Billionaires Are Warping Our Political System

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signalmankenneth

Verified User
'America is not yet an oligarchy, but that’s where the Koch’s and a few other billionaires are taking us.'

http://www.alternet.org/print/tea-p...billionaires-are-warping-our-political-system

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Charles and David Koch should not be blamed for having more wealth than the bottom 40 percent of Americans put together. Nor should they be condemned for their petrochemical empire. As far as I know, they’ve played by the rules and obeyed the laws.
They’re also entitled to their own right-wing political views. It’s a free country.
But in using their vast wealth to change those rules and laws in order to fit their political views, the Koch brothers are undermining our democracy. That’s a betrayal of the most precious thing Americans share.
The Kochs exemplify a new reality that strikes at the heart of America. The vast wealth that has accumulated at the top of the American economy is not itself the problem. The problem is that political power tends to rise to where the money is. And this combination of great wealth with political power leads to greater and greater accumulations and concentrations of both — tilting the playing field in favor of the Kochs and their ilk, and against the rest of us.
America is not yet an oligarchy, but that’s where the Koch’s and a few other billionaires are taking us.
American democracy used to depend on political parties that more or less represented most of us. Political scientists of the 1950s and 1960s marveled at American “pluralism,” by which they meant the capacities of parties and other membership groups to reflect the preferences of the vast majority of citizens.
Then around a quarter century ago, as income and wealth began concentrating at the top, the Republican and Democratic Parties started to morph into mechanisms for extracting money, mostly from wealthy people.
Finally, after the Supreme Court’s “Citizen’s United” decision in 2010, billionaires began creating their own political mechanisms, separate from the political parties. They started providing big money directly to political candidates of their choice, and creating their own media campaigns to sway public opinion toward their own views.
So far in the 2014 election cycle, “Americans for Prosperity,” the Koch brother’s political front group, has aired more than 17,000 broadcast TV commercials, compared with only 2,100 aired by Republican Party groups.
"Americans for Prosperity" has also been outspending top Democratic super PACs in nearly all of the Senate races Republicans are targeting this year. In seven of the nine races the difference in total spending is at least two-to-one [2]and Democratic super PACs have had virtually no air presence in five of the nine states.
The Kochs have spawned several imitators. Through the end of February, four of the top five contributors to 2014 super-PACs are now giving money to political operations they themselves created, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
For example, billionaire TD Ameritrade founder Joe Ricketts and his son, Todd, co-owner of the Chicago Cubs, have their own $25 million political operation called “Ending Spending.” The group is now investing heavily in TV ads against Republican Representative Walter Jones in a North Carolina primary (they blame Jones for too often voting with Obama).
Their ad attacking Democratic New Hampshire Senator Jeanne Shaheen for supporting Obama’s health-care law has become a template for similar ads funded by the Koch’s “Americans for Prosperity” in Senate races across the country.
When billionaires supplant political parties, candidates are beholden directly to the billionaires. And if and when those candidates win election, the billionaires will be completely in charge.
At this very moment, Casino magnate Sheldon Adelson (worth an estimated $37.9 billion) is busy interviewing potential Republican candidates whom he might fund, in what’s being called the “Sheldon Primary.”
“Certainly the ‘Sheldon Primary’ is an important primary for any Republican running for president,” says [3]Ari Fleischer, former White House press secretary under President George W. Bush. “It goes without saying that anybody running for the Republican nomination would want to have Sheldon at his side.”
The new billionaire political bosses aren’t limited to Republicans. Democratic-leaning billionaires Tom Steyer, a former hedge-fund manager, and former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, have also created their own political groups. But even if the two sides were equal, billionaires squaring off against each other isn’t remotely a democracy.
In his much-talked-about new book, “Capital in the Twenty-First Century,” economist Thomas Piketty explains why the rich have become steadily richer while the share of national income going to wages continues to drop. He shows that when wealth is concentrated in relatively few hands, and the income generated by that wealth grows more rapidly than the overall economy – as has been the case in the United States and many other advanced economies for years – the richest receive almost all the income growth.
Logically, this leads to greater and greater concentrations of income and wealth in the future – dynastic fortunes that are handed down from generation to generation, as they were prior to the twentieth century in much of the world.
The trend was reversed temporarily in the twentieth century by the Great Depression, two terrible wars, the development of the modern welfare state, and strong labor unions. But Piketty is justifiably concerned about the future.


Charles and David Koch should not be blamed for having more wealth than the bottom 40 percent of Americans put together. Nor should they be condemned for their petrochemical empire. As far as I know, they’ve played by the rules and obeyed the laws.
They’re also entitled to their own right-wing political views. It’s a free country.
But in using their vast wealth to change those rules and laws in order to fit their political views, the Koch brothers are undermining our democracy. That’s a betrayal of the most precious thing Americans share.
The Kochs exemplify a new reality that strikes at the heart of America. The vast wealth that has accumulated at the top of the American economy is not itself the problem. The problem is that political power tends to rise to where the money is. And this combination of great wealth with political power leads to greater and greater accumulations and concentrations of both — tilting the playing field in favor of the Kochs and their ilk, and against the rest of us.
America is not yet an oligarchy, but that’s where the Koch’s and a few other billionaires are taking us.
American democracy used to depend on political parties that more or less represented most of us. Political scientists of the 1950s and 1960s marveled at American “pluralism,” by which they meant the capacities of parties and other membership groups to reflect the preferences of the vast majority of citizens.
Then around a quarter century ago, as income and wealth began concentrating at the top, the Republican and Democratic Parties started to morph into mechanisms for extracting money, mostly from wealthy people.
Finally, after the Supreme Court’s “Citizen’s United” decision in 2010, billionaires began creating their own political mechanisms, separate from the political parties. They started providing big money directly to political candidates of their choice, and creating their own media campaigns to sway public opinion toward their own views.
So far in the 2014 election cycle, “Americans for Prosperity,” the Koch brother’s political front group, has aired more than 17,000 broadcast TV commercials, compared with only 2,100 aired by Republican Party groups.
"Americans for Prosperity" has also been outspending top Democratic super PACs in nearly all of the Senate races Republicans are targeting this year. In seven of the nine races the difference in total spending is at least two-to-one [2]and Democratic super PACs have had virtually no air presence in five of the nine states.
The Kochs have spawned several imitators. Through the end of February, four of the top five contributors to 2014 super-PACs are now giving money to political operations they themselves created, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
For example, billionaire TD Ameritrade founder Joe Ricketts and his son, Todd, co-owner of the Chicago Cubs, have their own $25 million political operation called “Ending Spending.” The group is now investing heavily in TV ads against Republican Representative Walter Jones in a North Carolina primary (they blame Jones for too often voting with Obama).
Their ad attacking Democratic New Hampshire Senator Jeanne Shaheen for supporting Obama’s health-care law has become a template for similar ads funded by the Koch’s “Americans for Prosperity” in Senate races across the country.
When billionaires supplant political parties, candidates are beholden directly to the billionaires. And if and when those candidates win election, the billionaires will be completely in charge.
At this very moment, Casino magnate Sheldon Adelson (worth an estimated $37.9 billion) is busy interviewing potential Republican candidates whom he might fund, in what’s being called the “Sheldon Primary.”
“Certainly the ‘Sheldon Primary’ is an important primary for any Republican running for president,” says [3]Ari Fleischer, former White House press secretary under President George W. Bush. “It goes without saying that anybody running for the Republican nomination would want to have Sheldon at his side.”
The new billionaire political bosses aren’t limited to Republicans. Democratic-leaning billionaires Tom Steyer, a former hedge-fund manager, and former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, have also created their own political groups. But even if the two sides were equal, billionaires squaring off against each other isn’t remotely a democracy.
In his much-talked-about new book, “Capital in the Twenty-First Century,” economist Thomas Piketty explains why the rich have become steadily richer while the share of national income going to wages continues to drop. He shows that when wealth is concentrated in relatively few hands, and the income generated by that wealth grows more rapidly than the overall economy – as has been the case in the United States and many other advanced economies for years – the richest receive almost all the income growth.
Logically, this leads to greater and greater concentrations of income and wealth in the future – dynastic fortunes that are handed down from generation to generation, as they were prior to the twentieth century in much of the world.
The trend was reversed temporarily in the twentieth century by the Great Depression, two terrible wars, the development of the modern welfare state, and strong labor unions. But Piketty is justifiably concerned about the future.

http://www.alternet.org/print/tea-p...billionaires-are-warping-our-political-system

 
most right wing nuts here don't even know who the Kochs and Adelson are. Trying to make them understand how big money is creating an oligarchy and destroying democracy is above their level of thinking.

Get ready for the Soros excuse from them... wait for it...
 
Does anyone want to inform the leftist retards of the forum that most of these billionaires are Liberals?

I see they are once again stuck on the moronic Koch meme.
 
Crashk said:
most right wing nuts here don't even know who the Kochs and Adelson are. Trying to make them understand how big money is creating an oligarchy and destroying democracy is above their level of thinking.

Get ready for the Soros excuse from them... wait for it...
Click to expand...

You lefttards never seem to be concerned when billionaires like Soros, Turner, etc, donate gobs of money to leftist causes; why do you think that is? It starts with an "H" and ends in "E". Another way to spell it is S-T-U-P-I-D.
 
Crashk said:
most right wing nuts here don't even know who the Kochs and Adelson are. Trying to make them understand how big money is creating an oligarchy and destroying democracy is above their level of thinking.

Get ready for the Soros excuse from them... wait for it...
Click to expand...

You and your ilk don't even know who Soros is, or how many shadow organizations he's put together to alter public opinion. Trying to make you understand how big money is creating an oligarchy and destroying democracy is above your level of thinking.
 
Same old nonsensical name calling and chest beating. No real debate, no facts, no idea of what is really going on in this country.

Please tell us how international monied interests will be better running this country than democracy.
Hint: start with your belief that money is speech.
please include a link
 
Crashk said:
most right wing nuts here don't even know who the Kochs and Adelson are. Trying to make them understand how big money is creating an oligarchy and destroying democracy is above their level of thinking.

Get ready for the Soros excuse from them... wait for it...
Click to expand...

and, it arrived just as you predicted it would.

It is interesting to note that some here claim that people worried about the Koch brothers are hypocrites because they did NOT, apparently, worry about George Soros. But yet, those same people who screamed at what Soros was doing have NO problem when the Koch brothers do it with double the money.... and they somehow fail to call their OWN behavior hypocrisy. I wonder why that is?
 
You need to tell us CrashK. How is all that Soros money helping the US? Hasn't he admitted that he wants to destroy our monetary system? His shill in the White House is doing just that.
 
Crashk said:
most right wing nuts here don't even know who the Kochs and Adelson are. Trying to make them understand how big money is creating an oligarchy and destroying democracy is above their level of thinking.

Get ready for the Soros excuse from them... wait for it...
Click to expand...

:rofl2:

Half the country has no idea who they are, liberals love creating boogie men to rile up the low information voters.


[h=1]Koch Zero? Why Democrats are going to have a hard time enraging people about campaign finance.[/h]
Half the country has no idea who the Koch Brothers are.

To be precise, 52 percent of people said they didn't know who Charles and David Koch were in a new GW Battleground poll conducted by Republican pollster Ed Goeas and Democratic pollster Celinda Lake. If you combine the 52 percent of people who didn't know their names with the 11 percent of respondents who had no opinion about the duo, you get more than six in 10 Americans who are entirely unmoved/unaffected by the recent focus by Democrats on villainizing the Kochs.


http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs...tacking-the-koch-brothers-probably-wont-work/

Democrats cannot run on anything right now, Obamacare is a disaster, no jobs, high unemployment, so they target the rich white guys as a battle cry.
 
Crashk said:
Same old nonsensical name calling and chest beating. No real debate, no facts, no idea of what is really going on in this country.

Please tell us how international monied interests will be better running this country than democracy.
Hint: start with your belief that money is speech.
please include a link
Click to expand...

This is the problem debating with low information twits; they start out with a false strawman and then expect everyone else to prove them wrong.

When you can PROVE that Conservative donors cause more damage to our electoral process than Liberal donors, we can have that conversation. When you can prove how "international" monied interests are running this country, we can have that conversation.

But right now, all I am seeing from you are the typical emotional hysterics and false strawmen claims one can expect from uninformed low information leftists who parrot the moronic talking points they are spoon fed by dishonest leftist sources.

Carry on crybaby.
 
maineman said:
and, it arrived just as you predicted it would.

It is interesting to note that some here claim that people worried about the Koch brothers are hypocrites because they did NOT, apparently, worry about George Soros. But yet, those same people who screamed at what Soros was doing have NO problem when the Koch brothers do it with double the money.... and they somehow fail to call their OWN behavior hypocrisy. I wonder why that is?
Click to expand...

The point here, which you seldom comprehend or deliberately avoid, is that whiney leftist low information dunces like you rant and whine about the Koch brothers as if Soros, Turner and the myriad of other leftist billionaires don't fund Democratic efforts. It's a glaringly stupid hypocritical rant that is being pointed out by Conservatives like me.

Obama outspent Romney in the most expensive election in history, yet low information dunces whine and complain about billionaire Conservative donors as if it is something that has never been done by Liberal donors.

Yes, you leftist twits really are THAT stupid, THAT big of hypocrites railing about monied influences; BUT only if they are Conservative.

:legion:
 
and if you righties had not spent years whining about Soros, you might have a point... but you did, so now you don't.
 
maineman said:
and, it arrived just as you predicted it would.

It is interesting to note that some here claim that people worried about the Koch brothers are hypocrites because they did NOT, apparently, worry about George Soros. But yet, those same people who screamed at what Soros was doing have NO problem when the Koch brothers do it with double the money.... and they somehow fail to call their OWN behavior hypocrisy. I wonder why that is?
Click to expand...
double the money? LMAO... try again Mutt.
 
maineman said:
and if you righties had not spent years whining about Soros, you might have a point... but you did, so now you don't.
Click to expand...

It doesn't occur to you that Soros is not a US citizen does it ignoramus? You're clueless pal was whining about "international" monied interested controlling our Democracy. Do try to keep up.

But of course a dishonest hyper partisan hack like you would have no problem with foreign billionaires trying to buy influence in US politics. But when that money comes from American billionaires for Republicans, why that is intolerable isn't it you partisan leftist hack?

And you wonder why people point at you dunces and laugh. You're a bunch of whiney low information leftist hypocrites stuck on stupid.
 
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