The Great Tulip Bubble

“For do I now persuade men, or God? Or do I seek to please men? For if I yet sought to please men, I should not be the servant of Christ.” — Galatians 1:10 (KJ21)

The time of Easter is a time for renewal and redemption in the Christian World. It is also a time of renewal for nature as spring brings new growth to the planet. It is a time for tulips.

The tulip is a perennial, bulbous plant with showy flowers in the genus Tulipa, of which up to 109 species have been described and which belongs to the family Liliaceae. The genus's native range extends from as far west as Southern Europe, Anatolia (Turkey), Israel, Palestine, North Africa, and Iran to the Northwest of China. The tulip's center of diversity is in the Pamir, Hindu Kush, and Tien Shan mountains. A number of species and many hybrid cultivars are grown in gardens, as potted plants, or to display as fresh-cut flowers. Most cultivars of tulip are derived from Tulipa gesneriana. [Source-Wikipedia]

Okay the above is the official definition of this beautiful spring flower, but now it’s time for the story of the Great Tulip Bubble.

Like the housing bubble and other similar bubbles the Great Tulip Bubble was created by speculators and people who thought they could make a killing from tulips.

It al began when the Spanish discovered great qualities of silver in the Andes Mountains of South America in 1545. Once the Spanish chemists learned how to refine this South American silver by using cobalt rather than the traditional mercury the boom in Spanish silver began. The Spanish conquest of the New World led to mining of  silver  that dramatically eclipsed anything that had come before that time. Between 1500 and 1800, Bolivia, Peru and Mexico accounted for over 85 percent of world production and trade.

The Spanish began minting the silver into coins where the mines were and shipping them back to Spain on their galleons. These coins were known as the Spanish Dollar or “pieces of eight” and they became the first universal currency. This universal currency opened vast amounts of trade across the world and allowed The Netherlands to become a great commercial center due to their mercantile and shipping proficiency and allowed the Dutch to break the monopoly in the Baltic States held by the Hanseatic League. Amsterdam became one of the greatest commercial cities of the world and the Dutch citizenry grew in wealth. They became so wealthy that they began looking for other things to invest in. They were looking for something of beauty that the people wanted and tulips looked like a sure thing.

Tulips have long held a significant role in Dutch history and culture ever since they were introduced to the Netherlands from the Ottoman Empire in the mid-1500s. So strong was the Dutch love affair with tulips during the Dutch Golden Age of the mid-1600s that a tulip bulb bubble or "Tulip Mania" even occurred. Generally considered to be the first recorded financial bubble, the Tulip Mania of 1636-1637 was an episode in which tulip bulb prices were propelled by speculators to incredible heights before collapsing and plunging the Dutch economy into a severe crisis that lasted for many years.

The Golden Century is the name of the period in Dutch history between 1600 and 1700 when the port city of Amsterdam was one of the richest of all cities in Western Europe due to its strong role in international trade. Trading companies such as the VOC (Verenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie), commonly known as the Dutch East India Company, became dominant players in the Netherlands’ trade with Indonesia and other far-away lands. Amsterdam’s booming economy led to a flourishing of the arts and architecture, as well as trade in blue glass, china and other luxury goods.

Dutch trade with foreign lands led to the importation of exotic goods that were never seen before by Europeans. Tulips were first introduced to Europe from Turkey when a sultan sent bulbs and seeds to Vienna. Shortly after 1554, these seeds were sent to Amsterdam, where their popularity began to rise. A university study in 1593 led to the discovery that tulips could withstand the harsh northern-European climate, which further boosted their desirability in the Netherlands. With their intensely colorful petals, tulips were unlike any other flower popular in Europe at that time and having tulips growing in one’s garden became an important status symbol.

Tulip plants originate in the form of tulip bulbs which do not flower until seven to twelve years later. Between April and May, tulips bloom for about one week, with bulbs appearing between June and September, thus confining Dutch sales to that season. A rudimentary derivatives market, similar to modern-day options and futures contracts, eventually arose so that traders could conduct trade in tulips all year round. Traders entered into tulip contracts by signing contracts for future tulip purchases before a notary. The very active tulip contract market eventually became an integral part of the overall booming Dutch tulip industry.

As the Dutch tulip market became increasingly sophisticated, tulips were classified into groups and priced according to their rarity. In general, solid-colored tulips were worth less than those with multiple colors. Couleren was the classification for solid-colored red, white, or yellow tulips, rosen referred to multi-colored tulips, often red, pink, or white and violetten described the white tulips with purple or lilac on them. Bizarden were the most popular tulips, with a yellow background and red, brown, or purple coloration. Tulips that were infected with the benign mosaic virus, which caused "flames" of color to appear upon the petals, sold at a premium due to their unique beauty and rarity

Tulip prices steadily rose with their growing popularity and bulbs were purchased at higher and higher prices by speculators who planned to turn around and sell them for a profit, similar to modern-day house "flippers." From 1634 to 1637, an index of Dutch tulip prices (see chart below) soared from approximately one guilder per bulb to a lofty sixty guilders per bulb. Traders who sold their bulbs for a profit began to reinvest all of their profit into new tulip bulb contracts or new bulbs to sell to other Dutch citizens or to take with them on trips around the world to sell alongside with spices from the Dutch East India Company. Many merchants sold all of their belongings to purchase a few tulip bulbs for the purpose of cultivating and selling them for more profit than they could have ever made in a lifetime as a merchant. As the tulip bulb bubble crescendoed, already pricey tulip bulbs experienced a twentyfold price explosion in just a single month By the peak of tulip mania in February of 1637, a single tulip bulb was worth about ten times a craftsman’s annual income and a single Viceroy tulip bulb was allegedly exchanged for the following goods.

• Two lasts of wheat
• Four lasts of rye
• Four fat oxen
• Eight fat swine
• Twelve fat sheep
• Two hogsheads of wine
• Four tuns of beer
• Two tons of butter
• 1,000 lb. of cheese
• A complete bed
• A suit of clothes
• A silver drinking cup

Successful Dutch tulip bulb traders, the archaic counterparts to the day traders of the late 1990s Dot-com bubble and the house flippers of the mid-2000s U.S. housing bubble, could earn up to 60,000 florins in a month– approximately $61,710 in current U.S. dollars. Tulip bulb speculation became so widespread by 1636 that they were traded on Amsterdam’s Stock Exchange and in Rotterdam, Haarlem, Leyden, Alkmaar, Hoorn, and other towns. Around the same time, tulip speculation even spread to Paris and England, where tulips were traded on the London Stock Exchange. In both cities, traders strove to push tulip prices up to the lofty levels seen in Amsterdam but were only moderately successful in their attempt.

Astronomically-high tulip bulb prices resulted in some equally astonishing anecdotes such as the sailor who mistakenly ate an extremely rare Semper Augustus tulip bulb thinking it was an onion. This "onion" was so valuable that it could have fed his whole ship’s crew for an entire year. The hapless sailor was jailed for several months for his innocent but costly mistake. Another similar anecdote is of a traveling English botanist who was unaware of the Dutch tulip mania of the time, who peeled and dissected a wealthy Dutchman’s four thousand florin Admiral Von der Eyk tulip bulb mistaking it for an unusual species of onion. The bewildered English traveler was quickly led through the streets, followed by a mob, to be brought before a judge who sentenced him to prison until he could pay for the damage.

Like all bubbles, the Dutch tulip bulb bubble continued to inflate beyond people’s wildest expectations until it abruptly "popped" in the winter of 1636-37. A default on a tulip bulb contract by a buyer in Haarlem was the main bubble-popping catalyst and caused the tulip bulb market to violently implode as sellers overwhelmed the market and buyers virtually disappeared altogether. Some traders attempted to support prices, to no avail. Within just a few days, tulip bulbs were worth only a hundredth of their former prices, resulting in a full-blown panic throughout Holland. Dealers refused to honor contracts, further damaging confidence in the tulip bulb market. Eventually, the government attempted to stem the tulip market meltdown by offering to honor contracts at 10% of their face value, which only caused the market to plunge even further. The brutal popping of the tulip bulb bubble ended the Dutch Golden Age and hurled the country into a mild economic depression that lasted for several years. The traumatic tulip bulb crash resulted in a suspicion toward speculative investments in Dutch culture for a very long time after. One also has to wonder if this is how the Dutch reputation for frugality arose!

Looking back through time it’s easy to laugh at the foolish Dutch, paying such prices for simple tulip bulbs, but an economic bubble was nothing new even then. We’re still doing the same sorts of things today. Human beings have always been prone to want things that are difficult to get, especially if everyone else seems to be doing it. Nutty behavior becomes commonplace when enough people are following along. It’s only afterwards that we stand back and shake our heads and wonder what came over us.

Tulips are without are my favorite flowers. While not having a distinct and pleasurable odor like roses or lilacs their variety of colors and delicate petals make them a sight for the eyes, especially when they are in fields and you a photographer.

One the world’s best places to view thousands of tulips is at Keukenhof Gardens in the Netherlands. Keukenhof Gardens are located near the little town of Lisse, just a short drive from Amsterdam. According to the official website for the Keukenhof Park, approximately 7,000,000 (seven million) flower bulbs are planted annually in the park, which covers an area of 32 hectares (79 acres). The gardens are open annually from mid-March to mid-May. The best time to view the tulips, however, is around mid-April, depending on the weather.

My wife a I visited Keukenhof Gardens in mid-May, 2004 and the tulips were in full bloom, but some of the fields had already harvested for their bulbs. It quite a sight to see fields of tulips arranged by color crawling over the gardens. The tulip may not be the investment it was once, but they are a beautiful sight to behold.

Some Photos from my visit the Keukenhof Gardens in 2004

You can view more photos by clicking here

The Men Who Built America

“It is not the employer who pays the wages. Employers only handle the money. It is the customer who pays the wages.” — Henry Ford

In recent years there has been an increasing scorn for capitalism in this country and around the world. Movements like Occupy caught a great deal attention last year as they staged protests and occupied parks in New York City and Oakland. Their beef was with the greed of capitalists and bankers. They wanted government to provide more and more assistance for those who could not find satisfying jobs.

There is a great series playing on the History Channel about the Men Who Built America. The series profiles John D. Rockefeller, Cornelius Vanderbilt, Andrew Carnegie, Henry Ford, and J.P. Morgan and shows how they turned ideas into millions of dollars and in the process they built this nation.

John D. Rockefeller, Cornelius Vanderbilt, Andrew Carnegie, Henry Ford and J.P. Morgan rose from obscurity and in the process built modern America. Their names hang on street signs, are etched into buildings and are a part of the fabric of history. These men created the American Dream and were the engine of capitalism as they transformed everything they touched in building the oil, rail, steel, shipping, automobile, and finance industries. Their paths crossed repeatedly as they elected presidents, set economic policies and influenced major events of the 50 most formative years this country has ever known. From the Civil War to the Great Depression and World War I, they led the way.

Using state of the art computer generated imagery that incorporates 12 million historical negatives, many made available for the first time by the Library of Congress, this series brings back to life the world they knew and the one they created. The event series shows how these men created the greatest superpower the world has ever seen. In the series we see how their historic achievements came to create the America of today.

The series begins with the life and achievements of Cornelius Vanderbilt. Shipping and railroad tycoon Cornelius Vanderbilt (1794-1877) was a self-made multi-millionaire who became one of the wealthiest Americans of the 19th century. As a boy, he worked with his father, who operated a boat that ferried cargo between Staten Island, New York, where they lived, and Manhattan. After working as a steamship captain, Vanderbilt went into business for himself in the late 1820s, and eventually became one of the country’s largest steamship operators. In the process, the Commodore, as he was publicly nicknamed, gained a reputation for being fiercely competitive and ruthless. In the 1860s, he shifted his focus to the railroad industry, where he built another empire and helped make railroad transportation more efficient. When Vanderbilt died, he was worth more than $100 million ($2.6 billion in today’s dollars).

In the early 1850s, during the California Gold Rush, a time before transcontinental railroads, Vanderbilt launched a steamship service that transported prospectors from New York to San Francisco via a route across Nicaragua. His route was faster than an established route across Panama, and much speedier than the other alternative, around Cape Horn at the southern tip of South America, which could take months. Vanderbilt’s new line was an instant success, earning more than $1 million (about $26 million in today’s money) a year.

In the 1860s, Vanderbilt shifted his focus from shipping to the railroad industry, which was entering a period of great expansion. He gained control of a number of railway lines operating between Chicago and New York and established an interregional railroad system. According to T.J. Styles, author of “The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt”: “This was a major transformation of the railroad network, which previously had been fragmented into numerous short railroads, each with its own procedures, timetables, and rolling stock. The creation of a coherent system spanning several states lowered costs, increased efficiency, and sped up travel and shipment times.”

Unlike the Gilded Age titans who followed him, such as steel magnate Andrew Carnegie (1835-1919) and oil mogul John Rockefeller (1839-1937), Vanderbilt did not own grand homes or give away much of his vast wealth to charitable causes. In fact, the only substantial philanthropic donation he made was in 1873, toward the end of his life, when he gave $1 million to build and endow Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. (In a nod to its founder’s nickname, the school’s athletic teams are called the Commodores.)

John D. Rockefeller (1839-1937), founder of the Standard Oil Company, became one of the world’s wealthiest men and a major philanthropist. Born into modest circumstances in upstate New York, he entered the then-fledgling oil business in 1863 by investing in a Cleveland, Ohio, refinery. In 1870, he established Standard Oil, which by the early 1880s controlled some 90 percent of U.S. refineries and pipelines. Critics accused Rockefeller of engaging in unethical practices, such as predatory pricing and colluding with railroads to eliminate his competitors, in order to gain a monopoly in the industry. In 1911, the U.S. Supreme Court found Standard Oil in violation of anti-trust laws and ordered it to dissolve. During his life Rockefeller donated more than $500 million to various philanthropic causes

In 1865, Rockefeller borrowed money to buy out some of his partners and take control of the refinery, which had become the largest in Cleveland. Over the next few years, he acquired new partners and expanded his business interests in the growing oil industry. At the time, kerosene, derived from petroleum and used in lamps, was becoming an economic staple. In 1870, Rockefeller formed the Standard Oil Company of Ohio, along with his younger brother William (1841-1922), Henry Flagler (1830-1913) and a group of other men. John Rockefeller was its president and largest shareholder.

Standard Oil gained a monopoly in the oil industry by buying rival refineries and developing companies for distributing and marketing its products around the globe. In 1882, these various companies were combined into the Standard Oil Trust, which would control some 90 percent of the nation’s refineries and pipelines. In order to exploit economies of scale, Standard Oil did everything from build its own oil barrels to employ scientists to figure out new uses for petroleum by-products.

Scottish-born Andrew Carnegie (1835-1919) was an American industrialist who amassed a fortune in the steel industry then became a major philanthropist. Carnegie worked in a Pittsburgh cotton factory as a boy before rising to the position of division superintendent of the Pennsylvania Railroad in 1859. While working for the railroad, he invested in various ventures, including iron and oil companies, and made his first fortune by the time he was in his early 30s. In the early 1870s, he entered the steel business, and over the next two decades became a dominant force in the industry. In 1901, he sold the Carnegie Steel Company to banker John Pierpont Morgan for $480 million. Carnegie then devoted himself to philanthropy, eventually giving away more than $350 million.

Ambitious and hard-working, he went on to hold a series of jobs, including messenger in a telegraph office and secretary and telegraph operator for the superintendent of the Pittsburgh division of the Pennsylvania Railroad In 1859, Carnegie succeeded his boss as railroad division superintendent. While in this position, he made profitable investments in a variety of businesses, including coal, iron and oil companies and a manufacturer of railroad sleeping cars.

After leaving his post with the railroad in 1865, Carnegie continued his ascent in the business world. With the U.S. railroad industry then entering a period of rapid growth, he expanded his railroad-related investments and founded such ventures as an iron bridge building company and a telegraph firm, often using his connections to win insider contracts. By the time he was in his early 30s, Carnegie had become a very wealthy man.

In the early 1870s, Carnegie co-founded his first steel company, near Pittsburgh. Over the next few decades, he created a steel empire, maximizing profits and minimizing inefficiencies through ownership of factories, raw materials and transportation infrastructure involved in steel-making. In 1892, his primary holdings were consolidated to form Carnegie Steel Company.

The steel magnate considered himself a champion of the working man; however, his reputation was marred by a violent labor strike in 1892 at his Homestead, Pennsylvania, steel mill. After union workers protested wage cuts, Carnegie Steel general manager Henry Clay Frick (1848-1919), who was determined to break the union, locked the workers out of the plant. Andrew Carnegie was on vacation in Scotland during the strike, but put his support in Frick, who called in some 300 Pinkerton armed guards to protect the plant. A bloody battle broke out between the striking workers and the Pinkertons, leaving at least 10 men dead. The state militia then was brought in to take control of the town, union leaders were arrested and Frick hired replacement workers for the plant. After five months, the strike ended with the union’s defeat. Additionally, the labor movement at Pittsburgh-area steel mills was crippled for the next four decades.

In 1901, banker John Pierpont Morgan (1837-1913) purchased Carnegie Steel for some $480 million, making Andrew Carnegie one of the world’s richest men. That same year, Morgan merged Carnegie Steel with a group of other steel businesses to form U.S. Steel, the world’s first billion-dollar corporation.

One of the most powerful bankers of his era, J.P. (John Pierpont) Morgan (1837-1913) financed railroads and helped organize U.S. Steel, General Electric and other major corporations. The Connecticut native followed his wealthy father into the banking business in the late 1850s, and in 1871 formed a partnership with Philadelphia banker Anthony Drexel. In 1895, their firm was reorganized as J.P. Morgan & Company, a predecessor of the modern-day financial giant JPMorgan Chase. Morgan used his influence to help stabilize American financial markets during several economic crises, including the panic of 1907. However, he faced criticism that he had too much power and was accused of manipulating the nation’s financial system for his own gain. The Gilded Age titan spent a significant portion of his wealth amassing a vast art collection.

During the late 19th century, a period when the U.S. railroad industry experienced rapid overexpansion and heated competition (the nation’s first transcontinental rail line was completed in 1869), Morgan was heavily involved in reorganizing and consolidating a number of financially troubled railroads. In the process, he gained control of significant portions of these railroads’ stock and eventually controlled an estimated one-sixth of America’s rail lines.

By the start of the 20th century, Morgan’s focus had shifted from railroads to other industries. In 1901, he bought the Carnegie Steel Company from Andrew Carnegie (1835-1919) for some $480 million then merged it with a group of other steel companies to create U.S. Steel, the world’s first billion-dollar corporation. Morgan also helped engineer the deals that established General Electric, International Harvester, American Telephone & Telegraph and other industrial giants. In 1902, he was instrumental in the formation of International Mercantile Marine (IMM), a conglomeration of transatlantic shipping companies. A decade later, the Titanic, owned by one of the IMM companies, White Star, sank on its maiden voyage after hitting an iceberg. Morgan, who attended the ship’s christening in 1911, was booked on the ill-fated April 1912 voyage but had to cancel.

During Morgan’s era, the United States had no central bank so he used his influence to help save the nation from disaster during several economic crises. In 1895, Morgan assisted in rescuing America’s gold standard when he headed a banking syndicate that loaned the federal government more than $60 million. In another instance, the financial panic of 1907, Morgan held a meeting of the country’s top financiers at his New York City home and convinced them to bail out various faltering financial institutions in order to stabilize the markets.

While working as an engineer for the Edison Illuminating Company in Detroit, Henry Ford (1863-1947) built his first gasoline-powered horseless carriage, the Quadricycle, in the shed behind his home. In 1903, he established the Ford Motor Company, and five years later the company rolled out the first Model T. In order to meet overwhelming demand for the revolutionary vehicle, Ford introduced revolutionary new mass-production methods, including large production plants, the use of standardized, interchangeable parts and, in 1913, the world's first moving assembly line for cars. Enormously influential in the industrial world, Ford was also outspoken in the political realm. Ford drew controversy for his pacifist stance during the early years of World War I and earned widespread criticism for his anti-Semitic views and writings.

A month after the Ford Motor Company was established, the first Ford car—the two-cylinder, eight-horsepower Model A—was assembled at a plant on Mack Avenue in Detroit. At the time, only a few cars were assembled per day, and groups of two or three workers built them by hand from parts that were ordered from other companies. Ford was dedicated to the production of an efficient and reliable automobile that would be affordable for everyone; the result was the Model T, which made its debut in October 1908.

The "Tin Lizzie," as the Model T was known, was an immediate success, and Ford soon had more orders than the company could satisfy. As a result, he put into practice techniques of mass production that would revolutionize American industry, including the use of large production plants; standardized, interchangeable parts; and the moving assembly line. Mass production significantly cut down on the time required to produce an automobile, which allowed costs to stay low. In 1914, Ford also increased the daily wage for an eight-hour day for his workers to $5 (up from $2.34 for nine hours), setting a standard for the industry. The mass production techniques Henry Ford championed allowed the Ford Motor Company to turn out one Model T every 24 seconds.

So during this great age of industrial expansion from the end of the Civil War to the end of the First World War what bound these giants of industry together? Firstly these men had fierce completive and entrepreneurial spirits. With the exception of J.P. Morgan they came from modest working-class roots and were not high-born. Second is that they wanted to win and would not take no for an answer. They hated competition and would take whatever measures needed to defeat that competition. Thirdly they all had a vision of what their efforts could achieve. Fourth is that they were not afraid of long hours and hard work and expected such from those around them. Fifth is that when they saw an opportunity they were quick to take action and if that opportunity did not pan out they were equally as quick to move on to other opportunities that would arise, especially from the work of others. And sixth, and perhaps the most important is that they realized the needs and wants of their customers and did all they could to keep them well feed.

In 1862, the Pacific Railroad Act chartered the Central Pacific and the Union Pacific Railroad Companies, and tasked them with building a transcontinental railroad that would link the United States from east to west. Over the next seven years, the two companies would race toward each other from Sacramento, California on the one side and Omaha, Nebraska on the other, struggling against great risks before they met at Promontory, Utah, on May 10, 1869.

By the 1880s the nation was overbuilt of railroads and many were losing money — including those owned by Vanderbilt. He was looking for new customers willing to ship goods on his lines. At the same time John D. Rockefeller was attempting to corner the market on kerosene — the fuel used to light homes and businesses across the nation. He needed a secure and cheap method of shipping his kerosene from his refineries to market. He also renamed his company Standard Oil implying that his kerosene was the standard on which all others should be compared with.

To insure his shipping Rockefeller struck a deal with Vanderbilt to ship exclusively on his railroads — namely the New York Central Railroad. Both men were wary of each other, but kerosene was making both Rockefeller and Vanderbilt rich. Starting in 1853, Thomas A. Scott of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company employed Andrew Carnegie as a secretary/telegraph operator at a salary of $4.00 per week. At age 18, the precocious youth began a rapid advancement through the company, becoming the superintendent of the Pittsburgh Division. His employment by the Pennsylvania Railroad Company would be vital to his later success. The railroads were the first big businesses in America, and the Pennsylvania was one of the largest of them all.

This did not sit well with Rockefeller. He was fearful that the cabal of Vanderbilt’s NYCRR and Scott’s PRRC would raise their prices and damage Standard Oil. So what did Rockefeller do — he built a pipeline and cancelled his exclusive deals with Vanderbilt and Scott.

In 1877, Standard clashed with the Pennsylvania Railroad, its chief hauler. Rockefeller had envisioned the use of pipelines as an alternative transport system for oil and began a campaign to build and acquire them. The railroad, seeing Standard’s incursion into the transportation and pipeline fields, struck back and formed a subsidiary to buy and build oil refineries and pipelines. Standard countered and held back its shipments, and with the help of other railroads, started a price war that dramatically reduced freight payments and caused labor unrest as well. Rockefeller eventually prevailed and the railroad sold all its oil interests to Standard. But in the aftermath of that battle, in 1879 the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania indicted Rockefeller on charges of monopolizing the oil trade, starting an avalanche of similar court proceedings in other states and making a national issue of Standard Oil’s business practices. Rockefeller was creating vertical and horizontal monopolies — but he was serving the public with cheap kerosene to light their homes.

Standard Oil added its own pipelines, tank cars, and home delivery network. It kept oil prices low to stave off competitors, made its products affordable to the average household, and to increase market penetration, sometimes sold below cost if necessary. It developed over 300 oil-based products from tar to paint to Vaseline petroleum jelly to chewing gum. By the end of the 1870s, Standard was refining over 90% of the oil in the U.S. Rockefeller had already become a millionaire.

Now enter Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla.

In his 84 years, Thomas Edison acquired a record number of 1,093 patents (singly or jointly) and was the driving force behind such innovations as the phonograph, the incandescent light bulb and one of the earliest motion picture cameras. He also created the world's first industrial research laboratory. Known as the "Wizard of Menlo Park," for the New Jersey town where he did some of his best-known work, Edison had become one of the most famous men in the world by the time he was in his 30s. In addition to his talent for invention, Edison was also a successful manufacturer and businessman who was highly skilled at marketing his inventions — and himself — to the public.

Serbian-American engineer and physicist Nikola Tesla (1856-1943) made dozens of breakthroughs in the production, transmission and application of electric power. He invented the first alternating current (AC) motor and developed AC generation and transmission technology. Though he was famous and respected, he was never able to translate his copious inventions into long-term financial success — unlike his early employer and chief rival, Thomas Edison.

Edison not only invented the electric light bulb he also developed a means of transmission of electricity — direct current (DC). His assistant at the time was a 29-year old Serbian immigrant named Nikola Tesla. In 1885, Tesla claimed that he could redesign Edison's inefficient motor and generators, making an improvement in both service and economy. According to Tesla, Edison remarked, "There's fifty thousand dollars in it for you — if you can do it" — this has been noted as an odd statement from an Edison whose company was stingy with pay and who did not have that sort of cash on hand. After months of work, Tesla fulfilled the task and inquired about payment. Edison, claiming that he was only joking, replied, "Tesla, you don't understand our American humor." Instead, Edison offered a $10 a week raise over Tesla's $18 per week salary; Tesla refused the offer and immediately resigned.

Tesla immediately teamed up with George Westinghouse who was famous for his development for air brakes on train cars. And now the current war began. Edison, who had partnered with J.P. Morgan were pushing DC while Westinghouse was pushing Tesla’s alternating current (AC). When Sing-Sing prison in New York was looking for a more “humane” method of executing prisoners they developed an electric chair using AC. The first trial was a botched failure and Edison and Morgan immediately began a nasty public relations campaign hyping the dangers of AC. This set Westinghouse back and in order avoid bankruptcy and convince investors to buy into AC Tesla signed all of his patent rights over to Westinghouse. At this time the Niagara Falls Power Company was building a massive hydro-electric generating plant to service the entire Northeast. They were taking bids from companies to provide the generators and were considering Westinghouse’s AC system and the Edison/Morgan DC system. The bidding war had begun.

In order to convince the public of the safety and efficiency of AC Westinghouse and Tesla worked feverishly to wire the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition (AKA Chicago World’s Fair) with thousands of lights. The Morgan/Edison (now General Electric) bid was $1.8 million and later reduced to $554,000. The Westinghouse/Tesla bid was $399,000. Westinghouse won the bid and had invent their own light bulb as General Electric refused them the rights to use the Edison bulb.

When the exposition opened and the great illumination was viewed by the public it convinced the Niagara Power to select the AC generators. Westinghouse had won the battle of the currents.

Meanwhile John Rockefeller was looking on from the sidelines wondering what would happen to his kerosene business now that electricity was beginning to light the nation. Rockefeller urged his scientists to come up with new ways to use petroleum and they did. One of the waste products from the refining of kerosene — a substance that was being dumped into the fields — was something called gasoline. But there was little use for gasoline until the emergence of the auto industry and Henry Ford.

With the introduction of the Model T Ford in 1908 the public was beginning to drive gasoline powered vehicles. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil empire was not only saved it was expanded through his vertical monopolies of owing the wells producing the oil and the refineries to owning the pipelines carrying his products and the service stations dispensing gasoline to the ultimate customer. With the widespread growth of the electrical industry a door had closed to Rockefeller, but with the growth of the automobile industry another door had opened.

Even though Morgan had lost the current war it did not take him long to dump Edison and buy into AC making General Electric one of world’s largest corporation.

Meanwhile with the PRR suffering setbacks in the Railroad business causing Carnegie and Scott to part ways it did not take the Scotsman long to jump head first into the steel business. The Bessemer process for making steel was not only a technical success it was also a great business success. Carnegie’s Homestead plant began turning out steel on a massive scale. With the development of Otis’s elevator taller and taller buildings became possible. The demand for Carnegie’s steel grew and grew as skyscrapers began to dot the cities of the nation. It was not only steel for buildings but steel for bridges, automobiles, and ships.

Carnegie built Pittsburgh's Carnegie Steel Company, which he sold to J.P. Morgan in 1901 for $480 million, creating the U.S. Steel Corporation. Carnegie devoted the remainder of his life to large-scale philanthropy, with special emphasis on local libraries, world peace, education and scientific research. With the fortune he made from business, he built Carnegie Hall, and founded the Carnegie Corporation of New York, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Carnegie Institution for Science, Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland, Carnegie Hero Fund, Carnegie Mellon University and the Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh, among others. His life has often been referred to as a true "rags to riches" story.

These men, while not perfect by any means and sometimes unethical, created whole industries supporting other businesses. Edison’s light bulb gave rise to the lamp industry with companies like Tiffany making lamps for the wealthy — lamps that sell for thousands of dollars at auctions today. Henry Ford’s auto plants created thousands of small, entrepreneurial enterprises supplying the auto industry — even to today’s Auto Zone. The cheap availability of steel brought forth the home appliance industry and gasoline not only fueled millions of automobiles but also allowed two brothers and bicycle makers in Dayton, Ohio to make a successful flight of something called an airplane on the wind-swept dunes of Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. Two high school dropouts who pioneered a trillion dollar aviation industry — an industry that transports billions of passengers safely each year around the globe.

Today many of our K-12 students learn virtually nothing of these giants and what they do learn is biased away from capitalism and towards something call social justice, They learn of the purported “evils” of the capitalistic system and the virtues of the collective. They learn that government is the source of all technology and invention. They have no idea of why the lights go on in their homes or classrooms when the flip a switch on the wall. They go into a high-rise building not knowing how steel and elevators were responsible for the construction of those buildings. And they ride in mom’s SUV or school bus with no idea of how the fuel that runs that vehicle got there. Even musicians who perform at Carnegie Hall probably don’t realize how this magnificent edifice came to be. It was not government who built it but the money from Carnegie’s steel. Yes, Mr. Obama, they did build it — not government.

We owe a great deal to these capitalist who were willing to risk everything of their visions and efforts. Yes, they made profits for without profits nothing would have happened. The next time you flip a light switch or ride an elevator give some thought to the men who built America.

Happy Birthday to the Magic Kingdom

“You cannot legislate the poor into prosperity, by legislating the wealth out of prosperity.” — Dr. Adrian Rogers (1931-2005)

Disneyland, Walt Disney's metropolis of nostalgia, fantasy, and futurism, opens on July 17, 1955. The $17 million theme park was built on 160 acres of former orange groves in Anaheim, California, and soon brought in staggering profits. Today, Disneyland hosts more than 14 million visitors a year, who spend close to $3 billion.

Walt Disney, born in Chicago in 1901, worked as a commercial artist before setting up a small studio in Los Angeles to produce animated cartoons. In 1928, his short film Steamboat Willy, starring the character "Mickey Mouse," was a national sensation. It was the first animated film to use sound, and Disney provided the voice for Mickey. From there on, Disney cartoons were in heavy demand, but the company struggled financially because of Disney's insistence on ever-improving artistic and technical quality. His first feature-length cartoon, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1938), took three years to complete and was a great commercial success.

Snow White was followed by other feature-length classics for children, such as Pinocchio (1940), Dumbo (1941), and Bambi (1942). Fantasia (1940), which coordinated animated segments with famous classical music pieces, was an artistic and technical achievement. In Song of the South (1946), Disney combined live actors with animated figures, and beginning with Treasure Island in 1950 the company added live-action movies to its repertoire. Disney was also one of the first movie studios to produce film directly for television, and its Zorro and Davy Crockett series were very popular with children.

In the early 1950s, Walt Disney began designing a huge amusement park to be built near Los Angeles. He intended Disneyland to have educational as well as amusement value and to entertain adults and their children. Land was bought in the farming community of Anaheim California and construction began in 1954. In the summer of 1955, special invitations were sent out for the opening of Disneyland on July 17. Unfortunately, the pass was counterfeited and thousands of uninvited people were admitted into Disneyland on opening day. The park was not ready for the public: food and drink ran out, a women's high-heel shoe got stuck in the wet asphalt of Main Street USA, and the Mark Twain Steamboat nearly capsized from too many passengers.

Disneyland soon recovered, however, and attractions such as the Castle, Mr. Toad's Wild Ride, Snow White's Adventures, Space Station X-1, Jungle Cruise, and Stage Coach drew countless children and their parents. Special events and the continual building of new state-of-the-art attractions encouraged them to visit again. In 1965, work began on an even bigger Disney theme park and resort near Orlando, Florida. Walt Disney died in 1966, and Walt Disney World was opened in his honor on October 1, 1971. Epcot Center, Disney-MGM Studios, and Animal Kingdom were later added to Walt Disney World, and it remains Florida's premier tourist attraction. In 1983, Disneyland Tokyo opened in Japan, and in 1992 Disneyland Paris--or "EuroDisney"--opened to a mixed reaction in Marne-la-Vallee. The newest Disneyland, in Hong Kong, opened its doors in September 2005.

My first visit to Disneyland was in November of 1961 when my wife, 12-year old brother and I spent two weeks visiting California. Like millions of Americans we had watched he “Wonderful World of Disney” on TV each week. Walt Disney had a great deal going with ABC as each week he put on a commercial for the park in the guise of a TV show. People didn’t care they enjoyed the show and learned about Disneyland.

Disneyland did come easy for Walt Disney. He had dreamed of this park for years. He wanted an amusement park not dominated by rollercoasters and midway games. He wanted to focus on children by presenting a clean and safe environment where they could enjoy his fantasy world.

During the 1970’s my wife worked as the operations officer for the Bank of America on Main Street. Even in the bank the employees had to dress in costumes commensurate with the character of the park. Employees of the park were not considered staff or employees – they were called characters and anyone appearing in public had to dress their part.

I would go to the park on Friday nights and meet up with my wife after work and we would spend the evening eating at one of the many restaurants and walking the park. This was great as it was free and Disneyland is at its best when he sun goes down and the lights come on.

Disneyland did come easy for Walt Disney. When he visited Germany in the early 1950’s with daughter she was awed by the Castle of Neuschwanstein in Bavaria. Disney told his daughter he would build her a similar castle in California, a castle that had stood for years as the symbol of the park.

It was not an easy task to build the Magic Kingdom. When Walt had developed his first plan he needed financing. There were no government subsidies in those days and the City of Anaheim was not going to kick in any bucks. Disney needed a bank to pony up the dollars for his dream. The problem was that since there were comparable parks in the nation the banks were leery of the project and Disney’s ability to pay back the loan.

Walt took his plans to the convention of amusement park operators in Chicago and presented his concept of the park. Suffice to say they were not impressed. They saw only one entrance and exit. There were no roller-coaster and a midway with vendors. The park would sell no alcoholic beverages. All of these were negatives in the eyes of the experts. This did not bode well for Walt’s plans. Walt was an artist and creator, not a banker of financier.

Fortunately for Walt his brother Roy did have skills and contacts in the financial world. Roy made the rounds of the banks and venture capitalist investors. Finally he convinced the Bank of America to take the risk and he rest is history. This is why for years a Bank of America branch office sat near the entrance on Main Street to serve the visitors and park’s merchants. According to my wife every day they would exchange thousands of dollars in foreign currency for the international visitors.

Walt, Roy and the Bank of America took a tremendous risk to build a park that would attract more than 14 million visitors each year. Yes, the Disney Corporation made money, but wasn’t that the purpose — it certainly was for the bank.

Disneyland put the sleepy town of Anaheim on the map. The city’s coffers were filled with tax dollars collected from the park in the form of property and sales taxes. Thousands of people got jobs at Disneyland, many of them young people who went on to bigger and better careers. It was great place to work. Where else could you rub shoulders Mickey Mouse and Snow White?

The park had a strict dress code. Characters were not allowed to take their costume heads off while they were “on stage” and there was a strict dress code for all employees, including the merchants and those in the bank. The park was clean and spotless. If you dropped something on the ground you as felt guilty as if you had thrown trash on your on floor. Even the parking was well organized with trams taking you from the lot to the park entrance. All buildings on Main Street were at 7/8 scale so as not to overpower the kids. During the construction Walt Disney lived at the park and supervised every bit of the construction.

Today Disney is a giant corporation with world-wide assets employing hundreds of thousands. The city of Anaheim had benefited beyond expectations from Disneyland. Motels, hotels, and restaurants were built that in turn paid taxes to the city and county. Shopping centers and business parks were built. A stadium was built that is home for a major league baseball team and an arena home to a professional hockey team. There was once a professional football team, but they decide to relocate to St. Louis.

My firm provided consulting engineering services to Disney. They were a though client to please. They demanded perfection and held us to impossible schedules, but they paid for what they demanded, albeit slowly.

Disney did not rely on government for their park or its expansion. They paid for the road improvements and utility extensions. They paid to the off-ramp from the I-5 Freeway to the park. They paid for the traffic lights and street lighting. They paid for new sewers and storm drains. I know because we did some of the engineering for these improvements.

As I mentioned above the benefits to the city of Anaheim and Orange County were immense. My daughter live in Anaheim and her cost for city provided electricity is one-third of what I pay to Southern California Edison. The residents, schools, and businesses have benefited from Disneyland and its expansion park California Adventure. And billions of people of all ages, nationalities, and races have enjoyed their time in the Magic Kingdom taking back lasting memories along with a few fuzzy animals, and of course a set of Mickey Mouse ears.

So the question arises as to what Disneyland owes to government. In President Obama’s mind Walt and Roy Disney did not build Disneyland, the government did. What an upside down country we are living in today.

So Happy 57^th Birthday to Disneyland.

Who is George Soros?

“I admit that I have always harbored an exaggerated view of my self-importance—to put it bluntly, I fancied myself as some kind of god or an economic reformer like Keynes (each with his General Theory) or, even better, a scientist like Einstein” — George Soros

Before going on to who George Soros is I want to give the reader a little background on how I compiled the information for this post. I first became familiar with George Soros through watching the Glenn Beck show on the Fox News Channel. Glenn Beck spent hours exposing the mysterious Soros or “spooky dude” as Beck calls him. Eventually other reputable media outlets like Brent Bozell’s Media Research Center began shinning the light on Soros, especially Bill O’Reilly.

I reviewed over thirty Web sites and watched several of Soros’ video interviews to obtain the information for this post. I found him to truly be a “spooky dude” who has made billions of dollars in currency and insider trading. He is a man with of absolute arrogance even goes so far as to compare himself to God — a truly committed left wing progressive. He has made his money in the United States a land he immigrated to after World War Two and has consistently spread his money around in an effort to control the media so he can destroy conservatives and advance his one-world progressive agenda. He has no loyalty to the Constitution and hates his number one rival Fox News.

For his purpose of destroying America and instituting a one world government he has recruited journalists, lobbyists and college students through the use of his vast fortune. He has given millions to NPR through his front organizations like the Open Society Institute (with one billion dollars in assets) and the Center for American Progress. He has forced his philosophy into the K-12 education system through his Tides Foundation. He is the puppet master behind Barack Obama and has his disciples ensconced in the highest levels of the White House including Cass Sunstein and his wife Samantha Power, the architect of our intervention in Libya. George Soros is truly a spooky dude.

The following background information was excerpted from Wikipedia.

Soros was born August 12, 1930, as Györgyin Schwartz in Budapest, Kingdom of Hungary, the son of the Esperantist writer Tivadar Soros and Elizabeth Soros. Tivadar (also known as Teodoro) was a Hungarian Jew, who was a prisoner of war during and after World War I and eventually escaped from Russia to rejoin his family in Budapest.

The family changed its name from Schwartz to Soros in 1936, in response to growing anti-Semitism with the rise of fascism. Tivadar liked the new name because it is a palindrome and has a meaning. Although the specific meaning is left unstated. in Hungarian, soros means next in line, or designated successor; and, in Esperanto, it means "will soar". Tivadar taught George to speak Esperanto from birth. Soros later said that he grew up in a Jewish home and that his parents were cautious with their religious roots.

Married and divorced twice, Soros has three children with Annaliese Witschak (Robert, Andrea, Jonathan) and two with Susan Weber Soros (Alexander and Gregory). His elder brother, Paul Soros, also a private investor and philanthropist, is an engineer, who headed Soros Associates and established the Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowships for Young Americans. Soros' nephew Peter Soros, a son of Paul Soros, married the former Flora Fraser – a daughter of Lady Antonia Fraser and the late Sir Hugh Fraser and a stepdaughter of the late 2005 Nobel Laureate Harold Pinter. Fraser and Soros separated in 2009.

Soros was thirteen years old in March 1944 when Nazi Germany occupied Hungary. Soros took a job with the Jewish Council, which had been established during the Nazi occupation of Hungary to carry out Nazi and Hungarian government anti-Jewish measures. Soros later described this time to writer Michael Lewis:

“The Jewish Council asked the little kids to hand out the deportation notices. I was told to go to the Jewish Council. And there I was given these small slips of paper. It said report to the rabbi seminary at 9 am. And I was given this list of names. I took this piece of paper to my father. He instantly recognized it. This was a list of Hungarian Jewish lawyers. He said, "You deliver the slips of paper and tell the people that if they report they will be deported."

Later that year, at age 14, Soros lived with and posed as the godson of an employee of the Hungarian Ministry of Agriculture. On one occasion, the official was ordered to inventory the remaining contents of the estate of a wealthy Jewish family that had fled the country. Rather than leave the young Soros alone in the city, the official brought him along. The following year, Soros survived the Battle of Budapest, in which Soviet and German forces fought house-to-house through the city.

Soros emigrated to England in 1947 and, as an impoverished student, lived with his uncle, an Orthodox Jew. His uncle paid his living expenses while he attended the London School of Economics, where he received a Bachelor of Science in Philosophy in 1952. While a student of the philosopher Karl Popper, Soros worked as a railway porter and as a waiter. A University tutor requested aid for Soros, and he received £40 from a Religious Society of Friends (Quaker) charity. He eventually secured an entry-level position with London merchant bank Singer & Friedlander.

In 1956, Soros moved to New York City, where he worked as an arbitrage trader with F. M. Mayer (1956–59) and as an analyst with Wertheim & Co. (1959–63). Throughout this time, Soros developed a philosophy of reflexivity based on the ideas of Karl Popper. Reflexivity, as used by Soros, is the belief that the action of beholding the valuation of any market, by its participants, affects said valuation of the market in a procyclical "virtuous or vicious" circle.

Soros realized, however, that he would not make any money from the concept of reflexivity until he went into investing on his own. He began to investigate how to deal in investments. From 1963 to 1973, he worked at Arnhold and S. Bleichroder, where he attained the position of Vice-President. Soros finally concluded that he was a better investor than he was a philosopher or an executive. In 1967, he persuaded the company to set up First Eagle, an offshore investment fund for him to run; and, in 1969, it founded the Double Eagle hedge fund for him.

In 1970, Soros founded Soros Fund Management with Jim Rogers. In 1973, he left Arnhold and S. Bleichroder to set up his own hedge fund with $12 million dollars from investors. Rogers retired from the fund in 1980.

Initially called the Soros Fund, it was eventually renamed the Quantum Fund. In 2000, the Quantum Group of Funds was reorganized, and the flagship Quantum Endowment Fund was established. Soros Fund Management LLC is the principal advisor to the Quantum Endowment Fund. Soros is the Chairman of Soros Fund Management. The firm's day-to-day operations are managed by Soros's two elder sons and the firm's Chief Investment Officer Keith Anderson. The fund has assets of approximately $27 billion dollars. Recent investments include the 2010 purchase of a 20% stake in BNK Petroleum. In 2007, the Quantum Fund returned almost 32%, netting Soros $2.9 billion dollars.

In August 2010, Soros bought a 4 per cent stake in the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) for about $35 million. Soros’s Quantum hedge fund bought the stake from Dubai Financial, a part of the state-run Dubai Holdings, for an estimated Rs. 380 per share. Over 5,000 companies are listed on the exchange.

In 1973, when investment regulations restricted his ability to run the funds as he wished, he resigned his position and established a private investment company, which evolved into the Quantum Fund. He has stated that his intent was to earn enough money on Wall Street to support himself as an author and philosopher– he calculated that $500,000 after five years would be possible and adequate.

On September 16, 1992, Black Wednesday, Soros's fund sold short more than US $10 billion worth of pounds, profiting from the UK government's reluctance to either raise its interest rates to levels comparable to those of other European Exchange Rate Mechanism countries or to float its currency.

Finally, the UK withdrew from the European Exchange Rate Mechanism, devaluing the pound sterling, earning Soros an estimated US $1.1 billion. He was dubbed "the man who broke the Bank of England." In 1997, the UK Treasury estimated the cost of Black Wednesday at £3.4 billion.

On Monday, October 26, 1992, The Times quoted Soros as saying: "Our total position by Black Wednesday had to be worth almost $10 billion. We planned to sell more than that. In fact, when Norman Lamont said just before the devaluation that he would borrow nearly $15 billion to defend sterling, we were amused because that was about how much we wanted to sell."

Stanley Druckenmiller, who traded under Soros, originally saw the weakness in the pound. "Soros' contribution was pushing him to take a gigantic position."

In 1997, during the Asian financial crisis, the Prime Minister of Malaysia Mahathir bin Mohamad accused Soros of using the wealth under his control to punish the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) for welcoming Myanmar as a member. Following on a history of anti-Semitic remarks, Mahathir made specific reference to Soros's Jewish background ("It is a Jew who triggered the currency plunge") and implied Soros was orchestrating the crash as part of a larger Jewish conspiracy. Nine years later, in 2006, Mahathir met with Soros and afterwards stated that he accepted that Soros had not been responsible for the crisis. In 1998's The Crisis of Global Capitalism: Open Society Endangered Soros explained his role in the crisis as follows:

“The financial crisis that originated in Thailand in 1997 was particularly unnerving because of its scope and severity.... By the beginning of 1997, it was clear to Soros Fund Management that the discrepancy between the trade account and the capital account was becoming untenable. We sold short the Thai baht and the Malaysian ringgit early in 1997 with maturities ranging from six months to a year. (That is, we entered into contracts to deliver at future dates Thai Baht and Malaysian ringgit that we did not currently hold.) Subsequently Prime Minister Mahathir of Malaysia accused me of causing the crisis, a wholly unfounded accusation. We were not sellers of the currency during or several months before the crisis; on the contrary, we were buyers when the currencies began to decline – we were purchasing ringgits to realize the profits on our earlier speculation. (Much too soon, as it turned out. We left most of the potential gain on the table because we were afraid that Mahathir would impose capital controls. He did so, but much later.)”

In 1988, he was asked to join a takeover attempt of the French bank Société Générale. He declined to participate in the bid but later bought a number of shares in the company. French authorities began an investigation in 1989, and in 2002 a French court ruled that it was insider trading, a felony conviction as defined under French securities laws, and fined him $2.3 million dollars, which was the amount that he made using the insider information.

Punitive damages were not sought because of the delay in bringing the case to trial. Soros denied any wrongdoing and said news of the takeover was public knowledge.

His insider trading conviction was upheld by the highest court in France on June 14, 2006. In December 2006, he appealed to the European Court of Human Rights, claiming that the 14-year delay in bringing the case to trial precluded a fair hearing.

In 2005, Soros was a minority partner in a group that tried to buy the Washington Nationals, a Major League baseball team. Some Republican lawmakers suggested that they might move to revoke baseball's antitrust exemption if Soros bought the team. In 2008, Soros' name was associated with AS Roma, an Italian football team but the club was not sold. Soros was also a financial backer of Washington Soccer L.P., the group that owned the operating rights to Major League Soccer club D.C. United when the league was founded in 1995, but the group lost these rights in 2000.

Soros has been active as a philanthropist since the 1970s, when he began providing funds to help black students attend the University of Cape Town in apartheid South Africa, and began funding dissident movements behind the iron curtain.

Soros' philanthropic funding includes efforts to promote non-violent democratization in the post-Soviet states. These efforts, mostly in Central and Eastern Europe, occur primarily through the Open Society Institute (OSI) and national Soros Foundations, which sometimes go under other names (such as the Stefan Batory Foundation in Poland). As of 2003, PBS estimated that he had given away a total of $4 billion. The OSI says it has spent about $500 million annually in recent years.

Time magazine in 2007 cited two specific projects – $100 million toward Internet infrastructure for regional Russian universities; and $50 million for the Millennium Promise to eradicate extreme poverty in Africa – while noting that Soros has given $742 million to projects in the U.S., and given away a total of more than $7 billion.

Other notable projects have included aid to scientists and universities throughout Central and Eastern Europe, help to civilians during the siege of Sarajevo, and Transparency International. Soros also pledged an endowment of €420 million to the Central European University (CEU). The Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus and his microfinance bank Grameen Bank received support from the OSI.

According to National Review^] the Open Society Institute gave $20,000 in September 2002 to the Defense Committee of Lynne Stewart, the lawyer who has defended alleged terrorists in court and was sentenced to 2⅓ years in prison for "providing material support for a terrorist conspiracy" via a press conference for a client. An OSI spokeswoman said "it appeared to us at that time that there was a right-to-counsel issue worthy of our support."

In September 2006 Soros pledged $50 million to the Millennium Promise, led by economist Jeffrey Sachs to provide educational, agricultural, and medical aid to help villages in Africa enduring poverty. The New York Times termed this endeavor a "departure" for Soros whose philanthropic focus had been on fostering democracy and good government, but Soros noted that most poverty resulted from bad governance.

He received honorary doctoral degrees from the New School for Social Research (New York), the University of Oxford in 1980, the Corvinus University of Budapest, and Yale University in 1991. Soros also received the Yale International Center for Finance Award from the Yale School of Management in 2000 as well as the Laurea Honoris Causa, the highest honor of the University of Bologna in 1995.

In an interview with The Washington Post on November 11, 2003, Soros said that removing President George W. Bush from office was the "central focus of my life" and "a matter of life and death." He said he would sacrifice his entire fortune to defeat President Bush, "if someone guaranteed it." Soros gave $3 million to the Center for American Progress, $2.5 million to MoveOn.org, and $20 million to America Coming Together. These groups worked to support Democrats in the 2004 election. On September 28, 2004 he dedicated more money to the campaign and kicked off his own multi-state tour with a speech: Why We Must Not Re-elect President Bush delivered at the National Press Club in Washington, DC.

Asked in 2006 about his statement in The Age of Fallibility that "the main obstacle to a stable and just world order is the United States", Soros responded that "it happens to coincide with the prevailing opinion in the world. And I think that's rather shocking for Americans to hear. The United States sets the agenda for the world. And the rest of the world has to respond to that agenda. By declaring a 'war on terror' after September 11, we set the wrong agenda for the world. When you wage war, you inevitably create innocent victims."

Soros was not a large donor to US political causes until the 2004 presidential election, but according to the Center for Responsive Politics, during the 2003–2004 election cycle, Soros donated $23,581,000 to various 527 groups dedicated to defeating President Bush. A 527 group is a type of American tax-exempt organization named after a section of the United States tax code, 26 U.S.C. § 527.

After Bush's re-election, Soros and other donors backed a new political fundraising group called Democracy Alliance, which supports progressive causes and the formation of a stronger progressive infrastructure in America.

In August 2009, Soros donated $35 million to the state of New York to be ear-marked for under-privileged children and given to parents who had benefit cards at the rate of $200 per child aged 3 through 17, with no limit as to the number of children that qualified. An additional $140 million was put into the fund by the state of New York from money they had received from the 2009 federal recovery act.

On October 26, 2010, Soros donated $1 million, the largest donation in the campaign, to the Drug Policy Alliance to fund Proposition 19, that would have legalized marijuana in the state of California if it had passed in the November 2, 2010 elections. [Source: Wikipedia]

From reading the above “neutral” background information you might conclude that George Soros is a very, very wealthy philanthropist who give tons of money to causes he believes will improve the lives of people around the globe. Nothing could be farther from the truth. In fact Soros is a megalomaniac with a messianic complex that leads him to believe he can solve all the problem of he world as he sees them — a real God complex.

On August 31, 2010 Ed Lasky wrote in American Thinker:

“The idea that Soros' giving is transparent is laughable — he's given millions to the Tides Foundation, a byzantine organization notorious for obscuring finding sources on the left . Further, Soros was very influential in setting up the Center for American Progress think tank and many other liberal organizations in the last decade. If any billionaire has waged war against a president recently, it's Soros' campaign against Bush. To dismiss any concerns about Soros' political spending while saying that the Koch brothers are at the center of a dark conspiracy is absurd.”

In his book The Alchemy of Finance Soros said:

“I admit that I have always harbored an exaggerated view of my self-importance—to put it bluntly, I fancied myself as some kind of god or an economic reformer like Keynes (each with his General Theory) or, even better, a scientist like Einstein”

According to friend Byron Wien (now with the Blackstone Group), “You must understand he thinks he’s been anointed by God to solve insoluble problems. The proof is that he has been so successful at making so much. He therefore thinks he has a responsibility to give money away,” (Time Magazine, Sept 1, 1997

In his book Underwriting Democracy: Encouraging Free Enterprise And Democratic Reform Among the Soviets and in Eastern Europe Soros claims:

“… - “If truth be known, I carried some rather potent messianic fantasies with me from childhood which I felt I had to control, otherwise I might end up in the loony bin. But when I made my way in the world I wanted to indulge myself in my fantasies to the extent that I could afford.”

In a 1998 interview with 60 Minutes Soros said he following in response to questions:

“KROFT: Are you religious?

Mr. SOROS: No.

KROFT: Do you believe in God?

Mr. SOROS: No.

KROFT: (Voiceover) Soros told us he believes God was created by man, not the other way around, which may be why he thinks he can smooth out the world’s imperfections.”

In the same 1998 interview with Steve Kroft, Soros was asked if he felt guilty about confiscating property from Jews as a teenager. He responded, “No.” He went on father to say: “I don’t deny the Jews their right to a national existence–but I don’t want to be part of it.” That experience notwithstanding, Soros has chosen to exclude Israel and Jewish causes, by and large, from his massive philanthropy-a decision that has caused comment among one of his colleagues in the financial community, particularly those who are strong supporters of Israel. In Hungary, Soros has been subject to anti-Semitic attacks.

He continued, “My mother was quite anti-Semitic, and ashamed of being Jewish. Given the culture in which one lived, being Jewish was a clear-cut stigma, disadvantage, a handicap-and, therefore, there was always the desire to transcend it, to escape it.” He confirmed what someone had told me-that his family name had long ago been changed from Schwartz. “So the assimilationist Jews of Hungary had a deep sense of inferiority and it took me a long time to work through that,” he said, adding, however, that he succeeded in doing so many years ago… “I am escaping the particular. I think I am doing exactly that by espousing this universal concept”-of open society. “In other words, I don’t think that you can ever overcome anti-Semitism if you behave as a tribe… the only way you can overcome it is if you give up the tribalness.”

Soros has long been calling for increased globalization. In “The Crisis of Global Capitalism,” 1998 he writes:

“To stabilize and regulate a truly global economy, we need some global system of political decision-making. In short, we need a global society to support our global economy. A global society does not mean a global state. To abolish the existence of states is neither feasible nor desirable; but insofar as there are collective interests that transcend state boundaries, the sovereignty of states must be subordinated to international law and international institutions. Interestingly, the greatest opposition to this idea is coming from the United States. But there has never been a time when a strong lead from the U.S. and other like-minded countries could achieve such powerful and benign results. With the right sense of leadership and with clarity of purpose, the U.S. and its allies could help to stabilize the global economic system and to extend and uphold universal human values. The opportunity is waiting to be grasped.”

Glenn Beck has done a great job of documenting Soros’s life and beliefs. You can read more by clicking here.

As for his philanthropic activism Soros is the king of left wing progressive cause. He says he is a champion of open societies and freedom yet he contributes not one dime to causes or organization other than progressive that promote a soft tyranny and a statist global society.

You might ask, why would such a wealthy person support socialist causes and government? I cannot read Soros’s mind, but I do know the socialist believe socialism is for the people— not for the socialist just as Lenin believed communism is for the people — not for the communists. At no point in the old Soviet Union did the Apparatchik and ruling class suffer, it was only the Proletariat who stood hours on end in the bread lines.

Soros like many wealthy people believe they are special and have the ability to change the world with their money. They want us to follow their lead and lower our standard of living to help the “poor” of the world with coercive government spending programs while they are, due to wealth, exempt from the consequences. This is typical of the progressive straits’ disrespect for individual God given rights and private property. Rarely do they fund conservative organizations like the Heritage Foundation, Cato Institute, Ayn Rand Institute or Americans for Prosperity. They are focused on power, the power their money can bring them

Soros has founded or is funding so many media and progressive organization that I cannot list them all here. But a few of the more obvious and egregiously left wing Organizations Funded Directly by George Soros and his Open Society Institute are:

• Air America Radio: Now defunct, this was a self-identified "liberal" radio network.
• Alliance for Justice: Best known for its activism vis a vis the appointment of federal judges, this group consistently depicts Republican judicial nominees as "extremists."
• America Coming Together: Soros played a major role in creating this group, whose purpose was to coordinate and organize pro-Democrat voter-mobilization programs. America Votes: Soros also played a major role in creating this group, whose get-out-the-vote campaigns targeted likely Democratic voters. This organization will play a major role in the 2012 presidential campaign.
• America's Voice: This open-borders group seeks to promote “comprehensive” immigration reform that includes a robust agenda in favor of amnesty for illegal aliens. American Bar Association Commission on Immigration Policy: This organization "opposes laws that require employers and persons providing education, health care, or other social services to verify citizenship or immigration status."
• American Civil Liberties Union: This group opposes virtually all post-9/11 national security measures enacted by the U.S. government. It supports open borders, has rushed to the defense of suspected terrorists and their abettors, and appointed former New Left terrorist Bernardine Dohrn to its Advisory Board.
• American Constitution Society for Law and Policy: This Washington, DC-based think tank seeks to move American jurisprudence to the left by recruiting, indoctrinating, and mobilizing young law students, helping them acquire positions of power. It also provides leftist Democrats with a bully pulpit from which to denounce their political adversaries.
• American Family Voices: This group creates and coordinates media campaigns charging Republicans with wrongdoing.
• American Federation of Teachers: After longtime AFT President Albert Shanker died in in 1997, he was succeeded by Sandra Feldman, who slowly “re-branded” the union, allying it with some of the most powerful left-wing elements of the New Labor Movement. When Feldman died in 2004, Edward McElroy took her place, followed by Randi Weingarten in 2008. All of them kept the union on the leftward course it had adopted in its post-Shanker period.
• American Immigration Law Foundation: This group supports amnesty for illegal aliens, on whose behalf it litigates against the U.S. government.
• Amnesty International: This organization directs a grossly disproportionate share of its criticism for human rights violations at the United States and Israel.
• Brookings Institution: This organization has been involved with a variety of internationalist and state-sponsored programs, including one that aspires to facilitate the establishment of a U.N.-dominated world government. Brookings Fellows have also called for additional global collaboration on trade and banking; the expansion of the Kyoto Protocol; and nationalized health insurance for children. Nine Brookings economists signed a petition opposing President Bush's tax cuts in 2003.
• Campus Progress: A project of the Soros-bankrolled Center for American Progress, this group seeks to "strengthen progressive voices on college and university campuses, counter the growing influence of right-wing groups on campus, and empower new generations of progressive leaders."
• Campus Progress: A project of the Soros-bankrolled Center for American Progress, this group seeks to "strengthen progressive voices on college and university campuses, counter the growing influence of right-wing groups on campus, and empower new generations of progressive leaders."
• Center for American Progress: This leftist think tank is headed by former Clinton chief of staff John Podesta, works closely with Hillary Clinton, and employs numerous former Clinton administration staffers. It is committed to "developing a long-term vision of a progressive America" and "providing a forum to generate new progressive ideas and policy proposals."
• Center for Community Change: This group recruits and trains activists to spearhead leftist "political issue campaigns." Promoting increased funding for social welfare programs by bringing "attention to major national issues related to poverty," the Center bases its training programs on the techniques taught by the famed radical organizer Saul Alinsky
• Center for Constitutional Rights: This pro-Castro organization is a core member of the open borders lobby, has opposed virtually all post-9/11 anti-terrorism measures by the U.S. government, and alleges that American injustice provokes acts of international terrorism.
• Center for Reproductive Rights: CRR's mission is to guarantee safe, affordable contraception and abortion-on-demand for all women, including adolescents. The organization has filed state and federal lawsuits demanding access to taxpayer-funded abortions (through Medicaid) for low-income women.
• Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington: This group litigates and brings ethics charges against "government officials who sacrifice the common good to special interests" and "betray the public trust." Almost all of its targets are Republicans. Coalition for an International Criminal Court: This group seeks to subordinate American criminal-justice procedures to those of an international court.
• Defenders of Wildlife Action Fund: Defenders of Wildlife opposes oil exploration in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. It condemns logging, ranching, mining, and even the use of recreational motorized vehicles as activities that are destructive to the environment.
• Democratic Party: Soros' funding activities are devoted largely to helping the Democratic Party solidify its power base. In a November 2003 interview, Soros stated that defeating President Bush in 2004 "is the central focus of my life" ... "a matter of life and death." He pledged to raise $75 million to defeat Bush, and personally donated nearly a third of that amount to anti-Bush organizations. "America under Bush," he said, "is a danger to the world, and I'm willing to put my money where my mouth is." Claiming that "the Republican party has been captured by a bunch of extremists," Soros accuses the Bush administration of following a "supremacist ideology" in whose rhetoric he claims to hear echoes of "Nazi slogans."
• Earthjustice: This group seeks to place severe restrictions on how U.S. land and waterways may be used. It opposes most mining and logging initiatives, commercial fishing businesses, and the use of motorized vehicles in undeveloped areas.
• Ella Baker Center for Human Rights: Co-founded by the revolutionary communist Van Jones, this anti-poverty organization claims that “decades of disinvestment in our cities” -- compounded by “excessive, racist policing and over-incarceration” -- have “led to despair and homelessness.”
• EMILY's List: This political network raises money for Democratic female political candidates who support unrestricted access to taxpayer-funded abortion-on-demand. Energy Action
• Four Freedoms Fund: This organization was designed to serve as a conduit through which large foundations could fund state-based open-borders organizations more flexibly and quickly.
• Free Exchange on Campus: This organization was created solely to oppose the efforts of one individual, David Horowitz, and his campaign to have universities adopt an "Academic Bill of Rights," as well as to denounce Horowitz's 2006 book The Professors. Member organizations of FEC include Campus Progress (a project of the Center for American Progress); the American Association of University Professors; theAmerican Civil Liberties Union; People For the American Way; the United States Student Association; theCenter for Campus Free Speech; the American Library Association; Free Press; and the National Association of State Public Interest Research Groups.
• Global Exchange: Established in 1988 by pro-Castro radical Medea Benjamin, this group consistently condemns America's foreign policy, business practices, and domestic life. Following the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Global Exchange advised Americans to examine "the root causes of resentment against the United States in the Arab world -- from our dependence on Middle Eastern oil to our biased policy towards Israel."
• Human Rights Watch: This group directs a disproportionate share of its criticism at the United States and Israel. It opposes the death penalty in all cases, and supports open borders and amnesty for illegal aliens.
• I'lam: This anti-Israel NGO seeks "to develop and empower the Arab media and to give voice to Palestinian issues."
• Independent Media Center: This Internet-based, news and events bulletin board represents an invariably leftist, anti-capitalist perspective and serves as a mouthpiece for anti-globalization/anti-America themes.
• Institute for Policy Studies: This think tank has long supported Communist and anti-American causes around the world. Viewing capitalism as a breeding ground for "unrestrained greed," IPS seeks to provide a corrective to "unrestrained markets and individualism." Professing an unquestioning faith in the righteousness of the United Nations, it aims to bring American foreign policy under UN control.
• Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law: This group views America as an unremittingly racist nation; uses the courts to mandate race-based affirmative action preferences in business and academia; has filed briefs against the Department of Homeland Security's efforts to limit the wholesale granting of green cards and to identify potential terrorists; condemns the Patriot Act; and calls on Americans to "recognize the contribution" of illegal aliens.
• League of Women Voters Education Fund: The League supports taxpayer-funded abortion-on-demand; supports "motor-voter" registration, which allows anyone with a driver's license to become a voter, regardless of citizenship status; and supports tax hikes and socialized medicine.
• Lynne Stewart Defense Committee: IRS records indicate that Soros's Open Society Institute made a September 2002 grant of $20,000 to this organization. Stewart was the criminal-defense attorney who was later convicted for abetting her client, the "blind sheik" Omar Abdel Rahman, in terrorist activities connected with his Islamic Group.
• Media Fund: Soros played a major role in creating this group, whose purpose was to conceptualize, produce, and place political ads on television, radio, print, and the Internet.
• Media Matters for America: This organization is a "web-based, not-for-profit progressive research and information center" seeking to "systematically monitor a cross-section of print, broadcast, cable, radio, and Internet media outlets for conservative misinformation." Mercy Corps: Vis a vis the Arab-Israeli conflict, Mercy Corps places all blame for Palestinian poverty and suffering directly on Israel.
• Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund: This group advocates open borders, free college tuition for illegal aliens, lowered educational standards to accommodate Hispanics, and voting rights for criminals. In MALDEF's view, supporters of making English the official language of the United States are "motivated by racism and anti-immigrant sentiments," while advocates of sanctions against employers reliant on illegal labor seek to discriminate against "brown-skinned people." Meyer, Suozzi, English and Klein, PC: This influential defender of Big Labor is headed by Democrat operative Harold Ickes.
• MoveOn.org: This Web-based organization supports Democratic political candidates through fundraising, advertising, and get-out-the-vote drives.
• NARAL Pro-Choice America: This group supports taxpayer-funded abortion-on-demand, and works to elect pro-abortion Democrats.
• NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund: The NAACP supports racial preferences in employment and education, as well as the racial gerrymandering of voting districts. Underpinning its support for race preferences is the fervent belief that white racism in the United States remains an intractable, largely undiminished, phenomenon.
• National Council of La Raza: This group lobbies for racial preferences, bilingual education, stricter hate-crime laws, mass immigration, and amnesty for illegal aliens.
• Pacifica Foundation: This entity owns and operates Pacifica Radio, awash from its birth with the socialist-Marxist rhetoric of class warfare and hatred for capitalism.
• Planned Parenthood: This group is the largest abortion provider in the United States and advocates taxpayer-funded abortion-on-demand.
• Ploughshares Fund: This public grantmaking foundation opposes America's development of a missile defense system, and contributes to many organizations that are highly critical of U.S. foreign policies and military ventures.
• Sojourners: This evangelical Christian ministry preaches radical leftwing politics. During the 1980s it championed Communist revolution in Central America and chastised U.S. policy-makers for their tendency "to assume the very worst about their Soviet counterparts." More recently, Sojourners has taken up the cause of environmental activism, opposed welfare reform as a "mean-spirited Republican agenda," and mounted a defense of affirmative action.
• Southern Poverty Law Center: This organization monitors the activities of what it calls “hate groups” in the United States. It exaggerates the prevalence of white racism directed against American minorities.
• Think Progress, a left wing web site of which Christiane Amanpour and former Washington Post editor and now Vice President Len Downie serve on boards of operations that take Soros cash. This despite the Society of Professional Journalists' ethical code stating: “avoid all conflicts real or perceived.”

To view a more comprehensive list click here.

If you Google each of these organizations and see who is on the board of directors or the prominent figures and journalists in the organizations you will be astonished at the reach Soros has into our media and lives. A very good source for this information is Discoverythenetworks.org and its guide to the political left and the organizations Soros pumps money into. It is amazing how much money and influence is being pumped into left wing progressive organizations and causes. Like the organizations listed above many have high sounding names laced with words like “open”, “democracy”, “freedom”, “human rights” and “anti-poverty”, but don’t be fooled. When you dig deeper and see who is involved and the projects they have advanced it’s quite another story. For a diagram of the web Soros and his minions have cast click here. It’s a fascinating and scary diagram of a web that any spider would be proud off.

Dan Gainor reported for the Media Research Center Network that on April 8, 2011 a group funded with $50 million of George Soros’ dollars held a major economic conference and Soros's goal for such an event is to "establish new international rules" and "reform the currency system." It's all according to a plan laid out in a Nov. 4, 2009, Soros op-ed calling for "a grand bargain that rearranges the entire financial order."

Gainor reported:

The event is bringing together "more than 200 academic, business and government policy thought leaders' to repeat the famed 1944 Bretton Woods gathering that helped create the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. Soros wants a new 'multilateral system," or an economic system where America isn't so dominant.

More than two-thirds of the slated speakers have direct ties to Soros. The billionaire who thinks "the main enemy of the open society, I believe, is no longer the communist but the capitalist threat" is taking no chances.

Thus far, this global gathering has generated less publicity than a spelling bee. And that's with at least four journalists on the speakers list, including a managing editor for the Financial Times and editors for both Reuters and The Times. Given Soros's warnings of what might happen without an agreement, this should be a big deal. But it's not.

What is a big deal is that Soros is doing exactly what he wanted to do. His 2009 commentary pushed for "a new Bretton Woods conference, like the one that established the post-WWII international financial architecture." And he had already set the wheels in motion.

Just a week before that op-ed was published, Soros had founded the New York City-based Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET), the group hosting the conference set at the Mount Washington Resort, the very same hotel that hosted the first gathering. The most recent INET conference was held at Central European University, in Budapest. CEU received $206 million from Soros in 2005 and has $880 million in its endowment now, according to The Chronicle of Higher Education.

This, too, is a gathering of Soros supporters. INET is bringing together prominent people like former U.K. Prime Minister Gordon Brown, former Fed Chairman Paul Volcker and Soros, to produce "a lot of high-quality, breakthrough thinking."

You can view Bill O’Reilly’s interview with Gainor on Fox by clicking here. Gainor lays out quite a case as to how Soros and his money is trying to control the media.

The same Dan Gainor has written a two part opinion piece for Fox News titled: “Why Don't We Hear About Soros' Ties to Over 30 Major News Organizations?” In his column Gainor exposes the $48 million dollars Soros has invested in the mainstream and web-based media in this country. He writes:

“When liberal investor George Soros gave $1.8 million to National Public Radio , it became part of the firestorm of controversy that jeopardized NPR’s federal funding. But that gift only hints at the widespread influence the controversial billionaire has on the mainstream media. Soros, who spent $27 million trying to defeat President Bush in 2004, has ties to more than 30 mainstream news outlets – including The New York Times, Washington Post, the Associated Press, NBC and ABC.

Prominent journalists like ABC’s Christiane Amanpour and former Washington Post editor and now Vice President Len Downie serve on boards of operations that take Soros cash. This despite the Society of Professional Journalists' ethical code stating: “avoid all conflicts real or perceived.”

This information is part of an upcoming report by the Media Research Centers Business & Media Institute which has been looking into George Soros and his influence on the media.

The investigative reporting start-up ProPublica is a prime example. ProPublica, which recently won its second Pulitzer Prize, initially was given millions of dollars from the Sandler Foundation to “strengthen the progressive infrastructure” – “progressive” being the code word for very liberal. In 2010, it also received a two-year contribution of $125,000 each year from the Open Society Foundations. In case you wonder where that money comes from, the OSF website is www.soros.org. It is a network of more than 30 international foundations, mostly funded by Soros, who has contributed more than $8 billion to those efforts.”

ProPublica is a classic example of a left-wing progressive propaganda machine. If you look at their mission statement, board of advisors and list of supporters and contributors you will nothing but left wing biased journalist and money people. They even have Cynthia Tucker who was fired from her managing director position at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution for false reporting.

Their mission statement reads:

“To expose abuses of power and betrayals of the public trust by government, business, and other institutions, using the moral force of investigative journalism to spur reform through the sustained spotlighting of wrongdoing.”

Yet in searching their web site I could not find one article on Anthony Weiner. I guess in their view wrong doing only occurs on the right. Take a few moments to read the list of hot above their banner. They even have an article questioning John Edwards’ guilt.

On other funded George Soros funded sites his attack machine went after Andrew Breitbart for exposing Weiner’s sexting. They even went so far as to accuse Breitbart of being the hacker who sent the lewd photos. This is what the left does best — attack and demonize. Pure Goebbels and Alinsky.

In the second part of Gainor’s piece on George Soros’ attempt to take over the media he writes:

“For George Soros and ProPublica’s other liberal backers, it was again proof that a strategy of funding journalism was a powerful way to influence the American public.

It’s a strategy that Soros has been deploying extensively in media both in the United States and abroad. Since 2003, Soros has spent more than $48 million funding media properties, including the infrastructure of news – journalism schools, investigative journalism and even industry organizations.

And that number is an understatement. It is gleaned from tax forms, news stories and reporting. But Soros funds foundations that fund other foundations in turn, like the Tides Foundation, which then make their own donations. A complete accounting is almost impossible because a media component is part of so many Soros-funded operations.

This information is part of an upcoming report by the Media Research Centers Business & Media Institute which has been looking into George Soros and his influence on the media.

It turns out that Soros’ influence doesn’t just include connections to top mainstream news organizations such as NBC, ABC, The New York Times and Washington Post. It’s bought him connections to the underpinnings of the news business. The Columbia Journalism Review, which bills itself as “a watchdog and a friend of the press in all its forms,” lists several investigative reporting projects funded by one of Soros foundations.

The “News Frontier Database” includes seven different investigative reporting projects funded by Soros’ Open Society Institute. Along with ProPublica, there are the Center for Public Integrity, the Center for Investigative Reporting and New Orleans’ The Lens. The Columbia School of Journalism, which operates CJR, has received at least $600,000 from Soros, as well.

Imagine if conservative media punching bags David and Charles Koch had this many connections to journalists. Even if the Kochs could find journalists willing to support conservative media (doubtful), they would be skewered by the left.”

I have written over 7,600 words in this blog post — way more than I should burden the reader with. Based on my research into the history, activities and financing of media pullets I could write another 14,000. Soros is truly a puppet master and media manipulator. With his billions he is gradually taking control of how our nation receives both domestic and foreign news and information.

Some people claim that Rupert Murdock, the owner of News Corp and Fox News, is a media mogul. That may be true, but Murdoch doesn’t hold a candle to Soros.

You wonder what Sarah Palin is so viciously and continuously attacked in the media. There is nothing to wonder about when you look at the Soros funded attack machine little ole Sarah is up against. This attack machine will eventually be turned on the rest of the Republican candidates for president as the primary season approaches. They will not only use their minions in the media they will also use the money of Soros to tilt the polls as we progress towards November of 2012.

When Hitler, Mussolini and Lenin rose to power they knew they had to control the media and they did. They used direct control and in the case of Lenin he used both direct control and useful idiots on the left.

Today we have one man, albeit a very rich man, who is taking control of our media and information flow for his personal messianic agenda of one world government. His government would be without a Constitution, but with a list of “human rights” as defined in a charter. There would be no representative government. We would be ruled by our “betters”, a group of elites who would know what is best for us.

If you think the power in the United States resides on Pennsylvania Avenue you are dead wrong. It resides on “K” street where parking is $30 per hour, if you can find a space. George Soros is truly a spooky dude.