BIllionaire cage match: 27 Yankees vs the Cubs

BIllionaire cage match: 27 Yankees vs the Cubs

by digby

I wrote about the battle of the billionaires (also known as American democracy) at Salon today:

There has been a long running joke in political circles that we should just force politicians to wear the logos of their donors and favored lobbyists the way NASCAR drivers wears logos on their jumpsuit. It would make it much easier for voters to identify to whom our elected representatives really answer. Right now they just wear an American flag pin and that doesn’t really tell us much.

As I wrote the other day, there doesn’t seem to be a whole lot we can do about this. Billionaires are perfectly happy to “own” politicians these days. If they ever had any shame about openly offering huge sums of money to anyone who will advance their agenda, paying lip service at best to the idea of democracy, they have managed to overcome it.

(Ironically, the group which filed the lawsuit challenging the democratic concept of “one person, one vote,” which was just accepted by the Supreme Court, is financed by right-wing millionaires through the old-fashioned tax-deductible “charitable trust” model, so perhaps these ostentatious billionaires aren’t quite ready to take full ownership of the franchise just yet.)

Since this insane income inequality is increasingly seen as almost supernatural, a condition ordained by the “invisible hand” of God, and to such a degree that many liberals have come to the conclusion that the only way to advance a liberal agenda is to find our own liberal billionaires. And that leads to certain awkward alliances, like this one, via Think Progress:

Usually the news that a major Republican donor will be dropping hundreds of millions of dollars on a campaign to influence voters on energy and climate change would make environmentalists worried. But not when that donor is spending $175 million to get Republicans to talk about clean energy and the solutions to the climate crisis.

Entrepreneur Jay Faison founded the ClearPath Foundation in December of last year in part to restore Republicans’ environmental legacy. Tuesday he announced that he will be investing $175 million on a public education campaign that will include a social media and online advertising to get Republicans to talk about market-based solutions to climate change. That includes $40 million through the 2016 cycle, and another $10 million as a seed fund for a political advocacy group. The foundation invested between $1 and $9 million in a few solar energy projects.

It is very hard to argue with that, and the environmental groups don’t even try. There is no greater challenge on the planet than the climate crisis and it would be foolhardy to turn away from any possible assistance in getting that done. The Sierra Club’s national campaign director Debbie Sease told Think Progress, ”it may or may not be enough, but it’s a really good thing. If you look at the scale of what we need to do on climate, you can’t do it with one party, you need Republicans too. It would be naive of me to think it’s the one thing that’ll turn it around, but it’s a start.”

Unfortunately, the right is antediluvian on this issue, so his “starting point” is trying to get the Republican rank-and-file to admit that the problem even exists and that science isn’t trying to yank their Bibles from their cold, dead hands. This man has his work cut out for him. And, at the end of the day, he will be trying to bring Republicans over to the cause while at the same time promoting conservative “solutions,” to be named later. And, let’s just say those don’t have the greatest track record when it comes to dealing with massive global crises.

Read on. There’s more. It’s depressing. But we’ve got to stay reality based amirite?