From Brave New Films:
It’s no secret that Latinos are a key voting bloc in many presidential swing states and tight senate races this election season. That’s the power the Koch brothers are trying to harness through LIBRE, a cynical attempt to convince Latino voters that Koch-supported candidates and policies align with their best interests. Brave New Films, which first introduced the world to these billionaires’ massive, moneyed manipulation schemes in Koch Brothers Exposed, is not letting them get away with it. We have gone to the ground to film this new video, just released with People for the American way, which shows what’s really behind LIBRE—greed.
As the video [below] shows, LIBRE gets its hooks in potential voters by hosting seemingly benevolent events like food giveaways, where they hand out bags of groceries. The sad irony is that many of the people who come to receive the groceries are working full time but not earning enough to make ends meet. Yet, in order to get one of the bags, the recipients have to fork over their contact information so the real feeding can begin—feeding them propaganda. The Koch’s use the personal information to send them misleading information about conservative candidates and to try to get them to support policies like opposing a higher minimum wage.
LIBRE started out this election in 10 states with fully staffed field offices. Recently, the Kochs announced that they are geared up to expand well beyond this scale in future elections by merging LIBRE and their other constituency-focused groups around veterans and millennials into their behemoth, Americans for Prosperity.
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At Daily Kos on this date in 2007—Bush Authoritarianism: Blackwater+Amway=GOP, Pt. 3:
One of the main hallmarks of Bush Authoritarianism is a variant of privatization, in which public goods or services supplied directly by government employees are "outsourced" to a private company, which takes tax dollars, but over which the government has much less control than public employees performing the same task. Privatization has been happening at all levels of government for a couple of decades. In some cases it’s warranted and in the best interests of citizens and taxpayers. But often, privatization results in inferior good or services, higher costs to taxpayers, and diminished accountability to the government and the public.
An extreme version of privatization has accelerated during the Bush administration: the privatization of warfare. Privatizing war is at the cutting edge of Bush Authoritarianism, and Blackwater, whose business practices and niche I discussed last week, is an archetypal "winner" in the new authoritarian system emerging under the Bush administration. Blackwater is not the only example, however; it is simply one of the more public and extreme examples of Bush’s base of support and the recipients of his governance, which transfers public moneys previously spent on government employees to perform government services, to private entities over which the government can exercise much less authority and accountability.
Blackwater CEO Erik Prince is a product of the world of ultra-conservative donors who’ve funded the vast right wing conspiracy. His father, auto parts mogul Edgar Prince, was one of the largest funders of the right wing movement.
On today’s Kagro in the Morning show, Greg Dworkin reviews Trump’s Al Smith Dinner bomb and continued cratering in the polls. Yet more sordid tales of Trump connections with Euro-mobsters surface. Josie Duffy Rice spotlights the worst district attorneys in America, facing the voters in November.
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