The archive for Alternet

A new video from Brave New Foundation shows how people are paying the ultimate price for the Koch brothers’ politics and profiteering.

by Tara Lohan at Alternet | October 11, 2011

“What we’ve been doing with our ‘Koch Brothers Exposed’ project is connecting the dots: explaining the size and scope of what they’re doing, which is really nothing short of trying to buy democracy,” said Greenwald, the president of Brave New Foundation. (Full disclosure: Greenwald is on AlterNet’s board of directors.) ”What we’ve done with each of the Koch pieces is to use specific stories to depict people’s lives and show that ideology has consequences. What the Kochs are doing is not harmless, it is not victimless, and there are people who are paying a terrible price for the brothers’ politics and their profiteering.”

Click here for the full story.

by Sarah Seltzer at AlterNet | August 17, 2011

After Brave New Foundation’s searing video, exposing the role Koch-funded organizations like Americans for Prosperity are taking in the re-segregation of schools and the undermining of public education’s very foundations, began circulating on the internet, the group naturally expected some blowback.

And naturally, it came, albeit poorly and someone incoherently, from AFP branches around the country.

Here’s BNF’s own explanation of what that response was like:

iThe Koch brothers – founders of the Tea Party group Americans for Prosperity – were the subject of our latest investigative video, “Why Do the Koch Brothers Want to End Public Education?”

AFP didn’t much like it, and that’s disappointing. With its extensive track record of influencing and  supporting elections – all adverbs are appropriate – we would think AFP would’ve taken another victory lap after our video.

They have done so previously.

Following the 2009 Wake County school board election, Americans for Prosperity waited a few months before publically popping champagne bottles. The blog entitled, “Your grassroots action really paid off in Wake County Public Schools,” is a self-congratulatory missive AFP published. In light of the role AFP played in Wake County, the blog post affirms its active role in repealing and replacing successful school integration policies.

… Americans for Prosperity has a track record of pleading ignorance and feigning innocence elsewhere too. ..

We are disappointed AFP doesn’t like our work, research, interviews or personal stories that reflect a pleasant working and middle class community trying to fight against outside right-wing agitation and influence.

But Americans for Prosperity goes further, and we’re amused its North Carolina chapter made embarrassing mistakes in its attempt to erase a story about its influence in the state. AFP got our name wrong. We are Brave New Foundation, not Brave New Films. The group got our President’s name wrong. His name is Robert Greenwald, not Robert Greenwell.

The mixture of backpedaling, attacks and hysteria caused by the BNF video (link here) show that they’ve truly hit a nerve and that AFP knows this exposure can harm its reputation irreparably.

Read more and watch the video here.

And read our own Adele Stan’s riveting article on the AFP’s attacks on education here.

By Adele M. Stan at AlterNet | August 14, 2011

The latest installment of Brave New Foundation’s documentary series “Koch Brothers Exposed” reveals the Kochs’ assault on public education.

For the full story: www.alternet.org

by Don Hazen at AlterNet | June 21, 2011

Brave New Films has provided, with Bernie Sanders, a clear deconstruction of the origins and process of the conservative disinformation propaganda machine. It’s scary.

If you have been paying attention to television, radio, newspapers, the Internet, various talk shows, including the batch on Sunday morning, you have heard two words repeated a lot; so often that there is actually the sound of an echo. Word one is collapse … collapse … collapse; word two is bankrupt… bankrupt … bankrupt. Can you guess why these words are repeated over and over (and no, this is not about the Greek economy)?

Rather, these words are being used and reused to describe the persistent disinformation that, if successful, will impact millions of people, probably even you, who are reading this. Did you guess right? The first message is: “We must raise the retirement age or the economy will collapse.” And two: “Social security is bankrupt.”

These two statements have been repeated thousands of times in and on American media. Yet there is not one scintilla of evidence that either one of these statements is accurate. But they have lodged themselves into the mainstream of American thought, constantly repeated by corporate media, as if they are obvious truths.

How does this happen? Since the 1970′s the conservatives in this country have developed a very powerful propaganda infrastructure, that is currently heavily funded by guess who? Right, the Koch brothers. It goes like this: large amounts of money a la Koch brothers are given to conservative think tanks where well-paid staffers develop position papers. The think tanks release the position papers pushing conservative ideas, then an army of publicists place the pundits from those very think tanks for media appearances to promote the ideas, repeating the talking points. The corporate media parrots these positions as if they’re fact; conservative politicians (funded by the Kochs and other conservative donors) embrace and promote the same talking points, as if they’re fact. This is the nature of the echo chamber. When it is fully operational, the same points are made in many media appearances, in every kind of media until the ideas become the conventional wisdom.

But you really need to watch how this works in action. Robert Greenwald’s Brave New Films has produced a groundbreaking investigative piece, which focuses on the cottage industry, largely funded by the Kochs, whose sole purpose is to turn fringe ideas into mainstream policy arguments. In BNF’s investigative work, they found documents and interviews that illustrate a vast industry of spokespeople, front groups, think tanks and elected officials, which have built a self-sustaining echo chamber.

The video “Echo Chamber” highlights the onslaught on Social Security as just one example. The Koch echo chamber on Social Security begins with think tanks like the Cato Institute, Heritage Foundation and Mercatus Center at George Mason University and the Reason Foundation, which owe their founding and achievements to Koch backing. These think tanks take their $28.4 million in Koch funding and produce more than 300 position papers distorting the purpose and effectiveness of Social Security.

And so it goes. But watch the video. It’s well worth it. And short and digestible.