The Evil Koch Family Spends Their Money In Class War Against The Rest Of Us... And We Smile Blandly

Money can buy you a lot of friends-- and this morning's NY Times makes it clear that David Koch is a more complicated figure than a Hitler caricature. His money-- ill-gotten or not-- is very much welcome in polite circles. "Koch said that only a relatively small portion of his giving goes to politics and public policy-- most, he said, goes to cancer research, followed by cultural and educational institutions. Aside from paying for Tea Party buses to bring racist thugs and drugged-up, confused and delusional seniors to disrupt townhall meetings, the Koch Bros have also funded inherently anti-American institutions in order to mold our country to their selfish interests. No, I'm not talking about the Republican Party or the John Birch Society, both of which the Kochs have poured vast sums into, right now; I'm talking about the Cato Institute. But before you read about what Cato has been up to, please watch the video above. It's one of the most powerful pieces of film circulating on the Internet this year and it presages a country taken over by non-human entities... not by evil robots operating on their own but by corporations operating on their own. As you probably know Charles Koch is chairman of Cato's board (and rotten brother David is also a board member), a combination of their check-writing ability and Ayn Rand's mortality. If Cato stands for one thing, it is "free markets," meaning the right of concentrated wealth to lord it over everyone else regardless of societal costs. The rest is window dressing. A list of contributors to Cato is virtually a list of America's most dedicated enemies-- and none of them have Arabic names. Aside from Kochs, there are Melon Scaifes, Coors, Olins, Milbanks... basically billionaires willing to write checks to create a web of useful idiots to promote their control over society and nation. And this is above ad beyond the considerable donations they get directly from corporate entities like Philip Morris, RJ Reynolds, Wal-Mart, Visa, Comcast and the American Petroleum Institute.

This week when ABC News ran a segment on "buying American," Cato rose up-- on behalf of it's multinational corporate owners-- screeching about dangerous nationalism. Our friends at the Alliance for American Manufacturing sent us an interesting post about the importance of Buying American, Cato's reaction, and a hypothetical phone conversation with Dan Ikenson, the paid Cato hack pushing the Koch agenda.

ME: Hi Dan, it's Steven Capozzola at AAM. Listen, your viewpoint is just backward. You guys are the ones who've gotten us into this mess.

IKENSON: Free trade works. Our productivity is better than it's ever been. Per capita income is so much greater than it was in 1960, when we hardly imported anything. Household goods cost less than ever. People can buy whatever they want.


ME: Yes, you talk about all these low-cost goods. But Dan, when I lost my job during the recession in 2002, the only work I could find was earning minimum wage at a bookstore. I had no health insurance. It took me an hour to earn the money just to buy a stick of deodorant. I couldn't afford to buy much of anything.

IKENSON: I understand. There has been some shakeout as we've adjusted to the global economy. But on the whole, we are far better as a nation. We don't make and sell low-end retail products any more. Instead, our factories produce top-notch items like pharmaceuticals, chemicals, airplanes, and sophisticated components.  

ME: And how does that benefit me if I've lost my job and am now earning miniumum wage?

IKENSON: You're talking about economics. The fact that Americans are unemployed speaks to a mismatch of skills demanded and skills available.

ME: Actually, I was thinking about the exact industries you're talking about. Our factory workers have lost good-paying jobs. But we're also losing ground in high-tech to China every day. What about the Silicon Valley people who've been laid-off because our high-tech has disappeared, too? What about printed circuit boards and semi-conductors and wind turbines and solar panels? I thought that's where we were supposed to be heading...

IKENSON: You want to be a protectionist and start putting up walls.

ME: No, I want China and other countries to stop putting up walls. They're extremely protectionist with all their currency rigging and illegal subsidies. The U.S. is a much more open market. Aren't you bothered by how protectionist China is?

IKENSON: China represents a vast market for U.S. companies.

ME: But our trade deficit keeps going up with China. They're not buying our stuff. Instead, we're becoming more dependent on them for hi-tech, for our military equipment. That worries the heck out of me.
IKENSON: U.S. manufacturing is thriving.

ME: Dan, hang on, can you do me a quick favor? Can you look out the window?

IKENSON: What, it's sunny? What?

ME: I want you to stop looking at your textbooks for a moment and actually take a look at the shape of the country. We've been following your prescription for the past 15 years. Are you telling me that as a nation we are better off than we were then? Do you really think we have better employment, more people covered with healthcare, less debt? Have you actually looked up from your desk and walked the streets, seen who's working, who isn't?

IKENSON: I'm not going to get into an angry discussion.

ME: Okay, so you're comfortable sacrificing millions of American jobs for an ideology.

IKENSON: But other jobs are created. You're only looking at the downside, not the positives.

ME: Dan, show me the positives. Show me that the trajectory we've taken since we opened up trade with China, for example-- that it has lifted up more Americans. Show me that we've been better off under your vision.

IKENSON: Goodbye.

Editor's Note: At this point, Ikenson hangs up on the hypothetical phone call.

What isn't hypothetical is that politicians get into Congress calling themselves Democrats and then feed at the same trough sleazy operations like Cato feed at and then vote exactly the way Republicans do. A perfect example is corrupt Minnesota Blue Dog Collin Peterson who announced yesterday his intention to work with these reactionary forces to gut environmental protections and to help the Kochs achieve their #1 agenda item: permanently blocking the Environmental Protection Agency from regulating greenhouse gas emissions. He-- as well as Dan Boren (Blue Dog-OK) and Nick Rahall (D-WV), two more corporate whores disguised in a blue t-shirts-- are co-sponsoring anti-EPA legislation with House Energy and Commerce Committee Chair Fred Upton (R-MI) and Rep. Ed Whitfield (R-KY), two of the worst energy company shills in Congress. Jim Inhofe introduced the same heinous bill in the Senate. We decided to see how much loot these characters have taken from Big Oil since 1990 to agree to poison the air we all have to breath. And-- lo and behold!-- they're among the biggest recipients of legalistic corporate bribes from this sector.

Jim Inhofe- $1,251,323
Dan Boren- $636,260
Fred Upton- $256,850
Ed Whitfield- $234,997
Nick Rahall- $131,458
Collin Peterson- $58,850

Not bad: just two-and-a-half million bucks and they have a "bipartisan" bill headed to the floor-- and to the signing pen of the weakest, most conflicted president in our lifetimes (who happens to have taken another $973,551 from this industry towards his political career).

UPDATE: Fighting Back In Wisconsin

This, of course, is a union ad, not a Democratic Party ad. You can tell because it has teeth and goes for the jugular: