{"id":358511,"date":"2018-04-26T17:22:04","date_gmt":"2018-04-26T16:22:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/a-quiet-conspiracy-of-billionaires\/"},"modified":"2018-04-26T17:22:04","modified_gmt":"2018-04-26T16:22:04","slug":"a-quiet-conspiracy-of-billionaires","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/a-quiet-conspiracy-of-billionaires\/","title":{"rendered":"A Quiet Conspiracy of Billionaires"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"pf-content\">\n<p>The Koch brothers are oil magnates and billionaire GOP funders.<\/p>\n<p>They believe that their great wealth entitles them to rule over the many. For decades, they&#8217;ve been running a surreptitious assault on the rules that protect the majority of us from their abuse. From whacking our voting rights to busting unions, their intent is nothing less than to pull a coup on democracy, installing a government of, by, and for the superrich.<\/p>\n<p>They&#8217;ve enlisted a secretive cadre of other billionaires who share their extreme kleptocratic belief that 1) the property rights of the rich are more important than the people&#8217;s political rights, 2) that majority rule is not a good form of governing, and 3) that the &#8220;Makers&#8221; (as the billionaires dub themselves) should be able to overrule collective actions of the lower classes (whom they call &#8220;Takers&#8221;).<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_25471\" style=\"width: 598px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-large wp-image-25471\" src=\"http:\/\/otherwords.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/Hightower-Koch-Brothers-Truthout.org_-592x600.jpg\" alt=\"Koch Brothers\" width=\"588\" height=\"596\" \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Truthout.org\/Flickr<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>They&#8217;ve created a complex, sophisticated web of right-wing front groups that have already corporatized a slew of our most basic laws and institutions, and they&#8217;ve gained a chokehold on nearly every level of government (including our courts and whole states like Wisconsin, North Carolina, and Texas). They&#8217;ve essentially taken over the Republican Party.<\/p>\n<p>Even more shocking than the arrogance of this unprecedented power grab by the conspiracy of billionaires is its quiet success.<\/p>\n<p>The Koch Coup crept up on us because it abhorred publicity and couched each move as an independent effort by a separate group. Then the conspirators backed the Supreme Court&#8217;s outrageous 2010 Citizens United decision, decreeing that unlimited corporate spending is allowed because it&#8217;s &#8220;free speech.&#8221; Only then did Americans begin waking up to the reality that the Kochs were making an assault on democracy itself.<\/p>\n<p>To learn more, check out the extensive Koch web files at the Center for Media and Democracy:\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.exposedbycmd.org\/koch\/\">www.exposedbycmd.org\/koch\/<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>The post <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http:\/\/otherwords.org\/a-quiet-conspiracy-of-billionaires\/\">A Quiet Conspiracy of Billionaires<\/a> appeared first on <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http:\/\/otherwords.org\">OtherWords<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>This piece was reprinted from <a href=\"http:\/\/otherwords.org\/a-quiet-conspiracy-of-billionaires\/\">Other Words<\/a> by <a href=\"http:\/\/rinf.com\">RINF Alternative News<\/a> with permission.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Koch brothers are oil magnates and billionaire GOP funders. They believe that their great wealth entitles them to rule over the many. For decades, they&#8217;ve been running a surreptitious assault on the rules that protect the majority of us from their abuse. From whacking our voting rights to busting unions, their intent is nothing [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2523,"featured_media":308742,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-358511","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/358511","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2523"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=358511"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/358511\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/308742"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=358511"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=358511"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=358511"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}