Move-on sponsored movie “Koch Brothers Exposed: 2014 Edition” shown in households all over the nation.

By Judi Curry

Bill from the Swamp Critters

Senator Bernie Sanders sent out an email telling Move-on members that “ . . . our great nation must not be hijacked by right-wing billionaires like Charles and David Koch. For the sake of our children and our grandchildren, we must fight back, and we must do it now in advance of November’s elections.”

I had heard of the Koch brothers for months; I was somewhat aware of the dastardly deeds they were doing throughout our country, and decided to attend the showing of this documentary at “The Hippie House” recently with approximately twenty of our Pt. Loma/Ocean Beach neighbors.

The Koch brothers, with more money than they know what to do with thanks to their father’s start in Russian oil, are determined to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to elect right-wing candidates to the U.S. Senate, the House of Representatives, Governors, Local School Boards and are not above taking a shot at the Presidency of the United States. They already own much of our economy; now they want to own the United States Government as well. And, thanks to the Supreme Court’s Citizens United and McCutcheon decisions, their power is greater than ever.

It is stated in the documentary that not only is their goal to defund Obamacare, cut Social Security, oppose an increase in the minimum wage and cut federal funding for education their plans are to repeal every major piece of legislation that has been signed into law over the past 80 years to protect the middle class, the elderly, children, the sick, women, and the rest of the most vulnerable in this country.

The event started out with a few snapshots of a popular band playing one of the Koch brothers daughter’s wedding.  This gave a little levity to a very serious problem facing America today.

Income inequality is getting worse. The Koch brothers want to do away with government as we know it, by “purchasing” politicians and knocking down the middle class. It was Stalin that brought Fred Koch into power originally by having him work the oil fields in Russia. He then brought his knowledge to the United States where he managed to ride roughshod over 300+ oil spills .

The Koch brothers managed to promote their “Americans for Prosperity” program where integrated schools were a nasty concept in spite of the high achievements of the Wake County School District in North Carolina. They actually attacked the integrated school; put money behind conservative candidates; spread lies, and found that the conservatives were elected into office. This caused so much controversy in the school district that two years later a new vote was held and the integrated concept was returned to the community. But there was untold damage caused by these actions, and it will take some time for the people to forget how they – and their children – were used as political fodder.

The Koch brothers were not just content with the public education sector. For some time there has been pressure to the Catholic Universities to stop taking money from the brothers. Because along with taking their money, the strings attached are detrimental to all the Catholic University students that are tied into the requirements and regulations for obtaining the money. At the present time the Koch brothers have donated $57.2 million dollars to Catholic Universities.

The Koch brothers are against the minimum wage, even though they make $1.8 million dollars every HOUR, which translates into $13 million dollars a day! And they are against someone making $9 an hour?

The Brothers have, so far, donated 22 million dollars to fight Union participation, and it is estimated that amount will rise substantially before the November elections. They maintain that “collective bargaining” hurts the working people.

The Brothers want to raise the retirement age to 69-70 years old. They talk about Social Security going bankrupt, which is not true. They want to see Social Security privatized – thus effectively wiping out the benefits people receive today from the monies they put into the system for years.

The Koch brothers are very much in favor of the Keystone Pipeline. This is some of the dirtiest oil around. It would only take one spill to destroy the land from the Canadian border to the borders of the United States. They have been responsible for over 300 spills; have had their hands slapped many times, but have always managed to get away with paying a minimum fine while the country suffers. And it is not just financial suffering. There have been many cancer deaths related to these spills. Unborn children are being born with evidence of cancer caused by the pollution of these spills. It is a ticking time bomb facing us today, and yet there are many in our Congress that think it will never happen again and it should be approved.

There was an oil spill in Corpus Christi that the Koch brothers tried to cover up. There were 97 counts of spillage that they were charged with. Thanks to the Bush administration they only had to pay a fine on one of the counts.

Now here is an interesting fact. The Brothers have donated over $500 million to cancer research. How interesting, because how much of that research is going to eradicate the cancer caused by these very same people?

Inside the Hippie House

There were some interesting feelings from the audience viewing this documentary. The feeling that a revolution is not far away was discussed. Young people are not voting, yet they are very concerned with what is happening to the environments and surrounding areas. Once we had a good system, but politics have changed a lot of that.

We need to get people out to vote, and although many are now registered, they are still not getting to the polls to cast their ballots. And it should come as no surprise to find out that it was the Koch brothers who fostered the idea of every voter must have an ID card. That really affects the poor, because many of them do not have birth certificates; do not have the money to purchase an ID card, and are finding out it isn’t just one identification card they need but several.

And another idea that the Koch brothers have is to sell public land to pay off the public debt. Who is going to benefit from that? The millionaires, of course. Corruption is money, and these men have more than their share of money. If the American people do not start looking at the hard facts, we are in a potentially bad place. The media needs to become involved – not those that are being bought by the Brothers and other conservatives. We need to educate more people if America is to survive.

Scott, Judi and Bill

It should be noted that this paper was written based on notes taken while watching the documentary. I tried to keep it as objective as possible; I tried to double check things I was not sure of. It was powerful, but really reached those of us that felt the same way as the Koch brothers were portrayed. It needs to be stronger; it needs to have more statistics to back up facts; and it needs to be shown to many more people.

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Judi Curry

High school dropout who decided to show the educational community what learning is all about. If it's the status quo something's wrong with it and I'll scratch the itch!

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