These crazed John-Birch-Society sociopaths have basically formed their own Republican party, which wasn’t hard because the Republican Party is ALWAYS for sale to the highest bidder. And they’re busy amassing even more money than they can supply on their own, by bringing in more of their sort of tycoons — the ones who actively look forward to grinding the faces of the poor.
Against such a toxic mix of cupidity and stupidity, we 99%ers mostly contend in vain. The Kochs’ ideology is baked into their DNA and shielded by a blinkered dogmatism and a firewall made of billions of dollars. They are to laissez-faire capitalism what Jerry Falwell was to Christianity — and they are every bit as dangerous to society.
Fortunately, being rich sometimes makes you careless: at their most recent gathering of their tribe, a guest left behind a donor list — a spreadsheet with the names of forty or so of the wealthy greedheads whose dream is to pillage undisturbed by the pesky minions of government.
Can you imagine being the hotel guest who discovered that document? Hmmm-de-dmmm, let’s sit here for a while and watch people, hmmm-de-dmmm, what’s this? Hmmm-de-d…holy shit! We the people are as grateful to the individual who figured out that that list was as we are to the waiter who recorded Romney’s “47%” speech.
The more than 40 donors courted by the Kochs include hedge fund and private-equity billionaires, real estate tycoons, and executives of top corporations, including Jockey International and TRT Holdings, owner of Omni Hotels and Gold’s Gym. A number of them have never been identified as members of the Koch donor network…
Another top conservative contributor on the list is TRT Holdings’ cofounder Robert Rowling, whose net worth is estimated at $4.9 billion. During the 2012 election, Rowling directed $3.5 million to American Crossroads, the super-PAC spearheaded by Karl Rove, and he cut a $100,000 check to the pro-Romney super-PAC Restore Our Future.
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Other heavy hitters slated for meetings with the Koch brothers or their representatives included Carl Berg, a Silicon Valley real estate tycoon worth $1.1 billion; Ken Griffin, who founded the hedge fund Citadel and clocks in at No. 103 on the Forbes 400 (net worth, $4.4 billion); John W. Childs, a top private-equity investor; and Fred Klipsch, the chairman of the headphone and speaker company Klipsch Group.
Follow the link to see the complete list, so you know who to boycott.
This would be garden-variety sociopathy if the Kochs were not so heavily involved in funding climate-change denial, and so heavily invested in the extractive industries that stand to profit from destroying our planet’s environment.
What’s been left out of the ferocious debate over the pipeline, however, is the prospect that if president Obama allows a permit for the Keystone XL to be granted, he would be handing a big victory and great financial opportunity to Charles and David Koch, his bitterest political enemies and among the most powerful opponents of his clean economy agenda.