No. There are a bunch of billionaires pushing their various agendas. Billionaire pet-causes is pretty much the only way things change in this country anymore. Democracy is dead, all we have left is billionaires fighting each other.

Democracy is not dead. But you're hundred percent right about Billionaires. Think Tanks are all 100% biased depending on who is funding what. Whether it's a company or a billionaire. Economists, professors, public figures, Historians, everyone is being paid.

The one tool we can wield in this information or rather misinformation age is critical thinking. I no longer follow any pundit. I have nowhere near their knowledge in their respective fields, but I can think and ponder whether their views make sense. Robert Reich, Krugman, Brooks, Shields, Shapiro or whomever. See what slant they are coming from, try to understand if they make sense. Immediately afterwards, read about the same topic from someone on the opposite side of the spectrum. Don't get lost in the doomsday world is ending, other side is evil BS. Then hold an opinion, but don't stick to it. Allow it to be malleable and change and try arguing from the other side constantly. I feel like our own ego is partly what let's us join each tribe of thought and we further reinforce it from reading similar viewpoints because we want to be good and right. Sounds simple, but it's so easy to get caught up in it without taking a step back and just thinking about that thought process.

So, that's how you keep democracy alive. Not through simple education where you reiterate facts, memorize or follow directions, but through improving critical thinking which is slowly worsening in college and high schools. In a conversation with a classmate, we reminisced how in 3rd grade we learned how to spot bias in news articles, practicing for months. I feel like that's disappeared too.

A good way of validating an idea is to look at empirical evidence, or the results of the application of that idea in other places.

A good example of this is the current tax debate. Republicans claim lowering taxes is a great way to "jump-start" the economy. But if you look at Kansas, a state that has been running that experiment for half a decade, you realize that it's a terrible idea.

https://www.npr.org/2017/10/25/560040131/as-trump-proposes-t...

> But if you look at Kansas, a state that has been running that experiment for half a decade

But then there are other states, like Florida IIRC, who have also been running that experiment and succeeding. So then the key is to see why one works and the other doesn't.

I'm from Florida. Born and raised. I'm not sure what they have been succeeding at. Opioid crisis is rampant, inequality is insane, the education system got worse and worse throughout my education and seems to have gotten worse since I graduated high school and left. Miami is partially underwater every king tide because of rising sea levels and yet under Rick Scott's government the phrase "climate change" is forbidden in emails and correspondence, so people are hamstringed into doing nothing about it. Charter schools have been given tons of leeway and there are tons of accounts of them discriminating against students who are less likely to be academic achievers on the one end of the spectrum (so that their stats look better), and on the other end of the spectrum they neglect and abuse the children in the classrooms.

As an individual it seems great to go work there as opposed to here in CA because there is no state income tax, yet I still make way more money here in CA because there is practically no industry in FL unless you're a lawyer or a doctor.

>>But then there are other states, like Florida IIRC, who have also been running that experiment and succeeding.

Succeeding by what measure?

I was wrong: I was thinking of North Carolina[0].

[0] http://www.nationalreview.com/article/454640/north-carolina-...

> Democracy is dead

According to the article the TPA's (and by extension the Koch's) campaign failed and the KentuckyWired project got the go ahead. Better funded, more powerful opposition lost a merits-based argument and did not get their way. This is an example of democracy working, wouldn't you say?

Only temporarily.

Once issues stop getting public attention they try again and usually succeed.

The article also cites Comcast's campaigns to oppose municipal networks. These campaigns failed too:

https://muninetworks.org/content/totals-are-comcast-spends-9...

They might try again, but then they might lose again. No need to give in to cynicism and apathy just yet.

Remember SOPA? people protested it because it allowed to see what people did online.

But what happened this year? ISPs can sell your web history. Now they got net neutrality provisions revoked.

They lost a battle, but they are winning the war.

Note that the recent presidential election was in large part decided by which groups didn't vote. The viewpoint that politicians are all the same, voting doesn't matter etc. is a also a political opinions which benefits certain interests.

Considering that the US election spending reached a billion $ I'm not convinced.

I'd love to one day see a US presidential candidate hand out flyers on Times Square.

... why?

I'd like to see less money in politics, either public funding or donations restricted to small individual donors, and I personally think a good candidate for higher office should have worked at least one shit job in their life. But the other extreme is equally absurd.

The President is literally the chief executive of an organization of millions of people. While some good old fashioned down-to-earth-ness is great for knowing what to do, if a Presidential candidate can't manage a large organization efficiently, pick competent subordinates and delegate authority effectively, they ain't never gonna get anything done as President.

The President is like the one race where a two year PR stint managing a few thousand people spread across all fifty states and a few territories is a good interview for the job.

Was this ever not the case? Look into the history of e.g. how marijuana prohibition came about. I think we are just more aware of it today.

History is more of a battle between the haves and the haves than between the haves and the have-nots.

Citation needed. Also, is there any reason to believe this isn't how it's always been throughout history? Those with lots of capital set things into motion that impact everyone else?

Corruption at the scale we're currently seeing was pretty much illegal until the Citizen's United ruling. Dark Money groups spent $600 million on senate races in 2016.

The Koch brothers alone were planning on spending nearly $1 billion to influence the election. It's no wonder that congress is racing to pass an historically unpopular tax bill that almost exclusively benefits these very same donors. Hell, Lindsey Graham gave away the game in a response a few weeks ago when asked what would happen if they didn't pass the bill:

> "The party fractures, most incumbents in 2018 will get a severe primary challenge, a lot of them will probably lose, the base will fracture, the financial contributions will stop, other than that it'll be fine!"

How what is described in the article - political group promoting their opinion - is "corruption"? Yes, some rich people may have financed that particular group - as rich people finance a lot of politically active groups - but what's corrupt in that? Did they bribe anyone? Did they break any laws?

Legal corruption is still corruption. But to fix it you have to change the system, not just enforce existing rules. And in order to change the system, you have to have a better system ready and widespread support for it. That's hard.

OK, let me rephrase. How it is "legal corruption"? What's corrupt there in people trying to convince other people in their point of view? Is the "corrupt" part that the people doing the convincing happen to be rich and thus must be evil? What exactly needs fixing here? Should Kochs be banned from political advocacy? Should TPA be prohibited? Should opposition to municipal projects be banned? What exactly here needs fixing?

Ever heard of United Fruit? Read more history and you'll find plenty of examples of the government taking action on behalf of one or a handful of corporations or individuals.

United Fruit (now called Chiquita) was able to exert influence on the Eisenhower administration because the Dulles brothers (Secretary of State and Director of the CIA) had a long work history and direct financial interest in the company, which was outraged that the Guatemalan government planned to force the company to sell its unused land back to the country at the company-assessed price (the company owned >40% of the arable land in the country, which it had claimed was nearly worthless to save on taxes).

The US imposed a military coup on Guatemala which overthrew a democratically elected government and installed a right-wing military junta in its place, after which the military ruled via a succession of corrupt dictators and military puppets, and undertook a horrific genocidal decades-long civil war against armed rebels and rural peasant civilians.

But I don’t think that’s quite the same situation as the Koch Brothers today. For one thing, all the consequences were borne by poor foreigners.

> all the consequences were borne by poor foreigners

What about all the American fruit farmers that compete with bananas? There's always side-effects. Now Americans eat more bananas than apples and oranges combined.

Hopefully they lose anyway if it's that unpopular.

Probably not -- The version that emerged from the conference committee included a provision that wasn't in either the House or Senate bill -- but coincidentally would result in a tax cut of over a million dollars per year to the Senator that was previously holding out. He then announced that he would now support the bill.

http://www.ibtimes.com/political-capital/last-minute-real-es...

I mean lose at the polls.

Yeah. Pre-enlightnment...

Are you from the US? If so your comment reads like you have Stockholm syndrome.

No, but they are a common punchbag for articles like this. In this case, Kochs probably had no idea what TPA is doing and exercised no control whatsoever over their actions in any way, they just gave money to a fund that gave money to ideologically affiliated fund that gave money to ideologically affiliated fund that gave money to TPA. But of course that doesn't make a good headline.

So now we accept that the brilliant billionaire businessmen don't know where their money is going? So their not evil just clueless - highly doubtful.

> So now we accept that the brilliant billionaire businessmen don't know where their money is going

Of course. When you donate to a fund, you are not going to track the destination of every cent, it's enough that you trust the managers of the fund that they will direct money to the causes which are ideologically aligned with what they think is right. They may request general report from time to time (like "gave X% to libertarian small-govt groups", etc.) but they certainly wouldn't micromanage every associated organization. Just as I, when donating to, say, Red Cross, don't go and see every project they are doing. I just trust they'd do the right thing with my money, based on what I know about them as an organization.

Brilliant businessmen are rarely brilliant because they know what which cent in their business is doing. More often, they are brilliant because they organize their business in a way that they don't need to know, they just hire right people, build right structures and delegate to them.

> So their not evil just clueless - highly doubtful.

They are neither evil nor clueless. Just as I am not "clueless" because I donate to dozens of organizations without knowing minute details of what they are doing. I just know that they are organizations that do things I support or would support, and trust them to figure out specific details of how to use my money. If I ever learn they are not doing a good job, I'll stop donating to them, that's all.

So, the headline is hyperbolic because the Kochs didn't make the decision, but ...

"More often, they are brilliant because they organize their business in a way that they don't need to know, they just hire right people, build right structures and delegate to them"

Which implies that they did in fact want this, even if you ignore all their other constant political gamesmanship for ends such as these.

Seems like we are having our cake and eating it too.

> So, the headline is hyperbolic because the Kochs didn't make the decision, but ...

And by "hyperbolic" you mean "complete fiction". It's like saying "Soros is to blame for political violence in US" because some of Soros funds have found way to Antifa groups, which are known to be violent.

> Which implies that they did in fact want this

Opposing government taking over infrastructure? Sure did, they are known for their libertarian views. Opposing specific municipal project? They probably had no idea it exists. If they did, I could plausibly imagine they might oppose it, but it's not the reason to put words in their mouth and describe something they didn't as something they did.

> if you ignore all their other constant political gamesmanship for ends such as these.

By using term "gamesmanship" you imply there is something nefarious in voicing their opinion and supporting causes they consider just by means like donating their own money and trying to explain to people their point of view by using their own money. I wonder do you deny this right to every US person or just ones that disagree with you or just ones that have money and disagree with you?

> Seems like we are having our cake and eating it too.

Not sure what you mean by "cake" here. The situation is simple - Kochs are known libertarians and donate to tons of libertarian causes. TPA is one of the "small government" groups that got some money under it, through network of affiliates. They opposed specific municipal project, as they think it is better to be done privately and not by government. Wired tried to present this completely mundane political occurrence as a nefarious plan by a shady billionaires to deprive us of Internet (no doubt in service of their ultimate goal of enslaving us all). Shame on the Wired for doing this hack job. End of story.

Nope. A lot revolves around them, but there are plenty of ultra-rich ideologues pushing their agenda this way. You can find some good investigative research on this in "Dark Money" by Jane Mayer, which details a lot of the history behind dark money influencing politics, and the ideals these guys are trying to advance.

The Mercers are another influential family she's written about [0]

[0] https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/03/27/the-reclusive-...

> If that is true - which it appears to be - are the Koch brothers the only ones?

Nope. There are e.g. Tom Steyer [0], Sheldon Adelson [1] and many others, both left & right (and the Kochs aren't really 'right' anyway — they're much more libertarian than they are conservative, supporting homosexual marriage &c.). Billionaires have the same right to free speech that paupers have, but they've got rather a lot more money to spend speaking than others do. Personally, I suspect that a lot of the anti-Citizens-United animus comes from billionaires (or employees of billionaires) annoyed at the competition: they don't want poorer citizens to band together to fund political speech.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Steyer

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheldon_Adelson

No, George Soros does a lot of this from a Democrat/left-wing perspective.

Pathetic state of affairs for this website when you get downvoted for saying a fact.

I'm not even making a value judgement. You get left wing billionaires and right wing ones. They all have their pet political causes.

It is just an author's way to say 'I am a left winger'. If the author wanted to say 'I am a right winger' George Soros would take the role of the evil billionaire villain. Every group has its own enemies that help them strengthen their identity.

Not long after I moved to Kansas in 2012, I received a postcard supporting some tea party idiot for the legislature. Was a four color printing on thick glossy paper. Paid for by the Koch's PAC Americans for Prosperity. I kept getting these cards every other day until the primary. By comparison, the campaign materials for the other candidates were clearly run off of someone's photocopy machine.

The cards, and bigger publications, started up again before the general. This is in a small rural district. This entire process was repeated across the state and was accompanied by constant television advertising. Led to Brownback getting enough support so he could get his infamous, and disastrous, tax cuts through the previously hostile legislature. Tax cuts strongly supported by the Kochs.

2014 and 2016 saw a repeat of this advertising blitz.

When the Democrats get angry at the Kochs, it's for good reasons. When I saw AFP interfering in something as small as my tiny district, I thought it was quite creepy. Soros's funding hasn't been even remotely as large nor as pervasive.

I understand the issues around campaign finance reform but what you are describing is one of the most transparent and open activism that is imaginable. They most likely target smaller elections where it is possible to swing results just by running a decent campaign with a setup that is easily scalable and reproducable across many districts.

Surely there's some underlying facts involved in this? I mean, if Koch is actually funding it and Soros isn't you can't just switch them.

No, but journalists set their priorities by what they are spending their time on. If you have some politically activist billionaires who invest in advocacy groups, you will always find some topic that angers your audience. The right just pushes the narrative that Sorros wants to regulate the Internet and funding all the Net Neutrality campaigns.

> No, but journalists set their priorities by what they are spending their time on. If you have some politically activist billionaires who invest in advocacy groups, you will always find some topic that angers your audience. The right just pushes the narrative that Sorros wants to regulate the Internet and funding all the Net Neutrality campaigns.

What does he gain from it? Motive is the determinant between activism and greed.