What does $23 million in donations to public television get you? A lot more than a tote bag, according to The New Yorker’s Jane Mayer. A New York public television outlet, WNET, went to great lengths to placate conservative industrialist David Koch as PBS aired an Alex Gibney documentary on income inequality that focused on the conservative billionaire. The president of WNET called Koch and offered to let him film a roundtable discussion that would air after the documentary, among other conciliatory gestures. The controversy reportedly also prompted PBS to back off another Koch-focused documentary in the pipeline. All the placation didn’t work: Koch resigned from his position on WNET’s board and reportedly canceled a large donation. Also, according to Koch’s doorman, Koch’s philanthropy doesn’t extend to tips. “We would never get a smile from Mr. Koch,” he says in the Gibney film. “Fifty-dollar check for Christmas, too—yeah, I mean, a check! At least you could give us cash.”

Jane Mayer:

Shortly before “Park Avenue” aired, Melissa Cohlmia, the chief spokesperson for Koch Industries, sent WNET a two-paragraph statement criticizing the film as “disappointing and divisive.” Cohlmia acknowledges, however, that neither she nor Koch had watched it. WNET aired the statement, unedited, immediately after the film. Cohlmia said that she based the critique on the trailer.

The weekend before “Park Avenue” aired, Gibney said, it was clear that “something weird had happened.” Shapiro called him at home. “He was very upset,” Gibney said. “They were thinking of pulling the program.” Gibney was told that the most pressing problem was Charles Schumer, the Democratic senator from New York. Schumer’s staff had called WNET, arguing that “Park Avenue” falsely accused the Senator of supporting tax loopholes for hedge-fund managers. Gibney double-checked his research and stood by his interpretation. Nevertheless, Shapiro told him that he planned to allow Schumer to add a response after the broadcast. But, Gibney noted, “Shapiro told me nothing about the Kochs.”

Gibney gives credit to Shapiro and WNET for airing his film uncensored. He is disappointed, though, that the station gave Koch and Schumer the last word. “They tried to undercut the credibility of the film, and I had no opportunity to defend it,” he said. Moreover, WNET replaced the introduction to “Park Avenue,” which was delivered by the actor Stanley Tucci, with one calling the film “controversial” and “provocative.” Gibney noted that he had asked to interview the Kochs while making “Park Avenue,” but they had refused. Cohlmia initially denied this, but after Gibney’s office provided me with the relevant e-mails she acknowledged that she had been contacted.

Shapiro emphasized that, by showing the Gibney film, he had made “the right call.” Still, spokespeople at WNET and PBS conceded that the decision to run the rebuttals was unprecedented. Indeed, it was like appending Letters to the Editor to a front-page article. Gibney asked me, “Why is WNET offering Mr. Koch special favors? And why did the station allow Koch to offer a critique of a film he hadn’t even seen? Money. Money talks.” He added that the Kochs’ willingness to issue a disclaimer without seeing the film “does not give me much confidence about how they might run the Tribune’s newspapers.”

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[NSFW: Language]

Your Moment of Clarity is now a full-on show. This is episode one with special guest Greg Palast. This week we look into billionaires. Are they the super heroes we make them out to be?

Help support Moment of Clarity. Go to www.DonateYourAccount.com/LeeCamp to donate just one Tweet or Facebook post per day. It takes 30 seconds.

Proposition 32 would stop unions from engaging in political activity while letting corporations do as much of it as their little hearts desire.

The so-called "Stop Special Interest Money Now Act" is not what it seems. It's really the Special Exemptions Act, intentionally written to create special exemptions for billionaire businessmen, wealthy CEOs, Wall Street investors, and more.

Don't let them gain even more power to write their own set of rules.

Who is pushing for these "Special Exemptions"?

Thomas Siebel, the billionaire founder of Siebel Systems, just dropped $500,000 on the pro-side. That’s pocket lint for Siebel, who is worth $1.8 billion, after he sold his company to Oracle for $5.9 billion in 2005.

Politically, Siebel may own the crown for Best Political Rally Intro Ever with his 2008 flourish for GOP VP candidate Sarah Palin. Or, as he referred to her: “The embodiment of pure, unadulterted good.” Really.

Here's how Siebel introduced Palin in 2008:

“Sarah Palin represents the best in each and every one of us,” he told the crowd, calling her ”an optimist, thoughtful, energetic, engaging … the embodiment of pure, unadulterated good.”

”Talk about change, my goodness, the world will never be the same,” said Siebel.

But he didn’t stop there.

"Sarah Palin has risen as if from some mythical kingdom of the north. She carries the flag of outrage for the rest of us: the employers who create jobs, the shareholders, the parents, the people who raise children … and the students, the future of America,” he said. ”Sarah Palin carries the flag of outrage for each of us … who cries out, ‘We’re mad as hell, and we’re not going to take it anymore.”

California, vote "NO" on Proposition 32

[Via Michael Moore, Joe Garofoli]

David Koch is hosting a fundraiser for millionaire Mitt Romney at his Hamptons estate Sunday evening. You could have come over to Koch's house today to meet Mitt Romney, assuming you had a spare $50,000 lying around. How do the elite afford those $50,000 tickets? Tax rates for the super-elite, the top .01%, have fallen in half since Mitt Romney’s father ran for president; or to put it differently, after tax income for this group has doubled due to policy alone. And bear in mind that the US economy flourished just fine under those 60-70 tax rates.

Not only have taxes on people such as Mitt Romney plummeted since 1960, they've risen flor nearly every income group except for the poor and very poor. The Bush tax cuts were especially generous to the uberwealthy, which isn't really a surprise.

Via the sparrow project:

At 4pm on July 8th, 2012 a diverse coalition of activists and occupiers from across New York will descend upon a fundraiser for presidential candidate Mitt Romney at the Southhampton home of billionaire David Koch. Citing the ever-growing and pervasive influence of Koch Industries’ money on our electoral system, organizers from Occupy Wall Street, The Long Island Progressive Coalition, Greenpeace, Move to Amend [Brookhaven], ALIGN NY, Art Not War, Strong For All, MoveOn.org, United New York, Occupy Storefront and Occupy Huntington, Long Island, have announced that they will take action to non-violently disrupt the fundraiser at David Koch’s shorefront estate located at 880 Meadow Lane in Southhampton.

While Romney plans on attending 3 fundraisers that day in the Hamptons the demonstrators have made it clear that the Koch Estate will remain their only target. The coalition of activists initially assembled by the End Corporatism Affinity Group of Occupy Wall Street will be taking a non-partisan stance, uniting around a unified message that corporate money is exponentially diluting and subverting our democratic process (a phenomenon not limited to one single party.) To the demonstrators, David and Charles Koch embody everything that is wrong with money in politics.

“The Long Island Progressive Coalition is busy coordinating a network of Long Island groups who won’t stand by while their backyard is used for Koch and Romney to fund a regressive political agenda,” says Lisa Tyson, director to the Long Island Progressive Coalition.

In 2011 Charles and David Koch announced their intentions to raise and spend $200,000,000 on whomever would run against President Obama. Also, in 2011 while on a retreat for supporters of Koch Industries and their political arm, American’s for Prosperity, Charles Koch was secretly recorded while addressing the group. “This is the mother of all wars we’ve got over the next 18 months. For the life or death of this country …if you want to kick in a billion, believe me,” says Koch “we’ll have especial seminar just for you.”

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This al-Jazeera documentary exposes Charles and David Koch, radical libertarians who use their money to oppose government and virtually all regulation as interference with the free market. They are each worth about $25 billion, which makes them the fourth richest Americans. When you combine their fortunes, they are the third wealthiest people in the world. The Kochs are also in a class of their own as players on the American political stage. Their web of influence in the U.S. stretches from state capitals to the halls of congress in Washington DC.

This hard-hitting investigation of the 1% at its very worst is the latest from acclaimed director Robert Greenwald. Charles and David Koch are using their billions to put a stranglehold on American democracy. What are we going to do about it?

It's not every day I can tie in kittens with Occupy-related news, but this new video from Moveon.org lets me do just that:

President Obama's Buffett Rule would require millionaires and billionaires to pay the same tax rate as the rest of us.

The Romney Rule lets fat cats rig the system, so they pay less and pass on the burden to hardworking Americans like you and me.

When the wealthiest 1% pay a fair tax rate like the rest of us, it keeps the American Dream alive for everyone. So tell Mitt Romney, kittens are cute. 1% fat cats who won't pay their fair share, eh, not so much.

The Buffet Rule is headed for a vote in the Senate today, where it's expected to die "quickly and quietly." If the bill is killed in the senate, don't anticipate any of us not among the wealthy ruling class to be quiet about it.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

[Video: Chris Matthews of MSNBC's Hardball features portions of President Obama's push for the Buffet Rule.]

President Obama appeared in Florida Tuesday to make the case for the “Buffett Rule,” a policy he introduced in this year’s State of the Union address. The rule would institute a minimum federal income tax of 30 percent for Americans who make more than $1 million a year.

The administration argues that the rule is designed to prevent the widespread tax evasion that allows top earners to avoid much of their social duties. It takes its name from billionaire investor Warren Buffett, who has publicly called for wealthy Americans to be taxed at higher rates than their mid-level employees.

As Bill Scher of Campain for America's Future notes, "President Obama's 30% rule is squarely within the 33% "principle" that President Bush articulated and nearly every Republican member of Congress at the time supported."

There is no justification for a backer of the Bush tax cuts to abandon that principle and filibuster President Obama's Buffett Rule.

Unless, Republicans want to articulate a new principle: "no one in America should have to pay more than a third of their income to the federal government ... and no multimillionaire who lives off of stocks and dividends should pay more than a sixth of their income to the federal government."

And as Think Progress noted, back in September 2011, when President Obama first debuted the Buffet Rule, they "climbed into the wayback machine and found a video of President Ronald Reagan decrying “crazy” tax loopholes that allowed a millionaire to pay a lower tax rate than a bus driver." Watch it here.

Now as the Senate prepares to vote on the Buffet Rule bill that would ensure that the wealthy pay a minimum 30 percent tax rate, Think Progress has found more Reagan video footage:

In this video, President Reagan describes a letter he received from an executive who wanted to come to Washington and tell Congress why it’s “wrong” that he was able to “take advantage of the present tax code” to pay a lower tax rate than his secretary.

In order to have a healthy economy, it needs to work for everyone and not just the wealthy 1 percent. The Buffet Rule bill will end those tax loopholes that enable the wealthy to pay less in taxes than middle class workers.

And if it was good enough for The Gipper, the GOP should love this bill.