The Koch brothers: a statewide and nationwide embarrassment for Kansas and the country

When the game is rigged in your favor, you win. So despite the worst economic downturn since the Depression, the big corporations are sitting on mountains of cash, the stock markets are up and all is well among the plutocrats. The endlessly egregious Koch brothers, David and Charles, are worth an estimated $35 billion. Yet they seem to feel as though society has treated them unfairly.

As Jane Mayer pointed out in her celebrated New Yorker article, “The Kochs are longtime libertarians who believe in drastically lower personal and corporate taxes, minimal social services for the needy, and much less oversight of industry — especially environmental regulation.” (A good hard look at their air-pollution record would make you sick.)

It’s a perversion of democracy, indeed, when individuals like the Kochs have so much clout while the many millions of ordinary Americans have so little. What the Kochs want is coming to pass. Extend the tax cuts for the rich? No problem. Cut services to the poor, the sick, the young and the disabled? Check. Can we get you anything else, gentlemen?   --Bob Herbert, Columnist, The New York Times

That is, an embarrassment unless you're one of the wealthy who benefit by their influence.

Apparently, when you're wealthy in America now, there really is no shame.

Or accountability.

Noblesse Oblige'.  How quaint.

Try to enjoy your Sunday, y'all.

Link to original post:  http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/12/opinion/12herbert.html?hp