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Leading GOP donor to speak at Cal Poly

October 11, 2013
Charles Munger Jr.

Charles Munger Jr.

Millionaire Republican donor Charles Munger Jr. will speak Friday morning at a Cal Poly political forum.

Munger, who contributed more than $36 million to various campaigns in the 2012 election cycle, will discus citizen participation in politics at 11:30 a.m. in the Performing Arts Center Pavilion. Former State Senator Sam Blakeslee will interview Munger.

A panel discussion that will include Blakeslee will proceed from 10 -11:30 a.m. The event is called Reforming California Politics.

Munger previously backed two successful ballot measures that created the Citizen Redistricting Commission. In April, he said that he would donate to former Lieutenant Governor Abel Maldonado’s campaign for the governorship.

Munger is the son of Berkshire-Hathaway Vice Chairman Charlie Munger and brother of Democratic activist Molly Munger, who spent more than $44 million in 2012 backing a tax measure that competed with Propostion 30.

John Fox, founder of the Rescue California Educational Foundation, Phillip Ung, policy advocate for California Common Cause, and Cal Poly political science professor Michael Latner will join Blakeslee on the panel.

The event will be livestreamed at http://www.iatpp.calpoly.edu/media/ and viewers can submit questions.

 


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The calpoly administration will do anything if there is any hope of money being involved. I can hear Armstrong breaking out his knee pads as I write. Calpoly made a killing off of Spanos; it seems like their trying to repeat that success with this loser. I don’t know it is about this world… if you have money, you’re instantly perceived as being important and your ideas suddenly matter. You would think a purported institution of higher learning would know better.


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Inheritance dildos in a bow ties, again. Hope he give the TV stations lots of money trying to elect un-Abel. “Reforming California Politics”? Sending the Mexicans back across the border makes no economic sense, so lets just let them join the former middle class and depress wages even further. Welcome to the Republican’s Brazilian wet dream. Wonderful, Muffy!


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Munger said he was backing Maldonado. What the heck is he thinking? A fool and his money are soon parted.


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This will not sit well with the Obamabots…


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Let me get this straight. Somebody with $36 million to dump into partisan political campaigns is going to talk about “citizen participation?” Sounds about right.


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Ahhhhh… Cal Poly students are going to learn about “citizen participation” in the political process from a multi-millionaire who dumped over $36 million, on mostly losing causes in the last election? It’s almost laughable. He is not even a self-made millionaire, deserving of respect for his personal business acumen.


So Mr. Munger Jr. backs Abel Maldonado for Governor? That will be an interesting race: California currently has a Democratic Governor, State Senate, Assembly and a budget surplus. Dream on about that hard right turn to conservatism in California.


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He made money the old fashioned way…He inherited it.


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I’m sure Poly was compensated, true to form, for giving this nut-job a forum.


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I thought the new right was tax evaders, gun nuts and zygote lovers. Ordinary citizens are tools of the old and the new “right”.


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We was, and we is!


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This guys smells. Not because he gave to campaigns, that is his right; but the fact that he was so involved in the redistricting and process of electing (rather than just the candidates) speaks to me as a VERY insider politico.


Insiders, whether democrat or republican, are not good for anyone. I am tired of choosing between the lesser of two evils. I would love to see a Libertarian ask some of the questions.


Heck, I’d love to see this happen with a democrat, as well. At least the right can face the heat (even if they fail).


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A call for “citizen participation” from a guy who spent over $36 million to get his candidates elected (or not, most of the time)? Is there a disconnect here or what?


This is a classic battle between the Old Right big money Republicans (think Rockefellers, Romney) and the New Right, small business owners and ordinary citizens. On the Democrat side, think George Soros.


Personally I believe the country is in for a serious shift to conservatism in the near future. The pendulum is about due to shift, as it historically always has. The challenge will be to find candidates in tune with this who can beat out the Old Right money,


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“Personally I believe the country is in for a serious shift to conservatism in the near future. The pendulum is about due to shift, as it historically always has. The challenge will be to find candidates in tune with this who can beat out the Old Right money”,


Sorry, just plain delusional.


The “serious shift to conservatism” already happened. Consequently, Teabaggers like Sarah Palin, Louie Gohmert, Todd Akin, Michele Bachmann, Richard Mourdock, Christinne O’Donnell, Ted Cruz, Mike Lee …got pushed to the front of the GOP clown car.

Some won, most lost.

Now, with the ultra-lunatics driving the conversation and policy among the right; the GOP is dropping like an anvil in a Wile E. Coyote cartoon and public opinion polls.


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“I believe the country is in for a serious shift to conservatism in the near future. The pendulum is about due to shift, as it historically always has.” Dear, where have you been for the last 30 years? We’ve been in Rightsville all that time. Indeed, if the pendulum is about to “shift,” it seems unlikely it will keep going in the same direction — Right. Indeed, a shift implies a change in direction: Left.


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Wow. You mention a shift to the right and get those two comments? Granted, it’s probably close to the mark (i.e. the more flak one gets, the closer to the right target you are).


I love when people in California think we’ve been in “Rightville” or ultra-conservative land for some time… you know, those big conservatives we’ve had since Reagan? Like… oh, what was his name… OK, but just because there has been NO real conservative in office since Reagan, it doesn’t mean we’re not living in a very conservative country… right?


Oh, we did have that really far-right conservative Arnold for a while. Yeah, he was way out right. Then there was… dang it, how far back am I allowed to go on this?


I sure hope I was able to deride enough people and assign derogatory and inflammatory names to people I do not agree with; then maybe I can psycho analyze your position as delusional, just to confirm how open minded and sophisticated I am.


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But we HAVE been much more conservative for the last thirty years. Remember the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000, signed into law by President Clinton? Basically he tore a page out of the conservative playbook to push business-friendly legislation with the full support of Alan Greenspan, a Reagan appointee.


How about the individual mandate portion of President Obama’s Affordable Care Act? Another page torn from the conservative playbook, this time the Heritage Foundation’s free-market answer to the Clinton’s proposed universal health care plan.


Or perhaps you mean Presidents George H.W. Bush and his son, George W. Bush, who surely were Birkenstock-wearing liberal hippies compared to President Reagan. Except for the younger Bush’s complete failure to reign in unregulated derivative securities before they sent the economy over the cliff, despite the elder Bush’s experience with the collapse of Long-Term Capital Management in 1998.


I just love when the right wing talking heads repeat this meme as though we’re on an inevitable slide into socialist tyranny.


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Considering conservatives are supposed to be for small government, your single-page example is laughable. Do we not have MORE government now than 30 years ago? Do we not have MORE regulation and fines, fees, taxes than 30 years ago? You ironically love how “right wing talking heads” think we’re sliding into socialism, yet use the individual mandate in Obamacare as an example of how we’re more conservative. I mean, there really is no sense in arguing at this point; one will either get it or they won’t.


The closest thing to a conservative we have is Rand Paul, Ted Cruz, and Mike Lee, Louie Gomert and Michelle Bachman… many others, but they oddly enough don’t make the evening news… wonder why? I’m hoping the infection that is D.C. doesn’t get to them, either, as it has with many others.


Libertarian and/or Conservative: both want LESS government (I know some people are programmed to respond with some anarchy nonsense, but they’re just non-thinkers). Is asking one’s government to NOT be so over-bearing and act within the Constitution that formed them too much to ask now-a-days?


Do we really need so much redundancy? Do we really need hundreds of thousands of “non-essential” personnel? I know there are a lot of people who want freedom FROM choice, rather than freedom OF choice, so the single-party system we have, masquerading as two parties, really fits inside their wheelhouse, as it goes.


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Don’t get me started on the myth of the liberal media, r0y. You don’t like my single page examples? I could go on a length about that one. Single sentence abstract: 90% of what you see and read is the product of large corporations with every good reason to skew their coverage to favor lightly regulated, modestly taxed, open markets… in short, a conservative agenda, which still won’t please you because your contemporary false “conservatives” are living in CloudCoockooLand.


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I guess it could be arguable that W bush and his gang of neocons were not ‘real’ conservatives, and neither were Newt Gingrich, Dennis Hastert, Tom Delay, and now John BOehNER, Eric Cantor, Kevin McCarthy, Paul Ryan in the House; and Chinless McConnell and his Confederate and mountain tribemen obstructionists in the Senate.


I might agree with you …to the point that I think they are proto-fascists, and not ‘conservative’ at all.


Really …there’s no real conservatives left in Washington, unless you want to include some old fashioned Democrats like Pryor of Arkansas…maybe Nelson of Florida, Baucus of Montana, Begich of Alaska, Heitkamp of North Dakota.


Name ONE true conservative now in the radical reactionary Republican party of any prominence.

If you do, it won’t be long before the label of RINO gets bandied about.


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Are you really a Ted Roll (political cartoonist) believer on proto fascists? https://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/07/22-1. You do know that he is all over the place politically and otherwise, from calling for Obama’s resignation for incompetency to suing Ann Coulter for libel?


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David Neiwert wrote the book http://cursor.org/stories/fascismintroduction.php


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