Congress, Justice, Politics, Religion, Society

Did the Koch Brothers Just Buy a Vice President?

Respectfully submitted by Lawrence Rafferty (rafflaw)- Guest Blogger

In light of Elaine’s excellent discussion of the radical voting record of Mitt Romney’s Vice Presidential pick, Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, I got to thinking just why would Romney pick such a radical Congressman to be be his Vice President? I understand that Mr. Romney would want an individual who has conservative credentials to improve his standing within his own adopted party and within the Tea Party.  But Mr. Ryan has serious baggage with his now infamous Ryan Budget that attacks the middle class and the poor, all for the purpose of retaining and enlarging tax cuts for the wealthy. Why would Mitt take on Ryan’s baggage when he is facing challenges on his lack of transparency on his tax returns?

It seems that the answer to those questions may all relate back to the Koch Brothers and the princely sum of $100 Million dollars!

According to long time Republican operative, Roger Stone, the Koch Brothers may have “purchased” the Vice Presidential choice from the Romney campaign for a promise to spend $100 Million in various Republican Super Pac funds and the so-called C-4 funds to attack the Obama campaign and support the Romney/Ryan ticket!   “Here is how Stone led his latest post, headlined “The Paul Ryan Selection, “which also delivers an amusing swipe at a certain Fox News analyst:

I’ve waited a few days to lay out my analysis of the selection of Paul Ryan for the VP slot on the Romney ticket. Unlike politicos like Dick Morris who badmouths the selection privately and shills for it publicly, I’ll tell you what I really think. My sources tell me David Koch played a key role in Ryan’s selection and that Koch’s wife Julia had been quietly lobbying for Ryan. The selection was cemented at the July 22nd fundraiser Koch held for Romney at the former’s sumptuous Hamptons estate. Koch pledged $100 million more to C-4 and Super PAC efforts for Romney [in exchange] for Ryan’s selection.”  National Memo

I understand that one has to take what Mr. Stone says with a grain of salt because he has been an insider political operative for decades, and maybe he has a grudge against Mitt Romney, Paul Ryan and/or the Republican Party.  One thing that is known is that the Koch Brothers have been big supporters of Paul Ryan and his attacks on the middle class and the poor. “The vice presidential nominee’s campaign finance record is not without some minor controversy. To begin with, he has long been a favorite of the libertarian billionaires Charles and David Koch. Before entering Congress, Ryan worked with a conservative group that would eventually merge with a Koch brothers’ group to become FreedomWorks, a leading sponsor of the Tea Party movement. Their mutual interests in libertarianism could explain why the private energy corporation Koch Industries has given Ryan more than $65,000 over his career”  US News and World Report

One writer claims that the Romney choice of Ryan is not only because of the big money supporting Ryan as a Vice President choice, but also because of a long struggle against the gains made by the Left since the late 60’s and early 1970’s.  “Paul Ryan’s selection as Mitt Romney’s running mate is the present culmination of more than two centuries of war on democracy and – in modern times – on the specific gains made through political struggle during the Roosevelt administration after the devastation caused by the Great Depression and on those specific gains for civil rights codified into law during the Great Society under Lyndon Johnson.”  Truthout

The Koch Brother’s father was the founder of the John Birch Society who could be called a bigot for some of his incendiary comments against minorities.  “As the progenitor of the Koch family, the elder Koch candidly and unabashedly wrote, “the colored man looms large in the Communist plan to take over America,” and “welfare was a secret plot to attract rural blacks to cities, where they would foment a vicious race war”).”  Truthout     Do the Koch Brothers agree with their father’s statement and is their choice of Ryan related to what they believe Ryan’s legislation and budget will do to harm minorities and women?

The Koch Brothers have funneled millions into various Super Pacs and Right Wing causes, but now if Mr. Stone and the op-ed on Truthout are to be believed, they have may have actually purchased the selection of their own Vice Presidential candidate.   Is this choice a continuation of the out of control election spending that was brought on by the controversial Citizens United decision?  Or is the Ryan selection a building block in the framework to attack social programs by the same moneyed interests that will benefit by the curtailing of these programs to allow for even greater tax breaks?

What do you think?

69 thoughts on “Did the Koch Brothers Just Buy a Vice President?”

  3. oh those lyin’ blue eyes!

    Paul, sweetheart, you can only drop the word ‘wonky’ so many times before people start to realize you are not a policy wonk at all.

  4. Great video Elaine! An amazing performance from Ryan. He could not even make sense when Hume was trying to walk him through it.

  6. Father Koch also made a he11 of a lot of money stealing oil and gas from the Native American tribes in Oklahoma.

    that is how ethical these guys are.

    Ill gotten gains stolen from the poorest in America have now bought another rich lackey to do their bidding in government.

  7. Did the Koch Brothers buy a VP? Why, isn’t it obvious?

    The Randian fan boys all flock to the John Birch Society under any name!

  8. Bron,

    We’ve been through this before on other threads. I have provided you with plenty of information on the subject. You choose to believe the disinformation provided by bloggers rather than to accept what we are being told by the great majority of climate scientists. That’s your prerogative.

  9. Elaine:

    here is an article that disputes climate data:

    http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/08/16/blog-memo-to-james-hansen-regarding-giss-southern-hemisphere-land-surface-temperature-data/

    “James, you should look into this matter. I don’t have the time or the inclination to carry this investigation any further.

    Some persons might think GISS has been manipulating data to acquire a higher land surface temperature anomaly trend in recent years. They also might assume GISS has been reducing coverage in recent years to create a little more variability, thereby increasing the chances for new record temperatures with each El Niño. And the way that all suppliers of temperature data appear to use data for a grid one year but not the next, and then have data for that grid reappear a year or two later, may lead some persons to think data is being cherry picked for use. We wouldn’t want people to think those things.”

    James is James Hansen. So maybe there is something fishy going on.

  11. Ralph,
    What does Buffet’s tax bill have to do with the claim that Ryans VP nod might have been purchased by the Koch Brothers?
    Isn’t Buffett’s company allowed to pay the lowest allowed by law, just like Exxon/Mobil,, GE and others? Why should he pay more while he is advocating that income taxes (not corporate taxes) should be higher for the wealthy when Romney and other multi millionaires and Billionaires are paying little or no taxes?
    Thanks for the link Elaine!

  13. Romney’s Veep Choice: Paul Ryan, Koch Ally and ‘Right-Wing Social Engineer’
    In making the risky choice of picking Rep. Paul Ryan, Mitt Romney seals the deal on the Koch brothers’ takeover of the Republican Party.
    By Adele M. Stan
    August 10, 2012
    http://www.alternet.org/election-2012/romneys-veep-choice-paul-ryan-koch-ally-and-right-wing-social-engineer

    Excerpt:
    It’s official: The Republican Party is now officially a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Koch brothers’ political enterprise. How else to explain Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s pick of Rep. Paul Ryan, Wis., as his running mate. Yes, that Paul Ryan — chairman of the House Budget Committee and author of the infamous Ryan roadmap budget plan, which promises to turn Medicare into a privatized voucher system, and yank health care from millions of children whose parents happen to be poor. And that’s just the beginning. In addition to a raft of cuts, the Ryan plan would end the Earned Income Tax Credit, which millions of parents count on.

    It’s a plan that even former House Speaker Newt Gingrich deemed too “radical.” Asked by NBC’s David Gregory to respond to Ryan’s proposal, Gingrich famously said (video): “I don’t think right-wing social engineering is any more desirable than left-wing social engineering. I don’t think imposing radical change from the right or the left is a very good way for a free society to operate.” (Of course that was before Gingrich walked back those remarks, apparently reminded by some savvy operative that he might not want to anger the Kochs, to whom Ryan, 42, is something of a youthful ward, having been the beneficiary of years of support from the Koch-founded Americans For Prosperity.)

    In case anyone should miss the point that Ryan is a very Kochy guy, Romney did his big reveal of running-mate Ryan this morning aboard the U.S.S. Wisconsin, a decommisioned ship docked in the all-important swing state of Virginia. However important Virginia is to the electoral math, Wisconsin is a highly symbolic icon for the Tea Party. It’s not only Ryan’s home state; it’s the poster state of right-wing triumph, the place where Gov. Scott Walker successfully fended off a recall attempt made by progressives in response to a bill he rammed through the state legislature that all but ended collective bargaining for the state’s public employees. Much of the credit for Wisconsin’s right turn goes to Americans For Prosperity, which boasts a particularly aggressive Wisconsin chapter, which began building a network of activists there in 2005.

    Ryan’s association with the group goes back almost that far. In 2008, he was granted the Wisconsin AFP chapter’s “Defending the American Dream” award, handed to him by a young county executive who served as emcee for those festivities — a guy named Scott Walker. Since then, he has made countless appearances on the group’s behalf, at anti-health-care reform rallies on Capitol Hill, on conference town halls across the country and at Americans For Prosperity and Americans For Prosperity Foundation events. (Just enter Ryan’s name into the search engine on the Amerians For Prosperity Web site, and you’ll come up with eight pages of citations.) In fact, Ryan was due to speak at last week’s conference sponsored by the AFP Foundation in Washington, D.C., forcing increased speculation about his running-mate prospects when he failed to show.

    For Romney, the pluses in picking Ryan are these: the Tea Partiers, who are less than wild about Mittens, really love them some Paul Ryan — as does David Koch, who will be seated as a Romney delegate at the Republican National Convention in Tampa. Koch and his brother, Charles — the mbillionaire owners of Koch Industries, the second largest privately held corporation in the U.S. — are major donors, not only to political candidates, but to a range of right-wing think tanks and groups . In the post-Citizens United world, those donations add up to millions in political advertisements by all manner of non-profit groups. Already, Americans For Prosperity has made a $27 million air-time buy for running anti-Obama ads.

  14. I’ve got news for you. Obama as well as Romney are going after the Middle Class. They ALWAYS go after the Middle Class. Obama hasn’t done anything to hurt the wealthy. And, of course, neither will Romney.

    Obama would never even have become President if not for the backing the wealthy. They OWN him. That’s why you had wealthy people like Warren Buffett coming out for “more taxes on the wealthy.” Buffett knows that this kind of talk is a total SCAM. Buffett, in fact, already owes the IRS more than $1 Billion in back taxes, that his tax attorneys are fighting off–successfully.

    Many years ago a rich woman named Leona Helmsley said, “Only the little people pay taxes.” Ultimately the US Government through the IRS did go after Helmsley–but not because of tax evasion. The US Government is just fine with tax evasion, as long as it’s done by the very wealthy and the corporations. No, they went after Helmsely because she opened her mouth and told the truth: YES, ONLY THE LITTLE PEOPLE REALLY DO PAY THE TAXES. So, it was sort of like the Mafia taking out one of their own when they talk too much. That’s the real reason they went after Helmsley. Had Helmsley simply not paid taxes like Buffett has not paid his share of taxes, the US Government and the IRS–pawns of the ultra-wealthy–would have left her alone.

    Obama’s proposed taxes on those earning $250,000 or more IS an attack on the Middle Class. Years ago, the rammed through a tax called the Alternative Minimum Tax (“AMT”) that was supposed to be a tax on the “wealthy.” Well, guess what, now nearly 65% of the Middle Class pays the AMT! These are called stealth taxes in the tax business, because they seem to be directed at others, but as inflation kicks in, which it will in short order.

    Bottom line: It does not matter who wins the election. The Middle Class will be screwed and the ultra-wealthy will win because the ultra-wealthy control the system and they control all of the politicians that count.

  15. rafflaw,

    “Did the Koch Brothers Just Buy a Vice President?”

    I don’t know–but I wouldn’t doubt it.

    Unearthing Paul Ryan’s 1% Connections
    8/16/12
    http://www.commonblog.com/2012/08/16/unearthing-paul-ryans-1-connections/

    Excerpt:
    Presumptive GOP Vice Presidential nominee Paul Ryan is famous for his detailed knowledge of the federal budget. This can be seen in his 2010 budget proposal calling for deep cuts in federal spending and converting Medicare into a voucher system.

    Hiding behind Ryan’s wonky image, however, are troubling ties to billionares like Sheldon Adelson, the Koch brothers, Cliff Asness and Paul Singer who have channeled Tea Party anger into a $400 million political machine.

    Earlier this week, Ryan took a break from campaigning to spend time with billionaire casino mogul Sheldon Adelson, who has spent nearly $50 million to defeat President Obama to date. Adelson, who has a close relationship with Mitt Romney, is under investigation by the SEC and the Department of Justice on allegations of bribery in China.

    That’s not all- Adelson is also being investigated for money laundering by the United States Attorney’s office in Los Angeles. Adelson, who has an estimated network of $21 billion has denied all allegations and has emerged as the largest donor to Romney supported PAC’s.

    Ryan ties to super wealthy began with the Koch brothers, who have donated more than a $100,000 to his campaign and leadership PAC. Their relationship has since transformed into one that has enriched Ryan’s campaign coffers as well as his career. Ryan has emerged as a skeptic of mainstream climate science and voted against new energy efficiency standards.

    Ryan has emerged as a skeptic of mainstream climate change allying himself with Koch affiliated research and activist groups.. He is one of very few elected officials to attend the Kochs’ biannual conferences, where wealthy donors sit in on seminars about runaway government spending and supposed “climate change myths”.

    Ryan has also developed relationships with other people in the Koch orbit, like Cliff Asness and Paul Singer, libertarian-minded financiers known for their open letters blasting President Obama. Both have donated money to Ryan’s campaign and are on a first name basis with him.

  17. AY,
    The Koch’s father had government contracts and also contracts with the Soviets. So he made millions off the Commies and then started an organization to “warn” everyone of the dangers of the Commies within our borders.

  18. Excellent article raff….. Gosh…… The price has really gone up….. I remember when it was dinner, a movie and drinks….. Both the then again, I am a child of the late 60’s, 70,’s, 80’s….. I think that generation subscribed to sex, drugs, rock and roll and not necessarily in that order…..

    Koch……has incentive to serve as the pimp master……Didn’t old man Koch…… Get his start by sodomizing the US government…… Old skimming…. Just a little off the top…..

  20. “Is this choice a continuation of the out of control election spending that was brought on by the controversial Citizens United decision?”

    Without question. Citizens United was their baby after all. And the second question is not mutually exclusive. Well played, raff. :mrgreen:

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