For years, liberals have fretted about the power of ultrawealthy people determined to use their billions to advance their political views. Charles and David Koch, in particular, have ranked high in the demonology of the American left.
But in Steyer, liberals have a billionaire on their side. Like the Kochs, he is building a vast political network and seizing opportunities provided by loose campaign finance rules to insert himself into elections nationwide. In direct contrast to them, he has made opposition to fossil fuels and the campaign against global warming the center of his activism.
The former financier is an unlikely green icon. Steyer built his fortune with a San Francisco-based hedge fund of the sort that drove protesters to occupy Wall Street. Some of the investments that landed him on the Forbes list of America's wealthiest went into companies he now says are destroying the planet. Adversaries and, in private, at least some erstwhile allies call him a dilettante.
Yet, unlike many others in a parade of super-rich Californians who have made forays into politics, Steyer has proved himself skilled at bringing attention to his cause and himself.
He has amassed impressive victories: helping persuade recession-weary Californians to pass a $1-billion annual tax hike; creating a gusher of money for energy efficiency; and this year playing a star role in destabilizing plans for the Keystone XL Pipeline with a campaign that has sown doubt about the project inside the administration and mobilized influential Democratic donors and business leaders against it.
Opponents of the pipeline, designed to move hundreds of thousands of barrels of oil daily along a 1,200-mile route from Canada's tar sands to Gulf Coast refineries, say it would contribute greatly to global warming.
"Normally, in the American system, people yell and scream and holler and nothing happens, and then something happens and it gets fixed," Steyer said in a recent interview. "That happened with acid rain, with the hole in the ozone layer. That is normally what happens."
Global warming, "for whatever reason, was not getting addressed," he said. "And it is the biggest issue."
I know right! He IS pretty awesome, and he's all ours.
And yes I do remember that we liberals also have Warren buffet, and that he is a billionaire that has long been on our side on most issues.
But you have to admit with so many billions financing the Right Wing we could use all of the help we can get.
Well, so long as he doesn't remain hidden, buy votes or try to own legislatures as the Koch brothers have done.
ReplyDeleteBeaglemom
He's not the only one! We have a billionaire in our neck of the woods who is a raging liberal. AND it's a woman!!!
ReplyDeleteWould rather see all money taken out of politics.
ReplyDeleteAgreed. Replace the money in politics with honesty.
DeleteAlso agree with that sentiment.
DeleteUnfortunately, the people who would have to pass the legislation to get rid of the private money in politics are the very people who benefit from it.
I wish he'd tackle Fukushima before the entire ocean & our planet are ruined.
ReplyDeleteAnd he's better looking than either of the Kochs too.
ReplyDeleteHow the GOP became the “White Man’s Party”
ReplyDeleteFrom Dick Nixon to Rand Paul, Republicans have banked on the unerring support of Southern white men. Here's how it came to be
...The Republican Party today, in its voters and in its elected officials, is almost all white. But it wasn’t always like that. Indeed, in the decades immediately before 1964, neither party was racially identified in the eyes of the American public. Even as the Democratic Party on the national level increasingly embraced civil rights, partly as a way to capture the growing political power of blacks who had migrated to Northern cities, Southern Democrats—like George Wallace— remained staunch defenders of Jim Crow. Meanwhile, among Republicans, the racial antipathies of the rightwing found little favor among many party leaders.
...That same summer of 1963, as key Republican leaders strategized on how to shift their party to the far right racially, the Democrats began to lean in the other direction. Northern constituents were increasingly appalled by the violence, shown almost nightly on broadcast television, of Southern efforts to beat down civil rights protesters. Reacting to the growing clamor that something be done, President Kennedy introduced a sweeping civil rights bill that stirred the hopes of millions that segregation would soon be illegal in employment and at business places open to the public. Despite these hopes, however, prospects for the bill’s passage seemed dim, as the Southern Democrats were loath to support civil rights and retained sufficient power to bottle up the bill.
http://www.salon.com/2013/12/22/how_the_gop_became_the_white_mans_party/
Really interesting article. I encourage you to read it in it's entirety. It helped me to understand why things are the way they are today and filled in some gaps for me in my political history. 1963 was a bigger year than any of us ever realized.
The 9 Worst States For Reproductive Rights In 2013
ReplyDeletehttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/12/23/2013-abortion-laws_n_4493602.html
Things are shifting all over the country. 'Red' states are turning purple and blue!
ReplyDeleteMichelle Nunn, Jason Carter hope to rechart the course of Georgia politics
The two major parties here don’t agree on many things. One of them is that it is only a matter of time before Georgia goes from being a Republican stronghold to a state that is up for grabs.
In next year’s elections, Democrats will be looking to speed that process along with a couple of candidates who bring fresh faces and familiar names.
They are Senate contender Michelle Nunn, an executive who is also the daughter of former senator Sam Nunn, and gubernatorial hopeful Jason Carter, a third-term state senator who is a grandson of former president Jimmy Carter.
Nunn and Carter face tough odds, given that Georgia has not elected a non-incumbent Democrat to any statewide office since the waning years of the last century. But recent demographic shifts suggest a new electoral equation could be forming — and probably more quickly than in much-talked-about Texas.
The face of the state is being changed by an influx of African Americans and Latinos. Although whites accounted for 71 percent of Georgians who voted in the 2004 elections, that share had dropped by nearly 10 percentage points in 2012.
Last year, President Obama’s reelection campaign pretty much ignored Georgia, but he still got more than 45 percent of the vote. Of the states that Obama lost to Republican Mitt Romney, Georgia had the second-narrowest margin, behind battleground North Carolina.
Democrats say all they need now is more money, better organization and the right names on the ballot — the last of which they believe they have found in Nunn and Carter, who present themselves as affable consensus-builders willing to reach across party lines.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/michelle-nunn-jason-carter-hope-to-rechart-the-course-of-georgia-politics/2013/12/21/a2611bfc-5e9b-11e3-be07-006c776266ed_story.html