Okay, is Harry Reid a troll? And, if so, is he any good at it?
About The Author
BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
There should be a warning for links to Salon.
Yeah what was that? A balanced article comparing two sludge barons giving 250 million this year to influence an election to 2006 and George Soros. It doesn’t fit. They act like the Koch billionaires are just another bump in the road of democracy. These guys are almost as dangerous as Rupert Murdoch and his Fox Spews channel.
We’re in a fight for our very lives and some dumb ass gets all squishy. Good grief. This is why the GOP owns the House and could take the Senate. We refuse to recognize them as the enemy. Not an opponent… no, they are the enemy. And they must be… dealt with.
That’s it right there. Its no joke and the time is past to be writing bullshit. Harry Reid needs to get out the megaphone and yell the Koch name from the mountain top. He needs to yell everything he says because no one can hear him when he speaks.
Fight the Gandhi style battle.. boycott, boycott, boycott
Koch Products & Companies Include:
Home/Office papers:
Other:
– American Greetings
(Kochs own minority
share)
– Guardian Glass
(Kochs own 44%)
Building supplies:
– Georgia Pacific
Canadian Tar Sands
Gander Mountain? Say it ain’t so! It figures, though. Guns.
Thanks for the list. I just got back from the grocery store and don’t think I bought anything from them. I probably shouldn’t have bought paper plates. Time to go paperless!
Boycotts are good, but if the list of products/goods to avoid is long, the implementation isn’t easy for those that want to participate. A list of products/goods that are okay to buy instead of Koch products/goods would be more helpful. Although there may not be any decent alternates to some of the Koch products.
For example, how much better is it to buy Hallmark cards instead of American Greetings? Billionaire Donald J Hall is an active funder of the Republican party and candidates (check out Open Secrets for a listing of his reported donations — not quite in bagger territory but $2,500 to Herman Cain is close enough) as was his wife and as is Junior (here with GWB) and who knows how many others in his family.
it would be interesting to learn that their bottom line is being affected- boycott has been discussed for going on 4 yrs now but I’ve never read anything about impact.
Not likely any impact because the boycott hasn’t actually been implemented for use by people that don’t have the time or skill to figure out what should be boycotted and what’s okay to buy.
Economic boycotting is always a work in progress. Not only do you need to hit the manufacturers, but you also need to hit the retailers and the service providers.
Work your way into it, and do research.
I would be more than willing to list all of the products/services that I know are owned/operated by fascists, and I’m sure others have their own lists.
Here’s a great link to use.
http://influenceexplorer.com/
thanks!
Yes. This is why libertarian logic continues to fail.
I like and try to participate in Israeli-BDS as much as I can, but it’s often difficult to know who/what needs to be avoided. I think the value of contemporary boycott resides in awareness of the cause itself rather than the actual boycotting of the goods/services.
I doubt Harry wins many converts but he does a good job of keeping issues where we have the advantage front and center and perhaps it fires up the base to some extent.
I think it remains to be seen if he’s “good at it”–but I think it’s interesting that pointing out “yeah but Kochs…” is the answer to “Soros funded” because it kind of seems like circa 2009-or-10, Glenn Beck started in on Tides Foundation and libs digging in on the Kochs, even though they have been at the “better political manipulation through throwing cash at things” quest far longer and harder, is the response to that. As it is though, I think non-political people, who only sort of follow the news, have no idea about dark money or PACs or any of it. Maybe if more people knew that a handful of players were responsible for desseminating scary influential memes by the sheer virture of being able to buy choirs of people to talk those memes up, they’d start double-checking just who is backing pols and policies that don’t seem to be especially helpful to regular people or even irregular ones. I can’t kick about what he’s doing, here.
“Dial it back”? The Koch Brothers are the greatest threat to Democracy currently extant in the USA.
The Koch Brothers are the greatest threat to Democracy currently extant in the USA.
Along with Rupert Murdoch, Art Pope and a few others.
There are others, of course, but the Koch’s are the biggest.
Booman complains about people being cynical and disengaged… but the problem isn’t those of us who are cynical. We’ve taken the temperature of the electorate and found they are willing to tolerate the evil Koch brothers.
So how do you rouse the electorate from its slumber? You let the barbarians rape and pillage the land, because…
…all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.
So let the Koch brothers and the 0.1% abuse and usurp. Let them evince their design to reduce us under absolute Despotism…
And then let us see how much our fellow citizens actually care.
We’ve taken the temperature of the electorate and found they are willing to tolerate the evil Koch brothers.
Which is why Republican SuperPACs were devastatingly effective during the 2012 election cycle, right?
I don’t know… were they? We lost 63 House seats in 2010 and got 8 back in 2012. 58 million people voted for republican candidates in 2012. More voted for Romney. It’s good that lots of democrats showed up to vote in 2012. Turnout went from 38 million democratic voters in 2010 to 59 million voters in 2012. Imagine how life would be different if those 20 million voters had bothered to show up in 2010.
I don’t know… were they?
No, they were massively ineffective, and burned hundreds of millions of dollars on losing elections on behalf of a handful if rich old lunatics.
Imagine how life would be different if those 20 million voters had bothered to show up in 2010.
It would have been better, but I don’t think it makes a lot of sense to attribute their failure to show up to the Koch brothers and their ilk.
Ignoring the vast influence of Koch money in state elections is a huge mistake. It’s not all about national elections.
I like what he is doing. He apparently learned from his experience on Romney’s taxes (and let’s not forget….Romney never showed that Reid was wrong) that he could make a difference.
He has a megaphone, why not use it?
.
I assume he was correct about the taxes; hoping we see the returns someday,
If not him – then who?
If not now – then when?
Give ’em hell, Harry!
Yes and yes.
Recalling how Harry Reid successfully tweaked Mitt Romney about his tax returns, I would answer yes to both.
I don’t know about Harry Reid, but I don’t think Charles Koch is doing himself any favors by writing whiny editorials in the Wall Street Journal. I’m sure anyone else who’s ever been criticized for pouring millions of dollars into an anti-government propaganda machine will understand the hell he’s been through, but for some reason I’m unmoved by his plight. I guess I just lack empathy.