(Very important details about how the reality of our political situation is brought so far away from the reality that impacts people’s day-to-day struggles. Sorry for the delayed promotion! – promoted by eli_beckerman)

Front Page – Above the fold:

Covert Operations

The billionaire brothers who are

waging a war against Obama.

Kudos to the Sunday Republican Newspaper for reprinting this story by Jane Mayer, first published in the Aug 30 edition of The New Yorker.  This article exposes the Koch brothers for their role in swaying elections and influencing legislation by using their bottomless pit of billions:  

The Kochs are longtime libertarians who believe in drastically lower personal and corporate taxes, minimal social services for the needy, and much less oversight of industry-especially environmental regulation. These views dovetail with the brothers’ corporate interests. 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.

Read more http://www.newyorker.com/repor…

It shows their connection to the Tea Party through the Americans for Prosperity organization, heck, it shows the connection to the Americans for Properity organization.  

A few weeks after the Lincoln Center gala, the advocacy wing of the Americans for Prosperity Foundation-an organization that David Koch started, in 2004-held a different kind of gathering. Over the July 4th weekend, a summit called Texas Defending the American Dream took place in a chilly hotel ballroom in Austin. Though Koch freely promotes his philanthropic ventures, he did not attend the summit, and his name was not in evidence. And on this occasion the audience was roused not by a dance performance but by a series of speakers denouncing President Barack Obama. Peggy Venable, the organizer of the summit, warned that Administration officials “have a socialist vision for this country.”

Five hundred people attended the summit, which served, in part, as a training session for Tea Party activists in Texas. An advertisement cast the event as a populist uprising against vested corporate power. “Today, the voices of average Americans are being drowned out by lobbyists and special interests,” it said. “But you can do something about it.” The pitch made no mention of its corporate funders. The White House has expressed frustration that such sponsors 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.”

Read more http://www.newyorker.com/repor…

We, bloggers and political activists, are already aware of all of these details.  The exciting thing about this is that it was printed front-page-above-the-fold in the Sunday Republican.  This plays an important role in educating all of the voters(and there are plenty)who don’t take the time to look past sound bites and popular storylines.  It will reach those voters who don’t use the internet.  I know plenty of those people.  They don’t use the internet extensively, nor do they normally get deeply involved in politics.  They support the Tea Party because they are fed up, but because their support is so superficial, they don’t realize the implications of what they are supporting.  The one thing these people have in common:  They read the Sunday paper!

WoooHoooo and super KUDOS to Springfield’s Sunday Republican. YOU ARE SO AWESOME !!!!!

And super KUDOS to Jane Mayer and The New Yorker. You are so AWESOME too!  If only we had excellence in reporting across the media spectrum. Our country would be in such a better place.