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Title: Angry Progressive Coalition to Protest Billionaire Gathering Hosted by Koch Brothers, Major Tea Party Funders
Source:
AlterNet
URL Source: http://www.alternet.org/story/14954 ... ers%2C_major_tea_party_funders
Published: Jan 17, 2011
Author: Don Hazen
Post Date: 2011-01-17 17:52:12 by Brian S
Keywords: None
Views: 7899
Comments: 2
Increasingly, Democrats, liberals and progressives are coming to understand that the Koch brothers, a secretive right-wing billionaire family that pours limitless money into virtually every destructive anti-democratic initiative affecting tens of millions of Americans, are "Public Enemy Number One." More and more, leaders and activists are shifting tactics and confronting the Kochs face-to-face, challenging their efforts to steal the American Dream and drown out the voices of ordinary Americans by buying our democracy, and trying to take control of civic and economic life. The Kochs' goal appears to be nothing short of transforming America into a radical right-wing, corporate, third-world-like country, crushing social safety nets, and letting the destructive "free market" reign supreme. The Koch brothers are bringing their super-wealthy friends to the California desert to a private gathering to strategize how they will dominate American political life, and bring a hardcore right-wing government to power in the U.S. In response, on Sunday, January 30, thousands of activists and concerned people are expected to travel to Rancho Mirage, a wealthy enclave adjacent to Palm Springs, to say no to the Koch brothers' plan. People will be educated about the Kochs and their cabal of rich friends, and peacefully march to offer an alternative to the greed and right-wing agenda that aims to roll back consumer protections, including the environment, health care, credit cards, banks and more. "We can't sit back while a few billionaires destroy the fragile fabric of democracy and the protections that are so necessary for the health of our society," says Jodie Evans of CodePink, one of the organizations planning the protest. "It is time for the progressive community to gather together and say no more, and what better place than where the Koch brothers are plotting their next moves." The Koch brothers protest signals a new stage among concerned Americans from many areas and organizations. An impressive tally of progressive leaders will speak at the gathering, including Van Jones, former Labor Secretary Robert Reich, and California Nurses Association co-president DeAnn McKewan. Marchers will come from a wide range of organizations including the California Nurses, Common Cause and the Courage Campaign. The Kochs control the second largest private company in America and are among the richest men in the world. Along with their wealthy allies, they funded the Tea Party to use as a hammer to drive American politics further to the right. Through their various organizations, and often secretly, the Kochs have pumped hundreds of millions of dollars into efforts to deny climate change, undermine financial reform, unleash unlimited corporate money in elections via the Citizens United decision, destroy unions, and make it far more expensive for students to get loans. And recently in California, Koch Industries pumped $1 million into elections last fall to try to roll back the state's global warming law with Prop 23. They have been major underwriters of the Tea Party and its efforts to disrupt congressional town hall meetings to give the insurance companies control over our health care. The Koch brothers used their wealth to finance scurrilous attack ads -- and recruit others to do the same -- in the wake of the Supreme Court's Citizens United ruling that allows corporations to spend unlimited amounts of secret money on politics. Their goal is to undermine our democracy so they can increase their profits and control and corrode our standard of living.
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#1. To: Brian S (#0)
(Edited)
progressive leaders will speak at the gathering, including Van Jones, former Labor Secretary Robert Reich, and California Nurses Association co-president DeAnn McKewan. Marchers will come from a wide range of organizations including the California Nurses, Common Cause and the Courage Campaign global warming Leave it to this bunch of communists, to make the Koch brothers look good in comparison.
All I have to do is consider the author and source of the article. You libs are shameless. http://www.narconews.com/hazenstory1.html The most serious Alternet ethics problems involve its director, Don Hazen. In that sense, the main problem that Alternet has is a "Hazen problem." With its monopoly status about to end, the pressure is getting to Alternet's Hazen. Last month, he engaged in what we see as Hazen's money-driven attack on a media watchdog group: Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, FAIR. In the past, Hazen has similarly attacked other nonprofit institutions that compete with Alternet for donations: Project Censored and even against IndyMedia, which, in our view, is to date the pinnacle model of citizen participation in the media. These organizations are unable to fully defend themselves because of that competition for funds. They would risk looking as petty as Hazen and Alternet if they did so. Narco News, however, does not compete in any way with Alternet, and certainly not for funds. We are not presently engaged in any fundraising campaigns (Narco News doesn't even have a bank account). We have recently won the Drug War on Trial case in the New York Supreme Court - that established First Amendment protection for all Internet journalists - and so we're not soliciting money for our defense fund, either. Thus, we are able to speak, cleanly and responsibly, about the problem that Alternet is causing for the alternative media and the causes it claims to support. The Alternet Papers Narco News has obtained internal documents authored by Alternet director Don Hazen and other Alternet staff members that reveal serious violations of the most basic ethical standards for journalists. Those violations include: -- The collection of what Alternet calls "bounty" fees for each story it sells on drug policy issues. -- Alternet's refusal, when asked, to disclose the nature of those reprint fees. -- Alternet's hiding the existence of those "bounty" fees from the writers of those articles, when Alternet claims to pay the writers 50 percent of all reprint fees. -- Alternet's consequent non-payment of funds that, according to its own website, rightfully belong to the writers. -- Alternet's blacklisting of writers (similar to the NY Times blacklist banning work by leaders of the National Writers Union), including when Hazen fantasizes, inaccurately, that a writer has been the source of information leading to a legitimate labor complaint by another writer. -- Alternet's cavalier theft, on two occasions, of stories from our own publication, and Alternet's dishonesty in having later claimed that it did not offer one of those stories for sale, when, in fact, it did. -- Alternet's request to staff members that they use false identities to post "positive reviews" of an Alternet product that is for sale on Amazon.com
Jodie Evans of CodePink
#2. To: Brian S (#0)
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