement. They don't know -- or don't want to know -- that they are acting on behalf not of their own interests but on behalf of the corporate interests of an oil company. It might matter to them that they've been bought out and, worse, are wasting their votes on a big lie. But apparently tea partiers have never bothered to read the actual tea leaves. The Koch’s don't make it easy.”
Here’s a quote from Mayer’s piece:
“The Koch’s have long depended on the public’s not knowing all the details about them. They have been content to operate what David Koch has called “the largest company that you’ve never heard of.”
Until now with Mayer’s piece, the story of what the Koch brothers have been up to has been kept out of mainstream media. Virtually no man or woman on the street has a clue as to who these guys are or how powerful they are.
Prairie Weather again:
“But at the center of Mayer's report is a description of the relationship between the Koch brothers and that "independent, grass-roots" Tea Party through the Tea Party's guardian angel, Americans For Prosperity (http://americansforprosperity.org/national-site).
The Tea Party spends a lot of time and plenty of jaw action trying to maintain their veneer as a homegrown, grass roots organization. It wouldn't surprise me at all if a significant percentage of the poor dopes really believe that they remain "grass roots."
Jane Mayer effectively kills that persistent lie. It's not often that Koch will turn up at even a major Tea Party event like the one that took place in Texas a month or so ago. He may not have been there in person, but in a convivial moment, Peggy Venable, who organized the event and who is a salaried employee of Americans for Prosperity (a big funding source for the Tea Party movement), let the cat out of the bag. “
And this, regarding Venable, from Mayer’s report:
“At the lectern in Austin, however, Venable—a longtime political operative who draws a salary from Americans for Prosperity, and who has worked for Koch-funded political groups since 1994—spoke less warily. “We love what the Tea Parties are doing, because that’s how we’re going to take back America!” she declared, as the crowd cheered. In a subsequent interview, she described herself as an early member of the movement, joking, “I was part of the Tea Party before it was cool!”
She explained that the role of Americans for Prosperity was to help “educate” Tea Party activists on policy details, and to give them “next-step training” after their rallies, so that their political energy could be channeled “more effectively.” And she noted that Americans for Prosperity had provided Tea Party activists with lists of elected officials to target. She said of the Kochs, “They’re certainly our people. David’s the chairman of our board. I’ve certainly met with them, and I’m very appreciative of what they do.”
Another blogger points out that the right wing FreedomWorks is also a Koch enterprise in this sense:
“Citizens for a Sound Economy”(Koch funded) was FreedomWorks' predecessor. All assets were merged together, and FreedomWorks emerged as the new entity. Whether or not Koch continues to fund FreedomWorks, it unquestionably was spawned with their money and intentions.”
Oh. Never heard of Freedomworks?
Just so happens FreedomWorks is the outfit that was behind the planned and funded “spontaneous grass roots” health care debate disruptions one year ago.
FreedomWorks was largely responsible for those loudmouthed jerks that showed up at town hall meetings to intimidate and shout down other Americans and elected representatives who disagreed with them. At least one of the meetings, in Tampa Florida, turned violent because of these idiots.
What the loud, disruptive protests were not was spontaneous. Freedom Works orchestrated them.
And what playbook was FreedomWorks working from when it did this?
Freedom Works, according to sourcewatch.org which tracks front groups claiming to be “grass roots” citizen organizations, was one of the lobbying groups involved in orchestrating the not so spontaneous anti-Obama "tea parties" on April 15, 2009.
According to Sourcewatch, in the summer of 2009 FreedomWorks began pursuing an aggressive strategy to create an “image in the media” what would appear, to the casual observer to be mass, angry public opposition to health care reform and clean energy reform at Congress members' town-hall meetings in their districts.
But a leaked memo from Bob MacGuffie, a volunteer with the FreedomWorks website "Tea Party Patriots," describes how members should infiltrate town hall meetings and harass and intimidate Democratic members of Congress:
“Spread out in the hall and try to be in the front half. The objective is to put the Rep on the defensive with your questions and follow-up ... You need to rock-the-boat early in the Rep's presentation. Watch for an opportunity to yell out and challenge the Rep's statements early. If he blames Bush for something or offers other excuses -- call him on it, yell back and have someone else follow-up with a shout-out ... The goal is to rattle him..."
FREEDOM WORKS SPOKESMAN ADMITS USING RADICAL LEFT WING STRATEGIES AND TACTICS TO DISRUPT
On the public radio broadcast of the program On the Media in August 2009, FreedomWorks spokesman Adam Graham – in a conversation taped in April by On the Media - freely admitted his group was using as a blue print for their town hall disruption demonstrations, radical left wing literature from the 1960’s and 70’s which, among other things, taught left wing radicals how to disrupt, sometimes violently, meetings and other gatherings and intimidate other Americans and political leaders.
Graham said on the program, “when we get our jobs and our organization, the first thing to do is ya sit down with some of Saul Alinksy’s books “Rules For Radicals.” We read that book and we study that book. Everything we’ve been trying to do here comes straight out of those pages.”
Thus Graham tacitly admitted FreedomWorks wanted to promote the same general type of radical right wing behavior as the left wing radicals of the 1960’s who also used Alinksy’s tactics for their work.
Saul D. Alinksy (1909-1972), often called the "father of modern American radicalism," developed tactics some would call brutish in efforts to grab power and these are the tactics the radical left used and now are in use by the radical right.
Eventually factions of the radical left wing stepped up their aggressive Alinksy inspired playbook to include bombings.
As we said Mayer’s piece is a must read and can be found HERE
| |
|
BACK TO
HOME
| |
|
