Yup. The Kochs. "Behind "Make America Great," the Koch Agenda Returns with a Vengeance"

[NRaleighLiberal]

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/cafe/behind-make-america-great-the-koch-agenda-returns-with-a-vengeance

Very long, and very important.

"At first glance, the victory of Donald Trump suggests that big political money has less clout than imagined in U.S. democracy. Not only are defeated Democrats consumed with blame-shifting and calls to deliver better messages to a supposedly crucial “white working class,” but pundits are portraying President-Elect Trump as a populist politician unmoored from the establishment or big donors. Some journalists even suggest that the hundreds of conservative millionaires and billionaires organized by Charles and David Koch lost relevance this time – because the two brothers personally refused to endorse Trump and their donor network cut back originally projected spending from almost a billion to a “mere” $750 million.

But we beg to differ. As researchers who have been tracking the long-term rise and recent impact of the Koch network, we see a very different picture. During the election campaign, Trump relied upon well-established conservative organizational networks that could reach into many states and communities. He made overt deals with the National Rifle Association and the Christian right, and he benefitted indirectly from Koch network operations centered in a nation-spanning, political party-like federation called Americans for Prosperity. Even more important, after his campaign squeaked through on November 8, an unprepared President-Elect Trump started to fall back on people and plans offered by the Koch network, which aims to dismantle not only Barack Obama’s accomplishments but much of what the federal government has done for 75 years to promote security and opportunity for ordinary Americans.

As we have detailed in a September 2016 research article, for many years the Kochs and their associates have orchestrated donations from hundreds of wealthy conservatives to build and support interlocked sets of free-market-oriented think tanks, advocacy groups, and constituency mobilization efforts. Growing since 2004 and now spanning three dozen U.S. states, the Koch centerpiece Americans for Prosperity (AFP) now employs hundreds of professional operatives, claims close to 300,000 affiliated volunteer activists, and spends some $150 million annually on electoral efforts and policy campaigns. Not surprisingly, AFP was very active in the 2016 election, surgically injecting massive resources of money and canvassing power into key Senate, gubernatorial, and down-ballot races.

The Kochs certainly did not want Trump to win the GOP nomination; they preferred the likes of Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker or Florida Senator Marco Rubio. As the New York magnate made surprising headway, the Koch network shifted resources to Congressional and state battles, pursuing a strategy designed to maximize post-2016 leverage despite Trump. But now that Trump has actually prevailed, Koch cleverness hits the jackpot. Although widely unpopular with the mass public, the Koch policy agenda of tax cuts for the rich, union busting, Medicare privatization, business deregulation, and evisceration of environmental and global warming measures is ripe to be rammed through a GOP-dominated Congress and sent to the desk of a president who needs Koch-affiliated personnel, understands very little about policy issues, and will be looking for victorious bills to sign into law. The stage is perfectly set to advance the core Koch ultra-free-market agenda, even though the brothers avoided endorsing Trump and the candidate himself discussed almost none of the relevant policy shifts in his appeals to voters."

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Read it all....

[Blanks]

1. Perhaps they shifted their support...

To house and senate races because they knew the fix was in.

[duffyduff]

6. What "fix"? Charles and David Koch each have one foot in the grave and the other on a banana peel.

Why the hell they give a shit after they are going to be dead is a mystery to me.

[Blanks]

7. I can't speak to why they care who wins...

But they've clearly been active in politics, perhaps it's what keeps them alive.

If it were me, I think I'd kick back and enjoy life for a while, I suppose that's why I'm not a billionaire like they are.

[KT2000]

2. Pence has the agenda locked

as a Koch minion.

[duffyduff]

4. Not gonna happen. Pence won't be able to do shit.

The Kochs are about dead anyway.

[KT2000]

8. they set up organizations

that will do their work for years to come. Many of the transition team members are part of those organizations and they are making decisions about cabinet members.

[Hortensis]

9. Exactly! What's this "dead" and "grave" cluelessness?

Charles Koch's will and money CREATED the Tea Party. Charles Koch's will and money engineered the 2010 Republican census-year sweep and locked-in restacking of the deck in favor of conservative voters.

Charles Koch's will, and the will and money of an ultraconservative alliance that numbered over 700 when Obama was elected, undoubtedly are behind their victory in 2016. They are able to hire the very best evil minds in the nation and beyond.

These men are very much alive. ferociously active and dangerous and will remain dangerous as long as their money lives on to fight to destroy what the American people built and go earnestly to the polls to vote for. Younger generations of Kochs are hair-part-deep in their dirty works.

Note that Richard Mellon Scaife died a handful of years ago, but his ultraconservative interference with our will and persecution of the Clintons live on through the Scaife Foundation and Judicial Watch. And the same for a number of other dead billionaires of his stripe.

The Lewis Powell memo laying out a plan for the transfer of wealth and power to a corporate state certainly lives on long after he retired from the SCOTUS and died. Yes, Powell is merely the earliest or one of the earliest of their collaborators they put on the Supreme Court.

[KT2000]

10. Exactly!

Great post!

[greymattermom]

3. One is 76

the other is 83. How long can this keep happening?

[duffyduff]

5. They are about done. I don't think any of the heirs are into this libertarian crapola. n/t

[Hortensis]

11. How about authoritarian fascist crapola? "Libertarian"

deregulation posturing has worked just fine for many unprincipled economic conservatives who are just as happy to use government to line their pockets when that works better. As the Kochs do.

Many suspect that under the skin the Kochs, and most in their giant alliance, are really just typical fascistic authoritarian conservatives in type--like the uber-authoritarian, Third Reich-admiring father the brothers supposedly rebelled against.

Now, Paul Ryan is probably the real thing--libertarian by personality, judging by his economics, which are too extreme for most of the Koch alliance, who apparently tend to prefer at least some institutional protections for their wealth.

[Kashkakat v.2.0]

12. Yep, as Ive said elsewhere- trump will prove to be a "useful idiot" by continuing to distract and

preoccupy the media and public with his antics, while Pence and cohorts ram thru a dizzying array of prewritten radical right legislation with great haste & secrecy, with little awareness or input from the public. Which is exactly how theyve been operating here in WI.

This is their golden opportunity and anyone who thinks they wont take full advantage hasnt been paying attention!

Pence is on record saying he will be a VP like Cheney (ie being the power behind the throne) while Trump when asked what his job would be, said "make America great."