Koch brothers under attack by leftwing film-maker

Robert Greenwald is taking the fight to billionaires David and Charles Koch, who fund much of the US's rightwing politics
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/may/15/koch-brothers-leftwing-film-maker

Even for the Lincoln Centre it was an unusual show, and an unscheduled one. Several hundred protesters turned up outside the arts complex on Manhattan's Upper West Side last week for the guerrilla screening of a short film. From a hotel on the other side of the street, a video was projected on to the centre's walls. The unwitting stars of the films were David and Charles Koch, the reclusive rightwing billionaire brothers whose secretive empire and network of influence and funding is emerging as a liberal rallying cause in America.

(snip)
Greenwald is determined to make the fight personal. His activists have found five homes of the brothers in the US and filmed themselves knocking on the doors, from the ski resort of Aspen, Colorado, to Palm Beach in Florida. The homes are profiled in "luxury porn" detail and juxtaposed with the hard times of working-class Americans. In one scene three financially struggling pensioners picnic on the beach outside a Koch mansion and wonder why anyone would need a house so big. In another, a researcher ambushes David Koch at the Economic Club of New York and asks: "How many houses do you really need?" The stone-faced Koch rapidly retreats behind a security guard without a word.

(snip)
Despite such efforts, the anti-Koch campaigners are unlikely to go away. Greenwald – whose previous targets have included Fox News, Walmart and former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani – says that he has at least seven more anti-Koch videos in the works.

Greenwald said the threat of a Koch backlash against his organisation was a concern but that he would not be intimidated: "The Kochs are the poster boys for a system that has become deeply unbalanced. We know that they are not happy with what we have done so far. They are going to be a lot less happy as we go on."

This was "graphically" covered over at Daily Kos Koch Brothers Exposed: Sticker Shock and Street Theater by someone who had a friend as an "Interventionist"

Complete with a Robert Greenwald YouTube Videos of their "guerrilla" activity:
http://youtu.be/6AfPGcpajtg

The Rightwing Koch Bros. Funded the DLC -- !!

http://www.democrats.com/node/7789

http://upload.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=439x498414


If you knew about this, why didn't you tell us?

If you didn't know, pass it along -- !!


:)

a lot more sense now. Like why some democrats don't act like democrats.

on camera, "Mr. Koch, if you are indeed the Christian you claim to be, then why aren't you sharing your wealth with the less fortunate, as Jesus commanded you to do?"

I'll have you know that every Christmas, David Koch has his chauffeur drop a dollar bill into a charity box. Then he asks for 50c change and a tax receipt.

what they want...greed and power. All else is just pretense. They are above the law and consider themselves the ruling plutocracy and definitely out to prove it. Exposure is absolutely necessary to prevent them from buying our democracy unseen.

there would be more balance..

Smart and effective!

I mean, yeah, they're major funders of the far right, but it's not like they're unique, or even particularly unrepresentative of their class. If they were to disappear tomorrow, taking their money with them, I'm sure Tea Party politics would not want for financial backing. The Kochs seem to have become for the left what George Soros is for the right - an all-purpose boogeyman.

When you read stuff like this, it makes it clear they aren't getting near enough attention

Last week it was reported that a Koch foundation had funded two academic posts in the economics department of Florida State University – with the proviso that it would decide which candidates could be considered. Giving such power to a donor is an unusual move, especially at a public university. It also emerged that 60% of the university's suggestions were vetoed by the Kochs.

in my book that's manipulation of education and the public universities

NOT getting enough attention. They appear to actually want attention from the RW especially the uneducated or ass kissers who they can convince that the wealthy should call the shots.

Again, IMO, they represent the worst of the capitalistic system, knowingly. They ARE unique in that they openly fund anti-labor, publicly defend their "stance" and openly abhor any Progressive attempts aimed at helping the less fortunate (us).

The FACT that they were BORN into their wealth seemingly never crosses their minds(?) as evidenced by their Ann Rand, up by your boot straps philosophy.

I just hope that Greenwald takes all security precautions. Snakes like this are very dangerous and will strike with whatever is at their disposal....everything.

Not that openly, they tried to stay hidden, but failed. But focusing solely on the Kochs makes me wonder who else is hiding in the shadows, doing the same thing that the Kochs do bit without as much attention.

off the kocks because of "boredom" or because "others might be there, too", is ludicrous.

There's nothing saying that just because the kocks are being watched doesn't mean that eyes are not also on whomever else is hiding behind their skirts.

As others have said on here, the Scaifes and DeVoses etc often go unnoticed because all eyes are trained solely on the Kochs.

This may help curtail some of the Citizens-United decision if Obama administration is able to pull it off by having the IRS require who and how much to prevent tax fraud. Hope someone here can explain this further. I just heard about it 2 wks ago.

The kocks are indeed dangerous because their tactics are for enriching themselves and those just like them. There is no evidence that has been placed in the public sphere that lays anything close to those charges at the feet of George Soros.

Clinton accurately said. Richard Mellon Scaife was the right-wing billionaire getting most of the attention then, but the problem wasn't just him then -- the Koch brothers were funding right-wing groups then, too -- any more than it's just the Kochs now. Or the Walton family. Or the NY hedge fund executive caught last year creating a fake citizens' group to hide behind as he paid for ads against Peter DeFazio in Oregon. Or the DeVos family, who some recent posts here suggest are the main force behind the right-wing drive to privatize education. Or the other super-rich individuals and families and corporations who are backing these right-wing think tanks and astroturf groups. They're working together to create a society in which they will have even more political clout and will be even wealthier, paying lower taxes, and they're masquerading as defenders of individual liberty and the free market, though oligopolies aren't free markets and it's government that gives individual citizens who are poor or middle class their largest measure of freedom against the power that can be wielded by the rich and corporations.

The Kochs are part of the problem, but only part of it.

:bounce: :bounce: :puke: :puke: :bounce: :bounce: :puke: :puke: :bounce: :bounce:

nt.

The wife, Betty or Betsy, is the sister of Erik Prince of Blackwater shame.

All of them, these billionaires who are undermining this democracy, need to be forced out from under their rocks and let the American people know where a lot of the propaganda they are exposed on a daily basis, is coming from.

Domestic enemies are as damaging to this democracy as foreign enemies are.

impediment to progress it would be the Koch Brothers. Born on third, they believe they cleverly earned their wealth. So.....they are the bogeymen.

George Soros? Not so much.

not to let up on the Kochs.

which the Democratic Party harbored within the party for decades --

How much harm did that do?



The Rightwing Koch Bros. Funded the DLC -- !!

http://www.democrats.com/node/7789

http://upload.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=439x498414


If you knew about this, why didn't you tell us?

If you didn't know, pass it along -- !!


:)

attention at all, but I DO agree that they're just one set of fascist billionaires. There are a LOT more of them out there.

One tea party group is the libertarian tea party group.
I got the impression this group was the original tea party group.

The second tea party group was the Social Conservative tea party group.
I got the impression this group usurped the original tea party group.

Question: are the Koch brothers Libertarian tea party,
Social Conservative tea party, or both?

One can point out Jesus' teachings to Christian Social Conservatives.
It may not do much good because their ministers, Beck, et al,
have them pumped up on so much hate and distrust, they're blind with anger.

Pointing out Jesus' teachings to a libertarian seems pointless.
Libertarians could just as easily be Atheist as Christian.
I have the unsubstantiated view Libertarians worship the "All-Mighty Dollar",
not any religious deity. I will admit I'm being harsh to Libertarians; I apologize.

Again, are the Koch brothers Libertarian tea party,
Social Conservative tea party, or both?

This allows them to be very strict.

--imm

Obama when he was trying to help the mortgage crisis. Isn't that when it all started and then FOX had these ignorant greedy cons throwing tea bags into the water someplace in Texas?

at the beginning of the health care debate.

Lots of info on the Kochroaches and lists of where they spend their money and their company's products as well as a number of articles.

http://kochwatch.org/

How many Koch Brothers types are out there that we know nothing about? Aren't these guys the tip of the iceberg of "THE POWERS THAT BE"?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wV1lZMTCqf8

thanks to George Carlin for the above. He describes the state of America more perfectly and brilliantly than anything I've ever seen in my life.

Fellow DU'ERS; "BE HAPPY WITH WHAT YOU'VE GOT"

-90% jimmy

If we ever build another monument it should be a bronze of George Carlin in a preposterous pose.

See my message further down on this thread --

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=103&topic_id=602703&mesg_id=602823

This was all in response, of course, to the 1960's Youth Revolution --

Indeed, in 1972, when the details began to come out about a break-in at Democratic Party headquarters in the Watergate Hotel, Mae immediately recognized personnel and modus operandi from nine years of assassination research, while the mainstream press continued to refer to Watergate as a "caper" and "a third-rate burglary." And so it came to pass that while Rabbi Magnin was entertaining Richard Nixon at his home in Los Angeles, his daughter Mae was revealing the President's role in an incredible conspiracy. Meanwhile, she also perceived an assassination plot, not merely against specific individuals, but against the entire counterculture that was burgeoning at the time.

"I realized that in this country we had a revolution--of housing, food, hair style, clothing, cosmetics, transportation, value systems, religion--it was an economic revolution, affecting the cosmetics industry, canned foods, the use of land; people were delivering their own babies, recycling old clothes, withdrawing from spectator sports. They were breaking the barriers where white and black could rap in 1967. This was the year of the Beatles, the summer of Sergeant Pepper, the Monterey Pop Festival, Haight-Ashbury, make your own candle and turn off the electricity, turn on with your friends and laugh--that's what life was all about."


http://maebrussell.com/Mae%20Brussell%20Articles/Ballad%20of%20Mae%20Brussell.html




The Rightwing Koch Bros. Funded the DLC -- !!

http://www.democrats.com/node/7789

http://upload.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=439x498414


If you knew about this, why didn't you tell us?

If you didn't know, pass it along -- !!


:)

But we should make them a symbol. We need something to stand up against, not just saying that some nameless and faceless wealthy people are evil.

Working class people should be picketing outside all of their homes and businesses 24/7. They should not be able to get a moment of peace, payback for the terror and heart ache they have caused so many millions of Americans.

K&R, thanks for the great OP.

to expose them all to Americans!

:kick:

each and every organization and think tank funded by the rightwing wealthy --

from Koch Bros./DLC which the Democratic Party harbored for decades --


to the GOP giving start-up funding for the Christian Coalition in the 1980's --

Richard Scaife funded Dobson's group -- other wealthy RW'ers funded Bauer's organization.


to the GOP radicalizing the NRA and using it to target not only liberals in the

Democratic Party, but liberals and moderates in the Republican Party, thereby

moving Congress to the far right.


GOPs/"pro-lifers" who ensured that Roe vs Wade may stand, but only over the bodies

of dead doctors. Investigations of this community show it funded by white supremacist

groups but Supreme Court refused to apply RICO laws.


Environmental deceptions depended not only on oil industry to misinform and disinform the

public -- ExxonMobil was able to do this with a campaign of lies and tens of billions of

dollars because we initially had a 50 year delay in feeling the effects of Global Warming ---

but in a corporate-press which has lied to the public by remaining silent.

In fact, for 2 or more decades now the New York Times has been allied with ExxonMobil in

presenting their disinformation re Global Warming on their Op-Ed pages.


Add to that Diebold voting machines which began to come in ... NOT IN 2000 OR 2004 ...

but in late 1960's ... !! Was there ever a "Southern Strategy" or was there only voting

computers to solve the problem's of elites?


Call it KABUKI or call it a Hollywood set -- everything the rightwing has is based on

lies and deception -- all bought with wealth$$$$$$$$$ --

go on television, America's current means of knowledge or so it seems? Good for Greenwald.

a Koch backlash is imminent!