This video explains why the #Wisconsin #SupremeCourt election is important to the future of the state and the nation. It also explains how #DarkMoney from the #Kochs and #LeonardLeo is having an outsized influence against #SusanCrawford.
youtu.be/6WL3pwdQnvA?...
Trump Backer CAUGHT Trying to ...
#Kochs
#CharlesKochâs network launches $20m campaign backing Trump #tax breaks
Revealed: #fossilfuel #billionaireâs #AmericansForProsperity vows âherculean undertakingâ to renew and deepen tax cuts
The donor appeal calls for even bolder tax cuts for corporations that would directly benefit #KochIndustries, the energy and chemicals giant from which most of #AFPâs funding derives.
It is estimated that the #Kochs have benefited by more than $1bn a year from Trumpâs tax cuts.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jan/27/koch-americans-for-prosperity-trump-tax-breaks
You often hear that every billionaire is a policy failure. More significant than that, every billionaire will cause policy failures. #jeffbezos #elonmusk #miriamadelson #kochs
#DE: richtig.
#USA:
Das liegt daran, dass auf gesellschaftlich-machtpolitischer Ebene der #BĂźrgerkrieg nie final entschieden wurde.
Viele Superreiche wie die #Kochs kämpfen seit Jahrzehnten mit allen Mitteln um eine RĂźckkehr ins 18./19. Jahrhundert. Mit mindestens seit 2010 groĂem Erfolg.
Die Ziele dieser Oligarchen/Plutokraten sind mit dem Demokratieverständnis westlicher Mehrheitsgesellschaften vÜllig inkompatibel.
Ich plane hierzu einen Thread in der kommenden Woche.
@taylorlorenz I read the âFree Pressâ from time to time, trying to read broadly. I see it filled to the brim with out-and-out propaganda, no pretende of adhering to journalistic principles (like fact checking, or named sources, or multiple confirmatory sources), nor ethics. Is it #Putin funded? Or sinister dark money, like the #Kochs?
"Huge funding from influential conservative donor networks is flowing into groups affiliated with a conservative venture aimed at creating a Republican 'government-in-waiting' [i.e., Project 2025], including over $55 million from groups linked to conservative activist Leonard Leo and the Koch network, according to an Accountable.US review shared exclusively with NBC News."
~ Katherine Doyle
#Trump #LeonardLeo #Kochs #Project 2025
#BoingBoing seems to have completely missed Nikki Haley's campaign, and the reason the #Kochs have continued to back her: the reasonable likelihood he will be not be on the ballot in enough states to make his chances of winning numerically impossible.
Anyone still standing at that point will likely become the #Republican candidate.
And Charles Koch is slimy evil. He got Trump in in 2016, and controlled his administration.. Haley is his insurance policy, just in case.
@GottaLaff The #gop is a Potemkin party, a brand owned by #Murdoch, #Leo, and #Kochs and a few other stakeholders as a joint venture.
"behind every great fortune is a great crime. It was this #Osage oil that created one of #Americaâs greatest fortunes: the Koch family, whose wealth is calculated at over $120bn. #Kochs have used this wealth to build a fearsome ultra-rightwing force that can create and destroy political careers." https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/oct/20/martin-scorsese-killers-of-the-flower-moon-osage-us-government
#BigOil #uspoli #CorporateGreed #RegulatoryCapture #IndigenousPeoples #Colonialism #Film
"For years, #Thomas was a strong supporter of Chevron deference and even wrote a major decision expanding it. But after he was cultivated by the #Kochs and became their close friend, he drifted away from Chevron, ultimately renounced and repudiated Chevron deference and is now on the brink of issuing or joining a decision that will overturn Chevron deference this coming term, in a case that is partly funded and supported by the #Koch network."
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2023/09/clarence-thomas-chevron-ethics-kochs.html
A World of Slaves:
Most Americans havenât seen whatâs coming.
Nancy MacLean notes that when the #Kochsâ control of the GOP kicked into high gear after the financial crisis of 2007-08, many were so stunned by the âshock-and-aweâ tactics of #shutting #down government, #destroying #labor unions, and #rolling #back #services that meet citizensâ basic necessities that few realized that many leading the charge had been trained in economics at Virginia institutions, especially George Mason University.
Wasnât it just a new, particularly vicious wave of partisan politics?
It wasnât.
MacLean convincingly illustrates that it was something far more disturbing.
MacLean is not the only scholar to sound the alarm that the country is experiencing a #hostile #takeover that is well on its way to radically, and perhaps permanently, altering the society.
Peter #Temin, former head of the MIT economics department, INET grantee, and author of "The Vanishing Middle Class", as well as economist Gordon #Lafer of the University of Oregon and author of "The One Percent Solution", have provided eye-opening analyses of where America is headed and why.
MacLean adds another dimension to this dystopian big picture, acquainting us with what has been overlooked in the capitalist right wingâs playbook.
She observes, for example, that many liberals have missed the point of strategies like #privatization.
Efforts to âreformâ #public #education and #Social #Security are not just about a preference for the private sector over the public sector, she argues. You can wrap your head around those, even if you donât agree.
Instead, MacLean contends, the goal of these strategies is to radically alter power relations, #weakening pro-public forces and #enhancing the #lobbying #power and commitment of the corporations that take over public services and resources, thus advancing the plans to #dismantle #democracy and make way for a return to #oligarchy.
The majority will be held captive so that the wealthy can finally be free to do as they please, no matter how destructive.
MacLean argues that despite the rhetoric of Virginia school acolytes, shrinking big government is not really the point.
The #oligarchs require a government with tremendous new powers so that they can bypass the will of the people.
This, as MacLean points out, requires greatly #expanding #police #powers âto control the resultant popular anger.â
The spreading use of pre-emption by GOP-controlled state legislatures to suppress local progressive victories such as living wage ordinances is another example of the rightâs #aggressive use of #state #power.
đCould these right-wing capitalists allow private companies to fill #prisons with helpless citizensâor, more profitable still, right-less undocumented #immigrants? âď¸They could, and have.
đMight they engineer a #retirement #crisis by moving Americans to inadequate 401(k)s? âď¸Done.
đTake away the rights of consumers and workers to bring grievances to court by making them sign #forced #arbitration agreements? âď¸Check.
đGut #public #education to the point where ordinary people have such bleak prospects that they have no energy to fight back? âď¸Getting it done.
đWould they even refuse children #clean #water? âď¸Actually, yes.
MacLean notes that in #Flint, Michigan, Americans got a taste of what the emerging oligarchy will look like â it tastes like #poisoned #water. There, the Koch-funded Mackinac Center pushed for legislation that would allow the governor to take control of communities facing emergency and put unelected managers in charge.
In Flint, one such manager switched the cityâs water supply to a polluted river, but the Mackinac Centerâs lobbyists ensured that the law was fortified by protections against lawsuits that poisoned inhabitants might bring. Tens of thousands of children were exposed to #lead, a substance known to cause serious health problems including brain damage.
Libertarian economist Tyler #Cowen has provided an economic #justification for this kind of #brutality, stating that where it is difficult to get clean water, private companies should take over and make people pay for it. âThis includes giving them the right to cut off people who donâtâor canâtâpay their bills,â he explains.
To many this sounds grotesquely #inhumane, but it is a way of thinking that has deep roots in America.
In "Why I, Too, Am Not a Conservative" (2005), Buchanan considers the charge of #heartlessness made against the kind of classic liberal that he took himself to be.
MacLean interprets his discussion to mean that people who âfailed to foresee and save money for their future needsâ are to be treated, as Buchanan put it, âas #subordinate members of the species, akin toâŚ#animals who are dependent.ââ
Do you have your education, health care, and retirement personally funded against all possible exigencies?
Then that means #you.
@Radical_EgoCom@kolektiva. I understand that. itâs just The history from 1945 forward to today is complicated. I lived a good part of that. The struggle isnât generational so much as class. The UAW workers werenât infiltrating state legislatures & starting wars 4profit. That was the #Kochs #Bush snakes. Iâll put together a 𧾠& see if I can be clearer. It may take awhile.
@carrideen Most Trumpers wonât bother but to ignore the well funded âmilitiasâ or insurgents & mercenaries being trained to destabilize America & turn us into a money farm for the #RulingClasses would be suicidal. We are under a coordinated attack by global special interests & we must be aware. #erikprince, #mbs, #Kochs #putins etc
> Donât hate the player, hate the game.. then change the game. But good luck with that. Studies.. show that the very wealthy are not only far more likely than the average citizen to reach out to their elected official.. they are also far more likely to see their own interests reflected in actual policy... In her book #DarkMoney, investigative reporter #JaneMayer writes about how dynasties including the #Kochs, the Scaifes, the CoÂorses, the Olins, and the DeVoses âweaponizedâ #philanthropy..
#Kochs still supporting #insurrectionists. "In Eric Schmitt, a Missouri senator, and Andrew Ogles, a congressman from Tennessee, AFP Action had invited two newly elected men who tried vigorously to overturn the 2020 presidential election"
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/feb/11/koch-brothers-afp-action-advocacy-far-right-republicans
Investigative journalist #JaneMayer review from 2019: #Kochland author Christopher Leonard digs up new âevidence of the Kochsâ role in perhaps the earliest known organized conference of climate-change deniersâŚ.The meeting, in 1991, was sponsored by the #CatoInstitute, a Washington-based libertarian think tank, which the #Kochs founded & heavily funded for years.â
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