In 2010, rumors the Koch brothers were behind the opposition to healthcare reform were confirmed and now their mission objective is overt and there is no doubt the Kochs and their corporate arm ALEC are out to end the healthcare system starting with Medicare and Medicaid. Republicans have yearned to undo New Deal provisions for 80 years, but they never openly stated their intent until this week.
On Tuesday, teabagger hero Paul Ryan said, “This to us is something that we’re not going to give up on, because we’re not going to give up on destroying the health care system for the American people,” and in Florida, at the urging of the Koch brothers’ front group, Americans for Prosperity, repugicans rejected expanding Medicaid to its poorest citizens with an endorsement by teabag Governor Rick Scott, and the bill’s sponsor said he wants Florida out of the Medicaid program. Those two events should dispel any rumors that repugicans are proposing Draconian cuts to safety nets and social programs out of fiscal responsibility, and informs that America is under siege from a very small group of wealthy industrialists led by the Koch brothers and their surrogates ALEC.
The movement to end the federal government and grant supremacy to individual states is a Koch and ALEC objective that gave rise to the “tenther” movement and increasing “nullification” threats in repugican-controlled states that began in earnest with passage of the Affordable Care Act. Paul Ryan is just a mouthpiece for the Koch brothers’ agenda, and his budget that ends Medicare, slashes social programs, and sends federal dollars to states in the form of bloc grants is part of a larger movement to give Republican governors control over social programs to erode them and give tax cuts to corporations and the wealthy. However, killing and starving the poor is just a side benefit for repugicans who are pursuing the Koch goal of ending all federal programs. Especially those that are successful and popular with the people in their push to portray the federal government as a failure.
When Ryan admitted that repugicans’ goal was “destroying the health care system for the American people,” he was only hitting the tip of the iceberg. The repugicans have proposed: abolishing child labor laws, eliminating the federal minimum wage, ending voting rights, slashing Social Security, abolishing public education, and eliminating regulatory agencies for the Koch brothers. Those objectives are discussed regularly at the Kochs’ secret policy meetings with the nation’s richest corporate leaders, two Supreme Court justices, and the Koch’s legislative arm ALEC. In fact, ALEC regularly writes template legislation for the Kochs that are routinely enacted in repugican states that have restricted voting rights, funneled public school funds to private religious schools and have also eroded environmental protections, chipped away at programs that assist seniors, women, and the poor. Such as the Medicaid that is under attack nationwide.
Last week it was reported the Koch brothers’ activists, Americans for Prosperity, funded campaigns in states with repugican governors that embraced Medicaid expansion to oppose efforts to give millions of poor Americans access to basic healthcare and Florida was a prime target. Apparently the Koch brothers were successful because not only did repugicans vote against expanding Medicaid at no cost to the state, they convinced them to pull out of Medicaid completely. It is a troubling sign because now that one GOP state is considering dropping out of the healthcare program for the poor, other repugican governors and legislators will feel emboldened to follow suit; especially with the prospect of garnering more campaign dollars from the Kochs and their corporate cohort ALEC.
Over the past couple of years, pundits have wondered aloud who leads the repugican cabal and it is clear that it is not Lush Dimbulb or Karl Rove; it is the Koch brothers. There is no question that every repugican policy, and every piece of legislation, comes directly from ALEC under supervision from the Kochs. Paul Ryan may not have meant to expose the Koch brothers’ goal of destroying the health care system for Americans, but now that he has, it is a simple exercise to compare repugican priorities with ALEC’s template legislation that follows the Koch’s frenzy for federalist policies by giving power to states and neutering the federal government. However the only reason the Kochs were successful installing their surrogates in Congress and state houses is because emoprogs and disaffected Democrats stayed home and failed to vote in 2010 or America would not be under siege.
There is a day of reckoning on the horizon for Americans, and at the rate repugicans are willing to do the Koch brothers’ bidding, it is not a very promising future. They may not control both houses of Congress, but with 30 repugican governors, and ALEC churning out Koch-inspired legislation to abolish child labor laws, voting rights, minimum wage, public education, women’s rights, environmental regulations, and increasing calls for nullification, Americans are in jeopardy of seeing their country transformed into a plutocrats’ paradise. Now that Paul Ryan revealed their goal is destroying the healthcare system, and Florida threatens to abandon Medicaid, two Koch objectives, it is obvious that what many pundits have feared is true; the Koch brothers control the repugican cabal and without an intervention, their bloodless coup d’état will give them control of America.
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