The Koch Brothers Are Knocking At Your Door And Want To Nestle Under Your Bed And Closet

Soooo, someone sent me this article from NPR on the Koch brothers; the fraternal billionaires the left are obsessed with.

 

George Soros, though, is a-okay!

 

Bah.

 

In any event, I'm not terribly interested in Koch. There's plenty of literature on them and where they donate money. You can decide if they alone are taking over your life. Sounds like a nefarious list too! Burp.

 

I'm more interested in one paragraph in the article. 

"Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right. According to Mayer, the Kochs and other conservatives have created philanthropic entities that enable them to aggressively pursue a libertarian agenda of lower taxes, deregulation of business and the denial of climate change."

 

'Hidden history'? There's no such thing as 'hidden history'. It's all there for all to see. Whether we look is another matter. 

 

In any event, what's the point here? They make it sound like it's a bad thing to have lower taxes or 'deregulating' parts of the economy that should never have been necessarily (overly) regulated in the first place. No kidding when you deregulate things get messy; we learned bad habits and had to reprogram how to, you know, run a business properly within the proper laws of economics and finance. Deregulation to me is the point of whereby an industry became too regulated and had to be deregulated for sanity's sake.

 

Perhaps the author and readers of NPR are fans of a controlled, economic and political suprastructure run by techno/bureaucrats?

Where have we seen this again? It's never been tried; or at least by the right top men. What we need is the perfect formula to run things!



Totalitarian movements (and modern progressivism is exactly that) throughout history have displayed an effective way to get a significant majority is to convince such people that they're victims of the group being targeted.
For example, under Mao, the intellectuals were the enemies of the peasants. Under Hitler and the Socialist Nazis commies, gays, retards, trade unionists and of course...da joos. The commies of course claimed that the bourgeois and the land owners were the enemy.

The Koch brothers make a wonderfully convenient target of hate for the totalitarians on the left. The 'rich' are the new pink at the moment.

 

Whatever: It's been done.

 

And it's irrational.

***

 

My question, as it pertains to that opening paragraph, is why should I be forced to pay for NPR or CBC?

 

In this day and age of access to information the idea they act as 'connectors from coast to coast' is increasingly precarious, if not irrelevant. The problem I have with this notion is it connects a certain type of person predisposed to believe certain belief systems I don't share.

 

For example, I happen to agree with the classical liberal position. I freely give to Reason magazine and Le Quebecois Libre. I don't agree with NPR/CBC and would not give to them if they were free-standing publications. This doesn't mean I wish for the demise. On the contrary, I'm asking that I not fund them on the basis of intellectual differences. 

 

If you are as important to society as you claim then you should be able to raise the funds through your base. Mother Jones and Vermont Public Television, for instance, has pledge drives so why shouldn't NPR or the CBC? Who are they to assume they're entitled to my money? 

 

If they want to create a 'Trudeau dynasty' narrative, fine, but put the cards on the table and raise your own funds. Instead, I'm basically told to shut and put up and do as I'm told because Canadian unity or some other nonsense.

Why is it okay to coerce taxes from me into something I disagree with? Explain me the 'fairness' in this. 

 

Show your work. 

 

***

 

From Inside Philanthropy I came across this comment:

"I recall a Marketplace report on effects of healthcare law, when people were having their policies cancelled for not meeting the Dems ideas on what they should contain. Ty Risdoll hemmed and hawed about whether this was a good or bad thing, but alas, he was forced to acknowledge the events had occurred, contradicting the Dems promise that those insured would be undisturbed. With that acknowledgement he closed his piece with a cheery glib assertion- "just think of the extra money you'll be getting in your paycheck". I kid you not. In his tortured reporting one phenomena was fact, had occurred. People had policies cancelled, perhaps because an elderly couple lacked pediatric care. His other assertion? Pure conjecture, a hypothetical that I'll wager 9 times out of 10 will *not* occur.

A few weeks ago, I was enjoying dinner at my parents house, with the News Hour playing in the background. A very concerned look at the use of software to manage workers scheduling was the topic of discussion. Deep discussion, several sources interviewed on air, footage outside various establishments in effected industries. Average joe managers on camera, about how they must utilize software to keep everyone below 30 hrs a week, the perspective of an employee unable to make ends meet, consultants opining and the great concern of how this effects "income inequality". A big production. Not one - not one - mention of the healthcare law as a driver of it all. The scheduling software has been around for years, why the push now? The News Hour knows *exactly* what it's doing.

I doubt public funding is the answer, as you assert. You'd like the government to fund reporting on the government?

The issue is one of people. You just cannot trust these people. And indeed bias, across mainstream news. Broadcast news, the places with the real reach. 7 to 8 million person reach, for each of the three broadcast networks. 10s of millions of viewers compared to the 2.5 million the dreaded Fox will reach in its most popular slot. Most people have no idea of the audience numbers. Why are they trained to revile Fox? Why does the Fox meme even exist? Are people asserting that *no* conservative voices should be heard at all?

Why is a single internet page, created by single guy, who doesn't even write any articles(!), reviled? The Drudge Report.

Why is Rush Limbaugh, largely on AM radio, whose reach is less than that of NPRs Morning Edition, such a cultural concern?

The fact that these memes are so prevalent among the people who don't watch or listen or read these outlets suggests something else is at play.

Your concern about the "Koch brothers" is along the same lines. Please review aggregate spending of Unions, where that goes, and how it compares to the "corrupting" influence of the Koch brothers. I assume you're interested in non-biased information."