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Herman Cain is OFF OF HIS ROCKER! He plans to put a Barbed Wire, Electrified Fence along the Border Warning "It will Kill You!" to all Mexicans/Latinos. So says the Ron Paul website.
"It’s going to be 20 feet high. It’s going to have barbed wire on the top. It’s going to be electrified. And there’s going to be a sign on the other side saying, ‘It will kill you!"Reports indicate Cain, the leading Tea Party Republican Presidential Candidate in 2012, and his campaign is heavily influenced and funded by the Koch Brothers. Cain's economic ideas, support and organization have close ties to two billionaire brothers who bankroll right-leaning causes through their group Americans for Prosperity.
Cain's campaign manager and a number of aides have worked for Americans for Prosperity, or AFP, the advocacy group founded with support from billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch, which lobbies for lower taxes and less government regulation and spending. Cain credits a businessman who served on an AFP advisory board with helping devise his "9-9-9" plan to rewrite the nation's tax code. And his years of speaking at AFP events have given the businessman and radio host a network of loyal grassroots fans. The once little-known businessman's political activities are getting fresh scrutiny these days since he soared to the top of some national polls.
His links to the Koch brothers could undercut his outsider, non-political image among people who detest politics as usual and candidates connected with the party machine.
AFP tapped Cain as the public face of its "Prosperity Expansion Project," and he traveled the country in 2005 and 2006 speaking to activists who were starting state-based AFP chapters from Wisconsin to Virginia. Through his AFP work he met Mark Block, a longtime Wisconsin Republican operative hired to lead that state's AFP chapter in 2005 as he rebounded from an earlier campaign scandal that derailed his career.
Block and Cain sometimes traveled together as they built up AFP: Cain was the charismatic speaker preaching the ills of big government; Block was the operative helping with nuts and bolts.
When President Barack Obama's election helped spawn the tea party, Cain was positioned to take advantage. He became a draw at growing AFP-backed rallies, impressing activists with a mix of humor and hard-hitting rhetoric against Obama's stimulus, health care and budget policies.
Block is now Cain's campaign manager. Other aides who had done AFP work were also brought on board.
Cain's spokeswoman Ellen Carmichael, who recently left the campaign, was an AFP coordinator in Louisiana. His campaign's outside law firm is representing AFP in a case challenging Wisconsin campaign finance regulations. At least six other current and former paid employees and consultants for Cain's campaign have worked for AFP in various capacities. (see rest of article here)
How corrupt is Wisconsin's Governor Scott Walker? He illegally passed a Union Bashing Bill which is currently being held up in courts due to its illegality. We heard him take a call from who he thought was the Koch Brothers --- grovelling and kissing their feet. Now, after reports for Tuesday's special election gave Democratic-backed challenger JoAnne Kloppenberg an extremely slim lead over incumbent Wisconsin Justice David Prosser, one of his clerk's is now pulling a "Katherine Harris" and has suddenly "found" 15,000 Votes -- most of them Republican! Now, these new votes have reversed the election results and who Prosser ahead. I wonder how long it took Wisconsin's Tea Party Gov Walker and his hoods to create this "Katherine Harris" phony scenario. This reminds me of Bush v Gore 2000 in Florida. Bush's Brother's Sec. of State, Katherine Harris, FIXED that election for a Republican Bush win! Now Harris' Doppelganger Nickolaus is doing the same in Wisconsin. This just proves that Republicans/TeaPartiers will sink to new lows to win elections! Let's hope the official recount discovers their CRIMES and the Wisconsin voters are successful in their Recall of the Republican Senators and Walker next year!
Has our country become a Plutocracy? A Plutocracy is ruled by the wealthy, or power provided by wealth.
We've seen what has happened with Wall Street and the Bailouts. We've seen how the Koch Brothers have overtaken the TeaPartiers and brainwashed them into blindly following their Big Business, Anti Obama, Anti Middle Class, Anti Union Agenda.
As Big Business continues to outsource; As older workers continue to face rising unemployment; As the Tea Partiers continue to blindly follow the agenda of the Koch Brother's Big Business agenda:
What will happen IF the Republican/Tea Partiers achieve their agenda?
Their Agenda:
1. Eliminate Social Security
2. Eliminate Medicare / Medicaid
3. Privatize Public Education
4. Eradicate Unions
5. Outsource All/Most Jobs to Offshore Companies
6. Eliminate Safety Regulations
7. Eliminate Securities Regulations
8. Lower Taxes for the Rich!
As our Baby Boomers are encountering Old Age, needing their social security checks since their savings have been devastated by the unscrupulous dealings on Wall Street; as they are in dire need of Medicare/Healthcare; who will help care for our Elderly if the TeaParty/Republicans achieve their Big Business driven agenda?
What is to become of us if they get their way?
As I have been reporting, Wisconsin Governor Walker is in the pocket of Big Business, particulary the Koch brothers. Walker took the call of someone posing as David Koch. Walker spent 20 minutes schmoozing the Fake Koch, scraping and bowing and kissing his ring. During the 20 minute call, Walker admitted:
. his goal is to Obliterate the Unions in Wisconsin and in other states!
. freeze the senators' paychecks,
. accelerating the timetable for public employee layoffs
. plans to terrorize the state Democratic Senators upon their return
Listen to how Cocky Walker sounds! How Arrogant! How he is SUCKING UP (It's Sickening)! How GULLIBLE on this PRANK Call!
AND WORST OF ALL, his plan to LIE to the HERO State Democrats to get them back into Madison. As you listen to the audio, REMEMBER, he is talking to one of the Koch Brothers (one of the Big Business Political Contributors from KANSAS!) and NOT to one of his Constituents from Wisconsin:
LISTEN TO THE AUDIO (7:00) "An interesting idea that was brought up to me by my chief of staff, we won't do it until tomorrow, is putting out an appeal to the Democratic leader. I would be willing to sit down and talk to him, the assembly Democrat leader, plus the other two Republican leaders -- talk, not negotiate and listen to what they have to say if they will in turn -- but I'll only do it if all 14 of them will come back and sit down in the state assembly. They can recess it ... the reason for that, we're verifying it this afternoon, legally, we believe, once they've gone into session, they don't physically have to be there. If they're actually in session for that day, and they take a recess, the 19 Senate Republicans could then go into action and they'd have quorum because it's turned out that way. So we're double checking that. If you heard I was going to talk to them that's the only reason why. We'd only do it if they came back to the capitol with all 14 of them. My sense is, hell. I'll talk. If they want to yell at me for an hour, I'm used to that. I can deal with that. But I'm not negotiating."
As I've long time reported, the Koch brothers funded the creation of the Tea Parties and Glenn Beck's 912 rallies and now, the campaigns of several Republican candidates. They hate President Obama and the Democrats because they are spoiling their plans to DESTROY THE MIDDLE CLASS!!! The Teabaggers may have been fooled by them, but these FAT CAT BIG BUSINESS BULLIES are finally being outed!
Guest Voz - Economist Robert Reich:
Not only is income and wealth in America more concentrated in fewer hands than it's been in 80 years, but those hands are buying our democracy as never before -- and they're doing it behind closed doors. Hundreds of millions of secret dollars are pouring into congressional and state races in this election cycle. The Koch brothers (whose personal fortunes grew by $5 billion last year) appear to be behind some of it, Karl Rove has rounded up other multimillionaires to fund right-wing candidates, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is funneling corporate dollars from around the world into congressional races, and Rupert Murdoch is evidently spending heavily.
No one knows for sure where this flood of money is coming from because it's all secret. But you can safely assume its purpose is not to help America's stranded middle class, working class, and poor. It's to pad the nests of the rich, stop all reform, and deregulate big corporations and Wall Street -- already more powerful than since the late 19th century when the lackeys of robber barons literally deposited sacks of cash on the desks of friendly legislators. Credit the Supreme Court's grotesque decision in Citizens United vs. the Federal Election Commission, which opened the floodgates. (Even though 8 of 9 members of the Court also held disclosure laws constitutional, the decision invited the creation of shadowy "nonprofits" that don't have to reveal anything.) According to FEC data, only 32 percent of groups paying for election ads are disclosing the names of their donors. By comparison, in the 2006 midterm, 97 percent disclosed; in 2008, almost half disclosed.
Last week, when the Senate considered a bill to force such disclosure, every single Republican voted against it -- thereby revealing the GOP's true colors, and presumed benefactors. (To understand how far the GOP has come, nearly ten years ago campaign disclosure was supported by 48 of 54 Republican senators.)
Maybe the Disclose Bill can get passed in lame-duck session. Maybe the IRS will make sure Karl Rove's and other supposed nonprofits aren't sham political units. Maybe pigs will learn to fly. In the meantime we face an election that marks an even sharper turn toward plutocratic capitalism than before -- a government by and for the rich and big corporations -- and away from democratic capitalism.
As income and wealth has moved to the top, so has political power. That's why, for example, it's been impossible to close the absurd tax loophole that allows hedge-fund and private-equity managers to treat much of their income as capital gains, subject to a 15 percent tax (even though they're earning tens or hundreds of millions a year, and the top 15 hedge-fund managers earned an average of $1 billion last year). Why it proved impossible to fund expanded health care by limiting the tax deductions of the very rich. Why it's so difficult even to extend George Bush's tax cuts for the bottom 98 percent of Americans without also extending them for the top 2 percent - even though the top won't spend the money and create jobs, but will blow a $36 billion hole in the federal budget next year. The good news is average Americans are beginning to understand that when the rich secretly flood our democracy with money, the rest of us drown. Wall Street executives and top CEOs get bailed out while under-water homeowners and jobless workers sink.
A Quinnipiac poll earlier this year found overwhelming support for a millionaire tax. But what the public wants means nothing if our democracy is secretly corrupted by big money. Right now we're headed for a perfect storm: An unprecedented concentration of income and wealth at the top, a record amount of secret money flooding our democracy, and a public in the aftershock of the Great Recession becoming increasingly angry and cynical about government. The three are obviously related.
We must act. We need a movement to take back our democracy. (If tea partiers were true to their principles, they'd join it.) As Martin Luther King once said, the greatest tragedy is "not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people."
What can you do?
1. Read Justice Steven's dissent in the Citizens United case, so you're fully informed about the majority's pernicious illogic.
2. Use every opportunity to speak out against this decision, and embarrass and condemn the right-wing Justices who supported it.
3. In this and subsequent elections, back candidates for congress and president who vow to put Justices on the Court who will reverse it.
4. Demand that the IRS enforce the law and pull the plug on Karl Rove and other sham nonprofits.
5. If you have a Republican senator, insist that he or she support the Disclose Act. If they won't, campaign against them.
6. Support public financing of elections.
7. Join an organization like Common Cause, that's committed to doing all this and getting big money out of politics. (Personal note: I'm so outraged at what's happening that I just became chairman of Common Cause.)
8. Send this post to your friends (including any tea partiers you may know).
Robert Reich is the author of Aftershock: The Next Economy and America's Future, now in bookstores. This post originally appeared at RobertReich.org.
Boston.com Reports: FDA says 2 egg farms violated standards
WASHINGTON — Food and Drug Administration investigators have found rodents, seeping manure, and even maggots at the Iowa egg farms believed to be responsible for as many as 1,500 cases of salmonella poisoning. FDA officials released their initial observations of the investigations at Wright County Egg and Hillandale Farms yesterday. The two farms recalled more than half a billion eggs after salmonella illnesses were linked to their products earlier this month.
The reports show many different possible sources of contamination at both farms, including rodent, bug, and wild bird infestation, uncontained manure, holes in walls, and other problems that could have caused the outbreak. Several positive samples of salmonella have been found at both farms.
The agency released the initial observations as their investigations concluded yesterday. Officials said they still cannot speculate on the cause of the outbreak but said the farms not only violated their own standards but also new egg rules put in place this summer.
Among the observations of the investigators:
■ Live rodents and mice at both farms; 
■ Structural damage and holes in many locations at both farms, allowing wildlife access;
■ Escaped chickens tracking manure through the houses;
■ Employees not changing clothing properly when moving from one location to another and not sanitizing equipment properly;
■ Dead and live maggots “too numerous to count’’ on the manure pit floor in one location at Wright County Egg;
■ Manure piled 4 to 8 feet high in five locations at Wright County Egg, pushing open doors that allowed wildlife to enter the laying houses;
■ Nonchicken feathers in a laying house and wild birds flying in and out of two facilities at Wright County Egg;
■ Manure seeping through the foundation to the outside of laying houses in 13 locations at Wright County Egg;
■ Rusted holes in feed bins and birds flying over the feed bins at Wright County Egg.
Reference: New Yorker & NY Times Billionaire brothers David and Charles Koch founded and fund the tea party group "Americans for Prosperity Foundation." The AFP funded Glenn Beck's "Take the Civil Rights Movement Back from Black Americans" rally this weekend. The Koch brothers also fund extremist Republican Dick Armey's Freedom Works Tea Party group. Both AFP and FW organized the well-staged Beck Tea Party event this weekend.
In Washington, the Koch brothers are best known as those that have repeatedly funded stealth attacks on the federal government, and on the Obama Administration in particular. David Koch and his brother Charles own Koch Industries, a conglomerate, headquartered in Wichita, Kansas, whose annual revenues are estimated to be a hundred billion dollars. The Kochs operate oil refineries in Alaska, Texas, and Minnesota, and control some four thousand miles of pipeline. Koch Industries owns Brawny paper towels, Dixie cups, Georgia-Pacific lumber, Stainmaster carpet, and Lycra, among other products. Forbes ranks it as the second-largest private company in the country, after Cargill, and its consistent profitability has made David and Charles Koch— among the richest men in America. Their combined fortune of thirty-five billion dollars is exceeded only by those of Bill Gates and Warren Buffett.
The Kochs believe in drastically lower personal and corporate taxes, minimal social services for the needy, and much less oversight of industry—especially environmental regulation. Their corporation significantly benefits from reduced government regulations. In a study released this spring, the University of Massachusetts at Amherst’s Political Economy Research Institute named Koch Industries one of the top ten air polluters in the United States. And Greenpeace issued a report identifying the company as a “kingpin of climate science denial.” The report showed that, from 2005 to 2008, the Kochs vastly outdid ExxonMobil in giving money to organizations fighting legislation related to climate change, underwriting a huge network of foundations, think tanks, and political front groups. Indeed, the brothers have funded opposition campaigns against so many Obama Administration policies—from health-care reform to the economic-stimulus program—that, in 
political circles, their ideological network is known as the Kochtopus. Charles Lewis, the founder of the Center for Public Integrity, a nonpartisan watchdog group, said, “The Kochs are on a whole different level. There’s no one else who has spent this much money. The sheer dimension of it is what sets them apart. The Koch brothers have a pattern of lawbreaking, political manipulation, and obfuscation. I’ve been in Washington since Watergate, and I’ve never seen anything like it. They are the Standard Oil of our times.”
The Koch brothers are Founders and funders of the Right Wing Extremist Tea Party group "Americans for Prosperity Foundation (AFP)—an organization that David Koch started, in 2004. The other major sponsor of the Tea Party movement is Dick Armey’s FreedomWorks, which, like Americans for Prosperity, is promoting Beck's events in Washington this weekend. Under its original name, Citizens for a Sound Economy, FreedomWorks received $12 million from Koch family foundations. Using tax records, researchers found that Koch-controlled foundations gave out $196 million from 1998 to 2008, much of it to conservative causes and institutions. That figure doesn’t include $50 million in Koch Industries lobbying and $4.8 million in campaign contributions by its political action committee, putting it first among energy company peers like Exxon Mobil and Chevron. Since tax law permits anonymous personal donations to nonprofit political groups, these figures may understate the case. The Kochs surely match the in-kind donations the Tea Party receives in free promotion 24/7 from Murdoch’s Fox News, where both Beck and Palin are on the payroll.
In the 1980s, when David Koch ran to the right of Reagan as vice president on the 1980 Libertarian ticket (it polled 1 percent), his campaign called for the abolition not just of Social Security, federal regulatory agencies and welfare but also of the F.B.I., the C.I.A., and public schools — in other words, any government enterprise that would either inhibit his business profits or increase his taxes. He hasn’t changed. Koch-supported lobbyists, foundations and political operatives are at the center of climate-science denial — a cause that forestalls threats to Koch Industries’ vast fossil fuel business. While Koch foundations donate to cancer hospitals like Memorial Sloan-Kettering in New York, Koch Industries has been lobbying to stop the Environmental Protection Agency from classifying another product important to its bottom line, formaldehyde, as a “known carcinogen” in humans (which it is).
Tea Partiers may share the Kochs’ detestation of taxes, big government and their hatred of President Obama. But there’s a difference between mainstream conservatism and a fringe agenda that tilts completely toward big business, whether on Wall Street or in the Gulf of Mexico, while dismantling fundamental government safety nets designed to protect the unemployed, public health, workplace safety and the subsistence of the elderly.
Yet inexorably the Koch agenda is morphing into the G.O.P. agenda, as articulated by current Republican members of Congress, including the putative next speaker of the House, John Boehner, and Tea Party Senate candidates like Rand Paul, Sharron Angle, and the new kid on the block, Alaska’s anti-Medicaid, anti-unemployment insurance Palin protégé, Joe Miller. Their program opposes a federal deficit, but has no objection to running up trillions in red ink in tax cuts to corporations and the superrich; apologizes to corporate malefactors like BP and derides money put in escrow for oil spill victims as a “slush fund”; opposes the extension of unemployment benefits; and calls for a freeze on federal regulations in an era when abuses in the oil, financial, mining, pharmaceutical and even egg industries (among others) have been outrageous.
The Koch brothers must be laughing all the way to the bank knowing that working (Tea Party) Americans are aiding and abetting their selfish interests. And surely Murdoch is snickering at those protesting the “ground zero mosque.” Last week on “Fox and Friends,” the Bush administration flacks Dan Senor and Dana Perino attacked a supposedly terrorism-tainted Saudi prince whose foundation might contribute to the Islamic center. But as “The Daily Show” keeps pointing out, these Fox bloviators never acknowledge that the evil prince they’re bashing, Walid bin Talal, is not only the biggest non-Murdoch shareholder in Fox News’s parent company (he owns 7 percent of News Corporation) and the recipient of Murdoch mammoth investments in Saudi Arabia but also the subject of lionization elsewhere on Fox.
No less a Murdoch factotum than Neil Cavuto slobbered over bin Talal in a Fox Business Channel interview as recently as January, with nary a question about his supposed terrorist ties. Instead, bin Talal praised Obama’s stance on terrorism and even endorsed the Democrats’ goal of universal health insurance. Do any of the Fox-watching protesters at the “ground zero mosque” know that Fox’s profits are flowing to a Obama-sympathizing Saudi billionaire in bed with Murdoch? As Jon Stewart summed it up, the protesters who want “to cut off funding to the ‘terror mosque’ ” are aiding that funding by watching Fox and enhancing bin Talal’s News Corp. holdings.
The White House has expressed frustration that the names of Tea Party sponsors -- the Koch Brothers -- have largely eluded public notice. David Axelrod, Obama’s senior adviser, said, “What they don’t say is that, in part, this is a grassroots citizens’ movement brought to you by a bunch of oil billionaires” -- like the Koch Brothers who have an agenda!
Herman Cain is OFF OF HIS ROCKER! He plans to put a Barbed Wire, Electrified Fence along the Border Warning "It will Kill You!" to all Mexicans/Latinos. So says the Ron Paul website.
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