How Billionaires Bagged the Tea Party

The Creeping Fascism of American Politics

FOCUS: States Unite Against Citizens United

Dimon's Deja Vu Debacle

Cut It Out: An Open Letter to Black Bloc Anarchists

This Is What Tyranny Looks Like

Jeet Heer: "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."

Scenes from a Tea Party rally, Capitol Hill, 03/16/10. (photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

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+17 # Guest 2010-09-04 09:33

The Tea Party is nothing but a farce. They protested against affordable health care, but not wall street. They are a disgrace to country for defending the right.

+23 # Guest 2010-09-04 09:47

God, it must be tough to be a Teabagger and have to confess to being made a whore to corporate greed and being played like a bad violin. Getting people to act against their own best interests time and time again is a skill that various corporate interests have made a fine art of. Too bad that it is so easy to play people for chumps and so hard to get them to actually investigate, study and think for themselves. Protecting what is in the best interests of EVERYONE shouldn't be such a hard sell, but so many just can't seem to get it. I don't intend to persuade any teabagger into being a liberal but who is going to protect them from themselves, or even protect us, period? The big money is betting on that never happening. It's probably a good bet at that. For shame.

+7 # Guest 2010-09-04 10:31

How are the Tea Party dupes going to be convinced they have been played? Who can communicate with them in a language they can understand and through a medium they will pay attention to? I was just reading about christwire.com and that may be the answer. Take every right talking point and diversion and expand it to beyond extreme. Follow Glenn Beck's example until the new radical version falls under the weight of its own absurdity.

Here's christware response to being outed as satire.

http://christwire.org/2010/09/satire-poes-law-and-the-new-york-times-campaign-to-discredit-the-evangelical-message-of-christwire/

+17 # Guest 2010-09-04 10:12

The media is partly at faulty, giving this ridiculous movement so much publicity. There have always been unintelligent people around, people who vote against their own best interests. Responsible journalists should let people know who is behind such movements instead of giving them unmerited attention.

+14 # Guest 2010-09-04 13:04

Helen, you are so correct. The media is no longer the 4th Estate, protecting the interests of the Constitution and educating the public. Rather it has been bought and paid for in many instances and reflects the corporate voices of those who hold the economic power. Maybe we should start examining the terror from within as it seems to be marching in lock step with those that cover themselves with Righteousness.

+8 # Guest 2010-09-04 15:55

This article is correct.Charles de Ganahl and David H. Koch epitomize greed.

Rather than paying their fair share of taxes, they work to abolish estate taxes forever, reducing even further the badly damaged progressive income taxation system. Worth $20 billion each, with Buffet and Gates and Sam Walton's heirs they are the 9 richest Americans.

Ironically, while trying to destroy the public educational system through charter schools, vouchers and electing right wing school board members, they push for more prisons.

Their think tanks invent "studies" promoting dubious efficacy of those for-profit gulags, such as the MTC prison that was driven from Ontario several years ago. MTC had a tragic escape in July that cost the lives of vacationing seniors.

Claiming they're "libertarians" the Kochs yet support institutions promoting a drug war that's generated over a million U.S. prisoners, funding the American Legislative Exchange council to do this.

+5 # Guest 2010-09-04 16:36

Miller has narrowly won the election thanks to a ballot initiative that would deny young women abortions without the notification of the very parents who may have abused them in the first place.

Very few liberal independents or Democrats showed for the vote. Miller was elected by 1.5% of the vote where only 8% of voters cast ballots for him.

The Tea Party (really, Charles de Ganahl and David H. Koch) has bought his and many other elections. It's much cheaper to buy these loose cannons than to pay estate taxes. They're worth $20 billion each. For the numerically challenged, that's twenty thousand million! They know if they get these tools into Congress, they'll be home free!

Some of these candidates act suspiciously like they are mentally ill: Senate candidates Miller and Angle, Governor Brewer, etc. That doesn't dissuade the angry masses from supporting them.

+4 # Guest 2010-09-05 14:27

The real tragedy is the collapse of our educational system, which, some might argue was gutted for this very reason-- to strip the American public of their critical thinking skills. We've become a nation of easy marks and no one knows it better than these fat cats standing on our necks, lining up for more champagne.

+3 # Guest 2010-09-05 14:27

What if both sides are partially correct?

Monopoly capitalism is served equally by Neo-liberals AND wealthy conservatives, Democrats and Republicans (Nader's - Republicrats). Leaving the middleclass, well stuck in the middle to fend for itself no matter what platitudes the jabbering class might espouse.

0 # Guest 2010-09-08 06:05

What evidence does this author have that the Koch's bankrolled the tea partiers? I saw none in this article.

The Koch's are indeed lifelong conservatives and/or libertarians and have been donating to free market organizations (as well as educational, science, and art organizations) for decades but I know of no information that ties them in to the tea party people who seem to me to be primarily self-financed grass-root organizations except, perhaps, for the Freedom Works Dick Armey wing, which, to the best of my knowledge, gets no money from the Koch's.

I think it is slanderous to charge the Koch's with something in the headline and then not present any factual information to support the headline.

Lee Nason
New Bedford, Massachusetts

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