Pete Tucker, D.C. journalist, says that the power behind the Trump candidacy were the infamous rightwing billionaire Koch brothers.
If you need documentation, read Jane Mayer’s investigative book, Dark Money, which Tucker cites in his article.
David Koch ran for vice-president on the Libertarian Party ticket. It received 1% of the vote. Since then, the Koch brothers have used their money to change the country.
Tucker writes:
The brothers began clandestinely partnering with fellow billionaires to secretly fund a vast network of right-wing organizations, dubbed the “Kochtopus” by critics.
The Kochs and their allies learned that “if they pooled their vast resources,” writes Mayer, “they could fund an interlocking array of organizations that could work in tandem to influence and ultimately control academic institutions, think tanks, the courts, statehouses, Congress, and, they hoped, the presidency…”
The Koch network has taken decades to perfect. Win or lose, it doesn’t dismantle after elections – if anything it grows. Obama’s presidency in particular spurred billionaires to invest in the Kochtopus.
It wasn’t just the ultra-rich who were stirred up after Obama’s 2008 win. Economic insecurity and the election of the first black president resulted in white backlash, which presented an opportunity for the Kochs to develop what they always needed: an army of dedicated foot soldiers willing to fight for their extreme agenda.
Tucker urges you to give Dark Money to your friends and family for Christmas.
The Trump regime is the culmination of their decades of organization and spending, even though they didn’t support Trump. He has named many of Koch’s close allies as members of his cabinet, including Mike Pence, Wilbur Ross, and Betsy DeVos. Billionaire Rebekah Mercer has given to the Koch network and is now a key member of Trump’s transition team. The head of the environmental transition group is a Koch-funded climate-change denier.
We thought Trump was dangerous because he knew nothing about government. Now we know that he is a close ally of the Koch brothers and a proponent of their radical rightwing agenda. That’s even scarier.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
“Dark Money” — see Meyer’s two interviews on http://www.booktv.org.
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What a surprise?????? BEst government money can buy.
[It may not be good for the country but it is sure good for CBS.]
When will they ever learn, when will they ever learn.
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Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Education and commented:
Interesting
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This is slightly off the topic, except it is about Trump and his cabinet selection. It comes from the Alliance for Retired Americans.
Rep. Tom Price Selected as Secretary of Health and Human Services
On Tuesday, President-elect Trump named House Budget Committee Chairman Tom Price of Georgia to be Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Rep. Price has spent years trying to privatize and cut Medicare and slash Medicaid.
Following the announcement, Rep. Price told reporters he plans to convert Medicare into a voucher system as early as the fall of 2017, and Speaker Paul Ryan wants to move even more quickly than that. In the past, Price has promised to cut benefits and change Medicare into a voucher program, effectively ending guaranteed benefits and turning it into coupon-care. As secretary, Price will also have significant control over Medicare Part D and policies affecting the price of prescription drugs….”
…….
How much worse can things get? Hopefully, people will finally stand up and be counted. This is NOT helping anyone.
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As someone who is on Medicare, this is terrifying. And if they mess with Medicaid, what about the hundreds of thousands of elderly in nursing homes who are supported by Medicaid and Medicare? Do the nursing home elderly get thrown out on the street? This wild not have happened with HRC.
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Joe, I’m also on Medicare. How can Trump, Ryan and Price really be this out of touch with what Americans need? I find it unbelievable. I’d like to think I’m in a dream and will wake up to find out the day is sunny and this isn’t reality.
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Well relax folks they are not going to take away OUR Medicare . They are way smarter than that . They have a long term perspective. They will be content to make any changes apply to those not to near eligibility . While they let inflation cut into the current program
They do this knowing that the American people are both too selfish and stupid to act in their mutual interests.
Current retirees knowing that they are not a target will not care about those that follow. Youth being invincible, do not plan for old age .
American Exceptionalism at its best. ,
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Sadly, you’re right.
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Senator Donnelly From Indiana Opposes Medicare Privatization
Senator Joe Donnelly, this week, stood up for everyday Hoosiers by opposing any efforts that would privatize Medicare.
This includes Donald Trump’s recent nomination to run the Department of Health and Human Services, Congressman Tom Price – one of the biggest proponents of privatizing Medicare.
Donnelly said in a statement: “Tom Price has led the charge to privatize Medicare, and for this reason, I cannot support his nomination. I am ready to work with anyone who wants to improve access to quality health care for Hoosier families and seniors, but the nomination of Tom Price would put us on a direct path to end Medicare as we know it, which would raise health care costs and break a fundamental promise to seniors.”
Last week, Donnelly reiterated his commitment to Medicare and his opposition to privatizing Medicare.
……..
This is getting scary. What is Trump hoping to accomplish by nominating Tom Price?
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Good for Senator Donnelly! On social issues, like education and healthcare, we must reach out to Republican Senators and persuade them not to endanger their constituents. Trump plans to appoint representatives of the religious right to lead these issues, and they will harm millions of people by privatizing Medicare and public schools. If enough constituents contact them, they might think twice about confirming extremists like Betsy DeVos and TOM Price.
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If it wasn’t so sad, this would be laughable. It is amazing how these accusations fit into the book, “THE PROTOCOLS OF THE LEARNED ELDERS OF ZION.” Except back then it were the Jews who were accused of plotting take-overs.
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Interesting that you would be so familiar with that book. You are trying very hard to normalize the protocols of the learned elders of zion (boy, you even know the exact title which most people don’t).
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Any student of WW2 should be familiar with that book.
My grandfather and uncle were hauled away by the Germans as slave labor. I grew up with three miles of a V2 rocket launcher site. Open spots in the neighborhood marked the places where these fit not make it to their intended target.
So yes, I happen to know about that book, and many others.
So the next time you make decide to make jumping to conclusions your form a excercise, you may want to ask a question or two.
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And that most people don’t know the exact title of the book is a cause for shame. It should be part of any history course – if for no other reason, the pain and agony it had caused to untold millions of people.
If you grew up in this country, unless have Jewish ancestors who had to flee and leave everything behind, you have no idea of the horrors caused by believers in that book.
Read it. You might see similarities with what was posted…
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Agreed, Rudy.
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I was glad for two things when I read this. That my heart was strong, thanks to a quadruple bypass, and that i was sitting down… 😉
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David Koch was in the photo array of Aspen Institute board members, until this summer. Gates funds Aspen’s education programs. Degrees of separation between DeVos, the Koch’s and Gates- one.
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Shocking.
So who is to blame for Hitler? The Germans who voted for his opponent? Or the Germans who demonized his opponent and the ones who voted for Hitler himself?? According to Allen, it must be the people who voted for his opponent instead of demonizing him so more people would vote for Hitler!
It is truly sickening that you blame the people who did NOT vote for Trump instead of the ones who kept normalizing him by saying “the Democrats are just as bad so he’s no different than any other political we’ve ever had.”
That’s what happened to Hitler. He won and no doubt there are plenty of German revisionists just like Allen who wanted to blame it on the people who voted for his opponent instead of the one who demonized his opponent as being just as bad as Hitler was.
Just think, we can give a pass to all evil people using those standards. Blame the people who fought against that evil person and not the people who did nothing but attack the person fighting against the evil because they were “just as evil” even if they weren’t!
And with that kind of thinking, our democracy is sure to die.
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I think the reaction is to the fact that the DNC/Clinton could not possibly have made (costly) mistakes.
When someone used the term “filled with hatred for Clinton,” it also lived by those same blinders. I don’t like here, did not vote for her – but can make my case as to why not. Reasoned. Clearly stated. But even that gets labeled
I don’t need Fox News, breit whatever (never even heard about them). I’m just not a Democrat. I dislike trump more than even people on this list. I have never felt the need to apologize for being a republican – until he joined the fray.
And even that case I can state, without resorting to name calling.
It would be interesting to see exactly WHO did vote for that man. From our own caucus numbers I know we had a number of Democrats who switched parties.
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An example of the Overton Window, where long-range ambitions suggest that if you figure out what the pubic is ripe to hear, you can then assertively push information which indoctrinates your own ideology….?
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Meyer also reveals the Koch family’s Hitler and Stalin connections of the past. Fred Koch, the Koch brothers father, made the family fortune building oil refineries for both Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia. She also reveals how Fred Koch indoctrinated his two boys with his virulent anti-government, anti-tax philosophy.
http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/34413-jane-mayer-reveals-history-of-koch-family-and-the-nazis
Many of America’s top industrialists liked Mussolini’s model of a corporately controlled state and pushed for the same fascists policies in the early 30’s They also liked Nazi industrial stock that achieved extraordinary dividends using the free labor provided by the slave camps next door. This youtube reveals some of the American war profiteers who made a killing provided needed supplies to both sides of WW2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SMKnH2BlkBA
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Does it not bother you to know that JFK’s dad was a nazi sympathizer, even as ambassador to the U.K.? And that he, too, shared those sympathies with HIS family?
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A well known fact,Rudy
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Not the question. Does it not bother anybody? Was the question.
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It bothers me that Americans weren’t taught that a handful of American industrialists (regardless of their party) helped finance Hitler into power and that they were let off the hook at the end of the war, just to be able to try it again 70 years later. It bothers me that the Nuremberg Trials concluded that there were many in America that would gladly kill out half of the population to gain control of the other half. When such things are not taught in schools, it allows such things to happen again.
Why weren’t we taught that George W Bush’s grandfather Prescott Bush and other top industrialists tried to overthrow President Roosevelt in 1933 in a fascist coup? That seems like something very important to leave out. Why is it that American history criticized Chamberlain so much for being fooled by Hitler, but not a word about the ones who helped fund Hitler into power. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PDUXDbhgJKY
As for President Kennedy, despite his family’s past, he tried to correct the past in his speech revealing the shadow government that really ran things. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QeYgLLahHv8 But the shadow government knew how shut him up, so they did.
The money minded like to use their power to paint the social minded as the enemy within, but it is really the money minded who have intentionally been undermining our democracy for decades that are to blame.
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I received this email from a friend in Canada after having sent her the SNL about Trump and his tweets. It is not available in Canada. Guess we are supposed to not make fun of our ‘great leader’ and let other countries know he has some major problems. What is happening to our free speech?
Carol
………………
On Sun, Dec 4, 2016 at 1:18 PM, Donna _[Canadian friend]____ wrote:
This message came in a heavy BLACK BAR with white letters: The uploader has not made this video available in your country.
Published on Dec 4, 2016
SNL makes fun of Trump’s tweets, and Trump immediately tweets his disapproval. Sad!
There’s an emerging theory that Donald Trump distracts us all with his tweets. But on “Saturday Night Live” this weekend, it was Trump getting distracted by his own tweets.
In the cold open, Alec Baldwin returns as the retweeter-in-chief, shrugging off important policy briefings to pass along the social media musings of 16-year-olds and other random Twitter users. There is also a cameo from Stephen Bannon, a plate of mashed potatoes and a brutal joke at Mitt Romney’s expense.
And naturally — and perhaps at the risk of proving SNL’s point for it — shortly after SNL made fun of him for getting distracted by insignificant tweets, Trump took to his preferred medium to voice his disapproval.
https://youtu.be/tI3g_laToxE
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