Category Archives: General

Free the news!

How would you like free, nearly unlimited access to the online editions of The Gainesville Sun, New York Times, Washington Post, New Yorker magazine, and just about every other publication that claims to allow you to view only a handful of articles per month?

Other sites block your access if you’re using a Web browser in “private browsing” mode because it offends some of their more predatory advertisers. (More about that in an upcoming post.)

Well, there’s a simple, non-technical way around both roadblocks. It only has three elements.

/Read how/

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R.I.P.

Move over, Beethoven.  Make room for Chuck Berry.  https://codex.wordpress.org/images/9/96/icon_cry.gif

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County elections 2014 – A case of Koch

Remember those news reports about the “Honoring our veterans” rally at a local motorcycle dealership in early June? Kinda? Vaguely?

Maybe you glossed over it, thinking, “It’s just another veteran’s group and just another post-Memorial Day celebration? Well, think again.

The event was staged by an “organization” called Concerned Veterans for America. If the reporters had bothered to Google that name and its operatives, they would’ve found that it’s just another ultra-right-wing 501(c)(4) front for the Koch brothers’ massive propaganda empire. It’s not an accident they turned up here, nor that the featured local speakers were hometown Tea Party favorites Ted Yoho and Susan Baird.

CVA targeted our area for a reason: the Koch brothers care about Ted Yoho and are keeping an eye on his district. If Democrat Marihelen Wheeler’s campaign begins to pose a credible threat to Yoho’s reelection, expect to see some outside intervention on Yoho’s behalf, just like CVA is doing elsewhere.


 Related links & further reading

Gainesville Sun article, “Support for local veterans coalesces at rally

Washington Post article, “The Players in the Koch-Backed $400 Million Political Donor Network

Propublica.org (investigative journalism site) report on the Koch brothers’ propaganda empire (also click on its links to related articles)

Wikipedia articles on CVA operatives Pete Hegseth, CEO, and Gary Berntsen, regional organizer

Also see Florida CVA director Stephen Flanagan’s post on an ultra-right blog for CVA/Tea Party connections

Still not convinced there’s a Koch-a-Yoho connection?  Check this out.


 

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Pipeline

Here’s what I’m working on and will be posting soon:

  • County Commission candidates and contributors
  • Am I the only one who remembers the trolley?
  • The stalk of the town
  • Plum Creek? Plumb crazy!
  • Veterans concerned for billionaire super-villains
  • ACPeds as a hate group: Smarter than the average bore-hole

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What’s new…

2020/02/07 – The Sun also sets relates the latest sad misstep in our local paper’s slow, steady decline.

2019/11/21 – Endorse me, endorse my dog bemoans how our local governments have become a self-perpetuating clique of the cool kids.

2019/11/21 – Free the news! reveals how to get around some of the paywalls and article-count restrictions blocking your access to popular news sites.

Oh, I almost forgot: I have no control over the ads. WordPress inserts them automatically, based on what? I don’t know.

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