Tom Steyer, the California-based former hedge fund manager, is going to spend $400,000 on ads criticizing a Massachusetts Democrat running for U.S. Senate, Stephen Lynch, who supports the Keystone gas pipeline, the Wall Street Journal reports.
Somehow all the "let's get money out of politics" folks who were so vocal in their opposition when it was Sheldon Adelson or David Koch spending money to support Republican or free-market ideas or candidates seem silent when it is an anti-global-warming, pro-"green"-energy California billionaire who is the one doing the political spending. It's a classic double standard, in which political spending by rich people is a grave threat to democracy, but the threat is only worth mentioning when the spending is done in support of right-wing causes.
As the Journal notes, in a recent interview with The Hill newspaper, Mr. Steyer said, "The goal here is not to win. The goal here is to destroy these people. We want a smashing victory."
Mr. Steyer has been urging Middlebury College to divest from fossil fuels, while he himself is on the board of Stanford, which has not divested. Mr. Steyer and his wife signed the giving pledge of Warren Buffett, whose Berkshire Hathaway owns MidAmerican, one of the utilities targeted by the divestment folks. And Mr. Steyer recently hosted at his San Francisco home President Obama, who in the second presidential debate criticized Mitt Romney for being anti-coal.