Monday, August 15, 2011

Thank God We've Got Rich People like Whitney Tilson to Buy Influence among Moderate Democrats

Yglesias:

We can also test this hypothesis by looking up Whitney Tilson’s record of campaign contributions. She’s given to Mark Begich, Ronnie Musgrove, Kay Hagan, Kirsten Gillibrand, George Miller, Michael Bennet, James Cluburn, Mark Warner, Mary Landrieu, Joe Biden, the New York State Democratic Party, Paul Kanjorsky, Chuck Schumer, Democrats for Education Reform, Alan Khazei, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, Jim Himes, Gary Peters, Krystal Ball, Jared Polis, Elwyn Tinkleberg, Tom Allen, Tom Udall, the Democratic National Committee, Reshma Saujani, and Russ Feingold. This looks to me like a person who’s sincerely interesting in improving the lot of poor people. A man who perhaps takes a special interest in K-12 education relative to other issues, but who is putting money on the line to help elect candidates who regularly vote for higher taxes on the rich in order to finance more generous social services.

That looks to me like a person giving money to new and prospective legistators which support his positions on education, senators on education-related committees, Democrats in close races, particularly against real nutjobs, and other intermediate organizations also doing the same.

It is bad enough that the rich can buy so much influence in our system, do we have to thank and congratulate them for it too?

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