Invasion of the Blog Snatchers, or Current TV, rip off somebody else

And, in good Dialectic fashion, instead it turns out to be both: the subsuming of the old GOP by the new KOCHtopus, much as humans were subsumed by the alien pods in the original and first remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers …

~ this blog, 6 February 2011

I’m actually sick of this crap. I pointed out the CATO/Howie Rich gang making up their own laws in dozens of states in 2006, but the “mainstream” press didn’t think it worthy of much comment. The only “major” stories were from the Omaha World Herald and the Portland Oregonian — both of whom crowed about what a great investigation THEY’D done.

Credit? Naw. But Howie got his ass kicked in every state but two: Arizona, where gun-toting Arizona state senator Lori Klein (who waved her pink, loaded, safety-less gun in a reporter’s face) ran that campaign. And in Florida, where, while it was a “legislative referral,” it later turned out that the legislator who “referred” the Howie Rich/CATO/Koch measure  was then-Speaker of the Florida House … Marco Rubio.

Gee does that look familiar? Read on to see why.

I won’t even go into WHY Aaron Sorkin owes me royalties, for ripping off story after story that I’ve been out ahead of the curve on in his retro-rewrite of the “news” (including the “Tea Party” tales).

And now, having figured out that the Koch Brothers are trying to grab the guts of the GOP, Jennifer Granholm of Current TV’s “The War Room” comes to the party. Glad to see you finally caught up   ….

Now, I’m going to play nice, here.  But jeebus, assholes (and I mean ALL aboveground media) would it FUCKING kill y0u to just once acknowledge something you got from the work of other reporters? I eagerly await your rationalizations, except that I’m going to make them as difficult to post as CURRENT TV makes it to post a comment, even if you’ve got multiple, verifiable accounts. I hope your snark and rationalizations have as much luck as I had trying to post a comment.

Here’s the actual point. I hope Current TV keeps fighting the good fight, and these are those what need them fightin’.

6 FEBRUARY 2011 · 11:58 AM

BREAKING: I Win The Blogger SuperBowl!

OK: It’s not quite accurate, but face it, it’s classier than saying “I TOLD YOU SO!!!” (And avoids the requisite coda: “NEENER NEENER POO POOH!”)

This is a classy blog after all. But whence this triumphalist bray? Gladjaksed.

I wrote a blog on September 3, 2009, which I retitled at the last moment, so the URL still reads “http://hisvorpal.wordpress.com/2009/09/03/koch-machine-hostile-takeover-of-gop/“

And this is some of what it said [emphasis added]:

So, all that air time was wasted in NOT understanding that Americans for Prosperity, the Independent Women’s Forum, FreedomWorks, the Sam Adams Alliance and Americans for Limited Government (and others, including the new American Liberty Alliance, founded by Tea Party founder and former Sam Adams staffer Eric Odom) are ALL intimately tied to the Koch astroturf machine. These foundations breed faster than paramecia in a petrie dish of agar. But the same suspects show up over and over again.

And, from this morning’s Los Angeles Times:

Koch brothers now at heart of GOP power

The billionaire brothers’ influence is most visible in the makeup of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, where members have vowed to undo restrictions on greenhouse gases.

By Tom Hamburger, Kathleen Hennessey and Neela Banerjee, Los Angeles Times
February 6, 2011

Reporting from Washington — The billionaire brothers David and Charles Koch no longer sit outside Washington’s political establishment, isolated by their uncompromising conservatism. Instead, they are now at the center of Republican power, a change most evident in the new makeup of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

Wichita-based Koch Industries and its employees formed the largest single oil and gas donor to members of the panel, ahead of giants like Exxon Mobil, contributing $279,500 to 22 of the committee’s 31 Republicans, and $32,000 to five Democrats.

Nine of the 12 new Republicans on the panel signed a pledge distributed by a Koch-founded advocacy group — Americans for Prosperity — to oppose the Obama administration’s proposal to regulate greenhouse gases. Of the six GOP freshman lawmakers on the panel, five benefited from the group’s separate advertising and grass-roots activity during the 2010 campaign.

Claiming an electoral mandate, Republicans on the committee have launched an agenda of the sort long backed by the Koch brothers. A top early goal: restricting the reach of the Environmental Protection Agency, which oversees the Kochs’ core energy businesses.

The new committee members include a congressman who has hired a former Koch Industries lawyer as his chief of staff. Another, Rep. Morgan Griffith of Virginia, won a long-shot bid to unseat a 14-term moderate Democrat with help from Americans for Prosperity, which marshaled conservative activists in his district. By some estimates, the advocacy group spent more than a quarter-million dollars on negative ads in the campaign. “I’m just thankful that you all helped in so many ways,” Griffith told an Americans for Prosperity rally not long after his election… [MORE]

Braying “I told ya so!” is the wrong response to this foreseen tragedy. Because, make no mistake, the new power center of the GOP wants nothing more than to dismantle all government and regulations. Last Week, Faux Bizniz ran the chyron TAXATION AS THEFT (from the blog I’m working on ["In Which We Use Our New Word"] , but took time out from to write this):

The guest? A scholar funded directly by Koch funds since 1980, or for the past 31 years.

It’s hard to feel anything other than horror at this prospect, but, please note, I saw this coming far in advance of the others, and I’ve been demonstrably giving you the straight goods for more than a few years now.

In one week, every idiot talking head on the Left will be suddenly an “expert” on the Koch Machine in the same way that the bloviating heads of the Right suddenly became experts on Egypt last week. And if that happens, we will MISS THE POINT.

And miss the warnings. And, as with this, by ignoring Cassandra, act the part of Agamemmnon and ignore the warning that would have saved his life.

Unlike Cassandra, I hope to NOT be (metaphorically) killed as collateral damage as well.

From March 9, 2009, a little ditty entitled:

Dangerous Koch-heads Tooting Furiously

9 MARCH 2009 · 3:20 PM

I have been sick enough with flu the past few daze (literally) that blogging was impossible. Unless, of course, you’re an aficionado of William S. Burroughs, which I am most definitely NOT.

kochtopus

It begins with a cryptic email in the inbox:

from    *****
to    hart
date    Mon, Mar 9, 2009 at 10:19 AM
subject    I think this one’s for you, Hart

http://oxdown.firedoglake.com/diary/4068

–
The problem isn’t government, it’s Republican government – and everyone knows it. –TPM reader BH

So, naturally, I clicked.

Koch Industries: The Real Force behind Right Wing America
By: perris Saturday March 7, 2009 3:35 pm

I”m at the gym on the bike, I usually read a good novel but today I was listening to an old broadcast of Thom Hartmann that I had recorded from his archives. (free I might add)

“Koch” industries (pronounced “coke”), became the subject for discussion.

I am AMAZED I have never heard of this company, AMAZED this has not gotten more exposure even from progressive blogs.

In 2004 they were the leading campaign contributers from all oil concerns, they operate under the radar because it’s privately owned, only they and the IRS know much about their operation.

IT IS THE SECOND LARGEST PRIVATE COMPANY IN AMERICA

*and I didn’t even know it existed till today*

From the link I posted fade to;

Although it is both a top campaign contributor and spends millions on direct lobbying, Koch’s chief political influence tool is a web of interconnected, right-wing think tanks and advocacy groups funded by foundations controlled and supported by the two Koch brothers.

Among those groups are some of the country’s most prominent conservative and libertarian voices including the Cato Institute, the Reason Foundation, Citizens for a Sound Economy and the Federalist Society. All regularly beat the drum in official Washington for the causes the Koch’s hold dear—minimal government, deregulation, and free market economics.

Look at that group funded, controlled and somtimes founded by “koch”…STUNNING!, and then there’s THIS ….

Well, as my regular readers know, and my irregular readers probably don’t, I’ve been deep-sea fishing in Koch waters, including turning up that $270,000 in cash from FreedomWorks to perennial Oregon Republican candidate and former GOP state chair Kevin Mannix — which may well have derailed his congressional campaign last year. And, perhaps, even affected the outcome of those ballot initiatives he was sponsoring on behalf of … FreedomWorks?

click for larger

Either way, there’s much too much information to suddenly dump on you, or the readers of the Oxdown Gazette, so here is my comment on the blog:

It’s not called the “Kochtopus” for nothing, pilgrims.

(And just because it was under your radar, doesn’t mean it was below everyone’s radar. Google “Kochtopus” and you’ll get about 1,580 hits.)

Don’t miss the forest for the trees: In fact, MOST of Koch’s money is spent in creating astroturf organizations through which millions channel. There’s George Mason University (whose death-rictus grinning alum, Nancy Pfotenhauer was Koch’s spokesperson after being groomed at GMU); there’s the whole Howie Rich crowd (including Americans for Limited Government, Citizens in Charge, US Term Limits, Parents in Charge and, most recently, the Sam Adams Alliance, featured on the Playboy blog — whose biggest task since 2006 has been to train right wing bloggers), there’s the Cato Institute, on whose board Charles Koch sits, there’s Dick Armey’s Freedomworks, Reason Magazine, etc. etc. etc.

‘Nancy Mitchell Pfotenhauer Runs several
Koch fraud operations out of same office address.’

This one is actually real.

Following “campaign contributions” is a blind alley: Most of Koch’s political money goes either through third party foundations or allegedly to the secret funding of initiative campaigns. See an example of Koch Kash at work HERE.

In a 60 Minutes piece in 2000, one of the Koch siblings (cut out of the business by the twin brothers Charles and David) called their operation “organized crime.”

And, here’s a weird peer into the ideological battles at the heart of the beast, from a TIME magazine blog in January.

This is a huge Ayn Rand/Libertarian operation (David literally BOUGHT his way onto the Libertarian ticket in 1980, and then stiffed on paying outstanding bills after the election) and the vast majority is under the surface going under a bewildering variety of names.

I wasn’t aware that Koch was the 2nd largest privately held firm in the world. As of their takeover of Georgia Pacific (you know, Dixie Cups, Northern tissue, etc.) quietly during the media dead zone of Christmas 2006, they became the largest privately held firm in the world.

Of course, even Libertarians kind of hate them.

Here are three interesting pieces.

And so forth.

Like rust, they never sleep.

Let me add this [emphasis added]:

To understand what happened, one must begin with Charles Koch. He and his brothers inherited an oil business from their father, Fred Koch, a stalwart of the John Birch Society and long active in rightwing causes. They developed and massively extended the family business, to the extent that Charles Koch and his brother David rank among the wealthiest people in the United States. On the current Fortune 400 list, the brothers are 9^th and 10^th, each with $17 billion; if the net worth of the brothers is taken together, the Kochs are second only to Bill Gates and Warren Buffett….

– “The Kochtopus vs. Murray N. Rothbard,” by David Gordon from LewRockwell.com

And this:

July 25, 2007 in Uncategorized by Scott Horton

Greg Palast, investigative reporter for BBC Newsnight and author of Armed Madhouse, explains the oil game in Iraq, the deal behind the U.S. attorney scandal, Hillary Clinton’s shameful corruption and her husband’s pardon of arch-criminal Mark Rich, and the deal struck by Republicans to impeach Bill only for the silly sex scandal instead of his felonious relationship with the Indonesian Riady family billionaires as long as the Democrats promised not to expose the Republican’s felonious connections to the American Koch family billionaires.

MP3 here. (39:05)

Now, I have so much information on what they’ve been up to lately, and there seems so little interest in it that I hesitate to write any further blogs on it. Your suggestions could alter my decision, but for right now, this seems enough.

The 2006 Howie Rich series is HERE.

Courage.

h/t TOMM

Little side note here, Nancy Pfotenhauer is, once again, “Koch Industries spokeswoman,” according to CNN, last Monday.

And that was my explication from the previous day’s post, which predicted what has transpired ["Daddy Long Legs" 5 MARCH 2009 · 11:39 PM]:

No, these [snarky death rattles of the GOP after the disastrous 2008 election]  are the twitchings of a dead Daddy Long Legs.

There are two distinct possibilities at this point, both leading to the same conclusion:

1. That the GOP will arise from its own ashes as someone significantly reformulates philosophy and rebrands a “new” GOP that IS significantly different than the failed larceny of the party that’s been in charge of not one, but TWO bank meltdowns since the “Reagan Revolution.”
2. That the GOP will die, like the Whigs, and reformulate around the Libertarian wing, as seems increasingly likely.*

And, in good Dialectic fashion, instead it turns out to be both: the subsuming of the old GOP by the new KOCHtopus, much as humans were subsumed by the alien pods in the original and first remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers (haven’t seen the second remake).

“Invasion of the Party Snatchers”?

Sure: It’s guaranteed box office at the invisible drive-ins that dot the landscape of our formerly non-feudal land.

Darned Space Critters Anywho!

Courage.

Back to the present. I predicted this was what was going to happen in “Dead Fly Buzzing” (28 April 2010) and repeated it in “Lords of the Flies” (30 November 2010), when it MIGHT have done you some damned good.  If you’d like to know what’s going to happen next, fucking ASK me. If anybody’s listening, I actually know what it is.

If anybody’s actually listening, that is.

Courage.