This is a must read. The Koch Cabal has been planning and working to ruin the middle class since the early 1970s (David Koch joined the family business in 1970), in response to America's growing disdain for "the system." The 1% was losing the hearts and minds of Americans and decided to fight back by forming lot of non-profit organizations and think tanks to act politically in order to reshape popular opinions and laws.
This is where the "Free Enterprise" "Smaller Government" "Lower Taxes" and "Trickle Down" "Freedom" chanting all began.
If you don't know your adversary and yourself, you will lose the battle. This is a foundational teaching in the Art of War.
We are losing the battles but we don't have to lose this war between the 1% and the 99%. It is time to reread this historical document.
I don't think you can truly understand todays GOP if you haven't read this:
The Powell Memo Original copy.
Searchable PDF format The Powell Memo
Bill Moyers wrote about this last year
The Powell Memo: A Call-to-Arms for Corporations
In the fall of 1972, the venerable National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) made a surprising announcement: It planned to move its main offices from New York to Washington, D.C. As its chief, Burt Raynes, observed:
We have been in New York since before the turn of the century, because
we regarded this city as the center of business and industry.
But the thing that affects business most today is government. The
interrelationship of business with business is no longer so important
as the interrelationship of business with government. In the last several
years, that has become very apparent to us.[1]
To be more precise, what had become very apparent to the business community was that it was getting its clock cleaned. Used to having broad sway, employers faced a series of surprising defeats in the 1960s and early 1970s. As we have seen, these defeats continued unabated when Richard Nixon won the White House. Despite electoral setbacks, the liberalism of the Great Society had surprising political momentum.
Moyers concludes his article with:
By this time, however, business PACs were shifting away from their traditional focus on buttering up (mostly Democratic) incumbents toward a strategy that mixed donations to those in power with support for conservative political challengers. Such a pattern was evident in the critical election year of 1978. Through September of the election season, nearly half of corporate campaign contributions flowed into Democrats’ coffers. In the crucial weeks before the 1978 election, however, only 29 percent did.
By the end of the 1978 campaign, more than 60 percent of corporate contributions had gone to Republicans, both GOP challengers and Republican incumbents fighting off liberal Democrats.[13]
A new era of campaign finance was born:
Not only were corporate contributions growing ever bigger,
Democrats had to work harder for them.
More and more, to receive business largesse, they had to do more than hold power; they had to wield it in ways that business liked.
We can improve our ground game.
“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.”
― Sun Tzu, The Art of War
Equally important are the follow up documents to Powell's meme found at
this link.
Of particular interest is a document entitled "Let's Stop the Nonsense" which you will find if you scroll past the lengthy article about Ralph Nadar. I highly recommend reading this as well.