I will not post anything again for a while today, unless there is breaking news. You need time to read this article in full.
It is a long article by Jane Mayer of the New Yorker, who has written major books about the dark money fueling rightwing politics.
The article is an in-depth analysis of the role of billionaire Robert Mercer and his daughter Rebekah in the creation of the Trump presidency.
It is a long read. It is an important read, to understand the threat to our democracy posed by the power of unaccountable billionaires.
It is fascinating, like watching a car crash, in this case, a political tragedy.
It begins with the shocking news that Patrick Caddell, who long ago was a pollster for Jimmy Carter, is now helping Trump behind the scenes.
Then it gets into the life and personality and actions of Robert Mercer, a billionaire who says little except with his vast wealth. Mercer hates the Republican party as much as he hates the Democratic party. He wants to destroy both. He has financed Breitbart and Steve Bannon. At first, he backed Ted Cruz, hoping he would be the outsider who smashed the system. But as Cruz faded, he poured his millions into Trump as the perfect outsider, the one who could break the Republican party and the entire system.
The Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision paved the way for a politically active billionaire like Mercer to buy politicians.
Mercer doesn’t like to talk to anyone. He once said to someone that he prefers the company of cats to humans. He loves computer code.
Mercer hates the Clintons. Over the years, he has financed every conspiracy theorist who published anything that would smear the Clintons.
Mercer thinks that racism in America is vastly overstated. In his rarified life, he never sees any racism. He supported Jeff Sessions.
One of Mercer’s notions is that nuclear radiation makes people healthier. He strongly supports nuclear power.
Mercer doesn’t believe that climate change is real or important.
Mercer doesn’t believe we need a government. He wants to destroy it.
When you read this article, you will understand why every Trump cabinet appointee is determined to slash and undermine their agency; that is what Mercer wants.
The Mercers work closely with the Koch brothers.
Pollsters working for Mercer found “mounting anger toward wealthy elites, who many Americans believed had corrupted the government so that it served only their interests. There was a hunger for a populist Presidential candidate who would run against the major political parties and the ruling class.” This yearning to overturn the system worked in favor of Bernie Sanders but also Donald Trump. As Mayer notes, Mercer and a billionaire oilman named William Lee Hanley–two of the richest men in America–“paid [Patrick] Caddell to keep collecting polling data that enabled them to exploit the public’s resentment of elites such as themselves.” Caddell wanted a third-party candidate–“Mr. Smith Goes to Washington”–but Trump was the one who capitalized on that public hunger for an outsider determined to smash the establishment (of which he was part).
To understand Trump, to understand the Alt-right, to understand the danger our country and our democracy is in, read this article.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
It’s just sad how many people they duped. Trump’s policies will directly and immediately harm the people who voted for him.
We have a federally funded after school program here. It’s on the chopping block to allow for Trump/DeVos “choice” funding. The kids who attend that program are white working class where I live because it’s 95% white and 50% working class here. Their parents make minimum wage, which is $16,100 a year in Ohio.
It’s almost like he’s deliberately screwing his supporters. Where do they think low income rural people go to school? They ALL attend public schools.
That’s not even mentioning Medicaid. ALL of these low income kids are on Medicaid. And school lunches!
It’s just an astounding betrayal of his supporters. It’s like he got into office and set out to harm them. They should be furious.
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“It’s just sad how many people they duped.”
This may be the 2nd biggest threat to our country.
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Thanks Diane for publishing this well informed article about the shady billionaire, Mercer, whom most people have not heard about and his power wielding progeny who thinks she owns America.
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His supporters are not duped. He is doing exactly what they want him to do. Several of my conservative friends fully support eliminating PBS, the EPA, etc, and only supporting a strong military. Regarding meals on wheels, one comment I read was that the elderly need to rely on their own families.
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I think the lower income supporters are duped because they don’t make enough to pay federal income taxes (other than payroll of course, but payroll doesn’t go to discretionary programs).
All of the federal funding in this county goes to low income white people, simply because it’s mostly white people. I think they thought he would help them. They’ll be shocked when he takes away Medicaid. My God, all their children are on it. They can’t pay for health care on 16- 20k a year. It’s impossible. The “choice” funding won’t help them because we don’t have a “portfolio” of schools. We don’t have the population to support one.
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Chiara’s analysis suggests the people she identifies, vote?
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They did in this election…for Trump..the great white hope?
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Beth
BINGO
Most of his supporter are not low income working class voters . Subtract the 41 percent that do not vote ,
52.5% of the remaining vote went to someone other than Trump .
That means that out of the remaining voters only 31% of Americans voted for Trump. So now the question becomes . Out of those Americans how many are truly in the suffering white working class . Yes I suspect that number is higher in the Rust belt from Western NY through Wisconsin.
I suspect that most were not the beneficiaries of the social safety net that he is tearing down. Or to rephrase that most were not aware of how much they have benefited from the social safety net. That is why he is careful not to overtly attack Medicare and Social Security .
So he is appealing to the middle class and higher, who vote in greater numbers than the poor. But the catch is many of those voters are recipients of Government support including anyone who gets Employer sponsored health care fueled by tax incentives.
Fills out a trust to divest their assets in the advent Uncle SAM is needed to pay for the nursing home, medicaid’s greatest cost. Anyone who gets a home mortgage deduction.
That is without even going to the fact that almost all those middle class voters here on long Island, that I know who voted for Trump, has direct safety net support for them or a family member. From the construction worker receiving the prevailing wage on a Federal project to the parents of adult twins living in a Halfway House for mentally handicapped children, to the women whose adult son is being treated for serious depression and schizophrenia under provisions in Obamacare, none see themselves as takers rather than givers.
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“one comment I read was that the elderly need to rely on their own families”
Assuming that all seniors have family to take care of them is typical of right-wingers who want to cut virtually all safety nets and programs for the elderly, including Social Security and Medicare. Many seniors that I know have no family, including me.
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And many seniors are already helping support their adult children, who are still living at home, and are having trouble finding a job that pays a livable wage thanks to the war on labor unions, minimum wages laws, too many jobs that only offer poverty wages with no benefits, and the increase in so-called “Right to Work States” that are really “Right to Pay Workers Next to Nothing with No Job Security” states.
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Lloyd Lofthouse
Grandma and Grandpa are watching the kids while mom and dad go to work . But they no longer can because they are going to work. Add that to the list
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Never, ever underestimate the possibility that some of Trump’s supporters will never hold him responsible for actions that actually harm them or their families. Trump gave them something that they wanted, which was blaming the ‘other’ for their personal misfortunes. As long as at least some of Trump’s voters remain wedded to their personal prejudices they will continue to act against their own interests.
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Mercer’s diagnosis: autism. Lloyd would call him sociopath.
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Jeez, yeah, you pretty much took the words right out of my mouth; well said.
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And, Rebekah?
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There is a reason that Silicon Valley seemed to have a higher incidence of autism. If not on the spectrum themselves, Valley people
tended to behavior traits associated with high functioning autism. Put two of them together and let them produce children and genetics did the rest. Just a theory I remember reading about a few years back. Do I sound like Trump? “I’m just reporting what was reported…”
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Many great mathematicians, physicists, musicians had autism, or, more likely, Asperger. One, for example, is Paul Dirac, one of the heroes of 20th century physics.
I have no idea how accurate this list is.
https://www.disabled-world.com/artman/publish/article_2086.shtml
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For some reason unbeknownst to me, Asperger’s is not longer an acceptable term. You are just “on the spectrum.”
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cx: no longer
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I think what most of the wealthy of Silicon Valley folks have is not really autism but “glutism”
They can never seem to get enough.
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More likely High Level Asperger’s…and Rebekah might be similiar since there is a genetic component…however, more likely she is just an insular entitled spoiled selfish greedy pig.
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Now tell us how you really feel.
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Pigs control the farm.
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Have been reading about control freak, Rebekah for the past year, and she, like De Vos, truly thinks she is above all others in using her money to run the government. She demands obedience from legislators in exchange for cash…no attempt to hide it., A real piece of work.
And as of today, Ivanka has an office in the West Wing (I just read), and is sitting in on all classified meetings. I really think Ivanka and Jared are running the country and Drumph is only tweeting and mouthing words.
Hope the nuclear football is locked away.
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We have one small K-8 Catholic school here. The Trump/DeVos budget cuts public school funding to divert funding to private schools. 99% of the Trump voters here will be harmed because 99% of them attend the public schools DeVos and Trump are opposed to.
I think they don’t really understand the country outside of NYC. I just don’t think they are familiar with how vast stretches of the country work. The idea that federal funding doesn’t help rural public schools is just wrong- it’s incorrect.
DeVos and the GOP Congress expect to show up in places like this and offer vouchers? That’s just irrelevant to people here. They’re offering them nothing- worse than nothing- because they’re cutting funding to public schools.
I’m still wrapping my head around the fact that tens of thousands of public employees in the federal government are opposed to public schools. That’s nuts. Ideology or grand plans of the ed reform “movement” aside, that is insane. We’re all supposed to pay these people to launch a war on the schools our kids attend?
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Some of the public employees, like Gordon, of the Cleveland public school system, and Skandera , formerly of New Mexico’s public school system, are Fellows of the Gates-funded Pahara Aspen Institute. David Koch is on the Aspen board.
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These great men like mercer and trump are going to meet me 1 day
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To gregdreads
Seriously, they cannot go to Heaven so that you cannot be the Angel greeter at the Heaven Gate.
As a result, would you prefer to be God of Death = The Grim Reaper in order to meet them 1 day = on their dead bed? If I were you, just forget about it. It is not worthy of your precious time to meet such nutty people. Back2basic
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I prefer to meet you sometime i guess
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I read a lot on the ed reform side because they so dominate policy that if you have a kid in a public school you have to read them or you won’t know what’s going on.
Anyway, I realized reading them that one (very large) group of “stakeholders” are completely excluded in ed reform- public school parents.
You will read testimonials from parents who choose charters and private schools but you will NEVER hear from a public school parent who supports public schools.
Amazing omission, right? A “movement” that excludes 90% of parents. The “battle lines” are always drawn as “charter and private school parents versus teachers unions”.
They simply disappear public school parents. We’re gone.
I noticed it when opt out started. That was public school parents. They were dismissed as kooks or “white suburban moms”. DeVos says she’s parent -centered but she omits public school parents. They actually sent a voucher proponent to speak to the PTA. A public school parent organization! They wouldn’t even listen to public school parents when they were in a room full of them.
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We can clearly see the threat from unhinged, paranoid billionaires. Our tax cutting agenda of the last thirty years has allowed these people to accumulate too much wealth, and money is power. They are now in a position to tailor laws to suit 1%, and many of our policymakers are puppets of the elite. With the decline of unions and a mostly passive bunch of Democrats, many of whom share the same economic views as conservatives, the only resistance left must come from the people themselves.
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It’s never enough. This guy has a 2 million dollar toy train and he’s mad that kindergarten teachers make 35k a year.
What would be enough? He has to have ALL the wealth? ALL the power? All the natural resources? He’s casting around now to spend it all- buying 2 million dollar toys. He needs more so much that he has to get rid of the last labor union?
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“The Wealthy Want it All”
The wealthy want it all
A third or half won’t do
The wealthy want the Fall
And other seasons too
The wealthy want the Land
And want the Seven Seas
They even do demand
The flowers, birds and bees
The wealthy will not rest
Until the earth is theirs
And manage to bequest
The planet to their heirs
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The wealthy also want to be like the wolves where only the alpha male and female are allowed to have sex and pups to pass on their “superior” jeans (I know it’s spelled gene). The rest of us will be worker bees worked to death, and we will be blocked from love, sex, and benefits of any kind. When we die, our bodies will be turned into watery soup fed to the workers who are still struggling to stay alive.
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Lloyd, you must have watched the Auschwitz documentary on Netflix. I did the same yesterday, and learned that the majority of the people killed there were Hungarians.
The important lesson I have learned was that fundamentally, Hitler would have been powerless if wealthy (not just German) businessmen hadn’t supported him.
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Poet,
“Bequest the planet to” oblivion.
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“Pale Blue Dot”
A pale blue dot
In blackest void
They want the lot
The greedy boys
But if they fail
To get the lot
They’d rather hell
Destroyed the dot
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If you made through the New Yorker article, then I highly recommend the following complement from the Guardian. It shows the role of Mercer and Bannon in working on the Brexit campaign (called Leave) in tandem with the Trump campaign. There is also some scary detail on the role of data analytics in shaping the specific words that Trump is using and how these are determined. This article is dated February 26, 2017 ….begin quote
Robert Mercer: the big data billionaire waging war on mainstream media Carole Cadwalladr
Just over a week ago, Donald Trump gathered members of the world’s press before him and told them they were liars. “The press, honestly, is out of control,” he said. “The public doesn’t believe you any more.” CNN was described as “very fake news… story after story is bad”. The BBC was “another beauty”.
That night I did two things. First, I typed “Trump” in the search box of Twitter. My feed was reporting that he was crazy, a lunatic, a raving madman. But that wasn’t how it was playing out elsewhere. The results produced a stream of “Go Donald!!!!”, and “You show ’em!!!” There were star-spangled banner emojis and thumbs-up emojis and clips of Trump laying into the “FAKE news MSM liars!”
Trump had spoken, and his audience had heard him. Then I did what I’ve been doing for two and a half months now. I Googled “mainstream media is…” And there it was. Google’s autocomplete suggestions: “mainstream media is… dead, dying, fake news, fake, finished”. Is it dead, I wonder? Has FAKE news won? Are we now the FAKE news? Is the mainstream media – we, us, I – dying?
I click Google’s first suggested link. It leads to a website called CNSnews.com and an article: “The Mainstream media are dead.” They’re dead, I learn, because they – we, I – “cannot be trusted”. How had it, an obscure site I’d never heard of, dominated Google’s search algorithm on the topic? In the “About us” tab, I learn CNSnews is owned by the Media Research Center, which a click later I learn is “America’s media watchdog”, an organisation that claims an “unwavering commitment to neutralising leftwing bias in the news, media and popular culture”.
Another couple of clicks and I discover that it receives a large bulk of its funding – more than $10m in the past decade – from a single source, the hedge fund billionaire Robert Mercer. If you follow US politics you may recognise the name. Robert Mercer is the money behind Donald Trump. But then, I will come to learn, Robert Mercer is the money behind an awful lot of things. He was Trump’s single biggest donor. Mercer started backing Ted Cruz, but when he fell out of the presidential race he threw his money – $13.5m of it – behind the Trump campaign.
It’s money he’s made as a result of his career as a brilliant but reclusive computer scientist. He started his career at IBM, where he made what the Association for Computational Linguistics called “revolutionary” breakthroughs in language processing – a science that went on to be key in developing today’s AI – and later became joint CEO of Renaissance Technologies, a hedge fund that makes its money by using algorithms to model and trade on the financial markets.
One of its funds, Medallion, which manages only its employees’ money, is the most successful in the world – generating $55bn so far. And since 2010, Mercer has donated $45m to different political campaigns – all Republican – and another $50m to non-profits – all rightwing, ultra-conservative. This is a billionaire who is, as billionaires are wont, trying to reshape the world according to his personal beliefs.
Robert Mercer very rarely speaks in public and never to journalists, so to gauge his beliefs you have to look at where he channels his money: a series of yachts, all called Sea Owl; a $2.9m model train set; climate change denial (he funds a climate change denial thinktank, the Heartland Institute); and what is maybe the ultimate rich man’s plaything – the disruption of the mainstream media. In this he is helped by his close associate Steve Bannon, Trump’s campaign manager and now chief strategist. The money he gives to the Media Research Center, with its mission of correcting “liberal bias” is just one of his media plays. There are other bigger, and even more deliberate strategies, and shining brightly, the star at the centre of the Mercer media galaxy, is Breitbart.
It was $10m of Mercer’s money that enabled Bannon to fund Breitbart – a rightwing news site, set up with the express intention of being a Huffington Post for the right. It has launched the careers of Milo Yiannopoulos and his like, regularly hosts antisemitic and Islamophobic views, and is currently being boycotted by more than 1,000 brands after an activist campaign. It has been phenomenally successful: the 29th most popular site in America with 2bn page views a year. It’s bigger than its inspiration, the Huffington Post, bigger, even, than PornHub. It’s the biggest political site on Facebook. The biggest on Twitter.
Prominent rightwing journalist Andrew Breitbart, who founded the site but died in 2012, told Bannon that they had “to take back the culture”. And, arguably, they have, though American culture is only the start of it. In 2014, Bannon launched Breitbart London, telling the New York Times it was specifically timed ahead of the UK’s forthcoming election. It was, he said, the latest front “in our current cultural and political war”. France and Germany are next.
A determined plutocrat and a brilliant media strategist can, and have, found a way to mould journalism to their own ends
But there was another reason why I recognised Robert Mercer’s name: because of his connection to Cambridge Analytica, a small data analytics company. He is reported to have a $10m stake in the company, which was spun out of a bigger British company called SCL Group. It specialises in “election management strategies” and “messaging and information operations”, refined over 25 years in places like Afghanistan and Pakistan. In military circles this is known as “psyops” – psychological operations. (Mass propaganda that works by acting on people’s emotions.)
Cambridge Analytica worked for the Trump campaign and, so I’d read, the Leave campaign. When Mercer supported Cruz, Cambridge Analytica worked with Cruz. When Robert Mercer started supporting Trump, Cambridge Analytica came too. And where Mercer’s money is, Steve Bannon is usually close by: it was reported that until recently he had a seat on the board.
Last December, I wrote about Cambridge Analytica in a piece about how Google’s search results on certain subjects were being dominated by rightwing and extremist sites. Jonathan Albright, a professor of communications at Elon University, North Carolina, who had mapped the news ecosystem and found millions of links between rightwing sites “strangling” the mainstream media, told me that trackers from sites like Breitbart could also be used by companies like Cambridge Analytica to follow people around the web and then, via Facebook, target them with ads.
On its website, Cambridge Analytica makes the astonishing boast that it has psychological profiles based on 5,000 separate pieces of data on 220 million American voters – its USP is to use this data to understand people’s deepest emotions and then target them accordingly. The system, according to Albright, amounted to a “propaganda machine”. end quote
If you Tweet or use Facebook and do “likes” at websites, you are feeding a database that makes Cambridge Analytica one of the most refined propaganda tools ever devised, and also a company that Mercer and Eric Kushner helped to bring to all things Trump.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/feb/26/robert-mercer-breitbart-war-on-media-steve-bannon-donald-trump-nigel-farage
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Thanks for this link which exposes the creepy, right wing intentions of these billionaire puppet masters. It is deeply disturbing that they believe they can come up with an algorithm to basically keep people in their places and socially engineer outcomes. VAM is a perfect example.
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It’s not just right wing billionaire puppet masters: Bill Gates obviously played a large role in the push for VAM during the Obama years.
Gates and Arne Duncan (who helped Gates with his “public school science fair project”, which treated millions of students as guinea pigs) almost certainly suspected that teachers would very likely oppose the standardization scheme with Common Core and all the standardized tests.
They also undoubtedly figured (correctly) that VAM would be an effective way of keeping teachers “in their place”. If their job depended on a high VAM score, which in turn depended on student test scores, the teachers would be very unlikely to balk at the standards and testing regime.
In this sense, VAM was — and still is — effective regardless of whether it actually works as claimed (which it doesn’t)
It had the effect of instilling fear ( some might say terror) in teachers — fear of being publicly shamed and even fired.
“A Billy’s Heel”
VAM’s a steel heeled boot
To guard against an arrow
From teachers who won’t root
For testing straight and narrow
“Ed Terrorism”
The fear is what’s desired
The goal is simply terror
Of being VAMmed and fired
The fear is not an “error”
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They do not posses a magical elixir. They do not have “voodoo like powers “to reach an ignorant base. The data is probably as useless as it is in many other areas. They have been given an opening by a Democratic party that abandoned its base long before. Leaving the door wide open .
I just confronted my Democratic Congressman at a town hall (now one of a tiny minority) for his vote for three bills that will eviscerate already inadequate citizens protections on two Wall Street deregulatory bills and the Scrub act which will cut regulation on health safety, environmental and consumer protection .
But the larger point is that there was a twenty year period uninterrupted by the 2016 campaign, where the leadership of the Democratic party worked hand in hand with Republicans at the expense of the American . While giving cover to most elected members . The vote on fast track being the most illuminating where only 24 Democrats voted with the Democratic President and the Republicans . The bill failed . Like magic two more showed up .
The Republican magic was not in getting the working class to vote for them. It was in getting Democratic Presidents and some Democrats to work with them and then putting it off on the Democrats.
The fact that the money men are are even further to the right of the Republican party is irrelevant. They are in a long process of hiring more compliant lackeys.
The Republicans are not winning the Democrats are losing.
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Good stuff, Laura. As I followed the instructions in your post, I came across “conservapedia”
http://www.conservapedia.com/Mainstream_media
Some more research on Mercer from 4 months ago.
http://www.radiofreeliberal.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=17678
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Thanks for both links. The conserapedia site is really scary.
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“DeVos now talking about how virtual charter schools, tax credit scholarship programs have worked for students”
The federal government has decided to pretend 90% of public school students do not exist.
It’s as if the privatization dream has already been realized in DC and public school kids are gone. You can’t pay these people to work on public schools! They refuse. It’s beneath them or something.
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You know, I always say that Versailles is now a museum. It may take a long time, but when you have masses of people in poverty who watch a wealthy minority reaping all the benefits, change happens. If politicians and billionaires think they will be safe in their palatial homes forever, they’ve got another thing coming.
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“You know, I always say that Versailles is now a museum.”
Are you saying, the White House and the Capitol will soon will be part of the Smithsonian complex?
Yeah, I often think about Sphia Coppola’s relevant film
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0422720/?ref_=nm_knf_i4
You are correct, Marie Antoinette had no understanding of the danger waiting for her. She appeared much more of a bystander than Mercer and friends.
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With the way things are going, I’d say it’s more likely they will one day beforee part of the Oedipus Complex.
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Poet, you are ruining my positive image. So where was I? Ah, yeah, so I am walking into this barely illuminated room in the Smithsonian, where waxified copies of US history’s shadiest figures are exhibited to scare our kids, and I see the following written under Bill Gates’s figure
“There was a legend about BG according to which he was so rich that he bought himself 9 lives from God, and hence was invincible. But he got into an argument with Donald Trump, the mentally retarded last emperor of the United States, over which one of them deserved more to reach the $1 trillion wealth first, and the ensuing short but violent battle proved that both had been given finite time to spend here on earth.”
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If Putin paid off Trump for winning the election with a 19-percent ownership in Russia’s oil industry, as has been alleged, then he might already by worth a trillion.
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For Gates to reach a trillion
He’d better do it quick
Cuz I would bet a billion
That Gates is very sick
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This tie was established months ago. Rachel Maddow .
https://mediamatters.org/video/2016/08/25/rachel-maddow-explains-money-man-behind-both-breitbart-news-and-trump-campaign/212685
The more pertinent question is how do you fight this right wing populist movement directed by Oligarchs and the answer in my mind is with a left wing populist movement .
You do not go out and defend the indefensible Obamacare, by trying to convince people how good it is . For what ever reason many have rejected that already .
You push for a Single payer system that kills Obamacare, Republicans,Corporitist Democrats and Trump . Make Americans hate their healthcare like our neighbors to the North (sarcasm)
You do not fight Trumps torrid love affair with Russian Oligarchs and Putin by jumping in bed with the Neo-cons seeking to line the pockets of the “Military Industrial Complex”
and the “Economic Hit-men” who have toppled Governments on every continent. You attack that philosophy head on, with a vision that calls for working to raise standards of living around the World. That diverts the waste of Military spending into economic development aimed at these people, not aimed at stealing their resources or making them indentured servants to foreign banks. Causing massive immigration flows from these failed States and backlashes directed at these immigrants, in the advanced Nations .
Jeffery Sachs calls for this approach , in his piece on BREXIT.
You do not fight Trumps populist message on manufacturing by denying that the system was rigged. By making up stories about robots stealing jobs in the last 20 years . A claim that can not be backed up by the data. Productivity growth which is the economic indicator that would illuminate this, says this is a myth. You lay out a new vision for the American workforce with minimum standards of living that place a safety net under a rising working class,empowered by protections for workers and a new style of labor movement that unites rather than divides workers . A universal minimum with increased healthcare , pensions ,education, for all Americans .
Try fighting Trumps assertion that “all new income is rising to the top”. Oh wait that wasn’t Trump was it.
The system is rigged and the Mercers and Koch’s,Trumps ,Bezos, and Gates are the problem not the solution. In every case it can be demonstrated that their wealth was built because the system was rigged. Bezos for Years had an edge over his competition by not having to pay sales tax,while his warehouse work force would be the subject of an Upton Sinclair novel ,if he were alive today. Gates benefits from patent protections on an operating system he didn’t invent. Patents that it can be argued hinder scientific research and development. Trump himself has gamed bankruptcy law that lets him skate and remain a billionaire(?) but makes homeowners homeless and students indentured to their debt at 16x the interest rates that banks pay you to hold and use your savings. He has gamed tax law to probably pay far less a percentage than you or I of his income .
In all cases a system rigged to serve the Oligarchs and not the people. The fight will not be easy .It may not be won. But anything less and you are not even in the battle.
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I finished my homework this morning. Joel, you are 100% on target. Yeah, we know how the oligarchy is buying the electoral candidates. How is it possible for us to fight on every front? Price’s response on the poor quality of life of cancer survivors really got to me. Three of my relatives are currently struggling with cancer. Meals on Wheels is too great a financial burden. Women should not be able to access health care at Planned Parenthood.
Undocumented immigrants should be demonized. Many of the students I teach are the anchor children of undocumented parents who work from morning to night to put food on the table and afford their children the educational and employment opportunities not available to them. Some of the parents are illiterate in their native languages. The notion of instituting a religious ban on visitors and potential immigrants is reprehensible.
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Colorado has gone stupid and evil. Colorado Bill to give charter schools equal share of local tax dollars. My tax dollars goes to support questionable schools and practices.
http://www.chalkbeat.org/posts/co/2017/03/13/bill-to-give-charter-schools-equal-share-of-local-tax-increases-clears-senate-with-changes-giving-districts-more-time/
This country has gone STUPID.
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And THANK YOU, again, Diane.
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CBS, which has had, for the past couple of years, a former Fox executive, running its news division, was the only one, of the 3 major networks, that did not interrupt programming today, for the Congressional testimony that corrected the lies of the sitting U.S. President, Donald Trump, claiming the former President engaged in criminal activity.
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What’s this?
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Comey et. al.testimony today before Congress.
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“The Grand Unification”
When Citizens United
The billionaires and pols
Our fate was then decided
We’d have to pay the tolls
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“Until Election Day in 2016, Mercer and Hanley—two of the richest men in America—paid Caddell to keep collecting polling data that enabled them to exploit the public’s resentment of élites such as themselves.”
Exactly. IMHO, it was not hard for people with critical thinking skills to see through the smoke and mirrors what was most probably happening and predict what would be coming. But many gullible folks were conned into believing that the wealthy elitist Trump, who was born to privilege and knows nothing about living without advantages, was somehow different from the much hated rich elitists, like the Koch brothers, who have been buying off politicians in both parties and purchasing public policies for some time now.
It should come as no surprise to Trump voters to learn that it’s those very elitists they resented who were the ones who choreographed, financed and catapulted Trump’s climb to POTUS (and orchestrated Clinton’s downfall). Hopefully, many in his base will come to realize that, even if he occasionally throws a bone to the working class, Trump’s actions, including his cabinet choices and budget, demonstrate that his loyalty is really to his own kind, the super-rich ruling class who effectively bought his presidency (along with various nefarious foreign factions, most likely).
This is precisely why I have long taught critical thinking to students, and it’s also why many on the right don’t want that to be taught in schools.
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If my circle of acquaintanceship is any indication, Trump supporters are not experiencing any rude awakenings. I was told this week that Trump should be given a chance and nobody is better than Trump by two individuals with plenty of graduate credits between them.
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I’m not surprised. I have yet to meet a Trump supporter who I would characterize as an egalitarian who really cares about humanity and who strikes me as being very intelligent, regardless of their level of education.
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IMO, as long as the Walton-funded Center for American Progress ($2.5 mil. Gates grant 2013-2015) makes decisions in the Democratic party, the executive, judicial and legislative branches will continue to bleed seats. “In 2012, each income bracket turned out to vote at a rate 3.7% points higher than the bracket below it… In the past 40 years, there has never been a year in which poorer people turned out at a rate higher than the rich.” (Politico)
The messaging of the Democratic Party attracted neither, the number of middle income voters nor the number of the poor voters, to avoid the loss of almost a thousand legislative seats and governorships and, the recent Presidential loss.
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Along with ALEC these right wing groups have been slowly consuming local progressive resistance in elections until they dominate. These people have so much money, they can continue to keep buying elections.
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One commonality among Libertarians like Mercer is that they believe the government funding is a total waste and are quick to criticize others for taking Handouts. Funny thing is, many of these people, including Mercer and the heads of the big Banks which were bailed out, have themselves been the recipients of government monies.
Mercer and his partner at IBM (who later both went on to make fortunes at Renaissance) got funding from the Pentagon’s DARPA when IBM would not adequately fund their translation project.
The things these two learned and developed from this were almost certainly applicable to their later success analyzing financial patterns.
This is actually a common theme: the government funds risky proof of concept of feasibility ventures, which then become very successful — and often very lucrative for the ones who got funded, but not necessarily for the government.
Big pharma bases a good part of their business model on this: government funds drug research and development and trials and then pharma companies cash in by charging the public outrageous prices for the drugs that were made possible with public monies.
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Yes, it was a long piece worth reading, but I don’t see how Mercer and his family can be stopped.
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Only one way to stop them: Vote against their candidates. They are one family. We are millions. We are hundreds of millions. We can stop them if we know who they are, what they are funding, and who they are funding.
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Rhetorically, why is it, journalists and bloggers, instead of Democratic politicians, who are exposing the Mercers, the Walton heirs, Bill Gates, the Koch brothers? (Harry Reid’s delayed comments about the Koch Bros. are a notable exception.) Why are Congressional members e..g. Corey Booker and Sherrod Brown, mute when it comes to ALEC?
How different the election outcomes would be, if there was universal, targeting of the neoliberal/right wing villains and vultures, by Democratic candidates. In order to get a Democratic electoral win, campaign donations should be tied to the number of times, the politician publicly lambastes an oligarch. It would separate out the DINO’s.
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Most of these elected representatives are mute about the Koch brothers, the Mercer family, the Walton family, etc. because they don’t want to shut off the flow of campaign contributions.
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Lloyd,
Example- Walton and Gates-funded, Center for American Progress.
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“The Moneyus Loop”
If Booker raised the question
About the money story
T’would give him indigestion
Cuz money goes to Cory
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Thank you Dr. Ravitch for this important post.
Your suggestion is excellent. All educators should unite to cultivate and to educate students and their parents regarding:
[start your suggestion]
Only one way to stop them: Vote against their candidates.
They are one family. We are millions. We are hundreds of millions.
We can stop them if we know who they are, what they are funding, and who they are funding.
[end your suggestion]
In short, all local grassroots MUST expose all bad candidates for all positions from Regional Councillors to State Congressmen /women.
This concept will be applied in Education as well. May
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A totally horrifying but not surprising (in the age of Citizens United) article. These people should (but never will ) be tried for treason as they are truly destroying democracy which is a cornerstone of our nation.
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Thanks Diane Scared
Sent from my iPhone
>
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I read every word and had read the earlier shorter version and was stunned of how a single rich very rich man could buy a puppet President and maybe a movement to take down our democracy just for the fun of it. Very scary. Like a bad dream.
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Food Republic reported on Jan. 27, 2017, that the NYC on-line gourmet cookie seller, Ruby et Violette is owned by Robert Mercer’s 3 daughters. Other media listed the bakery in the context of Rebeka Mercer, also.
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Must be poison cookies, laced with a pill that makes you hate poor and middle class people
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“Let them eat gourmet cookies”
Let them eat cookies
Let them eat cake
All the poor flunkies
On government take
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Have any of you eaten the cookies?
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Better late than never.
Meet the new boss same as the old boss. An Oligarch /Plutocrat and his daughters would qualify as Oligarchs is an Oligarch . I felt like the article was a waste unless you were clueless as to who he was. Is he any different than Murdoch ,Koch and Scaife before him .
Most Americans still get their news from traditional media 59% TV we can debate whether some of the right wing TV media is traditional. And although Murdoch may have preferred a Bush or Rubio he is crying all the way to the bank . While he empowers a TRAITOR .
Of the 40% who get news from online sources . They fall across the political spectrum and although I have no evidence , I suspect they are younger and perhaps more progressive .
But they didn’t win they aren’t political geniuses . They lost by 3 million votes through treason and slime . Yet that never would have happened if the Democrats had presented a progressive alternative .
On that note my call to Schumer and Gillerbrand was they hold the line on the filibuster or this life long Democratic voter who has voted lesser of two evils for 20 years will be voting Green from now on.
The damage that will be done in the next 2years no less 4 years will not be unwound for decades unless the Republicans go nuclear. In which case they may regret that FOREVER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
http://www.journalism.org/2016/07/07/pathways-to-news/
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Today, I called Sen. Sherrod Brown’s office and asked that he muster the effort to oppose Gorsuch. I reminded his staffer that the spendthrift Brown got $71 mil. of federal tax money, last year, to privatize Ohio’s public schools, when the Koch’s and Gates were more than willing to pay for it. And, I lamented, to the staffer, Brown’s lack of support for his Democratic colleague, in the recent election of Republican Sen. Portman.
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“Six a one..”
The billionaires
Are all the same
With different wares
And different name
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With ill intent
For all to see
They circumvent
Democracy
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Your amazing mind must defy categorization and, we, blog readers, are happy for it.
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I haven’t read this New Yorker article but I did give a thorough read to this one from The Guardian (long but well worth the read):
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/feb/26/robert-mercer-breitbart-war-on-media-steve-bannon-donald-trump-nigel-farage
They go into detail about his genius in technology and, hence, his ability to sway public opinion and voting (etc) through data collection from social media outlets. They talk about how he’s spreading these techniques to Europe, now.
What’s interesting is that I posted the link to my FB page, saying that the article has me seriously considering closing down my FB account. Then some of my friends told me that they’d not have KNOWN about Mr. Mercer but for my posting it on my page.
So I’m still open for business on FB, I guess.
I agree with Diane: as much as he has so much money and clout; we are many and he is few. Keep spreading the word about him and the candidates he supports. Throw the bums out!
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Same old story, different cover.
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Wish I’d been online to read this yesterday, as late in making comments. To Some DAM RE: your 3/20 poem, “The Wealthy Want it All”–actually, they want to DESTROY the Earth (Bakken/Standing Rock/Missouri River; fracking {earthquakes in OKLAHOMA!!}; EPA takeover/denial of climate change,WAR {amplifying their stocks in the military-industrial complex–Halliburton, Blackwater, et.al.}, etc., ad nauseum, emphasis on NAUSEUM) to make billions of trillions of $$$$–because they never have enough of those–& then, after destroying the planet, will escape to their OWN planet, leaving THAT for their heirs, ala the Matt Damon-Jody Foster movie “Elysium.”
& someone else–was it Lloyd Lofthouse?–referred to our (we, the plebians) deaths, & being made soup of–“Soylent Green is PEEEEEEEEEOOOOOOOOOOPLE!” screamed Charleton Heston, at the end of the film.
I didn’t yet get to read the link, but I’m sure the Mercers & every last one of the greedy, corrupt, selfish, rotten individuals (cannot bring myself to call them people–they don’t deserve to be among us) have been a part of ALEC–they & their bought (Cory Booker) legislators. It is absolutely imperative that all readers inform EVERYONE they know about ALEC, get good, thoroughly vetted people to run–ala Bernie-style–NO funny money–for office. AND–don’t be fooled by self-proclaimed “progressives” who have already served & run for other offices–check not only their voting records, but also their campaign contribution history. Rather than lament the %ages of non-voters, help to ensure that everyone be INFORMED voters.
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Interview with Jane Mayer on Fresh Air today.
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Interview w/Jane Mayer RE: Mercers, connections, on Democracy Now! (I mean, right now–12:33 AM CT). Of course, you can see it later, at democracynow.org
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I think you meant to give this link, not the one on the healthcare defeat of Trump
https://www.democracynow.org/2017/3/23/jane_mayer_on_robert_mercer_the
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Yes…thanks, Mate
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