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Life of the party?
Hollywood, Democrats and Reform Party leaders aren't saying much about a possible Beatty candidacy.
By Anthony York
[09/02/99]

My dinner with Bulworth
The Minnesota adman who helped Jesse Ventura become governor advises Warren Beatty on how he might claim the White House.
By Jake Tapper
[09/02/99]

Big Willie style
Controversial Florida state Rep. Willie Logan is hiring Jesse Ventura's adman to launch his grass-roots Senate campaign.
By Jake Tapper
[09/01/99]

The ugly American embassy
The U.S. wants to build a new mission in Berlin, and cut into the grounds of a tree-filled park and the new Holocaust museum to do it.
By Steve Kettmann and Guy Raz
[09/01/99]

Is welfare reform sending more kids to foster care?
Despite the success stories, more families at the bottom are falling apart.
By Nell Bernstein
[09/01/99]

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In fact, it's Beatty's very unmuddled call for complete public financing of all federal campaigns that has cut through the fog in this otherwise snooze-inducing political season, as the wholly owned and operated mainstream candidates vie to maintain our thoroughly corporatized political status quo. With the exception of maverick GOP candidate John McCain, and some vague rumblings from Bill Bradley, no serious presidential contender has yet acknowledged the threat to democracy posed by the unbridled influence of special-interest campaign contributors.

Also Today My dinner with Bulworth The Minnesota ad man who helped Jesse Ventura become governor advises Warren Beatty on how he might claim the White House. Life of the party? Hollywood, Democrats and Reform Party leaders aren't saying much about a possible Beatty candidacy.

We've already seen how the money chase has tainted front-runners Al Gore and George W. Bush, with Chinese government funds pouring into the Clinton-Gore coffers and Texas funeral industry dollars allegedly burying Gov. Bush's top mortuary watchdog. The Bush campaign is so flush with contributions from adoring fat cats that he has blithely waved off federal matching funds, which come with spending limits attached. To match this wretched excess, the Democratic Party has announced it will amass an arsenal of $200 million in soft money, a daunting task that, in the jaundiced words of pollster and Beatty ally Pat Caddell, will force party officials to not just rent out the Lincoln bedroom but sell off "wings of the White House."

It comes as little surprise that Bush and Gore have not placed campaign finance reform at the heart of their races. As Beatty has commented, our two major political parties have become little more than "accounting firms." The political system is "so corrupted, we don't need a third party, we need a second party," he declared.

Clearly it will take a political outsider to force the issue. McCain is making a noble effort in this regard, but Beatty's splashy entrance into the race would not only give the issue of campaign reform a dramatic boost, but also shine a spotlight on the growing wealth gap in America -- "the disparity of prosperity," as Beatty calls it. The persistence of poverty, especially among children, in the midst of an unparalleled economic boom is an obscenity rivaled only by the campaign finance scandal.

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