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Wednesday, June 20th, 2018

How the Koch Brothers Are Killing Public Transit Projects Around the Country

Author:     Hiroko Tabuchi
Source:     The New York Times
Publication Date:     June 19, 2018
 Link: How the Koch Brothers Are Killing Public Transit Projects Around the Country
Stephan:   This is one of the clearest examples of Neo-feudalism in the modern day. The Kochs are not fools and it is a great mistake to dismiss them. They have a world view, and, they have discovered the principles of social change I wrote about in The 8 Laws of Change. They have hired neuroscientists, and physicians, done the same research I have done, and reached the same conclusions. This is how to create social change. Only they serve the dark side of the force, as it were.

Tori Venable, Tennessee state director of Americans for Prosperity, left, helping volunteers in Nashville prepare for canvassing against a mass-transit proposal.
Credit: William DeShazer for The New York Times

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — A team of political activists huddled at a Hardee’s one rainy Saturday, wolfing down a breakfast of biscuits and gravy. Then they descended on Antioch, a quiet Nashville suburb, armed with iPads full of voter data and a fiery script.

The group, the local chapter for Americans for Prosperity, which is financed by the oil billionaires Charles G. and David H. Koch to advance conservative causes, fanned out and began strategically knocking on doors. Their targets: voters most likely to oppose a local plan to build light-rail trains, a traffic-easing tunnel and new bus routes.

“Do you agree that raising the sales tax to the highest rate in the nation must be stopped?” Samuel Nienow, one of the organizers, asked a startled man who answered the door at his ranch-style home in March. “Can […]

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1 Comment

  1. will on Thursday, June 21, 2018 at 3:14 am

    We are seeing this play out in Chapel Hill, Durham and Raleigh, NC-the Triangle with light rail and commuter rail. The republican legislature and Americans for Prosperity are running the same game to stop the systems from ever being built even though voters approved the taxes/bonds to pay for it. Not enough density, no one will get out of their current cars or future self-driving cars, it doesn’t go anywhere needed, old tech, noisy, not in my back yard, etc etc… Meanwhile a small system in Charlotte is working well and ridership has been growing over time. You are building for the future is something too many don’t get.