Eric Cantor Collecting A Lot Of Dirty Money To Pass Along To Easily Corruptible Republican House Candidates

So far this cycle Eric Cantor's PAC-- ERIC PAC (Every Republican Is Crucial)-- the largest of any political action committee controlled by any member of Congress, has raised $2,640,602. His PAC is a way for big corporations to funnel cash into Republican races and the biggest contributors come from the industries that Democrats have worked on regulating this year:

Wall Street- $251,100
Insurance- $209,750
Real Estate- $118,500
Pharmaceuticals/Health Products- $118,000
Lobbyists- $93,900

The biggest single batch of contributors comes from tobacco giant Altria ($42,250) followed by predatory and shady hedge fund speculators SAC Capital Advisors ($31,500). Toxic corporate entities like Altria and SAC Capital are not just buying influence with an up-and-comer like Cantor, they also get to funnel their cash into campaigns of other GOP pawns without the public knowing they're doing so. This way, for example, California independent voters have no way of knowing that these sleazy operators are behind the $10,000 donations Cantor gave sex predator Ken Calvert, extremist Tom McClintock, dirt bag lobbyist Brian Bilbray and Wall Street bailout queen Mary Bono Mack or the 5 grand pops he doled out to John Campbell, Dan Lungren, Dana Rohrabacher and real estate swindler Gary Miller. Blue America-endorsed Bill Hedrick is running for the Inland Empire congressional seat currently held by Cantor crony Ken Calvert. We reached him yesterday and he wasn't shy about giving us his perspective on these kinds of shenanigans.

What can I say-- Ken Calvert is your classic Washington politician who uses his constituents as a perch to be a player three thousand miles away in DC's lobbyist culture. He's pretty adept at getting special interests to fund his campaigns, but ask anybody here in his district what he's done for them and all they can point to are his shady land dealings and his abuse of the earmark system to fatten his bank account.

Part of the reason why people are so cynical about politics is because of the power special interests have, and Ken Calvert has done nothing to stop that because he benefits from it. He's a typical party-line guy who isn't going to rock the boat. It would probably take an act of god to see a Washington politician like him turn off the spigot of special interest money that gets in the way of solving some of our country's bigger problems.

Cantor has been handing out large sums to Republican incumbents and challengers, making sure dirty money from operators like SAC make their way into the "right" hands. "So far during the 2010 election cycle, his political action committee, Every Republican Is Crucial has donated more than $1 million to 156 Republican candidates. That’s more than hundreds of thousands above what any other such PAC connected to a lawmaker or candidate has reported, according to a CQ MoneyLine study of PACs through the second quarter of 2010. We got in touch with Bethlehem Mayor John Callahan, the Democrat challenging sleazy Wall Street shill Charlie Dent in Pennsylvania's Lehigh Valley this year. Like Bill Hedrick, he's not surprised by Dent's and Cantor's shady dealings. “Congressman Dent has taken over $2.7 million in PAC money," he told us, "and on the day that the Senate failed to pass the DISCLOSE ACT, Charlie Dent's campaign manager was bragging about all of the money Eric Cantor is raising for him. Wall Street has enough Congressmen working for them like Boehner, Cantor and my opponent Charlie Dent. We need to send a very clear message to the corporate special interests and foreign nationals that we will not allow them to secretly buy Congressmen by going on the offense against their loyalists in these final three months of the election.”