Don\’t you love it when an arrogant, holier-than-thou news/information venue shows itself to be completely ridiculous?
Here are the first two paragraphs from today\’s lead idiotorial in the New York Times:
Democratshave for too long been passive in the face of the vast amounts ofcorporate money, most of it secret, that are being spent to evictthem from office and dismantle their policies. By far the largestvoice in many of this year\’s political races, for example, has beenthat of the Koch brothers, who have spent tens of millions of dollarspeddlingphony stories about the impact of health care reform, all inorder to put Republicans in control of the Senate after the Novemberelections.
NowDemocrats are startingto fight back, deciding they should at least try to counter thetycoons with some low-cost speech of their own. Democrats may neverhave the same resources at their disposal – no party should – butthey can use their political pulpits to stand up for a few basicprinciples, including the importance of widespread health-insurancecoverage, environmental protection and safety-net programs.
The idiotorial goes on to insult Charles and David Koch eight ways from Sunday, including this quote from the increasingly bizarre Majority Leader Harry Reid: “That Republican majority is, in fact, working to gut the most important safeguards to keep cancer-causing toxins and pollution that cause sickness and death out of the air we breathe and the water we drink”.
Yep, Harry, the Republicans\’ brilliant idea – facilitated by all those Koch brothers\’ millions – is to kill off the population. What an amazing concept! They get all the Republicans to stop breathing air and drinking anything with water in it, while Democrats continue to do so…and soon there will be no one left but Repu…oh, wait.
Now that you understand the thrust of this idiotorial, let me acquaint you, and the New York Times editorial board, with solid evidence that Democrat billionaires are every bit as willing to spend as much as the Koch Brothers – and maybe quite a bit more – to push their agenda.
Read the first two paragraphs of an article which appeared in a major newspaper less than one month ago, and read all about it:
Abillionaire retired investor is forging plans to spend as much as$100 million during the 2014 election, seeking to pressure federaland state officials to enact climate change measures through ahard-edge campaign of attack ads against governors and lawmakers.
The donor, Tom Steyer, a Democrat who founded one of the world\’s most successful hedge funds, burst onto the national political scene during last year\’s elections, when he spent $11 million to help elect Terry McAuliffe governor of Virginia and millions more intervening in a Democratic congressional primary in Massachusetts. Now he is rallying other deep-pocketed donors, seeking to build a war chest that would make his political organization, NextGen Climate Action, among the largest outside groups in the country, similar in scale to the conservative political network overseen by Charles and David Koch.
Holy moly (and I don\’t mean moly): a Democrat billionaire, “similar in scale to the conservative political network overseen by Charles and David Koch”, who, just last year, bought the Virginia gubernatorial election for Terry McAuliffe (unless you think $11 million smackers isn\’t worth a few percentage points on election day), and is “forging plans to spend as much as $100 million during the 2014 election” to push the Democrats\’ climate-change agenda?
How can that not be in the Times\’ editorial? How can the Times\’ editorial board write about billionaires\’ undue influence on elections by featuring billionaires who contribute to the Republican party and ignoring the billionaires who contribute to Democrats?
What\’s that you say? Maybe that stuff about Tom Steyer isn\’t there because the source may not be up to the Times\’ high standards?
Ok, fair enough. That\’s certainly possible. You can\’t have some lower-end rag being put in the same class with the lofty New York Times.
Except….
This article is from the New York Times. And it was published on February 17th: less than one month ago. Click here and see for yourself.
In other words, the Times idiotorial has selectively fingered the Koch brothers as major contributors to right wing causes, and contrasted their activities with the poor, underfunded Democrats, who need to rely on “low cost speech” – when the Times\’ own news department has written about a Democrat billionaire who, singlehandedly, is equal to the Koch Brothers.
And that is before we get to the numerous other Democrat billionaire moneymen — like george soros, Herbert and Marion Sandler, Jeff Bezos, Irwin Jacobs, Haim Saban, Peter Lewis, Jon Stryker, etc. etc. etc. etc. etc.
Are there also Republican billionaires other than the Koch brothers willing to kick in tons of money? You bet there are. But to pretend that this only occurs on one side of the aisle, as the Times\’ editorial does, is effectively to lie to our faces.
On the other hand, it is great material for an idiotorial.
So, congratulations to the New York Times for providing just that.
