With a midterm campaign in which $4 billion was spent to help flip the Senate from Democrats to Republicans, the Brookings Institution has come out with a new ranking of America’s most politically influential billionaires.
A familiar pair of names is still No. 1: Charles and David Koch. They spent at least $290 million on the 2014 cycle, Brookings said.
They were followed by two more progressive donors, former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and climate change-focused financial executive Tom Steyer at Nos. 2 and 3, respectively.
The Koch brothers had some notable allies make their debut high on the list: Ameritrade founder Joe Rickets premiered at No. 6, after his Ending Spending PAC was a significant player in the Senate races. Businessman Robert Mercer followed at No. 7, a new entry on the list, for his donations to the Koch-backed Freedom Action Partners Fund.
Check out the very cool interactive from Brookings here.
America: it was nice while it lasted.
Game over. Ayn Rand has won.
As a Democrat, I would like to wave to the Democratic President’s Commerce Secretary down there at #20. Hi, Penny!
We will soon see what they got for their money,maybe slipping invisible ink into the Presidents veto pen which I am quite sure will be getting a workout in the coming months.The GOP has (24) months to ply their trade.IMHO it’s hard to start doing things if you have been sitting on your hands and saying NO to everything for the last (6) years then get in gear out of the gate,We will see.
Not when you have the MSM to cover for you. What will now happen is that the GOP/Teatrolls will suddenly become superficially reasonable…backing proposals and policies they blocked and refused to allow votes on and obstructed with filibusters, etc., and nobody will call them on it. The MSM will pretend like these things have been GOP/Teatroll policies all along and were their ideas and oh look how wonderful they are for compromising with the Dems and isn’t it nice to see them all working together once more so gee it must be that the GOP/Teatrolls are the ones who can govern, not the Dems and shouldn’t they just be given Conrgess and the WH in 2016 so this sudden wave of reasonableness that came about when they won control over the Senate can continue?
For many of the policies they blocked, it was all about who could take the credit. They can now take the credit, so they will cease obstructing those policies. The MSM will then give them the credit and weave a ridiculous misinformation narrative to try to convince everyone to do so as well. Why? Because when you have people like the Kochs spending $290M per election on advertising and advertising is you number one source of revenue, you fucking obey. IOKIYAR
Keep in mind: part of how the MSM sold the GOP/Teatrolls to everyone this election was to pervasively opine that giving the toddler its toy back would stop the tantrum. They will now do everything they can with their narratives going forward to make it look like they were right.