Follow the Money: GOP and Tea Party…Bought, Sold, Pawned and Owned

The supporters of the Tea Party are being duped. Duped by Billionaires no less. Bilionaires bent on taking over the US Government by eliminating the very programs so many supporting the Tea Party depend on. So on Thursday Sept 16th President Obama spoke of this very fact at a Fundraiser for Dick Blumenthal (D-CT). He touched on the reality of the who really funds the Tea Party and other falsely labeled ‘grass roots movements’.

This is something the majority of the mainstream media has yet to do yet deserves the full attention of Americans. Wealthy billionaires like Rupert Murdoch (FOX), and brothers Charles and David Koch are spending millions of dollars in an effort to dismantle the US Government and further their pro-corporate agendas. These are the very people paying people like Sarah Palin,
Glenn Beck, Newt Gingrich and the like to muck up the water and confuse the average voter. Paid to tap into the fears and frustrations of Americans while convincing them to support the destruction of the very government that provides them protection as a citizen.

Here the President points out to those in attendance just where all the money and outrage is coming from and just what they have in mind for Americans if we continue to allow a corporate takeover of our government:
That’s what they’re offering the American people — a future that looks just like the past, one where special interests get free reign to play by their own rules and where middle-class families are left to fend for themselves.

Now, that’s not a future I accept for the United States of America. That is not a future that Dick Blumenthal accepts for the United States of America.

This is a tough election season. People are hurting and they are understandably frustrated. And a lot of them are scared. And a lot of them are anxious. And that means that even when people don’t have ideas, if they’ve got enough money behind them, they may be able to convince some folks that, you know what, just cast a protest vote, throw the bums out. That’s a mentality that has an appeal. And you can’t blame folks for feeling that way sometime. But that’s not a future for our country, a country that’s more divided, that’s more unequal, that’s less dynamic, where we’re falling behind in everything from investment in infrastructure to investment in R&D. That’s not a vision for the future.

And if that’s not a future you accept for this nation, if that’s not the future you want for your kids and for your grandkids, then we are asking you for help in this election.

Because if you don’t think the stakes are large — and I want you to consider this — right now, all across the country, special interests are planning and running millions of dollars of attack ads against Democratic candidates. Because last year, there was a Supreme Court decision called Citizens United. They’re allowed to spend as much as they want without ever revealing who’s paying for the ads. That’s exactly what they’re doing. Millions of dollars. And the groups are benign-sounding: Americans for Prosperity. Who’s against that? Or Committee for Truth in Politics. Or Americans for Apple Pie. Moms for Motherhood. I made those last two up.

None of them will disclose who’s paying for these ads. You don’t know if it’s a Wall Street bank. You don’t know if it’s a big oil company. You don’t know if it’s an insurance company. You don’t even know if it’s a foreign-controlled entity. In some races, they are spending more money than the candidates. Not here because here the candidate is spending a lot of money.

They’re spending more money than the parties. They want to take Congress back and return to the days where lobbyists wrote the laws. It is the most insidious power grab since the monopolies of the Gilded Age. That’s happening right now. So there’s a lot of talk about populist anger and grassroots. But that’s not what’s driving a lot of these elections.

We tried to fix this, but the leaders of the other party wouldn’t even allow it to come up for a vote. They want to keep the public in the dark. They want to serve the special interests that served them so well over the last 19 months.

We will not let them. We are not about to allow a corporate takeover of our democracy. We’re not about to go back to the days when special interests took advantage of Main Street families. (Applause.) We’re not going to go back to the days when insurance companies wrote the rules that let you languish without health care because you had a preexisting condition. We’re not going to go back to the exact same agenda we had before I took office.

A lot has changed since that last election, but what hasn’t changed is the choice facing this country. It is still fear versus hope. It is still the past versus the future. It is still a choice between sliding backwards and moving forward. That is what this election is about. That’s the choice you will face in November.

Watch The President’s Remarks Here

These are the people trying to take over the United States Government. Wonder where all the Tea Party candidates suddenly came from? Wonder why most of these virtually unknown candidates suddenly are winning races and raking in millions in donations when most Americans are struggling to make ends meet? Where did these people come from? Why do they only appear on Fox News and get away with refusing to do any interviews? Why are they always only on Fox News and why does it appears Fox News provides free campaign air time to these virtual unknowns? Why are all of these newcomers to the political scene all in favor of ending Medicare, Social Security, Unemployment Compensation, Healthcare and other social programs?

Rachel examines how Billionaires Charles & David Koch & Koch Industries fund AFP, Americans For Prosperity, & the Tea Parties, yet deny it.

David and Charles Koch:
A few weeks after the Lincoln Center gala, the advocacy wing of the Americans for Prosperity Foundation—an organization that David Koch started, in 2004—held a different kind of gathering. Over the July 4th weekend, a summit called Texas Defending the American Dream took place in a chilly hotel ballroom in Austin.Though Koch freely promotes his philanthropic ventures, he did not attend the summit, and his name was not in evidence. And on this occasion the audience was roused not by a dance performance but by a series of speakers denouncing President Barack Obama. Peggy Venable, the organizer of the summit, warned that Administration officials “have a socialist vision for this country.”

Five hundred people attended the summit, which served, in part, as a training session for Tea Party activists in Texas. An advertisement cast the event as a populist uprising against vested corporate power. “Today, the voices of average Americans are being drowned out by lobbyists and special interests,” it said. “But you can do something about it.” The pitch made no mention of its corporate funders. The White House has expressed frustration that such sponsors have largely eluded public notice. David Axelrod, Obama’s senior adviser, said, “What they don’t say is that, in part, this is a grassroots citizens’ movement brought to you by a bunch of oil billionaires.”

Koch Brothers funding of a tight knit network of lobbyists, former executives and organizations has created a forceful stream of misinformation that Koch-funded entities produce and disseminate.

Koch Industries is the second largest private company in the U.S., with estimated 2008 revenues of $100 billion. Started as a petroleum business by their father Fred Koch, who was also a founder of the right-wing extremist John Birch Society, Koch Industries has become a diversified enterprise that funds large-scale lobbying and a range of libertarian policy and activist groups that play a significant role in the global warming denial machine.

To New Yorkers who associate the David H. Koch Theater at Lincoln Center with the New York City Ballet, it’s startling to learn that the Texas branch of that foundation’s political arm, known simply as Americans for Prosperity, gave its Blogger of the Year Award to an activist who had called President Obama “cokehead in chief.”

An oil company headed by conservative billionaires David and Charles Koch has contributed $1 million to the campaign to suspend the state’s landmark climate change law. Flint Hills Resources does not have any oil interests in California but is a big opponent of climate change legislation around the country. On Thursday, the Kansas-based refining and chemicals manufacturer threw its weight behind Proposition 23, the ballot initiative that seeks to suspend California’s greenhouse gas reduction law until the economy improves.

Rupert Murdoch:
The opponents of the proposed Cordoba Initiative Islamic center planned for Lower Manhattan are fond of suggesting, by way of lengthy and often confusing chains of causation and association, that its principal planner, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, is connected to terrorism. “The imam has been tied to some shady characters,” Fox Business Channel’s Eric Bolling recently said, “so should we worry that terror dollars could be funding the project?” Blogger Pamela Geller, who has become a regular talking head on cable-news channels to denounce the mosque, has noted Rauf’s involvement with a Malaysian peace group that funded the group that organized the Gaza flotilla under the headline, “Ground Zero Imam Rauf’s ‘Charity’ Funded Genocide Mission.”

On last night’s “Daily Show,” Jon Stewart skewered these antics as a “dangerous game of guilt by association you can play with almost anybody,” and proceeded to tie Fox News to al-Qaida by connecting Fox News parent News Corp’s second-largest shareholder, Saudi Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal, to the Carlyle Group, which has done business with the bin Laden family, “one of whose sons — obviously I’m not going to say which one — may be anti-American.” But Stewart didn’t need to take all those steps to make the connection: Al-Waleed has directly funded Rauf’s projects to the tune of more than $300,000. If Fox newscasters can darkly suggest “terror dollars” are sluicing into the Islamic center’s coffers via “shady characters,” then are Al-Waleed, and News Corp. leader Rupert Murdoch, by the same logic, also terror stooges?

For anybody still harboring the belief that the Tea Party movement is a grassroots insurgency, you may want to look at where two of the movement’s biggest backers are throwing their cash. Politico’s Ben Smith reports that News Corporation, the parent company of Fox News and the Wall Street Journal, and David Koch, the oil magnate who chairs the board of the Americans for Prosperity Foundation (the Koch-funded astroturf powerhouse behind a lot of Tea Party organizing), each threw a cool $1 million at the Republican Governors Association — hardly a rogue operation, and very much a part of the Republican establishment.

Yes, News Corp.’s software division is funneling money into the pocket of North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Il. Sean Hannity has asked, “Why would we sit down with a mad man like Adolf Jr., Ahmadinejad or Kim Jong-Il?” Perhaps he needs to pose that same question in News Corp.’s executive suite. In fact, I wonder what Fox News personalities think of their boss’ business dealings considering their own thoughts on the North Korean regime

In November 2005, three senior aides to Britain’s royal family noticed odd things happening on their mobile phones. Messages they had never listened to were somehow appearing in their mailboxes as if heard and saved. Equally peculiar were stories that began appearing about Prince William in one of the country’s biggest tabloids, News of the World. The stories were banal enough (Prince William pulled a tendon in his knee, one revealed). But the royal aides were puzzled as to how News of the World had gotten the information, which was known among only a small, discreet circle. They began to suspect that someone was eavesdropping on their private conversations.

As of this summer, five people have filed lawsuits accusing News Group Newspapers, a division of Rupert Murdoch’s publishing empire that includes News of the World, of breaking into their voice mail. Additional cases are being prepared, including one seeking a judicial review of Scotland Yard’s handling of the investigation. The litigation is beginning to expose just how far the hacking went, something that Scotland Yard did not do. In fact, an examination based on police records, court documents and interviews with investigators and reporters shows that Britain’s revered police agency failed to pursue leads suggesting that one of the country’s most powerful newspapers was routinely listening in on its citizens.

Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal now owns a 7 percent stake in Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp., the parent company of Fox News, making him the company’s largest shareholder outside of Murdoch’s own family. Alwaleed is best known for going to Ground Zero after the 9/11 World Trade Center attacks and personally handing then-mayor Rudolph Giuliani a check for $10 million to help finance relief efforts. Afterwards, Alwaleed released a statement blaming the attacks not on the Saudi airline hijackers, but on U.S. policies in the middle east. As a result, Giuliani returned the prince’s donation, gaining him praise from Fox News for doing so. Now that Alwaleed has a controlling ownership in News Corp., he is gaining influence over Fox News.

Rachel Maddow interviews Tim Phillips of Americans for Prosperity

Time to wake up people. No one can sit home this November, especially Democrats. Americans are being scammed by the tea party movement and the billionaires behind it. We need all hands on deck to fight the money and influence that is hijacking this country. We can not sit idly by while they pawn our future and fill Congress with a bunch of dangerous kooks.