Think Again: And They Call It Democracy

[ProSense]

Think Again: And They Call It Democracy

By Eric Alterman

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What’s more, right-wing billionaires and corporate titans have succeeded on another front—one that allows them to put a populist gloss on their unchanging agenda. In doing so they appear to have solved what the conservative scholar Bruce Bartlett describes as the right-wing libertarians’ age-old problem of being “all chiefs and no Indians.” And when Bartlett says “no” he means it.

Back in 1980 the oil billionaire David C. Koch ran for vice president on the Libertarian Party ticket. His platform endorsed the abolition of Social Security, federal regulatory agencies, the FBI, the CIA, public schools, and just about anything else, as Jane Mayer observed, that “either inhibit his business profits or increase his taxes.” The party polled barely 1 percent of the popular vote.

Today Koch funds a vast network of pseudo-scientific organizations to undermine legitimate climate science, and he also funds Tea Party groups that provide foot soldiers to march on behalf of his and his fellow plutocrats’ financial and political interests. For instance, the Americans for Prosperity Foundation—which gave its Blogger of the Year Award to somebody who termed Barack Obama America’s “cokehead in chief” and accuses him of “demonic possession”—was founded by Koch, who remains its chairman. It received more than $5 million from Koch foundations in 2005 to 2008 alone.

The group’s literature complains—rather ironically given the source of its funding—that “Today, the voices of average Americans are being drowned out by lobbyists and special interests…. But you can do something about it.”

These organizations’ “all chief, no Indian” nature has no bearing on their electoral effectiveness. The Concerned Taxpayers of America, or CTA, worked tirelessly to defeat Democratic congressional candidates in Maryland. It turns out to represent exactly two taxpayers. But give CTA credit. Its membership is double that of Taxpayers Against Earmarks, or TAE, which describes itself as “dedicated to educating and engaging American taxpayers about wasteful government spending and the misguided practice of earmarks” and poured millions into races in support of conservative Republicans across the country.

Alas, the “taxpayers” were really just one taxpayer, Joe Ricketts, founder of Ameritrade and owner of the Chicago Cubs, who voluntarily disclosed his identity though he was not required to do so by law.

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