Mark Ames Talks About Shocking New Koch Revelations With Dylan Ratigan

Class War For Idiots / eXile TV / April 21, 2011

By Mark Ames

Mark Ames talks with Dylan Ratigan about his investigative article in The Nation magazine, co-authored with labor journalist Mike Elk, exposing the scary and bizarre propaganda and elections influencing that Koch Industries now forces on its employees.

Watch the video here:

Mark Ames is the author of Going Postal: Rage, Murder and Rebellion from Reagan’s Workplaces to Clinton’s Columbine.

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15 Comments

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1. wengler | April 21st, 2011 at 6:24 pm
I was just sitting around minding myself when Mark Ames popped up on Democracy Now!
He’s everywhere these days…
2. DrunktankDan | April 21st, 2011 at 6:59 pm
I still can’t believe they are allowing my fuckin hero to be interviewed on tv.
Anyways dudes, the ‘watch here’ link is fucked. It leads to a really outdated 404 page. I know you aren’t faggy computer dorks so I don’t really expect much in the way of webdesign here, but you might wanna get that looked at.
Thanks for all the patriotic work you guys are doing.
3. first | April 21st, 2011 at 8:11 pm
first frosty!
4. fsafda | April 21st, 2011 at 11:49 pm
This is a Koch employee comment produced with generous ideological support from the Charles “I skullfuck my employees” Koch Foundation:
“now, because a corporation has full 1st amendment rights…” do you know what the first amendment says, ames? it doesn’t say “individuals have a right to free speech” or “individuals, loosely defined, have free speech rights”, it says “congress shall make no law… abridging the freedom of speech.” it means exactly what it says: that it is illegal for congress to make a law limiting speech of any kind. notice how there’s no mention of who/what a “speaker” is, and it was written that way intentionally so people like you will never get to decide who gets to speak and who doesn’t. n it doesn’t matter what the kochs tell their employees because enforcement is impossible. for someone who presents himself as such a champion of working ppl, u must have an extremely low opinion of them to think that they’re so susceptible to propaganda that they shouldn’t be exposed to the ‘wrong kind’ of ideas, lest it bewilder their little brains. so what you’re defending ultimately is employees’ “right” to “be free” from political messaging from their bosses (ie “abridging speech, u 1st amendment scholar, u) so we can protect that vital democratic institution… voting for democrats, apparently. because if THAT doesn’t happen, we’re obviously so much more screwed than we would be if they voted for the other puppet team. n if u replaced all the “Koch Industries”s with “WI state teachers’ union”s and the reps with dems, u wouldn’t bat an eye. you can hang it up; we get it, the kochs are hypocrites and have undue influence in politics. if u wanna play in the marketplace of ideas, then play with ideas, don’t obsess over individual players and reduce urself to fear-mongering so we illiterates know who the “bad guys” are. that “koch whore” glenn greenwald wrote an amazing book about the US oligarchy a few years ago, where he named a lot of the same ppl you have… but he’s on the other team, the evil ‘libertarian’ team, so i guess the kochs are also paying ppl to write books attacking the kochs. it all makes sense now (to u, probably). i cannot believe that 1) an adult could seriously entertain these ideas 2) they pay u to write this stuff. n bfor ur sycophant trolls decide im a ‘koch whore’, let me make this clear: the kochs paid me a very large sum of money to write this
5. GhostUnit | April 22nd, 2011 at 12:57 am
Thank you for doing this, Mark Ames. I hope there’s hope.
6. abc123 | April 22nd, 2011 at 1:53 am
What an enourmous crush I have on Ames’ head.
7. First | April 22nd, 2011 at 5:08 am
fIr$t !!! … !!!
8. 16 Shells from a 30.06 | April 22nd, 2011 at 8:50 am
While it may now be legal for corporate entities to play politics in a manner that used to be reserved for flesh and blood human beings, it still isn’t legal to riot and destroy the physical plants of these chinsy corporate outfits seeking to reduce the citizenry to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious sheep. Considering that our government decided to give corporations the rights of individual citizens, we the people should also have the ability to murder corporations that have offended against the citizenry. It’s only fair.
9. Phoenix Woman | April 22nd, 2011 at 9:36 am
“Does Anyone Else Think Bradley Manning’s Transfer Out Of Quantico Means The Torture Worked, They Broke Him Down And Got What They Wanted, Rather Than A Sign That Something Good Happened?”
They may well have broken him, but they probably didn’t get what they wanted, which was a gold-plated confession, or else the trial would have started by now. The problem with “breaking” people is that it tends to render them unusable for courtroom purposes.
Why are they so dependent on trying to get Manning to confess to whistleblowing? Because Adrian Lamo, the person on whom the DoD’s entire case rests, is about as reliable a witness as Benny Hinn:
http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/2010/12/30/pulling-some-threads-on-lamos-inconsistencies/
http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/2010/12/31/lamos-two-laptops/
http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/2011/04/21/what-happened-to-bradley-manning-in-january/
http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/2011/01/25/did-manning-zerofill-his-hard-drives-or-did-the-military/
http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/2011/03/03/bradley-mannings-new-charges-bringing-discredit-upon-the-armed-forces/
http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/2010/12/26/when-did-adrian-lamo-start-working-with-federal-investigators/
http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/2011/02/16/chet-uber-contacted-hbgary-before-he-publicized-his-role-in-turning-in-bradley-manning/
10. ha | April 22nd, 2011 at 11:34 am
Haha, i’m trying to find a reason to make it seem like i’m not bothered by this (after all i suck from the koch teat) give me a few more commenter-minutes here, i’ll think something up.
11. fr | April 23rd, 2011 at 12:09 am
I haven’t given much consideration to “koch revelations” since the Screech sex tape.
12. the other Jon | April 25th, 2011 at 12:17 am
So I was listening to NPR earlier, and while talking about the Dilbert creator’s clumsy attempts to manage his image online, they incidentally mentioned that the U.S. Army is developing a system, similar to that which we see being employed by the Kochs on this site and elsewhere, that will allow them to formulaically manage impressions throughout the media (e.g., figuring out precisely how many plants are needed per website to derail unsympathetic discussions, how to give the impression of popularity without actually being popular, etc.) and which if successful will truly distill propaganda, which in previous eras was often so transparent as to be laughable (at least in retrospect), into a science.
As I believe Ames has mentioned previously, American propaganda is effective precisely because Americans are unaware of its existence; we’re convinced that our system, which was, naturally, ordained by God to the exclusion of everyone else, is somehow immune from it. It is not surprisingly, then, that we see the altogether depressing, though not at all surprising tendency for Americans to fall for the most puerile swindles–which anywhere else would be recognized as such, thereby discrediting their originators–but which here go blithely unnoticed.
Paying close attention to the Kochs’ machinations is therefore especially important. Think about it: if they are already this influential in a time when scientific propaganda is only in its infancy, imagine what the world will be like when controlling the discussion, and therefore the direction of society, is as simple as inputting x dollars to achieve y result. If someone with enough money–be it the U.S. government, a multinational corporation, or a sadistic billionaire or two–decides that non-billionaire Americans would be better off as the bananas in the proverbial banana republic, then the formula will soon be available to directly accomplish it. So, in short, you ought to be paranoid about these guys and their ilk, because its only going to get worse.
13. the other Jon | April 25th, 2011 at 12:24 am
Oops, should have proofread that.
14. Alex Winter | April 26th, 2011 at 1:10 pm
The feeling I get from reading about these Kochs is that, hypothetically regardless of anything they might do, there is no court in America that could exact justice on them.
These men have discovered the way to be more powerful than any and all of our three branches of government and justice put together.
15. dan stabel | April 26th, 2011 at 2:07 pm
Hope Mark reads this, maybe he knows….
I I cross checked this bit. It seems to be quite accurate.
Daddy Koch, the {or a} founder of the John Birch Society, the godfather of right wing groups, founded it in 1956, upon his return from Soviet Russia. He did return as a naif, having been a regular visitor since the 1920 ‘s. Seems the place was not the same since old Joe passed on. He had been building refineries since then at immense profit, with nary a peep about Stalin’s butchery of his own people- in 30+ years he hardly could not have a few rumors. It’s ok: he did have Henry Ford for company. Like those ww2 Russian army trucks?