Suggested Reading for Week Ending 8/31
Why would someone in Gaza care about protesters in Ferguson? One argument is that the resurgence of popular uprisings around the world — the Occupy movement and the Arab Spring, for example — has created a kind of global protest culture, one that unites people against oppression across nations. As Goldhammer puts it, there’s now a “certain transnational homogeneity to scenes of riot police clashing with demonstrators.”
At a secret meeting of elite donors convened by the Koch brothers, McConnell laid out his plan for shrinking the federal government and whined about having to vote on minimum wage bills.
In 2010, Rupert Murdoch, whose News Corp. has been an ALEC member, declared K-12 public education “a $500 billion sector in the U.S. alone that is waiting desperately to be transformed.”
And there were incredible prizes to be won as long as the bubble continued to swell, as long as the fiction of Wall Street as an alternative to democratic government became more and more plausible. Maybe the Glass-Steagall act could finally be repealed; maybe the SEC could finally be grounded; maybe antitrust could finally be halted. And, most enticingly of all, maybe Social Security could finally be “privatized” in accordance with the right-wing fantasy of long standing.
The guy with the Long Island summer residence says that income inequality is hurting his quality of life. Because of the helicopter noise of the guy he probably reports to. I’m quite sure he is indifferent to his own noise produced by his late model BMW whizzing its fumes in the face his maid waiting at the bus stop. Because you know … that’s just freedom.
The GOP Data Trust, the company the RNC has been working with on its Beacon effort, is now going to be accessing the voter data from the Kochs’ company, but apparently all of the data will be dumped into the Kochs’ system. Which arguably means the Koch brothers essentially own the Republican party, not just its Senate candidates.
Documents obtained by Republic Report reveal for the first time that the group was actually founded by none other than Charles Koch, the petrochemical, manufacturing, and oil refining tycoon worth an estimated $52 billion.
From Birmingham to Ferguson, the only progress in 50 years is technology
The Kochs’ Anti-Civil Rights Roots:
New Docs Expose Charles Koch’s Ties to John Birch Society