Interesting parallel stats:
Jerry Brown is the Democratic nominee for governor of California. He is in a heated race with former eBay CEO, billionaire Meg Whitman, who has financed her campaign with her own money to the tune of $140 million. Of course, that's chump change to us billionaires, but to ordinary folks it must be staggering -- and alarming, if they think at all of the implications of super-rich individuals deciding to take control of our political process.
Look what the Koch brothers are doing behind the scenes now, financing the Tea Party and pouring millions into conservative campaigns. The presidential election could become a contest between dueling billioinaires, not necessarily as candidates but as the backers of candidates. Well, at least we might have Bill Gates and George Soros on our side.
But that's beside the point of this bit of factual whimsy about California's gubernatorial race.
Jerry Brown served as California's governor once before, from 1975 to 1983.
In that election, he replaced a Republican governor who was a former Hollywood actor.
If he wins in 2010, he will replace a Republican governor who is a former Hollywood actor.
Meaning? None, really. Just an interesting bit of factual whimsy.
Ralph
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Re my comment above about undisclosed sources of huge sums of campaign finance money, the Democratic National Committee is airing an ad on just this subject, accusing the U. S. Chamber of Commerce of funneling large foreign corporation money to Republican candidates. And, of course, with the SCOTUS decision, the sources are now protected.
ReplyDeleteHere's the text of the ad:
"Karl Rove, Ed Gillespie: They're Bush cronies. The US Chamber of Commerce: They're shills for big business," the ad goes. "And they're stealing our democracy. Spending Millions from secret donors to elect Republicans to do their bidding in Congress. It appears they're even taking secret foreign money to influence our elections. It's incredible, Republicans benefiting from secret foreign money. Tell the Bush Crowd and the Chamber of Commerce - stop stealing our democracy."