It turns out the Tea Party was right.

The raison d'être of the loosely affiliated grassroots organizations is that a big government threatens freedoms, especially if it's in the wrong hands. This week's revelations that the Obama Administration lied about the circumstances surrounding the death of the American ambassador at Benghazi, spied on the Associated Press, and intimidated conservative groups with the IRS clued in the mainstream media on what the Tea Party has known for years.

Not only has this administration rapidly centralized power but has turned the government against the American people in an unprecedented way, and it's not just the three scandals from this week.

Some liberals and libertarians deserve credit for raising concerns about sacrificing liberty for security in the wake of 9/11. We were fine when that power was pointed at our enemies in Al Qaeda. They warned us that in the wrong hands, it could be used against us.

Obama campaigned on ending some controversial Bush-era security programs. Liberals ate it up. Not only did he keep them, however, he expanded them and his administration has used them against his own country. Liberals didn't care.

Who did care, were the Tea Party groups. Many participants became disenchanted with Bush, especially in his second term. But size of his government was nothing compared to Obama, who showed a radical ideological streak that put no limit on the size of government--blended with nasty, brutal Chicago politics.

Thanks to an ill-informed public, an adoring press, and a golden tongue, Obama was able to get away with abuses of power. While the mainstream media may have just learned about his problems this week, conservatives reported it way back--but they were mocked and ignored, until now.

If the mainstream media was doing its job in 2008, there's no way Obama's campaign would have survived Jeremiah Wright, Bill Ayers, and Tony Rezko, let alone his anti-American upbringing or heavy drug use.

The press ignored even the existence of the Tea Party at first, which caught fire in its opposition to Obamacare.  Without mainstream media help, the Democrats were able to push it through with shady maneuvers.

Alone, conservatives tried unsuccessfully to hold Obama's Attorney General accountable for the Fast & Furious gunwalking scandal.  They pointed out that his Green Jobs Czar was a self admitted 9/11 Truther and communist. They railed against the partial nationalization of the healthcare, auto, and financial sectors, to no avail. Solyndra didn't make a dent, and taxpayer money flowed to Obama backers. He supported the violent Occupy movement--can you imagine what the press would say if Romney backed the Tea Party and it turned violent? The press had nothing but praise for it. Then there was massive ammo purchases and an assault on the second amendment.  Don't forget about Obama's war on whistleblowers.  Or his war on Libya without Congressional approval that he said would last weeks but lasted months.

Either the flagging economy or Benghazi should have cost him reelection, but instead he sailed in. Rand Paul had to filibuster just to get him to say he wouldn't target American citizens in a drone strike.

All of it was ignored by everyone but conservatives.

But now that the election is over, we're starting to hear about Benghazi, the IRS targeting of the Tea Party, and the overly aggressive pursuit of whistleblowers, all of which took place before he was reelected.

Now, the mainstream media has finally validated only a few conservative fears of this corrupt administration, which is worse than Nixon's.  There's lots more. Can Obama's disciples spin the news cycle back to his advantage? Will the press lose interest and the public go back to sleep?

Probably.

But there's a chance that scandals' momentum will highlight his other, previously ignored ones. Whether or not Obama sustains permanent political damage, the Tea Party can at least be assured that they were in the right all along.

After more than 35 years in the Senate, Richard G. Lugar of Indiana was ousted Tuesday by a tea party challenger in a Republican primary that showed how hard it is for a veteran lawmaker known for his ability to compromise to win reelection in the current political environment.

The Heritage Foundation provided a great way to visualize the media's biased coverage of the gaping chasm between how Tea Partiers and Occupiers behaved at their respective protests. The left-wing media was desperate for any examples of violence it could pin on the conservative movement, even blaming it for the shooting of Gabrielle Giffords by a disturbed young man who had no ties whatsoever to the Tea Party.

Any of the following events would be front-page stories for weeks if they happened:

• Tea Party Protester Defecates on Police Car
• Riot Police Arrest Tea Party Protesters
• Repairing Tea Party Damage to City Hall Could Cost $400,000
• Tea Party Protesters Sing 'F*** the USA'"
• Tea Party Speaker: Violence Will be Necessary to Achieve Our Goals
• Tea Party Protests Go Global; Riots in Rome
• Police in Riot Gear Clear Tea Party Protesters in California City

The media would be justifiably outraged if the Tea Party was guilty of any of the above. Instead, the media is guilty of hypocrisy for not crying out at all, because those acts were committed by Occupiers, not Tea Partiers.

A self-described militant Marxist party whole heartedly supports the far-left Occupy Movement, according to an article on the Party for Socialism and Liberation website.

In "Occupy LA has militant, anti-capitalist start," the PSL accurately summarizes (at least in the headline) the socialism-inspired protests raging around the country.

The PSL has called for a Marxist revolution in the United States, and has a history of supporting political riots in California.

The Occupy movement contrasts starkly with the peaceful Tea Party movement, which saw nary an arrest despite thousands of protests involving millions of people over the course of over two years. In one day, 700 Occupiers were arrested.

Occupiers have also been seen clashing with police and defecating on police cars, and their bizarre "collectively thinking" People Assembly rituals even confound liberals such as Congressman John Lewis.  Evidence even exists that some Occupiers are being paid to protest.

In early August, Standard & Poor's rating agency downgraded the U.S. credit worthiness from AAA to AA+, marking the first time that's happened since the country achieved AAA status in 1917.

A week earlier, the White House and congressional leaders reached a deal on raising the debt limit after a lengthy and high-profile standoff, with the Tea Party largely opposing it because it did not go far enough to cut spending.

That opposition, according to a Ventura County Star editorial on Labor Day, is what caused the national credit downgrade.

That's because the congressional Republicans' intransigent tea party-movement wing, with its reckless rule-or-ruin attack on lifting the debt ceiling, saddled the Republicans with the downgrading of U.S. creditworthiness, introducing uncertainty into the financial system when the markets were craving certainty and dealing a body blow to the fragile recovery of consumer confidence.

It wasn't decades of runaway spending during the administrations of Bush and Obama that culminated in massively expensive stimulus packages, or that the United States effectively resorted to printing money under the  "quantitative easing" program in order to meet its debt obligations that caused S&P to rethink our credit rating. No, no, no, it was those people in the lawn chairs with the flags.

Standard & Poor itself seems to have a different take on why it downgraded United States credit worthiness.

"The downgrade reflects our opinion that the fiscal consolidation plan that Congress and the administration recently agreed to falls short of what, in our view, would be necessary to stabilize the government's medium-term debt dynamics,"

In other words, there's too much debt and the Boehner/Obama deal didn't do anything to address that, which is exactly why the Tea Party opposed it.

To make the point even more clear, the head of sovereign ratings at S&P said, "This is a problem that's been a long time in the making--well over this administration, the prior administration," adding that the debt-to-GDP ratio is central concern to the agency.

Excessive debt was the primary cause of the downgrade. Not the Tea Party. In fact, S&P implicitly validated the Tea Party's opposition to the Boehner/Obama plan. If there's one group of people that shouldn't get any blame for the reduced AA+ rating, it's the Tea Party, yet that's exactly who got assigned the blame in the Star editorial.

The S&P official did say that Congress should not have waited until two days before the deadline to reach an agreement with the White House. However, with all the talk that the Tea Party representatives rejected compromise, the same is true for President Obama and the Democrats. If two parties to a discussion keep rejecting the others' proposals, it seems sort of one-sided to blame only one side for not compromising.

As S&P said, the blame lies with at least two presidential administrations who spent more money than they had. It shouldn't be hung around the necks of the only people who are arguing for any semblance of fiscal sanity.

On Monday, the Star published an editorial entitled, "Irene makes the case for government" in which the paper contrasted government performance in the face of the unusual northeast hurricane with general criticism from small-government conservatives.

Those who believe big government can do no right kept silent when big government swung into action. The much-derided Federal Emergency Management Agency prepositioned 18 disaster-response teams on the East Coast and stockpiled food, water and communications equipment.

The editorial continued to detail the preparations of various public agencies, and noted that hurricane expert Max Mayfield praised the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Mr. Mayfield praised the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration for spending the extra money -- Gasp! Federal spending! -- on additional surveillance flights and weather balloons that paid off in better forecasts.

Republican Presidential Candidate Michelle Bachmann was criticized for joking that hurricanes and earthquakes were divine wrath.

Campaigning in Florida, GOP Rep. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota said the hurricane, by then reduced to a middling tropical storm, and the East Coast earthquake days earlier were warnings from God about the evils of federal spending.

The editorial board apparently thought she was stone-cold serious even though she was smiled and her audience laughed when she said it. The editorial closed by recommending that conservatives stop talking about downsizing government until hurricane season is over.

The small-government types should hold off on their calls to downsize government. Hurricane season has three more months to run.

The article's premise--that small-government conservatives believe "government can do no right" is false. It assumes that because conservatives oppose big government, they must oppose all government.

I see the fallacy frequently, usually involving infrastructure. It goes like this:

"Oh you don't like big government? So you don't want roads then, huh?"

It's the logical equivalent of asking a drowning man if he drinks water occasionally. "You drink water every day; what's your problem with drowning?"

At the center of the fallacy is the assumption that you can't oppose something in degrees. I like water, I just don't want so much of it I drown in it. A little "Gasp!--Federal spending!" is OK by me, I just don't want to drown in public debt.

The fact that small-government conservatives oppose government in degrees is in our name. We aren't called "no-government conservatives." We want a little government, but not too much.

So when is a good time for government to get involved? If it protects us, and it works, then I think small-government types like myself are OK with it. In fact, conservatives tend to be the strongest supporters of police and the military, even though both are sizable arms of government.

You don't see Tea Partiers on street corners saying no to police and soldiers (but you do see that on the progressive left, interestingly). Nor will you see a lot of Tea Partiers--the fringe right, according to Democrats--opposing the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration. How much does the NOAA cost--.000000000000001% of the budget? There are few who care  about that, and the Tea Party did not originate over alarm at the NOAA's encroachment into our lives.

Small-government conservatives DO care when government involves itself in places it should not be or if its involvement does not work.  You don't get to $14 trillion in debt and a $1.3 trillion budget deficit with efficient government, so, believe it or not, there is room to criticize government.

When it becomes expensive, conservatives speak up.

Five of the top six largest federal budget items are progressive sacred cows, totaling two-thirds of all federal spending. If you want to cut back spending on any of those items, why you must oppose roads as well. A real good argument, right? It distorts any attempt to reduce spending or waste.

After Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans in 2005, FEMA started handing out money like it was candy, leading to millions of lost taxpayer dollars and widespread fraud. According to the liberal Huffington Post:

But that allowed thousands of improper and fraudulent payments. FEMA employees awarded money without interviewing applicants or inspecting property and made errors that ranged from recording incorrect banking information to failing to check whether insurance had already covered damage, according to congressional testimony.

HuffPo reported that FEMA is reviewing $600 million it distributed in aid to hurricane victims, and has already asked people to  pay back more than $22 million. Hundreds were convicted for fraud.

If we use the progressive fallacy that if you oppose an excess of something then you must oppose all of it, then if anyone finds it alarming that FEMA wasted millions or hundreds of millions of our dollars, then you must oppose all disaster response efforts.

In the final analysis, "Irene makes the case for government" inadvertently sets up a straw man--a conservative straw man who apparently is making the case for the elimination of all government--and knocks it down with an avalanche of praise for the feds in an attempt to diminish the arguments of those, particularly in the Tea Party, who took upon themselves the abandoned--but crucial--role of government watchdog.

Richard Carter, Chairman of the Ventura County Democratic Party.

That should be a surprising outcome, considering he was the moderator. I've publicly criticized him in the recent past, but fairness dictates that I credit him when he performs a good deed.

Carter and his team reached out to a libertarian and a conservative Republican and invited them to debate a Democrat (and an independent, who couldn't make it to the event). They sponsored a fair and open debate, and gave each participant an even chance to convince the left-leaning audience of the superiority of their positions.

No minds were changed.

I have a soft spot for people that make an effort to try to open a dialogue with ideological opponents in good faith--it's a naivete of mine I hold onto tightly so it's not lost in the glare of the endless daily partisan political war that's fought on print, TV, radio, and online all the time. Seeing an invitation go out for a friendly debate to me is like seeing a white flag of truce. For centuries, the flag ensured that the bitter fighting could stop for a few moments and combatants could sit down to reason together, even in enemy territory with safe passage ensured. To show my support for this idea, I traveled to Simi Valley to watch the debate. And if the panel were the combatants, then that would make me a war correspondent whose role it is to publicize any incidents of disrespect to the flag of truce.

As I stated before, Carter deserved credit for refereeing a fair match. How did the audience behave? There was a lot of hooting and hollering from the heavily Democratic audience, but guess what? It's their club, their home turf. I played against other town's baseball teams in the Midwest and I never expected their fans to cheer for me. When you're the visiting team, you don't have the advantage of having the crowd on your side, but so what it's fair.

I did hear some inappropriate things from a few individual audience members, but it wasn't anything egregious. The worst breach of the truce came when a Tea Party supporter tried to start a shouting match with the Democratic debater about abortion.

Now, I realize abortion is an emotional subject. I have strong feelings about it. But let's think about this practically. I previously opined that this debate was an opportunity for Tea Partiers to show mainstream Democrats that they aren't the irrational, angry people the elite media portrays them to be.

How do you think shouting like an irrational, angry person comes across to a Democrat? Like you just confirmed every single suspicion they had about you. Great job, way to influence others.

In contrast to that unruly audience member, the Tea Party organizer who was on the debate panel embodied the exact opposite of angry. She was quiet, calm, and didn't even want to comment on social issues. However, she didn't quite have the polished talking points at her disposal that her opponents possessed, and so she did not sway the crowd.

Incidentally, I don't regard having polished talking points to be a good thing, but nevertheless that's what the debate degenerated into--the professional Republican and the professional Democrat trading statistics and cliches and getting nowhere.

I do have to point out one low blow the Democrat took. Setting aside the fact that she was perhaps the smuggiest smug that ever smugged during a debate--she couldn't help but to make childish faces during her opponents' responses--she resorted to calling her conservative opponents "tea baggers" for identifying Obama's healthcare plan "Obamacare."  As the Republican pointed out, that's a descriptive and political term, not an insulting sexual term like "tea bagger." Republicans do not get upset when Reaganomics is discussed, why should Democrats melt down when Obamacare is mentioned? Oh, and just to show you how classy this lady was, she said that trickle-down economics is when the middle class "gets pissed on," which is sort of what she did to the flag of truce.

She, and a few of the audience members, seem to be the type of people that would invite someone to a "pig party." A pig party is where some cool kids invite some nerds to a party, pretending they like them so that they can get them in a room to sneer and make fun of them in not-so-subtle ways.

She could have learned a lesson in civility from Carter, who--even though he had opportunities to embarrass the participants--compensated for her intransigence by acting appropriately and courteously to the panel. Due to that, and the absence of a masterful performance by one of the conservatives, he (and by extension his organization) walks away from this one the winner.

With one week to go before income tax returns are due, the Ventura County Star ran an editorial that concluded that, unlike our European counterparts, Americans are whiny when it comes to paying their taxes.

In "Americans taxed less than others but feeling it more," the Star wrote, "As much as Americans and their politicians gripe about taxes, the U.S. tax burden of about 24 percent is one of the lowest in the developed world."

The Star notes that European countries derive a large portion of their revenue from a hidden value-added tax that is less obtrusive than the American self-reporting system. The VAT is "omnipresent," as the Star points out, and is subtly attached to just about every service or good that is sold. European consumers don't notice the VAT and so they don't have all the pesky Tea Party people whining about taxes like we have here. The Star writes:

The United States, by contrast, has a noisy and politically influential tax protest movement in the tea party. Its legislators resist any suggestion of tax increases to make up for the government's yawning deficits and balked at even a modest increase on the wealthiest 2 percent of taxpayers.

Perhaps Tea Partiers balked at Obama's "modest" increase because they realized that the wealthiest in the country already pay a disproportionate share of taxes and shouldn't be called on every year to pay a higher rate. After all, a series of "modest" increases--if they keep coming, one after another--soon amount to a very large increase. Incremental increases, however, are appealing to myopic observers whose frame of reference is limited to only the previous 12 months.

For the rest of us, we see that the top one percent of income earners pay almost 40 percent of all the remitted federal income taxes. The top 5 percent pay almost 60 percent. The job-producers tend to occupy this tier, so I think we can cut the Tea Party a little slack for "balking" at the increase.

The disparity doesn't stop at the top tax brackets.

The disgraced former presidential candidate John Edwards ran on the theme that there were two Americas--one was rich, one was poor. It turned out there were two John Edwards--one was a likable, populist politician; the other was a corrupt philanderer who impregnated his staffer behind his dying wife's back. But while Edwards was right that America was divided, he was wrong about what divided it

We're divided between taxpayers and tax eaters.

The top 50 percent of income earners pay over 97 percent of all federal income taxes. The bottom 50 percent pay 2.7 percent.

One half of all Americans barely pay into the system at all, but reap the most benefits--which are paid for by the other half.

When the Star reports that the average U.S. tax burden is 24 percent of income, it fails to take into consideration that almost half of U.S. taxpayers pay nothing.

In other words, if half of Americans' tax burden was zero percent, and the half that did pay taxes averaged 48 percent, the Star would claim that the overall tax burden is only 24 percent and ask, why are people so noisy about taxes?

Because the ones that do pay are paying almost half of their incomes!

But the main point of the editorial is that if we just hid the taxes a little more we wouldn't be so upset. Rather than make us swallow one big tax pill, VAT proponents would rather crush it up and sprinkle it into some milk for us to help make it go down.

Paul Revere and the Mechanics sounds like an alternative rock band, but they were really a Revolutionary-War-era organization that resisted British authority. In fact, it was as a Mechanic that Revere made his famous ride.

Last year, the American Majority--a group affiliated with the Tea Party--adopted the name for its mission of training ordinary people into politically-savvy activists.

On Saturday, the group sponsored a training event in Camarillo. Attendees studied how to build a coalition of volunteers, focus on influencing politics precinct by precinct, and use blogs, Wikis, and other social networking tools to spread information.

Most importantly, they studied "The System" itself, how we got here, and strategies for changing it.

Speaking of strategies, the Tea Party Patriots are convening in Phoenix later his month for the American Policy Summit--a forty-year political plan.

I don't think this Tea Party thing is a passing fad...

If you're a politician in California the last thing you want is to be mentioned on The John and Ken Show, let alone have them dedicate a full segment to you.

Yet that's what happened to Ventura Mayor Bill Fulton Thursday afternoon, when the outspoken hosts--infamous for their anti-incumbent "heads on a stick" campaign--spent twenty minutes lambasting him for hurting downtown businesses with the installation of parking meters.

John Kobylt and Ken Chiampou, who daily reach a million listeners on KFI (AM 640), said they were angered after reading a Ventura County Star article about the emotional meeting between businesses owners and city officials over the unpopular parking meters in front of their stores.

The article quoted Gary Parker, a Tea Party activist who owns American Flags and Cutlery, as saying, "I'm telling you, if my business goes down, I am going to dedicate my retirement to bringing those (meters) down."

A producer contacted Parker, and shortly after 2 p.m. he was speaking to John and Ken on the air about the mayor, who Kobylt called "Mayor full-of-it Fulton."

Fulton caught the attention of John and Ken over the weekend, when he was quoted in a Los Angeles Times profile of UCLA professor Donald Shoup, the "prophet of parking."

 "It's really remarkable how he has become the godfather of this parking idea," said Ventura Mayor Bill Fulton, who as a UCLA planning student in 1982 took Shoup's class on public resource economics.

"Don has been saying the exact same thing for 40 years, and finally the world is listening to him."

Fulton, in fact, said he recently became a full-fledged Shoupista when Ventura implemented a Shoup-style parking management program and quickly saw the intended results. By charging for 400 of the 2,900 public parking spaces downtown, the city has spurred employees of local businesses to park at free city lots and walk to work rather than use curb spaces needed by customers.

Business owners, led by Parker, say that they are seeing far fewer customers since the parking meters became operational in September.

"You got to fight the stupid people, and Donald Shoup is an educated fool and Mayor Bill Fulton is an idiot for being a Shoupista. It's a cult," Kobylt ranted. [continue reading]

The Tea Party movement is primarily a grassroots response to federal government encroachment. It began with the bailout and stimulus packages and caught fire with Obamacare.

As Tea Partiers wade deeper into politics, they are growing more concerned that progressivism infects not only the top of the political food chain but exists even at the lowest levels of government.

The Ventura County Tea Party Patriots are concerned enough about their local officials to initiate a new program to send members to various city and county government meetings to see what they're up to. They're even working with groups in other regions and states to keep an eye on their respective localities.

The new Tea Party Observers program is a response to Leftist political groups such as the Center for Community Change, which operate on the local level to push a national agenda by thinking locally and acting nationally.

It's the next place the Tea Party Movement will evolve to. Although it is the ideological opposite of progressivism, it is nevertheless borrowing the tactics of the Left. Picketing public places, marching in the street, rallying at the National Mall--Tea Partiers are becoming very successful at giving the Left a taste of its own medicine. And now, forming into local Acorn-type groups (without the fraud and socialist agenda) and focusing their power on the local level is the next step they need to take to save the country.

Volunteers are actively being recruited to take notes at every City Council and Board of Supervisor meeting, and the group is gathering Thursday night in Ventura for final preparations.

By now, you think elected officials would think twice before telling Carla Bonney that they won't answer her questions.

Yet that's what happened at Monday's Ventura City Council meeting, with just a handful of people in attendance to listen to the council discuss a ban on plastic bags.

Before the end of the week, Bonney was speaking to millions, as the firebrand Tea Party organizer took her fight against the ban onto national airwaves.

At Monday's meeting, Ventura City Councilmen Brian Brennan and Carl Morehouse attempted to ban single-use plastic bags, citing their danger to the environment. Instead, they succeeded only in persuading the council to vote 4-3 to have city staff work with agencies to find ways to reduce the amount of plastic bags in the community.

Councilmen Neal Andrews, Mike Tracy, and Jim Monahan voted against the resolution.  Andrews said a ban risked an unknown economic impact, household inconvenience and potentially even litigation.

"I heard a lot of the same rhetoric coming out of Sacramento from the folks that were donated to by the chemical lobby," said Brennan, prompting Andrews to later say that he's never accepted such donations.

At that point Bonney entered the chambers to address the council.

"You're overreaching," Bonney said. "And the whole point of the Tea Party is that our government is overreaching in every area of our lives."

Mayor Bill Fulton interrupted Bonney to explain that the public is prevented from asking any questions or engaging in dialog with the city officials.

Unfortunately, this is a pretty limited forum," Fulton curtly said.

Not one to keep quiet, Bonney found a forum that wasn't so limited Thursday afternoon when she called talk radio heavyweight Mark Levin to complain about the council's actions.

"We have to pay attention to our city councils because they're sneaking these things through," Bonney told Levin, whose voice reaches 8.5 million listeners a week.

"Where the hell did they get this power from?" Levin asked.

Levin is tied for the fourth largest talk radio audience, behind Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Glenn Beck, according to Talkers magazine. He is also a bestselling author.

Bonney is most likely the first person to take the proceedings of a Ventura council meeting to millions of people across the country.

Maybe now Mayor Fulton might pay her a little more attention.

"Ma'am, don't accuse me of not saying the truth," the congressman demands, taking a few steps toward his accuser.

Someone nearby says something off-camera about his behavior not being appropriate. That seems to make Rodriguez even angrier. He slaps the table with papers in his hand, then quickly steps back. Not exactly menacing behavior, but not a picture of self-control, either.

The Thousand Oaks Tea Party and 9/12 Project group will be visited by a Ukrainian teacher after a viewing of a documentary on the history of Progressivism.

The documentary, entitled "The Revolutionary Holocaust: Live free or die" is a history of the dark side of the Progressive movement in the early 20th century. It's produced by Glenn Beck, who asserts that the modern liberal movement is simply a rebranding of Progressive-era policies such as Marxism, collectivism, and eugenics.

Even though I'm a bit of a history buff, I had no clue about the history of Progressivism until I read Liberal Fascism by Jonah Goldberg. I literally judged the book by its cover and assumed it was just another "they're Nazis,we're the good guys" book and therefore was a waste of time.

However, when I finally read it I learned it wasn't that at all. It's a scholarly work, and I encourage all those who claim they are Progressives now to give it a read, and then afterwards ask themselves if they still want to be associated with that movement.

Here are the details about the event:

Thurs., June 17 - 6:30 p.m. - Video & Speaker - Calvary Chapel
Location:  2697 Lavery Ct., Suite 18, Newbury Park 91320
       (Lavery is two long blocks north of Hillcrest & Lawrence)

"The only way to fix the future is to understand the past." Glenn Beck

Video: "The Revolutionary Holocaust: Live Free ... or Die"
Speaker: Vadim Manzhos, school teacher in the Ukraine
Our program begins with the showing of "The Revolutionary Holocaust:
Live Free ... or Die," the special program by Glenn Beck about Collectivism,
many clips never seen before.
Vadim Manzhos will speak to us following the film of his life in the Ukraine,
contrasting it with the documentary and current trends in the U.S..
Many of you saw the documentary which aired January 22, 2010, but come
see it again and discuss it afterward with Vadim Manzhos.
The film shows clips from history erased from our history books and went
unreported in our newspapers. Learn about the deeds of Stalin, Mao,
Hitler, Castro, Che Guervara, and more.

Chances are you've never heard of the Koch brothers, even though they run the second-largest private company in the United States--a company whose growth has outpaced Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway. They keep a pretty low profile, which is hard to dowhen your pictures are above Oprah's in Forbes' list of the 400 richest Americans.  Despite their enormous success and vast wealth, Charles and David Koch are quiet philanthropists, donating hundreds of millions of dollars to museums and cancer research facilities. But it's their patronage of free-market capitalist think tanks and grassroots organizations that make them two of the founding fathers of the highly effective tea party movement.

A central theme to the movement is a vast reduction of government intrusion into personal liberties and restoration of laissez faire capitalism, something that is very close to the Kochs' hearts. While the tea parties only caught fire in 2009, the Koch brothers spent considerable time and money over the last 30 years paving the tea parties' way to the national scene.

Both brothers are libertarians--David, the second richest man in New York after Michael Bloomberg, even ran on the Libertarian Party ticket in 1980 as vice-president. Three years earlier, Charles Koch co-founded the well-known libertarian think tank the Cato Institute, which pumps out position papers and commentators promoting free market ideals on a national level. David serves on the Board of Directors, a position he also holds in the Reason Foundation.

In 1984, the brothers founded Citizens for a Sound Economy, whose mission was "to fight for less government, lower taxes, and less regulation." They populated the CSE board of directors with executives from their company, think tanks, and charitable foundations. Koch Foundation President Wayne Gable, Cato Institute Director David Padden, and Cato Institute Advisor Walter Williams all served on the board.

The organization produced over a hundred position papers a year and members appeared on TV and radio programs across the country to promote capitalism. Florida Congresswoman Katherine Harris called the CSE "one of the most effective grassroots lobbying organizations around--anywhere."

Meanwhile, Charles elevated Koch Industries from a $177 million company he inherited from his father in the 1960s to one with revenues of over $95 billion in 2008. Fred Koch--a founding member of the John Birch Society--invented a method for refining gasoline from heavy oil and employed it in the Soviet Union during World War II. The company soon expanded into chemicals, plastics, fertilizers, ranching, paper, and trading commodities. Dixie cups, Stainmaster carpet, and Brawny paper towels are some of the brands owned by Koch Industries. [continue reading]