Toxic Brew: The Tea Parties
George Monbiot | 27.10.2010 10:26 | Analysis | Globalisation | Sheffield | World
The Tea Party movement is remarkable in two respects. It is one of the biggest exercises in false consciousness the world has ever seen. And it is the biggest astroturf operation in history. These accomplishments are closely related.
An astroturf campaign is a fake grassroots movement: it purports to be a spontaneous uprising of concerned citizens, but in reality it is founded and funded by elite interests. Some astroturf campaigns have no grassroots component at all(1). Others catalyse and direct real mobilisations. The Tea Party movement belongs in the second category. It is mostly composed of passionate, well-meaning people who think they are fighting elite power, and who are unaware that they’ve been organised by the very interests they believe they are confronting. We now have powerful evidence that the movement was established and has been guided with the help of money from billionaires and big business. Much of this money, as well as much of the strategy and staffing, were provided by two brothers who run what they call “the biggest company you’ve never heard of.”(2)
Charles and David Koch own 84% of Koch Industries, which is the second-largest private company in the United States. It runs oil refineries, coal suppliers, chemical plants and logging firms. It turns over roughly $100bn a year, and the brothers are each worth $21bn(3). The company has had to pay tens of millions of dollars in fines and settlements for oil and chemical spills and other industrial accidents(4,5). The Kochs want to pay less tax, keep more profits and be restrained by less regulation. Their challenge has been to persuade the people harmed by this agenda that it’s good for them.
In July 2010, David Koch told New York magazine, “I’ve never been to a Tea Party event. No one representing the Tea Party has ever even approached me.”(6) But a new fascinating film, (Astro)Turf Wars, by Taki Oldham, tells a fuller story(7). Oldham infiltrated some of the movement’s key organising events, including the 2009 Defending the Dream summit, convened by a group called Americans for Prosperity. The film shows David Koch addressing the summit. “Five years ago,” he explains, “my brother Charles and I provided the funds to start Americans for Prosperity. It’s beyond my wildest dreams how AFP has grown into this enormous organisation.”
A convenor tells the crowd how AFP mobilised opposition to Barack Obama’s healthcare reforms. “We hit the button and we started doing the Twittering and Facebook and the phonecalls and the emails, and you turned up!” Then a series of AFP organisers tell Mr Koch how they have set up dozens of Tea Party events in their home states. He nods and beams from the podium like a chief executive receiving rosy reports from his regional sales directors. Afterwards, the delegates crowd into AFP workshops, where they are told how to run further Tea Party events(8).
Americans for Prosperity is one of several groups set up by the Kochs to promote their politics. We know their foundations have given it at least $5m(9), but few such records are in the public domain and the total could be much higher. It has toured the country organising rallies against healthcare reform and the Democrats’ attempts to tackle climate change. It provided the key organising tools which set the Tea Party movement running. The movement began when the CNBC reporter Rick Santelli called from the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange for a bankers’ revolt against the undeserving poor(10). (He proposed that the traders should hold a tea party to dump derivative securities in Lake Michigan to prevent Obama’s plan to “subsidise the losers”: by which he meant people whose mortgages had fallen into arrears). On the same day, Americans for Prosperity set up a Tea Party Facebook page and started organising Tea Party events(11).
Oldham’s film shows how AFP crafted the movement’s messages and drafted its talking points. The New Yorker magazine, in the course of a remarkable exposure of the Koch brothers’ funding networks, interviewed some of their former consultants(12). “The Koch brothers gave the money that founded [the Tea Party]”, one of them explained. “It’s like they put the seeds in the ground. Then the rainstorm comes, and the frogs come out of the mud - and they’re our candidates!” Another observed that the Kochs are smart. “This right-wing, redneck stuff works for them. They see this as a way to get things done without getting dirty themselves.”
The AFP is one of several groups established by the Koch brothers. They set up the Cato Institute, which was the first free market thinktank in the US. They also founded the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, which now fills the role once played by the economics department at Chicago University: as the originator of extreme neoliberal ideas(13,14). Fourteen of the 23 regulations that George W. Bush put on his hitlist were, according to the Wall Street Journal, first suggested by academics working at the Mercatus Center(15).
The Kochs have lavished money on more than 30 other advocacy groups, including the Heritage Foundation, the Manhattan Institute, the George C. Marshall Institute, the Reason Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute(16). These bodies have been instrumental in turning politicians away from environmental laws, social spending, taxing the rich and distributing wealth. They have shaped the widespread demand for small government. The Kochs ensure that their money works for them. “If we’re going to give a lot of money,” David Koch explained to a libertarian journalist, “we’ll make darn sure they spend it in a way that goes along with our intent. And if they make a wrong turn and start doing things we don’t agree with, we withdraw funding.”(17)
Most of these bodies call themselves “free market thinktanks”, but their trick, as (Astro)Turf Wars points out, is to conflate crony capitalism with free enterprise, and free enterprise with personal liberty. Between them they have constructed the philosophy which informs the Tea Party movement: its members mobilise for freedom, unaware that the freedom they demand is freedom for corporations to trample them into the dirt. The thinktanks the Kochs have funded devise the game and the rules by which it is played; Americans for Prosperity coaches and motivates the team.
Astroturfing is now taking off in the United Kingdom. Earlier this month Spinwatch showed how a fake grassroots group set up by health insurers helped shape the Tories’ NHS reforms(18). Billionaires and corporations are capturing the political process everywhere; anyone with an interest in democracy should be thinking about how to resist them. Nothing is real any more. Nothing is as it seems.
References:
1. See, for example, the exposure of astroturfing in Chapter 2 of my book Heat: how to stop the planet burning, 2006.
2.
http://www.portfolio.com/executives/features/2008/10/15/Profile-of-Billionaire-David-Koch/index3.html
3. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/oct/13/tea-party-billionaire-koch-brothers
4. http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/Global/usa/report/2010/3/koch-industries-secretly-fund.pdf
5. http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/08/30/100830fa_fact_mayer?currentPage=all
6. http://nymag.com/news/features/67285/
7. http://astroturfwars.org/
8. http://astroturfwars.org/
9. Greenpeace’s report on funding by the Koch brothers and their foundations shows that they spent $5m on AFP’s Hot Air tour alone. http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/Global/usa/report/2010/3/koch-industries-secretly-fund.pdf
10. http://www.cnbc.com/id/29283701/Rick_Santelli_s_Shout_Heard_Round_the_World
11. http://astroturfwars.org/
12. http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/08/30/100830fa_fact_mayer?currentPage=all
13. http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/08/30/100830fa_fact_mayer?currentPage=all
14. http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/Global/usa/report/2010/3/koch-industries-secretly-fund.pdf
15. http://mercatus.org/media_clipping/rule-breaker-washington-tiny-think-tank-wields-big-stick-regulation
16. http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/Global/usa/report/2010/3/koch-industries-secretly-fund.pdf
17. Interview with Brian Doherty, reported by The New Yorker. http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/08/30/100830fa_fact_mayer?currentPage=all
18. http://www.spinwatch.org.uk/blogs-mainmenu-29/tamasin-cave-mainmenu-107/5391-private-health-lobby-out-in-force-at-tory-conference
An astroturf campaign is a fake grassroots movement: it purports to be a spontaneous uprising of concerned citizens, but in reality it is founded and funded by elite interests. Some astroturf campaigns have no grassroots component at all(1). Others catalyse and direct real mobilisations. The Tea Party movement belongs in the second category. It is mostly composed of passionate, well-meaning people who think they are fighting elite power, and who are unaware that they’ve been organised by the very interests they believe they are confronting. We now have powerful evidence that the movement was established and has been guided with the help of money from billionaires and big business. Much of this money, as well as much of the strategy and staffing, were provided by two brothers who run what they call “the biggest company you’ve never heard of.”(2)
Charles and David Koch own 84% of Koch Industries, which is the second-largest private company in the United States. It runs oil refineries, coal suppliers, chemical plants and logging firms. It turns over roughly $100bn a year, and the brothers are each worth $21bn(3). The company has had to pay tens of millions of dollars in fines and settlements for oil and chemical spills and other industrial accidents(4,5). The Kochs want to pay less tax, keep more profits and be restrained by less regulation. Their challenge has been to persuade the people harmed by this agenda that it’s good for them.
In July 2010, David Koch told New York magazine, “I’ve never been to a Tea Party event. No one representing the Tea Party has ever even approached me.”(6) But a new fascinating film, (Astro)Turf Wars, by Taki Oldham, tells a fuller story(7). Oldham infiltrated some of the movement’s key organising events, including the 2009 Defending the Dream summit, convened by a group called Americans for Prosperity. The film shows David Koch addressing the summit. “Five years ago,” he explains, “my brother Charles and I provided the funds to start Americans for Prosperity. It’s beyond my wildest dreams how AFP has grown into this enormous organisation.”
A convenor tells the crowd how AFP mobilised opposition to Barack Obama’s healthcare reforms. “We hit the button and we started doing the Twittering and Facebook and the phonecalls and the emails, and you turned up!” Then a series of AFP organisers tell Mr Koch how they have set up dozens of Tea Party events in their home states. He nods and beams from the podium like a chief executive receiving rosy reports from his regional sales directors. Afterwards, the delegates crowd into AFP workshops, where they are told how to run further Tea Party events(8).
Americans for Prosperity is one of several groups set up by the Kochs to promote their politics. We know their foundations have given it at least $5m(9), but few such records are in the public domain and the total could be much higher. It has toured the country organising rallies against healthcare reform and the Democrats’ attempts to tackle climate change. It provided the key organising tools which set the Tea Party movement running. The movement began when the CNBC reporter Rick Santelli called from the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange for a bankers’ revolt against the undeserving poor(10). (He proposed that the traders should hold a tea party to dump derivative securities in Lake Michigan to prevent Obama’s plan to “subsidise the losers”: by which he meant people whose mortgages had fallen into arrears). On the same day, Americans for Prosperity set up a Tea Party Facebook page and started organising Tea Party events(11).
Oldham’s film shows how AFP crafted the movement’s messages and drafted its talking points. The New Yorker magazine, in the course of a remarkable exposure of the Koch brothers’ funding networks, interviewed some of their former consultants(12). “The Koch brothers gave the money that founded [the Tea Party]”, one of them explained. “It’s like they put the seeds in the ground. Then the rainstorm comes, and the frogs come out of the mud - and they’re our candidates!” Another observed that the Kochs are smart. “This right-wing, redneck stuff works for them. They see this as a way to get things done without getting dirty themselves.”
The AFP is one of several groups established by the Koch brothers. They set up the Cato Institute, which was the first free market thinktank in the US. They also founded the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, which now fills the role once played by the economics department at Chicago University: as the originator of extreme neoliberal ideas(13,14). Fourteen of the 23 regulations that George W. Bush put on his hitlist were, according to the Wall Street Journal, first suggested by academics working at the Mercatus Center(15).
The Kochs have lavished money on more than 30 other advocacy groups, including the Heritage Foundation, the Manhattan Institute, the George C. Marshall Institute, the Reason Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute(16). These bodies have been instrumental in turning politicians away from environmental laws, social spending, taxing the rich and distributing wealth. They have shaped the widespread demand for small government. The Kochs ensure that their money works for them. “If we’re going to give a lot of money,” David Koch explained to a libertarian journalist, “we’ll make darn sure they spend it in a way that goes along with our intent. And if they make a wrong turn and start doing things we don’t agree with, we withdraw funding.”(17)
Most of these bodies call themselves “free market thinktanks”, but their trick, as (Astro)Turf Wars points out, is to conflate crony capitalism with free enterprise, and free enterprise with personal liberty. Between them they have constructed the philosophy which informs the Tea Party movement: its members mobilise for freedom, unaware that the freedom they demand is freedom for corporations to trample them into the dirt. The thinktanks the Kochs have funded devise the game and the rules by which it is played; Americans for Prosperity coaches and motivates the team.
Astroturfing is now taking off in the United Kingdom. Earlier this month Spinwatch showed how a fake grassroots group set up by health insurers helped shape the Tories’ NHS reforms(18). Billionaires and corporations are capturing the political process everywhere; anyone with an interest in democracy should be thinking about how to resist them. Nothing is real any more. Nothing is as it seems.
References:
1. See, for example, the exposure of astroturfing in Chapter 2 of my book Heat: how to stop the planet burning, 2006.
2.
http://www.portfolio.com/executives/features/2008/10/15/Profile-of-Billionaire-David-Koch/index3.html 3.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/oct/13/tea-party-billionaire-koch-brothers 4.
http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/Global/usa/report/2010/3/koch-industries-secretly-fund.pdf 5.
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/08/30/100830fa_fact_mayer?currentPage=all 6.
http://nymag.com/news/features/67285/ 7.
http://astroturfwars.org/ 8.
http://astroturfwars.org/ 9. Greenpeace’s report on funding by the Koch brothers and their foundations shows that they spent $5m on AFP’s Hot Air tour alone.
http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/Global/usa/report/2010/3/koch-industries-secretly-fund.pdf 10.
http://www.cnbc.com/id/29283701/Rick_Santelli_s_Shout_Heard_Round_the_World 11.
http://astroturfwars.org/ 12.
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/08/30/100830fa_fact_mayer?currentPage=all 13.
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/08/30/100830fa_fact_mayer?currentPage=all 14.
http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/Global/usa/report/2010/3/koch-industries-secretly-fund.pdf 15.
http://mercatus.org/media_clipping/rule-breaker-washington-tiny-think-tank-wields-big-stick-regulation 16.
http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/Global/usa/report/2010/3/koch-industries-secretly-fund.pdf 17. Interview with Brian Doherty, reported by The New Yorker.
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/08/30/100830fa_fact_mayer?currentPage=all 18.
http://www.spinwatch.org.uk/blogs-mainmenu-29/tamasin-cave-mainmenu-107/5391-private-health-lobby-out-in-force-at-tory-conference
George Monbiot
Homepage:
http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2010/10/25/toxic-brew/
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Tea Party backing Candidate who Allegedly Shot Unarmed Iraqis 60 Times
27.10.2010 10:50
Thirty-nine-year-old Ilario Pantano, who is running for North Carolina's 7th congressional district as a Republican, was charged with the premeditated murder of two Iraqi civilians in 2005 while serving as a second lieutenant with the US Marines.
In April of 2004, Pantano and his platoon stopped and detained two Iraqi men in a car near Falluja. While the majority of his platoon was away, he and two others ordered the detained Iraqis to search their own car for weapons and then allegedly unloaded two full magazines of his M16A4 rifle into them.
Sergeant Daniel Coburn, who was 27 at the time and one of the three soldiers at the incident, recalled wondering "when the lieutenant was going to stop, because it was obvious that they were dead."
"I believed that by firing the number of rounds that I did, I was sending a message," Pantano told the New York magazine.
After killing the two Iraqis, he left a placard inscribed with the Marine motto "No better friend, No worse enemy."
A few months after the alleged incident occurred, Coburn reported him to senior officers.
All charges against Pantano, who was facing a possible death sentence, were later dropped due to insufficient evidence.
Although his opponent, incumbent Democrat Rep. Mike McIntyre, has not brought the issue up, Pantano's defeated primary opponent has.
Will Breazeale, a former lieutenant colonel who served in both Iraq wars, says Pantano has "no excuse for what he did."
"To shoot two unarmed prisoners 60 times and put a sign over their dead bodies is inexcusable," Breazeale told The Daily Beast. "And once people know the real story, he has no chance of winning in November. I know people think it's sour grapes, but I have nothing to gain by opposing him except clearing my conscience and fighting for good government."
Last week, the Chairman of the Robeson County Republican Party accused McIntyre of conducting a push poll calling campaign to inform voters that Pantano had once been charged with murder. Pantano's camp offered no evidence that McIntyre actually sponsored the push poll.
With help from the Tea Party movement, Pantano has been able to raise almost $1 million for his campaign. He has received endorsements from the Veterans In Defense Of Liberty, the North Carolina Chapter of Eagle Forum, far-right blogger Pamela Geller, and a number of other conservatives.
Speaking at a rally at Ground Zero in New York organized by Gellar, Pantano said, "My family and I traveled from our home in North Carolina to stand shoulder to shoulder in objection to this thinly veiled effort at marking Muslim conquest."
"The suggestion that this mysteriously funded mosque is anything other than a permanent demonstration of Islam’s march on the West is naïve at best," writes Pantano in an article for The Daily Caller. "This is about marking religious, ideological and territorial conquest."
According to a recent poll, Democrat McIntyre has a 12-point lead over Pantano. Pantano's campaign manager claims the poll is skewed, because it surveyed registered voters, not likely voters.
Despite McIntyre's 12-point lead, he has still faced an unexpectedly tough re-election challenge. A Republican has not taken North Carolina's 7th congressional district since 1871 and other polls have found a dead heat between the two candidates.
Eric W. Dolan
Homepage:
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article26689.htm