Discussion for article #226864
Some people collect cars, others collect paintings, and others collect politicians. All equally for sale.
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“…It can be a kind of status symbol…”
Try profitable.
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The WaPo assures you that we’re not an oligarchy yet. Now stop acting like you’re entitled to democracy, moochers!
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Should be an option give 40 Likes for that.
Money freaks, gold hoarders, gun nutz. All see their way as the only way. They foolishly increase chaos so as to get more stuff. Taken to logical ends, the increase in chaos makes their stuff worthless. We are not individuals anymore. We are exceedingly dependent on one another; society if you will.
One example: Smoke the power grid with a solar coronal ejection mass and all our digital organization stops until whatever disaster recovery system society can muster makes repairs. When society breaks down and the trucks quit rolling money gold and gunz become so much dead weight. There are already places in the world where money is worthless because stores are empty; places where people carry around old rifles in search of ammunition.
Those who catalyze the collapse of society sink their own yachts.
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Good example. Electrical grid stability is a huge issue at the moment as an increasing share of power is provided by intermittent sources such as wind, tide and sun. The Germans are using large 10,000 cycles fields of batteries based on 1MW units. In this case, the big operators had to move first, because, like in the publishing industry before, dinosaurs that didn’t learn to dance and help their customers deal with their electricity costs, face extinction. This will only get worse as the technology scales down. Already, any town or village in Germany that wants have its own power utility can. At the same time, Buckminster Fuller’s dream of a global DC hypergrid also progresses as well see these big powerline projects between e.g. Northern Africa and Europe.
Are we really comparing Carl Icahn (not defending Carl Icahn in particular) donating $10,000 to the Koch’s? That’s like saying an ant is the same thing as a tank.
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Steyer vs Koch = service to others vs self service.
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Perhaps they’re not donating because they know so many of the politicians are already working for them.
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Why There Aren’t More Koch-Style Billionaires In Politics?
Because not everyone is as big a d^ck as Kochs?
jw1
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David Vitter (R-LA) has released a senate minority report - about the “billionaries club” - a group of leftist-activist folks who donate to groups that are not commonly known. It , to my mind, was actually written terribly and mixes a lot of characters in order to try and make a point.
It was timely (for me) as I had just learned about the Peter Thiel (libertarian) support for the Seasteading - creating floating islands for his ilk. So his $2M is sane and someone else’s $2M to support renewable energy is not.
Sorry, I’m not going to help spread this particular report. It does cycle down through a bit of nasty GOP conspiracy theory and their sites. Oh MY!
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Why There Aren’t More Koch-Style Billionaires In Politics
I don’t think it is appropriate to call aggressive greed, pleonexy and schadenfreude a style.
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Well, it takes effort to rise to being such insensitive selfish pricks. Billions don’t make you an asshole. This can be achieved in poverty.
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From the ed blog on this article:
“And for all the freedom to spend without limit bequeathed by the Supreme Court, what about the great majority of billionaires who don’t donate any more to campaigns that your average small town doctor?”
So, I guess TPM’s well-known “issues” start at the top?
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@Meta - nice synonym for greed!
And now for my threadsnark: “And some of these very wealthy people, like Adelson, were betting on a particular horse,” Scholzman said. “He put his chips on Newt Gingrich and it didn’t go anywhere.”
“It” being the horse’s ass that is Newt Gingrich?