Comment Re:George Soros (Score 5, Informative) 406
You have Soros, on the left with his money, and the Koch brothers, on the right with their money, and "we the people" in the middle getting screwed from both ends.
Lets see. The Koch Brothers. Charles and David Koch each have personal assets of $36 billion each, in addition they each own 42% of Koch Industries that does $100 billion of business each year. A petrochemical company is valued at about three times annual revenue, so 42% of $300 billion is $126 billion that each of them owns*. Plus their $36 billion each in holding outside Koch Industries and each of them is worth $162 billion, or $324 billion for the set.
George Soros, is worth $20 billion, a 16-1 one disadvantage in wealth. Also note that he is the only liberal billionaire that the right-wingers seem able to find, whereas on the right the list goes on forever (Sheldon Adelman, Pete Peterson, etc.. etc.) . And finally it helps to do a little reality checking to find out how much Soros has actually contributed over time to liberal causes. The total amount seems to be about $30 million, mostly spent during the early Bush years.
Sorry, despite the fevered efforts by the right to try to whip Soros up into a bogeyman, his contributions to political causes over time are tiny compared to the money machine that the Kochs and company have built up over the years, and keeps running with billions in annual funding without pause.
You are getting screwed from only one end, the corporatist end. And it is rich men on the right who are successfully buying our political system so that the screwing will continue.
*Odd, isn't it, that Forbes doesn't count business ownership in its calculation of wealth. You may object "But that's not real wealth, they can't spend it", which is nonsense. They could borrow against it for cash whenever they chose, or put their ownership on the market and cash out. They can tap that money whenever they like.