ELECTIONS HAVE CONSEQUENCES!!

Especially when you don't show up.

9 Signs the Kochs Have Created Their Own National Political Party
The Koch Party is what plutocracy, not democracy, looks like.

December 23, 2014 |

It is time to stop talking about the Koch brothers and instead talk about the Koch Party, the nation’s third largest political network that is a full-blown but private political operation. The Koch Party has come into view in 2014, as some of the country’s best investigative reporters have traced and exposed various elements of their operation.

The Koch Party is not as large as the Democrats or the Republicans, but is still unprecedented in size, scope and reach. Like other political parties, it has a platform, donors and constituents, electoral and advertising strategies, voter data, and—after the 2014 midterms—members of Congress ready to shepherd its pro-corporate, anti-regulatory agenda.

But unlike the Democrats and Republicans, the Koch Party is not public. It doesn’t have national political conventions attended by the media and delegates. Instead it has secretive getaways for mega-millionaires and billionaires in posh gated resorts where the public and press are neither invited nor allowed.

http://www.alternet.org/tea-party-and-right/9-signs-kochs-have-created-their-own-national-political-party?paging=off&current_page=1#bookmark

Probe fails to link IRS scandal to White House WASHINGTON (AP) - A House Republican investigation faults senior IRS officials in the mistreatment of conservative groups that applied for tax-exempt status, but could find no link to the White House, according to a report released Tuesday. [Million$$ Wasted!!] The probe isn't over, although investigators have reviewed 1.3 million pages of documents and interviewed 52 officials. The report, however, marks the end of Rep. Darrell Issa's tenure leading the investigation.

http://www.jsonline.com/business/national/issa-probe-fails-to-link-white-house-to-irs-scandal8df9473266194512b8dea6d4cd5c8076-286674841.html

My horrible right-wing past: Confessions of a one-time religious right icon
I was a religious fanatic appealing to political leaders. Today, the fanatics are the political leaders
Frank Schaeffer | Wednesday, Dec 24, 2014 03:58 AM PST

This zealous negativity has a long history. I was part of it as the nepotistic sidekick to my religious-right evangelist father. The 1970s Evangelical anti-abortion movement that Dad (Evangelical leader Francis Schaeffer), C. Everett Koop (who would be Ronald Reagan’s surgeon general) and I helped create seduced the Republican Party. We turned it into an extremist far-right party that is fundamentally anti-American. There would have been no Tea Party without the foundation we built.

The difference between now and then is that back then we were religious fanatics knocking on the doors of normal political leaders. Today the fanatics are the political leaders.

http://www.salon.com/2014/12/24/my_horrible_right_wing_past_confessions_of_a_one_time_religious_right_icon/