Posted on 04/04/2004 8:24:09 PM PDT by Dan from Michigan
The New Fat Cats
Fri Apr 2, 3:59 PM ET Add Business - BusinessWeek
Online to My Yahoo!
Laurie David doesn't consider herself part of a special-interest lobby seeking political favors. She's just a determined environmentalist who's raising gobs of money to defeat President George W. Bush (news - web sites). What does she want in return? For starters, stronger pollution-control laws for utilities and tougher fuel-economy standards for Detroit. Oh, and she would also like the next President to sign the Kyoto treaty committing the U.S. to significant cuts in greenhouse gases.
For years, David, 45, has raised money for environmental causes, but her new gig is political fund-raising. Operating outside the campaign-finance laws, she is drumming up heaps of soft money -- the unlimited contributions that political parties once thrived on but are now barred from accepting -- by bringing hundreds of prominent people from the entertainment, media, and fashion worlds into her Beverly Hills home. There, they listen to Democratic activists lay out their strategy for defeating Bush. There is no fancy meal and no admission charge. But afterward, David, a former talent coordinator for The Late Show with David Letterman and wife of comedian Larry David, discreetly mentions that she has given $100,000 -- and could her guests please do the same? "My job is to do everything I can to take the country back from the right wing," she vows.
And how. David has raised some $2 million for liberal 527 committees -- nonprofit groups named for a section of the tax code -- whose purpose is to bypass the 2002 McCain-Feingold campaign-finance reforms. That makes her part of a new breed of fund-raiser taking advantage of chinks in the law to keep the cash coming. Call them the New Fat Cats. The reform measure has also given rise to a handful of even more effective fund-raisers: "super fat cats" such as billionaire George Soros, who support the 527s with huge gifts. Soros alone has given some $15 million to liberal causes.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
Then what the hell are you?
tougher fuel-economy standards for Detroit.
Easy for you to say in your posh elitist Beverly Hills mansion you arrogant bitch(and I rarely use that term for a woman). Some of our family members(like my dad before he retired) depend on Detroit Auto companies for their living, and your policies would put them out of work, but what the hell do you care about that over in Beverly Hills.
And the democraps are the party of the 'workin' man'. Riiight.
They never do. The media refers to the anti-Second Amendment group Brady Center, with a couple hundred thousand members, to be a 'citizens action coalition'. The NRA, with about three million members, is a 'Special Interest'.
Remember, it's only a special interest if you don't like it.
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