World News Korner

Good news liberals! We finally have a billionaire on our side.

Courtesy of the LA Times:

For years, liberals have fretted about the power of ultrawealthy people determined to use their billions to advance their political views. Charles and David Koch, in particular, have ranked high in the demonology of the American left.

But in Steyer, liberals have a billionaire on their side. Like the Kochs, he is building a vast political network and seizing opportunities provided by loose campaign finance rules to insert himself into elections nationwide. In direct contrast to them, he has made opposition to fossil fuels and the campaign against global warming the center of his activism.

The former financier is an unlikely green icon. Steyer built his fortune with a San Francisco-based hedge fund of the sort that drove protesters to occupy Wall Street. Some of the investments that landed him on the Forbes list of America's wealthiest went into companies he now says are destroying the planet. Adversaries and, in private, at least some erstwhile allies call him a dilettante.

Yet, unlike many others in a parade of super-rich Californians who have made forays into politics, Steyer has proved himself skilled at bringing attention to his cause and himself.

He has amassed impressive victories: helping persuade recession-weary Californians to pass a $1-billion annual tax hike; creating a gusher of money for energy efficiency; and this year playing a star role in destabilizing plans for the Keystone XL Pipeline with a campaign that has sown doubt about the project inside the administration and mobilized influential Democratic donors and business leaders against it.

Opponents of the pipeline, designed to move hundreds of thousands of barrels of oil daily along a 1,200-mile route from Canada's tar sands to Gulf Coast refineries, say it would contribute greatly to global warming.

"Normally, in the American system, people yell and scream and holler and nothing happens, and then something happens and it gets fixed," Steyer said in a recent interview. "That happened with acid rain, with the hole in the ozone layer. That is normally what happens."

Global warming, "for whatever reason, was not getting addressed," he said. "And it is the biggest issue."

I know right! He IS pretty awesome, and he's all ours.

And yes I do remember that we liberals also have Warren buffet, and that he is a billionaire that has long been on our side on most issues.

But you have to admit with so many billions financing the Right Wing we could use all of the help we can get.

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