Meet the Billionaires Using Their Immense Dough to Make Life Miserable for Ordinary Americans

[xchrom]

http://www.alternet.org/economy/meet-billionaires-using-their-immense-dough-make-life-miserable-ordinary-americans



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1) Pete Peterson’s deficit/debt scare campaign and his ongoing effort to gut Social Security and other entitlements. Leading every list of billionaires pushing an issue is billionaire Pete Peterson and his forever war on government doing things to make our lives better, especially Social Security. Peterson leads the list because of reports of his pledge to spend $1 billion on his pet issue.

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2) Billionaire John D. Arnold’s attack on public-employee pensions. Have you heard that the biggest problem facing our states, counties and cities is the bloated, lavish, insane level of money that goes to public-employee pensions? Of course you have, and that's partly thanks to billionaire John Arnold. Arnold got his start at Enron trading natural gas derivatives. After Enron he used his Enron money to form an energy-trading hedge fund. Now he is using his fortune to fund various philanthropic causes, including helping to keep Head Start running when Republicans recently shut down the government. Unfortunately he has also dedicated part of his fortune to gutting public-employee pensions.

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3) Charles Munger Jr. (near-billionaire and son of a billionaire) bankrolled California’s Proposition 20 in 2010 to create a “citizens redistricting committee” that took the process of drawing political districts out of the hands of California’s politicians. Munger and many Republicans believed this would immediately turn the state over to the Republicans because the districts were “ gerrymandered”—rigged—to have a majority of “safe” Democratic-voting districts.

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4) Billionaire Tom Perkins laid out his own solution to the democracy problem the other day in an interview at the Commonwealth Club INFORUM in San Francisco, saying, “The Tom Perkins system is: You don’t get to vote unless you pay a dollar of taxes,” Perkins said. “But what I really think is, it should be like a corporation. You pay a million dollars in taxes, you get a million votes. How’s that?”

[Turbineguy]

1. They seem to get plenty of voluntary help

from people who are not rich.

[B Calm]

4. yeah, but someday they hope to be rich too. . .

[hobbit709]

2. A great shortening using the good doctor's invention would cure them of their problem.

[Fumesucker]

5. Procrustes would be pleased n/t

[Le Taz Hot]

3. I don't know about the others

but #3 actually worked quite well. His intention may have been to get more Republicans elected but it actually has worked to achieve a much more fair and logical system. If you look at California's districts before 2010 and after, you'll see a vast difference and districts that actually make sense.

[Nanjing to Seoul]

6. Billionaire Tom Perkins needs to be ball gagged.

[MrScorpio]

7. I'm partial to giving him a good old-fashioned Iranian horse whipping myself. nt

He can use the ball gag as a bit.

[GoCubsGo]

9. I prefer the Mussolini treatment--for the whole lot of them.

It's the only way to deal with a fascist.

[Gary 50]

8. Where are the Koch brothers?

[socialist_n_TN]

10. Too bad we can't have a pack of playing cards........

(like they had in Iraq) showing 52 of these bastards and what they look like. I know this only talks about 9, but I'm sure there are 43 more of them out there.

[jsr]

11. Someone should make a digital poster and make it viral.

[Hotler]

12. These people need to be thankful that .....

the American people are not putting it to them like the people protesting in the Ukraine are doing against the PTB over there.

P.S. Morning Xchrom.