[andyt]

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/how-billionaires-bagged-the-tea-party/article1695897/

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...the largely hidden role of Dave and Charles Koch, two brothers whose personal fortune, rooted in the oil industry and manufacturing, puts them in the same league as Bill Gates and Warren Buffett...

As hard-core libertarians who oppose most government social policy, the brothers Koch have given tens of millions of dollars over the years to right-wing think tanks and political-action groups. Their largesse has been instrumental in turning the Tea Party movement into a force in U.S. political life. An adviser to Barack Obama has described it as “a grassroots citizens' movement brought to you by a bunch of oil billionaires.”...

The idea of populist billionaires seems, on its face, absurd. The original U.S. populist movement arose in the late 19th century in opposition to big business, especially banks and railways, to argue for greater communal control of key economic decisions. This is exactly the tradition the Kochs have spent a lifetime fighting, spending a king's ransom.


There are two ways to think about their plutocratic populism. One is to see it simply as a well-executed con game: Using shell organizations and slippery rhetoric, the Kochs have duped many ordinary Americans into thinking that they are fighting powerful vested interests when the result will allow big business to be further entrenched. This is the implicit thinking governing Ms. Mayer's article and there is truth to it.

Everyone loves to root for the underdog. The mystifying thing about the success of right-wing populism is the way it can cast even jowly, cigar-chomping plutocrats in the role of David (or rather Dave) fighting the Goliath of big government.

[Pseudonym]

Here is a link to the article in the New Yorker unto which the above article refers.http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/08/30/100830fa_fact_mayer

[Pseudonym]

The New Yorker article is rather boring, I got through a bit over half of it before I got tired of the conspiracy mongering. I'll leave it up if anyone else wants to check it out.

Nice to hear about some big contributors to libertarian causes though.

[The_Doctor]

I bet most supporters of the Tea Party don't know what they are getting into by voting tea party. I believe the Tea Party is trying to sneakly trying to pass Libertarianism as Conservatism.

I bet a whole majority want to keep most government programs because they benefit from them.

[Pseudonym]

What are they getting into? Isn't it hard to slip a secret agenda into a diffuse group without a central authority?

[The_Doctor]

Do most Conservatives really want to get rid of the Department of Education? Heck they are supporting Libertarians. Which supports legalizing drugs and prostitution. The ironic thing about it is that Conservatives oppose legalizing drugs and prostitution.

Most Conservatives don't know what they are getting into.

[Lemmy]

To be fair, most libertarians support public education and few libertarians belong to the Libertarian Party. The Libertarian Party is a big bag of crazy.

[Dragom]

If it isn't proof of significant fiscal support and helpful direction from a organization left in place by the late Otto "Scarface" Skorzeny it really isn't going to help.

[andyt]

If you read the article, it shows that Randolph Hearst did exactly the same thing:

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But it doesn't do justice to the emotional power of the Kochs' pitch. Despite its seeming absurdity, right-wing populism is a brand that has been marketed successfully for nearly 80 years. So we might want to ask why plutocrats have been allowed to style themselves as avatars for the common man and woman.

$1:

Looking back on the Hearst newspapers of the 1930s as well as like-thinking peers such as the Chicago Tribune and Reader's Digest, it is interesting to notice how often they focus on the stories of supposedly persecuted millionaires, rich men whom they portrayed as the victims of a malicious state. In The New Republic in 1934, journalist Richard Neuberger, who would go on to become a U.S. senator, complained about “the current crusade to create martyrs out of millionaires.”

I

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n her New Yorker article, Ms. Mayer states: “Charles Koch, in a newsletter sent to his 70,000 employees, compared the Obama administration to the regime of the Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez. The Kochs' sense of imperilment is somewhat puzzling. Income inequality in America is greater than it has been since the 1920s, and since the 1970s the tax rates of the wealthiest have fallen more than those of the middle class.”

[BartSimpson]

The_Doctor The_Doctor:

Do most Conservatives really want to get rid of the Department of Education?

Yes, we do. It would be better to disband the agency and return the funding for it to the states. The agency exists by diverting Federal average daily attendance funding from schools to its budget. In short, classrooms received less funding after 1980 when this agency was created.

What does this wonderful agency do?

They come up with regulations.

Like how many electrical outlets have to be in a classroom or even a janitorial closet on a school campus.

Like requiring US history curriculums to note that the most important event in all of US history was the Seneca Falls Declaration of women's rights. No kidding.

Like requiring 'family health' education (aka, sex education) studies for children as young as five.

Like dictating the kinds of grass that can be used for lawns at schools (which benefits seed farmers from southern Oregon).

Like prohibiting the planting of fruit trees on public school campuses so children don't eat free fruit instead of eating fruit sold to the school by farmers who lobbied for this law. They also passed a law that prohibits school kids from eating fruits and vegetables from school farm programs. Such food has to be used for animal feed per their regulations.

Like requiring schools to be built by union labor, increasing the cost of building a school well over that of prevailing construction costs in every city in America.

And etc. and, yes, we lived without this agency for 200 years and we can live without it again.

[andyt]

Come to Canada, we don't have a national dept of education. Oh, wait, you're a teabagger - maybe better stay home.

[bootlegga]

BartSimpson BartSimpson:

The_Doctor The_Doctor:

Do most Conservatives really want to get rid of the Department of Education?

Yes, we do.

I wish Canada had a federal department of education (we don't because education is under the purview of the provinces).

I feel Canadian students sometimes suffer because of the lack of consistency from one province to the next. As it stands now, students of schools in wealthier provinces do better on exams than those from poorer provinces (much like in the US where it's divided by urban and suburban).

I think Canada would be better off with consistent standards across the country, instead of a mish-mash of standards.

[andyt]

bootlegga bootlegga:

BartSimpson BartSimpson:

The_Doctor The_Doctor:

Do most Conservatives really want to get rid of the Department of Education?

Yes, we do.

I wish Canada had a federal department of education (we don't because education is under the purview of the provinces).

I feel Canadian students sometimes suffer because of the lack of consistency from one province to the next. As it stands now, students of schools in wealthier provinces do better on exams than those from poorer provinces (much like in the US where it's divided by urban and suburban).

I think Canada would be better off with consistent standards across the country, instead of a mish-mash of standards.

I would start with just having consistent funding for school districts across the province, and that funding being sufficient so that even poor districts can give their kids enrichment. Instead, rich districts are able to fundraise big bucks for enrichment, which the poor districts can't afford.
'
OTOH, apparently the BC teachers are going for a big wage increase this year. I say fuck em - times are tough and they earn enough money.

[BartSimpson]

bootlegga bootlegga:

BartSimpson BartSimpson:

The_Doctor The_Doctor:

Do most Conservatives really want to get rid of the Department of Education?

Yes, we do.

I wish Canada had a federal department of education (we don't because education is under the purview of the provinces).

I feel Canadian students sometimes suffer because of the lack of consistency from one province to the next. As it stands now, students of schools in wealthier provinces do better on exams than those from poorer provinces (much like in the US where it's divided by urban and suburban).

I think Canada would be better off with consistent standards across the country, instead of a mish-mash of standards.

In the US it is in recent years the rural kids and especially home schooled kids who do the best on upper division language, comprehension, and mathematics. The further away a child is from the educrats, the better they seem to do. Urban kids are the focus of most Federal and state educrats and they're the ones who do the worst.

[bootlegga]

BartSimpson BartSimpson:

bootlegga bootlegga:

I wish Canada had a federal department of education (we don't because education is under the purview of the provinces).

I feel Canadian students sometimes suffer because of the lack of consistency from one province to the next. As it stands now, students of schools in wealthier provinces do better on exams than those from poorer provinces (much like in the US where it's divided by urban and suburban).

I think Canada would be better off with consistent standards across the country, instead of a mish-mash of standards.

In the US it is in recent years the rural kids and especially home schooled kids who do the best on upper division language, comprehension, and mathematics. The further away a child is from the educrats, the better they seem to do. Urban kids are the focus of most Federal and state educrats and they're the ones who do the worst.

Yes, but given that most school funding in the US is raised by local school districts based on property taxes, suburban areas with larger, more expensive homes raise proportionately far more than urban areas with smaller, less expensive homes. That means that suburban schools have better equipment (be it libraries, PC labs, A/V equipment, sports equipment, whatever) and can pay better salaries to teachers than urban schools can.

That's one of the big reasons urban kids test scores are lower than those of suburban kids. Of course societal factors like gang culture, violence, poverty, etc. weigh heavily too in those scores, but given that the kids don't even have the same facilities puts them behind the eight ball right from the get go.