Amazon founder donates $10 million to get more veterans elected to Congress
Rep. Brian Mast, R-Fla., walks to a meeting with fellow Republicans on Capitol Hill on July 14, 2017. Mast, a combat veteran and bomb disposal technician, lost both legs in an IED explosion in Afghanistan in 2010.
Amazon founder and Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos is donating $10 million into a political action committee (PAC) dedicated to getting more veterans elected to Congress.
The donation comes just two months before the contentious November midterm elections, and is a major funding and publicity boost for the PAC veteran advocacy group With Honor, which has already endorsed a bipartisan slate of 33 House candidates.
Fox News reports group founder Rye Barcott tells how the Bezos family’s donation supports With Honor’s idea of building a “cross-partisan coalition” of lawmakers who can overturn the partisan infighting in national politics today.
Bezos, has not made any similar major campaign donations in the past. The With Honor fund has a stated goal of creating “a government that works for and is trusted by Americans, where principled veterans represent a significant percentage of elected positions at all levels.”
While I generally disagree with Bezos’s left-slanted activities, this donation to a PAC dedicated to getting vets into politics seems like a good idea. Until I think of Tammy Duckworth, that is.
Category: Politics, Support the troops
Rep. Rick Crawford, R-Ark was an enlisted EOD tech in Iraq. With Rep. Brian Mast, R-Fla in the House, Rick lost bragging rights to being the only EOD tech serving and knowing him, I am sure he does not mind sharing honors for this exclusive club.
Not to take away from your post, AW1Ed, but could not help notice the picture of Representative Brian Mast from Florida that was in the article (he is also a retired US Army SSG).
Guess am trying to understand why he wears cut off pants in the majority of photos I found on him for his photo shoots. Good example is Facebook:
https://m.facebook.com/RepBrianMast/
Self answering my own puzzlement: perhaps his agenda on wearing the cut offs is to emphasize to all that despite a “handicap” of losing both legs during a conflict, one can persaverse and do great things for country, family, friends and self and set an example of strength and courage for others..or feel sorry for themselves because of their current degraded physical condition by wallowing in self-pity to get attention from others??
Don’t think Brian Mast is an attention seeker; definitely not a “Whoa is Me” type from reading his Bio. Again, just not use to seeing someone wearing a coat & tie wearing cut off slacks/trousers to expose their “new” legs.
Maybe I am being too petty.
I questioned it as well. Maybe I’m being too suspicious of pols, since most of them constitute part of the swamp.
“Maybe I’m being too suspicious of pols…” There is no such thing as being too suspicious of the critters. He could velco/zipper/button the bottom half of the trousers to the uppers if, for some reason, he had reason to display the prosthetics temporarily.
Shall we make a list of the weasels who have been Veterans? It is silly to have to take a pledge to be honest and decent in order to qualify for the PAC money. I like a hostile Congress. This all-for-one and one-for-all PAC-club pledge is horse shit.
Rep. Mast answered this question publicly back in 2016.
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/19/us/politics/a-combat-veteran-runs-for-congress-and-the-scrutiny-intensifies.html
Short version: whenever he fell (which he apparently does somewhat often because he can’t bend his prosthetic feet), the hinges on his prosthetic legs ruined his trousers. So he apparently said, “The hell with it,” and started wearing his trousers cut off above the hinge.
Thank You, Hondo, for the clarification.
I can think of a couple of remedies for that, other than a wheelchair. No one wants to accuse a disabled Veteran of displaying his hole card. Say something bad about a disabled Veteran? Hell, even here they are sacrosanct to people. Just look at what happen with Senator McCain recently. As critters, they are all fair game.
What if long trousers interfere with the mechanism? that would be my first thought!
Hat tip to Mr. Bezos’ more than generous donation. While I hope most/all are Conservatives (NOT RINOs, NOT Liberals), I’ll probably prefer anyone who is a veteran, combat or not, over a non-veteran, all other things being equal (which they never are). Interesting to see how this plays out and how the funding will be allocated. Will he fund veterans in any/all race(s), regardless of party affiliation? This is a wild guess, but I’m thinking most who are funning for office and who are veterans, will ‘probably’ be Republicans vs Democrats. I say that simply because it has been my experience that most military personnel tend to be Republicans. Not always but usually. That’s been my personal experience. I wonder how far down the food chain he will go with his money? Will he restrict his funding to Congressional and Senate races, or will he go well down into local politics as well? This is very interesting and encouraging. Nice to have so much money that $10 million is of no significance to the giver but can be a deciding factor in several races. Wow
As much as I appreciate Bezos’s business model, in which he gives independent business owners a “storefront” opportunity to sell their products, I view this with a curmudgeon’s eye.
Maybe it’s a kickstarter for those who want to run. I just do not want to see self-serving twinks like Duckworth beating out those who do want to make things work better.
make no mistake, it is Bezos we are looking at and the last thing Bezos wants is more Senator Cottons.
Bezos wants minions to do his bidding so that he continues to make his billions.
Nothing more.
I agree PH…the thing is too many younger vets have been educated by the communist NEA and are leftists by training…we DO NOT NEED more of those in our govt! imho How you sort them out? thats up to voters to do their homework imo! I think this is bezos goal, just being a nit picker here. but I don’t trust ANY leftist/liberal/communists!
I used to like and support Rep Mast until he became a gun control advocate
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/politics/fl-florida-school-shooting-brian-mast-gun-politics-20180321-story.html
“I cannot support the primary weapon I used to defend our people being used to kill children I swore to defend.” Mast in NYT
See? This is what happens. A guy flashes his Veteran status all over the place (check his website) and, once inside, changes his mind on some key items. Why? Because the #1 job of every critter is to keep his phony baloney job and get re-elected. How about this, instead: “As a principled man, I cannot remain in office because I have changed my stance on a key plank that helped me to this seat.”
Pols begin their reelection campaign the night the successful election results come in. It’s a process that feeds upon itself. Unfortunately, most of them suck. Most as in virtually all.
My take is that any pol who is in office more than one term is in too long. The many perks, the power, the lobbyists, and the pandering take their toll. It explains why those who have promised a single term end up saying, “But now I realize how much of the People’s work is yet to be done.” The system itself corrupts and I’m not talking the system of representative democracy. I’m talking about all of the stuff that the critters have quietly allowed themselves over decades and decades.
“Politicians and diapers both need to be changed often and for the same reason.” – Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain)
AMEN 2 terms total, thats it!!!
Uh…”principled man”? Do we really have many of those in our govt?
I came here to say exactly this.
Brian Mast is a complete RINO.
He just won his primary ( against a navy officer who is a doctor) and will be the Republican candidate for House of
Representatives for his district
We will never get rid of anti gun RINOS like Rick Scott and Brian Mast when they keep winning primaries!
Man that is some bullshit. Of course the gun grabbers will use it as though no one can call out the critter / badly wounded veteran.
Anyone here think that the Vets he’s trying to get elected to Congress are a bunch of liberal gun grabbers like Mast?
Leftists like Bezos are NOT altruistic when it comes to donations. There’s always an agenda.
Yep..bezos has NO HONOR…remember when he was going to force a bunch of Hawaiians out of their homes and property so he could have MORE and more elbow room….he is a scumsucking pig imho!
I agree until someone becomes a liberal/RINO/attention whoring shitbag.
Simple.
(NOT)
Is it bad I didn’t realize there was a man with prosthetic legs in the photo until I read the comments?
Yeahhh it wasn’t the prosthetic legs that caught my eye…
Hi, Animal…
Pulled up AW1Ed’s post on my Smartphone..and Brian Mast’s picture was right there glaring at me before I had a chance to read Ed’s post..don’t know what the post or the pucture looks like on a PC or how it was displayed..
So, no, it is not bad you did not realize there was a man in the photo with prosthetic legs…
I see what you did, SFC D…did you notice the same thing, Animal?😉
I did notice the same thing.
There was a man in the picture? The legs I saw looked pretty good. pols gonna pol and the ones that aren’t crooked when the go up to the swamp, become crooked very soon. Nature of the beast.
I would applaud the effort to get vets elected, did I not know of the examples cited above and Bezos’ left leaning reputation. Hard to think the owner of WaPo will be centrist or impartial.
First word to come to mind after reading the lede was “Duckworth”. Can’t imagine Bezos wanting to help anyone other than more Duckworths.
Eyes left, gentlemen. The focus of the post is a PAC backing Vets to Congress or the Senate. Not a blond distraction with a short skirt and…
Disregard, carry on.
Apparently, “bipartisianship” means supporting more dems than Republicans (19 to 14).
shit if it was me , my legs would either the current camouflage pattern of the day or dodge challenger purple… who the hell cares what kind of pants he wears if he can do the job….
I too am suspicious of Bezo’s motives, and the shakedown results of all that money. Being a vet doesn’t mean that one is necessarily a conservative, or even a good guy. Besides one that was just buried last week, I’m also reminded of an EX-Marine from Pennsylvania.