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Koch Brothers Interfere in Local Election 5/8/2014 8:24:48 AM
The local zoo in Columbus, Ohio, lost a referendum to update, thanks to a commerical financed by Charles and David Moneybags.
Most people are familiar with the furor that resulted from Governor Scott Walker’s decision to deny Wisconsin teachers the right to negotiate. That’s when we first heard the name Koch brothers, at least it’s the first time I personally heard about them. The Kochs went on to spend something like 100 million dollars on the 2012 election. This was mere pocket change for them. They were worth 31 billion dollars each last year. The last Fortune magazine has them earning forty million each. They own some refineries, and if they close them a little early for “maintenance,” as they did in the Midwest last winter, they can make up that 100 million in the blink of an eye.
Okay, that’s national politics. The democrats have donors like George Soros and the former mayor of New York City, Michael Bloomberg, who can compete with the oil barons on those issues. Some of the biggest unions also kick in.
The issue in this article is interference in local affairs. Columbus, Ohio wanted to update its zoo, but it took a referendum to do it. It was called issue six on the ballot. The Kochs are blood brothers with Grover Norquist who has vowed to drown government in the bathtub. They provided those who opposed the upgrade with a commercial that made Karl Rove’s telephone campaign to slander former Texas governor Anne Richards, claiming she was a lesbian (Well, she has a daughter, so if she was, she was at least bi) look like a tiddlywinks match. The commerical claimed Issue 6 would raise taxes 105 percent. That’s a bald-faced lie. Issue 6 would cost the owner of a $100,000 house $23 a year.
It all goes back to Barry Goldwater who doesn’t get enough credit for people like Andrew Breitbart who listened to the first few minutes of Shirley Shabazz’s speech and decided she was a racist (She isn’t; she was trying to rally all poor people, black and white, to vote together). Barry scolded his conservative supporters for not being dedicated enough to ideology. He told them you had an obligation to do everything in your power (the implication was lie right and left and bug senators’ offices) to make sure conservative philosophy prevailed in every election. This idea has now led to Tea Party members targeting people like John McCain, who once joined with Russ Feingold, a senator from Wisconsin, to write a bill that would limit the amount of money being tossed around in national elections. At the time they weren’t worried about local elections. That was peanuts. We just had an election in Florida, in a district that had been Republican for 53 years. It was neck and neck. The Kochs, Rove and other GOP contributors spent so much money (so did the democrats), that they broke Michelle Bachmann’s record for money spent on a congressional election. The Republican squeaked out a win.
Hopefully democratic candidates will remind voters what the Koch brothers did in Columbus, Ohio. What’s next, school board elections?
The Koch brothers are bad, but they’re not the worst. That would be Sheldon Adelson, whom the national press keeps referring to as a Las Vegas casino owner. Yes, he owns a casino or two or three in Las Vegas, but his big money comes from China. Gambling is illegal on the mainland, but Adelson wrangled a deal to build the largest casino in the world on Macau. Adelson had to float an IPO to avoid bankruptcy, but he bribed a Chinese official who allowed it. This is the sort of man that Jeb Bush, Chris Christie and other possible 2016 candidates for president are courting. He’s going to want something in return. He hates online gambling, and he wants legislation passed to outlaw it. Even democrats are afraid to stand up to him.
Democrats maintain that American voters go to the poll and repeatedly vote against themselves. We’re talking about 99% vs. one percent. The democrats should win back the House in a landslide, but the GOP has convinced the American public that the Affordable Health Care Act is a swindle. I just read an article that claimed President Obama lied when he said if you like your insurance you could keep it. Well, if you don’t get your insurance from the company you work for and you’re under 65, you were probably buying junk insurance that didn’t cover much. Under the Affordable Health Care Act insurance companies can’t get away with that anymore. And they can’t turn you down if you have a prior existing condition, and they have to let you cover your kids until they’re 26. Yes, the internet site wasn’t ready on time, but eventually eight and a half million did sign up. There must be something there that they like. I have to mention the ER, then I’ll quit. Freeloaders are using the ER for health care. They don’t think they need to buy insurance because there’s a law that says the hospital can’t turn you away. That’s why it costs so much to use the ER. Something like $600 when you walk through the door. Guess who pays that? The government does and the government is you. Also if the Affordable Health Care Law was such a terrible idea, why did the Heritage Foundation, a conservative “think” tank, recommend it? Obama wanted single payer for everybody like most industrial countries have. He couldn’t get it because the Blue Dogs, democrats who sometimes vote for guns and “right to life” legislation, wouldn’t vote for it. I’m 69 years old; I have Medicare and a Medicare supplement that I’m very happy with. It pays for everything with the occasional co-pay. I pay $189 a month. $110 is deducted from social security; the rest goes to the supplement.
Please know the issues before you vote for somebody like Michelle Bachmann. Thankfully she’s not running, but they found somebody worse, Tom Emmer who believes waitresses and bartenders shouldn’t get minimum wage because they make $100,000 year. Where, on Mars?
