In the realm of American politics there are two go-to people to blame all of the country’s woes on. If you’re on the “left” you blame all of the country’s problems on the Koch brothers and if you’re on the “right” you blame all of the country’s problems on George Soros. Let’s consider the “left’s” go-to blame machine, the Koch brothers. Anybody who espouses neoconservative, conservative, or libertarian ideas will eventually be accused of being a paid Kochtopus shill. Apparently the Koch brothers are funding everything that isn’t neoliberalism (by the way guys, you must not have my new address since I’ve not seen a check since I moved several years ago). As it turns out, in the realm of political funding, the Koch brothers aren’t at the top of the list:
OpenSecrets.org tallied the top donors in federal elections between 1989 and 2014. Koch Industries — privately owned by the Evil Koch Bros — is on the list, to be sure, but doesn’t appear until the 59th slot, with $18 million in donations, 90 percent of which went to Republicans.
Unions, unions, unions
So who occupies the 58 spots ahead of the Evil Koch Bros? Six of the top 10 are … wait for it … unions. They gave more than $278 million, with most of it going to Democrats.
These are familiar names: AFSCME ($60.6 million), NEA ($53.5 million), IBEW ($44.4 million), UAW ($41.6 million), Carpenters & Joiners ($39.2 million) and SEIU ($38.3 million).
Obviously the author is trying to point out that the Koch brothers aren’t really evil and that unions are the secret political string pullers. What I got out of the article is that the Republican Party has a funding problem. This doesn’t surprise me considering the fact that the Republican Party is becoming more political irrelevant as the years go on. Who is going to invest major money into a party that can’t deliver?
This country is slowly turning into a true one party system (at the moment it’s two party in name only since there is no difference between the Republican and Democratic parties). The reason for this is almost entirely because of the stupidity of the faltering party. And stupidity is a self-feeding monster. As the Republic Party continues to be more stupid it’s going to attract more stupid people that will ensure it keeps acting stupidly and so on. Needless to say the stupidity cycle will also ensure big money donors go elsewhere to get their psychopathic desires fulfilled.