The Koch Brothers are the face of evil according to just about everybody it seems. I did a Google search and after typing in “Koch Brothers” the top two searches that came up were “Koch Brothers evil” and Koch Brothers exposed”.
Go to any of the pages that come up and you’ll find something along the line of, “The Koch brothers are two billionaires who are using their vast wealth to rewrite the rules of government to suit their ends. The Koch brothers are a symbol of a greater problem of the power of money in politics—in particular, the ability of some über-rich people and large corporations to put their massive thumbs on the scale of democracy in ways that manipulate and ultimately overwhelm the will of the people.”
Sounds pretty bad. So if these guys are, “using their vast wealth to rewrite the rules of government to suit their ends”, how do we measure how evil their intent is? By how much money they are spending to achieve their evil ends. After all, the articles keep referring to them using their money to influence outcome.
Off to the internet, the source of all knowledge. On the “Our Future” website, a well-known Progressive website, we find a table listing the top 100 political donors. Information was based on data released by the FEC on 03/09/15 and the IRS on 5/12/15 for 2014.
The top 25 donors from the chart are listed below. I had to go down to number 25 because that’s where Koch brother number two appears. Koch brother number one comes in at number ten.
Considering the Koch brothers net worth ($41 billion each) you’d think they’d be at the top of the list the way they are talked about in the news.
Total donations made by the Koch brothers to further their evil plans $7,784,300. That’s a lot of money, but it pales in comparison to the $75 million donated by Thomas Steyer to Democratic/Liberal candidates. So is Thomas Steyer ten times more evil than the Koch brothers because he donated ten times more money to further his evil plan. Or are only Conservative plans evil?
Michael Bloomberg’s donations exceed the donations of the two Koch brothers combined by $2.7 million. So how evil is he?
As a matter of fact, the donations made by Thomas Steyer and Michael Bloomberg alone are more than all of the donations made to Conservatives by the top 25 donors all together.
So if money donated to further a political cause is the measure of evil, there are people out there that are a lot worse than the Koch brothers.
So explain to me again why the Koch brothers are so bad?
Link to the full chart:
If you study the complete chart you will find:
- 51 of the top 100 political donors gave to Liberal causes
- 49 of the top 100 political donors gave to Conservative causes
- Some donors gave to both, but their donations primarily went to one
- Total contributions collected – $309 million
- Contributions distributed to Liberal causes – $167 million
- Contributions distributed to Conservative causes – $121 million
- Contributions distributed to other causes – $21 million
Look at donor number 12, George Soros. Ever heard of him? And donor number 36, Jonathon Soros. This father and son team donated a total of $5.4 million to Liberal causes.
Is this a conspiracy? Are they trying to “use their vast wealth to rewrite the rules of government to suit their ends”. Where is the hue and cry to expose these two “über-rich people”? (Does George Soros $23 billion net worth qualify him as über-rich ?) Do they want to “manipulate and ultimately overwhelm the will of the people”?
Why isn’t the media investigating this duo? Oh, wait, I forgot. They’re donating to Liberals, so their intent has to be pure with no thought of personal gain or “overwhelming the will of the people.” Amazing how that works.
I guess it’s not really the amount of money you donate, but to whom you donate that determines how you will be reported in the media.