Saturday, October 31st, 2015
Dave Levinthal, - Reader Supoported News/Aljazeera
Stephan: If you can buy government in the U.S. why not education so that you can control what children are taught.
Credit:radio.foxnews.com
Last summer, a top lieutenant of Charles and David Koch’s vast network of philanthropic institutions, laid bare the billionaire brothers’ strategy to evangelize their gospel of economic freedom.
Political success, Kevin Gentry told a crowd of elite supporters attending the annual Koch confab in Dana Point, Calif., begins with reaching young minds in college lecture halls, thereby preparing bright, libertarian-leaning students to one day occupy the halls of political power.
“The [Koch] network is fully integrated, so it’s not just work at the universities with the students, but it’s also building state-based capabilities and election capabilities and integrating this talent pipeline,” he said.
“So you can see how this is useful to each other over time,” he continued. “No one else has this infrastructure. We’re very excited about doing it.”
The Center for Public Integrity obtained a previously unpublished audio recording of the meeting, which focused on the Kochs’ higher education funding strategy, from liberal activists who produce The Undercurrent, an online video program.
Higher education has become a top Koch priority in recent years. And their funding — as […]
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Saturday, October 31st, 2015
Travis Gettys, - The Raw Story
Stephan: This second story I am publishing not only as a thing unto itself, but to give some sense of the breadth and depth of the attempt to turn education into fascist propaganda in the U.S. This is a critically important trend whose developments are happening almost entirely without corporate media coverage.
Colorado students protest proposed changes to AP history courses
Credit: KCNC-TV
The Koch brothers are getting involved in a local school board election in Colorado — where voters are considering whether to oust conservatives who replaced Advanced Placement history books with patriotic propaganda.
Thousands of students walked out last year to protest changes to the history curriculum — which school board members say shifted the focus toward patriotism and away from “civil disorder” and “social strife” — setting the stage for the Nov. 3 recall election, reported the New York Times.
Americans for Prosperity, the pro-business activist group funded by billionaires Charles and David Koch, is paying for commercials and fliers backing the school board’s conservative majority — while angry parents, teachers and labor unions are calling for the three board members’ removal.
Recall backers have raised more than $250,000, including about $15,000 from the local teachers’ union, while conservative and libertarian groups have already spent about $500,000 on TV ads alone […]
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Saturday, October 31st, 2015
AJ Vicens, - Mother Jones
Stephan: Most people know about the corruption of money in Presidential politics, and I should think almost as many know about the Congress, but few people seem to know about the American judiciary. This report will spell it out.
I don't know how any of this can come as a surprise. Citizens United legitamized bribery, indeed the outright purchase of political candidates. If you have a lot of money what better way to operate than to get laws written the way you want, then you don't have to worry about breaking the law. And if you can do that why not buy the judges so that should some situation end up in their hands, they will know to decide in your favor. The level of corruption in this country is astonishing.
Crediit: iStock
When Richard Bernstein decided to run for a seat on the Michigan Supreme Court, he had a lot stacked against him: He was a Democrat, he had no experience as a judge, and he was blind—something he’d dealt with his entire life.
Bernstein spent more than $1.8 million of his own money to get that seat, making history by becoming the first blind justice in the state’s history.
That ranks as the third-highest amount of overall spending in judicial elections during the 2013-14 cycle, according to the latest installment of “The New Politics of Judicial Elections,” a series of reports that have tracked spending trends in judicial elections since 2000. Even though he put $1.8 million of his own money into the race, Bernstein says it was just enough to get the job done, especially with a tide of PAC money flowing through various entitles that funded ads against him.
“You’re not really able to see firsthand the amount of money that was spent against [you],” Bernstein told […]
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Saturday, October 31st, 2015
Paul Krugman, Nobel Laureate Economist and Op-ed Columnist - The New York Times
Stephan: I believe that one of the consequences of Citizens United making unlimited special interest money available is that the uber rich only support candidates who espouse what they want, and that position is a profit first model that is anti-life and non-compassionate. That in turn has brought forward in the Republican Party, which is the principal beneficiary, a group of politicians who first and foremost cater to those interests but who are in other regard mediocre and ethical challenged.
My main take away from the third Republican debate was the astonishing amount of bald-faced lying one heard, and how ignorant and ill-equipped for leadership the candidates were. This is what we have come to, as Paul Krugman makes painfully clear.
Paul Krugman
Nobel Laureate Economist and Op-Ed Columnist
Credit: Twitter.com
At one point during Wednesday’s Republican debate, Ben Carson was asked about his involvement with Mannatech, a nutritional supplements company that makes outlandish claims about its products and has been forced to pay $7 million to settle a deceptive-practices lawsuit. The audience booed, and Mr. Carson denied being involved with the company. Both reactions tell you a lot about the driving forces behind modern American politics.
As it happens, Mr. Carson lied. He has indeed been deeply involved with Mannatech, and has done a lot to help promote its merchandise. PolitiFact quickly rated his claim false, without qualification. But the Republican base doesn’t want to hear about it, and the candidate apparently believes, probably correctly, that he can simply brazen it out. These days, in his party, being an obvious grifter isn’t a liability, and may even be an asset.
And this doesn’t just go for outsider candidates […]
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Friday, October 30th, 2015
Stephan: Lamar Smith went to Yale so I think we can accept that he is not a man of low IQ. He is however, at least publicly, a man of astonishing willful ignorance, a representative whose public profile is that of a hardcore Theocratic Rightist. I also think that history will come to know him as a villain guilty of crimes against both humanity and the planet. Here is why I think that.
I should also say this is why I do not believe that we as a nation will be prepared for the catastrophic devastation that climate change is is going to bring to our country.
Republican Representative Lamar Smith of Texas’ 21st District
Credit: Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call
Last Thursday, the nation watched with a mix of amusement and horror as the House Benghazi committee spent 11 hours grilling Hillary Clinton on a bizarre farrago of issues, many of which bore only tangential connection to the Benghazi attack.
Over the past few weeks, the political narrative seems to have shifted from “Clinton in trouble” to “congressional witch hunt seeks to take down Clinton.” Between McCarthy’s accidental truth telling, an ex-staffer confirming the worst reports about the committee, and another House Republican conceding the obvious, it has become clear that the Benghazi committee is a thoroughly partisan political endeavor. Opinion has turned, but Republicans are trapped.
The thing is: The Benghazi committee is not even the worst committee in the House. I’d argue that the House science committee, under the chairmanship of Lamar Smith (R-TX), deserves that superlative for its open-ended, […]
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