You may have noticed I’ve been rather absent for awhile. I had volumes of data to digest and boil down to what follows. I have boiled it down as far as I can. At nearly 6,000 words, I could easily break it down into six segments of 1,000 words apiece, and still be accused of unwarranted loquacity. Tough. This is as stripped down as I could make it for you. Trust me, it’ll go a lot faster than you think. OK? Ready? Steady? Let’s go:
Robert Leroy Mercer of East Setauket, New York (Long Island)
Welcome to Constitutional Jeopardy. You have the answer (the title): now, what’s the question?
Bob Mercer donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to defeat Peter DeFazio in the Fourth Congressional District of Oregon. He didn’t succeed, either, with loony-tunes candidate Art Robinson, crank scientist, global warming denier and John-Galt-lovin’ home-schooling guru. DeFazio prevailed, as usual, and a particularly comatose and unprofessional Oregon media sat around in their usual pose, with their heads firmly up their overlarge asses.
The national media followed suit, with the exception of the Rachel Maddow Show, who ventured into non-easy-for-video waters, and dropped the investigation.
But there is a huge misperception here, and one that needs to be talked about: the idea that Bob Mercer had some “personal” grudge against Peter DeFazio because DeFazio and Tom Harkin of Iowa had co-sponsored a “transactions tax” on trades, and that, therefore, was the REASON that Mercer was slushing cash into the Oregon congressional race.
Because Robinson lost, this isn’t “news” and has been dropped. But it ought not: it’s important in understanding the buying of our election, and the manner in which future elections may well be run.
Idaho Prologue:
2006 was a busy year for Laird Maxwell, of Boise, Idaho. Continue reading
