The New York Times recently published an exposé about the role Koch brothers are playing in the dismantling of our democracy: "
A Federal Budget Crisis Months in the Planning." They have spent hundreds of millions of dollars in a massive propaganda campaign, the funding of astroturf "grassroots" groups and think tanks, buying off politicians, and deploying a carefully-planned strategy to take down our democratic system of government. They've made a lot of progress with their fascistic planning thus far.
The reason they've made progress is because they are highly strategic, focused, and organized.
I've been studying and observing how these cretins operate, with the objective of "reverse engineering" the incredible damage they and their kind have done to this country...
Here's a draft of what I would do if I was a billionaire...
Counter-Propaganda
I start there because I've long determined that when it comes to this fight for social justice and for democracy, everything starts and ends with the winning of the hearts and mind of the population, and the most effective way of communicating with the public at large is through mass media messaging.
I would open hundreds of pubic relations/outreach offices in all 50 states and I would task them with formulating mass media campaigns specifically designed to push a progressive and social justice narrative, to expose wrongdoing by those in power, and to rattle the cages of the corrupt and on-the-take corporate media conglomerate.
Tonight I came across a site dedicated to "Exposing And Opposing The Corporate State," which I think is a great model for a counter-propaganda campaign:
We are a collective of activists who came together in the Fall of 2011, after the Occupy movement really kicked into high gear. Our goal was to produce educational outreach cards for all the various Occupy groups around the country, to hand out at protests and other events. In March 2012 we released our first ten cards and launched our website. The result was incredible! People loved our cards and we started getting tons of requests to produce more, on other topics. By the Summer of 2012 the Occupy movement started waning, but our orders actually picked up. We realized a lot of activists and organizations unrelated to Occupy were purchasing our cards. So we changed our tagline from “Educational outreach cards for the Occupy movement” to “Educational outreach cards for activists.” While our roots are in Occupy, our cards are for anyone working to expose the corporatocracy and build real democracy in the US and the world.
If I was a billionaire, I would fund these guys! I would also fund outfits like "
Connect The Dots USA" which produces easy to understand
graphics about complex issue:
In the confusion of today’s 24/7 spin machine, doesn’t it often seem like the “Flat Earth Society” gets equal or more time than the “Round Earth Society”? And, left unchallenged by journalists, people are free to just pick their own facts?
The goal of these visual, easy-to-understand presentations is to help regular, busy folks like yourself understand the issues and what is happening with our political process. Then we can start to connect the dots to get our policies to work for the benefit of most Americans again.
And of course, I would blanket the airwaves, TV, radio, with the progressive and social justice narrative... For years and years to come.
Researches / Analysts
I would hire thousands of researchers and analysts from across the country and would task them with creating very detailed reports about exactly how the treasonous political class is being bribed.
I would request that reports be created on each and every one of the politicians holding public office in cities, states, and the federal level. I would want to see reports similar to what War on Error does: "Pictorial Response to Today's NYTimes Koch Brothers Exposé." Heck, if I was a billionaire, I would make sure she's fully funded!
I want to see the web of corruption for each politician; so that means a list of their family members, their close associates, their funders, and a very detailed account of apparent or factual conflict of interests relationships.
I would ask the analysts to use sites like MapLight, Sunlight Foundation, Center For Investigative Reporting, and hundreds of sites operated by citizen journalists and no-profits around the country.
I would ask them to submit a slew of Freedom of Information Act requests on a host of topics, including the illegal spying by the for-profit corporate-run and operated NSA and other surveillance police state agencies.
This information would be then passed along to the counter-propaganda team so it can be used for carefully crafted messaging to reach the mass audience. It would be a 24/7 mass media operation reaching every corner of the country.
I would also reach out to the greatest thinkers (and truth-tellers) of our time like Wendell Berry, Bill Moyers, Chris Hedges, Noam Chomsky, Naomi Klein, Jeremy Scahill, Daily Kos alumni David Sirota, economists Richard Wolff, Joseph Stiglitz, Robert Reich, and Paul Krugman, among others...
Activists / Street Teams
I would hire thousands of activists around the country (and pay them well), and would task them with organizing protest rallies (among other things), and with coming up with the best ideas about putting the maximum amount of relentless pressure on each component of the fascistic oligarchy...
For example, I would have one kick-ass team tracking the corrupt on-the-take politicians at every single high-priced fund-raising, or event sponsored by their corporate paymasters. This would be relentless, no fail, every single time, no matter how secretive the meeting, my folks would be there making some noise, taking photos and videos, and using the material to discredit and attack these treasonous politicians.
Another team would be tasked with coming up with ideas to spread unionization to every work place in the country, starting with Walmart, Target, and all the big-box retailers. There would be tasked with infiltrating all these workplaces and trying to organize rolling work stoppages, and a thousand other pressure tactics against these companies.
At the same time I would have a team working on finding ways to defund the corporate state in favor of localized economies/markets.
There would be people working on alternative food production and distribution concepts/approaches, Workers’ Self-Directed Enterprises, and sustainability.
I would also have a team tasked with coming up with strategies with dealing with any attempt of intimidation by right wing thugs.
The effort would be open-ended, relentless, sustained, day after day, week after week, year after year, until the oligarchy is removed and replaced with democracy.
If I was a billionaire, I would relish at the opportunity of taking on the Koch brothers, head on!
What would you do?
Note: I'm starting a "October 15th Movement" and will ask people to join me on the 15th of every month, starting on October 15th to coordinate action. It could be anything according to your own interests. It could be a protest rally, or something related to the LGBTQ community, protecting the environment, or helping the homeless, or campaigning for an honest politician, or making a small donation to a cause. I will be sharing more ideas, and welcome yours as well.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Market For The People |Ray Pensador | Email List | Twitter | Facebook
P.S. There is a small group of users who regularly engage in disruptive behavior in my diaries' discussion threads. I would like to ask people interested in serious discussion to avoid engaging these few folks in any way. They usually engage in insults, mockery, and fallacies intended to derail discussion, and post several messages each. I know this may be annoying to some readers and may prompt them to engage these folks. I highly recommend that they be ignored so we can focus on intelligent discussion.