Thanks for the fascinating article about the Bradley Foundations financed by donations originating from the Koch and Scaife billions ("The right's $350 million idea train," Dec. 18). Too bad this wealth cannot be devoted to good works like alleviating poverty, ignorance and disease, as the Rockefeller and Carnegie fortunes did in the past and Gates, Buffet and Soros families are doing at present. Instead, the Bradley Foundation is acting as a "malefactor of great wealth," as Teddy Roosevelt famously put it, to peddle its extreme right-wing ideology.

This kind of practice has been with us for a long time, The Prophet Amos tells us that the Lord forgave the Kingdom of Israel for adultery, idolatry and murder but could not forgive its inhabitants for allowing the wealthy and powerful to oppress the poor and helpless and to corrupt the legal system and therefore destroyed the Kingdom.

Jack Kinstlinger, Baltimore