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$200 million dollars to NPR, courtesy of the late Joan B. Kroc (the widow of McDonald's restaurant founder Ray Kroc).
Personally I think McDonald's sucks, but Mrs Kroc did a very cool thing with her money, so maybe I'll actually go buy some McNuggets for lunch tomorrow.
Or maybe not. Their food still sucks.
This page contains a single entry from the blog posted on November 6, 2003 11:20 PM.
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Comments (1)
Dear Lux:
Sorry to be OT: I am actually replying to a comment you made on the Dean Blog earlier, about how his campiagn should not opt out of the matching funds and spending limits.
I voted to opt out with this reasoning: the Dean campiagn IS campiagn finance reform. The huge amount of small donations Dean has raised from many individual donors has immunized him (about as much as possible)against the influence of concentrated economic interests, a la Enron. To exchange this reform-in-fact for a symbol of reform (accepting spending limits) which will in practice only aid the world's worst example of politics-for-sale-to-the-highest-bidder (Bush) is no service to campaign finance reform. The concept of matching funds and spending limits were useful ways to diminish the role of money in campiagns, by creating a level playing field. But Bush's anticipated $200,000,000 means there will be no level playing field. In that context, accepting spending limits means letting the dollars of Bush's "Pioneers" and "Rangers" count more than the the dollars I and thousands of others have poured into the Dean campaign. That's a betrayal of reform, not a defense of it.
I have seen some people argue that a sort of compromise might be to opt out, to allow spending money against Bush between the primaries and the conventions, but adhere to the spirit of finance reform by observing the $45 million spending limit for the *primaries*. I think there is some merit to this idea, though no one else's campaign, as far as I can tell, is as financially democratic as Dean's. But as I see it, formally accepting spending limits would simply help Bush foist on us the very type of government campaign finance reform was designed to prevent -- a government of no-bid contracts, aborted EPA investigations (see yesterday's news), California-style energy company larcenies, and tax breaks for the rich. No thanks. And with Dean, we are not just trading one set of big money sugar daddies for another. We are getting a campaign that exemplifies everything finance reform is about. Anyway, my $.02.
- pedestrian crossing
Posted by pedestrian crossing | November 7, 2003 12:18 PM