General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsElection Rigging, Dark Money in Cantor's "Upset" Loss to Koch Stealth Candidate
http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/24501-election-rigging-dark-money-in-cantors-upset-loss-to-koch-stealth-candidateHouse Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) during a news conference at the Capitol in Washington, Feb. 5, 2013. Cantor will resign as majority leader within weeks, according to leadership aides a day after he was defeated in the 2014 primary election by David Brat. (Photo: Christopher Gregory / The New York Times)
Political races this November will feature an all-out battle for control of the US Senate. The "upset" Virginia primary defeat of Eric Cantor raised two critical election integrity issues that few in the mainstream media have covered, but which should set up serious red flags for those concerned about manipulations of the 2014 and 2016 elections.
The first alarm is the hidden connection that Professor David Brat's victory had to the Koch Brothers dark money network: hundreds of millions of dollars in "charitable contributions" to inoculate American academic institutions and media with extremist libertarian philosophy, promoting the Ayn Randian culture of greed while boosting radical Tea Party candidates. The net effect has been to undermine the civility of American politics, divide the Republican Party, stalemate Congress and hobble government institutions.
Most pundits reflecting on the Virginia race have myopically ignored the money-in-politics corruption, because outwardly, Cantor outspent Brat by a huge margin. Instead they focused analysis on immigration issues, intraparty Republican division, Cantor's complacency as a candidate, or the possibility of Democrats in the open primary crossing over to vote for his radical opponent.
David Brat was not just any economics professor. He was director of Randolph-Macon's Moral Foundations of Capitalism program, a curriculum underwritten by John Allison's BB&T Bank's charitable foundation. Allison is on the Board of Directors of the Ayn Rand Institute, which means Rand's thousand-page ode to antigovernment libertarian capitalism, Atlas Shrugged, is usually included in the curriculum. Allison is also the CEO of the Cato Institute, the Koch-funded, far-right think tank working closely with the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) to set back the social reform and safety net programs of the 20th century.
Nuclear Unicorn
(19,497 posts)Now we're supposed to feel all doomy-gloomy.
Are we now supposed to withhold criticism of establishment GOPers lest the devil we don't know prove worse than the ones we do?
By the way -- where's the Progressive insurgency counterpart to the Tea Party? We have Nancy Pelosi claiming the Iraq AUMF is legal and in force, the TPP moving forward in secret and a police state descending. Where is our election upset to put the fear of God into the establishment?
Jackpine Radical
(45,274 posts)and those Progressives, well, you know--they're just not good for bidniss an' even George Soros is backing Hillary coming out of the box.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/soros-group-triples-its-lobbying-spending/2014/02/23/c9af9f8e-9a33-11e3-b88d-f36c07223d88_story.html
Brother Buzz
(36,212 posts)Koch money may have been at work, but the Democrats helped. The November general election is another story.....
DCCC, please pick up the nearest white courtesy telephone.
woo me with science
(32,139 posts)that the challenger won by running a campaign against crony corporatism and that voters were responsive to that.
If anything, this election drives home
(1) that the corruption of our politics through crony corporatism is recognized by voters as a critical issue across party lines and thus offers an important opportunity to build coalitions behind candidates who will actually fight this corruption
and
(2) that corporatists in both parties, knowing what voters want, do not hesitate to lie shamelessly about what they actually stand for, which makes it doubly important for voters to vet candidates carefully and expose fake populists through their actual policy positions, e.g., Hillary's populist talk versus her corporate funding, warmongering, and support of the TPP.
EEO
(1,620 posts)former9thward
(31,798 posts)And a typical 'my candidate did not win so the voting machines must be rigged' post. How is it that only internet posters know that voting machines are rigged? How is it that the DNC and all the state and local Democratic parties don't know this? How is it that professional campaign mangers and consultants don't know this? Are all these people in on the conspiracy to keep our voting machines rigged? Or are they just all stupid and only the internet bloggers know better? It has to be one or the another to buy into this theory.
Ned Fenwick
(25 posts)I don't think it's that simple, "former9thward". When a candidate is polling several points ahead, but loses to a very conservative candidate who works at a very conservative institution in a dept. funded by extreme conservatives, and this very conservative guy supposedly didn't spend any money, but some unknown entity did spend money (maybe millions, no way of knowing actually) on his behalf, isn't there just a teensy-weensy chance that Chuck & Dave Koch's stooges helped the guy? The Harper's Monthly article a few months back pretty much explained why conservatives are doing as well as they're doing, and it isn't very optimism-inspiring for the future of this country, unless you're a billionaire or a dedicated employee of one.
former9thward
(31,798 posts)There is zero at the link. If there were any significant money being spent in a small congressional district it would be noticed right away. It tells me you have never been involved in a campaign.
KansDem
(28,498 posts)"Moral" and "capitalism" in the same name?
From the article--
Ayn Rand. like her devoted followers, was a hypocrite--
However, it was revealed in the recent "Oral History of Ayn Rand" by Scott McConnell (founder of the media department at the Ayn Rand Institute) that in the end Ayn was a vip-dipper as well. An interview with Evva Pryror, a social worker and consultant to Miss Rand's law firm of Ernst, Cane, Gitlin and Winick verified that on Miss Rand's behalf she secured Rand's Social Security and Medicare payments which Ayn received under the name of Ann O'Connor (husband Frank O'Connor).
As Pryor said, "Doctors cost a lot more money than books earn and she could be totally wiped out" without the aid of these two government programs. Ayn took the bail out even though Ayn "despised government interference and felt that people should and could live independently... She didn't feel that an individual should take help."
But alas she did and said it was wrong for everyone else to do so. Apart from the strong implication that those who take the help are morally weak, it is also a philosophic point that such help dulls the will to work, to save and government assistance is said to dull the entrepreneurial spirit.
In the end, Miss Rand was a hypocrite but she could never be faulted for failing to act in her own self-interest.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-ford/ayn-rand-and-the-vip-dipe_b_792184.html
"Ayn Rand" the libertarian who despised big government
"Ayn O'Connor" the recipient of Social Security and Medicare benefits
I'm sick and tired of these fucking hypocrites!
snooper2
(30,151 posts)"hundreds of millions of dollars in "charitable contributions" to inoculate American academic institutions and media with extremist libertarian philosophy, promoting the Ayn Randian culture of greed while boosting radical Tea Party candidates."
drm604
(16,230 posts)Election rigging, and computerized voting in particular, were at one time a big issue on DU and elsewhere. I myself wrote on the old DU about Michael Connell, and the interconnected web of right-wing IT companies involved in both elections and campaigns as well as right-wing websites. With our presidential victories, we all (myself included) have somehow let all of this slide down the memory hole. However, victories at the presidential level don't prove that this kind of rigging doesn't occur at local and state levels (or even that it can't or doesn't occur at the presidential level).
It's a difficult problem to fix. Those who win the elections get to choose the voting equipment, or at least get to define the process by which it is chosen. The winners essentially get to choose how the winners are determined.
It's so difficult a problem that, I think, we've all just sort of hoped it isn't true and turned our attention to other issues. We can't continue to do that.
This can't be ignored. This has to become an issue again.
A lot of Republicans are unhappy about Cantor's loss. Maybe this is the opportunity to push for some kind of real change. Maybe we can get some of them on our side on this one issue.
bbgrunt
(5,281 posts)while scotus insists that money = speech, there are many who seem to insist that it doesn't have an effect.
tea and oranges
(396 posts)have been remarkably ineffective in swaying elections despite their determination & money.
This ploy, while disturbing & seditious, doesn't look like a winner for them. YET.
The long term ramifications will, in all probability, be allowed to come to fruition (for all the resons noted in article).
Meanwhile back at the House, one of the cruelest, most powerful Republicans has been replaced by a newbie w/ no experience, committee placements, etc. and the upstart Brat is so inarticulate on policy issues that he'll need schooling to be ready for primetime.
The Koch's seem to lack the gift empathy. W/o that, it's awfully hard to ken the human critters they want to control & their money assures that those close to them will be People of the Yes.
Is it the Koch's vs the Banksters, whose servant Cantor was?
More important - will the Koch's be allowed to continue in their efforts to buy the country, when it should be perfectly obvious they don't have the best interests of any other than themselves in mind (not heart!)?
(In a related query, will Cliven Bundy suffer no consequences? Or are "consequences" now the special reserve of the poor, minorities, & those who protest?)
Cheviteau
(383 posts)First , Mr. Brat has to run against the democratic nominee and win the general election before he takes his seat in Congress. Given the low turnout in the primary plus the suspicion that democrats helped him, his victory is not a given. Secondly, The saga of Ol'Clive Bundy is far from over. When the hammer drops on him there will be no doubt left in anyone's mind that the Federal Government controls our public lands. Wait and see. I get a real kick out of the Teacups with their smugness, believing that Ol'Clive has put one over on that damn "Kenyan socialist Muslim dictator".
tea and oranges
(396 posts)My heart sinks daily at the lack of news on the Teahadist front on the public lands in Nevada.
Also, yes, Mr Brat is studying up now on how to beat a Dem (one who may or may not actually receive funding from the dysfunctional DCCC, look to the blog Down with Tyranny [link:http://downwithtyranny.blogspot.co.uk/ Howie's been reporting the protected status of Mr Cantor for years) & how to speak coherently in front of a general audience instead of his college classes.
Overseas
(12,121 posts)JackHughes
(166 posts)The presumption should always be: If an election can be stolen an election will be stolen. Electronic voting with no tangible paper trail makes it easy to steal elections.
It's ridiculous that exit pollsters and news organizations -- not to mention the Democratic Party -- have resorted to a novel psychological theory, i.e., that Republicans are less likely to respond to exit pollsters, than the more obvious explanation for the consistent deviation between exit polls and official results that always favors Republicans.
xchrom
(108,903 posts)colsohlibgal
(5,275 posts)Pollsters almost certainly couldn't be that far off. I give Brad Friedman of Brad's Blog a lot of credit, he immediately thought it was beyond fishy, when nobody else was going there for some reason.
Thinkingabout
(30,058 posts)KauaiK
(544 posts)...the dark money and Koch Bros purchase of Government is more worrisome and problematic.