The Tea Party - Ideology Sources, Funding, and Network
This article details the involvement of the Koch Brothers with the Tea Party. It is a long and very worth your time and effort to read and digest. If you want to understand the Tea Party, where it came from, and how it is funded read this entire article. There are some key names in here that show up over time. Remember them and when you read other articles in the future make the connections.
Personally, I have mixed feelings about the Tea Party, the Koch brothers and the agenda being pushed. I embrace many Libertarian values and much of their agenda. However, we should all understand where the messages are coming from, who is crafting them, their goals, and who is ultimately behind these seemingly disparate groups that are tied together in many complex and interesting ways.
Strongly recommended use of your time to read and understand.
The billionaire Koch brothers’ war against Obama: newyorker.com
Personally, I have mixed feelings about the Tea Party, the Koch brothers and the agenda being pushed. I embrace many Libertarian values and much of their agenda. However, we should all understand where the messages are coming from, who is crafting them, their goals, and who is ultimately behind these seemingly disparate groups that are tied together in many complex and interesting ways.
Strongly recommended use of your time to read and understand.
The billionaire Koch brothers’ war against Obama: newyorker.com
Comments
I have been doing some research this morning on him and found he got an Islamic guy named Faisal Gill, who did not disclose association with a known terrorist during his appointment process, appointed as policy director for the Department of Homeland Security’s intelligence division. His ties were then discovered and he was briefly removed as director but then reinstated. Norquist also has ties to the Ground Zero mosque, and some troubling ties to 9/11.
When I see Norquist involved with the Koch's you wonder who is using who. Are the Koch's being duped and used by Norquist? Are they really collaborators? To what end? Are they really trying to bring a third party up? Is it all a way to discredit the whole third party idea in the US for at least another generation?
One thing I have gleaned is that the Koch's and Norquist play for keeps and for the long-term - like 30 to 50 years and longer.
Global Warming debate: I hear you! The world is warming but that is not the question (i agree with you). I cannot figure out why this debate is confused seemingly on both sides. Maybe it is as simple as you state and has to do with mis-directing people from the real issue - pollution. It does seem the GBW debate has deflected discussion about pollution almost completely.
There is lots of info here. One passage particularly interesting was...........
1. Beginning with more information about the Islamists associated with GOP kingmaker Grover Norquist, the program highlights the appointment of Faisal Gill—a Norquist protégé—to a sensitive intelligence position with the Department of Homeland Security. Note that Gill, in turn, is closely associated with Abdurahman Alamoudi, an intimate of the Al Taqwa milieu. “The policy director for the Department of Homeland Security’s intelligence division was briefly removed from his job in March when the Federal Bureau of Investigation discovered he had failed to disclose his association with Abdurahman Alamoudi, a jailed American Muslim leader. Alamoudi was indicted last year on terrorism-related money-laundering charges and now claims to have been part of a plot to assassinate Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Abdullah.” (“How Secure is the Department of Homeland Security?” by Mary Jacoby; Salon.com; 6/22/2004; p. 1; accessed at: http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2004/06/22/gill/print.html .)
2. It is frightening to note the information to which Gill’s appointment has given him access. “After a flurry of interagency meetings, however, Homeland Security decided to leave the policy director, Faisal Gill, in place, according to two government officials with knowledge of the Alamoudi investigation. A White House political appointee with close ties to Republican power broker Grover Norquist and no apparent background in intelligence, Gill has access to top-secret information on the vulnerability of America’s seaports, aviation facilities and nuclear power plants to terrorist attacks. [Emphasis added.]” (Ibid.; pp. 1–2.)
3. “The FBI raised concerns with Homeland Security officials in March after discovering that Gill had failed to list on security clearance documents his work in 2001 with the American Muslim council, the officials said. The advocacy group, which was controlled by Alamoudi, has been under scrutiny in an investigation of terrorism financing. The lead agent in that investigation works for an arm of Homeland Security. Gill’s omission of the information on his ‘Standard Form 86’ national security questionnaire is a potential felony violation. There is no evidence, however, that Gill has taken any action to compromise national security.” (Ibid.; p. 2.)
Tons of other info showing many GOP/Arab connections. The Bush/Bin Laden connection is not unusual and has been downplayed in the media.
While I support the libertarian view of social issues, which is basically live and let live, I reject libertarian economics. While the idea that one's labor, and its fruits are his own and that any attempt of government to take it away si theft, is a tempting one, the actual following of this philosophy to its logical conclusion leads to a world that is not very nice to live in. It is a world where people like the Koch brothers amass vast power and use it to keep the rest of us in a position where it becomes less and less possible to achieve upward mobility.
The simple fact is that "the system is rigged, and it is rigged against us (progressives.)" That and people like the Kochs, Norquist and Rupert Murdoch make it extremely difficult to achieve progressive reform no matter what the majority of voters want. In this climate it's far easier to cut taxes for rich people and loosen regulation on business than to create initiatives that actually help average people.