The ugly Americans

[Cobalt_Kid]

The Koch brothers seem to represent the worst of America, greed and contempt for their fellow Americans. Their dad made his fortune working for the most committed and dangerous enemy that the US ever had, Joseph Stalin and the brothers seem committed to destroying what's left of freedom and prosperity in America.

Robert Greenwald's "Koch Brothers Exposed" (Full) - YouTube

They're working to limit voter rights.

Voting limits put democracy in peril - CNN.com

Through a spate of restrictive laws passed in Republican-led state legislatures, a disproportionate number of African-Americans, Latinos, people with disabilities, the elderly and the young will find voting difficult and in many cases impossible. These laws require a state photo ID to vote, limit early voting, place strict requirements on voter registration and deny voting rights to Americans with criminal records who have paid their debt to society.

A new documentary from Brave New Foundation reveals strong partisan backing of these laws. Under the pretense of safeguarding elections against voter fraud, the American Legislative Exchange Council, a conservative advocacy group that receives funding from the billionaire Koch brothers (who also back the tea party), crafted and distributed model voter ID legislation introduced in more than 30 states this year. But widespread voter fraud is a myth. A report from the Brennan Center for Justice says strict ID verification requirements "address a sort of voter fraud more rare than death by lightning." An extensive analysis of data from all 50 states by the U.S. Justice Department found that incidents of voter fraud are exceedingly rare.

They want to resegregate schools.

Robert Greenwald and Max Stanley: The Koch Brothers Are At It Again in Public Schools [VIDEO]

The student resegregation plan favored by industrialists Charles and David Koch has been a divisive flashpoint between school board members in Wake County, NC. The billionaire brothers continue trying to resegregate a widely celebrated school system, which sets the agenda for hundreds of communities across nationwide.

The Koch brothers are extending their political battles to local school boards. An anonymous campaign flier, which may have ties to the Kochs, accuses the NAACP of brainwashing local anti-resegregation candidates. The flier is called "indoctrination" and is being investigated by state officials. The Kochs have been linked to similar smear efforts in Michigan and Wisconsin.

The Koch brothers own virtually all of Koch Industries, a $100 billion manufacturing conglomerate. Through our Koch Brothers Exposed videos, we've brought the brothers' spending on political causes that advance their bottom line and anti-civic service ideology to the fore. This film investigates the Kochs' role in resegregating a high performing school district.

While owning a half dozen multi-million dollar homes they use their "think tanks" to advocate the continued foreclosure of many Americans.

Robert Greenwald: Five Worst Things the Koch Brothers Have Done. Vote!

The Kochs fund think tanks that push for foreclosures on working people's houses. The Koch funded Reason Foundation has produced numerous reports saying that foreclosures should not be stopped. And the Koch funded Mercatus Center also presented congressional testimony stating that the foreclosures should not be stopped, and that there is no harm done to homeowners when their houses are foreclosed on.

They're busy taking over higher centers of learning to impose their message on a new generation.

FSU Accepts Funds From Charles Koch In Return For Control Over Its Academic Freedom | ThinkProgress

Robert Greenwald: Are the Koch Brothers Teaching You? [VIDEO]

What's happening to academia in Florida demands national attention. Billionaires Charles and David Koch are infringing on intellectual freedom and independence in colleges and universities. It's an old fashioned quid pro quo where the Koch brothers get allied professors who'll preach Ayn Rand, supply side economic policies and the values of the 19th century Guilded Age to students and the college gets some funding.

Every year, thousands of individuals move through the Koch-supported classes, lectures and fields of study, which in their totality amount to an ideological assembly line bought and paid for by the Koch brothers. There are Koch-funded agreements at more than 150 American colleges and universities.

And while the Kochs will never need for anything due to the massive fortune that's based on their father's work for Stalin, they don't want to see average Americas have a chance to advance their own interests.

Analysis: Koch brothers a force in anti-union effort | Reuters

The billionaire Koch brothers -- whose deep pockets and small-government philosophy have made them conservative powerhouses -- are playing an influential role in the drive to strip public employee unions of their rights to bargain in several U.S. states.

Charles and David Koch, who both rank 24th on the Forbes list of the world's richest people with $17.5 billion each, are behind campaign donations of tens of thousands, if not millions, of dollars to Republicans leading the anti-union effort.

"They're the poster boys for the incredible out-sized influence that corporate America has on our government right now," said Mary Boyle of the left-leaning group Common Cause.

Koch Brothers Behind Wisconsin Effort To Kill Public Unions - Forbes

As the nation focuses on the efforts of Governor Scott Walker to take away collective bargaining rights from public employees in Wisconsin, new information is coming to light that reveals what is truly going on here.

Mother Jones is reporting that much of the funding behind the Walker for Governor campaign came from none other than uber-conservatives, the infamous Koch Brothers.

What’s more, the plan to kill the unions is right out of the Koch Brothers play book.

Koch-backed groups like Americans for Prosperity, the Cato Institute, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, and the Reason Foundation have long taken a very antagonistic view toward public-sector unions. Several of these groups have urged the eradication of these unions. The Kochs also invited Mark Mix, president of the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, an anti-union outfit, to a June 2010 confab in Aspen, Colorado;

Via Mother Jones

If you are reluctant to believe that this is a coordinated attack, consider this-

This afternoon, Marty Beil, executive director of the Wisconsin Public Workers Union, sent a message to the Governor’s office agreeing to the cuts to pension & welfare benefits sought by Walker in his bill. The governor’s response was “nothing doing.” He wants the whole kit and kaboodle – the end of the collective bargaining rights of the public unions.

They put millions into their public relations organizations to get their message out.


And now we aim our focus at the Koch brothers. 
With a net worth of $43 billion the Kochs have already spent decades of their lives and over $324 million of their wealth exerting their influence.

Koch brothers pour more cash into think tanks, ALEC | The Center for Public Integrity

Four foundations run by billionaire industrialists Charles and David Koch hold a combined $310 million in assets according to tax filings obtained by the Center for Public Integrity.

The documents also show that the brothers, principal owners of the second-largest privately held company in the United States, combined in 2011 to donate $24 million through those foundations with much of the money going to support free-market and libertarian think tanks and academic centers.

A $4.4 million grant to the George Mason University Foundation makes up 15 percent of the university foundation’s grant revenue for 2011. The school is the largest recipient of Koch foundation money since 1985, and it houses several free-market and libertarian research centers including the Institute for Humane Studies, which received $3.7 million from the Koch foundations.

They also think that most Americans should have to work into their old age.

Here’s How the Koch Bros. Put ‘Raise the Retirement Age’ On TV

Brave New Foundation - The Koch Brothers’ Echo Chamber - Brave New Foundation

Koch Industries: Social Security Age Should Be Raised

They also want to kill social security.

The Koch brothers' campaign to kill social security | Robert Greenwald | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk

Ugly Americans is too tame a term really, this is pure evil.

 

[DaSleeper]

So much left hand spin in this one it's hard to know where to start.......
Just of the top of my head....I guess we Canadians are being denied voters' rights by having to show photo I.D. at the poll stations uh?:roll:
And having convicts voting is definitely something we should get rid of in Canada IMHO.

 

[Cobalt_Kid]

Looks like they're behind the Tea Party also, my Step-dad is a member. It's too bad that such anti-American losers are using patriots to destroy the country. My family goes back to before the US Revolution, some of my ancestors fought to get rid of exactly this kind of tyranny.

Brendan DeMelle: Study Confirms Tea Party Was Created by Big Tobacco and Billionaire Koch Brothers

A new academic study confirms that front groups with longstanding ties to the tobacco industry and the billionaire Koch brothers planned the formation of the Tea Party movement more than a decade before it exploded onto the U.S. political scene.

Far from a genuine grassroots uprising, this astroturf effort was curated by wealthy industrialists years in advance. Many of the anti-science operatives who defended cigarettes are currently deploying their tobacco-inspired playbook internationally to evade accountability for the fossil fuel industry's role in driving climate disruption.

My Grandfather was an Idaho Libertarian, they don't come much more extreme than that, he was a member of the John Birch society and had racial views I certainly don't support. But I doubt he really understood its links to Stalin through Fred Koch. More than anything he hated big government, but that's exactly what we're getting with the Kochs and other tyrant wannabees in the US. They could care less about true freedom and equality, however they would love to create the kind of state where they control everything.

Tea Party Financiers Owe Their Fortune to Josef Stalin - Truthdig

The Tea Party movement’s dirty little secret is that its chief financial backers owe their family fortune to the granddaddy of all their hatred: Stalin’s godless empire of the USSR. The secretive oil billionaires of the Koch family, the main supporters of the right-wing groups that orchestrated the Tea Party movement, would not have the means to bankroll their favorite causes had it not been for the pile of money the family made working for the Bolsheviks in the late 1920s and early 1930s, building refineries, training Communist engineers and laying down the foundation of Soviet oil infrastructure.

The comrades were good to the Kochs. Today Koch Industries has grown into the second-largest private company in America. With an annual revenue of $100 billion, the company was just $6.3 billion shy of first place in 2008. Ownership is kept strictly in the family, with the company being split roughly between brothers Charles and David Koch, who are worth about $20 billion apiece and are infamous as the largest sponsors of right-wing causes. They bankroll scores of free-market and libertarian think tanks, institutes and advocacy groups. Greenpeace estimates that the Koch family shelled out $25 million from 2005 to 2008 funding the "climate denial machine," which means they outspent Exxon Mobile three to one.

So the same prick that brought us the Cold War and the police state is also behind a lot of destruction of true American values through the Koch family.

Yes, your typical American success story, helping the wests worst threat to develop the necessary industrial base to attack us for more than half a century.

In 1929, after hosting a delegation of Soviet planners in Wichita, Kansas, Winkler and Koch signed a $5 million contract to build 15 refineries in the Soviet Union. According to Oil of Russia, a Russian oil industry trade magazine, the deal made Winkler-Koch into Comrade Stalin’s number-one refinery builder. It provided equipment and oversaw construction:

The first Winkler-Koch plants were set up in Tuapse in 1930. The cracking unit operated commendably, and would in the future be the type preferred by the heads of the Soviet Union’s petroleum industry when purchasing new cracking equipment. In 1931, two Winkler-Koch cracking units were launched in Baku, another two in Batumi, and six at once in Grozny; the last had a combined refining capacity of 900,000 tons per year. In 1932, a Winkler-Koch unit commenced operations in Yaroslavl.

At the time, the Soviet Union’s oil industry was a total mess. Equipment built by Western engineering firms was always breaking down or didn’t work at all. Western engineers were constantly being accused of espionage or sabotage, real or imagined, and booted out of the country. Soviet workers suspected of colluding with the foreigners were simply taken out back and shot. Winkler-Koch made sure it was running a tight, efficient operation. Unlike his Western competitors, Koch pleased his Soviet clients by ensuring top quality and helping the cause of socialism.

The Soviet oil planners were delighted with Koch’s refineries. The communists were so impressed they kept giving Winkler-Koch business and regularly sent Soviet engineers to train in Wichita. It was a sign of growing mutual trust.

By the time he got out in 1933, Koch earned $500,000, which was a ton of money for a kid fresh out of college. This nut of money served as the foundation for the family’s future assets, which Koch no doubt started acquiring at rock-bottom prices. After all, 1933 was one of the two worst years of the Great Depression—all assets were priced to go at 90 percent off. In the end, the capitalist-hating socialists ended up treating Koch fairly, way better than the monopolistic thrashing he got from his native land. So you’d think he’d at least something good to say about the Soviet Union when he got home.

 

[Mowich]

No doubt these are two nasty specimens, cobalt. I have heard much about them in numerous documentaries I've watched on U.S. politics and very little of it makes me feel warm and cozy.

 

[Cobalt_Kid]

America is such a great society, it hurts to watch "people" like this tear down the most important parts.

Without free elections and honest and open representation then America becomes the opposite of what the visionaries who created it intended. The kind of things the Kochs are doing remind me of the covert schemes the Bolsheviks did to take over Russia after the Revolution.

 

[CDNBear]

Does anybody see a legitimate fault with photo ID for voting?

 

[Cobalt_Kid]

To put this in context, if this was 1775, the Sons Of Freedom and people like Samuel Adams and John Hancock wouldn't be working for or with the Kochs, they'd be writing pamphlets about how corrupt and arrogant they were and would be carrying out acts of defiance that would have them labeled as terrorists in todays US.

It's sad that the legacy of one of the first acts of American independence has been stolen by individuals who don't have a clue what America is really all about.

And it's about freedom for all, not just the few that can afford to spend millions on creating their own media echo chamber, buy off politicians at all levels, create "astroturf" organizations, suppress voters rights, attack the right to collect bargain and more.

These are things that tyrants do, not what free thinking, freedom loving patriots do.

 

[CDNBear]

So in other words, no, you don't have a legitimate complaint with having to poses photo ID to vote.

 

[Cobalt_Kid]

Put another way how can you have a nation based on the idea of all people being created equal and government of the people, by the people, for the people, if you have a tiny minority who use their wealth and power to rob and disenfranchise millions of their fellow Americans?

 

[CDNBear]

Put another way how can you have a nation based on the idea of all people being created equal and government of the people, by the people, for the people, if you have a tiny minority who use their wealth and power to rob and disenfranchise millions of their fellow Americans?

No, no, I got it, you have no actual legitimate complaint against the first thing in your link, photo ID to vote.

You don't have to try and distract me with your usual babble.

 

[SLM]

Does anybody see a legitimate fault with photo ID for voting?

What could possibly be the legitimate fault with it? You're on a voter list, you submit your ID to prove that you are indeed the person on that list, then you vote. We do it here all the time. Are we somehow less democratic in our voting process?

 

[Cobalt_Kid]

The people who are being put into power through the campaign funding of individuals like the Kochs aren't governing for the people, it's not government by the people, and it certainly isn't coming from the people. The reason America is having such a hard time and is so far in debt is that a few massive parasites like this have latched on and are busy sucking the nation dry.

 

[SLM]

So much left hand spin in this one it's hard to know where to start.......
Just of the top of my head....I guess we Canadians are being denied voters' rights by having to show photo I.D. at the poll stations uh?:roll:
And having convicts voting is definitely something we should get rid of in Canada IMHO.

I agree completely. Voting rights should be reestablished the moment you walk out of prison. While you're in prison, you're not a contributing member of society, in fact you've been the exact opposite, so why should you get a say during that period.

 

[CDNBear]

What could possibly be the legitimate fault with it? You're on a voter list, you submit your ID to prove that you are indeed the person on that list, then you vote. We do it here all the time. Are we somehow less democratic in our voting process?

That's my point, why are some Americans all bent out of shape.

It actually helps prevent voter fraud.

Why is it that's seen as undemocratic, unless you're an idiot.

The people who are being put into power through the campaign funding of individuals like the Kochs aren't governing for the people, it's not government by the people, and it certainly isn't coming from the people. The reason America is having such a hard time and is so far in debt is that a few massive parasites like this have latched on and are busy sucking the nation dry.

How does the well-groomed opinion critique the prose?

 

[Cobalt_Kid]

The Koch Industries is one of the biggest polluters in the nation, they're not trying to limit voters rights to support democracy in America, they're doing it to remain as free from accountability as they can.

They also do everything they can to neutralize the EPA.

Koch Brothers Behind Push To Dismantle EPA | DeSmogBlog

During last week’s Americans For Prosperity (AFP) event, a common theme kept creeping into the speakers’ presentations: Dismantle the EPA. And as the major funders of AFP, Charles and David Koch are the ones pulling the strings of the American elected officials who keep clamoring for an end to all environmental protections.

Since the new Republican-controlled Congress took over earlier this year, calls for the EPA to be disbanded and general attacks on the agency have been constant. In the last 11 months, we have covered those stories here, here, here, here, here, here, and here. Those in favor of saying goodbye to the EPA include presidential candidates like Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney, elected officials like Republican Representatives Mike Rogers and David McKinley, and even media figures like Fox News’s John Stossel. The attacks include false claims that the agency is destroying jobs, or just general claims that the agency’s usefulness has run its course.

House Dem: Change title of EPA bill to 'Koch Brothers Appreciation Act' - The Hill's E2-Wire

Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.) wants to change the title of a bill that would permanently block Environmental Protection Agency climate regulations to the "Koch Brothers Appreciation Act," a reference to the billionaire brothers who are active in Republican politics.
Connolly has submitted to the House Rules Committee a series of amendments that would change the title of the bill to everything from the "Middle Eastern Economic Development and Assistance Act" to the "Head in the Sand Act."

I'm pretty sure it's still the United States of America, not the United States of Koch Inc.

 

[SLM]

That's my point, why are some Americans all bent out of shape.

It actually helps prevent voter fraud.

Why is it that's seen as undemocratic, unless you're an idiot.

I think, like most everything else, it boils down to a purely partisan thing. One groups suggested it, therefore it has to be vilified.

 

[Cobalt_Kid]

Whatever they are I seriously doubt the Kochs are true Libertarians. I grew up with people who really did believe in freedom in the US and they didn't spend their lives trying take most freedoms away from their fellow Americans.

 

[CDNBear]

I think, like most everything else, it boils down to a purely partisan thing. One groups suggested it, therefore it has to be vilified.

And then ignored when you really can't formulate a legitimate reason to be against, as Cobalt here so eloquently exemplifies.

Whatever they are I seriously doubt the Kochs are true Libertarians. I grew up with people who really did believe in freedom in the US and they didn't spend their lives trying take most freedoms away from their fellow Americans.

Meh, you want to take freedoms away from other Canadians.

What makes them worse than you?

 

[DaSleeper]

When he can't answer a simple question, he simply climbs back up on his soapbox and keeps rambling and babbling away:roll:

 

[SLM]

What could possibly be the legitimate fault with it? You're on a voter list, you submit your ID to prove that you are indeed the person on that list, then you vote. We do it here all the time. Are we somehow less democratic in our voting process?

I should as well that, should someone not have a DL, because some people don't, you can show other forms of ID along with some kind of proof of address, which can simple be a piece of official mail like a bank statement. With that you can vote here too. So it's not like it completely discriminates against those who don't have photo ID. It's got to be nearly impossible to get by in society without some form of identification.

I'd also hate to think what they'd say if they knew the majority of Canadians registered with Elections Canada by checking a box on their personal tax return. I'm sure that freak a few out, lol.