Psychopaths 'r' us

The town of Seatac in Washington state has a ballot initiative next month that would require most (though not all--smaller ones are exempt) retail businesses and hotels at its busy airport (again, businesses outside its busy airport would be exempt) to pay their employees a living wage of $15.  For those of you who may be republicans, that comes to $600 a week if (and that's a big if) you can get 40 hours a week, or just a little over $31,000 a year.

For some odd ass reason, this has drawn the ire of the Koch Brothers, and one of their front groups, Donors Trust, has donated big dollars to help defeat the initiative.  The big question is:  why?

I mean really--it's not like the projected 6000 people who will see this raise are going to suddenly find themselves in the rarefied air of the Koch brothers world.  People making $31,000 a year don't run around lighting cigars with $100 bills or staying in $10,000 a night hotel suites.  Christ, even if you have a spouse making the same amount yearly, the best you could hope for would be to maybe own a small home, a new car every seven or eight years, and take the kids to DisneyWorld once before they get too old for the Magic Kingdom.

It's also not as if the Koch brothers are going to pay for it all by their lonesome.  Chances are they don't spend that much time in Seatac, and even if their Big Mac (and I'm sure the Koch brothers eat at McDonald's regularly) went from $4 to $4.50 on their next visit it's going to lessen their billions about as much as removing a single grain of sand lessens the Sahara Desert.

In the end, it's probably little more than a complete lack of empathy for anybody who isn't them.  They don't give a shit as long as they continue accumulating more and more money.

King Midas' greed caused him to starve to death as his touch turned all his food into gold.  Wonder what the fate of the Koch brothers will be?

Peace,
emaycee