Plutocrat Payback, the Worst Kind

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Produced by: 
KBOO
Program:: 
Air date: 
Thu, 04/03/2014 - 10:00am to 10:15am
Interview with Jeff Milchen

 My guest today, Jeff Milchen of the American Independent Business Alliance out of Montana fought Citizens United and he's fighting the  plutocrats again in the wake of the supreme Court Justices disgracefull decision on campaign finance:  Here's a quote to get he riot under way:     "The five Justices who voted to expand the Court's 'money equals free speech' doctrine have made the democratic republic, promised to us by our Constitution, impossible. Citizens' votes are stripped of power when the wealthiest few can pre-determine which candidates and parties are acceptable for the rest of us to make our choices."
 
Still believe that The Great recession was a total surprise that left the plutocrats gobsmacked sideways? Have a look at this lovely bridge - newly new!  Once upon a time the prosperity of the upper classes depended upon and to some degree underwrote the prosperity of the American middle class. Not so now.  Since 2008, the number of people who call themselves middle class has fallen by nearly a fifth, according to a survey in January by the Pew Research Center, from 53 percent to 44 percent. Forty percent now identify as either lower-middle or lower class compared with just 25 percent in February 2008.
 
The Senate Intelligence Committee's expected vote to approve declassifying part of a secret report on Bush-era interrogations of terrorism suspects puts the onus on the CIA and a reluctant White House to speed the release of one of the most definitive accounts about the government's actions after the 9/11 attacks.   Or we could simply wat for another whistleblower to come forward with the goods. Many people would be far more likely to trust the process and the documents resulting from suuch an event.  The vote to reveal comes tomorrow.
 
The project, dubbed "ZunZuneo," slang for a Cuban hummingbird's tweet, was publicly launched shortly after the 2009 arrest in Cuba of American contractor Alan Gross. He was imprisoned after traveling repeatedly to the country on a separate, clandestine USAID mission to expand Internet access using sensitive technology that only governments use. The U.S. government masterminded the creation of a "Cuban Twitter" — a communications network designed to undermine the communist government in Cuba, built with secret shell companies and financed through foreign banks.
 
Doesn't smell quite right....Don't expect to find genetically modified salmon — or any other engineered fish or meat — on store shelves anytime soon.
 
Look out below !!! Here comes that avalanche of money.  And it looks a lot like Giv Chris Christie knew something the rest of us did not know about the Supreme court decision opening the campaign funding floodgates...Donors have given $33 million to the Republican Governors Association since New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie took the helm late last year.   The committee to elect GOP governors said Thursday it raised $23.5 million during the first three months of the year. That sum more than doubles the $9.1 million raised at this point in 2010, the last time there were 36 gubernatorial races.
 
A century-old farmhouse has been demolished near Pendleton to allow workers to continue cleaning up almost 5,000 gallons of diesel fuel spilled in an accident last month.   Members of the family that owns the Hill Ranches looked on Tuesday as two excavators tore down the house.   Fritz Hill reared two sons there and planted some of the trees surrounding the place. He appeared shaken and didn't want to comment.
 
 

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