If Billionaires were X-men, how would they carry out their plots and plans for world domination?
I dunno, let's turn the Magnifying Glass on them for a while ...
Koch conference under scrutiny (pdf)
Kenneth P. Vogel and Simmi Aujla, POLITICO -- Jan 27, 2011
This weekend, for the eighth straight year, the billionaire Koch brothers will convene a meeting of roughly 200 wealthy businessmen, Republican politicians and conservative activists for a semi-annual conference to raise millions of dollars for the institutions that form the intellectual foundation – and, increasingly, the leading political edge – of the conservative movement.
[...]
“The main goal of the seminars appeared to me to be education on the challenges that face the American system of free enterprise and democracy, and what people can do about them,” said Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell, a conservative Republican who has attended at least seven of the meetings.
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Until recently, the secrecy surrounding the meetings had always been tight. A packet distributed to participants at the last session, held in June in Aspen, Colo., warned attendees not to talk to the press about the meetings, to wear their nametags at all times, and stressed that the meetings are “confidential” and “invitation-only.”
[...]
Paranoid Secrecy, check!
Koch conference under scrutiny (pdf)
Kenneth P. Vogel and Simmi Aujla, POLITICO -- Jan 27, 2011
Charles and David Koch each own about 40 percent of the Wichita, Kansas-based Koch Industries, which was founded by their father in the 1940s as an oil concern. Today, it’s the second-largest privately held company in the U.S., with interests in producing and distributing oil, chemicals, energy, pulp and paper, and various other concerns.
Students of libertarian free-market philosophy, the Koch brothers, their foundations and company focused their giving in the 1970s, 80s and 90s on think tanks that churned out mountains of studies and white papers promoting libertarian-infused free-market policies and legislation.
The family’s money either launched or helped launch such pillars of the conservative establishment as the Cato Institute, the Mercatus Center, and the Institute for Justice, while the Koch-funded Citizens for a Sound Economy, founded in 1984, engaged in so-called grassroots lobbying on a narrow range of issues that sometimes seemed to jibe with the interests of the Koch’s companies.
[...]
And POLITICO has learned the Kochs are trying to launch a voter micro-targeting operation called Themis that their operatives hope will one day rival the Democrats’ vaunted Catalist database, which was funded with help from Democracy Alliance.
Serious plans to target and sway Elections, check!
Kochs brothers’ plan for 2012: raise $88 million – Kenneth P. Vogel and Ben Smith – POLITICO.com
by Jeff Pruett, slinkingtowardretirement.com -- Feb 13, 2011
In an expansion of their political footprint, the billionaire Koch brothers plan to contribute and steer a total of $88 million to conservative causes during the 2012 election cycle, according to sources, funding a new voter micro-targeting initiative, grass-roots organizing efforts and television advertising campaigns.
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The Kochs swear summit attendees to secrecy and few will talk publicly about the meetings or the brothers’ philanthropy for fear of jeopardizing relationships with — and potentially funding from — the Kochs, who have a reputation in conservative circles for retaliating against allies and former allies deemed insufficiently loyal.
Technically, the Kochs don’t control any groups, rather they exert significant influence through their contributions, board positions and patronage of the leaders of outfits that have been prominently featured at their donor conferences, such as Americans for Prosperity and Themis, a fledgling voter micro-targeting initiative spearheaded by former Koch staffer Karl Crow that in some ways seems designed to compete with an effort launched last year by the Rove and Gillespie-backed Crossroads Grassroots Policy Strategies.
What do the the Koch Brothers expect in exchange for their "patronage" -- just some $erious Loyalty pledges from their crime-fighting cohorts -- and that they will keep on fighting for their free-market way of life ...
Koch Secret Memo -- for their Aspen Strategy Meeting -- June - 2010
Agenda: Understanding and Addressing Threats to American Free Enterprise and Prosperity
Source: Think Progress
Perhaps this Elite Club of Comic-book Heroes should be more worried about REAL Threats to Democracy like these? ... Threats from within their own Koch-funded ranks ...
Koch Industries Instructed 50K Employees How They Were Supposed To Vote In 2010 Elections
by Lee Fang thinkprogress.org -- Apr 20, 2011
Writing today in the Nation, Mark Ames and Mike Elk reveal that Koch Industries mailed a letters to 50,000 employees instructing them on who to vote for in the 2010 midterm elections.
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Karl Crow is a Koch operative who had penned a memo calling for corporations to exploit Citizens United and aggressively use “employees, vendors, and customers” as tools for advancing business interests in the political sphere.
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Currently, Crow is heading up a vast new Koch-funded project called “Themis” to mobilize voters for the 2012 election cycle.
ThinkProgress has covered this disturbing trend of corporate political coercion since 2009. While researching the health insurance industry’s efforts to kill health reform, we discovered that a consulting firm called Democracy, Data and Communications (DDC) that actually specializes in helping large corporations organize their employees into mini-lobbyists. DDC currently consults for Koch, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, several banks, the tobacco industry, and health insurance companies.
DDC apparently knows how to "rally" the peasants, with their "advocacy" skill sets.
That takes some brass, to send out a memo instructing your employees How to Vote! Wonder how many of them did, as they were told?
Have to wonder too, if the Koch Brother's "Themis organization" is related to the Chamber's "Team Themis"? Not much of a paper trail on either of them out there ... perhaps all neocon tea party roads, DO lead back to Koch?
That would explain a lot. Maybe those Billionaire-backed X-Men really DO have a take-over plan.
It's not like Campaign 'Dirty Tricks' are beneath them ... given their cookie-cutter tactics used to sway the last election their way.
Koch conference under scrutiny
By KENNETH P. VOGEL & SIMMI AUJLA, politico.com -- 1/27/2011
[pg 4]
Their summer 2010 Aspen conference, for instance, featured a heavy emphasis on the efforts of Koch-linked groups to shape the midterm elections by rallying grassroots activists around issues important to the tea party.
An ad was screened attacking Obama’s healthcare overhaul, and plans were announced to air it in districts of vulnerable congressional Democrats who supported it, while Karl Crow, a former Koch Foundation staffer who left to run Themis last year, introduced the project to donors.
Tim Phillips, president of Americans for Prosperity, which David Koch helped found in 2004 and which played a leading role in organizing early tea party events, talked about his group’s effort to mobilize voters ahead of the midterms, as well as its planned $45-million campaign ripping Democrats in 50 swing House districts and half a dozen targeted Senate races.
At the luncheon on the final day, a donor stood up and pledged $1 million to fund some of the Koch-backed non-profits, followed by a number of other 7-figure pledges, and a combined $12 million pledge by the Koch brothers, according to multiple attendees, one of whom estimated that the pledges received at that luncheon alone totaled $25 million.
[pg 1]
Common Cause, the liberal watchdog group, [...]
calls [this bunch] “the billionaires caucus”
Isn't it something this Elite group of X-Men and X-Women, can now just afford to buy their own caucusing power, whenever they need it ... to get whatever their Businesses might need?
Afterall this home-grown OPEC-ish Block of Billionaires really has some scary "threats" to contend with, given their ultimate libertarian goals for the rest of us:
Koch Secret Memo
Beware, little people, beware ...
The only apparent power we have for fighting back, is the focusing power of the Magnifying Glass on their shadowy ways.
Given the Koch Summit attendees "inroads" into the Traditional Media -- that focusing power, can be drowned out, any day of the week. And the forecast, calls for rain.
"You want a Job, you better Vote their way." The Themis Advocacy has spoken.