Mark Sumner
Daily Kos
September 19, 2011
When we chow down on cow, we use the term “beef” to distance what we’re putting in our mouths from the creature placidly chewing grass in a field. When we use the term “SuperPAC” we’re engaging in another polite euphemism to avoid upsetting those with tender ears. Beef is nothing more than sliced up cow. SuperPACs are nothing more than stitched together bribes. Unfortunately, the same thing can be said of many politicians.
Take Rick Perry. Half of Perry’s contributions have originated with only 204 people. So many dollars coming from so few sources means that Perry’s team is extremely aware of who puts the butter on their toast. This isn’t twenty bucks from a million people. It’s closer to a million bucks from twenty people, and when someone contributes at that level they don’t do it because they like a candidate’s haircut, or even his ideology. It’s not going to the candidate with whom they’d most like to share a beer. Donors at this level share all the beers (and champagne) with the candidates that they can guzzle.
When individuals cut checks to politicians the size of those being scribbled out to Rick Perry, it happens for one reason. It’s an investment. In this case, it’s a pretty safe investment, because history shows that Rick Perry is a slot machine who pays on every pull.
One share of Perry belongs to playboy billionaire Thomas Friedkin, who earned his money the old fashioned way—he inherited it—and who used part of that money to start big game hunting preserves in Botswana and Tanzania. Rick Perry rewarded Friedkin’s obvious love of animals (and $700k contribution) by making him head of the Texas Park and Wildlife Commission, where he bumped the not-quite-so-generous Perry contributor who last held the position.
Another piece of PerryCo goes to home builder, Bob Perry (no relation). Not only did Bob Perry hand out $2.5m to namesake Rick, he also passed along another $7 million to Karl Rove’s Crossroads PAC. For this, Bob was well rewarded. To help out his pal Bob, Rick Perryshepherded through legislation forcing home buyers who were taken in by incomplete or shoddy work to go to an industry-dominated commission for “justice” rather than a judge. For his contributions, Bob Perry got to have his lawyer design the legislation, which Rick Perry then signed. A very good deal for Bob, and that’s even before you get to his role in passing anti-immigrant regulations.
Perhaps the biggest block of Rick Perry shares belong to garbage magnate Harold Simmons. For the $3 million he’s contributed, Simmons walked off with the whole state program for monitoring nuclear waste. The program was turned into a private monopoly for Simmons’ company. That was just the beginning.
When Simmons’ proposed facility was sent for environmental review, it failed. The approval commission ignored the environmental review and allowed the facility anyway. That was still just the beginning.
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