Our award-winning ActivistCash.com website profiles food cops bent on controlling our diets and ironically inhumane animal rights activists. Normally we track who funds the activists, but for a little change of pace we decided to take a look at which political candidates and groups received cash from the craziest food scolds.
Using the always-handy OpenSecrets.org, here’s a small glimpse of the not-so-surprising activist-to-politician donations:
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) campaign director Bruce Friedrich gave $250 to the visibly vegan Dennis Kucinich (D-Greenpeace). Kucinich, you’ll recall, has been described by his own local press as “vain,” a “yappy little demagog,” and “an obnoxious little twerp.” No doubt Friedrich is a fan of the Kucinich-planned Department of Peace, responsible for crafting “policies to address violence against animals.” Presumably, in Kucinich Land, such “violence” would include a grill and a healthy dollop of A1 steak sauce. Long-time PETA spokes-blonde Alicia Silverstone also ponied up $500 to the Kucinich campaign.
Marion Nestle, author of Food Politics, believes there’s too much food in this country. But apparently she thinks there’s not enough money for MoveOn.org, which used an overhyped fish scare in a political attack ad, along with the Environmental Working Group and Natural Resources Defense Council. While Nestle is known to urge restraint on the dinner plate, she forked over $1,300 to the radical group.
PETA activist and surly actor Ed Asner gave $500 in 2003 and 2004 to perennial presidential candidate Lyndon LaRouche — who in 1988 was sentenced to fifteen years imprisonment for conspiracy, mail fraud, and tax code violations. Perhaps LaRouche’s greatest asset is his rosy vision of the future, as demonstrated in his speech titled: “I stand at the bedside of a doomed empire.” Ironically, in a May 2004 speech LaRouche said of Baby Boomers: “They tend to be pessimistic about our situation. And they obviously, most of them are draft dodgers, and therefore don’t know much.”
