Neoliberal Silicon Valley Owned Rep. Rohit Khanna (D-CA) is the New “Alternative” Pied Piper of the Corporate Left

by Scott Creighton

When Rohit “Ro” Khanna (D-CA 17th) recently popped onto the alternative left scene, it was at a Jimmy Dore live show. Jimmy later said “Ro” flew there that day specifically to attend the event. When he was called up on stage there was already a chair and a mic waiting for him. He sat next to the comedians and the show went on with Jimmy making sure to include him in the political discussion every now and then.

That video was posted on April 27th 2017.

On May 10th, Cenk Uygur couldn’t contain his glee when he had Ro on his show and asked him if he knew what “Justice Democrats” were. Cenk said the JDs were the “strong, progressive democrats who couldn’t be corrupted by corporate and PAC money”. Ro was there to announce he was joining the fledgling political sub-party owned and operated by Cenk Uygur (of Young Turks network) and Kyle Kulinski (of Secular Talk)

Rohit is being billed as an anti-corporatism Democrat who they say wants to shake-up the system and get the old cronies out of office so he can help rebuild the Democrat Party into something that represents the workers again. He speaks the right language, he knows the right buzz-words. He’s young, he’s a minority (which is a requirement these days on the left apparently) and he’s already won a seat in the House of Representatives so he’s not starting off from scratch.

But there is something slightly off about “Ro” and you can’t quite put your finger on it when you see him live like at the Jimmy Dore Show rollout they did with this Cenk Uygur branding program.

You don’t really know what it is but something tells you… you’ve seen this movie before. You saw it in ’92 then you saw the remake in 2008.

Then it hits you. You dig a little deeper than the folks at the Young Turks network (and that includes Jimmy Dore who is also on Cenk’s payroll by the way) want you to and you find Rohit Khanna isn’t the knight in shining progressiveness that you were told he was. In fact, he’s nothing like that at all.

Then you remember “I did see this movie before and I hated it the first time, walked out in the middle of the second and now here we are and I’m not even going to pay the price of admission.”

What do they think we are? Stupid?

In a word… yes.

Ro Khanna is a fraud and I’m going to prove it to you once and for all.

1. The Justice Dems are nothing more than a sheep-dogging for-profit project.

The “Justice Democrats” is merely a vehicle designed to keep the flock from straying away from the corrupt unDemocratic Party. There is a lot of money floating around right now in service to that particular mission statement and anyone offering to do the job is sure to get piles of money from all sorts of interested parties if they can reasonably convince the party establishment that they can deliver the unwashed masses back into the fold.

Cenk Uygur is a former republican (like Hillary Clinton for example). He went to Wharton business school (same as Donald Trump). He was pro-life, anti-affirmative action, opposed feminism and wrote repeatedly that the Armenian genocide didn’t constitute genocide. Some time after 1999 he claims he started turning “progressive” He later said it was the illegal invasion of Iraq that did it.

In 2014 a Republican  politician and businessman gave Uygur $4,000,000 to expand his reach with his “progressive” YT network. In April of 2014, Buddy Roemer pumped that lump sum of cash into Cenk’s “progressive” network and promised he would give him another 4 mil if he needed it. That’s a whole bunch of cash for a Youtube and internet radio show network.

Buddy Roemer was a fake Democrat before he become a Republican. Did you know that? Once the gig was up and everyone was on to his trick, he had to switch party affiliation to Republican.

“In Congress, Roemer frequently supported Ronald Reagan‘s policy initiatives and fought with the Democratic congressional leadership,^[13] though he remained in the party. He also criticized then Democratic House leader Tip O’Neill of Massachusetts for being “too liberal”…”

Buddy was one of the first neoliberal centrist Dems. In short, he was a Republican pretending to be a Democrat, like many we see now in politics.

Kinda like Cenk Uygur.

The Justice Dems right now have a total of 3 candidates. “Ro” is one of them, he’s their prize acquisition because he raises so much money from the corporations in Silicon Valley and from Indian businessmen hoping to get a payback. More on that later.

The other two are Cori Bush and Paula Swearengin.

Their official websites are carbon copies of each other. Looks like something a corporate tool would do. Cori is a nurse and ordained minister. Paula’s claim to fame is that she is a “coal miner’s daughter”, got her hair cut on the steps of the West Virginia capitol building protesting mountaintop removal strip mining and she once had a short interaction with a politician at a rally that was put on Youtube.

They both claim to be “fighters” on their webpages. They will both lose. I don’t even know if Paula has ever had a job. It doesn’t list one, much less a career, on her website.

They will lose because closeted Republicans pretending to be Democrats like Cenk Uygur, Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi et al would rather keep a corporate Democrat in power than see a real candidate with a real shot at beating them primary them in the next election. And if they do beat their neoliberal buddies, then they would certainly rather see a Republican beat them than let them get in congress.

Unfortunately these two fine women don’t seem to understand how this works. They are being used by Mr. Uygur and Mr. Kulinski as credibility boosters. But they will lose and their benefactors know it. In fact, they are counting on it.

Let me just say this as well… you aren’t going to vote your way out of this. Especially by voting for one party or the other in our One Party System, the Business Party or the Washington Consensus.

Black box voting is a sham. We saw that in the case of Alvin Greene in South Carolina. We saw it in presidential elections in the past. We saw it during the Democrat Primary in 2016. Election fraud is real and it is taking place right here right now in the U.S. That’s why so many countries don’t allow these electronic voting machines to be used in their elections and why we have to stop using them here.

That said… let’s move on.

(I’m sorry Cori and Paula. You wont win because even those supposedly on your side don’t want you to win. You’re part of a dog and pony show and I am sorry as I can be to tell you that, but you are.)

2. Follow the corporate money all the way to “Ro’s” pockets

Here’s the big product pitch for the Justice Dems:

“Democrats that represent people, not corporations”

“Ro” is supposedly a candidate that refuses to take super PAC and corporate money. But it takes it all the time. In fact, he bundled a ton of cash to win California’s 17th district election last year.

Compare where his money came from to that of his opponent’s, Mike Honda:

Now “Ro’s” top 9:

Let’s look at where their money came from in terms of individuals donating and which industry they work in.

“Ro” Khanna took over $700,000 from the Securities and Investments industry. That was his top industry.

Mike got $238,000 from retired people and $138,000 from people working in the “human rights” sector. Combined that makes up about half of what “Ro” got from Wall Street essentially.

Why is it you think so many Wall Street types felt the need to bundle up cash for “Ro”? Are they suddenly “progressive”?

Jimmy Dore did an extremely dishonest video the other day defending “Ro” and his promotion of this guy. In that video Jimmy said something like “sometimes these rich guys can be progressive you know. FDR was rich!”

So Jimmy thinks there are thousands of FDRs working in Wall Street these days just looking for a real progressive to take up their cause? Uh. No.

Critics of anyone calling out this “Ro” guy say these are individual donations and that these people “just happen” to work in those sectors in the 17th district. That doesn’t work either. Look at the spread of the numbers above. That’s not a happenstance. Statistically speaking, that’s a clear pattern. Big business and Wall Street prefer “Ro” over Mike and trade unions prefer Mike over “Ro”

Other apologists for “Ro” point to the fact that Alphabet gave Bernie Sanders $300,000+ in last year’s campaign. They say “see? Bernie took it to so that means it’s not bribery”

Yeah, but Alphabet (Google’s parent company) gave Hillary over 1.5 million compared to that and what exactly did Bernie do? He sheepdogged real progressives back into the fold and when Hillary stole the nomination from him… he campaigned for her… almost like he was bought and paid for… right?

Oh yeah… and he went out and bought a $600,000 lakeside log cabin in the woods.

In the end, “Ro” raised something like 5 million dollars to run for a job that pays $174,000 per year. The VAST majority of that came from bundlers with ties to Big Business in Sillicon Valley and the financial sector who I am sure gave up all that money because they want too see free college and Medicare for All handed out to the general public.

(This is the part where I am rolling my eyes)

It is well known that “Ro” is bought and paid for. This is NOT news.

He was one of “Wall Street’s fab five: House members, candidates most reliant on funding from finance industry” according to Open Secrets in June of 2016.

In Oct. of 2016, he was exposed at the Daily Kos as Wall Street’s and Silicon Valley’s puppet AND his campaign manager had to quit right before the election because he hacked Honda’s system and stole his donor list then used it to try to collect donations and get them to vote for “Ro” instead.

Going all the way back to Feb. of 2014, Pando said he was “owned” by Silicon Valley.

Libertarian Peter Thiel is a big supporter of “Ro” as is most of the monied class in Silicon Valley, according to Pando. Maybe that’s because “Ro” wants to let Silicon Valley ‘repatriate” all those profits they are hiding overseas for zero taxes just so long as they promise to invest some in jobs here in the states. We’re talking trillions maybe.

Maybe they like “Ro” because he’s not Mike Honda who the New York Times described as a ” liberal, pro-labor Democrat with a passion for civil rights” and which was extremely negative toward “Ro”

Truth be told, “Ro” is bought and paid for and the word has been out on this Silicon Valley/ Wall Street asset for a long time. This is nothing new.

It is odd that Cenk and the others at Justice Dems and Young Turks would have picked this guy to represent their “no corporate cash” product. He’s nothing but corporate cash, even if he gets it through the back door. Everyone knows it. Everyone except the desperate progressive YT fans I guess. What do they think? They’re stupid?

3. Rohit Khanna is a trained neoliberal

Rohit Khanna attended the University of Chicago where he received his degree in economics. The birthplace of American neoliberal ideology was the University of Chicago’s School of Economics. That’s where Milton Friedman taught. That’s where the Chicago Boys came from, the technocrats who decimated Chile after our little coup in 1973. Sept. 11th, 1973 to be more specific.

4. Rohit Khanna married well. Real well.

Rohit Khanna’s father in law, Monte Ahuja, has a business school named after him. He’s Republican of course.

5. Rohit Khanna fully supports Nancy Pelosi

These days in all these interviews, Ro Khanna keeps saying the DNC rigged the primary against Bernie Sanders and the corporate Dems have to go. He pretends that he’s out there to fight the establishment in the unDemocratic Party but I found a little Op Ed he wrote in late Nov. 2016… about 6 months ago… taking about Nancy Pelosi, the most corrupt, bought off unDemocratic Party member there is. Under her, nothing got done except more war and no one being held accountable and a Republican healthcare bill got passed under the name ObamaCare. All sorts of ‘compromises” were made to undermine Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid and of course, the Dems went from holding both houses of congress AND the White House to losing all of it… BECAUSE THEY DIDN’T DO A THING THEY PROMISED WITH THAT ADVANTAGE.

Nancy Pelosi was the worst Speaker of the House in a long time and is the worst leader of this party… ever.

And yet… Mr. anti-establishment Khanna wrote of her… just 6 months ago:

“we must have Nancy Pelosi leading House Democrats in the hard fights ahead.

At the same time that Hillary Clinton lost the White House, because of Leader Pelosi’s tireless efforts, House Democrats won several key races..

…sniping about Nancy Pelosi’s age and undermining her leadership is not a strategy to protect hard-working families from Republicans’ destructive agenda or win back the House…

Today, we need her as House Democratic Leader more than ever before.” “Ro” Khanna

Pelosi the the congressional poster-child for what is wrong with the Democrat Party these days. She is a corporate Dem to the bone and she opposes progressive action at every turn.

And Cenk Uygur’s “CHANGE” candidate supports her continued leadership? That’s progress?

6. Rohit Khanna backs the White Helmets and the disinformation that Assad is a dictator

I can’t cover this one any better than Debbie did over at the Sane Progressive. I have to give her credit. She rants a bit but she is definitely on point when it comes to this guy being another fraud and Jimmy Dore selling out by endorsing him. With regard to his meeting the White Helmets leaders his spokesperson said”

“He met with representatives from the White Helmets to support their humanitarian efforts in Syria. The congressman updated his social media posts about the meeting to clarify his position.”

After his little photo op with the group and his praising of them in public, “Ro” got some pushback from real progressives and anti-war leftists like myself who let him know he was meeting with and endorsing a group who are aligned with al Qaeda and used to be called the Islamic State Fire Brigade. They are fully funded by the U.S. and Britain, created by a former British military officer and their purpose is to promote lies about the Assad government in an effort to promote war and regime change.

“Ro” quickly backtracked knowing full well he would need the real left if he intends to take his political career to the next level. He removed some Facebook posts and Tweets. Had to scrub his history as quickly as he could.

Over at the fake left Huffington Post, they tell the story slightly differently.

It’s a fine line he has to walk. He doesn’t wish to lose the real left because he saw what that did to Hillary Clinton in November. She lost to Donald Trump for God’s sake, perhaps the single worst candidate the right has run for president since… well, Mitt Romney and John McCain.

But he also doesn’t want to say the wrong thing and piss off the pro-war fake left.

Anyone promoting regime change in Syria is not a candidate the real left should ever support. Debbie gets that 100% right. They shouldn’t demonize journalists or politicians who actually go there and try to get a better understanding of what is happening just because the truth doesn’t fit the needs of those who demand regime change in Syria.

And let’s be honest… the ones who want regime change in Syria, the ones “Ro” is currently pandering to, are not INDIVIDUAL VOTERS… but corporate America and Big Banking. And that just goes further to prove who “Ro” actually works for.

7. Rohit Khanna not only supported the TPP and other fascist “free trade” deals… he may have had a hand in crafting them.

“Ro” changed his position on the TPP when it became fashionable for politicians to do so in spite of the fact that Barack Obama, then still president, was pushing as hard as he could to get the globalist deals done.

As soon as Obama took office in 2009, he jumped into pushing negotiations for the TPP and our representatives began meeting with reps from other countries and Big Business immediately.

If you recall, Rohit Khanna worked as United States Deputy Assistant Secretary of Commerce from Aug. 2009 til Sept. 2012 and he only left office so he could run for office himself.

For those of you who don’t know, the Commerce Department was heavily involved in the TPP negotiations. “Ro” was working under Rebeca Blank for most of his tenure. She is a proponent of the globalist trade deals.

Whether or not he was involved in the crafting of the deals themselves, he certainly was a supporter of them before he opposed them when it was fashionable to do so. Kinda like his support of the White Helmets.

8. “Ro” was first marketed to progressives by the same astroturf group Obama created to help sell the TPP

This is fascinating and very enlightening.

Cenk Uygur’s fake progressive political action committee (let’s face it, that is what it is) is not the first astroturf marketing campaign to promote “Ro” as some kind of progressive.

Look at that. They knew he was a ‘Democrat in name only’ way back in 2015… and here we are having to fight this same fight today as folks like Cenk Uygur and Jimmy Dore try to polish this turd and sell him again. Pretty sad right?

9. Rohit Khanna backs the “its the Russian’s fault” New McCarthyism bullshit

This one should obviously be a deal breaker for anyone considering who they will back for political office. Anyone that is actually a progressive that is. New McCartyites aren’t progressive. I don’t care if their name is Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders or “Ro”

“The President’s decision to remove FBI Director James Comey raises serious questions about the independence of law enforcement. That is why I support a bipartisan, independent commission to investigate Russian interference in the 2016 election. It is the only way we can restore trust in our democratic institutions. Now is the time for Congress to take action on the Protecting Our Democracy Act, a bill that has the support of the entire Democratic caucus. The bill would create a 12-member, bipartisan, independent commission empowered to interview witnesses, obtain documents, issue subpoenas, and receive public testimony to examine attempts by the Russian government and others to use electronic means to influence, interfere with, or sow distrust in last year’s U.S. elections.” Rohit Khanna, 4 days ago

This past month Jimmy Dore has done some great work exposing the bullshit of the “Russia did it” excuse and disinformation. Suddenly, after backing “Ro”, he has now come out with a bullshit video of him and his crew sitting around pondering “I wonder what the Russians did? gee?”

The Russians didn’t do shit to undermine our elections… but we have a bill in congress right now asking for $20,000,000 to regime change Venezuela and we have a whole bunch of contractors in Syria terrorizing the country and attacking civilians so we can regime change that country. Oh I’m sorry… they’re called “moderates” aren’t they?

This Russia bullshit is about justifying Hillary’s loss but it’s also about destabilizing the Trump presidency AND ginning up a new Cold War which is very profitable for the corporations that OWN the unDemocratic Party. And “Ro” once again, parrots the corportist talking points.

It’s also about Russia starting the last leg of the pipeline with Turkey and keeping us from getting what we wanted in Syria. They have to be punished for thwarting our “national interests”

There is no evidence of Russia interfering in our election process. None. So why do we need an independent commission?

This whole Russia thing has greatly diminished any confidence people still had with the fake left. They’re sick of it because after all this time all we see are more 6 degrees of separation guilt by association innuendo and tons and tons of unsupported allegations being tossed around like evidence of Iraqi WMDs were not that long ago.

It’s bullshit and most real progressives know that. Cenk Uygur doesn’t seem to know it and it looks like Jimmy Dore is forgetting that. But we know “Ro” doesn’t know it or he wont say it… officially. He will imply it in public at a nightclub with Jimmy, but officially, he’s got a different opinion. Kinda like his take on Nancy Pelosi… right?

10. The Email

Yes, I finally got around to the email and I saved it for last because everyone knows all about it by now. Debbie at the Sane Progressive has covered it. So has H.A. Goodman. Everyone has talked about it.

The story goes something like this:

“Ro’s” campaign manager (not the one who got caught hacking into Honda’s account, he had to resign) sent an email to John Podesta begging him to get Hillary to openly back “Ro” in the 2016 race. He talked about how much corporate money “Ro” has raised and how much he could raise for the Dems (he said $50,000,000) between his Silicon Valley friends (like Peter Thiel) and businessmen from India. He went on too say “Ro” is a big supporter of Hillary’s and that Ro would support the TPP when Honda wouldn’t. Then he begged Podesta to get Hillary to show up at his wedding.

The email is part of the Podesta emails published by Wikileaks.

I saved this for last, not because it’s the strongest evidence, but because it’s the weakest.

It’s his campaign manager desperately trying to sell “Ro” to the most powerful insider in Washington, first of all. It’s not coming from “Ro” himself, though I don’t doubt every word of it is true.

A lot of folks have focused on this email as the Holy Grail of evidence against “Ro” and I don’t think it is.

• He has a long history of being exposed as a bought and paid for candidate.
• He cheated to win the seat he has now.
• He is a trained neoliberal from the birthplace of American neoliberalism.
• He promotes disinformation about Assad, the White Helmets and Russia to keep in good standing with the corporate party he pretends to oppose.
• He backs Nancy Pelosi for God’s sake.
• He was marketed the first time by Obama’s Sell the TPP astroturf project.
• He’s being marketed now by a fake-left sheep-dogging outfit funded by Republicans.
• He backed the TPP if he didn’t help write the damn thing.

There are a number of reasons for real progressives, the kind that refused to vote for career criminal Hillary Clinton, to avoid Rohit Khanna like the plague. Sure the email helps people understand all of this but it doesn’t stand by itself as reason enough to not support him.

The unDemocratic Party are desperate. They need a passable progressive they can retool a bit and pass off as the real deal in 2020. Clearly Cenk Uygur sees this guy and his connections as his meal ticket. That’s why he was giggling when he announced “Ro” as a Justice Democrat on May 10th. Like most other Republicans, and I include the Republicans pretending to be Democrats, all he sees are the dollar signs.

Seems to me Jimmy Dore is being forced by the Young Turks to promote this guy and he really doesn’t like it. You can tell it when you listen to his shows with “Ro”

You can also tell Cenk has pressured Jimmy to promote him and his network more on his Youtube channel. He’s been mentioning Cenk an awful lot this past month and even had some of his “journalists” on the show.

(This is the thing Jimmy. You call out the Dems, and rightly so, for being to dependent on corporate money to take a stand and do and say as they wish. Funny how money does that to people, right? Funny how you can get so used to a certain level of financial success, you can’t figure out a way to do without it, and you are forced to… compromise. Funny how that works, isn’t it? I promise you one thing though… Cenk knew all about it.)

Rohit Khanna is not progressive.

He’s another Bill Clinton or Barack Obama. He’s a package. A product. Marketed and sold like Pepsi. And like Pepsi, he’ll end up rotting your teeth out.

The unDems are desperate and so to, unfortunately, are real progressives and the real left (or what’s left of it)

Don’t settle for this. The guy is a polished turd and he will betray you. Cenk Uygur, the New Congress thing, the Draft Bernie ridiculousness… it’s all marketing and you can’t be fooled by it even if you want to be.

Demexit might seem like a desperation move but I promise you, falling for this regurgitated bullshit is the real sign of insanity. It’s not even good regurgitated bullshit.

Rohit Khanna is a neoliberal centrist in progressive WWE costumes and you simply can’t fall for that crap again. If you do, you deserve what you get.

Listen to Debbie, unsubscribe to Jimmy like I did and send a message: we aren’t buying what you’re selling anymore.

WE AREN’T FUCKING STUPID

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