There are many people in the world who are guided by hate, cruelty & greed and those of us who are guided by love, kindness & generosity are struggling just to keep even with these people, let alone making the positive difference in the world we long to make. In fact, recently it seems it has been sliding away from good to more & more evil. This evil comes in the form of the African poacher, the Southern gun-toting Christian fundamentalist, the leader of a Muslim terrorist cell, a Mexican drug overlord, a brutal dictator such as Syria’s Hafez Assad, the Koch Brothers.. They’re all pretty much one & the same, with greed and/or hate guiding their actions, and they let nothing get in their way. The more power & wealth they have, the more damage they do. They may cause many deaths along the way. The deaths may range from a few to a few dozen (animal or human) in the case of the poacher, to hundreds in the case of the terrorist or drug kingpin, to hundreds of thousands in the case of the brutal dictator, to millions upon millions, maybe even billions, in the case of the Koch brothers. If they’re allowed to get too far with impunity, as with Hitler, we can have a true holocaust.
Someone like Koch or Murdoch or Monsanto can do so much damage to our country & the world. I read recently that 2 families, consisting of just 8 people – the Koch Brothers & the Waltons of Walmart – have as much wealth as the bottom half of the world. That is outrageous! Just think of what wonderful things could be done with all that wealth – it could make a huge difference on so many levels -- yet these 2 families use it for self-serving, destructive purposes.
There is no reason why the whole nation, indeed the whole world, shouldn’t be revolting against the powers that are ruining the future for the rest of us. We need to focus everybody's attention on them, how they are manipulating our government, the media & the public to sacrifice the world's future for their own unbounded greed. They have been attacking and destroying our democracy, the public good, and the world environment. The only way to stop them is to attack & destroy them. And we should go full force and take them down one by one, or better, if possible, 10 by 10, starting with some of the most egregious transgressors like Koch Industries, Monsanto, the Murdoch empire, Walmart, Goldman Sachs, Exxon, Bayer.... unless & until these entities reverse course in a major way.
I think progressive groups of all persuasions should join to blacklist the worst offenders and make an unrelenting effort to put them out of business. We should boycott any & every product they make as well as anybody who colludes with them to create their nasty policies. We should protest against any media program that lets them advertise, pressure any institution that invests in their companies to divest of them. We should try to ban coal & promote the assessment of special taxes on carbon, gasoline, chemicals & meat as well as a progressive tax system that will exempt the 1st $30-40K, while taxing any income above $1 million at 90%.
We could start with, say, four companies. I have been debating who has been more destructive to the world, the Koch Brothers or Rupert Murdoch. Murdoch controls a huge share of the media in Australia, the UK, the US & Canada, and his distortion of the facts & manipulation of information to fit his agenda has grievously harmed all 4 nations and therefore the world. He can be held responsible for tilting the public in each of these nations far to the right and allowing Bush Jr. to power, creating the most failed presidency in US history, and virtual clones of Bush to arise to power in Canada & Australia, in each case critically hampering any movement towards taking necessary action on climate change, among other major failures.
On the other hand, the Koch Brothers alone are responsible for so much destruction of land, waterways, forests, wildlife, & our atmosphere, that directly or indirectly has killed millions upon millions of lives already & even more in the future simply by the physical devastation Koch Industries have wrought, the deleterious effects on the environment & human health the extraction, transportation & use of their materials have caused, and the insidious ways their money has gone legislating favorable taxes for themselves and harmful policies for the country & electing onerous politicians. They have probably done more to undermine our democracy, which is in a critical state right now, than any other entity in the history of our nation, including the Soviet Union. So why aren’t we all uniting in an effort to contain this beast and put them away so they can no longer cause harm to our nation and the planet?
Rounding out my Top 4 are Monsanto, with its poisons & GMO foods it’s shoving down our throats, its big ag monocultures & its intimidation of small farmers, and Walmart, which has driven out of business small stores everywhere they’ve gone, and through their policies of extremely low wages, have impoverished a good portion of America’s working families, and exemplify the growing gap between rich & poor.
So Koch, Murdoch, Monsanto & Walmart are for me the evil 4 we should unite to bring down.
Let’s start with Koch, beginning with 2 definitions of words that could be useful in our jingo:
Kochroaches: billionaires who put millions of their money into advertisements, campaigns, organizations & institutions with the purpose of promoting extremist right-wing corporatist viewpoints in order to lower taxes & provide tax loopholes for themselves, eliminate regulations on their industries, distort & make up convenient facts, allow unfettered pollution of our environment & appropriation of public & private land, infiltrate & corrupt our government & media & subvert our democracy.
Kochsuckers: brainwashed or gullible believers of the Kochroaches’ propaganda, who will mindlessly follow the billionaires’ dictates, often taking in their money either in order to get elected to government or to have their shared agenda passed, as in the case of many politicians, including nearly all Republicans; or loudly protesting against government and other imagined bogeymen, often to their own detriment for policies that actually hurt them, such as Tea Party followers.
Imagine how much good someone could do for our nation and for the world with the amount of money the Kochs have! They could contribute greatly toward alleviating poverty, invest in scientific, medical or technological research, improving our space capabilities, expanding mass transit, or helping to wipe out diseases. They could boost our level of education, renovate Detroit and other cities, finance the rebuilding of our infrastructure, advance our green energy technology. But instead they use it all for self-interest, not giving a second thought about what or whom they might hurt or destroy in the process.
They have infiltrated our government, media & society from within & without, sowing discord in our nation, attacking the principles of democracy & destroying the world, and we need to recognize them as the enemy that they are to our people and the world. They have no conscience. It’s all about greed, all about getting more money for themselves, no matter how, and no matter the cost to the rest of us. They’ve attacked our environment, our health care system, our social security, our education, our democracy. They have relentlessly lied, distorted the facts, demonized those who try to improve the world, and given us a bleak future, and it’s time we fight back. Make them the pariahs they deserve to be, and let everybody know who is aligned with their selfish interests, who accepts their money, who is their puppet.
The total damage done by the Kochs to our democracy & national health, to the health of our land, water, air, plants & animals is incalculable but may well be greater than any single entity in human history. The money they are putting into preventing the now urgent and massive global effort necessary to confront the imminent climate and environmental catastrophes to which they’ve contributed mightily is unprecedented.
We need to be vigilant over their activities, and whenever & wherever it is merited, bring them to court for any violations of the law. For any spills, for any violation of a city code or land rights of indigenous people, pollution of waterways, property damage, disease, etc. they should be charged at least triple the total costs associated with them, leaving it open-ended so that damage, disease & death later discovered to be related to the incident could be added to the total fines. Add to that slander from their political ads, unlawful funneling of money, etc I am sure there are countless deaths that can be associated with their activities, and I think they should be subject to negligent homicide if not mass murder, genocide or treason. The International Court at The Hague should put them on trial.
Democrats should make the Koch Brothers one of their main campaign talking points. It is good to see Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid mention them a few times recently.
We need to boycott every one of their products, and those of everyone who is allied or affiliated with them.
Is it any surprise that political measures that would hurt them would help the environment and vast majority of the people in many ways? Taxes on use or emissions of fuels & gases, such as carbon tax (or fee + dividend), gasoline tax, meat tax, greenhouse tax. Eliminating tax loopholes, tax havens & subsidies to Big Oil & Big Ag. And make a much more progressive tax system than we have now – more in line with our boom years of the ‘50s. I’ve devised such a tax system, which is outlined below as a footnote. It’s one that is straightforward & easy to calculate using simple arithmetic. The majority of wage earners would pay less tax than they do now, but the difference in the upper levels is great enough to rake in a lot more revenue for the federal government than it does now, and immediately turn our deficit into a hefty surplus. Nobody earning $40,000 or less annually would pay any income tax. Somebody earning $75,000 per year would pay $4000 in taxes, with $71,000 left over to keep. However, since taxes rise fairly steeply in the upper brackets, especially above $1 million on, one’s leftover income wouldn’t reach a million dollars until total income is over $7 million. I don’t know how much the Kochs earn per year. I suspect it varies considerably. But let’s say it’s $100 million (which seems to be a conservative estimate). How much would they pay in taxes, according to my system, and how much would they have left over? They’d pay $89,714,000 and retain $10,286,000, which is still far more than most of us would earn in a lifetime. But consider how much good use that tax contribution could do: far better than misinform the public & buy elections. And if their annual income were more in the range of a billion dollars, then multiply those figures by around 10.
We need separation of corporation & state, same as separation of church & state, with no corporation money going to elections or any government official. Ban coal & shale & tar sands oil and many other poisons. Fund and man our government agencies so they can do their job: the FDA, IRS, EPA, Immigration, etc. have been purposefully underfunded & understaffed so that they can't do their job adequately, and the wrongdoings of corporations don't get caught. We also need universal health care such as it is in some European nations, greater investment in public education, more scientific research and scientific applications to the political problems we face, expand mass transit, switch away from fossil fuels to clean renewables, and virtually end industrial capitalism, all of which are evidently opposed by the Kochs, but all of which are needed to survive as a viable nation.
Progressive Income Tax Rate Leaving 1st $40K of annual income tax exempt, and 90% for Income after the 1st $1 Million. There is a 10% tax from $40-70K, 20% from $70-100K, 30% from $100-150K, 40% from $150-200K, 50% from $200-300, 60% for $300-400K, 70% for $400-600K & 80% for $600K to $1 million. 90% on all additional income above $1M.