I agree with devie. You would get more traction by using your web skills to expose the Koch Brothers' enterprise. That way, we can use our WALLETS/PURSES and NOT BUY THEIR PRODUCTS.

By NOT buying any Koch Brothers products, you would make more of an impact and believe me when I tell you that their 'behaviour' will be modified.

Quickly.

Koch Brothers are in all of your lives daily. Stop using anything associated with them and see how much you enjoy life. I guarantee YOU can't live without the products.

Boycotts are stupid....That is Liberal talk.......When you boycott someone who is already a multi-BILLIONAIRE, where are you hurting them? What will happen is workers will be layed off and all of them are not Republican. That is what will be modified.

Cyber Attacks: They accomplish nothing but a jail term. They will be caught.

Pietro, you may find it a little difficult to believe, but they are a very large corporation, with a myriad of company affiliations. Just looking at some of the areas they focus on, paper products (Georgia Pacific) carpeting (Stainmaster), pipelines, refineries (Flint Hill Resources), the list goes on and on. I took a look at their website, maybe you should see some of the positive things they are doing for the environment, land management, and as a participant in the EPA's National Environmental Performance program. If they were other than a Libertarian/Conservative entity, most folks on this board would be singing their praises, but given their conservative bent, folks get bent. I have a sneaking suspicion that if everyone on this site opted to purchase something other than Koch Industries products, they wouldn't know or care.

Are we playing rock paper scissors now? Because money trumps the pen by silencing some voices and forwarding others. Always pick money.

Living in LA - I now how big the Koch Brothers enterprise is. My point is this - there are an awful lot of people purchasing these products that these guys made. My point is this - why CONTINUE to fill their coffers if you disagree with what theyare doing politically?

You gotta HURT 'EM in the wallet to get their attention. So you are saying that if enough people don't go out and buy BRAWNY Towels, that the Koch Brothers' enterprise will NOT notice?

Believe me - they wil notice. And they will respond to that 'incident' as best they know how. They will entice you to CONTINUE to buy with coupons and incentives. However, if we show the Koch Brothers that no matterwhat they do, we will not buy their products - behaviour modification kicks in, no matter how 'large' they are.

It is good to see you posting again, Living in L.A. I hope all is going well for you.

Koch Brothers are in all of your lives daily. Stop using anything associated with them and see how much you enjoy life. I guarantee YOU can't live without the products.

Boycotts are stupid....That is Liberal talk.......When you boycott someone who is already a multi-BILLIONAIRE, where are you hurting them? What will happen is workers will be layed off and all of them are not Republican. That is what will be modified.

Cyber Attacks: They accomplish nothing but a jail term. They will be caught.

Well, ITM, YOU may not be able to excise the Koch Brothers' products out of YOUR life, but I can with mine. I can only speak for myself, but if 50 MILLION others decide to give their business to the 'competition' and do the same thing, then you can bet that the Koch Brothers WILL notice.

Now, this will be a first in a long time, but I actually agree with you - cyber attacks accomplish nothing but a jail term.

When you boycott someone who is already a multi-BILLIONAIRE, where are you hurting them?

So why are you screaming about it, ITM? No big deal, let the little people boycott.

What will happen is workers will be layed off and all of them are not Republican. That is what will be modified.

Why, if the little people are not hurting anyone with the boycott?

Or wait a minute. You don't mean to imply that St. David and St. Charles would actually behave vindictively, do you?

Remind me again, where do I go to line up for the cake?

p.s. Why don't you just change your moniker and get it over with -- Instead of "In the Middle," which you aren't, why not try "In the Tank," which you clearly are?

We cannot block everything we do not agree with.

Pietro, all is well in the world, or at least my little corner of the world.

I'm sceptical of any boycott, especially by a relatively small proportion of the general populace (not that I'm picking on liberals), and as you noted, cents off coupons are a option for any merchandiser. When we are faced with buying one product at $5, or a similar product at $4.75, but the $5 product has a dollar off coupon, most people won't care who manufactures it, especially in these economic times, they'll notice the price differential of $.75 after the coupon. Or you could be a cheapskate like me, that has plenty of room in my garage, and hordes non-perishable items like toilet paper, dish soap, etc, but only when I can buy it with a coupon and on sale. When my children come home from college, the first thing they do is shop in my garage, sad but true.

You didn't comment on the other portion of the posting, that of their relatively positive corporate personna. Any commentary would be appreciated.

I took a look at their website, maybe you should see some of the positive things they are doing for the environment, land management, and as a participant in the EPA's National Environmental Performance program. If they were other than a Libertarian/Conservative entity, most folks on this board would be singing their praises, but given their conservative bent, folks get bent.

I apologise, Living in L.A., I had to leave for a moment. OK, I posted the snippet of your post above, and although I do NOT dispute what you have said and what the Koch Brothers have done, I say this:

If a drug kingpin buys uniforms for all of the teams in a Little League in the town/city he lives in, is that drug kingpin any LESS of a monster because he did something for the children and parted with a little money?

I am reminded of a Movie that I saw - American Gangster (with Russell Crowe and Denzel Washington) - about a guy who was one of the most RUTHLESS drug dealers in Harlem in the 70's who was outwardly Christian and community minded. He went to church; he had a beautiful wife; he drove the best cars; had the best clothes. He looked like a VERY successful businessman.

Never mind that the poison that this guy was selling was destroying lives and neighbourhoods. Never mind he was killing people who owed him money in cold blood on the streets. Never mind he was sucking the financial lifeblood out of the neighbourhoods he preyed upon. Never mind that the families he destroyed with his drugs would affect generations of people.

The people liked this guy because he showed a little compassion and did things for the community (in this case, he gave away turkeys to the poor who had no food).

Are the Koch Brothers any diferent than that drug kingpin IF their policies are causing people harm?

Now, for clarity's sake, I am NOT SAYING THAT THE KOCH BROTHERS ARE DRUG DEALERS. I am saying that LIKE drug dealers, they are magnanimous when it is convenient to put up the facade that they are 'good corporate neighbours'.

I do not think that if the Koch Brothers were NOT Conservative that my opinion would have changed much. We had another poster, John B, that posted about judges that were funnelling at risk kids to jails and detention centers that would profit 'friends' of his. The Judges were Democrats. Does that make the acts they committed any less heinous?

I am with Pietro pretty much on this one. If you don't think boycotts work, then you can't be very old. We used to get alot done with boycotts in the 70's and 80's before everyone even had computers much for home use.

Believe you me, I can easily live without anything the Koch brothers manufacture and sell, and I will be more than happy to do so. At Wallwerld they have an isle about the length of my house of nothing but paper towels.. Koch Bros. does not manufacture them all.

I see nothing wrong with hacking some Corporate group that are illegally trying to control others lives. These 'men' have billions of dollars but don't want teachers, firemen, police or anyone else to get a decent wage? That seems to be a typical right wing thing to do and what really surprises me is that not all right wingers are rich and can't see the forest for the trees of who is ripping them off and keeping them poor with over taxation of the middle and lower-middle class, but they don't want to pay their fair share... they hide it out of country.

As far as all the 'good things' that Koch's do? Simple, most Corporate 'philanthrophy" is for tax reasons and those reasons only.

Corporate GREED runs wild in this country and the public seems to be completely apathetic about it all. That I do NOT understand. In England they were recently able to peacefully make a phone co.pay taxes in the UK instead of hiding it out of country. They also were successful in fighting banks overpaying their CEO's.

Americans want Democracy, but are not willing to fight for it. They would rather fight about right and left which keeps us divided. Remember:: divided we fall, United We Stand.

@anonymousbeliever

"They would rather fight about right and left which keeps us divided. Remember: divided we fall, United We Stand."

You hit the nail on the head here. This is exactly what the Republican party is doing. They stir up their rabble using Beck, Limbaugh, etc. in order to guarantee that everyone will be at odds with each other and too busy fighting to notice what they are really up to. People need to wake up and start using their brains.

Pietro,

Probably an instance of we'll have to disagree. There's no evidence offered in your comparison between Denzel and the Koch brothers, nor to the best of my knowledge have the Koch brothers committed any sort of crime, nor have you offered any support to the idea that they have caused harm to anyone. Political support (of either ideology) doesn't constitute causing harm in my view, or else unions and corporations would be equally culpable.

Anonymous believer, I'm pretty old, not quite double nickles, but working on it, and hoping to attain that level of maturity this year. My point with the boycotts was pretty simple, you have to have a significant degree of participation in a boycott to get results, I don't believe that that degree of participation and cooperation exists for a boycott of Koch Industries products. Facebook, MySpace, whatever social network you'd like to use to inspire a boycott, require impactful individuals to make a choice to participate, self interest in this world is greater than it was in the 70's and 80's, good luck with the boycotts. As for the balance of your post regarding corporate philanthropy, so what? Whether it's for tax reasons, or for "good of the world", either way it's being done. If you're a churchgoing individual is your contribution to the church for strictly the good it might do, or do you factor in the idea that there is a tax deduction involved? How about if you make contributions to the Boy Scouts, Girls Scouts, American Cancer Society, Salvation Army, or any other charity? I for one take advantage of the tax deduction, that doesn't make me a bad citizen, just one that would like to pay as little tax as I am legally able to pay. As an aside, corporate greed (read that as profits) created cell phones, computers (like the one I assume you're using), software, satellite tv (since you mention the 70's and 80's, do you remember when tv was free?), and just about every product that you take for granted. Are there excesses, of course, but don't denigrate the profit motive completely, without profit, there's not much in the way of innovation.

Probably an instance of we'll have to disagree. There's no evidence offered in your comparison between Denzel and the Koch brothers, nor to the best of my knowledge have the Koch brothers committed any sort of crime, nor have you offered any support to the idea that they have caused harm to anyone. Political support (of either ideology) doesn't constitute causing harm in my view, or else unions and corporations would be equally culpable.

Living in L.A. - you are probably right - this is an instance where we disagree. However, please re-read the post and notice that I bolded the phrase IF their policies are causing people harm.

That is the operative phrase.

If you do not see the Koch Brothers causing any harm, then my analogy doesn't hold water. BUT - if you DO see the Koch Brothers causing harm, then my analogy stands - are they any BETTER than a Drug Kingpin that does something magnamamous.

Thanks for your response to my post.

Hi Pietro,

I guess I don't agree in the concept of assessing an opinion the weight of a fact. If I were to say that unions had the potential to cause harm to people, it's the same (in my mind) as you saying that the Koch brothers may cause harm to people. In any case, I don't see the Koch brothers in the same light as most of the posters on this board, I see two people exercising their rights thru expenditures of their own money, in support of political positions that many people agree with, and quite possibly, that as many disagree with. That in no way equates them to a drug dealer, or kingpin, or anything else that would devolve into criminal activity. A slightly different take on the unions (and my wife is a member of the SEIU), is that they spend other peoples money (dues) to support political positions that perhaps, many of their own members (my wife for instance) disagree with.

You mentioned that you hadn't seen me posting her for a while, that's true. I stopped posting after the elections in hopes that after a few months the incivility would pass, although I kept reading on an intermittent basis. Apparently I'm still too early in the post election healing process, I just took a look at today's postings, and lo and behold, the ridiculous and the inane reign once again. Thanks for taking the time to communicate, most of the participants here simply wish to blindly follow the lead of their particular ideology.

Living in L.A. - I too took a break from posting for a couple of weeks, but my competitive instinct kicked in and I ended up joining the fray again. What I find hard to take - and to let go - is people spouting opinion as FACT. It is OK to have an opinion (and we can agree to disagree, as we have done here), but to use that OPINION and state it as FACT, well, that doesn't pass the giggle test for me.

On another thread, In the Middle, TX, whom I butt heads with almost ALL the time, actually had a post that was worthy of comment. I even voted for it!! We will probably revert back to our 'regularly scheduled partisan sniping', but I am trying to rise (just a little) above the fray and give credit where credit is due, no matter what the persuasion.

Don't give up on us yet, Living in L.A. It is good to see you posting again.

Living in la - post 1.9 I can relate to what you do with your garage. My dad was much the same way. Only he took it much further. He had a salvage license from the state of NY which meant he could take off in his pickup to legally do curbside pickups as well. He basically picked up anything of potential value to barter with his friends or to sell as scrap. BTW- we didn't have an acreage and the town required that everything be kept inside a building or shed. Us kids didn't mind the non-perishable items he would get from supermarkets but we did look askew at his "junk" collecting. Our attitudes changed when he and mom took off for two nonths on a round the world tour.

Are you seriously saying the republicians are pure in thought and actions? I say Bull Poopie!!

Republican Governors are taking on the corrupt public employee unions and their lapdogs, the Democrats..

This message was probably paid for by the Koch Brothers. They are the puppetmasters behind the anti-climate change campaign, the campaigns to weaken environmental laws and to break up unions.

Amy:

Is that all you Liberals know; Koch Brothers? You would think they are Jesus Christ as paranoid as they make you Liberals.

Do you not think ALL MESSAGES put out by the Democrap party is not paid for?????????

Liberals are funny people. You all think your shyt don't stink.

What is a moonbat, Bob? You use the term so loosely but i cannot for the life of me figure out what it is supposed to mean?

Kinda like billion zillion, a number you yourself made up.

Lawless hooligans???

Governor Walker has twice admitted he had discussions about sending in troublemakers to the protests. It's disgusting that a Governor admits he thought about sending troublemakers into a crowd where children and infants are present.

Additionally, it was Governor Walker that wrote a bill allowing him to sell million dollar tax payer funded facilities for a penny. No bid contracts do not belong anywhere near tax payer money.

the sane adults have taken over many more states;

And you would be qualified to judge this how? Or, wait ... do you mean the protesters at the Wisconsin Capitol and the protests in all 50 states over the weekend? Then agreed.

And tell me again, Bobby -- How DID Texas get that HUGE deficit, with a fiscally conservative governor and legislature and WITHOUT any of those corrupt unions?

I'm still waiting for Your Smugness to enlighten me.

Bryan E:

What is a moonbat, Bob?

Bob knows a moonbat when he sees one Bryan. After all, he sees one in the mirror every day.

Is that all you Liberals know; Koch Brothers?

No, but at the moment, it's all we need.

You would think they are Jesus Christ as paranoid as they make you Liberals.

No, there's ABSOLUTELY no mistaking the Koch Brothers for Jesus Christ.

Paranoid, however, they are. Billionaires who feel threatened by public employee unions. Billionaires who feel hreatened by librarians, teachers, doctors, nurses, snow plowers, bus drivers, city planners, scientists, professors, and most ironic, the police ... just because those people would DARE flout the brothers' authority and ask for a decent living:

Oliver Twist: "Please, sir, may I have some more?" Koch Brothers: "NO."

Billionaires who need to fight for their "freedom."

LoLoLoLoLoLoL Really, ITM ... really. Aren't you embarrassed by your own silliness?

You're another one of those people who appear to believe that there really IS cake.

I think 'moonbat' is something like a 'half-governor', but I'm not sure....Could be a 'ditto' head, too, I guess.

LoL dbo -- ditto that.

The Koch brothers are on the top ten list of polluters in the USA, they want to cheat Wisconsin taxpayers with no-bid contracts for state power plants, they want to enact minimum wage pay scales for everyone in the state. and they bought a puppet governor to do their dirty work. A couple of upstanding citizens, they are.

You know exactly why your on that e-mail list. Stop playing the stupid role. YOU put your name on the list because you thought it would give you an inside look.

Liberals are too easy. SAD..........

ITM, show me proof of your claim. I'll be here til 5PM EST. Thanks!

Liberals are too easy. SAD..........

Not as easy as you, ITM. And not half so sad.

LoL They never expected Walker to expose them so thoroughly in one twenty minute telephone call.

Too funny. And they get to keep him.

Sort of like a robbers trying to quietly break into someones house to steal everything they can, and suddenly blinding lights go on all around them and someone yells, "Smile! You're on Candid Camera!!"

I think this is one corporate venture they will regret buying into.

I don't understand why Anonymous crashed the Koch Brothers web site. It doesn't seem to fit with their agenda. They have always supported the right to free speech, even those they absolutely disagree with. More likely, while the network providers were busy with the DDoS attack, Anonymous was infiltrating the network to collect a pile of private e-mails and memos from the Koch Brothers astroturf 'Merkins fer Prosperity, to let the American people see what's really behind the curtain. That should be interesting.

And we thank you for your being, your pwning, etc. Keep it up, dudes and dudettes. I'll light a candle to you.

You, kind sir, seem to have captured our spirit intact. Although I personally do not agree with the new Koch operation, it seems that our numbers are growing at nearly an exponential rate. Inasmuch, some of our new brothers seem to have more of a penchant for politics than the "regulars", if you will..

Regardless, allow me to be the first to tell you that your story inspires at least one Anon. Surely you never saw a revolution coming out of those old city-block long machines run on vacuum tubes? lol, I'm sure you're not that old, for your tenacious memory and mental acuity seem to be running full throttle.

We surely may never meet..but I can assure you that there is a revolution brewing, deep below these seedy streets. Our name was, up until recently, associated with idle kids who DDoS (distributed denial of service) websites for petty causes. Yet, as our power grows, we feel comfortable in opening up our repertoire of skills for the masses to ogle.

The acquisition and subsequent publishing of the ACS:Law documents could be seen as the start of our current phase of operations. Having partaken in that attack, I am humbled to see their head lawyer Andrew Crossley currently fumbling about to gain his mere reputation back.

The disruption of services for PayPal, Amazon, Visa, and Mastercard were the, albeit weak, next step. Even with a much smaller base than now, we were able to get our point across. The media didn't like to pick up on our story, but this is a common practice for any major success Anonymous has.

HBGary Federal was our most recent ACS:Law-style takedown. After poring over the 78,000+ e-mails we reclaimed from their servers, it turns out that they truly were our enemy after all, what with all of their pitches to Bank of America and the Chamber of Commerce on how best to discredit Wikileaks or union supporters. What was meant to be a search for lulz turned into a treasure trove of goodies, thanks in part to Aaron Barr being as repugnant ethically as he is mentally.

Anonymous will stand strong with our chaotic neutral resolve. Our sheer volume will overwhelm any who attempt to stymie Anonymous. Our goal is not to meddle in politics, for you see, Anonymous has no desire to control such things. The pursuit and defense of Internet freedom is our only true goal, save for the lulz. Anonymous does not seek to usurp these cronies, but merely to rot them and their ivory towers from the inside out as we see fit.

& Anonymous always delivers, dearest anonymousbeliever, so be sure to stay tuned.

We are Anonymous.

We are legion.

We do not forgive.

We do not forget.

Expect us.