Environmental champion Tom Steyer elected Terry McAuliffe governor of Virginia-- so why the glum face?Tom Steyer is a San Francisco billionaire and a dedicated environmental activist. Last year, he spent $11 million helping elect one of the most corrupt corporate whores in American politics, Virginia's new governor, Terry McAuliffe. A few days ago, the Washington Post reported that Governor McAuliffe has joined a coalition of right-wing, anti-environment governors pushing for off-shore drilling. Steyer may be delighted he helped keep Ken Cucchinelli out of office but his boy McAuliffe joined up with Climate Change deniers Pat McCrory (R-NC), Robert Bentley (R-AL), and Phil Bryant (R-MS) to demand that the Interior Department allow Big Oil and Gas companies to drill, baby, drill off the coasts of their states.
McCrory heads the Outer Continental Shelf Governors Coalition, a group of mostly Republican governors pushing to expand offshore oil drilling. McAuliffe told the Washington Post he would join the coalition-- the first Democrat to do so-- as he sped out of the meeting Monday.…[B]efore drilling or exploration can commence, states will have to consider objections from environmentalists, who are concerned about the impact on wildlife.
Steyer plans to spend a lot more than $11 on electoral politics this cycle. He's ponied up $50 million of his own and is raising another $50 million from rich friends concerned about the environment. Hopefully, they'll chose better candidates than Terry McAuliffe… but there is no reason to believe that will be the case. They take their advise from corrupt corporate Democrats just like McAuliffe. In today's NY Times Nick Confessore has a fascinating piece on how the big money donors-- primarily Republicans-- are demanding a bigger say over party strategy.
The Republican donors who have financed the party’s vast outside-spending machine are turning against the consultants and political strategists they once lavished with hundreds of millions of dollars.In recent months, they have begun holding back checks from Republican “super PACs” like American Crossroads, unsatisfied with the groups’ explanations for their failure to unseat President Obama or win back the Senate. Others, less willing than in the past to defer to the party elders and former congressional staff members who control the biggest groups, are demanding a bigger voice in creating strategy in exchange for their continued support.Donors like Paul Singer, the billionaire Republican investor, have expanded their in-house political shops, building teams of loyal advisers and researchers to guide and coordinate their giving. And some of the biggest contributors to Republican outside groups in 2012 are now gravitating toward the more donor-centric political and philanthropic network overseen by Charles and David Koch, who have wooed them in part by promising more accountability over how money is spent.…The quiet revolt signals a broader shift in the world of big money. Clubs of elite donors in both parties are taking a more central role in shaping policy and campaigns, displacing party leaders and the outside-spending organizations they helped create after the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision in 2010. And the sheer scale of their spending is almost certain to rewrite the playbook for political campaigns this year, as candidates reckon with the strongly held views of some of the world’s wealthiest people… “The Karl Rove thing is out,” said one donor, who asked for anonymity because he did not want to offend Mr. Rove. “The Koch thing is in.”
Good luck working with a bunch of ego-centric divas, folks-- and I know. In the music business I worked with some highly successful divas with… let's say "minds of their own"-- like Madonna, Stevie Nicks, Joni Mitchell, Chaka Khan, Rickie Lee Jones, Cher. They all earned a right to make decisions-- right or wrong-- and they were very aware of it. Yasha Levin, writing for Pando Daily this week, covered the cash-rich attempt of Ro Khanna to unseat progressive icon Mike Honda in CA-17, the Silicon Valley. "Ro’s appeal," he writes, "to the inflated egos of Silicon Valley billionaires-- and their delusional belief in the transformative and utopian power of tech-- is a bit nauseating. But it’s not surprising, given the candidate’s shameless embrace of tech culture and money. I mean, this is the same guy who told the New York Times that he considers himself a 'tech groupie.'"
Ro’s campaign contribution list reads like an unofficial Silicon Valley social register: Peter Thiel, Sean Parker, Sheryl Sandberg, Marissa Mayer, Marc Andreessen, Ron Conway, Mark Pincus, rainmaker/venture capitalist John Doerr and hundreds of other lesser-known tech titans and financiers.Most of these donors (as well as their husbands and wives) have maxed out their $2,600 federal individual contribution limit. Many of Ro’s big name supporters are so sure he’ll succeed in his primary challenge that they’ve maxed out their contributions to both his primary and general election campaigns.Ro is running as a Democrat. But as you can see from the list of names, moneyed support for Ro is a multi/post-partisan affair. It’s a big tent party that includes hardcore libertarians, Tea Party backers, Mitt Romney supporters, wealthy techno-Democrats, entertainment industry has beens like M.C. Hammer and new age quacks like Deepak Chopra. Hell, even anti-government venture capitalist Chamath Palihapitiya, a Senator Ted Cruz supporter who praised the recent government shutdown because it finally prevented D.C. pols from messing with the economy, is excited about electing Ro as Silicon Valley’s next Congressman.New York Magazine’s Kevin Roose hung out with Ro and some of his backers, and came away stunned by the messianic fervor the candidate inspires among the normally politically agnostic Silicon Valley elite:“In the past few months, I’ve heard maybe a dozen members of Silicon Valley’s investor class tell me, in rapturous tones, how Khanna just gets it. He gets that tech’s political influence can be much bigger than changing a few immigration laws, and he gets how much the Valley could do for the country if given strong leadership and a common platform to rally behind.”Which brings us to Ro’s “strong” common platform. What exactly is it?Ro’s supporters didn’t offer many specifics when interviewed by the Times or New York magazine. Rather, they describe his appeal in cultural, almost transcendental terms. Ro is a politician like few others-- someone who understands that Silicon Valley is undergoing a political awakening-- a coming of age. He just “gets it” and “identifies with us.”The only thing Ro’s backers can agree on is that, if he wins, he’ll be a reliable warrior for their interests.“The tech community is looking for advocates who will be be really, really outspoken for tech, and Ro fits that mold… I’m hoping it’s a wave of the future that continues, because it’s crucial for the tech community to have a really active voice in Washington,” Ron Conway, an early investor in Google and PayPal, told the New York Times.At a $2,600-a-head fundraiser in May 2013, Napster/Facebook billionaire Sean Parker introduced Ro Khanna to a room full of other tech millionaires and billionaires as a man who can take their vision to D.C.
“Silicon Valley hasn’t been properly represented at the federal level. We haven’t had the kind of young, hard-driving candidate that really understands the unique issues facing Silicon Valley at a moment in time when, you know, they actually are at a series of, uhm, important political milestones and political turning points. And to a certain extent, I think we’re starting to come to a realization of our own power and of our own capability, not just as innovators and technology pioneers, but also, uhm, but also in a political sense.”Taking the mic from Sean Parker, Ro told this room of ultra-wealthy donors that he wanted to use the values and culture of tech-- their values and culture-- to change the world.
“The premise of this campaign is quite simple. We’ve had quite brilliant people…use technology to change the world. And it’s time that we actually change politics, that Silicon Valley has the potential to do this. … It’s not just about having a tech agenda. This is about something much deeper-- our values, and our ability to use those values to change Washington and the world.”[W]hile sucking up to Silicon Valley’s inflated sense of their new power has done wonders for Ro’s campaign coffers, it’s hard to see how he wins against Rep Mike Honda solely on the strength of his spiritual connection to Silicon Valley’s investor and executive class.He needs something big, because it’s shaping up to be tough battle. To enter the general election, Ro will need place at least second in California’s newfangled “open primary” race this summer. Called a “jungle primary,” it’ll pit all candidates from all parties against one-another in a single race and then put the top two candidates on the general election ballot.Current polls show Ro coming in in close third. So he’s got three months to convince enough voters that he’s a better Democrat than Rep. Honda. And that’s no easy feat, given that the incumbent is well-liked, has the protection of the powerful House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and has been endorsed by President Barack Obama, Howard Dean, labor groups and a long list of other Democratic Party power players.So what’s Ro’s plan? How is going to convince voters that he’s radically different and better than Mike Honda?Ro’s campaign literature offers an uninspiring and cautious mix of progressive, New Democrat and Centrist Republican policies-- most of them long supported by Rep. Honda. The only substantive difference seems to be in the realm of education, with Ro favoring anti-teachers’ union measures like performance pay. But even there the wording is guarded and generic…If you read his book Entrepreneurial Nation, Ro comes off as a boringly moderate Republican-- someone who tisk-tisks hardline Austrian economists, Randroids and Koch groups for going over the edge in their hate of government, but praises business-minded pragmatists like President Ronald Reagan for understanding that “ideology must never trump national interests, and that our nation has a stake in helping our businesses.”Centrism? That’s not the type of stuff you’d expect from a insurgent politician facing a tough race with bad odds.I wanted answers, specifics. So earlier this week, I went to a Ro Khanna campaign event to ask the candidate exactly what he stands for. What I discovered was shocking: he doesn’t seem to know either.…For all the talk of him being an aggressive disrupter, Ro is a big let down. His political vision is bland, cautious and overly conservative.This isn’t Kansas or Arizona, and Ro isn’t running for Ron Paul’s old congressional seat in Texas. This is the heart of the Bay Area, which has been solidly liberal and Democratic for decades. Out here, Ro comes off as a squishy moderate Republican.None of his proposals to are controversial, nor are they even minimally progressive by Bay Area standards. And they are completely in line with the views of Silicon Valley’s investor and executive class.…I wanted to believe that Ro’s tech politics transcended Honda’s tired old world ideas, but I didn’t see any evidence that they existed.So I came up to Ro after speech and asked him directly: Is there anything specific that he thinks Rep. Honda has done wrong? Any legislation, policies and/or votes?Honda’s got a decade of legislative history to choose from, so I figured Ro would at least find a couple of things he disagreed with.I was wrong.Ro couldn’t name anything-- not a single vote nor a single piece of legislation that he took issue with.I asked Ro again and tried pressing him for something-- anything-- concrete. But he just kept talking vaguely about Honda’s “lack of leadership” and “initiative,” and that today’s political challenge requires a “different skill set and expertise on the economy”…The only specific criticism he could come up with: Mike Honda for accepting PAC money and taking campaign contributions from lobbyists-- which was a strange fault to pick at, considering that Ro raised the vast majority of his campaign funds from the creme de la creme of Silicon Valley’s money class.If he doesn’t have a problem with the way Mike Honda’s voted, then why aggressively unseat a fellow Democrat? Why go through the trouble if there’s no concrete reason to do so?It could be that Ro has plenty of things he’d do differently than Mike Honda, but doesn’t want stick his neck out too far and possibly alienate voters with unfavorable positions so early in the race.Earlier this month, Ro got creamed by a negative New York Times article after he bragged to a reporter that main difference between him and Rep. Honda is that “I wear tech groupie as a badge of honor.” He then followed that up by telling the NYT that he favored changing America’s tax code to allow tech companies to repatriate their profits without being taxed. It’s a position that would go over well with lots of tech companies, including Apple, which currently has over $100 billion in profits stashed away offshore because it doesn’t want to pay taxes. Even Republican Senator John McCain called the practice “egregious and outrageous.”And maybe that’s why Ro inspires such political fervor among the Silicon Valley elite: their political vision is so degraded and limited that they view a boring centrist like Ro as nothing less than Jesus, just because he wants to let them pocket their fat profits without getting taxed?
