Tornado Alley (PROG)

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Koch Brother: My Buying Congress Is Just Like Blacks Fighting To End Slavery

Political donor and billionaire Charles Koch just had the sheer nerve to compare his ultra-conservative organization’s efforts to dismantle America’s public institutions and all government regulations to the fight to end slavery and secure equal rights for women and minorities.

It’s an astonishingly offensive statement that highlights just how extreme the views of the Koch Brothers are. Reading between the lines, the comparison to the civil rights movement indicates that he feels that he and the other billionaire robber-barons are enslaved by government regulations and the burden of taxes – and that he will fight as hard as the civil rights leaders did to get what he wants.

On Sunday at a hotel in California, Koch implored a group of wealthy conservatives to become even more supportive in his reckless libertarian agenda – and used leaders such as the Founding Fathers, Martin Luther King, Jr. and abolitionist Frederick Douglass as parallels to what the Koch Brothers intend to do. Using inspirational language mostly reserved for the abolitionists, suffragettes and civil rights leaders – people who have made REAL change for the better of humanity – Koch uttered this grossly inappropriate statement:

“They all sought to overcome an injustice. And we, too, are seeking to right injustices that are holding our country back.”

Whining that he and his fellow conservatives were fighting an uphill battle, he added:

“To defy the tremendous odds stacked against them, they all had—not just the Founding Fathers—to commit their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor, often at great personal sacrifice. So that’s the challenge before us. We’re all going to have to raise our efforts to the next level.”

Koch said this to the an influential group of about 450 rich, predominately white donors seeking political candidates to back. Koch also reported that one of his group’s causes – overhauling America’s criminal justice system to reduce the amount of nonviolent prisoners – had made progress. He pitched to the room’s mostly-white audience and said, “My hope is that if it can be achieved, not only will it provide opportunity for hundreds of thousands of families, but it will help ease racial tensions, which is critical for the future of this country.”

“We’re all going to have to raise our efforts to the next level. We’re going to have to build, with tens of millions of other Americans, the most effective movement in history for helping people improve their lives and making the world a better place.”

Disguising his dangerous libertarian agenda with a few feel-good statements, Koch said, “We aim … to remove the shackles preventing all Americans, especially the disadvantaged, from pursuing their dreams.”

Americans, don’t be fooled. Charles Koch and his brother David Koch are both worth approximately $51 billion individually, and are in charge of a pernicious network of some seventy-plus groups that are working to advance the Koch Brothers’ neo-fascist agenda. You can bet that whoever they choose for the Republican nomination will fight tooth and nail to privatize everything from public schools to Social Security to the Postal Service if elected. At this conference, five Republican presidential candidates (Marco Rubio, Scott Walker, Carly Fiorina, Jeb Bush and Ted Cruz) were also scheduled to speak, furthering the conservative agenda and putting the future of America in complete jeopardy.

Fortunately, a few people got it right during this weekend-long conservative conference. A small gathering of protesters showed up at Koch’s event holding signs that said, “Koch kills democracy.” They wouldn’t be exaggerating at all.
http://www.occupydemocrats.com/koch-brother-my-buying-congress-is-just-like-blacks-fighting-to-end-slavery/