"Tom Steyer may be liberals' answer to the Koch brothers"

[applegrove]

Tom Steyer may be liberals' answer to the Koch brothers

By Evan Halper at the LA Times

http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-steyer-20131222,0,6539543.story#axzz2oAkkZ9KG

"SNIP....................................


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.



.....................................SNIP"

[BKH70041]

1. Billionaires are known for cutting their own throats.

That's how they got to be billionaires.

[DBoon]

2. The Left's answer to the Kochs is popular mobilization

You will never get progress by playing one billionaire against another

[1000words]

3. +1

King of the Hill.