The Fascists Are Coming for Your Social Security and Medicare

10/24/2018

The Confirmation Files Business, Economy, government, Politics, poverty , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

The billionaire fascists are coming for your Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. And they’re openly bragging about it.

Right after Trump’s election, back in December of 2016, Newt Gingrich openly bragged at the Heritage Foundation that the Trump administration and Republicans in Congress were going to “break out of the Franklin Delano Roosevelt model.” That “model,” of course, created what we today refer to as “the middle class.”

This week Mitch McConnell confirmed Gingrich’s prophecy, using the huge deficits created by Trump’s billionaire tax cuts as an excuse to destroy “entitlement” programs.

“I think it would be safe to say that the single biggest disappointment of my time in Congress has been our failure to address the entitlement issue, and it’s a shame, because now the Democrats are promising Medicare for All,” McConnell told Bloomberg. He added, “[W]e’re talking about Medicare, Social Security and Medicaid.”

These programs, along with free public education and progressive taxation, are the core drivers and maintainers of the American middle class. History shows that without a strong middle class, democracy itself collapses, and fascism is the next step down a long and terrible road.

Ever since the election of Ronald Reagan, Republicans have been working overtime to kneecap institutions that support the American middle class. And, as any working-class family can tell you, the GOP has had some substantial successes, particularly in shifting both income and political power away from voters and toward billionaires and transnational corporations.

More from Thom Hartmann @ Common Dreams

Posted by Libergirl

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Ted Cruz warns of “Watergate-style blowout” in 2018

10/16/2017

The Confirmation Files Business, Economy, Politics , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Wealthy conservative donors and influential Republican lawmakers say they increasingly fear a historic backlash at the ballot box next year if the GOP effort to pass a sweeping rewrite of the nation’s tax laws falls short in the coming months.

Image: Dia Dipasupil/Getty Images for Lincoln Center

At a two-day midtown Manhattan summit of the billionaire industrialist Koch brothers’ powerful donor network, GOP patrons, senators and strategists spoke in cataclysmic terms about the price they expect to pay in the midterm elections if their tax reform effort does not win passage.

They voiced concerns a demoralized Republican base would stay home, financiers would stop writing campaign donation checks to incumbents and the congressional majorities the party has built in the House and Senate could evaporate overnight.

To head that off, the same Republicans said they are waging an intense, multi-front effort in and outside of Congress and the White House to shepherd the endeavor to the finish line.

Koch network officials said they have invested more than $10 million this year in advocating for the GOP tax plan.

Art Pope, a major conservative donor from North Carolina, put it this way: “When you have lack of success, that may depress voter turnout for Republicans, that may depress donations for Republicans and conservatives.”

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) warned that Republicans could face a “Watergate-level blowout” in the midterm elections if they don’t make major legislative strides on taxes and health care, invoking the political scandal that brought down Richard Nixon’s presidency and set back the GOP considerably in subsequent elections.

“If tax reform crashes and burns, if [on] Obamacare, nothing happens, we could face a bloodbath,” said Cruz, who spoke in a moderated discussion.

More from Apple news via WaPo

Posted by Libergirl

 

Kochs launch new super PAC for midterm fight

06/18/2014

The Confirmation Files Politics , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

 

  During a closed-door gathering of major donors in Southern California on Monday, the political operation spearheaded by the Koch brothers unveiled a significant new weapon in its rapidly expanding arsenal — a super PAC called Freedom Partners Action Fund. The new group aims to spend more than $15 million in the 2014 midterm campaigns — part of a much larger spending effort expected to total $290 million, sources told POLITICO. It’s an evolution for billionaire industrialists Charles and David Koch. The vast network of political nonprofit groups they helped build has mostly funneled its unprecedented political spending into issue-based campaigns that usually slam Democrats for supporting big government but seldom explicitly ask voters to support GOP candidates.

 

More from Politico

Posted by Libergirl

Exposing the Koch Brothers’ 2014 Plan: Focus On 13 States and Campaign on Social Media

01/16/2014

The Confirmation Files Politics , , , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

The libertarian industrialist brothers David and Charles Koch spent more on 2012 elections than previously believed—$400-plus million, new investigations have found. Buried in that reporting is an even more intriguing detail: where and how their political cartel will campaign in 2014.

Image: gsa.gov

If you look at the websites of the Koch-backed non-profits identified by the Center for Responsive Politics and mapped even more elaborately by the Washington Post, telling tidbits sketch out the frontline strategy of the Koch-backed wing of the GOP. Thirteen states are priorities, and social media will be used for its propagandizing.

The Center for Shared Services is a job placement agency for the dozen politicized non-profits funded by the Kochs. Besides the Washington beltway, they are looking for nuts-and-bolts campaign staff in Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Louisiana, Minnesota, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, Texas and Virginia. They even have a Twitter page for hiring, at FreeMarketRecruiting.

The Koch groups, which railed against Obama and congressional Democrats in 2012, especially want to hire grassroots organizers and social media experts. One group, the Public Notice, describes itself as “an independent non-profit dedicated to providing facts and insight on the economy and how government policy affects Americans’ financial well-being.” It seeks a “social media engagement specialist,” who will “plan, implement, and optimize numerous paid advertising campaigns on diverse channels such as Facebook, Twitter, Pandora, YouTube, Google, OutBrain.”

This social media campaign position reflects a shift away from using traditional broadcast media for electioneering, which political consultants say will be the big trend in 2014.

“Campaigns will need… the ability to predict when a conversation on social media has the potential to become rapidly viral or, potentially, nuclear,” wrote Bryan Merica, in Campaign and Elections magazine. “Imagine a communications war room staffed by a college intern… A young team member will know when to raise the red flag and alert senior campaign staffers to a quick moving story or sentiment.”

The Kochs’ cartel seems to be embracing this strategy. Voters and social media users in its 13 targeted states may soon start seeing messages from any number of little-known Koch-funded groups with anti-government messaging. These include:

•  The 60 Plus Association. Founded in 1992, it tries to be the right-wing version of the American Association of Retired persons, or AARP. The Post found that it spent $4.6 million on ads against Obama, Obamacare and House Democrats in 2012.

More from Alternet

Posted by the NON-Conformist

Post analysis shows Koch brothers raised $400 million for shadow political network

01/06/2014

The Confirmation Files Politics , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Image: Raw Story

Image: Raw Story

An analysis by The Washington Post and the Center for Responsive Politics published Sunday revealed that Koch Industries-backed entities operating in the opaque world of political dark money raised more than $400 million during the 2012 election cycle largely from anonymous donors.

The Post and CRP examined 17 conservative groups that made up the Koch network of loosely-affiliated organizations and found that they had raised at least $407 million during the 2012 campaign. The amount is comparable to the combined spending of all unions in state, federal and local races, and dwarfs all other sources of political spending in 2012 other than, perhaps, the Karl Rove-associated Crossroads super PAC and nonprofit group which brought in $325 million in the last cycle.

It isn’t clear, despite the Post analysis, how much the Koch brothers themselves contributed to the affiliated groups, in part because they used complicated and sophisticated financial processes to shield the identities of donors.

More from The Raw Story and The Washington Post

Posted by The NON-Conformist

Grassroots Movements Are NOT Funded By Billionaires

08/11/2011

The Confirmation Files Politics, Society , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Former Vice-President Al Gore recently spoke of the need for a new grassroots movement; an American Spring much like the Arab Spring that brought down Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak as well as other leaders across the Middle East. He mentioned the wonderful digital tools that are newly available for the reinvigoration of democracy,” as well as “non-violent change where people on the grassroots get involved again. Not the, you know, not in the Tea Party-style.”

This characterization(or rather mischaracterization in their minds )didn’t go over well with pundits and some factions of the Tea Party; be it the “Express,” “Nation” or “Patriots.”  A guest on Sean Hannity’s Great American Panel said Hello…. Al Gore there IS a grassroots movement and it’s called the Tea Party. Ya think? A grassroots movement is defined as not adapted from or added to an existing facility or operation: totally new.  How can you be a grassroots when you’re being bankrolled by billionaires? Not just any billionaires either; ever heard of the Koch brothers(David and Charles)?  Yes, the uberrich David Koch founded Americans for Prosperity, which has worked closely with the Tea Party since its inception. You’ll hear more about the money the brothers donate to entities such as the Metropolitan Opera House but much less about the shadow organizations such as Americans for Prosperity.

I wrote last summer that those Dixie paper plates and cups at your summer barbecue is partly financing the Tea Party Movement because the Koch brothers own Georgia Pacific, heck they own a lot of stuff and are among the richest men in America.  I hope you like your billionaires with two faces because that’s what you’re getting with the Koch Bros. On the one hand they pledge ten million dollars to the MET(Metropolitian Musuem of Art) to fix its crumbling outside fountains and on the other they make the list as one of the top ten air polluters by the Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts. It’s no secret that the brothers are longtime libertarians but does the Tea Party/so-called grassroots movement really understand what that means.  Lower taxes, the bare amount of social services for the needy and to hell with environmental regulation. All fine until a corporation dumps its dirty water right in your back yard. The Koch brothers are rich and could fight it but not you Tea Party Patriot now at the least you could file a complaint with a government agency.

Let’s revisit a more realistic grassroots movment:The Civil Rights Movement. Real change came about for people of color, especially blacks, in the form of voting rights and, yes, improved economic conditions. There were, of course, those who donated time and money to the movement but certainly not millions and certainly not by two rich white men who distrust government at its core. The Tea Party may think they are making radical change to this country but really they are destroying the America that has progressed so much since the 60s.

Posted by Libergirl

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