Please forgive me for belaboring the obvious, but Sheldon Adelson, the Koch brothers and the rest of the robber barons who bankroll America's gold-plated right-wing guano faucet are decidedly uninterested in the "issues" their minions pretend to care about.
Case in point: America's sweetheart Karl Rove and his Crossroads GPS monstrosity bought ads in Nevada to tell everyone Shelley Berkley used her position "to enrich her family" so she's a poophead blahblahblah. The allegation aside, who could possibly believe that the one-percenters who finance Rove's un-American activities are even slightly disturbed if someone unfairly uses influence to enrich themselves? True, some people might call that corrupt or a conflict of interest. But Mitt Romney calls it his career. And the whole point of getting Berkley's opponent, senator-by-appointment-only Dean Heller, elected is that if Republicans control the Senate, it will be much easier for billionaires and corporate CEOs to use their position and influence to enrich themselves at the expense of everyone else. Obviously.
Another case in point: The right's war on public employees. From my latest CityLife column:
...Sheldon Adelson did not give Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker's campaign a quarter-million dollars because Adelson thinks the assistant manager of the Oshkosh DMV office needs to contribute more to her retirement. Adelson and the rest of the bajillionaires who ladled money on Walker's successful campaign against a recall, and who generously finance a host of right-wing advocacy groups and PACS, could give a shit if some fireman in Eau Claire is overpaid.
The Koch brothers have not bankrolled a Nevada branch of their severely anti-union wingnut factory, the Orwellian-named Americans for Prosperity, because the Kansas-headquartered petrochemical tycoons are deeply disturbed by the compensation package awarded to North Las Vegas park maintenance crews.
As Walker himself so eloquently explained, the right's financiers are just using the public employee issue to "divide and conquer," manufacturing outrage toward civil servants so as to drive a wedge between middle class voters and pit them against each other while the billionaires point, laugh and continue to redistribute wealth to themselves and from the middle class without interruption. Obviously.
The obvious is belabored at more length in the aforementioned CityLife column, and I've also been holding forth (nattering on?) about what drives the money behind the right -- and what doesn't -- on The Agenda fairly regularly, and on this recent edition in particular:
Yes, friends, that's The Agenda, hosted by Hugh Jackson from the left and Elizabeth Crum from the right, weekdays at 12:30 on Channel 3 and also available for viewing on the internets at your convenience! (Please excuse the plug. But while I'm relatively new to the medium and the industry, I'm pretty sure when one is doing a TV show one is supposed to encourage people to watch it.)
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FYI, BTW, FWIW, WTF, BYOB, ETC... I may decide to rekindle, as it were, the Gleaner and post more frequently later this summer, which is to say just as the plutocracy and its repulsive minions cynically smother democracy round-the-clock and wall-to-wall in a vile and truly world-historical shitblizzard of filthy lies and unbridled self-interest. Or I may not. Meantime, Nevada's most consistently insightful, serious and well-researched source of policy analysis from a progressive perspective, perhaps especially with respect to federal issues and the congressional delegation, can be found at Desert Beacon. Obviously.
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