It's standard fare in politics sadly. If you want immigration laws (even just existing ones on the books) to be enforced, you're racist against Mexicans (an accusation made by people who have never reviewed Mexico's much stricter immigration laws!). If you criticize Israel, you're an anti-Semite. If you're against President Obama's politics or Eric Holder's actions, you're racist against black people. Etc etc. I wonder what such people would say if we ever developed a real problem with millions of white Canadians illegally entering the country, but I digress.

It's a cheap way to shut down all reasonable discussion and put the other person immediately on the defensive, trying to disprove a negative. It comes from people who don't want reason and logic to enter into the discussion because these are threats to their position, a position based on self-interest and not based on what makes good policy or which view is closest to the truth.

A side-effect I consider intentional is that the obsession with group identity is a direct assault on the concept of individuality. Real individuality is a strong threat to the main method of politics today, which is to divide people into multiple groups and gain power by promising to protect each from the others.

Government is supposed to play the role of the impartial referee in the game of "Capitalism".

Absolutely not. No less an expert than Thomas Jefferson believed that government's role was to act in opposition to corporate power. Not impartial, but as a counterforce that could bring some measure of moral accountability to the amoral golem of the corporation, with it's shields from personal liability.

Outside of unions and governments, there are no other such forces. And before you say, "Free Market", that only works as long as there is some measure of moral accountability, such as social pressure on corporate leaders. With the rise of the multinational, there is no person to be held accountable. So, you end up where a corporation that has stolen $10billion being given a fine of $1million. I think a 1000:1 ratio between profit and cost is no counterforce at all.

Further, with the enormous consolidation that has occurred in the corporate sector, it is no longer possible for consumers to enforce moral accountability. That's why we're in a post-free market era. There's no free market because there cannot be a free market. Free markets are the LAST thing powerful corporations want.

Firstly, corporate sovereignty has been decreasing for decades.

I'm glad I clipped this article from the day before yesterday:

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20131024/11560725004/what-does-isds-mean-corporate-sovereignty-pure-simple.shtml

"Decreasing for decades"? Absolutely not. Each international trade agreement brings an enormous increase in corporate sovereignty. And we're about to ratify the Trans Pacific Partnership, which is the Big Kahuna of international trade agreements.

While I agree corrupted politicians should be shamed ans Interne is a valuable tool for that, this story looks very local news, isn't it?

It would be local news, except for the fact that the Koch brothers' network, funding the American Legislative Exchange Council and FreedomWorks, is influencing candidates and elections in all 50 states.

So if by "local" you mean "in the United States" then you are correct. If you mean that it's something that's only happening in one little backwater, then no, it's not a local story.

Can someone explain to me

I have the same complaint when someone uses some high-tech acronym I don't recognize.

If this was the first article you had ever read that mentions the Koch Brothers, I could see where you might need such an explanation. By now, half a decade into their influencing the political system to enhance their fossil fuel and other natural resource holdings, most of the readers, especially the American readers, know who these guys are, who their father was (a big John Bircher and avowed racist and anti-semite) and what they're up to via mechanisms like FreedomWorks and ALEC and the Tea Party. They use their own billions as seed money to create a network of action committees that seek to influence politics from the level of local school boards thousands of miles away from where they live right on up to the President and the President's supervisor, the chairman of the Fed.

A famous story about one of the Koch Brothers recounts how someone called Wisconsin governor Scott Walker pretending to be David Koch and the governor slobbered all over the phone telling the pseudo-Koch Brother how he was gonna make sure - you bet - to get rid of all those unions who expect to actually get, you know, paid for working in Koch Industries facilities, and assured pseudo-Koch that there would be sufficient poor people taken off the state Badgercare rolls so that Koch's companies would get substantial tax subsidies in Wisconsin. It was a remarkable candid snapshot of just how much the name "Koch" reverberates through the precincts of the so-called "constitutional conservatives" and just how much it opens the doors to the treasury to these so-called "patriots".

Hopefully a padded cell.

C'mere, you. Lemme give you a big kiss. You just gave me a good laugh.

Where are the moderators?? You are SO offtopic. STFU and GTFO.

And mod me down, too.

Both main parties are almost entirely corrupt; people shouldn't vote for either.

Either? In the last election there were 5 parties on enough ballots to win. You have friends and relatives who smoke pot, why are you voting for people who want them in jail?

If AGW really is the ONE TRUE WAY then I'm sure one more study won't change that.
You aren't worried are you?

No, I doubt I'll be alive 50 years from now, it won't bother me. But "me" is the least of my worries.

They should be taken out and shot.

Rational much?

I think you've misunderstood the GP. And, uh, I think the GP did, too.

I'm fine with that, you selfish prick.

Bullshit.

[citation needed]

</shooting fish in a barrel>

52% of Republicans believe in creationism in a recent Gallup poll, as opposed to 34% of Democrats (still shocking). Having a majority membership of a major political party has given religious ideologues political influence they haven't enjoyed since the 1920s.

Any numbers about "creationism" are meaningless because nobody agrees what "creationism" is. 2/3rds of the world's population believe in a creator, so what? Are they all "creationists"?

Your atheistic troll is offtopic and offensive. However, I do forgive you for it.