Wichita Kansas is the home town the most politically ambitious billionaires in the whole country. Those two billionaires are Charles, and David Koch. These are the men who believe that their money makes them way smarter and more deserving of a government of their liking than the poor suckers who work for a living, keeping their financial empire afloat. Most of those people can barely afford to send $100 to their favorite politicians running for office and many will just vote and that is it.
When I was young I constantly heard that fascism and communism where a threat to our “democracy.” If anything threatens what is left of our democracy it is the idea of billionaires taking over the country and setting themselves up as political and financial war lords. Their desire is to control over institution that our lives depend on, from health care to the news media.
It was just two years ago that the Koch brother’s network raised $400 million in an attempt to destroy the presidency of Barack Obama. That was a bitter disappointment for them and other billionaires such as Donald Trump when their money didn’t pay off. They also spent a lot of money on other conservative politicians.
All indications are that we will see a record amount of money in the next elections as these billionaires try to destroy the Democrat’s hold of the Senate and spending on local races all across the country to build their empire from the bottom up.
They will funnel much of this money to a network of conservative organizations that are set up to look like grass roots organizations, but are actually just front groups to push the Koch brothers conservative agenda.
According to POLITICO; The shift is best illustrated in the expansion of three pieces of the Koch political network expected to be showcased or represented at the three-day meeting in Palm Springs, whose evolving roles were described to POLITICO by several sources.
• Center for Shared Services: a nonprofit recruiter and administrative support team for other Koch-backed groups, which provides assistance with everything from scouting office space to accounting to furniture and security.
• Freedom Partners: a nonprofit hub that doled out $236 million in 2012 to an array of conservative nonprofits that is now expanding its own operation so that it can fulfill many of the functions of past grantees.
• Aegis Strategic: a political consulting firm started last year by Koch-allied operatives who will recruit, train and support candidates who espouse free-market philosophies like those beloved by the Kochs, and will also work with nonprofit groups in the Koch network, like Freedom Partners, with which it has a contract to provide policy analysis
There are other potential front groups they can make use of including Center to Protect Patient Rights. We can be assured that this group is dedicated to destroying Obama-care and making sure that poor people, especially the working poor and those on minimum wage, will be denied any kind of health care.
There is also their main front group Americans for Prosperity.
And the Koch Brothers are not just spending money to promote their ideology. They are saving themselves lots of money, opposing any kind of environmental regulations, minimum and livable wages for their employees, no safety regulation, not taxes (those are for the little people to pay such as their employees) not entitlements, even social security and avoiding having to spend virtually nothing for the poor and middle classes healthcare.
When the Koch Brothers talk of freedom or economic freedom, they are not talking about the 99% of us struggling for a living, they are talking about the 1% such as them. And that freedom they want comes at out expense.
This is the time to work harder to destroy these people’s efforts and eventually get RID of the Koch Brothers.
Sources: Some of this information came from The Washington Post , The Wichita Eagle, and Wichita Peace and Freedom Party Examiner.