Meet the 25 Billionaires Who Control Everything (per Brookings Institution)

[Octafish]

Last edited Mon Sep 15, 2014, 11:17 AM - Edit history (1)

The Brookings Institution just released a list of the 25 US billionaires with the most political power

by Andrei Burke
Ultraculture.com

The Brookings Institution think-tank has just released a list of the 25 US billionaires with the most political power. You can access an interactive graphic here.

The list is a part of Brookings Institution Governance Studies Director Darrell West’s forthcoming book Billionaires: Reflections on the Upper Crust. The book argues that the wealthy are more politically engaged than the general public. Research has found that 99 percent of the top 1% of wealth holders vote in presidential elections, nearly double the rate of the general public. This is likely due to the fact that the super wealthy know that political engagement matters, and being involved in politics yields results. While the general public is busy turning a cynical eye to elections, seeing little difference between Democrats and Republicans, the ultra rich are buying up our government and influencing domestic and foreign affairs.

West notes that much of the debate of how wealth influences politics suffers from an ideological fallacy. Progressives raise alarm when conservative billionaires are politically active, yet are quick to praise the efforts of the left-leaning rich. Alternately, conservatives fear when liberal billionaires put money into elections but celebrate the advocacy efforts of their own billionaires and special interest groups. West argues that each side misses the challenges raised by billionaire activism for the entire system. The extensive resources and advocacy efforts of the super wealthy provoke concerns about “political influence, transparency and accountability.” During this time of “high income concentration and dysfunctional political institutions” it is important that the general public understand just how much money impacts politics.

CONTINUED...

http://ultraculture.org/blog/2014/09/12/meet-25-billionaires-control-everything/

# Names
1 Charles & David Koch
2 Michael Bloomberg
3 Tom Steyer
4 Sheldon Adelson
5 George Soros
6 Rupert Murdoch
7 Bill and Melinda Gates
8 John and Laura Arnold
9 Penny Pritzker
10 Warren Buffett
11 Peter Thiel
12 Mark Zuckerberg
13 Jeff and MacKenzie Bezos
14 Pierre and Pamela Omidyar
15 Paul Singer
16 Peter G. Peterson
17 Marc Andreessen
18 Donald Trump
19 Alice Walton

More on the coming book: http://www.brookings.edu/research/reports2/2014/09/billionaires

[Trillo]

1. It's great to be very rich in the U.S. NT

[Octafish]

20. Everybody's your friend when you're rich.

Ask Larry Summers, who asks, "What would Goldman think?"

[valerief]

2. USA is number one! For billionaires and mega-millionaires. nt

[Octafish]

21. Some believe it's our duty to make the world safe for them.

DOW Up 153-percent since 2009. Wages up 2-percent.



The lagging line is your sad hourly earnings. They have barely budged since the market bottomed in 2009, while the Dow has skyrocketed 153 percent. Between November 2012 and November 2013, the latest data available, hourly wages for nonsupervisory workers rose just 2.1 percent, just barely ahead of inflation.

SOURCE: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/12/31/stock-market-best-year-1997_n_4524267.html

[bigdarryl]

3. And almost all of them are republicans

[rurallib]

5. or libertarian - which to me is the crazy wing of the crazy party

[hfojvt]

12. ironically enough, there used to be a moderate wing to that party

they were called

Rockefeller Republicans.


Rockefeller.



Like I said - ironically.

[rurallib]

13. I often wonder if many of those became blue-dog dems or

are they just quiet or did they drop out? I really wonder what happened to them. They seemed to have vanished.

[Laughing Mirror]

37. Hillary was a Rockefeller Republican

if I remember correctly.

[rurallib]

41. she worked for Goldwater IIRC

[closeupready]

4. Ha! Alice Walton big-time supporter of Hillary Clinton.

Not surprised at that, at all, since Hillary served on Walmart's board of directors for 7 years.

[ChisolmTrailDem]

7. That begs the question I haven't considered before:

Just who are the people that Hillary considers her close friends? I'm not talking about the niceties of "And now I'd like to introduce to you, my friend, David Axelrod." I'm talking about true friends. Is Alice Walton a true friend of Hillary's? I don't know, but a lot can be learned from knowing this information.

[Demeter]

18. If you want a friend in Washington, buy a dog

--Harry S. Truman

Despite being quoted as a remark of Truman by both George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton, this apparently originates from a line in the portrayal of Truman in the play Give ‘Em Hell, Harry (1975) by Samuel Gallu : "You want a friend in life, get a dog!" This was later paraphrased by Maureen Dowd (10 March 1989): "If you want a friend in Washington, buy a dog." But prior to Gallu's play there is no actual indication Truman ever said this, according to investigations by David Rothman In "Google Book Search, Harry S. Truman and the get-a-dog quote: Presidential library unable to confirm it" (28 June 2008)

[JEB]

6. Those people don't frequent the same places I do.

Too bad we can't talk about two Americas anymore.

[chervilant]

8. Almost all are old, white men.

Alice Walton did almost NOTHING to become a billionaire--she is living off the largesse of her entrepreneur father, Sam Walton, who's probably spinning in his grave over what his children have become.

[geardaddy]

9. Neither did the Koch Bros or Donald Trump

They inherited their millions.

[HughBeaumont]

35. Except here's a news flash: Sam Walton sucked also.

When minimum wage was 1.15 an hour, he paid his employees HALF that. He also hated unions with a passion and his "Made in America" campaign was mostly bullshit.

http://reclaimdemocracy.org/brief-history-of-walmart/

[chervilant]

36. Not initially...

I grew up in the town where Walton had his second store. You would often find him sacking items and helping customers out to their vehicles. He drove an old red pickup, and usually had his hunting dog in the back, if it wasn't too hot. He was quite personable and quick to help.

Early on, he had mostly 'made in America' items, but lots of it was cheaply made and not too popular. People were ridiculed for shopping at Wal-Mart because of the shoddy merchandise.

Arkansas is largely anti-union, and Walton certainly had the same attitude towards unions. However, he made sure that his workers got stock options, and several of his long-term employees are wealthy today because of this. Walton wanted his employees to have 'stock' in the company to insure their loyalty. That began to change--in the 80s I think. Now, people work there because they HAVE to, since there are not a lot of jobs in our little town.

I do not like Wallyworld AT ALL, but I shop there. I try to go less than once every six-eight weeks. I can save $3-5 on dog food, and I save lots on household cleaners, detergents, and food. I make them price match for everything that I can find lower somewhere else. Since my pay scale is in the toilet, it's difficult to shop somewhere where I'll spend $10 more than I'd spend at Wally's for the same items. Our little town doesn't have many stores that can compete with Wallyworld, but I am trying to find ways to get what I need ANYWHERE but Walmart.

[hunter]

10. Billionaires ought to be taxed out of existence.

Their money stagnates and stinks of corruption.

The pond we all live in needs some heavy aeration. The scum at the top is blocking out all the light.

[Demeter]

17. +several brazillion

[BrotherIvan]

30. ^^This!^^

[hifiguy]

34. A perfect analogy.

Time to scrape the scum off the pool that is this nation.

[hfojvt]

11. "control everything"

I never understand absurd concepts like that. What is that supposed to mean?

The things that really impact MY life are presumably not in their control. My relations, for example, with my co-workers, with my former boss and my new boss (who is working the job I USED to have) and so on an so forth.

And people like Pete Peterson, Adelson and my uncles Koch are perhaps working to end, or privatize social security, but even though they "control everything" they still have not managed to do so yet.

So clearly "control everything" is an absurd piece of hyperbole.

Do they have lots of power? Well, why wouldn't they? But so do lots of other people. Since there are 492 billionaires in the US, why should those 25 have more power than the combination of the other 467 who have more combined wealth?

And not to mention the combined wealth of others. $2 trillion for the billionaires? According to the census of wealth there are 8 million households with between $500,000 and $836,033 in net worth and another 8 million with over $836,033. The first group has at least $4 trillion in net worth and the second group $6.7 trillion. The second group includes the billionaires so subtract $2 trillion from that total, and those 16 million non-billionaires, who are doing relatively well, have collective net worth of $8.7 trillion.

At least.

Heck, even the 15 million households with net worth between $250,000 and $500,000 (with half having over $341,848) have over $4.4 trillion in net worth. So there's $13.1 trillion in wealth against the less than $1 trillion of those 25.

Not to mention potentially 50,000,000+ votes (from 31,000,000 households) against their 40.

[OnyxCollie]

14. Lenin declared that “A few hundred multi-millionaires and millionaires

control the destiny of the world.”

Now make that billionaires instead of multimillionaires.

The powerful make the rules, leaving the weak to accept the reality presented and deal with it. Max Weber (1922 {1978}, as quoted in Wright, 2002) described this as such:

{Action that is motivated by self-interest can still be} substantively heteronomously determined... {in} a market economy, though in a formally voluntary way. This is true whenever the unequal distribution of wealth, and particularly of capital goods, forces the non-owning group to comply with the authority of others in order to obtain any return at all for the utilities they can offer on the market... (p. 110 {p. 839}).

[hfojvt]

15. that must have been

before he met Stalin.

And there isn't any sort of system where freedom is going to be absolute.

The independent farmer of 1922 with his own land and tools was often out there slaving away in the hot sun and hoping for some rain.

[OnyxCollie]

23. You mentioned Pete Peterson,

founder of the Blackstone Group.

He's poised to become the nation's biggest slum lord.

How Wall Street Has Turned Housing Into a Dangerous Get-Rich-Quick Scheme -- Again
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/laura-gottesdiener/foreclosed-homes-rental-properties_b_4343234.html

Wall Street’s foreclosure crisis, which began in late 2007 and forced more than 10 million people from their homes, has created a paradoxical problem. Millions of evicted Americans need a safe place to live, even as millions of vacant, bank-owned houses are blighting neighborhoods and spurring a rise in crime. Lucky for us, Wall Street has devised a solution: It’s going to rent these foreclosed houses back to us. In the process, it’s devised a new form of securitization that could cause this whole plan to blow up -- again.

Since the buying frenzy began, no company has picked up more houses than the Blackstone Group, the largest private equity firm in the world. Using a subsidiary company, Invitation Homes, Blackstone has grabbed houses at foreclosure auctions, through local brokers, and in bulk purchases directly from banks the same way a regular person might stock up on toilet paper from Costco.

In one move, it bought 1,400 houses in Atlanta in a single day. As of November, Blackstone had spent $7.5 billion to buy 40,000 mostly foreclosed houses across the country. That’s a spending rate of $100 million a week since October 2012. It recently announced plans to take the business international, beginning in foreclosure-ravaged Spain.

Few outside the finance industry have heard of Blackstone. Yet today, it’s the largest owner of single-family rental homes in the nation -- and of a whole lot of other things, too. It owns part or all of the Hilton Hotel chain, Southern Cross Healthcare, Houghton Mifflin publishing house, the Weather Channel, Sea World, the arts and crafts chain Michael’s, Orangina, and dozens of other companies.

[stevenleser]

19. I'm halfway between you and the OP. It definitely is not 'control' but there is heavy influence

going on.

I also dont know that most of these folks are Republicans. Soros is definitely not a Republican, nor is Warren Buffet. I don't think the Gates' are Republicans. Bloomberg is a Democrat who ran on the Republican ticket because that was an easier road to the nomination. Omidyar's political leanings are not clear but seem at least somewhat libertarian. https://www.nsfwcorp.com/dispatch/extraordinary-pierre-omidyar/

[Demeter]

16. That's a reasonable number of targets

for the next revolution.

[moondust]

28. vs. the police forces they've militarized?

I wonder why the Russian tsars didn't do more to "insure" themselves against the hungry masses?

[Demeter]

38. Oh, they did. It's just that they were outnumbered

and outclassed.

Watch those militarized police forces do a 180 when it's their wives, children, mothers they are facing.

[flying-skeleton]

22. Donald Trump is a Billionaire? Says who ??

[JPZenger]

24. A number of those persons support some progressive causes

Not all billionaires are Kochs and Waltons. Some do feel an obligation to give something back.

For example, Ms. Prizker is Obama's Secretary of Commerce.

[OnyxCollie]

25. You need a better example.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/101665148

Penny Pritzker..The Subprime Queen...Obama's Pick for Dept. of Commerce
http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/05/03/the-privilege-of-the-pritzkers/

An Interview with Tim Anderson on Obama's Commerce Nominee, Penny Pritzker, the Sub-Prime Queen
The Privilege of the Pritzkers
by DENNIS BERNSTEIN

President Barrack Obama has nominated his long time friend and top fundraiser, Chicago-based Multibillionaire, Penny Pritzker, to be the next Secretary of Commerce. According to the Chicago Tribune, “Pritzker’s nomination could prove controversial. She is on the board of Hyatt Hotels Corp., which was founded by her family and has had rocky relations with labor unions, and… She could also face scrutiny over the collapse of Superior Bank, which was co-owned by her family. The bank, based in Hinsdale, Ill., was involved in subprime mortgage lending, and its failure in 2001 stirred charges of fraud and mismanagement.”

Penny Pritzker, says Chicago-Based independent banking investigator Tim Andersen, played fast and loose with the American Dream. Anderson, who has been investigating for many years Pritzker’s pioneering sub-prime operations, says Superior Bank in Chicago, specifically targeted poor and working class people of color across the country. He asserts that her extreme wealth and privilege has not only made her virtually untouchable by law enforcement, but now her appointment to Sec of Commerce, will allow her to cleanse her sub-prime banking record by becoming the Secretary of Commerce.

D.B Let’s start with some deep background on Penny Pritzker and the family holdings…

TA: There are 11 senior Pritzkers, the descendants of A. M Pritzker, who is the 11th wealthiest person after Forbes. But they are different as far as their wealth goes. Before they broke up the family dynasty because of a suit between two of the junior siblings, they had about 15 billion dollars. Bloomberg thought it was more like 38 billion because so many of the assets are major companies that are privately owned, it’s hard to evaluate that.

DB: $38 billion, with a B.

TA: $38 billion. One publication listed eight casinos, another listed 13, with each license worth a half a million dollars. There is another $5-7 billion in casinos. When you own 13 casinos for 5-7 billion, you are a player in the casino business. That’s just the hotels and casinos. There are many other companies they own such as the second largest chewing tobacco company, which they sold for 3.5 billion dollars. They actually owned the second and third largest chewing tobacco company, but have since off-loaded those for billions of dollars. Many of their assets are not what society considers clean assets, but hey don’t care. As far as money goes, they want it. When it comes to casinos or chewing tobacco companies, they don’t care. Their wealth is almost incalculable, because according to Forbes magazine, they are the only family in America to have off shore tax-free trusts because they were grandfathered in. Their off shore trust can ship money back to their family tax-free. It was grandfathered in because their grandfather got it through Congress – he was smart to see the future and got it done. Congress closed the loophole and grandfathered him in. Forbesmagazine wrote about the Pritzker’s off shore trust, they emphasized that there are over 1000 separate trusts. Many families have two or three different savings accounts to keep track of what money belongs to who, but when you have over 1000 different trusts to handle the family estate it’s very hard to comprehend how much wealth there is and how many businesses they control. A few years ago, Penny sold TransUnion, the largest credit reporting agency in America, but there’s a question about whether she sold it to herself by selling it to various hedge funds which her family has a large interest in. Until she sold it, you could say that Penny Pritzker had more files on every citizen in America than the CIA and FBI combined, because everybody has a credit score and credit report. Penny Pritzker had the credit scores and report on every single citizen in America.

DB: That’s amazing because before she had TransUnion, she had Superior Bank, through which she destroyed the credit of tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands. You might say she helped destroy the credit of the United States of America.

[MisterP]

33. serving as a neolib in a neolib's neolib Cabinet is not "progressive" nor "giving something back"

just because there's a D after their name doesn't mean they poop rainbows

[Demeter]

39. Penny gave herself back all the cash she put into Obama's campaign

quid pro quo

[Cleita]

26. K&R

[ErikJ]

27. Kochs probably spend more than all others COMBINED.

[gordianot]

29. What amazes me the Koch money is an outright personal buy for influence in the Political Elite.

Political ads work but I will never be convinced it is solely to influence the votes of fickle, independent and low information voters.

[ErikJ]

31. Most of Koch spending is on negative attack ads.

On the Dem candidates or issues. I think their main goal is to keep as many people from voting as possible or at least for that candidate.
----------------------------------------------
The billionaire Koch brothers and their political network are planning to spend almost $300 million during the 2014 election cycle, some of which will go toward a renewed effort to combat unprecedented carbon regulations unveiled by the Obama administration last month.

According to The Daily Beast, industrialists Charles and David Koch will advance a new energy initiative this weekend at a California resort featuring Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and libertarian political scientist Charles Murray. While its scope isn't clear yet, the group will be spearheaded by the Freedom Partners Chamber of Commerce, a 200-member organization that has funneled millions of dollars to various nonprofits in the Koch network.

The new push comes in the wake of proposed EPA regulations that would cut carbon dioxide emissions from power plants by 30 percent. It also follows a February announcement from billionaire liberal investor Tom Steyer, a major advocate against the Keystone XL pipeline, that he will be undertaking his own $100 million initiative to make climate change a key issue in 2014.

Americans for Prosperity, the main political arm of the Kochs, is already planning a $125 million spending spree on other political projects across the country, according to Politico.

................................................
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/06/14/koch-brothers-spending_n_5494963.html

[valerief]

32. Brookings can't convince me those other billionaires aren't also buying senators

and reps and governors and justices and screwing with our lives.

[HughBeaumont]

40. Marc Andreessen is one of the biggest pigs walking.

Got wealthy fleecing millions with his shoddy product at no cost to him and has long promoted neo-lib/libertarian economics, free trade, job offshoring and other anti-worker measures. Switched to Republican in 2012, yet economically he's always been in the Feldstein/Friedman camp. Wife used to be a fellow with the Hoover Institution.

[Initech]

42. George Carlin was right. It's a big club and we're not in it.