America Is For Sale, And The Kochs Are Buyers

Thanks to the richest brothers on the planet we now know what the price tag on democracy is: $889 million. That’s what the Kochs are willing to spend to purchase the White House, the Senate and the House of Representatives. The price seems a little low, considering the rich heritage of the merchandise…after all, we are talking about two and a half centuries of what Thomas Jefferson called a “great experiment…which we trust will end in establishing the fact, that man may be governed by reason and truth.” Seems Jefferson was wrong though; we will now be ruled by money. A bit tawdry to put a price tag on previously revered entities once occupied by incorruptible giants like Jefferson, Lincoln, Roosevelt, Moynihan, Stevenson, Baker, and the like. The fact that the previous owner of the White House was a black man may have the dropped the price a bit.

Ted Cruz was on TV the other day decrying liberals who depict the Kochs as “the nexus of all evil.” Ted’s only half right. The Kochs need corrupt, maniacal, right-wing zealots like Cruz to complete the nexus. The list of Koch supplicants is a mile long; it includes nearly every conservative nut job one can imagine—Paul Ryan, Scott Walker, Joni Ernst, Louis Gohmert—the crazier the better. Being a Koch-funded politician has become quite profitable. The median wealth of a typical congressman is now over $1 million. That’s nice for them, but bad for the rest of us who need government to work for all the people, not just Mr. Burns, Old Man Potter, and Ebenezer Scrooge.

You see, the Kochs are nuttier than pet squirrels, and their politics make Himmler seem like a moderate. Their forebears were notorious Nazis, and their father was the founder of the John Birch Society. Throw in millions from their wildly lucrative businesses, and you’ve got a fascist, imperious concoction cloaked in a lot of extremist “freedom of enterprise” rhetoric.

The Kochs’ megalomaniacal goal of transforming America from a democracy to oligarchy began in 1963 when Koch the father paid for and distributed “JFK: Wanted For Treason Posters” in Dallas in November 1963. (You see the super-rich were paying 78% income taxes under Kennedy, who also wanted to gut the power of Texas oil millionaires who paid no taxes.) A half century later the transformation is nearly complete. If the Kochs get enough of their pawns elected, we will see the end of health care access for the poor, the eradication of Social Security and Medicare, the end of public education, the perpetuation of a permanently crumbling infrastructure, and the disappearance of the middle class. The new socioeconomic strata will consist of two levels: the super-rich and the super-poor. The America of Koch will consist of yacht owners sailing past homeless vagrants sleeping on the beach; San Simeon-like castles towering above decaying slums; beggars herded into detention camps so as not to bother the 1% with their dreary needs. The Third Reich without the concern for its citizens.

Let’s officially dispense with the charade. We can drop the superfluous and misleading political titles, like Mitch McConnell, Senate Majority Leader from Kentucky…or House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio. From now on they should be addressed as Mitch McConnell, the distinguished leader of Koch Industries, and John Boehner, the Koch spokesperson in the House.

What can we do about all this? It’s simple: don’t ever vote for a Republican again as long as you live. And boycott all Koch industry products.

http://www.amazon.com/Presidents-Mortician-Tim-Fleming-ebook/dp/B00I6GNPD4