wilkes

thats billion with a b.

We all see how indecent America has become under Rump.
Impeach now

Sorry. They should be theg.

I really wonder where you get your info, they.

https://www.factcheck.org/2...te-rumors/

US News and World Report:

The sign of higher intelligence, it's said, is the ability to hold opposite ideas in one's head and continue functioning.

Yet when considering Charles and David Koch, the industrialist brothers and conservative activists, liberals' heads metaphorically explode before they can allow positive thoughts about the left's biggest boogeymen. They argue the Kochs are the biggest threat to American democracy outside of the Islamic State group, powerful ideologues who want to create a tax-free corporate playground with next-to-no government - and who have the vast wealth, $28 billion and counting, to make it happen.

What tends to go unmentioned: the owners of Koch Industries, one of the world's biggest conglomerates, have kicked in an estimated $1.5 billion or so to an array of causes and institutions most liberals love: public television, medical research, higher education, environmental stewardship, criminal justice reform and the arts. Stung by a 2010 New Yorker article that framed them as villains, the brothers are assertively putting out the good word about their good works.

[ OPINION: The Koch Brothers Shake it Up ]

David Koch seemed baffled that their politics overshadow their philanthropy. In a September 2014 Q-and-A with Crain's, a New York-based business journal, David Koch said he and his lower-profile brother, Charles, simply want to use their vast fortune to make a better world - and, while he's at it, shove back against liberals who shame his name.

"The left-wing Democrats highly enjoy calling me an evil Koch brother, and the [philanthropic] contributions I make in these many areas are tremendously worthy," he said, noting his contributions to the United Negro College Fund helped many African-American students who couldn't otherwise afford it to "come to these great [historically black] colleges."

Having his name on hospitals, the theater housing the New York Metropolitan Ballet and countless boards and charities, he says, "sends a message to the political groups in this country that don't like the conservative Republican businessman."

Yet historians and political analysts say the Kochs' undeniable contribution to the public good - the brothers have individually received Philanthropist of the Year awards from various charitable organizations - and news they could spend as much as $1 billion on the 2016 presidential election are symptoms of a much larger problem.

Their influence on culture and politics are signs America has entered what could be called The Gilded Age 2.0: an era in which wealth inequality, and an electoral system awash in money, have given the super-rich a disturbing amount of influence in American society.

Though David Koch says his family foundation spends far more on philanthropy, the brothers have had an impact on the political landscape, funding conservative presidential candidates like Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, pouring millions into right-leaning think tanks and anti-tax organizations like the Club for Growth and regularly meeting with other wealthy campaign contributors in exclusive retreats. Critics say the brothers have fought environmental protection laws and pushed for legislation favorable to the petrochemical industry, the source of their incredible wealth.

David Karpf, a George Washington University professor who specializes in media and American culture, says the Kochs are throwbacks to an era when business titans like Andrew Carnegie, Leland Stanford and Cornelius Vanderbilt roamed the earth, balancing political power with charitable giving. Then, Karpf says, the industrialists shaped their legacies by giving huge chunks of their money away, creating monuments to themselves in the process.

"I don't think we should find it surprising" that 21st-century barons like the Kochs would follow suit, Karpf says.

More importantly, he says, in an era of dwindling public funding and donations, the Kochs' massive contributions are mixed blessings for beneficiaries. Although the Kochs have said their gifts are given with no strings attached, Karpf says they are still influential.

Consider public television, which has reportedly received more than $23 million from the Kochs in the last decade. David Koch's affiliation with two of the Public Broadcast System's flagship TV stations, WNET in New York and Boston's WGBH, has caused more than one headache for the station and PBS in general.

Critics say his presence led PBS to quash plans to air a 2012 documentary, "Citizen Koch," which contends that the billionaire brothers and their allies are funding a political war against employees' unions, the Democrats' most powerful allies.

Although PBS and WGBH have insisted Koch has no say in what the station decides to air, upper-level managers pulled the plug on "Citizen Koch" without a detailed explanation.

[ READ: The Democrats' Anti-Koch Capitol Hill Show Goes On ]

In a 2013 report on the controversy, PBS ombudsman Michael Getler wrote that there was no evidence David Koch ordered them to kill the documentary; indeed, PBS in 2012 had aired a documentary about wealth inequality on Park Avenue that roughed up the Kochs and other wealthy residents of perhaps the nation's most exclusive neighborhood.

Network officials probably censored themselves, Getler writes, because they were "wary of the impact of another PBS-distributed film critical of a hugely wealthy and politically active trustee of two key PBS stations who had already donated $23 million to public broadcasting and was reportedly considering a new, very large gift."

Moreover, "the unspoken influence of money - especially big money - can be thought-provoking inside organizations, especially public ones that are always scrounging and live within a unique and uncertain fundraising environment," he adds.

That clash underscores "the fundamental problem" with the Kochs' philanthropy, Karpf says. Big money can cause big problems, he says, for organizations who must balance independence against the bottom line; no one would care, he argues, "if they had this wealth and no [obvious] political agenda."

Richard White, a Stanford historian and Gilded Age expert, says we've been here before: at the turn of the last century, industrial philanthropists made eye-popping donations "to justify great fortune and an attempt to use that to control the direction of societal and cultural change."

Carnegie, a major player in the railroad and steel industries, used his wealth to sprinkle grand libraries stamped with his name in towns across the country. White says the goal was to promote individual self-improvement -- but not necessarily for his employees.

At the same time he attempted to increase American literacy, White adds, "his workers are working 12 to 14 hours a day" with little time to go read a book.

Like the Kochs, Stanford, Carnegie, Andrew Mellon and most of the GIlded Age tycoons were, primarily, tough, savvy businessmen who wanted to make lots of money, West says.

Carnegie, who backed tariffs to keep imported steel out of the U.S. market, wasn't above playing hardball with politicians, or the workers who helped him build his fortune, White says, pointing to an 1892 strike at Homestead Steel, a Carnegie plant in Pittsburgh.

When the Amalgamated Steelworkers union went on strike, Carnegie used an iron fist to deal with it. After hiring replacement workers, he crushed the union revolt with the help the National Guard; then, he hiked production quotas, dropped wages and boosted profits.

"When you begin to see the sources of their money, there's a reason people began to resent it," even when they dole it out to charity, White says. "Carnegie wasn't a widely admired man."

[ MORE: The Attack Goes On ]

Yet Carnegie is perhaps more likely to be admired these days for founding Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh and bankrolling Carnegie Hall, perhaps the world's most famous performing-arts stage. Ask a freshman at Stanford or Vanderbilt University to describe how - or why - their universities were created, and they'll probably shrug.

"Very few people have a clue who these people were," White said. "Philanthropy does work to preserve their memories."

A little publicity doesn't hurt, either.

After being caught flat-footed by the New Yorker article, the Kochs created a rapid-response PR team, including setting up KochFacts.com. They're not shy about publicizing their affiliation with Van Jones, a progressive activist and former Obama administration staffer, on criminal justice reform.

And longtime critic Lawrence O'Donnell, host of "The Last Word" on left-leaning MSNBC, gave the Kochs a personal salute in an emotional commentary on his program last year.

When he was critically injured in a head-on car crash on the British Virgin Islands in April 2014, O'Donnell was airlifted to New York, then taken to the Hospital for Special Surgery in Manhattan. A longtime critic of the Kochs' politics, O'Donnell was stunned when "the first words I saw when I was rolled into the hospital was the name David H. Koch - yes, that David Koch."

While he agrees with Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, who in a floor speech called the Kochs "un-American" for their right-wing activities, "David Koch has given $25 million to the hospital that put me and many other men, women and children back together," O'Donnell says. "David Koch's money helped make their hospital experience a better one, and that is a very, very good thing."

That doesn't mean the Kochs can't be criticized for his politics, O'Donnell says; it just means holding two ideas in mind at the same time.

"You can be outraged by what the Koch brothers do with their money in politics," he says, "and you can appreciate what they contribute to hospital and medical research and you can do that at the same time and still retain the ability to function."

Democratic party is in good shape to take back Congress and the White House next year. Make America decent again

Kamala.Free stuff for black folks only.Joe.I don't know what the blank he's talking about.Elizebeth.More free stuff.Beto.Now thinks he's a slave owner because his desendents were.Cory.Angry all the time.Bernie.More free stuff.Blank.At least he's honest about who is going to pay for it.Oh yeah.We have nothing else except we hate Trump.That's what's ruining the Democratic party.

Yes, the Koch brothers may have ruined the GOP, but Nixon, Sarah Palin, W, the Teabillies, and President Hairpiece all had a hand in it, too.

https://trofire.com/2019/06...democrats/
Now they are trying the same with the Democratic party.