Tag Archives: John Birch Society

January 20, 2013 · 5:37 PM

Joe Scarborough: Republicans Only Kept House Majority Because Of Gerrymandering

Even though he’s been speaking truth to (Republican) power lately, I’m still not a Scarborough fan…

Think Progress

MSNBC host and former Republican Congressman Joe Scarborough admitted on Sunday that Republicans only kept their majority in the House of Representatives as a result of gerrymandering, noting that the GOP received less votes than Democrats in the 2012 election. Scarborough argued that Republicans must prevent radical ultra-conservative voices from dominating the party’s message and pointed out that the GOP is already losing electoral ground among voters who view it as too extreme and out of touch with middle class Americans:

SCARBOROUGH: William F. Buckley in the 1960,s at some point had to start defining the boundaries of conservatism. He went after the John Birch Society, Ayn Rand, George Wallace. That has to happen again with this party because it’s getting smaller and smaller. In this debate, we actually have conservative thinkers, talking about Ronald Reagan being a RINO — a Republican in name only, because he supported an assault weapons ban. They keep pushing themselves closer and closer to the cliff. But I just have to say one other really important point, because I made a mistake over the past month talking about how Republicans have also won a majority in the House. As this article I was referencing mentioned, we actually got a minority of votes nationwide in House races. It was just gerrymandering from 2010 that gave us the majority.

Watch it:

Indeed, a recent Republican State Leadership Committee report boasted that the only reason the GOP controls the House of Representatives is because state legislatures gerrymandered congressional districts in blue states. “Controlling the redistricting process in these states would have the greatest impact on determining how both state legislative and congressional district boundaries would be drawn,” the report reads.

“Aggregated numbers show voters pulled the lever for Republicans only 49 percent of the time in congressional races, suggesting that 2012 could have been a repeat of 2008, when voters gave control of the White House and both chambers of Congress to Democrats. But, as we see today, that was not the case.”

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March 28, 2011 · 3:25 AM

A brief perspective on the Koch brothers

The billionaire brothers whose political action committee gave Gov. Scott Walker $43,000 and helped fund a multi-million dollar attack ad campaign against his opponent during the 2010 gubernatorial election have quietly opened a lobbying office in Madison just off the Capitol Square

Who are the Koch Brothers?   Few people know that they were instrumental in organizing the “Tea Party“.   

Their father, Fred Koch was a founding member of the radical right-wing   John Birch Society. 

The same group that may have attributed to the assassination JFK:

(M1) Wanted for Treason, a handbill published by supporters of the John Birch Society and handed out in Dallas before President John F. Kennedy arrived on his visit (November, 1963)

1. Betraying the Constitution (which he swore to uphold). He is turning the sovereignty of the US over to the Communist controlled United Nations. He is betraying our friends (Cuba, Katanga, Portugal) and befriending our enemies (Russia, Yugoslavia, Poland).

2. He has been WRONG on innumerable issues affecting the security of the US (United Nations, Berlin Wall, Missile Removal, Cuba, Wheat deals, Test Ban Treaty, etc.).

3. He has been lax in enforcing the Communist Registration laws.

4. He has given support and encouragement to the Communist-inspired racial riots.

5. He has illegally invaded a sovereign State with federal troops.

6. He has consistently appointed Anti-Christians to Federal office. Upholds the Supreme Court in Anti-Christian rulings. Aliens and known Communists abound in Federal offices.

7. He has been caught in fantastic LIES to the American people (including personal ones like his previous marriage and divorce).

Why were members of the John Birch Society angry with John F. Kennedy in 1963?

Like father like sons?

Charles was a co-founder of Cato in 1977 and David helped to launch Citizens for a Sound Economy in 1986. This, says Moore, is the brothers simply following in “dad’s footsteps: Fred Koch was a charter member of the ultraconservative John Birch Society in 1958.”   

Dance with the Devil

The good news in 1929 for young MIT chemical engineer Fred Koch was that he had successfully developed a superior oil refinement process with a business partner.  The bad news is that he had a bitter lesson to learn about his laissez-faire competitors when virtually every major US oil company smacked him with 15 year’s worth of patent infringement lawsuits.  The net effect was that one cease-and-desist order after another was issued from the judge’s bench, and until the legal process could sort itself out, Fred Koch was – for all practical purposes – aced out of the US oil market.  And the bills still needed to be paid.

So what to do?  Fortunately, the Unseen Hand pointed the way to Soviet Moscow, where totalitarian dictator Josef Stalin was rolling out his first Five Year Plan for sweeping industrialization.  And he was especially interested in oil engineers.

“We are the world’s greatest market, and we are prepared to order a large amount of goods and pay for them,”  - Josef Stalin, 1932

Fred Koch answered the call, and signed a $5 million deal in 1929 to build 15 refineries in the Soviet Socialistic Republic, thus providing a substantial wet kiss to the cause of worldwide socialism everywhere.  Koch and his partner provided equipment and oversaw construction and installation, and quickly became Comrade Stalin’s number one go-to refinery contractor.

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March 6, 2011 · 2:59 AM

Glenn Beck Exposes FreedomWorks Fisting (A DC Douglas Tweak)

H/t Neonzx

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August 24, 2010 · 12:08 AM

More On Koch Bothers Insidious Role In Crafting The Modern Right

Think Progress

This morning, the New Yorker’s Jane Mayer published an explosive investigative piece detailing the role of the Koch family in orchestrating not only the Tea Party movement, but much of the modern right-wing infrastructure. The brothers David and Charles Koch, heirs to the oil and chemical conglomerate Koch Industries, have founded or funded dozens of conservative or libertarian publications, think tanks, and attack groups. Their father, Fred Koch, similarly fueled the paranoid right-wing movements of the fifties and sixties through his financing of the John Birch Society.

Mayer’s piece builds off the original reporting conducted by ThinkProgress since the very beginning of the Tea Party movement. Here’s a review of what we’ve reported:

– In April 2009, ThinkProgress revealed that Americans for Prosperity, a group founded by David Koch, was helping to plan dozens of the first national Tea Party rallies. Americans for Prosperity staffers organized events, from making reservations, to providing talking points and signs, to calling activists to encourage them to participate.

– In August 2009, ThinkProgress obtained an exclusive memo from a Tea Party group supported by Koch’s Americans for Prosperity. The memo outlined various ways for Tea Party activists to intimidate Democratic lawmakers and disrupt their town hall meetings on health reform. ThinkProgress published half a dozen articles exposing the role of Koch-funded groups like “Patients United” in encouraging opposition to health reform. For instance, in Virginia, a Koch-funded operative Ben Marchi assisted a birther who followed Rep. Tom Perriello (D-VA) around, yelling at him at town hall meetings.

– The Wonk Room reported on thirty years of Koch Industry environmental front groups. The timeline showed how Koch tried desperately to smear the cap and trade system set up to address acid rain with a “grassroots” group without a single grassroots member.

– At Rep. Michele Bachmann’s (R-MN) “House Call” rally, ThinkProgress produced a video report exposing Koch for paying for dozens of buses for anti-health reform activists to reach DC. We also captured the picture of a large banner comparing health reform to the Holocaust.

– The Wonk Room investigated Koch Industries’ role in the effort to repeal AB 32, the landmark California climate change clean energy law. The Wonk Room’s video report revealed how Koch Industries’ reliance on high-carbon Canadian crude would become less profitable if similar laws like AB 32 are enacted around the country.   Coninue reading…

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