DKos: Paul Ryan's Dinner Companions, Not The $350 Wine, Are The Story

[Hissyspit]

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/07/11/993378/-Paul-Ryans-dinner-companions,-not-the-$350-wine,-are-the-story?detail=hide

MON JUL 11, 2011 AT 10:00 PM EDT

Paul Ryan's dinner companions, not the $350 wine, are the story

by Laura Clawson

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His dinner companions, though, are a little more interesting. Again, not necessarily surprising, but if you want to see the Republican policy world in a nutshell, this is it. TPM has identified them:

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Asness, who ordered the wine and who, according to Feinberg was the one who said "Fuck her," is better known as a high-profile hedge fund manager. Asness founded and runs AQR Capital, which manages an estimated $26 billion in a variety of traditional products and hedge funds, and his life story has been the subject of numerous books and articles about the rise and fall of Wall Street. He's also grabbed headlines for being one of the most voluble opponents of President Obama's economic policies.

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Hedge fund billionaires make giant contributions to elite universities and get like-minded professors hired to named chairs. (The Koch brothers have been doing this with a vengeance.) Together, they influence politicians, who set the economic agenda in Congress and to a great extent in the media. That is how it works, how our public discourse on the economy is shaped, and it starts with money.

Again, this is not shocking, but the very baldness of what's we're seeing in this particular case is a helpful reminder of the myriad ways money buys access. It's not just campaign contributions or even the promise of high-paying jobs to politicians who've left office. Money buys experts. It buys credentials like named chairs for the experts you, as a billionaire, want to be influential. And then you and your pet expert go to a nice dinner and drink $350 bottles of wine with a high-profile member of Congress and when he cites the ideas you were pushing, he's not citing some self-interested hedge fund guy, he's citing a University of Chicago economics professor.

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[Beaverhausen]

1. "Asness"

the joke just writes itself

[myrna minx]

2. K&R n/t

[Sal Minella]

3. One sort of unconsciously is dimly aware this stuff might be going on,

but seeing it laid out in such lucid prose is still gut-wrenching.

[Bandit]

5. I wonder, do you think only Conservatives do this?

Are there any Liberal billionaires that are politicly minded enough to use their money to influence others? I keep hearing about George Soros from the wing nuts but there must be others.

[beac]

4. K&R. Wish the msm would cover this with the same vigor as they

did his budget proposal.