KOCH BROTHERS CREATED A POLITICAL MONSTER

The shut down and debt crisis is making it clear something is drastically wrong with the way people think about Washington.  Let me explain. Virtually everyone agrees business interests pay politicians to do their bidding. They vote the way they are told or they are not re-elected. All evidence points to this. Top revenue producing oil companies receive subsidies, there are no gun registrations, the top 1% is getting richer and the poor are getting poorer.

The second part of the puzzle is that if Congress allows us to step off the fiscal cliff by refusing to pay the countries debt, the stock market will bottom out and the wealth of the nation will fall 40% or more. The recovery will stagnate and we will go into a deep recession. All people will be hurt but the ones with a marginal income will be hurt the most, especially retired people who live on investments.  However, the richest among us will also suffer huge losses. If the U.S. crashes the world crashes.  A billionaire would have no place to hide and therefore would end up having $600,000,000. While it is true that unlike a pensioner living on dog food, he would still be able to buy a prime rib lunch, he loves his money and it would hurt him to see it go away.

The obvious conflict is there for all to see. If the billionaires were the ones telling politicians how to vote, why would they not tell them to prevent the Nation from stepping off the “fiscal cliff”? There has to be an answer.

I wonder if our premise concerning the buying of politicians is wrong—at least, partially wrong. Yes, on some issues they response to what they are told but on others they do not pay any attention to their handlers. My speculation is that by using the threat of a primary challenger, and financing the most radical right wing challenger, they have created a radical right wing minority in congress. By gerrymandering red state legislative districts, they have concentrated radical votes. In addition, by manipulating time of elections to off years or low turn out elections and manipulating the timing of party primaries they have elected a group of people who willingly accepted their campaign money and support without having loyalty to their donors. The old standard of party loyalty—the rich get richer philosophy—is gone in the sense of having elected party politicians who support good old conservative values. The new agenda is not the conservative part agenda.

It is time to examine what we mean by the pronoun ‘they’ when we talk about rich donors. First, a rich democrat donor donates to candidates who believe in fairness, openness, equality, etc; what some refer to as a nanny government.  Second, a rich Republican donates to candidates who believe in deregulation, no taxes, voter suppression, etc. They are what some refer to as an authoritarian government. This honest political difference is now in the history of politics in the Untied States. There is a big difference to what we have now. The new donors are people who do not believe in government of any kind. They believe their own rhetoric about “all government is bad”, all taxes are bad, and all regulations are bad. We are talking about David and Charles Koch; two people who grew up in the toxic environment of their father Fred Koch and the John Birch Society. If you do not know what that means, then it is time for you Goggle it and find out. The new politicians are as crazy as are the two people who are controlling our entire government—with the blessing of the Supreme Court. 

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