How Much Wealth Is Enough?

Have you both­ered pay­ing atten­tion to whats hap­pen­ing in the United States Congress late­ly? If you haven’t, yet you are find­ing it hard to put food on the table you should be con­cerned. If you are able to put food on your table you should be con­cerned that 46.5 mil­lion Americans are liv­ing in pover­ty. The pover­ty thresh­old in 2012 was an income of $23,492 for a fam­i­ly of four. Reuters new Agency reports while the Standard & Poor’s 500 index gained 16 per­cent on a total return basis last year, includ­ing rein­vest­ed div­i­dends, the Census Bureau report showed medi­an house­hold income slipped to $51,017 from of $51,100 in 2011. The econ­o­my has strug­gled to sus­tain growth rates of more than 2.5 per­cent since the reces­sion ended.

While the amount of Americans liv­ing in pover­ty has increased and the econ­o­my is strug­gling with a growth rate of 2.5 per­cent Republicans in the United States House of Representatives have dou­bled down on efforts to desta­bi­lize the econ­o­my. You may ask whats new ? Well it’s impor­tant to note what they are doing. They just passed a bill which would cut Forty Billion Dollars from the food stamps pro­gram over 10 years. That is Four Billion Dollars less per year to this vital pro­gram. And they have tak­en their 42^nd vote to repeal the Affordable Care Act, (Obama care).

Both the Supplementary Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) or Food Stamps, and the Affordable Care Act (Obama Care) pejo­ra­tive­ly labeled, are pro­grams which are help­ing the poor. The ques­tion which ought to be on the minds of all con­cerned is this. Why exact­ly does the Republican par­ty hate the poor this much? The late Senator Ted Kennedy asked the same ques­tion on the floor of the Senate years ago. On that occa­sion Senator Kennedy was talk­ing about Republicans intran­si­gent refusal to allow a vote to increase the min­i­mum wage.http://​www​.youtube​.com/​w​a​t​c​h​?​v​=​S​i​c​F​n​8​r​q​PPE.http: On that occa­sion Senator Kennedy asked, why do you have so much dis­dain for the poor that you keep pil­ing on amend­ment after amend­ment, where does the greed stop?

Senator Ted Kennedy (deceased)

What would the late Senator Ted Kennedy say to what’s hap­pen­ing in this coun­try since he went to rest? Voting Rights gut­ted by the Supreme Court which is the high­est earth­ly body the peo­ple have to appeal to for basic fair­ness and decen­cy. Basic food sup­ple­ments to the poor­est being cut back at a time when data points to increas­ing pover­ty and hunger , par­tic­u­lar­ly among chil­dren and the elder­ly. As a child grow­ing up in Jamaica it was com­mon to see foods in schools with the American Flag, donat­ed to our Government to help feed the most vul­ner­a­ble. This was not con­fined to our small Island, the American Government helped to feed the hun­gry the world over. Today the Republican Party is the par­ty of Oligarchs. The Party is there sole­ly to ful­fill the dic­tates of the mega rich Oligarchs like David and Charles Koch. Today’s Republicans are deny­ing what amounts to just over a dol­lar per day in food sup­ple­ment to Americans, some of whom are work­ing yet unable to make ends meet.

Getting food from the farm to our fork eats up 10 per­cent of the total U.S. ener­gy bud­get, uses 50 per­cent of U.S.
land, and swal­lows 80 per­cent of all fresh­wa­ter con­sumed in the United States. Yet, 40 per­cent of food in the 
United States today goes uneat­en. This not only means that Americans are throw­ing out the equiv­a­lent of $165
bil­lion each year, but also that the uneat­en food ends up rot­ting in land­fills as the sin­gle largest com­po­nent of U.S.
munic­i­pal sol­id waste where it accounts for a large por­tion of U.S. methane emis­sions. Reducing food loss­es by 
just 15 per­cent would be enough food to feed more than 25 mil­lion Americans every year at a time when one in 
six Americans lack a secure sup­ply of food to their tables. Increasing the effi­cien­cy of our food sys­tem is a triple­bot­tom-line solu­tion that requires col­lab­o­ra­tive efforts by busi­ness­es, gov­ern­ments and con­sumers. The U.S.
gov­ern­ment should con­duct a com­pre­hen­sive study of loss­es in our food sys­tem and set nation­al goals for waste 
reduc­tion; busi­ness­es should seize oppor­tu­ni­ties to stream­line their own oper­a­tions, reduce food loss­es and save 
mon­ey; and con­sumers can waste less food by shop­ping wise­ly, know­ing when food goes bad, buy­ing pro­duce that 
is per­fect­ly edi­ble even if it’s less cos­met­i­cal­ly attrac­tive, cook­ing only the amount of food they need, and eat­ing
their left­overs.http://​www​.nrdc​.org/​f​o​o​d​/​f​i​l​e​s​/​w​a​s​t​e​d​-​f​o​o​d​-​i​p​.​pdf

Multi-bil­lion­aire Oligarchs, David and Charles Koch.

Republicans in the House and Senate open­ly deride the poor , paint­ing them as lazy shift­less dis­pos­able who fail to take full advan­tage of Capitalism and all its virtues[sic] Today I echo the late Senator Ted Kennedy; What do you find so dis­dain­ful about the poor that you lit­er­al­ly want them to starve to death. How much is enough? Charles and David Koch are very wealthy own­ers of Koch Industries.

With his broth­er Charles, who is sev­en­ty-four, David Koch owns vir­tu­al­ly all of Koch Industries, a con­glom­er­ate, head­quar­tered in Wichita, Kansas, whose annu­al rev­enues are esti­mat­ed to be a hun­dred bil­lion dol­lars. The com­pa­ny has grown spec­tac­u­lar­ly since their father, Fred, died, in 1967, and the broth­ers took charge. The Kochs oper­ate oil refiner­ies in Alaska, Texas, and Minnesota, and con­trol some four thou­sand miles of pipeline. Koch Industries owns Brawny paper tow­els, Dixie cups, Georgia-Pacific lum­ber, Stainmaster car­pet, and Lycra, among oth­er prod­ucts.Forbes ranks it as the sec­ond-largest pri­vate com­pa­ny in the coun­try, after Cargill, and its con­sis­tent prof­itabil­i­ty has made David and Charles Koch — who, years ago, bought out two oth­er broth­ers — among the rich­est men in America. Their com­bined for­tune of thir­ty-five bil­lion dol­lars is exceed­ed only by those of Bill Gates and Warren Buffett.http://​www​.newyork​er​.com/​r​e​p​o​r​t​i​n​g​/​2​0​1​0​/​0​8​/​3​0​/​1​0​0​8​3​0​f​a​_​f​a​c​t​_​m​a​yer

These two men are behind a range of leg­is­la­tion being tabled and passed in munic­i­pal, state and the fed­er­al Legislature. Their fin­ger-prints are on leg­is­la­tion which weak­ens envi­ron­men­tal laws, on efforts to de-fund and repeal the afford­able care act, among oth­ers. They are the pow­er behind the Tea-Party move­ment which dis­guis­es itself as a lib­er­tar­i­an grass-roots move­ment, and uses the faces of ordi­nary peo­ple to get their destruc­tive mes­sage across. They give huge sums of mon­ey to var­i­ous phil­an­thropic caus­es, leav­ing their names on many land-marks. David Koch in par­tic­u­lar ‚has mas­tered the art of leav­ing a trail of pos­i­tives bear­ing his name . He donat­ed a hun­dred mil­lion dol­lars to mod­ern­ize Lincoln Center’s New York State Theatre build­ing, which now bears his name. He has giv­en twen­ty mil­lion to the American Museum of Natural History, whose dinosaur wing is named for him. After notic­ing the decrepit state of the foun­tains out­side the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Koch pledged at least ten mil­lion dol­lars for their ren­o­va­tion. He is a trustee of the muse­um, per­haps the most cov­et­ed social prize in the city, and serves on the board of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, where, after he donat­ed more than forty mil­lion dol­lars, an endowed chair and a research cen­ter were named for him.:[new yorker]

Don’t be fooled by these acts of phil­an­thropy, every­thing these two pow­er­ful oli­garchs do are geared toward solid­i­fy­ing and gain­ing more pow­er> They have a will­ing part­ner in Republicans in the con­gress. though by far not the only two of their kind, David and Charles Koch has become the face of excess greed and inhu­man­i­ty toward the poor and dis­pos­sessed. If you haven’t been pay­ing atten­tion to whats hap­pen­ing in your life and to your life now is a good time to start.