
What Happened to Jane Mayer When She Wrote About the Koch Brothers - theklub
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/27/nyregion/what-happened-to-jane-mayer-when-she-wrote-about-the-koch-brothers.html?mabReward=A6&moduleDetail=recommendations-0&action=click&contentCollection=Asia%20Pacific&region=Footer&module=WhatsNext&version=WhatsNext&contentID=WhatsNext&src=recg&pgtype=article
======
jedberg
This is not entirely surprising. A large swath of their wealth was created via
the government's help, and they get that help by creating falsehoods that no
one checks into. That seems to be standard operating procedure in politics
today -- say whatever makes the people agree with you, because most aren't
smart enough to see the follow up the next day pointing our you're a liar.

And this isn't limited to conservatives, the democrats do it just as much.

~~~
dtornabene
I upvoted you but I might disagree with that last sentence, not because I'm
some raging democrat, I'm not. I'm farther to the left than most (in America
at least) and the reaction that establishment democrats have had to the
sanders campaign has been a thing of hideous beauty and would, on the surface
confirm your point. But its worth noting precisely how bad obfuscation, lying,
etc has become within the republican party in the last few decades. Norm
Ornstein has written about this extensively and was more or less ostracized
for it within the establishment political media. This is a conservative
scholar who works at the American Enterprise Institute. Not exactly an
expropriator coming for your small business and golf courses. He's far from
the only one. Mike Lofgren (former republican staffer), Lawerence Wilkerson
(former chief of staff to Colin Powell), hell even John Kasich has made
oblique reference to it this primary season. Rick Pearlstein had an excellent
(if long) essay were addresses exactly this question; the dishonesty at the
heart of the modern republican party.

------
kossTKR
Let me reccomend "Toxic sludge is good for you".
[http://www.prwatch.org/tsigfy.html](http://www.prwatch.org/tsigfy.html). Its
a book about PR in the twentieth century.

Basically the corporate elite has been hiring armies of secret and hidden
agencies, front groups, lawyers PR people, ex-army agents etc. for decades.
They smear , threaten, distort and ultimately change the publics perception of
reality.

~~~
benjohnson
For example:

Here is Washington state, we have a local software billionaire who has had
credible allegations of sexual abuse and has settled at least one civil suit.

The larger local new paper (Seattle Time) omits stories about this from their
searchable index even though they covered the several instances extensively.

Google comes to the rescue - "Paul Allen Sexual Abuse" links to other news
sources, though it too is missing the Seattle Times.

