You have to wonder what $113 million could do for education in this state. That would pay a lot of teacher’s salaries. Or maybe pay for health care for a few thousand people who can’t afford it.
But being Ahnuld the Guvuhnator for four more years and supporting those non-special interests is oh so much more important, isn’t it?
AP Wire | 11/01/2006 | AP Enterprise: Schwarzenegger donations top $113 million
When he ran for governor during the 2003 recall election, Arnold Schwarzenegger described the Capitol as a place where “special interests have a stranglehold. The money comes in, favors go out, the people lose.”
Even as the governor says he is not returning favors for cash, the money has been flooding in since he rose from Hollywood celebrity to chief executive of the nation’s most populous state.
An exhaustive review of campaign finance records by The Associated Press reveals that Schwarzenegger is on pace to become the most prolific fundraiser in California history. He has raised $113.4 million in the little more than three years since he launched his campaign to replace Democrat Gray Davis, who often was accused of having a “pay to play” approach to governing that favored his donors.
That amount is nearly as much as the $120 million Davis raised over seven years for two gubernatorial campaigns and to fight the recall effort. It also is more than three times as much as Schwarzenegger’s Democratic opponent in Tuesday’s election, state Treasurer Phil Angelides, has received during roughly the same period.
Schwarzenegger has done it despite having voter-imposed contribution limits on some of his campaign committees that Davis did not face until the 2003 recall campaign.
“Schwarzenegger has raised an average of $95,000 a day, which dwarfs the amount of money Davis raised,” said Carmen Balber, a consumer advocate for the Santa Monica-based Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights, which tracks Schwarzenegger’s campaign contributions and has been one of his biggest critics.
Schwarzenegger also has funneled $23.7 million of his own money into his campaigns, which have included his unsuccessful efforts to pass four ballot measures in last year’s special election.
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HI, I saw your post at Hullabaloo and followed you here. I did a brief survey of your site and I like what I see. I posted this shortly after your comment:
Joshua Holland provides the details that prove beyond a reasonable doubt, assuming that the jury doesn’t believe that two plus two equals five, that Bush invaded Iraq to steal its oil: http://www.smirkingchimp.com/node/1854
“But even “untold riches” don’t tell the whole story. Depending on how Iraq’s petroleum law shakes out, the country’s enormous reserves could break the back of OPEC, a wet dream in Western capitals for three decades. James Paul predicted that “even before Iraq had reached its full production potential of 8 million barrels or more per day, the companies would gain huge leverage over the international oil system. OPEC would be weakened by the withdrawal of one of its key producers from the OPEC quota system.” Depending on how things shape up in the next few months, Western oil companies could end up controlling the country’s output levels, or the government, heavily influenced by the United States, could even pull out of the cartel entirely.
Both independent analysts and officials within Iraq’s Oil Ministry anticipate that when all is said and done, the big winners in Iraq will be the Big Four — the American firms Exxon-Mobile and Chevron, the British BP-Amoco and Royal Dutch-Shell — that dominate the world oil market. Ibrahim Mohammed, an industry consultant with close contacts in the Iraqi Oil Ministry, told the Associated Press that there’s a universal belief among ministry staff that the major U.S. companies will win the lion’s share of contracts. “The feeling is that the new government is going to be influenced by the United States,” he said.”
Chris Floyd uses Joshua Holland’s work to provide a logical explanation as to why Bush seems to think he is winning the war in Iraq: http://www.chris-floyd.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=886&Itemid=135.
The Asian Times Online http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page.html is a good place to watch the Great Game unfold http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Game.