David Koch's Reverse Tea Party'

David Koch’s Reverse Tea Party

by David VanThournout
Monday, August 30th, 2010

I’ve never been to a tea party event. No one representing the tea party has ever even approached me.

All this tea party talk and I finally read about David Koch actually speaking to the Crowd. Wow. I don’t know what people know about this guy or not. I’ve been hearing about him ever since Greg Palast covered the Koch brothers involvement in starting the libertarian party in his book “The Best Democracy Money Can Buy”

Here is the wikipedia entry on David Koch;

David Hamilton Koch (pronounced /ˈkoʊk/ "coke", born May 3, 1940) is an American engineer, politician and businessman. He is one of the co-owners (with older brother Charles) and an executive vice president of Koch Industries, a conglomerate with major petroleum and natural gas holdings that is the second largest privately held company (after Cargill) in the United States.[1] He is the second richest man living in New York City, as of 2010.[2] He is a major funder of conservative causes, including the Tea Party movement.

So, he’s a rich guy who's family made its start by ripping off Native Americans that owned small oil wells across Oklahoma. Just google David and Charles Koch and spend a few hours reading about these guys. But here it is in a nutshell;

David Koch started the tea party "movement". I put movement in quotes because I don’t think that the word “movement” applies to anything that rich people do... unless it’s in the bathroom. Not to say that they aren’t people, just not people like you and I working toward a better world.

Lets just for a moment go back over the whole tea party thing in the beginning. I honestly think that the people in Boston that tossed the tea overboard into Boston harbor should have done so without the disguises. But hey, that’s me just channeling Gandhi. When American colonists tossed the tea overboard they did so in protest of taxation without proper representation. It was obviously an influential event leading up to the American Revolution. It galvanized us.

Here’s what wikipedia has to say of the Boston Tea Party’s legacy. It actually appends the current shenanigans labeled Tea Party to the Boston Tea Party’s Legacy:

In early 2009, a series of citizen gatherings called "Tea Parties" began to protest recent increases in government spending, particularly in President Obama's budget and economic stimulus package.[71][72] One of the first of these was held on April 15, 2009, on Boston Common, just a few blocks from the original Boston Tea Party.[73]

To say that this is incomplete would be an understatement. I think it would be much more appropriate if it said; “In early 2009, a series of astro-turfings made to appear like citizens gathering and calling themselves the Tea Party entirely funded by mega wealthy oil mogul David Koch began to protest recent increases in Democrats in Congress and the Senate. One of the first of these was ... blah blah blah”.

Look, the Boston Tea Party was a real people’s movement. Maybe the American Revolution itself wasn’t perfect, nor is it today even perfectly understood. However, the ludicrous idea that the Tea Party of modern times could be mistaken for anything other than the ultimate manufactured discontent of the oil slick operators, no this is just blowback from women getting to vote, black people getting civil rights, and most recently, gay people getting uppity.

What David Koch, through the Americans For Prosperity Foundation and in close cooperation with Dick Armey’s FreedomWorks, have really done is just forced that weak, salty, nasty, improperly taxed, artificially colored, pesticide ridden, genetically modified, oil polluted, tea down our collective throats whether we liked it or not! This is not a movement at all. This is nothing short of the systematic and diabolical poisoning of American politics and our society by the second wealthiest person in New York City. David Koch has outspent Exxon trying to confuse the debate over whether or not climate change is being driven by human activities. According to a 2010 study by the University of Massachusetts at Amherst’s Political Economy Research Institute Koch Industries is one of the top ten polluters in the United States. in this article by journalist Jane Mayer, she quotes Charles Lewis, founder of the Center for Public Integrity as saying, “The Koch’s 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.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1911 that antitrust law required Standard Oil to be broken into smaller, independent companies. Among the "baby Standards" that still exist are ExxonMobil and Chevron. John D Rockefeller, even though he had no management role owned 25% of its stock and so became the richest man in the world in the wake of the breaking up of Standard Oil.

The Bottom Line?

I thought it appropriate to deliver this last in bankers language since this guy could literally buy the oval office in 2012.

Global warming could be good for the planet, Koch says. “A far greater land area will be available to produce food.”

If we don’t stop this political manipulation and wholesale obfuscation of what really matters by our right wing loonies (all nice and wound up tight by our tea party puppet-master David Koch) with a massive effort of progressives and liberal activity up to November and (most especially) beyond, then we may be looking at the very real rise of fascism in America. His messenger boy Glenn Beck is whipping up a batch of brownshirts as we speak. Gonna take back the civil rights movement they say. When really, it’s clearly just a a supremely manipulative man taking advantage of our fears to manipulate our political dialogue. So he can continue ripping us off and polluting our air and our politics with these toxic idea’s of his. Just his self serving attempt to normalize hate and forever stop all real public dialogue.

David Koch actually suggests that global warming could be good for the planet. That more land area will be available to produce food. "Lengthened growing seasons in the northern hemisphere, he says, will make up for any trauma caused by the slow migration of people away from disappearing coastlines. The Earth will be able to support enormously more people because a far greater land area will be available to produce food."

The sheer arrogance of this particular oil burning ape boggles the imagination. So since this guy thinks global warming is maybe a good thing he's obviously hell bent on polluting our politics to make sure that we do nothing about global warming which would probably reduce his profit considerably.

But don't expect David Koch to help pay for 90% of humanity having to move away from everything they've ever known and loved. He quite clearly doesn't care about anyone but himself and his idea of how our world should be.

David Koch’s Reverse Tea Party

The Bottom Line?

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