by Joseph P. Tartaro | Executive Editor
Billionaires can support their public policy causes with infinite ease and grace. What’s more, they seldom are criticized for the policy positions they take, unless they do or say something incredibly flagrant or stupid like Donald Sterling or Ray Rice.
It has always been thus as far as I can see.
Two things especially have prompted this musing about our freedoms and the people who have so much money they can do whatever they want in any form of government—even government of the people, by the people and for the people.
One is the current spectacle of the modern robber barons, people like Bill Gates, Paul Allen and Michael Bloomberg, trying to force their policies down the throats of the people of Washington State. All of them have been bankrolling the anti-gun push for Initiative 594 in Washington State, a proposal that is clearly the wolf of gun confiscation disguised in what many might believe is the sheep’s clothing of gun purchase background checks.
Two, I have been reading Doris Kearns Goodwin’s The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft and the Golden Age of Journalism, a history of public policy and politics at the turn of the 20th century.
One theme that jumps out of both is the fact that big money can impact the lives of all the unsuspecting little people. What helped Teddy Roosevelt to bust the powerful trusts and monopolies that severely affected the lives of the average American workers, small businessmen and their families were the investigative journalists he later call “muck-rakers,” who exposed for the public and the president the excesses of a handful of powerful men. Teddy Roosevelt’s reform policies to break the stranglehold of monopolists like John D. Rockefeller, Cornelius Vanderbilt, J. P. Morgan and others of their greedy ilk could not have gained traction without the exposes published in those days.
If you’ve been watching the recent Ken Burns series on PBS television, you would have gotten some of the same message.
What is hindering contemporary attempts to prevent big money interests from dictating what Americans can and cannot do is the lack of true investigative journalism on a similar scale in popular media today. Yes, I know there are a few people exposing some of the current shenanigans of the rich and powerful, but they are mostly on the Internet. They may reach a few million even, but not in the same high numbers that accept the dribble of the mainstream print and electronic media.
What’s worse is that so many Americans today do not pay attention to the news that’s available in any form. They are the same people who go out and vote for a political candidate who is an indicted gun-runner, or to re-elect officials who have been reported, accused and even convicted of other criminal acts. As long as they get the public services they think are filling their wants and needs.
And even when the media does report on allegations of corruption or collusion, most of the public doesn’t seem to care. I suppose they figure it’s just negative political advertising. On the other hand, maybe the majority is so tuned out of politics and public policy that they aren’t even paying attention. They don’t seem to care, until something affects them personally.
Getting back to big money, the average American doesn’t have any idea what it means to have a million dollars to his or her name, not just to spend on every day expenses, education of children, health care or even as a backup nest egg. Yet many of us donate to various causes and charities, and many gun owning Americans particularly join and/or donate to pro-gun organizations at the national, state or local level. In addition, many also donate much of their spare time to pro-gun rights activities. To them, an average hundred dollars contributed to the cause in a year is a major expense. People of better means, of course, may be in the $1,000 a year bracket.
But all of us together can’t seem to give enough to insure the success of our fight to protect our guns and self-defense rights on a continuing basis.
On the other hand, the big guys drop a million here and a million there without batting an eyelash. They are so rich it really doesn’t matter to them.
Consider for a moment, one million dollars is one thousand $1000 bills, and a billion is one thousand $1 millions. The people who are bankrolling I-594 in Washington State, and are preparing to do the same in other states like Nevada, Oregon, California and Arizona; make their donations with $100,000 and $1 million checks.
Those big donations buy them access to both the political power brokers and the major media, both through entertaining the non-investigative reporters and the talking heads who are awed by the people they should really be questioning, and by advertising bombardments directed at the general public.
When you are one of the richest people imaginable and you pick up the phone to a governor, a senator, a congressman, a news editor, or even a banker, those people always take the call immediately. No busy signals.
The Bloombergs, the Gateses, the Allens aren’t just rich, they are powerful because they are presumed to be very smart, and, more importantly, they are known to have almost as many billions as there are stars.
Gates is No. 2 on Forbes magazine’s list of the World Richest People. According to Forbes, Gates is worth $81.3 billion, Bloomberg is No. 11 with $35 billion, and Allen is No. 55 with $16.3 billion. That puts some of them well ahead of George Soros, who most gunowners are aware has been one of their biggest threats, not least of which as a big donor to anti-gun think tanks and researchers. Soros is No. 25 on Forbes list with $24 billion.
They might be kind and gentle to their pets, love their wives and children, but they know they can do anything they want, and they know they can hire the best lawyers to sue whoever gets in their way.
The only thing that seems to slow them down or thwart their will completely is when the majority continues to oppose them and votes against their schemes. The people cannot outspend the very rich few.
