Are you THE Claire Conner?

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Wrapped in the Flag, by Claire Conner, Beacon Press, 2013. [link:http://www.amazon.com/Wrapped-Flag-Learned-Growing-Americas/dp/0807033316|
I'm on FB and Twitter and have many more posts on my website. [link:http://claireconner.com|
Thanks for welcoming me to DU

welcome to DU, Claire!

Since my book was published in hardcover (Beacon Press, 2013), in paperback (2014) and on ebook, I've worked non-stop to tell my story and warn Democrats, Progressives, Liberals (and anyone else who'd listen) that the radical right has taken control of the GOP. I recognized that the "NEW" GOP talking points, rolled out by the Tea Party and mainstream Republicans are old recycled 1960s extremism, the kind preached by the John Birch Society. Because I was a witness to the rise of the Birch society -- being only 14 when I became a member -- I was sure that my story would resonate with Americans all over the country.

I've had a first-hand, personal experience with the "hands over ears" of the left. So many well-meaning folks can't grasp these realities:

1. The right is never kidding, never retreating, and never constrained by facts.
2. The right will, absolutely, dismantle every bit of progressive legislation from 1913 to the present.
3. The right has sold the idea that government is our biggest problem. And they've done this with almost no pushback from the left.
4. The right are radical extremists and they have a big tent for a host of folks. They specifically target certain issues to grab a specific audience and keep them in the GOP. For example: anti-abortion, anti tax, anti-healthcare, anti-civil rights, anti-education, and on and on.


Today's radical right has re-packaged old John Birch Society conspiracy theories, paranoia, hate, and fear and wrapped the whole stinking mess in phony Christianity. Armed with this snake oil, they've taken over most of the GOP and 60% of the states. Extremism has gone mainstream and the left is still convinced that we can "work" with these people.

It's impossible to find common ground with people who want to slash the government without regard to the impact on real people.
The people running the GOP and the Koch network are not conservatives or compassionate. They are dangerous extremists.

'stupid' or 'uneducated' or saying they can't possibly take over a foolish and dangerous complacency.

They've shut out our voices and have used conspiracy theories to divide their opposition so well, that many are more willing to see democracy die than admit they've been taken in by the right.

I've posted many times the Koch agenda as publicized by Sanders and Reid, that is now almost completely accepted and implemented. Yet people still blame those who are trying to resist it in government, give them no credit, as we sink into a swamp of negative nationalism that is allowing the nation to be divided up into smaller fiefdoms.

I appreciate the brave determination to get the word out. There are still too many who have never heard of the connections. Others, like myself, fortunately not in a family that was oriented that way, saw the Birchers and rest of what you mention in the OP going on around me as I was growing up. I felt the heaviness, the oppression which is so engrained now it's never left the USA. And now it's bundled for a new generation, who believe they're being liberated by it now, not looking at what they are creating with their enthusiasm.

I'm wondering if your book was the source ffor this video that was made by Thom Hartmann. And if he or others will give an effective platform to combating this generational movement that is so hard to fight but too dangerous to ignore. People have taken the liberties we had post WW2 after fighting the Axis for granted. And are letting it slip away, even cheering it on at times.

Hartmann's video goes all the way back to the beginnings of the power and influence of the Koch family and how they brainwashed generations:

Thom Hartmann: Conservative Millennials, Boomers & Libertarians all being Conned



Here is the transcript of the video:

Multigenerational political influence by a very narrow special interest group is rare, but we're seeing it played out right now in front of us. A billionaire family - the Kochs - have gone from influencing my father's generation, to my generation, to my kids' generation - and very few Americans realize it. Daddy Koch - Fred - made his first millions palling around with Joe Stalin in the Soviet Union in the 1920s and 1930s. As the fascists rose to power in Europe in the 1930s, he was an enthusiastic supporter of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, who invented the word "fascist," meaning essentially the takeover of democratic governments by big business interests. Mussolini went so far as to dissolve the Italian parliament, and replace elected politicians with representatives of each district's largest corporations. Fred Koch and Mussolini both particularly hated the trade unionists and their sometimes allies, the communists. So after Mussolini, along with his ally Hitler, lost World War II against America, Fred Koch brought the anti-communist pro-business-running-goverment - what some would call "facist" - torch to America big time, helping start the John Birch Society.

Two of their biggest efforts are pretty well known. After the Supreme Court ruled, in 1954, in the Brown versus Board of Education case, that segregation in schools was unconstitutional, the John Birch Society put up billboards all across America calling for the impeachment of the Chief Justice of the Court, Earl Warren. Daddy Fred Koch was very concerned about the integration of our schools - in fact, he wrote, "The colored man looms large in the Communist plan to take over America." With JFK's election, Fred Koch's John Birch Society went off again - this time against JFK. Using rhetoric not that different from the "secret Muslim" plots the Tea Party promotes about Obama, in a 1963 speech Fred said that " infiltrate the highest offices of government in the U.S. until the President is a Communist, unknown to the rest of us.”

When JFK was scheduled to come to Dallas that year, the JBS distributed flyers saying, "Wanted, for Treason" all around the town two days before his arrival. On the day JFK was assassinated, large ads ran in the Dallas newspapers attacking Kennedy as being soft on Castro, among other things. That was my dad's generation. Daddy Koch died, and his sons Charles and David took over the family business of promoting the business and billionaire takeover of our American government.

They're doing it with a two-pronged attack. For people over forty, they're funding the Tea Party through a variety of groups, most notably Americans for Prosperity and Freedomworks. And for people under forty, they're funding Libertarian think tanks, like the Charles Koch Foundation (which was renamed as the Cato Institute), and the Reason Foundation, where David Koch is a trustee, which happily embraces a new generation of young people with the idea that "freedom" means the "freedom" to buy politicians and the "freedom" to pollute. For the young people, of course, the Libertarians throw in the "freedom" to smoke dope and hire a hooker, but those are just bones being cynically tossed to young potheads and young protoge's of Dick Morris.

But the Koch's have been inside the Libertarian movement from its beginning - 32 years ago this year, David Koch was the Libertarian Party's official candidate for Vice President of the United States. It's really pretty incredible, but it's all true. The main agenda of the Koch's John Birch Society was to enhance the power and control of our government by big business and billionaires, while fighting organized labor and people like me who were protesting the Vietnam War. The main agenda of the Koch's Tea Party is to get millionaires elected to Congress and have them cut taxes and regulations for Koch Industries and other polluting corporations, while fighting organized labor and people like me who were protesting the Iraq War.

And the main agenda of the Koch's Libertarians - again, funded and trained by the Koch Brothers - is to keep intact the power of big money over our government, cut taxes and regulations on billionaires and polluting industries, while fighting organized labor and people like me who are protesting the corporate takeover of the United States of America. Three generations of Americans, all duped by the same billionaire family. Three generations buying into the idea that "what's best for industry and billionaires is best for America" - and that government is our "enemy" rather than something that our nation's founders fought and died to create for all of "We The People" And, increasingly, it's not just the Koch family. The Walton family - whose combined wealth is greater than 40 percent of all Americans - funded a covert campaign to rename the estate tax as the "death tax" and lobbied so hard they got the estate tax eliminated entirely in 2010.

Senator Bernie Sanders pointed out yesterday that - so far - we know of 26 billionaires - worth over $146 billion - who have already "invested" or committed to invest over $561 million dollars in this election cycle - most of it to defeat Democrats who want to raise their taxes. The good news is that young people are waking up and realizing that the Libertarian hustle the billionaires are feeding them is just that - a hustle. Just like Tea Partiers are waking up to their having been had by billionaires who want to privatize their Social Security. Hopefully, soon, America will regain its sanity and we'll go back to viewing cranky billionaires the way my Dad's generation did - as Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower did - when Eisenhower referred to their ilk as "small in number and stupid" They're not stupid any more, and if we really value American traditions, we really must push back on this kind of power and influence in American politics.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/101744227

Of course you know all of this. And the Koch agenda being enacted now:

Here are just a few excerpts of the Libertarian Party platform that David Koch ran on in 1980:

“We urge the repeal of federal campaign finance laws, and the immediate abolition of the despotic Federal Election Commission.”

“We favor the abolition of Medicare and Medicaid programs.”

“We oppose any compulsory insurance or tax-supported plan to provide health services, including those which finance abortion services.”

“We also favor the deregulation of the medical insurance industry.”

“We favor the repeal of the fraudulent, virtually bankrupt, and increasingly oppressive Social Security system. Pending that repeal, participation in Social Security should be made voluntary.”

“We propose the abolition of the governmental Postal Service. The present system, in addition to being inefficient, encourages governmental surveillance of private correspondence. Pending abolition, we call for an end to the monopoly system and for allowing free competition in all aspects of postal service.”

“We oppose all personal and corporate income taxation, including capital gains taxes.”

“We support the eventual repeal of all taxation.”

“As an interim measure, all criminal and civil sanctions against tax evasion should be terminated immediately.”

“We support repeal of all law which impede the ability of any person to find employment, such as minimum wage laws.”

“We advocate the complete separation of education and State. Government schools lead to the indoctrination of children and interfere with the free choice of individuals. Government ownership, operation, regulation, and subsidy of schools and colleges should be ended.”

“We condemn compulsory education laws … and we call for the immediate repeal of such laws.”

“We support the repeal of all taxes on the income or property of private schools, whether profit or non-profit.”

“We support the abolition of the Environmental Protection Agency.”

“We support abolition of the Department of Energy.”

“We call for the dissolution of all government agencies concerned with transportation, including the Department of Transportation.”

“We demand the return of America's railroad system to private ownership. We call for the privatization of the public roads and national highway system.”

“We specifically oppose laws requiring an individual to buy or use so-called "self-protection" equipment such as safety belts, air bags, or crash helmets.”

“We advocate the abolition of the Federal Aviation Administration.”

“We advocate the abolition of the Food and Drug Administration.”

“We support an end to all subsidies for child-bearing built into our present laws, including all welfare plans and the provision of tax-supported services for children.”

“We oppose all government welfare, relief projects, and ‘aid to the poor’ programs. All these government programs are privacy-invading, paternalistic, demeaning, and inefficient. The proper source of help for such persons is the voluntary efforts of private groups and individuals.”

“We call for the privatization of the inland waterways, and of the distribution system that brings water to industry, agriculture and households.”

“We call for the repeal of the Occupational Safety and Health Act.”

“We call for the abolition of the Consumer Product Safety Commission.”

“We support the repeal of all state usury laws.”

The GOP is against taxes that support schools, public schools and anything that supports children. This is why Sanders and Reid called them out, and they were immediately attacked in the media and on the ground in NV.

Look at the list and the links if you have time. It's why Obama, Reid and Sanders have called them out, along with others. The GOP is just following the agenda set out there.

And they have many converts and work all sides of the political field to get it done. They are close and willing to bankrupt the country and kill millions to create their version of liberty and freedom.

http://www.sanders.senate.gov/koch-brothers

http://www.historycommons.org/context.jsp?item=a7980koch

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10024806298

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/harry-reid-republicans-addicted-to-koch

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/06/harry-reid-koch-brothers_n_4914164.html

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/04/04/harry-reid-koch_n_5092685.html

http://www.politico.com/story/2014/01/harry-reid-koch-brothers-102859.html

http://www.businessinsider.com/harry-reid-koch-bros-un-american-2014-2

Last but not least:

http://www.reid.senate.gov/koch-facts#.U0AZsa1dUi4

Yet we still have people praising Rand Paul, who fully supports all of this agenda. DU has page views of 100,000 daily with 60,000 different individuals according to the site owner, Skinner. I hope these facts will be presented widely. I do explain these things to people IRL.

I hope that DU will become a force against this. We should focus on it, or we can forget even having this place to discuss our world eventually as they privatize everything, and make all the rules. They will do it. I will be referring this thread to others and in my posts. Thank you.

then, you post a direct link to the photo either in the body of your post, or, in my case, your signature line.

ETA: The direct link to the photo, in my case, is: DELETETHIShttp://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y13/steve2470/Capture_zps83a74f7e.png (without the obvious word, of course). I put in the word because the DU software automatically converts url's to links or images.

"copy image url" then paste the url into your post.

That is a version of the Kochoctopus theme from Crooks and Liars:

GOP Funding Octopus - Many Tentacles, Same Groups

By karoli - 8/28/10

The next time you hear a news story where Republicans cry poor, remember this. The RNC is irrelevant. These days, post-Citizens United, the money is staying in the control of independent organizations, all $400 million of it pledged toward the midterm elections.

Four hundred million dollars. Wow. Think Progress has an eye-opener of a report about the organizations behind the big bucks. Clearly the Republican strategy was to fragment and spread out the money across many different facets, so they could sweep in the most people/interests at once...

(That is followed by a break down of all the groups in the image.)

...These groups, and the people behind them, are the architects and funding source for the attack ads, mailers, robocalls and print ads we're barraged with on a daily basis. They're responsible for stirring the teabaggers into a froth and overlooking inconvenient facts about reality in order to feed a media frenzy about imagined threats to our nation. They arrive in the form of news broadcasters from Fox to CNN to even MSNBC, and have absolutely no problem lying and misleading to win back control of this Congress.

It's also interesting to see what names aren't in the spotlight, but still stand right behind the list and the money. Names like Steve Forbes and Ross Perot, for example. Perot funds the Tea Party Express, among other organizations. Steve Forbes is more likely to be behind the scenes, pulling the strings right. But in the end, it's a very few people putting a lot of money into their hopes that a new Congress will get them more money. And power.

Vote.

http://crooksandliars.com/karoli/gop-funding-octopus-many-tentacles-same-gro

On posting images, I suggest that if an image is not specifically forbidden by copyright, instead of what Steve has recommended. Some that are copyrighted only request a link back to their website. Some images are so ubiquitous, they need no linkage.

Click on the image found in a google search that you are looking for. I found the above image and article through a google images search under the terms of 'Kock octopus.' The image result will take you to the webpage and give them views.

After you click on the image, it will bring you to a new page with the link to the image in the address bar. That is the internet ID for that photo. I often save the image and its link in a folder for fast reference. I only use an online photo service for my own photos, not these kinds or images for which I've lost the link.

If you want to share a video, such as a youtube video, post the link in the DU message box as I did above with the Hartmann video. Most uploaders don't object to their work being posted or even downloaded and uploaded by others, as it will bring their cause page views anyway. At times videos had very few views when I found them, then the count for views went up because so many people saw them at DU.

That will bring attention to this 'hiding in plain sight' scheming.

This is an IMPORTANT post and thank you!!

Probably the real reason that Fred Koch helped start the John Birch society was to make dealing with "communists" appear to be so UnAmerican that no company would want to do it. That let his companies work in the USSR for many years free of any competition.

Thanks for posting!

You input will be greatly appreciated

But it's $889,000,000,not 189,000,00 that the Koch's are spending to buy the 2016 elections.

I was just looking for a bathroom.

My state has several. Im not sure if they are Cato orgs or Koch orgs or both.

The think tanks are Cato, Heritage, and many more.
Money flows from Club for Growth, Americans for Prosperity and a whole web of others
The right has built a huge infrastructure while the left was snoozing and/or congratulating themselves on winning the White House.

Both of you do a terrific job of educating us & I appreciate the truth about the hands over ears and snoozing left. You're so right about ALEC, they're everywhere. Great to have you here.

everyone should know rhis and sadly few do or care to know .

Great OP. Keep up the good work.

I invite all of you to check in with me on FB
https://www.facebook.com/WrappedInTheFlagByClaireConner?ref=hl

Twitter
https://twitter.com/wrappedinflag

My website
http://claireconner.com/

And, don't forget to look at my book
http://www.amazon.com/Wrapped-Flag-Learned-Growing-Americas/dp/0807033316/ref=tmm_pap_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1423200795&sr=8-1

I'll continue posting here on DU. And look forward to lots of good conversation.

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