Community | January 28, 2011 | 29 comments

Billionaire's Caucus

source: http://www.figrd.blogspot.com/

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This weekend, for the eighth straight year, the billionaire Koch brothers will convene a meeting of roughly 200 wealthy businessmen, Republican politicians and conservative activists for a semi-annual conference to raise millions of dollars for the institutions that form the intellectual foundation – and, increasingly, the leading political edge – of the conservative movement.

In the past, the meetings have drawn an A-list of participants – politicians like Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina, leading free-market thinkers including American Enterprise Institute president Arthur Brooks, talkers Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck and even Supreme Court justices - to mingle with the wealthy donors who comprise the bulk of the invitees. The meetings adjourned after soliciting pledges of support from the donors – sometimes totaling as much as $50 million – to non-profit groups favored by the Kochs.
For the most part, the meetings, which are closed to the public and reporters, have attracted little attention outside conservative circles. But very different circumstances surround the Koch conference set to begin Saturday at an exclusive resort outside Palm Springs, Calif.

The Koch brothers – Charles and David – have come under intense scrutiny recently for their role in helping start and fund some of the deepest-pocketed groups involved in organizing the tea party movement such as Americans for Prosperity, and for steering cash towards efforts to target President Barack Obama, his healthcare overhaul, and congressional Democrats in the run-up to the 2010 election.

Liberal critics have launched a campaign to highlight what they say is the systematic way in which the Kochs use their political giving to advance a conservative economic and regulatory agenda designed to further the interests of their oil, chemical and manufacturing empire.

Common Cause, the liberal watchdog group, is planning a protest called “Uncloaking the Kochs” and what it calls “the billionaires caucus” on Sunday a few miles down the road from the resort in Rancho Mirage, Calif., where this weekend’s conference will be held, and a handful of reporters have made plans to try to cover the Koch’s closed-door gathering.

While the Koch conferences have taken on an undeniably political edge – a June summit featured sessions on voter mobilization efforts for the 2010 midterms as well as solicitations for an ad campaign attacking Democratic lawmakers – those who have attended the meetings say the critics have it all wrong.

“The main goal of the seminars appeared to me to be education on the challenges that face the American system of free enterprise and democracy, and what people can do about them,” said Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell, a conservative Republican who has attended at least seven of the meetings.

McDonnell, who is not attending this weekend’s conference, said he was introduced to the gatherings by “free market friends up in Northern Virginia, some in the Koch enterprises institution,” and he cast the conferences as playing an important role in the political process.
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29 comments // Billionaire's Caucus

  • MAssappeal
    • 0
      MAssappeal  

    • these guys will sit and eat shrimp and foie gras and count money while the rest of us literally starve. It's about time that we start taking this kind of thing for what it is-an open provocation, and to do what our grandparents failed to do in the 30s and get a little rowdy with these bastards.

    • 1 year ago
  • Sarah_Honea
    • 0
      Sarah_Honea  

    • If I could have the undivided attention of the users here for one moment...

      Consider our debt connected currency as blood. Mine, yours, the Parasites listed above...I am still on the Fence when it comes to Buffet.. that aside.

      that Greenback with the all seeing eye is blood, sweat, and tears of hundreds of millions, nay-billions of people. Forget that few collect and get fat off of it. remember that biliions in one way or another have had their share stolen and handed over. Their blood spilled in wars, increase in food and energy prices. Trillions pirated from treasuries around the world. that blood/money is taken becasue we believe ourselves too week to stop it.

      Anyone looking at what is happening in North Africa? Amman, Jordan. Those people have a right to bitch, Those people have a truly legitimate beef with those assholes up top- because they Truly do not have the terms in their own governments laws to dissent. We Americans have reaped what we have sown. We have had the laws in black and white to protest-to make right what we have lost and for the last 40 years we have elected en mass to be on our collective asses. Buying into the Lie that the many are the WEAK and the few are powerful. Sorry sisters and brothers. We citizens have the capacity for true grit.

      What is chaffing the Ass of my Generation ( 18-35) and my parents Generation ( 45-65) is that we have bought into the farce that we sign a petition and elect who we want and there your are, giving my Black brothers and sisters the right to vote cleared the air. NO IT DID NOT. IF ANY of you had really listened to What Martin Luther King, John Lewis, or Malcolm X you will find that the vote is the means not the ENDS. Sure you can vote, but by the end of the sixties because of the Military Industrial complex it was and is still hard to cut through the crap and every month it gets even harder to crack the shit off Washington Sweathog.

      Facebooking a bitch, is not going to make those men listen.
      A Current comment like the one I am writing is not going to do shit
      twittering Koch is a Cock---is not even worth the petrolium the electrons were born of.

      You want to do something. Look to North Africa,The ANC in the eighties and Anonymous. a DDOS attack is the virtual equivalent of a sit in or a human chain. Hackers enter, DDOS just sits in front of the door..use your minds

      Thats the thing: In our country most people are not brave enough o get thrown in the paddy wagon..get a little teargas in the eyes.

      If the monetary system as it stands is a symbol f enslaved blood then the price of true freedom is blood. In the form of honest protest-civil disobedience and the disruption of Government by the people to show how much government has strayed at home and abroad from its promises.

      Get on your feet- what has our lethargy and apathy really accomplished?

    • 1 year ago
  • ghostofamerica
  • bike10
    • +2
      bike10  

    • Just your typical rich Republicans who oppose health care, mininum wage, social security and tax cuts for the rich.

    • 1 year ago
  • emarston
  • hanzdogy
  • emarston
  • dalistuff
    • +1
      dalistuff  

    • This is the negotiation of the corporate elite. What happening to the US? The old American dream is screwed, Middle class is no longer here. What's the new US agenda? are these closed minded bigoted wealthy idiots going to set the seeds for their new America? This is some scary CRAP!!

    • 1 year ago
  • southrabbit
  • Saladin
  • Valorie
    • +6
      Valorie  

    • If you can't make it to protest, please donate to the cause. These are the exact people responsible for the economy, the fake news and who finance political candidates not qualified for public office. These people could use their resources for the good of the country, but instead want to deregulate their industries which will destroy American in every way. Don't these people have enough money already?

    • 1 year ago
  • pjacobs51
    • +6
      pjacobs51  

    • The words "secret," "billionaire" and "meeting" always produce a certain chill when combined.

      Are they plotting global domination, or just comparing yachts?

    • 1 year ago
  • Incredulous
  • timetide
  • Incredulous
    • +9
      Incredulous  

    • Gotta luv the picture, Beck and Limbaugh with their mouths wide open....Blah, Blah, Blah, ready, willing and able to catch any stray flies in the room.

      I find conservative thinking to be very alarming...the rules are always bendable, truth is relevant to the amount of money on the table, and they seem capable of rationalizing just about anything for the good of the cause.

      What the hell is the cause?

    • 1 year ago
  • bailey78
  • Paratus
  • postlapsaria
    • +5
      postlapsaria  
    • Paratus:

      and that thought itself is stupid.

      "liberal" (progressive) ideals and goals are consistent throughout the years. our elected officials don't always fulfill what we want, but it's always the finish line we're chasing.

      where as conservatives seem to just say 'black' to the left's 'white'
      you guys--as a whole party with a platform and mission-- have flip flopped on the wars, on taxes, on entitlement programs, on healthcare-- over the last 50 years. your people are riddled with double standards and what seems to be selfishness against the other people in the country that you don't like.

      i don't know how you guys consider yourself the party of Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt.

      it's PROVEABLE (with video, newspapers, soundbites) that you guys seem to carve out facts and stories to fit your narrative... and again, you guys change your opinion when needed.

    • 1 year ago
  • Incredulous
    • +1
      Incredulous  
    • Paratus:

      which is why we all need to wake up and realize we have been equally duped and are consciously being pitted, one ideology against the other, to keep us from recognizing the real enemy.

    • 1 year ago
  • postlapsaria
  • toyotabedzrock
    • +3
      toyotabedzrock  
    • Paratus:

      Except you think that because your incapable of rational thought, and are to confused by it.

      Then throw in the fact that your misinformed on important historical events by a cast of dimwits over at fox.

      Liberals from the US where among the first people to go and fight Hitler's army and did so of their own choosing.

    • 1 year ago
  • toyotabedzrock
  • timetide
  • Incredulous
    • +1
      Incredulous  
    • postlapsaria:

      the will to power

      I see it this way. The marketplace is the central meeting ground where people bring their own surplus, be it food, labor, energy, whatever. Traditionally, people have bartered and sold their surplus to purchase what they lacked. But we have corporations like Monsanto that want to take over the marketplace and use governments to outlaw anyone selling anything at any market booth other than their own. If you can imagine your local farmer's market, the guy with surplus peaches brings his peaches to the market, sells them, and then uses part of that money to purchase cheese from another merchant, who in turn does the same thing with his product and purchases another guy's surplus. But when you have global corporations taking over the means of production, it's like having the police come in to the local farmer's market, shut down every individual producer, and tell everyone they can only purchase what they need from the "company store."

      Economically, this is what is happening to free enterprise under a government (and particularly a Supreme Court) that continues to enact laws and create protections for corporate interests over taxpayer interests.

      This is the system you use to create poor people and billionaires.

    • 1 year ago
  • Incredulous
    • +1
      Incredulous  
    • toyotabedzrock:

      not denying that, but this is the good cop/bad cop rationale. Follow the money and you always end up in the same place, and both parties are present and accounted for when it comes to dividing the spoils.

    • 1 year ago
  • FtheBULLSHT
  • FtheBULLSHT
  • Progresshiv
  • Incredulous
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