How the Koch brothers built the most powerful rightwing group you've never heard of

[arenean]

From The Guardian:

Americans for Prosperity is a little-known, billionaire-funded organization that has pushed US politics to the right. How did it happen?

The cries of “Shame! Shame! Shame!” rang throughout the marbled walls of the Wisconsin state assembly chamber. Disgusted Democratic politicians, some of whom had been up for over 60 hours by this point, punctuated their chants by throwing papers – and even drinks – at their fellow Republicans. Police officers had to be summoned to physically separate one Democratic representative yelling “Cowards!” across the aisle.

The source of this confrontation, in the early hours of February 2011, was an unprecedented push by Wisconsin Republicans, led by the state’s newly elected Republican governor, Scott Walker, to slash the union rights held by most public workers. Walker argued that budget woes in the state necessitated the shift, and barrelled forward to eliminate the rights of virtually all public-sector workers to collectively bargain with government and to allow government employees to opt-out of paying dues to their unions.

At first blush this might seem like a years-old local issue in a US state that rarely lights up the international headlines. Yet events in Wisconsin are crucial to understanding how a little-known, billionaire-funded organization, called Americans for Prosperity (AFP), has tilted American politics to the right. It is intertwined with, and rivals in size, the Republican party itself.

Full article: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/sep/26/koch-brothers-americans-for-prosperity-rightwing-political-group

[donkeypoofed]

1. So that's WTF is going on.......Figures !!

Old rich corrupt white dudes thinking they're smarter and more entitled than everybody else. Bastards.

[Hermit-The-Prog]

2. unionized billionaires

Compare, from the article:

AFP has recognized that to make lasting change in US politics, the Koch network would need to permanently weaken the organizations that support liberal candidates and causes – and above all, the labor movement. [...] To succeed in electing conservative candidates and promoting right-leaning policy, then, AFP would need to hobble unions, especially those in the public-sector that were powerful state-level allies of Democrats.

And:

In America, wealthy people have always thrown their weight around to influence elections and policy. But what is newer and more portentous in the early 21st century, especially at the state level, is the rise of organized big donor collectives through which hundreds of billionaires and millionaires invest in organization-building to remake the very terrain on which US elections and government activities play out. Organized political mega-donors can get much more leverage through persistent organizations than from scattered, one-time contributions to particular politicians.

They organize while eroding organizations of working people.

[zentrum]

3. Why are they always

.....so pro-active and planning just what to do and our side is always so surprised, so always reactive?

Thanks for the post.

[C_U_L8R]

4. Like Randolph and Mortimer Duke

Racist old farts gaming the system to make one buck.

[ancianita]

5. That the Guardian hasn't heard of them doesn't mean millions of Americans haven't.

There is WAY more than Americans For Prosperity for the Guardian and its readers to examine.

The entire system of planning is based on James MacDill Buchanan's basic principal that majority rule is bad for the economy; thus the need to end democracy, or craft constitutions to require 2/3 supermajorities on all laws of the land.

Planning, training, preparedness + buying sellouts equals Kochs' politics since the 70's.

file:///Users/constanceprince/Desktop/Screen%20Shot%202018-09-26%20at%206.40.12%20AM.png


A good history of the Kochs' philosophy is in Nancy MacLean's Democracy In Chains (2017)

[dalton99a]

6. +1. DUers are quite familiar with that bunch

[erronis]

7. Your desktop link to a screenshot won't help me . I'll altavista the "Democracy in Chains"

[ancianita]

9. Does this help?

https://qph.fs.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-bc5d082f0531b50bc667fa19ce2d6ac5-c

Also, Quora has a whole set of relevant Muckety maps.

https://www.quora.com/To-what-extent-do-the-Koch-brothers-control-American-public-policy

[erronis]

8. This is supported by a great Atlantic article:

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/10/poland-polarization/568324/

Monarchy, tyranny, oligarchy, democracy—these were all familiar to Aristotle more than 2,000 years ago. But the illiberal one-party state, now found all over the world—think of China, Venezuela, Zimbabwe—was first developed by Lenin, in Russia, starting in 1917. In the political-science textbooks of the future, the Soviet Union’s founder will surely be remembered not for his Marxist beliefs, but as the inventor of this enduring form of political organization. It is the model that many of the world’s budding autocrats use today.

Unlike Marxism, the Leninist one-party state is not a philosophy. It is a mechanism for holding power. It works because it clearly defines who gets to be the elite—the political elite, the cultural elite, the financial elite. In monarchies such as prerevolutionary France and Russia, the right to rule was granted to the aristocracy, which defined itself by rigid codes of breeding and etiquette. In modern Western democracies, the right to rule is granted, at least in theory, by different forms of competition: campaigning and voting, meritocratic tests that determine access to higher education and the civil service, free markets. Old-fashioned social hierarchies are usually part of the mix, but in modern Britain, America, Germany, France, and until recently Poland, we have assumed that competition is the most just and efficient way to distribute power. The best-run businesses should make the most money. The most appealing and competent politicians should rule. The contests between them should take place on an even playing field, to ensure a fair outcome.

Lenin’s one-party state was based on different values. It overthrew the aristocratic order. But it did not put a competitive model in place. The Bolshevik one-party state was not merely undemocratic; it was also anticompetitive and antimeritocratic. Places in universities, civil-service jobs, and roles in government and industry did not go to the most industrious or the most capable. Instead, they went to the most loyal. People advanced because they were willing to conform to the rules of party membership. Though those rules were different at different times, they were consistent in certain ways. They usually excluded the former ruling elite and their children, as well as suspicious ethnic groups. They favored the children of the working class. Above all, they favored people who loudly professed belief in the creed, who attended party meetings, who participated in public displays of enthusiasm. Unlike an ordinary oligarchy, the one-party state allows for upward mobility: True believers can advance. As Hannah Arendt wrote back in the 1940s, the worst kind of one-party state “invariably replaces all first-rate talents, regardless of their sympathies, with those crackpots and fools whose lack of intelligence and creativity is still the best guarantee of their loyalty.”

Lenin’s one-party system also reflected his disdain for the idea of a neutral state, of apolitical civil servants and an objective media. He wrote that freedom of the press “is a deception.” He mocked freedom of assembly as a “hollow phrase.” As for parliamentary democracy itself, that was no more than “a machine for the suppression of the working class.” In the Bolshevik imagination, the press could be free, and public institutions could be fair, only once they were controlled by the working class—via the party.

The Koch's and allies are hollowing out the "democratic" government of the US and replacing the holes with loyalists to their new order.

[appalachiablue]

10. Kochs & father Fred, founder of the JBS, John Birch Society

have built a massive empire of networks for decades, generations.

The Kochs fund more than 200 US colleges and universities finance and economics depts., high school business classes, and much more.

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[appalachiablue]

11. Nancy MacLean's new book, 'Democracy in Chains'

and Claire Connor's book, 'Wrapped in the Flag' both explain the far right agenda to take us back to 1910 that has been in the works for decades.

"The daughter of one of the society’s first members and a national spokesman about the society, Claire Conner grew up surrounded by dedicated Birchers and was expected to abide by and espouse Birch ideals. When her parents forced her to join the society at age thirteen, she became its youngest member of the society. From an even younger age though, Conner was pressed into service for the cause her father and mother gave their lives to: the nurturing and growth of the JBS.

She was expected to bring home her textbooks for close examination (her mother found traces of Communist influence even in the Catholic school curriculum), to write letters against “socialized medicine” after school, to attend her father’s fiery speeches against the United Nations, or babysit her siblings while her parents held meetings in the living room to recruit members to fight the war on Christmas or (potentially poisonous) water fluoridation. Conner was “on deck” to lend a hand when JBS notables visited, including founder Robert Welch, notorious Holocaust denier Revilo Oliver, and white supremacist Thomas Stockheimer.

Even when she was old enough to quit in disgust over the actions of those men, Conner found herself sucked into campaigns against abortion rights and for ultraconservative presidential candidates like John Schmitz. It took momentous changes in her own life for Conner to finally free herself of the legacy of the John Birch Society in which she was raised."

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16071820-wrapped-in-the-flag