Gordon Duff ~ Intel, Disclosures and Gossip Such as Not to Spoil Your Tea 4/22/12

Sunday, April 22nd, 2012
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by Gordon Duff, Senior Editor

Few understand the American election, even those who live here. I am forced to write for an international audience, which may actually make more sense to Americans. President Obama inherited two wars, a collapsed stock market and massive debt.

We look at the market today at 13,000 plus and still wonder why our pension funds are down and our homes are impossible to sell.

We also note that rents are up, food is up, gasoline is way way up yet that 13,000 market isn’t the same one it was in 2007.

It is a different group of companies, what we call a “fix.” The old “blue chip” companies went broke, or so we are told, and we picked new ones and are pretending things are better.

We make up for it by, not only printing massive amounts of counterfeit currency for ourselves but for Europe as well.

The Funny Money Game

More honestly, it wasn’t just the currency but the ambiguity of the banking business that let trade and investment build jobs.

Money was lent that never existed, collateralized by imagination, derivatives, overvalued real estate but real jobs were the result, jobs that came with home purchases, paid taxes, people buying things, when the “phony dollar, euro and pound” died, so did our ability to supply jobs.

We are now dependent, partially at least, on a couple of ways to continue that we see and some that are highly secret. What we see are these:

Every financial prediction is that the end came years ago but we are still moving on as though things were OK. This is a magic balancing act run by Timothy Geithner and President Obama who are trying to stop the massive thievery, overtly at least, and restore revenue through taxes on the rich, something that Reagan onward ended.

We are basing our economy on wartime spending, which is financed by borrowing. The wars, the Bush “terror wars” are the most insane and dishonorable in American history.

I even have Army Intel telling me the World Trade Center towers were brought down by sophisticated miniature hydrogen bombs. Photo analysis exists of all the attacks, millions of dollars of it, like that we released of the UFO in Korea last week. We are told it can never be released and it hasn’t ten years later, not to anyone.

Continuing on this is purposeless.The Republican Party, working with Israel and the Koch brothers, using manipulated polls, gas and oil speculation and rigging food prices is trying to crash the American economy before the election.

They are afraid of President Obama and rightly so. The GOP is primarily tied to narcotics, organized crime and has its only backing from Americans that no longer are willing to believe the outlandish lies they have been told as news for a decade.

The problem, a worse one, is that, since at least 1947, our history has been rigged as well. That story is not just strange but bizarre, frightening, and “topsy-turvy.”

We will get to some of it later. Now we move into the darker aspects of our economy, if such a thing were possible.

Federales Reservistos !!

Over the past few months, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, a rogue operation even by Federal Reserve Standards, without any authorization, created $31 trillion and simply “gave it away,” pumping it into European banks, we have records as there was a partial audit done at the request of congress.

Congress, however, went silent. The reason, overtly at least, is that the foreign owned banks that represent the Federal Reserve System, really an ancient expression of 18th century “moneylenders”, had “gone under.” Their massive private debt, amounting to “qau-trillions,” imaginary though it is, has made continuation of our monetary system impossible.

Only America can illegally counterfeit the massive imaginary currency needed to float these banks while about two thirds is eventually bled off, 1/3 to organized crime and another third we can’t find at all and nobody is asking.

THREE STEPS BEYOND CONSPIRACY THEORY

“They’re Heeeere!!!”

For nearly 60 years, movies and TV have slowly focused on a plotline involving secret Nazi flying saucers, alien landings, inter-dimensional travel and a future that never came.

We were supposed to be living in “Star Trek” already, having settled the moon in “1999″ as the old TV show, not even available on Netflix, told some of us.

Our “conspiracy television” tells us of flying saucer crashes,  and astronauts who saw “alien spacecraft” speak up now and again.

And finally, we have recognized what has been minimally “inter-planetary” aircraft built by our own governments using technology that we have had for decades, technology that represents unlimited “free energy,” perhaps uncontrollable planetary development but worse, disclosure of some “dark secret.”

Word goes two ways:  you tell folks that everything is free, free water, free electricity, and “free lunch” and we go into a population hell of “not so white” folks who worship what many Americans think might be the wrong gods. 

With Romney, our Mormon candidate, his religion is based on secret inter-galactic travel, transmigration of men only into gods and the use of women as sex tools after the “brain sucking machine” finishes them off.

This really is the religion of Mormonism, this and much more.  It makes Scientology look better and better.

Mormons are all Republicans.  Who else would think that exploiting brain dead slaves would make you  ‘godlike?”

HERE IS WHAT WE CAN TELL YOU

Senior reliable sources, by that I mean mainstream “Big Army” flag officers, have been consulted about the use of cold fusion, hydrogen/boron fusion and other “non-lethal” or “aneutronic” devices that can provide all power needed on earth at extremely low cost.

Wind and solar are considered “dead duck” technologies as fusion is both very simple physics, containable, produced not only unimaginable power but expels usable electric current without any traditional conversion required by nuclear technology.

The questions are only design and construction with working models out there already.

This technology is decades old, as is similar technology that nullifies gravity. This means that conventional rocket travel, our guided missiles, our airplanes, even our most advanced secret projects have been entirely “cover and deception.”

MORE LATER BUT SOME “DARKSIDE”

It is no secret to most of you that “bad space guys” have been visiting earth.  In fact, the only crazy part is the number of films that try to depict off world or interdimensional civilizations as having any human characteristics at all.

Any “advanced civilization” could be millions of years beyond us, questions continually brought up for fans of “Dr. Who,” the British science fiction series that runs decade after decade as a demented “Scooby Doo” type show with cardboard scenery.

The “dark side” is that all this exists.  The dark side is that America, seen as the representative world power, primarily at least, has decades of interaction with alien species, multiple alien species, and has “bought time” as it were through denial and through agreements that allow the seizure of humans for something far worse than the “anal probe.”

DENIAL

Lying about this while basing much of our entertainment industry on what borders on fairly full disclosure, of the threat at least, is almost a joke. Our denial comes in the cost.  There is little or no sign that much in advanced technology has been passed on.

Documents outlining the relationship indicate the existence of a highly secretive and advanced committee that oversees our response which is, primarily, the divestment of technologies and resources, trillions of dollars, into programs that are meant, and this is a guess only, to allow us to defend ourselves.

The point of conjecture, based on easy to “figure out” disinformation campaigns and our decades of frozen technology, all new mobile phones and little else, is that basic concepts in physics involving both field and energy systems has created capabilities that are incompatible with a planet where stone age to iron age civilizations coexist.

We are a planet where animals are bred for food under brutal conditions and where continual warfare, too often near “UFO” level technologies used against virtually unarmed civilians are seen as acceptable by most people.

Moral and ethical concerns seem to have been systematically bred out of the most advanced societies through continual exposure to highly propagandized public education and history that barely passes for mythology.

You can add in absurdly childish economic and political systems that pontificate while, in reality, reproducing pre-feudal values, theft of resources, enslavement of the mass of population, and the defilement of the “middle” or “professional classes” within bureaucracies that foster apolitical lives or attempt to replace philosophy with dogmatic religions.

This only leaves the need to discredit or contain real creativity or advancement through a system of “branding” those who disclose truths as “whistleblower,” the genuinely talented as “elitist kooks” and the rest as “radicals” or “conspiracy theorists.”

Anyone else can be and is murdered.

When need to “manage” comes to play, appetites for perversion, buggery, abuse of power, murder and torture, satiate those who wish to prove to themselves their power is real.

Toward that end, we have seen the torture, so much of it over the past dozen years that thousands have died in secret prisons, many filmed and the most obscene acts shown to the most powerful, some members of the Supreme Court, congress and the White House.

I DIGRESS

DC Boy Toy – James Guckert/Gannon

Years ago, there were accusations made against a president by a “pimp” who organized the kidnapping and murder of children who were sold for sexual favors to leaders of our government and key industries.

The tradition, for decades, had been to supply politicians with “road secretaries, women who would provide sexual favors in lieu of normal family lives, keeping errant politicians in line and retiring with senior executive (GS 15) positions.

Some of these women held America’s greatest secrets and these relationships have glued America together, or at least did, until the middle of the Reagan administration when pedophiles, mostly homosexual, had infiltrated the government as they had the Catholic Church.

A search, Google, yahoo, of words like Bush, Farmer and DeCamp will barely touch on it.

The basic accusations, kidnapping of children off the streets of America, chosen for “type” based on “requests” by the supposedly powerful and influential were quieted by groups within the FBI and intelligence agencies with dozens being murdered.

“Politics as usual,” the murder of several senators, key government scientists, FBI agents, the discrediting of dozens, imaginary street crimes, Chandra Levy, Dr. David Kelly, John Wheeler II, Vince Foster, Steve Kanga and hundreds of others, were only “safety valves.”

The only one spoken of anymore is Senator Paul Wellstone who was assassinated with his family for political reasons.

The release of the recent photograph showing Lee Harvey Oswald standing in the doorway of the Texas School Book Depository at the exact second he was supposed to be shooting President Kennedy is now accepted, part of the public record, and, not only denied but defiles us in ways we are now too stupid to begin to understand as does 9/11 and the 20 square miles torture prisons in Poland and a dozen other countries, or are they prisons?

No one has ever spoken to anyone who has ever been in one, either stationed as a guard, janitor, guard, nothing.  America now has more secret prisons than Nazi Germany was said to have “concentration camps, far larger, far more expensive and, unless we can prove otherwise, capable of certainly more deaths.

How strange is that?  In a nation of “human rights activists, no one asks, not a word from Ron Paul or the ACLU, not the SPLC, in fact no one has ever said a word other than mild complaints but never a law or request for an investigation or any curiosity at all.

What isn’t mentioned is that these facilities are huge, entirely secretive and show no signs of funding, no one has ever met a prisoner who has been in one, no accusations or trials are arranged, no named suspects are brought up, no crimes mentioned, no plots, no imaginary terrorist acts, in fact there is no proof that these are prisons at all.

Some of these are larger than our biggest military bases.  What are they?  We can’t prove they are prisons, no photos emerge, no witnesses come forward, no survivors have ever made it out, the Red Cross has never inspected them yet the Red Cross visited Auschwitz hundreds of times.

The best we could hope for is that they are CIA heroin and cocaine distribution hubs but they are too big and there are too many plus, we already know that Camp Bondsteel in Kosovo is where we run our drugs and where we manage our partnership with the Albanian Mafia.

U.S. Camp Bondsteel – Kosovo

Ever wonder why we have one of our largest military bases in the world in “Kosovo,” but nobody remembers every being stationed there or why it exists?

We had touched on stories of one or more presidential pedophile.  I have talked with officials during the Bush administrations that were invited to “diplomatic functions” that ended with “private parties” upstairs.  They said they thought it was just cocaine, this was the cover story.

I have since learned it was not cocaine.  What was done with the kids when they had been “used up?”  Does anyone believe the man in prison for killing Chandra Levy really did it?

ECONOMIC SECRETS

Organized Crime’s Best Friend

There are two areas of economic secrets we will mention today, at the request of others.  We have available incontrovertible proof that over half the diamonds that come into the United States are tied to terrorism and organized crime.

We also know that documents proving this, scientific papers, testimony, were turned over to both the FBI and State Department by credible sources in the international law enforcement community.

Published studies show that equipment used by American customs officials have been sabotaged to allow illegal diamonds, most manufactured using a sophisticated process more difficult to detect than simple “cloning” or simply smuggling conflict diamonds.

Fifty percent of diamonds brought into the US from Tel Aviv are illegal. Both customs and the organizations involved in overseeing diamond quality for the jewelry industry are financially involved. Quantities of proof are vast, authoritative and have caused several major firms such as DeBeers to restructure and divest.

Diamonds are the primary source of both money laundering and terrorist/weapons financing in the world and the US is quite purposefully avoiding demands they quit taking part in these activities.

America does the same thing with drugs.

NEW CHINESE PLOY

China is telling the world it can use “gold tailings” to remove 40 times more gold from ore than possible before.  This is untrue.

Years ago, the South Koreans developed a methodology, though expensive, to actually manufacture gold.  China has very small gold reserve for a nation as wealthy as they claim.  In fact, their currency is one of the worst in the world and their banking system is inherently incompetent and corrupt.

It was also rumored, several years ago, that China, upon examining gold reserves it held in Hong Kong, found nearly 1/3rd to be counterfeit.

The issues have been, of late, seeking a currency for world trade and to secure and underwrite industrial growth while the “fiat” currencies of the west, all of them, have proven to be worthless.

Down the Black Hole

The $31 trillion dollars in unauthorized Federal Reserve currency exports is proof that, in actuality, there is no world currency exchange and it is now and has been for years, nothing but an act.

China has sought more, and to advance the process of creating a parallel currency as a hedge against political instability, to continue hiding from the public their recent political collapse and economic downturn, China has licensed South Korea’s technology for producing gold.

As cover for this, China has sent groups around the world buying non-producing mines, producing offers for worthless “gold tailings” and has been loading the internet and technical publications with pseudo-science, utter fiction and deception.

What we don’t know is how much it actually costs to manufacture gold.  Is it $100 per ounce or $2000 per ounce?

Where we picked up the South Korean ploy is when they let market prices fluctuate up to $150 per oz. below accepted value.

The problems are twofold:

  1.  It creates gold as a derivative of subjective value, something Korea would never have done.  Thus, any currency underwritten by gold will not only eventually have no trade value but, when the public learns of the process, gold market will crash.
  2. Diamonds, a vastly larger market, both gem quality and industrial, have been manufactured for decades.  Currently, there is no accepted technology that can detect phony diamonds.  This is the truth and those who say otherwise are unaware of advances in growing diamonds from much smaller “seed crystals” with individual DNA.  This is far different than “cloning” and, as yet, no equipment used by any government, quite purposefully, can detect these phony stones.  Thus, all world diamonds are technically worthless.

CONCLUSION

This leaves very few ways of expressing value and power. 

Future Tax Collectors?

If all currencies, all debt also, are deniable, if gold can be manufactured, and we can prove this beyond question, if all diamonds are useless and governments are choosing to turn to narcotics, weapons and hydrocarbons to express both political power and value, economic systems will continue until one of the bubbles burst or we have a world war, which is a more likely scenario.

Syria is the likely basis with US expansion of missile bases into Central Europe as the initiator.

Then again, the Serbian elections and a new realignment between Serbia and Moscow would flank US efforts to dominate the Black Sea region.  With Russian power west of NATO, with Turkey and Israel at odds, with India producing ICBMs, aimed at China and Israeli ICBMs from India pointed at Europe and their real enemy, the United States.

Don’t believe this, start reading the Jerusalem Star.

US attempts to control Central Asia are going to fail until and unless we are willing to follow the unwritten Obama doctrine, trading Turkey, Iran, Pakistan and India for Israel and Britain.

When the Chinese have settled into Africa, each day planeloads arrive, they will find themselves overextended and dependent on an American military presence that has moved down the west coast of Africa in relative stealth.

The continuing problems will be narco-dependency and our lack of an American currency.

Our most crippling problem is the lack of a government, particularly the ability of the Supreme Court to go  “activist” and usurp states’ rights, interfere in elections, write its own legislation, that and our “money in politics” issue, primarily involving Israeli interference in the House of Representatives is likely to bring about use of emergency presidential powers after the election.

Thus far, one Supreme Court Justice is guilty of tax evasion, another tied to organized crime, both “neocon-activists.”  Both face arrest.

Despite the entertaining flurry of testimony regarding our army and Secret Service and their “whoring,” we have multiple high level confirmations of an Israeli attempt on President Obama’s life, to have been staged during the visit to Colombia.

If anything, problems with Israel are problems with Netanyahu alone.  He hates black people and can’t help but show it.

Despite his lack of intellectual accomplishment, this is not a particularly clever guy, he talks to Obama as though he were talking down to a slave, which is how we are told Netanyahu thinks of anyone of African background.

On the other hand, Obama, Biden and General Dempsey, though all three extremely disappointed in Netanyahu’s lack of ability and manners, he has repeatedly insulted all three, believing his “mob” connections in the US make him “bulletproof,” see the writing on the wall.

Israel has been isolated, not by Arab dictatorships but by democracies.  If Egypt can get rid of its military junta, Israel will be a lost cause, leaving them only their Wahhabist friends in Saudi Arabia.

The Muslim heresy of “Wahhabism,” spreading terrorism and ignorance, is and we aren’t kidding, a deal cut between the US, Saudi Arabia and Israel to open terrorism schools in every poor Muslim area, raising kids to be suicide bombers.

Why, we might ask?  If you aren’t aware that Israel has made billions in profits peddling protection from “suicide bombers” around the world, you need to catch up on the defense industry.

To keep up business, if a real suicide bomber, some poor mentally abused kid preyed on my religious crazies can’t be found, “someone” will build a car bomb anyway.  Look into it, a growth industry, invest, I am considering printing up a list of companies that do it all, disease and cure.

I found a lot of graphic suicide bomber images but just too gross for a Monday morning, so we go with generic…Jim

Without the Saudi’s funding extremist movements across the Middle East in concert with Israel and friends in the US, nations such as Turkey, Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan, whose elections are rated as more democratic than either those held in America or Israel, something unreported in the US press, will, as threatened, let the “sands of time” erase Zionism.

The reality, of course, is that there never was a Zionist cause.  There never was a “Greater Israel” or hope of it.  There is no great nuclear arsenal in Israel as there are no nuclear weapons in North Korea and very few in China.

There is only oil theft, drug running,  money scams, phony terrorism and propaganda.  Israel is like one of those children’s charities, where they show the poor starving child, flies around their eyes, yet your donations do nothing but buy private islands, whoring vacations and private planes.

Being honest, the only reason we mention Israel is not because they are worst, not by far, the Saudi’s leave them in the dust, it is just that their control of the press has brought the backlash they were too stupid to notice.

The Promised Land?  Where is it?  We’re still looking.

 Editing: Jim W. Dean

http://www.veteranstoday.com/2012/04/22/intel-disclosures-and-gossip-such-as-not-to-spoil-your-tea/

The Top Five Special Interest Groups Lobbying To Keep Marijuana Illegal

This is just one more example of how broken the criminal justice system has become and another indication that fascist principles have taken over rule of law. It’s no surprise to see ALEC ~ the American Legislative Exchange Council that your Republican/Tea Party elected officials have sworn “loyalty oaths” to ~ legislator’s are among the list of perpetrators attempting to subvert the will and best interests of the voters.
Question: What’s wrong with conservative voters, why are you blind to the obvious? These politicians aren’t serving your best interests and never have. Please tell me why you still vote Republican after all the evidence coming forward that they only care about continuing to enrich the corporate elite at the expensive of the tax payer, I really don’t understand and all ears…

Last year, over 850,000 people in America were arrested for marijuana-related crimes. Despite public opinion, the medical community, and human rightsexperts all moving in favor of relaxing marijuana prohibition laws, little has changed in terms of policy.

There have been many great books and articles detailing the history of the drug war. Part of America’s fixation with keeping the leafy green plant illegal is rooted in cultural and political clashes from the past.

However, we at Republic Report think it’s worth showing that there are entrenched interest groups that are spending large sums of money to keep our broken drug laws on the books:

1.) Police Unions: Police departments across the country have become dependent on federal drug war grants to finance their budget. In March, we published a story revealing that a police union lobbyist in California coordinated the effort to defeat Prop 19, a ballot measure in 2010 to legalize marijuana, while helping his police department clients collect tens of millions in federal marijuana-eradication grants. And it’s not just in California. Federal lobbying disclosures show that other police union lobbyists have pushed for stiffer penalties for marijuana-related crimes nationwide.

2.) Private Prisons Corporations: Private prison corporations make millions by incarcerating people who have been imprisoned for drug crimes, including marijuana. As Republic Report’s Matt Stoller noted last year, Corrections Corporation of America, one of the largest for-profit prison companies, revealed in a regulatory filing that continuing the drug war is part in parcel to their business strategy. Prison companies have spent millions bankrolling pro-drug war politicians and have used secretive front groups, like the American Legislative Exchange Council, to pass harsh sentencing requirements for drug crimes.

3.) Alcohol and Beer Companies: Fearing competition for the dollars Americans spend on leisure, alcohol and tobacco interests have lobbied to keep marijuana out of reach. For instance, the California Beer & Beverage Distributors contributed campaign contributions to a committee set up to prevent marijuana from being legalized and taxed.

4.) Pharmaceutical Corporations: Like the sin industries listed above, pharmaceutical interests would like to keep marijuana illegal so American don’t have the option of cheap medical alternatives to their products. Howard Wooldridge, a retired police officer who now lobbies the government to relax marijuana prohibition laws, told Republic Report that next to police unions, the “second biggest opponent on Capitol Hill is big PhRMA” because marijuana can replace “everything from Advil to Vicodin and other expensive pills.”

5.) Prison Guard Unions: Prison guard unions have a vested interest in keeping people behind bars just like for-profit prison companies. In 2008, the California Correctional Peace Officers Association spent a whopping $1 million to defeat a measure that would have “reduced sentences and parole times for nonviolent drug offenders while emphasizing drug treatment over prison.”

RELATED: Why Can’t You Smoke Pot? Because Lobbyists Are Getting Rich Off of the War on Drugs

61-Year Old Woman Violently Arrested After Peacefully Protesting a Koch Funded Meeting

Note: Kansas Gov. Brownback’s disturbing comments posted on the Heritage Foundation’s web site:

A 61 year old woman with a husband taking care of their disabled child at home while she’s out disrupting the actions of elected officials. Protesting instead of caring for her child, hopefully the cops beat some sense into her but I doubt it, wild indians on the war path are totally out of control. Sounds like a state social services case manager needs to take charge of the child to insure that it is receiving appropriate care !”

Anyone who still votes Republican seriously needs to reassess their position,  this is not the same GOP of the good ole days. It’s owned by fascists like the Koch brothers, nothing more than psychopaths fashioning themselves after feudal lords hell bent on hording the wealth and turning the clock back to the dark ages.

Phone numbers are listed at the bottom if you wish to voice your concerns over this incident.

From: Nation of Change

On November 16th, protestors in Wichita, Kansas registered and attended Governor Brownsback’s Town Hall Meeting focusing on child poverty in the state. The group planned to protest the Governor’s decisions on how to improve the poverty level of children in Kansas. To date, Governor Brownback has cut funds for several educational and healthcare programs for children and adolescents while 75,000 children in Kansas are without health insurance.

All citizens in attendance were made to sit at assigned tables while listening to speeches sponsored by the Heritage Foundation, a think tank funded by the Koch Brothers. The meeting that took place failed to discuss Brownback’s several poor decisions and instead was a subtle promotion for marriage in Kansas – something that the speaker related to the poverty level.

At the end of the speech, protestors stood with their backs to the speaker and read their own statement to educate those in attendance on the cuts that Brownback has orchestrated. At the end of this statement, as the protestors attempted to walk out quietly, police officers entered the building and arrested Doris Gent (Ravenfeather), a 61-year-old Native American woman.

Doris was arrested brutally, with onlookers describing the police twisting her arm behind her violently and pushing her against the wall. The police were so forceful she was left with several bruises and a strained neck, prompting a visit Wesley Hospital’s Emergency Room the next day. Meanwhile, Doris had a husband at home caring for their disabled child.

Doris was released after she was charged but will have to return for her trial on April 20, 2012. We ask you to support the activists that are attempting to get the charges against her dropped. We believe that she is being used to set an example for simply exercising her right to peacefully protest.

Please call the Wichita Mayor and City Council. Please make your calls from 9:00 am – 5:00 pm daily until 4/20. Go To Facebook Events Page: Drop the Charges Against Doris ‘Ravenfeather’ Gent and also: Pack the Courtroom for Doris Ravenfeather!
City phone #(316) 268-4331 Fax# (316) 858-7743
Connect with City Council members or leave a message.

This article was published at NationofChange at: http://www.nationofchange.org/61-year-old-woman-violently-arrested-after-peacefully-protesting-koch-funded-meeting-1334850629. All rights are reserved.

Corporations Flee Right-Wing ALEC: Yet Another Win for Progressives

 

ALEC is a huge threat to democracy so this sends a clear message that progressives are winning the war one battle at a time – and that’s how it’s done!! 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Recently there have been several instances in which the public spoke out loud enough that a major organization or company had to back down, David and Goliath-style.
April 6, 2012  |
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Recently, activist site ColorofChange.org launched a campaign targeting corporations that fund the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), the right-wing group that has played a key role in the passage of loathsome voter ID and “stand your ground” laws around the country. As ColorofChange.org told its members:

Supporters of discriminatory voter ID laws claim they want to reduce voter fraud (individuals voting illegally, or voting twice). But such fraud almost never actually occurs, and never in amounts large enough to affect the result of elections. What is clear is that voter ID laws prevent large numbers of eligible voters from casting a ballot, and could disenfranchise up to 5 million people…..Major companies that rely on business from black folks shouldn’t be involved in suppressing our vote.

A ColorofChange.org petition addressed to “the leadership of corporations that support ALEC” urges the companies, “I presume your company does not want to support voter suppression, nor have your products or services associated with discrimination and large-scale voter disenfranchisement. I urge you to immediately stop funding ALEC and issue a public statement making it clear that your company does not support discriminatory voter ID laws and voter suppression.”

The companies being targeted included Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, Intuit, Inc., and Kraft Foods — all of which dropped their ALEC memberships as the ColorofChange.org campaign gained steam. Coca-Cola was the first to announce it was jumping the ALEC ship, and the other companies’ announcements soon followed. (Notably, and predictably, missing have been the public statements denouncing voter suppression. Wrote Kraft, “Our membership in ALEC expires this spring and for a number of reasons, including limited resources, we have made the decision not to renew.”)

As each new corporation drops ALEC, the pressure mounts for other corporations to do the same. Meanwhile, both Koch Industries and Wal-Mart, which plan to keep their ALEC affiliation, have been forced to issue public statements reaffirming their support for the dubious group. Quoth a Wal-Mart spokesperson, “Our membership in any organization does not affirm our agreement with each policy created by the broader group.” Convincing!

Will Wal-Mart and Koch, not to mention ALEC, survive this campaign? As critics of this sort of activism are quick to point out, of course they will. But there are three big wins here that activists should celebrate: 1) The headlines generated by this campaign made the public more aware of ALEC and of voter ID laws; 2) ALEC has lost some major supporters; and 3) Koch and Wal-Mart had to explicitly state that they would rather stand with ALEC than with the victims of the terrible policies it supports. The latter may seem like a small thing for corporations the size of Koch and Wal-Mart, but it may prove to be a very big deal indeed the more consumers learn about ALEC’s unsavory positions.

Blogger thereisnospoon wrote a post at Hullabaloo on Friday about why these types of campaigns work for progressives:

[T]he right wing doesn’t look very good when exposed to sunlight. Corporations have an interest in making money, and they can’t make money if regular Americans think they’re associated with voter suppression of minorities, or with the sort of garbage that comes out of Limbaugh’s or Beck’s mouths. The people who come out to vote every two to four years may skew older and more conservative than the general population, but the people who buy soft drinks and other products don’t. Corporations know this, and the last thing they need is [a] public relations nightmare.

The ALEC campaign isn’t the first time that we’ve seen the power of public pressure on display in recent months. Recently there have been three other instances in which the public spoke out loud enough that a major organization or company had to back down, David and Goliath-style. Remember these?

1. Komen vs. Planned Parenthood. Breast cancer mega-charity Susan G. Komen for the Cure learned a valuable lesson earlier this year: Do not mess with reproductive health supporters.

During one whirlwind week in late January/early February, Komen 1) announced new funding criteria under which Planned Parenthood would no longer be an eligible grantee; 2) was called out for its baldly political move in a firestorm of outraged tweets, Facebook messages and blog posts from Planned Parenthood supporters; 3) lied about its motivations; 4) lied again; and 5) finally backed down (sort of), announcing it would tweak its new funding criteria and “continue to fund existing grants, including those to Planned Parenthood.”

Although Komen’s “reversal” leaves the door wide open for snubbing Planned Parenthood in the future, it’s clear who won this messaging war: Planned Parenthood and reproductive health supporters in general. At a time when reproductive rights are under attack more than ever, from legislators, bishops and conservative talk-radio blowhards alike, that is a BFD.

And with all the dirt this fracas unearthed (ties to right-wing politicians, “pinkwashing” and more), Komen is still feeling the fallout of its decision in the form of fleeing executives and dwindling donations.

2. Protesters Pressure Apple on Foxconn Worker Rights. With all the hubbub over Mike Daisey’s unfortunate embellishments in his spoken-word performance about Foxconn workers, it became easy to lose sight of the truths in Daisey’s work: namely that factory workers at Foxconn do routinely endure unacceptable conditions to make the products that we, as consumers, enjoy on a regular basis. We created the market for those workers’ jobs, and then we allowed our beloved tech companies to get away with not enforcing labor rules as strictly as they should. It’s a situation that was not okay before Daisey infamously lied to This American Life fact-checkers, and it is a situation that is not okay now.

The good news is that activists have made at least some headway in campaigns targeting Apple for its lax enforcement of labor rules in China. Both Daisey’s story and a subsequent investigation in the New York Times helped prompt a new wave of public interest in Foxconn worker conditions earlier this year (we can thank Daisey for that). Change.org supporters and other activists ran with that interest, pulling in more than 250,000 signatures for a petition targeting Apple and organizing protests around the world.

Soon after, watchdog group the Fair Labor Association released a new report on worker conditions at the plant, finding “at least 43 violations of Chinese laws and regulations, and numerous instances where Foxconn defied industry codes of conduct by having employees work more than 60 hours a week, and sometimes more than 11 days in a row,” according to the Times. In response, Foxconn said it would “work with Apple to carry out [a] remediation program, developed by both our companies.” Although there is legitimate concern about how much of an impact these changes will have, and when they will be implemented, the changes could, per the Times, “signal a new, wide-reaching change in working conditions throughout China.”

It may not be enough, but it is a significant step forward that activists (and yes, Mike Daisey) should celebrate.

 

3. Limbaugh’s “Slut” Comment Leads Sponsors to Drop Him Like a Fly. Rush Limbaugh learned a Komen-esque lesson recently about screwing with reproductive health supporters. In early March, Limbaugh called Georgetown Law student Sandra Fluke a “slut” and a “prostitute” because she wanted to speak at what turned out to be an all-male congressional panel on birth control. He added, charmingly, “So, Ms. Fluke and the rest of you feminazis, here’s the deal. If we are going to pay for your contraceptives, and thus pay for you to have sex, we want something for it, and I’ll tell you what it is. We want you to post the videos online so we can all watch.”

Limbaugh has said more than his fair share of horrific things about women, people of color and, well, plenty of other people. But perhaps buoyed by the Komen win, reproductive health supporters and other activists came out in full force against Limbaugh, garnering tons of popular support along the way. In response, at least 140 sponsors dropped Limbaugh, realizing that supporting him was a liability and could cost them customers.

If you take one thing away from all these stories, let it be this: public pressure works. As progressives, we can win battles against large corporations and other dubious organizations if we rally together.

 

Lauren Kelley is an associate editor at AlterNet and a freelance writer and editor who has contributed to Change.org, The L Magazine and Time Out New York. She lives in Brooklyn. Follow her on Twitter here.

6 Reasons the Koch Brothers Had a Very Bad Week

 
Note: Since 1980 there haven’t been two people who have worked harder or spent more money to destroy the environment AND turn America into a third world fascist state, than the Koch brothers. They belong at the top of the list concerning the mass arrests, hopefully after this week the heat burning under their ass has knocked that phony smile right off their face!
 
Talk about two souls completely disconnected from Source….
 
You know? Come to think of it, if the heat is on the Koch brothers – particularly at this time – it’s certainly an indication that something’s up when two of the most powerful men in the country are under investigation. It’ll be interesting to see how all this plays out.
 
An FBI investigation, a new documentary, and a negative court ruling: here’s a look inside the Kochs’ worst week in a while.
April 2, 2012  |
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Were there a way for a few billion clams to wipe a week off the calendar, one imagines that Charles and David Koch, the multibillionaire principals of Koch Industries, would like to see the final week of March 2012 vaporized, at least in the public mind. For the Kochs, it was a week of bad news: a new documentary about their political activity and corporate negligence was making a splash — on the same day a story broke announcing an FBI investigation of two Wisconsin groups tied to Americans for Prosperity, the political ground organization they founded and fund. (Full disclosure: AlterNet is a supporter of the documentary, Koch Brothers Exposed, and I appear in the film.)

Things got even worse the next day, Friday, March 30, when the billionaire brothers learned that a federal court handed down a decision that may ultimately require certain non-profit groups, such as Americans for Prosperity, to reveal their full donor list, and the New Yorker‘s Jane Mayer, who wrote a devastating profile of the brothers last year, reported on the Kochs’ involvement in a barrage of anti-Obama ads sponsored by a tax-exempt non-profit called the American Energy Alliance, which may also now be required to reveal its donor list.

On the very same day, another federal court struck down portions of Wisconsin’s controversial law that stripped collective bargaining rights from most of the state’s public employees – a law championed by Americans for Prosperity, and rammed through the state legislature a year ago by the AFP-supported Gov. Scott Walker. Here, we take a closer look at the Kochs’ very bad week.

1. An FBI Investigation

Just hours before the premiere showing of Koch Brothers Exposed in Manhattan on Thursday, March 29, the Miwaukee Journal Sentinel‘s Daniel Bice broke the news that the FBI was investigating possibly illegal activity by two groups led by Mark Block, former director of the AFP Wisconsin chapter, during his stint as campaign manager for former GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain. (The Hermanator famously referred to David Koch as his “brother from another mother” at an event hosted by the oil baron in Washington, DC, last year.) Among documents Bice uncovered last year was a profit-and-loss statement for Prosperity USA, a nonprofit group headed by Block, which details travel costs for a visit last year with David Koch and Americans for Prosperity president Tim Phillips in Washington, DC.

While that’s not proof of wrongdoing, it is proof of David Koch’s link to Block, a shady character who has been prosecuted in the past for violating Wisconsin election law.

The Journal Sentinel reports: “FBI agents have been talking to donors and other individuals connected with Prosperity USA and Wisconsin Prosperity Network,” both non-profits founded by Block while he was at the helm of AFP-Wisconsin. (AlterNet has published several reports involving the Wisconsin Prosperity Network, here,  here and here.)

In correspondence with the Center For Public Integrity’s iWatch News last year, AFP spokesperson Levi Russell acknowledged that “there were financial dealings with Prosperity USA and/or the Wisconsin Prosperity Network.”

2. Revelation of Koch Involvement in Group Running Anti-Obama Ads

Already, March 29 was looking like a tough day for the Kochs when Politico’s Kenneth P. Vogel burst forth with an article revealing the involvement of the Kochs in an organization, the American Energy Alliance, that launched a multimillion-dollar ad campaign against President Barack Obama on Friday. The ads put forth the specious claim that the president’s policies are driving up gasoline prices.

According to Politico:

The group launching a $3.6 million ad campaign hitting President Barack Obama on gasoline prices has deep ties to the billionaire libertarian industrialists Charles and David Koch.[...]

The groups are run by Tom Pyle, a former lobbyist for Koch Industries. Pyle regularly attends the mega-donor summits organized by the Koch brothers, including the 2012 winter summit in Indian Wells, Calif., where the Kochs raised more than $150 million to be directed to groups ahead of the general election.

[...]

The ads come after the Kochs’ primary political group, Americans for Prosperity, earlier this year launched a $6 million ad campaign calling out Obama over the now-defunct, government-subsidized maker of solar power components, Solyndra.

The following day, the New Yorker’s Jane Mayer followed up with a closer look at the American Energy Alliance:

So who is behind the advertising campaign to push the line that Obama is to blame? Bill Burton, senior strategist at the pro-Obama Super PAC Priorities USA believes that it comes from a familiar source. “The Koch brothers and other oil barons are using profits from high gas prices to fund false political attacks benefitting Governor Romney,” he says.[American Energy Alliance Communications Director Benjamin] Cole retorts that there is “not a single penny of Koch money” paying for the two-week ad campaign. But he declined to confirm or deny reports, including one by Politico, that the Koch brothers, whose privately owned conglomerate, Koch Industries, is a major domestic-oil refiner, have steered funds to both the American Energy Alliance and the Institute for Energy Research. A spokesperson at Koch Industries did not respond to questions on the Kochs’ ties to the groups.

3. Federal Court Sets Stage for Revelation of Americans For Prosperity Donors

The Koch brothers are notoriously secretive about where they put their money when it comes to their influence on the political process. Their vehicles of choice are a particular sort of nonprofit organization – those that fall under either 501(c)(3) or 501(c)(4) of the Internal Revenue Service tax code. Under current Federal Election Commission regulations, organizations sponsoring so-called “issue” ads — even those with with the (c)(3) or (c)(4) designation — have not been required to reveal their donors. Americans for Prosperity, the Americans for Prosperity Foundation and the American Energy Alliance all fall under one of these designations. In her report on the anti-Obama ads discussed above, Mayer explains it on the New Yorker‘s Web site:

Technically, the ads have been produced and aired by the Washington-based American Energy Alliance, a 501c-4 social-welfare organization under the Internal Revenue Service’s tax code, whose activities, under the law, have to be largely non-political. This group shares office space and personnel with a sister organization, the Institute for Energy Research, a 501c-3, whose tax status is typically reserved for charities. Its activities have to be strictly non-partisan and non-political.

Even though the American Energy Alliance and Americans for Prosperity are rather blatantly political in their activities, lax enforcement has allowed the groups to get away with their ads and political rallies while shielding their donors from disclosure.

A decision made on Friday by the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia could change all that, laying before the eyes of the world the extent of the Koch brothers’ spending through such organizations.

As the Huffington Post’s Paul Blumenthal reported:

Friday’s court ruling could reverse a trend started by the FEC rules, and aggravated by the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision, that led to an explosion in undisclosed contributions to electoral efforts. The percentage of independent spending that went undisclosed jumped from 1 percent in 2006 to 43.8 percent in 2010, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.Advertisements falling under the rubric of “electioneering communications” include those run against President Barack Obama by the American Energy Alliance and Americans for Prosperity, both non-profits linked to the Koch brothers. All ads run by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce are classified as “electioneering communications.” The ruling would require for the first time that contributions to these groups, and many more, be disclosed.

The FEC, whose nondisclosure rules were challenged by Rep. Chris Van Holland, D-Md., could appeal the ruling if four of the six FEC commissioners vote to do so.

4. Recall This: A Legal Defeat for Koch-Funded Wisconsin Gov. Walker

Just as the date was being set for a recall election for Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, a federal court struck down portions of the anti-labor law that all but ended collective bargaining for the state’s public employees. When first introduced in the state legislature, the anti-union measure sparked an uprising in the Dairy State last year that led to an 18-day occupation of the state capitol building. Walker was elected in 2010 with a substantial assist from the Wisconsin chapter of Americans for Prosperity (then under the leadership of Mark Block, now a person of interest in the aforementioned FBI investigation). Judge William Conley took aim at several portions of the law: those that forbade the automatic deduction of union dues from public employes and demanded yearly union elections. Such provisions treated certain groups of public employees differently from others with similar jobs, apparently according to their loyalty to the governor.

From Amanda Terkel’s report on Huffington Post:

The court ruled that the state cannot prevent public sector unions from automatically deducting dues from workers’ paychecks and cannot require them to be recertified annually.The law, known as Act 10, requires most public sector unions to hold annual votes on whether a majority of its members want to recertify the union. It also took away the rights of some unions to automatically collect dues from members’ paychecks.

The court kept most of the law in place, but it ruled that the state did not have the power to pick and choose which unions could deduct dues. Under Act 10, only “public safety unions” — those representing firefighters and police officers — could continue to take out payments automatically.

AlterNet’s Steven Rosenfeld explains the loyalty issues involved:

The ruling by U.S. District Court Judge William Conley, which struck down those sections of the law, held that the legislature had the right to deny union bargaining rights, so long as that policy was applied evenly across all state employee unions–not just the ones opposing the governor’s or his party’s policies. In Act 10, Walker generally exempted state police and public safety unions from the bargaining and dues-collecting restrictions.”The Act’s treatment of the Capital Police, who endorsed the governor’s opponent, in comparison to its treatment of state vehicle inspectors, who endorsed the governor, best illustrates this suspect line-drawing,” Conley wrote, saying that targeting of some unions violated the Constitution’s equal protection clause.

5. ‘Koch Brothers Exposed’ Debuts

If you’re trying to keep a secret — say, one about the amount of money you’re investing in organizations that put out disinformation in order to sway the political process in your favor, or maybe one about the cancer affecting nearly every family in a neighborhood downriver from your paper plant — a documentary raising questions about these things is never a good day. On Thursday, March 29, filmmaker Robert Greenwald unveiled a feature-length film, Koch Brothers Exposed, at a screening co-sponsored by AlterNet and Greenwald’s Brave New Foundation.

But given all the other fires that had popped up in Kochland — the court ruling against Scott Walker, the FBI investigation of Mark Block, the Politico report on the Kochs’ support of the American Energy Alliance, and the New Yorker‘s exploration of the Alliance’s Koch links — you’d expect that public relations wizards for the Kochs and their proxies would be falling all over themselves issuing statements and doing spin-control on these developments. Instead, radio silence:

From Politico:

http://www.alternet.org/election2012/154795/6_Reasons_the_Koch_Brothers_Had_a_Very_Bad_Week/?page=entire

Kochs, Lies, and Videotape

 

 This week as I premiered my new film, Koch Brothers Exposed — the result of a year-long investigation on how two billionaires are using their wealth to corrupt democracy — Koch Industries has launched an attack on the film and me. The Kochs intimidate, they menace; they have a letter from their lawyer borderline threatening the media if it reports what’s in the film — and they always try to change the subject so their behavior can stay in the shadows: not only are they unwilling to accept my offer of a debate or interview, they also refuse to testify about their interest in the Keystone XL pipeline and may have to be dragged kicking and screaming into revealing their secret contributions to groups doing election work. This time, the Kochs are using a technique I point out in the film: attacking to avoid dealing with the facts. They are dodging and distorting the truth to avoid confronting our findings on cancer, voting rights, civil rights, and more.

How? Let me count (some of) the ways:

1) Cancer. People are dying of cancer near the Kochs’ Georgia Pacific plant in Crossett, Arkansas, and the Kochs refuse to answer the relevant question: What are they going to do about it? On Penn Road in Crossett, right near the mill, residents powerfully show how nine out of 11 homes have suffered from cancer. A USA Today study said Crossett’s school district is in the top 1% in the nation for cancer. Meanwhile, the Kochs’ facility releases significant amounts of formaldehyde — a known carcinogen — and there’s no other chemical plant in town. The Kochs are among the country’s top 10 polluters and lobbied hard to keep formaldehyde from being labeled a carcinogen. For a company where one of the owners (David Koch) and the communications director (Melissa Cohlmia) are cancer survivors, this is tragic and infuriating. It reflects a warped sense of humanity where greed trumps all.

2) Voting rights. The Kochs have given over $1 million to the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a group that’s trying to pass severe voter ID restrictions in states across the country. These bills disenfranchise the poor, the elderly, the young, people of color — in short, people who are likely to oppose a 1% agenda. The Kochs won’t explain why anyone should believe that ALEC’s pro-corporate, anti-99% agenda is somehow detached from its billionaire funders. Onerous voting restrictions are already impacting people’s ability to vote in the 2012 election.

3) Re-segregation. Americans for Prosperity (AFP), which is Koch-founded and Koch-financed (they refuse to say how much but we know it’s at least $5 million), pushed “reforms” in North Carolina that would destroy a school district’s model of racial integration and ensure students go to school mainly with people of their own race. We call out this “re-segregation” in Koch Brothers Exposed. The Kochs, of course, try to hide from their connection — hoping we ignore not only their involvement in the founding and financing of AFP, but also the fact that David Koch has served as chair of the group’s supposedly nonpolitical arm, the AFP Foundation. Their dissembling doesn’t pass the laugh test–particularly when they’ve refused to open the books to show where their funding is coming from.

4) Worker rights. The Kochs have been undermining labor rights, helping anti-union Gov. Scott Walker in Wisconsin and supporting groups that want to boost employer power against employees. They also have pushed the interests of large corporations over Main Street. The Koch brothers try pathetically to attack me on that front, going back eight years to my film Wal-Mart: the High Cost of Low Priceand saying a locally-owned hardware store I profiled as an example of how Wal-Mart shuts down small businesses had actually closed before the retail giant opened. Um, as the store owners said in the film, the reason it closed early was problems involving financing and reduced appraisals in light of Wal-Mart’s impending arrival. This is yet another example of distorting the facts and is ultimately a distraction.

Why are the Kochs flailing so desperately in the face of our findings? Because they can’t give straightforward, convincing rebuttals to the claims we lodge against them in the film. My organization, Brave New Foundation, doesn’t have billions of dollars at its disposal to fight back, but this time time, the Kochs aren’t getting the last word. The smears and name-calling (I’m malicious, I’m a liar, blah blah blah) may not be pleasant but won’t stop the film from being shared by 25 groups partnering with us and thousands of people online.

The Koch brothers epitomize the corruption of democracy that’s going on in our country, with a handful of people at the top expanding their wealth on the backs of the 99%. Americans shouldn’t fall for their attempt to change the subject.

By Robert Greenwald | Sourced from AlterNet

Posted at March 31, 2012, 10:24 am

http://www.alternet.org/newsandviews/article/874960/kochs%2C_lies%2C_and_videotape/

Georgia women senators walk out, protesting ‘war on women’

7:20 AM, Mar 8, 2012
Written by Jon Shirek

 

ATLANTA — Women members of the Georgia Senate staged a brief demonstration against the Republican and male majority in the Senate, complaining that the GOP is waging a war — against women and their access to abortion and contraceptives.

Eight of the nine women senators — the eight women Democrats — walked out of the Senate chamber in protest as the Republican majority passed two bills they oppose.

The Senate voted, 33 to 18, to prohibit state employees from using their state health benefits to pay for abortions.

And the Senate decided, by a vote of 38 to 15, that employees of private religious institutions have no right to demand that their insurance policies pay for contraceptives, as the Obama Administration wants to require.

Sen. Mike Crane, the sponsor of the abortion coverage bill, urged support of the legislation as a vote to save taxpayer dollars and make a pro-life statement. He emphasized that the bill does not prevent abortions.

Both bills were immediately sent to the House, where Republicans also hold the majority.

As for the contraceptives issue, it was in 1999 when the women’s caucus in the Georgia legislature first won passage of the current state law that requires insurance companies to cover the cost of contraceptives.

“It’s a good law. Never had a problem with it,” said Sen. Nan Orrock, (D) Atlanta. “But here come the right-wing shock troops, marching, marching, marching. And women are on the bullseye target.”

But, as McKoon explained it, many religious organizations are self-insured and therefore have not been subject to that 1999 law. As a result, they have not had to include coverage for contraceptives for their employees. But, he said, under the new, federal health care mandates, self-insurers will fall under state regulation of the insurance industry. So McKoon’s bill would exempt religious employers from being required to cover the cost of contraceptives – as the state’s 1999 law currently says everyone but self-insurers must do.

Continued here, including video coverage of the protest:

Georgia women senators walk out, protesting ‘war on women’

More on the war on women here on Randi Rhodes homework page:
http://www.randirhodes.com/pages/homework.html?feed=364336&article=9877692#ixzz1omMP3wzA

 

Are the Koch Brothers Funding Rush Limbaugh?

MUST SEE!! This video Bernie Sanders explains how right wing propaganda rolls out talking points to keep audiences brainwashed,  with three radio stations in every market spewing Limb-Beck hate talk and pundits talking this garbage on the TV no wonder Americans are so confused!

By Robert Greenwald and Jesse Lava

Just in time for the release of Brave New Foundation’s new film, Koch Brothers Exposed, Rush Limbaugh has thrown in with Charles and David Koch in their letter war with Obama campaign manager Jim Messina. No surprise there; Rush has made his fortune defending the rich and powerful against the 99%. But does Rush actually have a vested interest in the Koch brothers’ success?

The letter war started when Messina sent a fundraising letter saying the billionaire brothers bankroll “Tea Party extremism” and manipulate oil prices to buttress their energy business. The Kochs responded that Obama was treading on their “right to free speech.” (To them, I guess, being criticized by the president is tantamount to being arrested for sedition.) Team Obama shot back again, and here we are.

Rush has taken to the airwaves and lauded the Kochs. “This is how you do it,” he says. And on the surface, the reason for Rush’s apologetics is straightforward enough: he’s a man of the Right, and so are the Koch brothers. But below the surface of this defense lies a much more complex and insidious truth. The fact is that Rush needs the Kochs,and the Kochs need Rush.

Limbaugh is, fundamentally, a mouthpiece for conservative propaganda. He’s not a researcher. He’s not a grassroots organizer. He’s a mouthpiece. And where would he be without propaganda to spout? He has to get his ideas from somewhere. He can’t feed the right-wing echo chamber that’s hijacking our democracy if someone isn’t feeding him first. That’s where the Kochs come in.

The video we made with Sen. Bernie Sanders reveals the Kochs’ general method, whether Limbaugh is involved or not: fund an army of right-wing organizations so that politicians and pundits know exactly what to say:

Americans for Prosperity, the Heritage Foundation, the Federalist Society, Manhattan Institute: the list of Koch-backed groups goes on and on. And when such groups badmouth Social Security, say, or worker rights, that gives people like Limbaugh something to talk about.

The reverse is true too: without people like Rush — or, for that matter, Fox News’s Megyn Kelly and Laura Ingraham, who also just defended the Koch brothers against Obama — the Kochs could never spread their pro-corporate ideology as far and wide as they have. That’s why the Kochs provide the financial fuel that lets these people yap their trap. The propagandists need the funders, and vice versa.

Koch Brothers Exposed goes into detail on exactly how this echo chamber works. The reality is that corruption doesn’t happen mainly when a rich guy wangles a quid-pro-quo from a politician in a smoke-filled room. It happens when interests align so that powerful people have an incentive to stick up for each other and keep things just the way they are.

So are the Koch brothers funding Limbaugh? I’m not sure Rush has ever sent them an invoice. But he doesn’t have to. And that’s what’s so insidious about what the Kochs do.

I invite you to join the conversation on our Koch Brothers Exposed page on Facebook and follow me on Twitter.

http://blogs.alternet.org/speakeasy/2012/03/01/title-are-the-koch-brothers-funding-rush-limbaugh/

Fracking, Pipelines, Nuclear Reactors and Fault Lines in North America

 

Uploaded by on Mar 3, 2012

America’s Anti-Christ: “How The Kochs Are Fracking America”

Note: Just to be clear, it is this editors opinion that the Koch brothers represent what the Christian fundamentalists term as the modern day Anti-Christ for 30 years in actively destroying the democratic foundations and principles America was built on, by covertly subverting our democracy into a fascist, totalitarian state. One only has to look at how ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council has been designed to dismantle the public good, how the entire skeletal structure of local and state governments is being sold off to corporations for profitization – my term for privatization – in states where Republicans have the majority. If you think you’re getting anything different with Ron Paul you better think again, he’ll sell everything off that makes this country good, for a profit! It’s not government that’s bad, it’s the corporate money that bought the will of our politicians, that’s what corrupted the system.

When we take the corporate money out of politics – no more lobbyists, no more PAC’s, no more Citizens United – when politicians can’t be bought like Indy Race Car Drivers then we’ll get the government we deserve. As it stands corporations are in control of everything, even the defense department are beholden to the corporations that manufacture weaponry and defense systems.

And this article clearly makes the connection between the Koch brothers and corporate destruction of the environment through fracking, which is causing earthquakes and the permanent destruction of the water tables. Would anyone argue that there’s a better, more thorough representation of pure evil in corporate America than the Koch’s?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 At the Republic Report, Lee Fang details how the Koch Industries petrochemical empire is involved in the boom in natural gas hydrofracturing.

The right-wing Koch brothers have developed a vertical empire designed to extract wealth from every point in the hydrocarbon lifecycle. A small fraction of their profits is funneled into corrupting our political system, in order to prevent government from protecting society against the costs of the waste products.

The October 2011 issue of Discovery, the in-house Koch Industries newsletter, explains how the Koch Industries empire is profiting from the “really exciting”fracking boom:

– 1. Koch Pipeline is partnering with NuStar Energy to develop a dormant pipeline from Pettus, TX to refineries in Corpus Christi. The pipeline will transport natural gas from fracking sites in southern Texas. Koch Pipeline is a Koch Industries subsidiary.

– 2. Flint Hills Resources recently purchased a small craft pier and wharf in Ingleside, TX to store shipments of natural gas from fracking operations in the Eagle Ford shale formation. Flint Hills Resources is a Koch Industries subsidiary.

– 3. Koch Supply & Trading, a Koch Industries company that deals with commodity trading and financial products, is “already trading Eagle Ford crude” to help supply Koch companies and other customers, according to a Koch Industries newsletter.

– 4. Koch Chemical Technology Group is designing a processing facility near Yoakum, TX to help process natural gas fracked in southern Texas. Koch Chemical is a subsidiary of Koch Industries.

– 5. John Zink, a Koch Industries company, is providing flares for a natural gas processing plant in Helena to service the fracking industry.

– 6. Georgia Pacific produces resins used for chemicals used to prop open micro-fractures, an important process for fracking to occur. GP is a Koch Industries subsidiary.

– 7. Koch Fertilizer, a Koch Industries company, has tapped into increased natural gas production from fracking to develop fertilizer.

From Rick Santorum and Mitt Romney to the Cato InstituteHeritage Foundationand Americans for Prosperity, the Koch political network has been furiously attempting to block any oversight or regulation of the pollution and risks associated with fracking, no matter the danger to the American public.

By Brad Johnson | Sourced from ThinkProgress