When is Harry Reid going to mention Tom Steyer on the Senate floor?
Via Sac Bee
You might think last week didn’t start out happy for Tom Steyer, the San Francisco billionaire who is spending his money and time trying to save the earth by fighting climate change.
The front page of the Monday New York Times described Steyer in so many words as being a hypocrite for having run a hedge fund that “pumped hundreds of millions of dollars into companies that operate coal mines and coal-fire power plants,” including an especially nasty 4,000-acre Australian coal mine.
It didn’t get much better the next day when a Wall Street Journal columnist piled on with an opening line that read: “Tom Steyer ruined the planet before he offered to save it.”
Investors Business Daily and newspapers in Montana chimed in, too, alleging he essentially is buying off Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and other politicians by opening his checkbook wide to help Democrats who, like Steyer, are convinced of the threat of climate change.
I figured he’d be a little grumpy and glum when we spoke on Thursday.
“Ha, ha, ha,” Steyer said by phone. He added: “Ha, ha, ha.”
“Politics is a full-contact sport. If you get involved, expect people to take a shot at you,” he said, quoting sage political advice he received when he decided to quit his hedge fund, Farallon Capital Management, and become engaged in the political system on the side of the environment.
Reid, struggling to hold onto a Democratic majority, is waging a campaign to demonize libertarian brothers Charles and David Koch, the oil magnates who fund many conservative campaign efforts.
The Kochs rank No. 6 on Forbes’ list of the world’s richest people with fortunes of $41 billion apiece. Steyer is way down at No. 1,141, with $1.6 billion, still oligarch air. He is becoming the liberal conservatives love to hate, now that he is challenging the oil industry and its allies.
The Republican National Committee and House Speaker John Boehner denounce him, trying to shred him for doing what rich Republicans do: spend big to elect the people who will do what they want. It is the American way of politics.
Steyer doesn’t seemed bothered by the assaults. “They’re doing exactly what I would expect,” he said.
Californians became acquainted with Steyer in 2010 when he spent $7 million to defeat Proposition 23. That was the failed oil-and-coal-industry-funded initiative that sought to unravel California’s landmark Assembly Bill 32, which is forcing drastic greenhouse gas reductions.
In 2012, Steyer spent $30 million on his Proposition 39, which raised taxes on out-of-state corporations to pay for energy conservation programs intended to reduce reliance on carbon-based fuel.