7 ms·

So the point of this is that a small number of super rich people exert massive influence through a series of shell organizations, media campaigns, and think tan

So the point of this is that a small number of super rich people exert massive influence through a series of shell organizations, media campaigns, and think tanks. If that is true - which it appears to be - are the Koch brothers the only ones?

guelo 9y ago
No. There are a bunch of billionaires pushing their various agendas. Billionaire pet-causes is pretty much the only way things change in this country anymore. Democracy is dead, all we have left is billionaires fighting each other.
- brandnewlow 9y ago
  Citation needed. Also, is there any reason to believe this isn't how it's always been throughout history? Those with lots of capital set things into motion that impact everyone else?
  - mikeyouse 9y ago
    Corruption at the scale we're currently seeing was pretty much illegal until the Citizen's United ruling. Dark Money groups spent $600 million on senate races in 2016. The Koch brothers alone were planning on spending nearly $1 billion to influence the election. It's no wonder that congress is racing to pass an historically unpopular tax bill that almost exclusively benefits these very same donors. Hell, Lindsey Graham gave away the game in a response a few weeks ago when asked what would happen if they didn't pass the bill: > "The party fractures, most incumbents in 2018 will get a severe primary challenge, a lot of them will probably lose, the base will fracture, the financial contributions will stop, other than that it'll be fine!"
    - xapata 9y ago
      Ever heard of United Fruit? Read more history and you'll find plenty of examples of the government taking action on behalf of one or a handful of corporations or individuals.
      - jacobolus 9y ago
        United Fruit (now called Chiquita) was able to exert influence on the Eisenhower administration because the Dulles brothers (Secretary of State and Director of the CIA) had a long work history and direct financial interest in the company, which was outraged that the Guatemalan government planned to force the company to sell its unused land back to the country at the company-assessed price (the company owned >40% of the arable land in the country, which it had claimed was nearly worthless to save on taxes). The US imposed a military coup on Guatemala which overthrew a democratically elected government and installed a right-wing military junta in its place, after which the military ruled via a succession of corrupt dictators and military puppets, and undertook a horrific genocidal decades-long civil war against armed rebels and rural peasant civilians. But I don’t think that’s quite the same situation as the Koch Brothers today. For one thing, all the consequences were borne by poor foreigners.
        xapata 9y ago
        > all the consequences were borne by poor foreigners What about all the American fruit farmers that compete with bananas? There's always side-effects. Now Americans eat more bananas than apples and oranges combined.
    - pishpash 9y ago
      Hopefully they lose anyway if it's that unpopular.
      - mikeyouse 9y ago
        Probably not -- The version that emerged from the conference committee included a provision that wasn't in either the House or Senate bill -- but coincidentally would result in a tax cut of over a million dollars per year to the Senator that was previously holding out. He then announced that he would now support the bill. http://www.ibtimes.com/political-capital/last-minute-real-estate-tax-break-gop-bill-will-benefit-trump-2629381 http://www.ibtimes.com/political-capital/last-minute-real-es...
        pishpash 9y ago
        I mean lose at the polls.
    - smsm42 9y ago
      How what is described in the article - political group promoting their opinion - is "corruption"? Yes, some rich people may have financed that particular group - as rich people finance a lot of politically active groups - but what's corrupt in that? Did they bribe anyone? Did they break any laws?
      - neolefty 9y ago
        Legal corruption is still corruption. But to fix it you have to change the system, not just enforce existing rules. And in order to change the system, you have to have a better system ready and widespread support for it. That's hard.
        smsm42 9y ago
        OK, let me rephrase. How it is "legal corruption"? What's corrupt there in people trying to convince other people in their point of view? Is the "corrupt" part that the people doing the convincing happen to be rich and thus must be evil? What exactly needs fixing here? Should Kochs be banned from political advocacy? Should TPA be prohibited? Should opposition to municipal projects be banned? What exactly here needs fixing?
  - everyone 9y ago
    Yeah. Pre-enlightnment... Are you from the US? If so your comment reads like you have Stockholm syndrome.
- clouddrover 9y ago
  > Democracy is dead According to the article the TPA's (and by extension the Koch's) campaign failed and the KentuckyWired project got the go ahead. Better funded, more powerful opposition lost a merits-based argument and did not get their way. This is an example of democracy working, wouldn't you say?
  - partycoder 9y ago
    Only temporarily. Once issues stop getting public attention they try again and usually succeed.
    - clouddrover 9y ago
      The article also cites Comcast's campaigns to oppose municipal networks. These campaigns failed too: https://muninetworks.org/content/totals-are-comcast-spends-900k-fort-collins-election https://muninetworks.org/content/totals-are-comcast-spends-9... They might try again, but then they might lose again. No need to give in to cynicism and apathy just yet.
      - partycoder 9y ago
        Remember SOPA? people protested it because it allowed to see what people did online. But what happened this year? ISPs can sell your web history. Now they got net neutrality provisions revoked. They lost a battle, but they are winning the war.
- propman 9y ago
  Democracy is not dead. But you're hundred percent right about Billionaires. Think Tanks are all 100% biased depending on who is funding what. Whether it's a company or a billionaire. Economists, professors, public figures, Historians, everyone is being paid. The one tool we can wield in this information or rather misinformation age is critical thinking. I no longer follow any pundit. I have nowhere near their knowledge in their respective fields, but I can think and ponder whether their views make sense. Robert Reich, Krugman, Brooks, Shields, Shapiro or whomever. See what slant they are coming from, try to understand if they make sense. Immediately afterwards, read about the same topic from someone on the opposite side of the spectrum. Don't get lost in the doomsday world is ending, other side is evil BS. Then hold an opinion, but don't stick to it. Allow it to be malleable and change and try arguing from the other side constantly. I feel like our own ego is partly what let's us join each tribe of thought and we further reinforce it from reading similar viewpoints because we want to be good and right. Sounds simple, but it's so easy to get caught up in it without taking a step back and just thinking about that thought process. So, that's how you keep democracy alive. Not through simple education where you reiterate facts, memorize or follow directions, but through improving critical thinking which is slowly worsening in college and high schools. In a conversation with a classmate, we reminisced how in 3rd grade we learned how to spot bias in news articles, practicing for months. I feel like that's disappeared too.
  - enraged_camel 9y ago
    A good way of validating an idea is to look at empirical evidence, or the results of the application of that idea in other places. A good example of this is the current tax debate. Republicans claim lowering taxes is a great way to "jump-start" the economy. But if you look at Kansas, a state that has been running that experiment for half a decade, you realize that it's a terrible idea. https://www.npr.org/2017/10/25/560040131/as-trump-proposes-tax-cuts-kansas-deals-with-aftermath-of-experiment https://www.npr.org/2017/10/25/560040131/as-trump-proposes-t...
    - zeveb 9y ago
      > But if you look at Kansas, a state that has been running that experiment for half a decade But then there are other states, like Florida IIRC, who have also been running that experiment and succeeding. So then the key is to see why one works and the other doesn't.
- olavk 9y ago
  Note that the recent presidential election was in large part decided by which groups didn't vote. The viewpoint that politicians are all the same, voting doesn't matter etc. is a also a political opinions which benefits certain interests.
  - Feniks 9y ago
    Considering that the US election spending reached a billion $ I'm not convinced. I'd love to one day see a US presidential candidate hand out flyers on Times Square.
    - saalweachter 9y ago
      ... why? I'd like to see less money in politics, either public funding or donations restricted to small individual donors, and I personally think a good candidate for higher office should have worked at least one shit job in their life. But the other extreme is equally absurd. The President is literally the chief executive of an organization of millions of people. While some good old fashioned down-to-earth-ness is great for knowing what to do, if a Presidential candidate can't manage a large organization efficiently, pick competent subordinates and delegate authority effectively, they ain't never gonna get anything done as President. The President is like the one race where a two year PR stint managing a few thousand people spread across all fifty states and a few territories is a good interview for the job.
- api 9y ago
  Was this ever not the case? Look into the history of e.g. how marijuana prohibition came about. I think we are just more aware of it today. History is more of a battle between the haves and the haves than between the haves and the have-nots.
smsm42 9y ago
No, but they are a common punchbag for articles like this. In this case, Kochs probably had no idea what TPA is doing and exercised no control whatsoever over their actions in any way, they just gave money to a fund that gave money to ideologically affiliated fund that gave money to ideologically affiliated fund that gave money to TPA. But of course that doesn't make a good headline.
- scarface74 9y ago
  So now we accept that the brilliant billionaire businessmen don't know where their money is going? So their not evil just clueless - highly doubtful.
  - smsm42 9y ago
    > So now we accept that the brilliant billionaire businessmen don't know where their money is going Of course. When you donate to a fund, you are not going to track the destination of every cent, it's enough that you trust the managers of the fund that they will direct money to the causes which are ideologically aligned with what they think is right. They may request general report from time to time (like "gave X% to libertarian small-govt groups", etc.) but they certainly wouldn't micromanage every associated organization. Just as I, when donating to, say, Red Cross, don't go and see every project they are doing. I just trust they'd do the right thing with my money, based on what I know about them as an organization. Brilliant businessmen are rarely brilliant because they know what which cent in their business is doing. More often, they are brilliant because they organize their business in a way that they don't need to know, they just hire right people, build right structures and delegate to them. > So their not evil just clueless - highly doubtful. They are neither evil nor clueless. Just as I am not "clueless" because I donate to dozens of organizations without knowing minute details of what they are doing. I just know that they are organizations that do things I support or would support, and trust them to figure out specific details of how to use my money. If I ever learn they are not doing a good job, I'll stop donating to them, that's all.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
gadders 9y ago
No, George Soros does a lot of this from a Democrat/left-wing perspective.
- Dirlewanger 9y ago
  Pathetic state of affairs for this website when you get downvoted for saying a fact.
  - gadders 9y ago
    I'm not even making a value judgement. You get left wing billionaires and right wing ones. They all have their pet political causes.
1337biz 9y ago
It is just an author's way to say 'I am a left winger'. If the author wanted to say 'I am a right winger' George Soros would take the role of the evil billionaire villain. Every group has its own enemies that help them strengthen their identity.
- pjc50 9y ago
  Surely there's some underlying facts involved in this? I mean, if Koch is actually funding it and Soros isn't you can't just switch them.
  - 1337biz 9y ago
    No, but journalists set their priorities by what they are spending their time on. If you have some politically activist billionaires who invest in advocacy groups, you will always find some topic that angers your audience. The right just pushes the narrative that Sorros wants to regulate the Internet and funding all the Net Neutrality campaigns.
    - croon 9y ago
      > No, but journalists set their priorities by what they are spending their time on. If you have some politically activist billionaires who invest in advocacy groups, you will always find some topic that angers your audience. The right just pushes the narrative that Sorros wants to regulate the Internet and funding all the Net Neutrality campaigns. What does he gain from it? Motive is the determinant between activism and greed.
- charcoal23 9y ago
  Not long after I moved to Kansas in 2012, I received a postcard supporting some tea party idiot for the legislature. Was a four color printing on thick glossy paper. Paid for by the Koch's PAC Americans for Prosperity. I kept getting these cards every other day until the primary. By comparison, the campaign materials for the other candidates were clearly run off of someone's photocopy machine. The cards, and bigger publications, started up again before the general. This is in a small rural district. This entire process was repeated across the state and was accompanied by constant television advertising. Led to Brownback getting enough support so he could get his infamous, and disastrous, tax cuts through the previously hostile legislature. Tax cuts strongly supported by the Kochs. 2014 and 2016 saw a repeat of this advertising blitz. When the Democrats get angry at the Kochs, it's for good reasons. When I saw AFP interfering in something as small as my tiny district, I thought it was quite creepy. Soros's funding hasn't been even remotely as large nor as pervasive.
blackrose 9y ago
Nope. A lot revolves around them, but there are plenty of ultra-rich ideologues pushing their agenda this way. You can find some good investigative research on this in "Dark Money" by Jane Mayer, which details a lot of the history behind dark money influencing politics, and the ideals these guys are trying to advance. The Mercers are another influential family she's written about [0] [0] https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/03/27/the-reclusive-hedge-fund-tycoon-behind-the-trump-presidency https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/03/27/the-reclusive-...
zeveb 9y ago
> If that is true - which it appears to be - are the Koch brothers the only ones? Nope. There are e.g. Tom Steyer [0], Sheldon Adelson [1] and many others, both left & right (and the Kochs aren't really 'right' anyway — they're much more libertarian than they are conservative, supporting homosexual marriage &c.). Billionaires have the same right to free speech that paupers have, but they've got rather a lot more money to spend speaking than others do. Personally, I suspect that a lot of the anti-Citizens-United animus comes from billionaires (or employees of billionaires) annoyed at the competition: they don't want poorer citizens to band together to fund political speech. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Steyer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Steyer [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheldon_Adelson https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheldon_Adelson

guelo 9y ago

No. There are a bunch of billionaires pushing their various agendas. Billionaire pet-causes is pretty much the only way things change in this country anymore. Democracy is dead, all we have left is billionaires fighting each other.

brandnewlow 9y ago
Citation needed. Also, is there any reason to believe this isn't how it's always been throughout history? Those with lots of capital set things into motion that impact everyone else?
- mikeyouse 9y ago
  Corruption at the scale we're currently seeing was pretty much illegal until the Citizen's United ruling. Dark Money groups spent $600 million on senate races in 2016. The Koch brothers alone were planning on spending nearly $1 billion to influence the election. It's no wonder that congress is racing to pass an historically unpopular tax bill that almost exclusively benefits these very same donors. Hell, Lindsey Graham gave away the game in a response a few weeks ago when asked what would happen if they didn't pass the bill: > "The party fractures, most incumbents in 2018 will get a severe primary challenge, a lot of them will probably lose, the base will fracture, the financial contributions will stop, other than that it'll be fine!"
  - xapata 9y ago
    Ever heard of United Fruit? Read more history and you'll find plenty of examples of the government taking action on behalf of one or a handful of corporations or individuals.
    - jacobolus 9y ago
      United Fruit (now called Chiquita) was able to exert influence on the Eisenhower administration because the Dulles brothers (Secretary of State and Director of the CIA) had a long work history and direct financial interest in the company, which was outraged that the Guatemalan government planned to force the company to sell its unused land back to the country at the company-assessed price (the company owned >40% of the arable land in the country, which it had claimed was nearly worthless to save on taxes). The US imposed a military coup on Guatemala which overthrew a democratically elected government and installed a right-wing military junta in its place, after which the military ruled via a succession of corrupt dictators and military puppets, and undertook a horrific genocidal decades-long civil war against armed rebels and rural peasant civilians. But I don’t think that’s quite the same situation as the Koch Brothers today. For one thing, all the consequences were borne by poor foreigners.
      - xapata 9y ago
        > all the consequences were borne by poor foreigners What about all the American fruit farmers that compete with bananas? There's always side-effects. Now Americans eat more bananas than apples and oranges combined.
  - pishpash 9y ago
    Hopefully they lose anyway if it's that unpopular.
    - mikeyouse 9y ago
      Probably not -- The version that emerged from the conference committee included a provision that wasn't in either the House or Senate bill -- but coincidentally would result in a tax cut of over a million dollars per year to the Senator that was previously holding out. He then announced that he would now support the bill. http://www.ibtimes.com/political-capital/last-minute-real-estate-tax-break-gop-bill-will-benefit-trump-2629381 http://www.ibtimes.com/political-capital/last-minute-real-es...
      - pishpash 9y ago
        I mean lose at the polls.
  - smsm42 9y ago
    How what is described in the article - political group promoting their opinion - is "corruption"? Yes, some rich people may have financed that particular group - as rich people finance a lot of politically active groups - but what's corrupt in that? Did they bribe anyone? Did they break any laws?
    - neolefty 9y ago
      Legal corruption is still corruption. But to fix it you have to change the system, not just enforce existing rules. And in order to change the system, you have to have a better system ready and widespread support for it. That's hard.
      - smsm42 9y ago
        OK, let me rephrase. How it is "legal corruption"? What's corrupt there in people trying to convince other people in their point of view? Is the "corrupt" part that the people doing the convincing happen to be rich and thus must be evil? What exactly needs fixing here? Should Kochs be banned from political advocacy? Should TPA be prohibited? Should opposition to municipal projects be banned? What exactly here needs fixing?
- everyone 9y ago
  Yeah. Pre-enlightnment... Are you from the US? If so your comment reads like you have Stockholm syndrome.
clouddrover 9y ago
> Democracy is dead According to the article the TPA's (and by extension the Koch's) campaign failed and the KentuckyWired project got the go ahead. Better funded, more powerful opposition lost a merits-based argument and did not get their way. This is an example of democracy working, wouldn't you say?
- partycoder 9y ago
  Only temporarily. Once issues stop getting public attention they try again and usually succeed.
  - clouddrover 9y ago
    The article also cites Comcast's campaigns to oppose municipal networks. These campaigns failed too: https://muninetworks.org/content/totals-are-comcast-spends-900k-fort-collins-election https://muninetworks.org/content/totals-are-comcast-spends-9... They might try again, but then they might lose again. No need to give in to cynicism and apathy just yet.
    - partycoder 9y ago
      Remember SOPA? people protested it because it allowed to see what people did online. But what happened this year? ISPs can sell your web history. Now they got net neutrality provisions revoked. They lost a battle, but they are winning the war.
propman 9y ago
Democracy is not dead. But you're hundred percent right about Billionaires. Think Tanks are all 100% biased depending on who is funding what. Whether it's a company or a billionaire. Economists, professors, public figures, Historians, everyone is being paid. The one tool we can wield in this information or rather misinformation age is critical thinking. I no longer follow any pundit. I have nowhere near their knowledge in their respective fields, but I can think and ponder whether their views make sense. Robert Reich, Krugman, Brooks, Shields, Shapiro or whomever. See what slant they are coming from, try to understand if they make sense. Immediately afterwards, read about the same topic from someone on the opposite side of the spectrum. Don't get lost in the doomsday world is ending, other side is evil BS. Then hold an opinion, but don't stick to it. Allow it to be malleable and change and try arguing from the other side constantly. I feel like our own ego is partly what let's us join each tribe of thought and we further reinforce it from reading similar viewpoints because we want to be good and right. Sounds simple, but it's so easy to get caught up in it without taking a step back and just thinking about that thought process. So, that's how you keep democracy alive. Not through simple education where you reiterate facts, memorize or follow directions, but through improving critical thinking which is slowly worsening in college and high schools. In a conversation with a classmate, we reminisced how in 3rd grade we learned how to spot bias in news articles, practicing for months. I feel like that's disappeared too.
- enraged_camel 9y ago
  A good way of validating an idea is to look at empirical evidence, or the results of the application of that idea in other places. A good example of this is the current tax debate. Republicans claim lowering taxes is a great way to "jump-start" the economy. But if you look at Kansas, a state that has been running that experiment for half a decade, you realize that it's a terrible idea. https://www.npr.org/2017/10/25/560040131/as-trump-proposes-tax-cuts-kansas-deals-with-aftermath-of-experiment https://www.npr.org/2017/10/25/560040131/as-trump-proposes-t...
  - zeveb 9y ago
    > But if you look at Kansas, a state that has been running that experiment for half a decade But then there are other states, like Florida IIRC, who have also been running that experiment and succeeding. So then the key is to see why one works and the other doesn't.
olavk 9y ago
Note that the recent presidential election was in large part decided by which groups didn't vote. The viewpoint that politicians are all the same, voting doesn't matter etc. is a also a political opinions which benefits certain interests.
- Feniks 9y ago
  Considering that the US election spending reached a billion $ I'm not convinced. I'd love to one day see a US presidential candidate hand out flyers on Times Square.
  - saalweachter 9y ago
    ... why? I'd like to see less money in politics, either public funding or donations restricted to small individual donors, and I personally think a good candidate for higher office should have worked at least one shit job in their life. But the other extreme is equally absurd. The President is literally the chief executive of an organization of millions of people. While some good old fashioned down-to-earth-ness is great for knowing what to do, if a Presidential candidate can't manage a large organization efficiently, pick competent subordinates and delegate authority effectively, they ain't never gonna get anything done as President. The President is like the one race where a two year PR stint managing a few thousand people spread across all fifty states and a few territories is a good interview for the job.
api 9y ago
Was this ever not the case? Look into the history of e.g. how marijuana prohibition came about. I think we are just more aware of it today. History is more of a battle between the haves and the haves than between the haves and the have-nots.

smsm42 9y ago

No, but they are a common punchbag for articles like this. In this case, Kochs probably had no idea what TPA is doing and exercised no control whatsoever over their actions in any way, they just gave money to a fund that gave money to ideologically affiliated fund that gave money to ideologically affiliated fund that gave money to TPA. But of course that doesn't make a good headline.

scarface74 9y ago
So now we accept that the brilliant billionaire businessmen don't know where their money is going? So their not evil just clueless - highly doubtful.
- smsm42 9y ago
  > So now we accept that the brilliant billionaire businessmen don't know where their money is going Of course. When you donate to a fund, you are not going to track the destination of every cent, it's enough that you trust the managers of the fund that they will direct money to the causes which are ideologically aligned with what they think is right. They may request general report from time to time (like "gave X% to libertarian small-govt groups", etc.) but they certainly wouldn't micromanage every associated organization. Just as I, when donating to, say, Red Cross, don't go and see every project they are doing. I just trust they'd do the right thing with my money, based on what I know about them as an organization. Brilliant businessmen are rarely brilliant because they know what which cent in their business is doing. More often, they are brilliant because they organize their business in a way that they don't need to know, they just hire right people, build right structures and delegate to them. > So their not evil just clueless - highly doubtful. They are neither evil nor clueless. Just as I am not "clueless" because I donate to dozens of organizations without knowing minute details of what they are doing. I just know that they are organizations that do things I support or would support, and trust them to figure out specific details of how to use my money. If I ever learn they are not doing a good job, I'll stop donating to them, that's all.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]

gadders 9y ago

No, George Soros does a lot of this from a Democrat/left-wing perspective.

Dirlewanger 9y ago
Pathetic state of affairs for this website when you get downvoted for saying a fact.
- gadders 9y ago
  I'm not even making a value judgement. You get left wing billionaires and right wing ones. They all have their pet political causes.

1337biz 9y ago

It is just an author's way to say 'I am a left winger'. If the author wanted to say 'I am a right winger' George Soros would take the role of the evil billionaire villain. Every group has its own enemies that help them strengthen their identity.

pjc50 9y ago
Surely there's some underlying facts involved in this? I mean, if Koch is actually funding it and Soros isn't you can't just switch them.
- 1337biz 9y ago
  No, but journalists set their priorities by what they are spending their time on. If you have some politically activist billionaires who invest in advocacy groups, you will always find some topic that angers your audience. The right just pushes the narrative that Sorros wants to regulate the Internet and funding all the Net Neutrality campaigns.
  - croon 9y ago
    > No, but journalists set their priorities by what they are spending their time on. If you have some politically activist billionaires who invest in advocacy groups, you will always find some topic that angers your audience. The right just pushes the narrative that Sorros wants to regulate the Internet and funding all the Net Neutrality campaigns. What does he gain from it? Motive is the determinant between activism and greed.
charcoal23 9y ago
Not long after I moved to Kansas in 2012, I received a postcard supporting some tea party idiot for the legislature. Was a four color printing on thick glossy paper. Paid for by the Koch's PAC Americans for Prosperity. I kept getting these cards every other day until the primary. By comparison, the campaign materials for the other candidates were clearly run off of someone's photocopy machine. The cards, and bigger publications, started up again before the general. This is in a small rural district. This entire process was repeated across the state and was accompanied by constant television advertising. Led to Brownback getting enough support so he could get his infamous, and disastrous, tax cuts through the previously hostile legislature. Tax cuts strongly supported by the Kochs. 2014 and 2016 saw a repeat of this advertising blitz. When the Democrats get angry at the Kochs, it's for good reasons. When I saw AFP interfering in something as small as my tiny district, I thought it was quite creepy. Soros's funding hasn't been even remotely as large nor as pervasive.

blackrose 9y ago

Nope. A lot revolves around them, but there are plenty of ultra-rich ideologues pushing their agenda this way. You can find some good investigative research on this in "Dark Money" by Jane Mayer, which details a lot of the history behind dark money influencing politics, and the ideals these guys are trying to advance. The Mercers are another influential family she's written about [0] [0] https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/03/27/the-reclusive-hedge-fund-tycoon-behind-the-trump-presidency https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/03/27/the-reclusive-...

zeveb 9y ago

> If that is true - which it appears to be - are the Koch brothers the only ones? Nope. There are e.g. Tom Steyer [0], Sheldon Adelson [1] and many others, both left & right (and the Kochs aren't really 'right' anyway — they're much more libertarian than they are conservative, supporting homosexual marriage &c.). Billionaires have the same right to free speech that paupers have, but they've got rather a lot more money to spend speaking than others do. Personally, I suspect that a lot of the anti-Citizens-United animus comes from billionaires (or employees of billionaires) annoyed at the competition: they don't want poorer citizens to band together to fund political speech. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Steyer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Steyer [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheldon_Adelson https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheldon_Adelson