How far has PBS fallen?

[BlueStreak]

A friend called tonight saying I really needed to turn on the Nova program about killer volcanoes of Iceland. I turned it on halfway through. It was all very surreal. It seemed to be saying there is nothing we can do about our climate because when these killer volcanoes go off, it will be bigger than anything we have done to ourselves. So paint the town. No point in worrying about our use of fossil fuels.

This was bizarre. And then it went on to say that very soon governments would be coming to get the weakest among us -- elderly, sickly, obese -- and killing them because there just aren't enough resources for everybody, don't you see,

I haven't watched any PBS program for a decade, when the Republicans started taking it over. But it was really shocking to see just what had become of Nova.

Then it all became clear. The banner came on, saying "This program paid for by David Koch."

How much of PBS have the Koch brothers taken over by now?

[Hekate]

1. Please tell me you are pulling our leg

Please

[elleng]

2. ditto

[BlueStreak]

3. No. I am not.

http://watchdogprogressive.com/2011/04/the-curious-case-of-nova-and-david-h-koch/

[elzenmahn]

20. This is not a leg-pull

The Kochs have their bloody sponsorships listed all over PBS.

It's hard for me to trust much of anything that comes out of there anymore. It's sad.

[a kennedy]

46. oh yah, and under David Koch's name was the word, "philanthropist".....

philanthropist?? You have got to be f*cking kidding me.

[Eleanors38]

47. Watch PBS 1 night & see more "Koch" than in Miami.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

4. I saw that program, and I have quite a different take on it

First of all, volcanic eruptions have historically cooled the climate in the path of the ash.

I don't recall anything about the government "coming to get" the weakest among us. What I took from it was that in the historic eruptions, the weakest suffered the most.

I'm going to see if it's still on PBS streaming and make sure.

[BlueStreak]

6. I tuned in midway through.

But to me, the implication was clear enough. People of earth. Prepare yourself for times of shortage when the governments will have to terminate the weakest and least valuable members of society to preserve something for the rest.

Of course the voice-over was not this direct. But it doesn't have to be. The Koch message came through loud and clear. Don't worry about our fossil fuels, you are doomed anyway. And government is your biggest enemy.

I heard that BEFORE I saw that Koch was the underwriter for it. It was just bizarre until I saw who was paying for it.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

7. To see the whole thing from the beginning:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/earth/doomsday-volcanoes.html

I just watched the opening of it, and it is indeed the program I saw last year.

[BlueStreak]

9. Listen to the dialog 50 minutes in.

Yes, it was clever. A person could miss the subtext. But that section clearly talks about "they" and that can only mean "the evil government". There is no other reasonable interpretation. It essentially says the government will "cull" the population. The government will decide to shut off power systems. The government will decide what companies are no longer allowed to operate. This is not science. This is right-wing anti-government propaganda. It belongs on World Net Daily, not PBS.

And then listen to the the final summation. It says, basically, that we are doomed. The volcanoes we have seen are tiny compared to what will hit us. And the obvious implication is that this is much bigger than any man-made effect, although they don't offer any evidence to support that.

The right wing speaks through dog whistles. You have to listen carefully to hear how they manipulate things.

It is complete bullshit -- pure right wing propaganda. I'm sorry that PBS is at the point that it allows its once proud name to be usurped this way.

[BlueStreak]

11. Here's the key part of the transcript

Still, the greatest threat would come not from Katla's ash, but from her toxic sulfuric acid cloud. Faced with a giant volcanic eruption today, a major response would be needed to protect us.

JOHN GRATTAN: But how would they do that? They would do that by inconveniencing us, they would do that by switching off the power stations that might be burning coal; they might stop us driving cars that are emitting pollution from the engines; they would do that by closing factories down.

MIKE RAMPINO: I think modern day society should very much be concerned with volcanism.

CLAIRE WITHAM: I think we're probably more susceptible to these types of events in the 21st century than we are in the early 20th century.

JOHN GRATTAN: We think we're immune to these things, and, frankly, we're not.

NARRATOR: Those least able to protect themselves would be most affected.

JOHN GRATTAN: To be brutal about it, the vulnerable population will be culled from society. The elderly, the sick, people with heart and lung conditions, the obese. We are going to see many, many people dying.

NARRATOR: Today we have a society dependent on air travel,…

IAN DAVIES: The way we move food, freight, people around the world now, any disruption to that is devastating.

NARRATOR: …a society that's delicately linked together.

JOHN GRATTAN: So, a massive volcanic eruption is really going to disrupt this web of connectivity. All those networks are going to be fractured; they're not going to work anymore.

NARRATOR: Lives were thrown into chaos when Eyja, a relatively small volcano, awoke in 2010. How much worse will it be if and when one of Iceland's doomsday volcanoes erupts?

[pacalo]

14. Your OP & the additional information you've provided get my vote for thread of the new year.

Last edited Thu Jan 2, 2014, 02:41 AM - Edit history (1)

I love your writing style; the OP was well told. "Paid for by the Koch Brothers" -- & their sponsoring the message that "vulnerable population will be culled from society. The elderly, the sick, people with heart and lung conditions, the obese."

That is despicably brutal & about 5-miles away from being a flat-out direct "you little people are going to die; we'll see to that" threat to the little-people who are watching this PBS Koch propaganda.

Great thread!

[BlueStreak]

16. Thank you. I am still in a bit of shock

I really didn't expect to see that kind of garbage from Nova.

But the Koch Brothers have been using their money to control everything that has influence. They are buying up entire research departs of universities. Of course the university should just carry on as usual and never mind the fact that we are supplying the money that pays the salaries.

This did not start with David and Charles. Their father was doing this same shit before they were even born. He was the main money behind The John Birch Society, which was the Fox News of its day.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

17. "Culled" is an unfortunate choice of words, but I didn't get the impression that it would

be the government "culling" the vulnerable.

As in the "killer smogs" of the 1950s, the elderly, those with lung problems, and other vulnerable populations would probably not survive. This is fact, not some plot. There was no government plot to kill people in the 1950s.

Nor was there in the 1700s when the effects of an Icelandic eruption were felt all over Europe and caused terrible suffering in England.

No problem with seeing the Koch brothers as evil, but you're probably reading too much into this.

[BlueStreak]

18. It becomes more clear when you separate the speakers.

The one making the most outrageous comments is JOHN GRATTAN. Please try reading just his comments in sequence. I think his meaning is perfectly clear. Whether government actively performs the culling or simply stands aside while the culling happens hardly makes a difference, does it? This is just another version of "death panels" from exactly the same source.

JOHN GRATTAN: But how would they do that? They would do that by inconveniencing us, they would do that by switching off the power stations that might be burning coal; they might stop us driving cars that are emitting pollution from the engines; they would do that by closing factories down.

JOHN GRATTAN: We think we're immune to these things, and, frankly, we're not.

JOHN GRATTAN: To be brutal about it, the vulnerable population will be culled from society. The elderly, the sick, people with heart and lung conditions, the obese. We are going to see many, many people dying.

[muriel_volestrangler]

42. What he's saying is that coal produces the same sulfuric pollution as the volcanoes

and that coal power stations and vehicle engines are therefore things we'd need to shut down. This is not a message of "we should use these things". It's a message of "we shouldn't use these things". And he's saying that the sick are most vulnerable to the pollution.

[truedelphi]

72. Thank you. I was beginning to think my reading abilities were

Either gone completely or else the only real reading abilities left on this board.

[pacalo]

19. The word "culled" came from the PBS transcript posted by Blue Streak.

Between reading your view & Blue Streak's, I'm interested in watching the program myself. This is an interesting thread.

[Common Sense Party]

26. Nowhere does he imply that government is going to "cull" the weak from society.

He's talking about volcanic ash. Those with the weakest lungs, the poorest health, will be physically affected more than the strong and healthy. That's just common sense. I agree. People see the word "Koch" and their knees jerk so hard they kick themselves silly.

[Hoyt]

34. That's my take. Whatever, in such a disaster a government response would be necessary.

Otherwise, those with power and gunz will survive by culling from the rest of us. I have no doubt the callous will survive.

[bemildred]

38. It is deliberately, delicately ambiguous.

What he really seems to be saying is something like: a big volcanic eruption will require a big (government) response, which response will be to shut things down (to stop global warming or pollution or something), which shutdown will cause a lot of the weak-helpless-poor to die (of starvation and plague and things).

I just want to insert here that we are all going to die, and those weak-helpless-poor will also die in unknown numbers if nothing is done when that big volcano goes up.

It's a weak argument, easy to pick apart.

What comes through is the fearmongering, like the OP says.

[MADem]

32. I didn't either--to me it sounded like the health of the elderly and obese would cause them to croak

from the after-effects of the volcanic eruption.

That said, I too think the Koch Bros. suck, that goes without saying.

[GeorgeGist]

40. 'Culled' was a deliberate choice of word.

Who 'they' is a irrelevant. It might include DuckDynasty fans.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

71. Well, I'm glad SOME PEOPLE understood what they were saying

Anyway, it's not the Icelandic volcanoes that are the greatest threat to the U.S., although they are for Europe, as evidenced by the 18th century records from England and France.

The greatest volcanic threat to everyone in the U.S. is the possible eruption of the Yellowstone caldera.

[sabrina 1]

13. So they're they're going to terminate the top 1%. Cool!

Prepare yourself for times of shortage when the governments will have to terminate the weakest and least valuable members of society to preserve something for the rest.

We need our carpenters, plumbers, doctors, nurses, garbage collecters, farmers, fire fighters, teachers, garbage collectors etc.

What would people like the Koch brothers do if they had to build their homes? THEY are the 'weakest and least valuable members of society'. What purpose do they serve? 'Least valuable members of society'. I can get on board with that.

[Common Sense Party]

27. Context, FFS.

[El_Johns]

5. PBS has been gradually going corporate since its public funding started getting cut -- I believe in

the Reagan area.

It now has what amount to commercials for corporate donors -- like Ralph Lauren.

[burrowowl]

10. Yup!

Sad.

[mwooldri]

22. Yup. They got to pay NBC for their shows....

Downton Abbey... made by NBCUniversals' Carnival Films for itv (UK TV network) and WGBH pitched in with itv to pay for it. WGBH can afford it because it's made in the UK... smaller budgets... tight filming schedule... they let itv have first dibs so it gets aired there first..... but still it's not cheap.... so I guess Ralph Lauren pitches in to pay the bill... and allegedly by viewers like us.

Yup. Commercial television exists on PBS. Not everything British on PBS comes from the BBC.

[okaawhatever]

8. Geez this is just scary. I know there are a bunch of right wingers on the board so that may

not be any help. The gop took over PBS when we weren't paying attention.

[Kablooie]

12. The new president of NPR is a conservative Republican millionaire so why not PBS too?

They are intent on taking over all the media so we get no propaganda but what the right wants us to hear.

[pacalo]

15. Spot on.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

21. What's really FUNNY is the fixation on the infiltration of TV....

That is SOOOO "Last Century".

They really ARE stuck in the 50s.

[snot]

29. You wish. Don't look now, but the internet's being bought, too.

And we're letting it happen.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

31. Yup. They aren't letting any stuff against them out there.

[BlueStreak]

49. And it is relatively cheap. When you have the money the Kochs have ...

The amount of money it costs to turn PBS into a RW propaganda machine is not even pocket change. It is the amount of money they drop on the floor when they are putting the pocket change into their pockets.

And they aren't doing all of this just because it is their philosophy. It is a GREAT INVESTMENT for them. The more fear mongering they can do, the more anti-science hysteria they can whip up, the more money Koch Industries makes.

It is just bitness.

It saddens me that there are some here who don't really understand that, but we'll just have to keep working on that. This truly is a struggle for the future of the planet and what our future society will look like.

[2banon]

23. I've been pointing that Koch Brothers "owns" Nova, and Big Business Foundations

pretty much has taken over much of Propaganda Broadcasting Service..

I didn't know who the Koch brothers were back in 2002, 2003 but that's when I saw Nova with wide open eyes, with some very serious misrepresentations and false analysis regarding certain known facts on 9/11;

In addition to Nova, The News Hour and Charlie Rose really make it clear that PBS is no longer the bastion of honest and unbiased source of information and analysis, if it ever really was. (I'm not really whether or not it's been a big change in my perception or their content. Probably both.)

It's also become quite the "shoppers home network" these days, not to mention format for sleazy snake oil sales people on a frequent basis.

I've also noticed that the Reich Wingers no longer threaten defunding of PBS. They've been seriously quiet with their complaints generally speaking.

I think we have enough clues what's happened to PBS, at this point. I'm stunned that no one ever seem to notice or care about it when ever I bring the subject up.

On DU, media criticism is always all about CNN/MSNBC/FOX.

[Judi Lynn]

39. No doubt you remember when Republican speakers on tv/radio used to hammer away at PBS,

insisting it was controlled by liberals. They kept on attacking it until a Republican Congress slashed and hacked away at its budget, leaving it helpless and dead in the water, and forced to start accepting sponsorship from big corporations. It made a sudden, and ugly swing to the right.

[2banon]

59. Yes, it was a constant threat..

and then the threat became actualized or rather institutionalized.

Some years ago, I was a programmer & involved in a small community NPR station... we produced quite a bit of our own programming on an unpaid volunteer basis, which was a lot of fun, it was mostly various music formats. nothing particularly political.

But anytime any on-air discussion of political topics got mentioned, it was closely scrutinized by Program Director and Station Manager. If memory serves at the time NPR demanded roughly a third of daily on-air content be dedicated to "must carry" programming such as All Things Considered and Morning Edition, and we had to pay them significant amount of $ to air it!!

It's hilarious to hear these ATC people talking amongst themselves about listener complaints with regard to right wing spin and censorship. They laugh at this with assertions that they get complaints both from the "far left" and the "far right", pat themselves on their backs with the standard response, "we must be doing something right".

[BlueStreak]

50. Same thing happening at BBC.

The struggle is worldwide.

[blkmusclmachine]

24. ,

,

[merrily]

25. I don't recall if it is Koch-brothers backed or not, but Washington Week

has to have a designee of some funder on every week. I don't know if that is disclosed anywhere in writing every week, but I don't hear any spoken disclosure.

During the Bush administration, when they would not allow a kid's program to interview two women sitting in a kitchen about dairy issues, I knew PBS was over for me.

There was no mention in the segment that they were lesbians or two moms or anything of the kind. They were simply two women in a kitchen discussing their dairy farm. Could have been business partners, for all the viewer knew. But, in real life, they were lesbians and two moms and that was enough for PBS to take that show out of the program.

Better to allow kids who had two moms to be bullied and shunned than to even show two women sitting in a kitchen together, discussing dairy farming.


ETA: Bill Moyers continues to be, for me, an exception to the above. And I do watch some other PBS shows. I just don't trust them implicitly, as I once did. Then again, we should trust no one implicitly anymore, IMO.

[GabbyHamilton]

28. How far has PBS fallen?

I really didn't anticipate seeing that type of rubbish from Nova. But the Koch Bros have been using their cash to manage everything that has an impact. They are purchasing up whole analysis leaves of colleges. Of course the school should just bring on as regular and never mind the point that we are providing the cash that will pay the incomes.

[gopiscrap]

57. Welcome to DU

[factsarenotfair]

30. Iceland didn't buckle down to austerity.

This show is probably some sort of oblique threat and smear by the Kochs for Icelanders daring to stand up to the banksters as well as the propaganda mentioned above. Who would want to visit or invest in a country on the verge of being destroyed by THREE volcanoes??? Who would want to emulate them??? Iceland is going to cause the END OF THE WORLD!!!

[CanSocDem]

48. There you have it. (eom)

[BlueStreak]

51. Good point. These guys work on many levels.

Never confuse David and Charles Koch with nitwits like Sarah Palin or Todd Akin, or even slightly less moronic people like Limbaugh and Huckabee. The Kochs are very smart. They know exactly what they want, and they understand they have to work every single day in every possible dimension to assure that. What happened in Iceland is every bit as threatening to them as the Muslim Brotherhood. This Nova program was a triumph of the Koch propaganda method. IN 60 minutes they succeeded in using a thin veneer of "scienciness" (thank you Stephen Colbert) to stoke general paranoia, to posit that fossil fuels aren't anything like the doom that will hit us from natural causes, and ad the same time took specific potshots at Iceland and broader attacks on big, bad government in general.

And look at the number of people here who completely missed that -- and still miss it when it is spelled out for them.

This is powerful stuff. In a bad way.

[2banon]

60. Well Said! Fullly agree. n/t

[malaise]

33. Sad to watch

but in reality the Koch brothers will not win.

[BlueStreak]

52. Please go on. What do you think will be their downfall?

[malaise]

58. Look how much they spent and Obama sitll won

People do not turn back easily - they move forward. The Koch brothers will fail just like their stupid racist daddy.

[2banon]

61. I make no such assumptions...

no actual factual basis to make that conclusion. Obama's victory should not be seen as the conclusive test. We know there are many different factors involved in election engineering.... we don't really know why their "levers" didn't over ride the levers of Obama's "team".. we can only make an "educated" guess. but there are no simple answers when it comes to winners and losers in elections.

Their daddy might have been a racist, but stupid? uhm, I wouldn't say that.

[BlueStreak]

69. I think their Daddy accomplished what he wanted to do

And the sons are largely succeeding as well. Even when they "lose" an election, they still win. Obama took 4 years to put a person in charge of the EPA. He will give them the Keystone pipeline they want. They are making more money than ever under Obama. And billions of those dollars are being reinvested in corrupting our political system.

They are winning.

I would agree with you in one respect though. In the past 10 years, there is much more awareness of who these guys are and how they operate. It is getting harder for them to fly under the radar. And that may be the one thing that is hopeful.

[ananda]

35. This is a good catch.

Thanks for posting.

[DemocraticWing]

36. At least PBS has the honestly to tell us.

The rest of the government was bought by the corporations but they keep claiming to serve the people.

[Smarmie Doofus]

41. Touche'. n/t

[sendero]

37. Well look at it this way...

..... they held out almost a decade longer than NPR. NPR had gone to the dark side by 2000 at best.

[BlueStreak]

54. I'm not sure I share that view -- at least not exactly.

In my view, PBS has been gone for 15-20 years. I literally haven't watched a single program on PBS for a decade until my friend suggested I turn on this Nova program. We know for certain that the News Hour -- brought to you by General Electric -- has been far right wing for a very long time, maybe since its very inception. There has been some artistic program on PBS that avoided politics. I'll give you that, so I guess there is an argument that maybe 1/3 of the programming is neutral.

NPR is a different situation I think. There is no doubt that it has eased rightward with all the rest of the media. But it seems to me that as of January 2, 2014, NPR is only somewhat right of center -- not extreme right, and remains the closest thing to objective news among the major media outlets. Their coverage of the NSA was very pro-authoritarian, but not as much as the teevee networks. They do have some reasonable coverage of climate issues and economic issues. Their coverage of "the Obamacare disaster" has been horrible and baseless. So it is a mixed bag.

There is no doubt that NPR has become corrupted and is moving in a bad direction. I'm only suggesting that they were able to destroy PBS first and NPR is still a work in progress. Come back in a couple of years and see where NPR is by then.

My local station switches to BBC programming after midnight. That is like listening to Fox News with a cockney accent. Throughout the 2012 campaign, every commentary was anti-Obama, pro-Romney. Every question and comment has a bias as if being presented by the Chamber of Commerce.

And like MSNBC's prison programming, the BBC overnight finds a way to cover almost nothing but atrocities hour after hour. If a person listened to that all the time, they'd think the only thing happening on this planet is Africans slashing and raping each other. I don't deny that is important to cover, but it is not the only important news in the world. And much of that gory stuff is rehashes of stuff that happened 20 or 40 years ago, not current news. I believe most of that is the British aristocrats trying to keep alive the good old days of the empire when they lorded over all those black people in Africa. Did we mention what primitives they are ...?

[sendero]

73. By the time the Iraq war of 2002 ish came around..

.... NPR was no better than Fox News with a fake liberal veneer.

I might not have noticed that PBS had slipped also, series like Frontline seemed to still be on track.

[corkhead]

43. I saw the program description last night and deliberately chose to skip watching it because

it looked like it was going to be an hour of Koch Bros. claptrap. I hate to see that assessment was correct.

Sad that this show has lowered itself to the quality level of what the Discovery Channel was before it went all in with so-called "reality" shows. Nova used to be intellectually stimulating, but now it seems to be written to the level of a 6th grader.

[Shankapotomus]

44. What we need at PBS is

a wealthy liberal donor to offer to match or exceed David Koch's contribution if PBS will drop him.

[TexasProgresive]

45. Granted I only watched about 15 minutes towards the end of NOVA

My take is that the program was scripted and directed to appeal to the lowest common denominator. The tone was melodramatic and definitely put me off, sort of tabloid TV on PBS. When I tuned in it was highlighting the crevice volcano that last erupted over an 18 mile crevice for 8 months. I thought that it was sulfuric acid that killed the people in Iceland and western Europe before they finally revealed that. I mean it's a no brainer volcanism produces great quantities of sulfur dioxide and a volcano 18 miles long for 8 months would be a worse case scenario. Just knowing how another Icelandic volcano disrupted air travel because of an ash cloud gives evidence that an acid cloud could cover western Europe.

Back to the original post- I did not hear that part but it is true that the poor and unhealthy would suffer the worst. Wealthy people could just leave during the duration. People without the means to leave would suffer from respiratory distress and if that didn't kill them, famine would finish them off.

About the Koke brothers and other "sponsors" of PBS shows; I think that this was the plan. Re-pukes worked tirelessly to defund public radio and TV leaving the door open for wealthy "benefactors" to fill the gap. This has given them control of content to what we see and hear today.

[BlueStreak]

55. It is Jiu-Jitsu

They inhabit the body of Nova rather than try to create a competing program. They let the Nova producers do the normal imagery and more-or-less normal dialog through most of the show. But they they take over the program ending to turn it into a hysteria, anti-government, pro-fossil fuel, anti-regulation hit piece, and the majority of viewers (even some people here) just accept that as if it were credible and truth.

It is much more powerful to do it this way. Not only do you inherit the credibility of the PBS and Nova brands, but you eliminate a voice that would otherwise be speaking the truth.

[2banon]

62. exactly so.. n/t

[bluestate10]

53. In a world of free media, people that think they can control ideas by buying up old

media outlets are foolishly wasting their money. In a world of social media and instant access to facts, only the opinions of the lazy or cheap can be influenced via one sided arguments.

[2banon]

64. most people seem to be pretty lazy when it comes to sourcing

wanting it served up on a platter.. old and new media share the same problem. control content when it comes to "news" and analysis of significant matters to our lives and decisions we make based on that information.

[betterdemsonly]

56. Obama appointed another republican to head pbs

This is the predictable result. Nova has been called out numerous times for David H Koch's influence particularly on climate science, but it has also promoted social darwinism.

http://www.fair.org/blog/2010/09/08/is-nova-catering-to-its-anti-science-sugar-daddy/

Obama just doesn't see this as a problem.

[2banon]

65. No Surprise, but still infuriating.

[truebrit71]

63. I believe the Koch brothers actually got PBS to pull a documentary last year...

..that was specifically critical of their activities...does anyone else recall that?

I always cringe when I see a Frontline or Nova piece that is tangentially sponsored by those rat-bastards...it makes me question the impartiality of the information I am about to see...Frontline is one of the few shows that still seems to do proper in-depth reporting on important issues...

[2banon]

66. Frontline.. Used to watch it with full faith in objectivity and facts.

I still watch occasionally, but with veils pulled up over eyes.. sad.

[2banon]

67. forgot to mention, I seem to recall that happening with pulling a doc critical of the Koch Brothers.

[BobUp]

68. There you go

I quit watching PBS after watching and finding out who was paying or funding PBS, Koch? aaahhh, that's it, I'm done, this was a couple of months ago.

Kochs dabble in a bit of everything, people here and elsewhere need to know who the brothers are, are what they own, fund and represent.

http://www.boycottkochbrothers.com/

http://www.boycottkochbrothers.com/#products

snippet
Koch Products & Companies Include:
- Angel Soft
- Angel Soft Ultra
- Brawny paper towels
- Dixie cups (& napkins & plates)
- Insulair cups
- Perfect Touch cups, paper products
- Quilted Northern
- Sparkle paper towels
- Stainmaster
- Vanity Fair napkins & paper towels
- Mardis Gras napkins
- Zee Napkins
- Georgia Pacific products


Home/Office papers:
- Advantage
- Image Plus
- Spectrum

Other:
- American Greetings
(Kochs own minority
share)
- Guardian Glass
(Kochs own 44%)
- Stainmaster
- Lycra
- Teflon

Building supplies:
- Georgia Pacific

and of course, the state of Wisconsin

[BlueStreak]

70. You didn't mention the core of their universe

oil refining and distribution.

They own the process for refining gasoline. Every gallon you buy puts some money in their pockets one way or another.

[BobUp]

74. aww sheet

I just found out last night that 11 repuglicons are going to launch an effort to impeach our prez because of changes he made to the ACA, I'm becoming more ill every day.

The stupids have forgotten that the Social Security Act would not be here had it not been signed into law by Executive Order by FDR.

Thanks for reminding me of how heavily involved they are in the petroleum industry, and also in the building materials industry ( roofing and siding materials) I did forget about that, but that's what happens when you're an old fart, you forget things.