The Kind-Hearted Smart Aleck

It's only February, and already, billionaire Tom Perkins is trying to stake claim to Douche of the Year honors. Not long ago, he compared progressives' desire to increase taxes on the top 1% to Nazis going after Jews during the Holocaust. He then decided to increase his odds of winning the before-mentioned award by saying the following during a speech at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco last night: "The Tom Perkins system is: You don't get to vote unless you pay a dollar of taxes. But what I really think is, it should be like a corporation. You pay a million dollars in taxes, you get a million votes. How's that?" While it's debatable that Perkins was joking around, it doesn't seem to be debatable that he's a major league jerk. He also seems to be clueless about the real world. Unfortunately, due to the Citizens United ruling, corporations can spend countless dollars on ads to influence people's vote. In other words, if you pay a milli...

Billionaire Thomas Perkins recently wrote a letter-to-the-editor in the Wall Street Journal which made me realize it is possible be both a billionaire and stupid. In this letter-to-the-editor, the venture capitalist wrote the following: "I would call attention to the parallels of fascist Nazy Germany to its war on its 'one percent,' namely its Jews, to the progressive war on the American one percent, namely the 'rich.' ... From the Occupy movement to the demonization of the rich embedded in virtually every word of our local newspaper, the San Francisco Chronicle, I perceive a rising tide of hatred of the successful one percent. There is outraged public reaction to the Google buses carrying technology workers from the city to the peninsula high-tech companies which employ them. We have outrage over the rising real-estate prices which these 'techno geeks' can pay. ... This is a very dangerous drift in our American thinking. Kristallnacht was unthinkable in ...

The Charles Koch Foundation doesn't appear to be very good with numbers, which is kind of odd considering Charles Koch is estimated to be worth $34 billion. In a recent ad by Koch's conservative non-profit group, it asserts that if you make $34,000 or more, you're in the top 1% of earners (worldwide). In the United States, where Mr. Koch resides last I heard, one must earn approximately $352,000 annually in order to be among the top 1%. $34,000, $352,000 - those numbers are so similar, I may have to re-watch the film Twins to make certain Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito are not identical. In actuality, $34,000 is just 9.7% of what it takes to make it into the top 1% of earners in this country. Making matters even worse for the Charles Koch Foundation and their odd math is the fact that the top 1% of earners in this country earn an average of $1.12 million. The $34,000 mentioned in the ad is just 3.0% of $1.12 million. How far off are the numbers presented in...