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mac
Joined: 07 Mar 1999
Posts: 17747
Location: Berkeley, California
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 Posted: Sun Mar 09, 2014 7:51 pm Post subject: |
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Follow the money and the political organizers behind the Tea Baggers:
| Quote: | On May 17th, a black-tie audience at the Metropolitan Opera House applauded as a tall, jovial-looking billionaire took the stage. It was the seventieth annual spring gala of American Ballet Theatre, and David H. Koch was being celebrated for his generosity as a member of the board of trustees; he had recently donated $2.5 million toward the company’s upcoming season, and had given many millions before that. Koch received an award while flanked by two of the gala’s co-chairs, Blaine Trump, in a peach-colored gown, and Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg, in emerald green. Kennedy’s mother, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, had been a patron of the ballet and, coincidentally, the previous owner of a Fifth Avenue apartment that Koch had bought, in 1995, and then sold, eleven years later, for thirty-two million dollars, having found it too small.
The gala marked the social ascent of Koch, who, at the age of seventy, has become one of the city’s most prominent philanthropists. In 2008, he donated a hundred million dollars to modernize Lincoln Center’s New York State Theatre building, which now bears his name. He has given twenty million to the American Museum of Natural History, whose dinosaur wing is named for him. This spring, after noticing the decrepit state of the fountains outside the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Koch pledged at least ten million dollars for their renovation. He is a trustee of the museum, perhaps the most coveted social prize in the city, and serves on the board of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, where, after he donated more than forty million dollars, an endowed chair and a research center were named for him.
One dignitary was conspicuously absent from the gala: the event’s third honorary co-chair, Michelle Obama. Her office said that a scheduling conflict had prevented her from attending. Yet had the First Lady shared the stage with Koch it might have created an awkward tableau. In Washington, Koch is best known as part of a family that has repeatedly funded stealth attacks on the federal government, and on the Obama Administration in particular.
With his brother Charles, who is seventy-four, David Koch owns virtually all of Koch Industries, a conglomerate, headquartered in Wichita, Kansas, whose annual revenues are estimated to be a hundred billion dollars. The company has grown spectacularly since their father, Fred, died, in 1967, and the brothers took charge. The Kochs operate oil refineries in Alaska, Texas, and Minnesota, and control some four thousand miles of pipeline. Koch Industries owns Brawny paper towels, Dixie cups, Georgia-Pacific lumber, Stainmaster carpet, and Lycra, among other products. Forbes ranks it as the second-largest private company in the country, after Cargill, and its consistent profitability has made David and Charles Koch—who, years ago, bought out two other brothers—among the richest men in America. Their combined fortune of thirty-five billion dollars is exceeded only by those of Bill Gates and Warren Buffett.
The Kochs are longtime libertarians who believe in drastically lower personal and corporate taxes, minimal social services for the needy, and much less oversight of industry—especially environmental regulation. These views dovetail with the brothers’ corporate interests. In a study released this spring, the University of Massachusetts at Amherst’s Political Economy Research Institute named Koch Industries one of the top ten air polluters in the United States. And Greenpeace issued a report identifying the company as a “kingpin of climate science denial.” The report showed that, from 2005 to 2008, the Kochs vastly outdid ExxonMobil in giving money to organizations fighting legislation related to climate change, underwriting a huge network of foundations, think tanks, and political front groups. Indeed, the brothers have funded opposition campaigns against so many Obama Administration policies—from health-care reform to the economic-stimulus program—that, in political circles, their ideological network is known as the Kochtopus.
In a statement, Koch Industries said that the Greenpeace report “distorts the environmental record of our companies.” And David Koch, in a recent, admiring article about him in New York, protested that the “radical press” had turned his family into “whipping boys,” and had exaggerated its influence on American politics. But Charles Lewis, the founder of the Center for Public Integrity, a nonpartisan watchdog group, said, “The Kochs are on a whole different level. There’s no one else who has spent this much money. The sheer dimension of it is what sets them apart. They have a pattern of lawbreaking, political manipulation, and obfuscation. I’ve been in Washington since Watergate, and I’ve never seen anything like it. They are the Standard Oil of our times.” |
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/08/30/100830fa_fact_mayer?currentPage=all
or: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/29/opinion/29rich.html?_r=0
and then there is Dick Armey: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/15/AR2010031503730.html
Some of this is just self aggrandizement--Dick Armey (Freedom Works) and Karl Rove got very rich funding campaigns. Some of it is astroturf.
In the Bay Area, the local Tea Baggers attended a number of hearings about transportation planning. one and all they were the cranks at the bank of the City Council meeting that aren't smart enough to follow the staff report--but are deeply paranoid. What a movement. Big victories in Texas, eh?
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/06/us/tea-party-in-texas-sees-silver-linings-in-gop-primaries.html?hpw&rref=politics
But according to Techno, they vote their principles--if they can just find them. |
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nw30
Joined: 21 Dec 2008
Posts: 6485
Location: The eye of the universe, Cen. Cal. coast
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| Posted: Sun Mar 09, 2014 8:44 pm Post subject: |
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mac, you've got some kind of serious TEA Party obsession going on, here are your threads w/in just the 1st and 2nd pages:
"Will the Republican survive the Tea Party?"
"What has the Tea Party done for us lately?"
"Obama vs. the Tea Party, who can lead?"
Are you worried about the TEA Party or something?
If they were so out there, to where they aren't even a threat, then you wouldn't have this obsession, seems to me.
Bringing them up, all the time, keeps them relevant, don't you think? |
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techno900
Joined: 28 Mar 2001
Posts: 4161
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| Posted: Mon Mar 10, 2014 7:34 am Post subject: |
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Who would have thought that one sentence: | Quote: | | Many may not like the tea partiers, but they do stick to their principals. |
would have generated so much interest. OK, fine, they haven't done a great job of sticking to their principals.
mac said: | Quote: | | What, no comment on the rest of the subsidies to housing? |
Correct me if I am wrong, but I don't think that was the topic.
But, since you brought it up, has there been anything that I have said that suggested I was FOR the interest deduction? |
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pueno
Joined: 03 Mar 2007
Posts: 2807
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| Posted: Mon Mar 10, 2014 7:36 am Post subject: |
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| nitwit30 wrote: | mac, you've got some kind of serious TEA Party obsession going on, here are your threads w/in just the 1st and 2nd pages:
"Will the Republican survive the Tea Party?"
"What has the Tea Party done for us lately?"
"Obama vs. the Tea Party, who can lead?"
Are you worried about the TEA Party or something?
If they were so out there, to where they aren't even a threat, then you wouldn't have this obsession, seems to me.
Bringing them up, all the time, keeps them relevant, don't you think? |
That's pretty funny coming from someone who's among those who endlessly hammer on Obama for the snivel du jour.
I'd say that you're "the pot calling the kettle..." but you'd twist that into a racist screed.
Isn't it time for you to yowl "Benghazi, Benghazi..."?
| techno900 wrote: | | ...sticking to their principals.? |
The correct word is P R I N C I P L E S.
Fifth grade vocabulary a puzzlement to you? Didn't the principal drive that principle hard enough?
. |
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mac
Joined: 07 Mar 1999
Posts: 17747
Location: Berkeley, California
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| Posted: Mon Mar 10, 2014 10:58 am Post subject: |
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| NW--to answer your question, I think that the Tea Party is the worst thing to happen in American politics since McCarthy. And, as I think their support by the lunatic and oily right, and votes show--they are not committed to actual fiscal austerity--just a war on the poor. And hatred for Obama. |
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mac
Joined: 07 Mar 1999
Posts: 17747
Location: Berkeley, California
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| Posted: Mon Mar 10, 2014 12:10 pm Post subject: |
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I also like reminding all those "we built it on our own" folks, particularly contractors like NW, that they actually didn't. Homeownership is subsidized by a little over $300 billion a year. These subsidies help support the home remodeling industry, which generates about $500 billion a year in business.
In contrast, the total cost of the food stamp program is $76 billion. 72% of that goes to families with children--the princely sum, on average, of $133/month.
So to those who want to cut food stamps and drug test welfare recipients, regardless of the bill of rights--but benefit from their own sources of welfare, I say, get a clue. |
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KGB-NP
Joined: 25 Jul 2001
Posts: 2856
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| Posted: Mon Mar 10, 2014 2:18 pm Post subject: |
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Mac,
Are you suggesting NW be tested to receive his subsidies? Me too, and anyone else who can endanger me or others in the work place. |
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keycocker
Joined: 10 Jul 2005
Posts: 3598
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| Posted: Mon Mar 10, 2014 2:31 pm Post subject: |
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RR,
If we tested and fired every employed person if they had a beer or a joint in the last two months, would the Canadian economy collapse? LOL |
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mac
Joined: 07 Mar 1999
Posts: 17747
Location: Berkeley, California
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| Posted: Mon Mar 10, 2014 3:47 pm Post subject: |
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RR asked:
| Quote: | Mac,
Are you suggesting NW be tested to receive his subsidies? Me too, and anyone else who can endanger me or others in the work place. |
I'm suggesting that those who complain about welfare for others still manage to cash their own welfare checks. And most of them think that they made it all on their own. Hypocrisy in America--especially, but not solely, on the right.
If you read what I wrote earlier, anyone that understands the Bill of Rights knows that you can't test anybody without probable cause. Of course the government, from the days of J. Edgar Hoover ignored that. Bush eavesdropped everybody until the Supreme Court told him he couldn't. Then the Republicans wrote legislation that allowed it--and now they blame Obama for continuing it.
My point with that is that much the Republican right is inconsistent when it comes to liberty and rights. It seems to depend on whether their buddies are doing it, or if they want to control the behavior of women and gays. |
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KGB-NP
Joined: 25 Jul 2001
Posts: 2856
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| Posted: Mon Mar 10, 2014 4:12 pm Post subject: |
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Mac,
I was kidding around.
KC,
I'm not talking months. I'm talking that day. I was first on scene to pick up a mason who'd fallen off a scaffold. Those masons would always have a little "vino" with lunch. I've watched a guy blow half his arm off too. If a test can save people from themselves, is it still viewed as an infringement? Are seatbelts an infringement? I'm not talking about probing people's butt holes or anything.
If Obama had such a problem with the invasion of privacy then why didn't he shut it down right away? Was it like trying to just take a wee little peak at some porn turns into an addiction? If I took over a business and didn't like an aspect of it's ethics or operation then out goes that practice and the people who thought it was a good idea. |
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