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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsThe Kochs Can't Control the Monster They Created
The billionaire conservatives join the ranks of business interests trying to rein in the GOP's base, but it has turned into an unstoppable force.The government shutdown and looming threat of default have pitted House conservatives against the Republican Party's traditional allies in the business community. Populist Tea Partiers driven by ideology care little for the pleas for sanity from banking lobbyists and the Chamber of Commerce; indeed, they wear their disregard for Big Business as a badge of honor.
Where does that leave the Koch brothers? The billionaire industrialists have funded a sprawling empire of libertarian-conservative activism; they've been dubbed the bankrollers of the Tea Party. Liberals frequently accuse them of seeking deregulatory policies to further their company's financial interests. But what happens when the Tea Party's ideological warfare threatens to plunge the U.S. economy into chaos?
The answer: The Kochs appear to be distancing themselves from the movement they've helped to create. In a letter released Wednesday, Koch Industries' chief lobbyist, Philip Ellender, says the company does not favor the House's push to defund Obamacare as a condition of keeping the government open. Koch Industries would prefer to see Congress focus on fiscal issues: "We believe that Congress should, at a minimum, keep to sequester-level spending guidelines, and develop a plan for more significant and widespread spending reductions in the future," Ellender writes.
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http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/10/the-kochs-cant-control-the-monster-they-created/280435/
Hey Charlie and you too David, you built this and you damn well own it. You just thought you could toss all your money around and buy what you pleased. You are used to getting what you want. You want to rule the world and you bought and paid for your little corner of it. You bought a Tea Party and now they are completely out of your control. You got a box of matches and a few cans of gasoline...then BOOM! Your little fire turned into a raging out of control inferno!
I guess that you never heard that when you buy a toy that you should never include the batteries. Your Zombie Hoard has come to life.
bklyncowgirl
(7,960 posts)Either that or their getting a whole boatload of complaints from the other one percenters at the "Club" whose investments are tanking. It'll be interesting to see if the Teahadists can be reined in.
Uncle Joe
(58,444 posts)Cha
(297,764 posts)stock market.. I can't imagine he's the only one. He said he should have taken it out last week.
They built those teaKochs.. never thought I'd see the day they disfreakingowned them.
bluestate10
(10,942 posts)business people that don't want to help pay their way, and people that have no clue of what government does. Good luck to the Kochs as they attempt to control the monster they created. Rich people should take a lesson from this, if they destitute Americans, the rich will lose and on top of that have their possessions and possibly their lives taken, they won't be able to run and hide out in Europe, The Americas, Africa, ect because they have impoverished people in those lands also, so their choice will be the faces that they want to brutalize them.
sheshe2
(83,940 posts)Keep on hammering.
Iliyah
(25,111 posts)One of their monsters, Crazed Cruz is still going after Obamacare and did a poll thru a extremely right wing mag.
I think the Koch Brothers have lost control of the monsters. Plus, their bullshit is coming to haunt them.
Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin
(108,273 posts)The Teabaggers have invaded the country club and are scuffing the floor up with their hoverrounds.
The Velveteen Ocelot
(115,878 posts)Fumesucker
(45,851 posts)gopiscrap
(23,765 posts)SDjack
(1,448 posts)commodities to control the world when the major economies crash and WW-III is fought. They are insane and need to be stopped now.
enough
(13,262 posts)It's no problem for them to say they don't want this or that, and then fund whatever it is to the hilt at the same time.
To believe a word from them or their organizations is to have drunk the Roundup.
Paula Sims
(877 posts)it's about an evil entity that ends up controlling its "master". That's what happened here -- they thought they were controlling the genie (Disney version) and it's just the opposite. Many myths (or truths for those who choose to believe) is the same thing that happened to Alister Crowley, and perhaps King Solomon (many versions of that story).
It's the internal evil that ends up controlling the external entity.
Cha
(297,764 posts)And, fuck whatever the Kochs "believe".
sheshe2
(83,940 posts)TeamPooka
(24,261 posts)After you create the monster you can't control it
sheshe2
(83,940 posts)The ugly is out, and out of control.
Cha
(297,764 posts)many of us are feeling about this tea party.
Time for a quote from Mark Twain~
[font size=lg]"Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear - not absence of fear.
― Mark Twain[/font]
Bonhomme Richard
(9,000 posts)sheshe2
(83,940 posts)What a useless feeble man. When I think that he is a few steps away from holding the highest office, I shudder.
tofuandbeer
(1,314 posts)Cha
(297,764 posts)how I pronounce it?
Got it Cha!
Raine
(30,541 posts)haele
(12,682 posts)They think they have enough money to buy loyal sycophants and security people. If they can get rid of Government for the people, they will have Government for sale (even worse than it is now...) Without regulation, with all these resources that can be bought, used up, and thrown away. No Government to fine them, no Government to bring up charges when people get killed and wide swaths of flora and fauna in the countryside dies off because the water and earth are polluted.
Someone else can come around behind them and put in enough fill dirt to cover the slag pits, and maybe plant some pretty trees and Monsanto-developed pollution resistant sod, so in ten years or so, it could be turned into a nice little "Bible-Land Garden of Eden" park to sent the servant class off to for a little recreation.
They're angling to set themselves up as Princes, and America to be like a collection of medieval Italian principalities. If they have to destroy it, or convince enough under-educated, fearful people that they'd be better off with natural born leaders than elected leaders, they will feel they're justified to set Chaos in motion. After all, the Kochs are very, very wealthy off the backs of working people and benefits granted them by taxpayers, and that's just something theses "Princes" can't admit to themselves. They're just as much Teabaggers as the most rabid Faux-watching retiree who's afraid of "Foreigners", "Druggie Pimp Gang-bangers", "Commies","Anarchists" and "Atheists".
Haele
Loudly
(2,436 posts)then I will know that the monster has turned the table.
Volaris
(10,274 posts)is the disconnect among the Tea Party puppets that says someday they WILL be the super rich. As soon as they figure out that isn't going to be the case, they (almost invariably) start self-identifying as Liberals.
Loudly
(2,436 posts)IkeRepublican
(406 posts)Rant ahead.
This dynamic duo molded by their communist father are distancing themselves because, like always at the 11th hour, the media got off their behinds and are giving away the store. To think that they are worried about their portfolios or, more importantly - that they won't be back - is a terribly misguided assumption.
These two scoundrels are interested in one thing - power. And they don't care what it takes, how much it costs, how much they get caught or how much they wreck our country in order to get it. They are corporate communists - wanting to set up a state to where they rule, own all of the media under the thumb of that possible state and treat us exactly like citizens of the old Soviet.
Simply because they claim to be "for freedom" doesn't mean they are. As we've seen with Republicans over the past 30 years, what they claim to want is almost certainly the direct opposite.
Others may call this scenario as fascism, not communism. Either way - they want to own the state. And that is why they will always be a major menace to American freedom, democracy and rule of law.
As Ike once said, "Remain vigilant, but never be hysterical."
emulatorloo
(44,192 posts)He wasn't a communist, he was the proto-TeaBag nut.
Emit
(11,213 posts)There are big, extremely irrational parts of the society, and they have now been mobilized politically by the Republican establishment, hoping that these people could be an electoral base to keep them in power, but on the assumption that they'd be able to control them. And that's turning out not to be easy. You actually saw it in the last primaries if you were watching. The Republican Primaries were quite interesting. The establishment had its candidate, Romney, a kind of a Wall Street lawyer and investor, and they wanted him in. But the base didn't want him. And every time a candidate came up from the base, that is with popular support, the Republican establishment went into high gear to destroy them with massive propaganda attack ads and so on. It was one after another, each one crazier than the last. And the Republican establishment is afraid of them, they don't want them. So they were able to keep them under control and get their own candidate in. But they're losing control of the base, and that's a deep dilemma for the Republican Party.
Actually, I'm sorry to say it has some historical analogs. It's kind of reminiscent of what happened in Germany in the late Weimar years. German industrialists wanted to use the Nazis, who were a relatively small group, as a battering ram against the labour movement and the left. They thought they control them but it turns out they were wrong. They couldn't control them. I'm not saying that will happen here, it's quite a different set of circumstances, but something similar is taking place. The Republican establishment, the mainstream corporate financial wealth, is getting to a point where it can't control the base it's mobilized.
http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/19287-in-conversation-with-noam-chomsky-on-us-politics-global-affairs-and-capitalist-reform