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True Belivers, life inside the BushCo bunkhouse. Pioneers, Rangers, and "Big Breasted Devils!"

Bush's Bagmen | ...the president's A-team for campaign cash

Welcome to the most ambitious and best-organized shakedown in the history of American presidential politics. Bush is working to raise a record $200 million -- and so far, at least sixty percent of his campaign donations have come from just 416 elite fund-raisers... [...]

Bush tried out the system in 2000, but this year he has expanded it to unprecedented proportions. He has added more than 250 Pioneers to his fund-raising club and created two new categories: Rangers (those who round up more than $200,000) and Mavericks (young Republicans who lasso $50,000). In essence, these select fund-raisers serve as bagmen for the president. They hit up wealthy friends and colleagues to give the maximum legal donation of $2,000 each, then bundle up those contributions and deliver them to the campaign.

Some Pioneers rely on a sort of pyramid scheme to gather money: [...] "Basically, it's an Amway sort of model," says Kevin Rennie, a former Republican state legislator from Connecticut who has monitored Bush's fund-raising effort. Appropriately, Betsy DeVos, whose husband heads the Amway empire, is a Bush Pioneer.

The Diplomat
Peter Secchia, a timber executive and self-described "political operative," helped Bush's father defeat televangelist Pat Robertson during the 1988 primaries. He was rewarded with the ambassadorship to Italy - despite an astounding lack of diplomatic skills. Secchia calls women "bitches" and "big-breasted devils," and in one speech he announced, "I saw the new Italian Navy. Its boats have glass bottoms, so they can see the old Italian Navy." [...] He abruptly ended an interview with Rolling Stone with a mock threat: "If you do a bad story," he said with a laugh, "I have some friends in Palermo who can take care of your knees."

Nice regul'r folks. Real family values types. Go check out Yeoman's article. There are several more "A-team" profiles included. Needless to say, I think it's pretty plain spoken clear what the "A" in "A-team" stands for.

Continue reading... Bush's Bagmen | Meet the Pioneers and Rangers, the president's A-team for campaign cash. By Barry Yeoman [Rolling Stone]

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