The Koch Brothers and the Danger of American Plutocracy<\/a> by Robert Reich in Bill Moyers Online.<\/p>\nThe Text:<\/strong> 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\u2019ve played by the rules and obeyed the laws.<\/p>\nThey\u2019re also entitled to their own right-wing political views. It\u2019s a free country.<\/p>\n
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\u2019s a betrayal of the most precious thing Americans share.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
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 \u2014 tilting the playing field in favor of the Kochs and their ilk, and against the rest of us.<\/p>\n
America is not yet an oligarchy, but that\u2019s where the Kochs and a few other billionaires are taking us.<\/p>\n
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 \u201cpluralism,\u201d by which they meant the capacities of parties and other membership groups to reflect the preferences of the vast majority of citizens.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Finally, after the Supreme Court\u2019s Citizen\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
So far in the 2014 election cycle, Americans for Prosperity, the Koch brother\u2019s political front group, has aired more than 17,000 broadcast TV commercials, compared with only 2,100 aired by Republican Party groups.<\/p>\n
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 and Democratic Super PACs have had virtually no air presence in five of the nine states.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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 \u201cEnding Spending.\u201d The group is now investing heavily in TV ads against Rep. Walter Jones (R-NC) in a North Carolina primary (they blame Jones for too often voting with Obama).<\/p>\n
Their ad attacking Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) for supporting Obama\u2019s health care law has become a template for similar ads funded by the Koch\u2019s Americans for Prosperity in Senate races across the country.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
At this very moment, Casino magnate Sheldon Adelson (worth an estimated $37.9 billion) is busy interviewing potential Republican presidential candidates whom he might fund, in what\u2019s being called the \u201cSheldon Primary.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cCertainly the \u2018Sheldon Primary\u2019 is an important primary for any Republican running for president,\u201d says Ari Fleischer, a former White House press secretary under President George W. Bush. \u201cIt goes without saying that anybody running for the Republican nomination would want to have Sheldon at his side.\u201d<\/p>\n
The new billionaire political bosses aren\u2019t 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\u2019t remotely a democracy.<\/p>\n
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 \u2014 as has been the case in the United States and many other advanced economies for years \u2014 the richest receive almost all the income growth.<\/p>\n
Logically, this leads to greater and greater concentrations of income and wealth in the future \u2014 dynastic fortunes that are handed down from generation to generation, as they were prior to the 20th century in much of the world.<\/p>\n
The trend was reversed temporarily in the 20th 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.<\/p>\n
A new gilded age is starting to look a lot like the old one. The only way to stop this is through concerted political action. Yet the only large-scale political action we\u2019re witnessing is that of Charles and David Koch, and their billionaire imitators.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Article: The Koch Brothers and the Danger of American Plutocracy by Robert Reich in Bill Moyers Online. The Text: 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, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":49,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[259],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\n
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![\"Koch](\"http:\/\/www.prosebeforehos.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/koch-brothers.jpg\")
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