“You call yourself a Christian, I call you a hypocrite/
You call yourself a patriot.
Well, I think you are full of sh*t!…
How come you’re so wrong, my sweet neo-con.”
You gotta hand it to Mick Jagger and the Stones. They dish out lyrics that shock — like those above from their upcoming single, “Sweet Neocon.”
But they’re foremost business-savvy merchants who toss us liberals a bone with those lyrics while taking dough from their tour’s chief sponsor, “mortgage lender and mega-political donor Ameriquest.”
Their “A Bigger Bang” U.S. tour opening on Aug. 21 at Boston’s Fenway Park features an Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger fundraiser at “$10,000 a pop to get in on a private preconcert reception and front-and-center seats to watch the show — or $100,000 to sit with the governor in his luxury box.” (S.F. Chronicle)
We were all going to buy the single, “Sweet Neocon” right? I say DON’T BUY THE SINGLE until the Stones stop mixing their music — just to make a buck — with Republican corporate donors deadset on setting back California’s health care system.
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[Ameriquest], based in Orange, is the lead sponsor of the Stones’ 2005 tour and has written $1.5 million in checks to the Republican Schwarzenegger’s campaign coffers to date.
LOOK: Even if the Stones aren’t involved with Arnold’s fundraiser, they are involved with a major corporate donor to the Republicans and to the Terminator’s special election in November. The California Nurses Association says:
Why nurses Say Vote
NO in NovemberGovernor Schwarzenegger is taking millions of dollars from corporate lobbyists to promote his special election in November that will slash public healthcare and social services budgets and silence the voices of nurses, teachers, firefighters, and other public service workers.
The threat is clear: fewer laws protecting patients and consumers, more power for corporations, and cutbacks in healthcare, education, and other public services. We’ve had enough. The California Nurses Association is fighting back.
From today’s San Francisco Chronicle: “Governor to paint it green as Stones fan
For $100,000, you can watch concert with Schwarzenegger”:
“Politicians are always looking for more ways to raise money — but Schwarzenegger is one of those pushing the envelope and raising money in ways with a vigor that … we don’t often see,” said Steve Weiss, spokesman for the Washington-based Center for Responsible Politics.
“Schwarzenegger is using his celebrity to his advantage,” he said, but increasingly it appears at odds with the candidate who “ran a campaign in which he said he would not be beholden to special interests.”
The governor and committees backing his ballot measures had spent more than $23 million during the first six months of the year, according to the most recent disclosure statements released last month. Groups opposing the governor’s measures that would change teacher tenure and the state budget process had spent just more than $10 million.
Schwarzenegger and first lady Maria Shriver liked the idea of sponsoring a Rolling Stones fundraiser because “he’s apparently a big Stones fan,” Massachusetts GOP activist Melissa Lucas told the Boston Herald.
The event was arranged after Ameriquest offered the governor more than three dozen center stage and luxury box seats for the Stones’ first 2005 U.S. concert — seats currently going for $1,600 each on ticket brokers’ Web sites.
“We were offered an opportunity for some tickets we could have for fundraiser purposes,” Wilson said. “It promised to be a very unique event and something our supporters would respond to.”
No involvement from band
Fran Curtis, the longtime publicist for the Rolling Stones, said by telephone from Toronto — where they’re preparing for the tour’s start — that the band itself had no role in the matter. “We knew he was coming, but nothing else,” she said.
A spokesman for Ameriquest refused to comment on the arrangement. The company, he said, “has a policy of not commenting on its political contributions.”
The slew of scheduled fundraisers has delivered the governor’s opponents ammunition to fire away at what they call an increasingly shameless hat-in-hand routine.
“Sounds like ‘Sympathy for the Devil’ to me,” quipped Gloria Nieto, a Democratic National Committee member and director of the Lyon-Martin Women’s Health Services Clinic in San Francisco.
Check out the California Nurses Association site for more on opposition to the Terminator.
