It is my personal perception, that billionaires like Soros and the Koch Brothers and the Walton family and Gates, among a long list, are using their billions to improperly influence the rules the rest of us mortals must live by. How else to explain Walmart paying wages ($9 hr) that are far below the federally established poverty level of 11.90 an hour, and making it up for that corporate strategic plan, by being subsidized by the taxpayers to the tune of $7.2B annually? About $6.2B of that goes to personnel for subsidized housing, food stamps, and Medicaid. In other words, WM is not paying for the benefits they supply their slaves. We taxpayers are. I can think of better places for our country to spend $7.2B, and I don't mean overseas. Money-deficient schools, some of which are crumbling in more ways than one; roads and bridges that are crumbling, no mistake about that, etc.

Bill Gates is pouring some of his money into changing the ways schools operate. Is he suggesting? No, he is offering his idea of school improvement programs to schools along with some computer freebies and every supt. starts bowing down to his Foundation. I am all for free enterprise and the amassing of fortunes. It is what the recipients do with their profits that concerns me. You can't take it with you, so why not spend it on the greater good? That is what drives me nuts about the oil industry. Double-figure quarterly profits in the BILLIONs were normal for years until the recent dip in crude and Brent crude barrel prices. The irony is they bring it in over the very road and across and under the very bridges that their trucks have helped deteriorate, and need some serious repair and replacement work. Do we ever, ever hear of any of the American or foreign oil conglomerates announce they are donating funds to fix those items, anywhere in America? What we get, are media ads touting how they need their profits to increase technology and find more oil. World is awash in the stuff, and yes there is an extraction and manuf. cost. But look at their quarterly profit statements easily accessible on line, then wonder why your local school district has to have booster clubs to raise funds for basic education needs.

Greed wasn't so dominate a topic once upon a time. Somewhere along the line these past 40 years we've gotten out of balance in America. Living wage jobs are fewer. Corporations buy smaller companies under the guise of having responsibilities to their stockholders, and turn around and close those companies, laying off thousands, whose lost income effect ripples through their communities. We have been living in such a world for at least 25 years. Who is going to be able to keep buying stock if no one is working a decent paying job to buy stock? We're already at that point.

Mr. Soros is reputedly behind some of the social unrest in this country. He is a life-long committed, dedicated socialist and a long-time financial supporter of, wait for it, Pres. Obama.

The Koch brothers have, in my opinion, wielded undue influence up and down all the halls and cloakrooms of Congress, influencing votes, bill outcomes, Supreme Court rulings.

I am pretty sure that the FF did not have this evolution in mind when they wrote our founding documents. Our give-away welfare programs are out of control. Our tax code has more holes than swiss cheese. The five year farm bill Congress passed a year ago to the tune of about $962m, was so complicated and so loaded with pork that Congress admitted publicly they have NO IDEA how to fix it.

Read the Patriot Act some day. I still haven't been able to finish it. Talk about loss of freedoms.

Read the Affordable Healthcare Act, that Ms. Pelosi admitted "we didn't read it so we don't know what's in it." This, is your representative (employees) govt. in action.

A plutocracy is an ugly thing, sir. In my opinion, we have been one for some time. Probably reached it about the time corporations started banking off-shore to avoid the IRS reach, banking laws, etc. Read the spin that corps. put out every year about how they "pay taxes, yes we do." Someday I want to read BOTH sets of books.

In summary, we created our own problems. We have a do-nothing Congress completely at odds with the Executive Branch. We have a bunch of lifetime bench sitters on the Supreme Court that have, in recent years, rolled back all major court decisions regarding integrating schools and corporate campaign contribution ceilings. We have twice elected a man to the WH who to this day refuses to discuss or provide the most basic documentation about his birth, background, educational institutions attended and graduated from, or held any kind of job that would remotely prepare him for the mess in which he finds himself today, partly by his own inabilities, and partly by a citizenry that refuses to vote or care. Waiting in the wings is Bilary Clinton, who has no idea what truth might actually be, not a scintilla of character or integrity, but retains the ability to fast and double-talk her way out of everything disgusting she does, which is everything. She will gather votes next year because too many sheep think it will be cute/great to have a woman in the WH finally. We made that "first" mistake 6 years ago. Let us not repeat.