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Is it possible to buy America?
Sure looks like it.
The Koch brothers and their allies are pumping tens of millions of dollars into a data company that’s developing detailed, state-of-the-art profiles of 250 million Americans, giving the brothers’ political operation all the earmarks of a national party. …Politico,12/8/14
Karl Rove, back in during the Bush campaigns, was profiler in chief. This looks like Rove+Koch, an effort that was first reported, also by Politico, early in 2013.
The GOP didn’t have an answer for Big Democratic Data in 2012, costing them in close races from Congress to the White House.
Now, they’ve got lots of answers — possibly too many — and a feisty rivalry is brewing between tea party upstarts, nonpartisan data geeks, operatives linked to the Koch brothers and insiders like Karl Rove.
This isn’t just about who can hire the most young IT programmers, create the slickest app to optimize door-knocking routes or stave off a repeat of the Election Day collapse of Mitt Romney’s ORCA system.
Rather, in a very real way, it’s about who controls the party through its most precious asset — its voter data — and the multimillion-dollar contracts that could follow. …Politico2013
So this is one of those “welp, here we go again” stories, only perhaps more sinister. Mike Allen, at Politico, comments on the latest news about the Koch’s venture.
BEHIND THE CURTAIN – … ‘The Koch operations are the most important non-party political players in the U.S. today, and no one else is even close,’ said a top Republican who was involved in the last eight presidential campaigns.
“The least-known vehicle for the Kochs is a for-profit company, i360, that has spent more than $50 million on building data bases and tools over the past four years. ‘Right now, we’re talking about and building things that you won’t see in 2016, because it’s not going to be ready until 2018,” [said i360 President Michael] Palmer. … i360 links voter information … with any interaction the voter may have had with affiliated campaigns and advocacy groups. Then comes estimated income, recent addresses, how often a person has voted, and even the brand of car …Politico,12/8/14
Do you get it? This isn’t the Kochs just spending money on their godawful political beliefs. This is the Kochs making money from an intelligence operation that preys on the American voter and appears to go way beyond the NSA.
Nothing is sacred. Not the vote, not democracy, and certainly not privacy. Not America.
Cross-posted from Prarie Weather
Photo by Jencarlonene20 (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons