Billionaires for Bush
---
via leeja
b 4 b 18 min in
86,075 views Oct 18, 2025 Why, America? with Leeja Miller
Go to https://ground.news/Leeja to stay fully informed on US Politics and see all sides of every story. Subscribe through my link for 40% off for unlimited access on the Vantage plan. | From the Otpor movement in Serbia to the Yippies here in the US, tactical frivolity and other humor has been used to great effect to raise awareness for a cause or even to topple a dictator. Today we're discussing what we can learn from these movements. 🔗 Sources: https://www.leejamiller.com/episodes/...
org matls
---
Billionaires for Trump Men's Value T-Shirt Billionaires for Trump Light T-Shirt | CafePress
Billionaires for Bush - Wikipedia 210 25}:
Billionaires for Bush was a culture jamming political street theater organization that satirically purported to support George W. Bush, drawing attention to policies which were perceived to benefit corporations and the super-wealthy. The group would typically dress as parodies of wealthy "establishment" figures in tuxedos while proclaiming slogans such as "Two Million Jobs Lost—It's a Start".
A secret New York City Police Department intelligence report, based on undercover surveillance of the group in 2003 and 2004 in advance of the 2004 Republican National Convention in New York City, described the Billionaires as "an activist group forged as a mockery of the current president and political policies".[1]
History
Forbes 1999
The organization had first been founded by Andrew Boyd as "Billionaires for Forbes", but Forbes left the 2000 race for the Republican Presidential nomination early due to a lack of adequate voter support. In 1999, Billionaires were present as Steve Forbes announced his candidacy for President and jeered him as he signed a flat tax pledge in New Hampshire.[2] The Billionaire Manual describes the action:
They wore conservative jackets and ties (but no bowler hats, etc.) and carried innocuous signs such as "Run, Steve, Run." Happy to have grass-roots support, the Forbes handlers (who believed the Billionaires were students from a nearby business school) placed them in front of the cameras, very near to the podium from which Forbes was speaking. However, each of their signs had another sign behind it. And behind their banner (which read "Forbes 2000: He wants YOU to win") was another banner, waiting. At the most dramatic moment of his announcement, the Billionaires flipped their signs, and pulled away the large banner to reveal one which read: "Billionaires for Forbes: Because Inequality isn't Growing Fast Enough." The Billionaires started chanting "Let workers pay the tax so investors can relax!" and other slogans. Forbes and his handlers were completely thrown off, a little tussle ensued, and the Billionaires were pushed off to the side away from the cameras. Not wanting to miss the action, half the TV crews left the Forbes speech to cover the Billionaires. The action got lots of coverage.
Bush (or Gore) 2000
During the 2000 U.S. presidential election the organization was led by Andrew Boyd and Jenny Levison as "Billionaires for Bush (or Gore)," with the message that whichever candidate became president, corporations and the wealthy were guaranteed to benefit. The group spoke out under the motto "Because Economic Inequality Is Not Growing Fast Enough".[3]
The group appeared at the 2000 Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles, California, satirically praising major corporations for their financial support of the convention by attempting to deliver thank you cards to Fleet Bank, Fidelity Investments and Verizon Communications.[4]
The Billionaires planned a "Million Billionaires March" at the 2000 Republican National Convention in Philadelphia held the day before the convention. Other activities included a "Vigil for corporate welfare" and an auction of corporate advertising rights for the Liberty Bell.[5]
Bush 2004
At a March 2004 fundraiser on Long Island attended by President Bush, Billionaires for Bush came to show their "support", with men dressed in tuxedos with top hats and women in evening gowns and long gloves. The group's laminated posters featured such slogans as "Leave No Billionaire Behind" and "Corporations Are People Too".[6]
Their largest events to date took place as part of the 2004 Republican National Convention protest activity. A separate group, however, continued on in the plague-on-both-your-houses style as "Billionaires For Bush Or Kerry".
A "Million Billionaires March" on July 27, 2004, in conjunction with the 2004 Democratic National Convention in Boston, Massachusetts, attracted 150 marchers who presented a faux check made out for the amount of "whatever it takes" to the local offices of the Republican Party, as part of an effort to "defeat" Kerry.[7]
Lawsuits filed against the New York City Police Department after the 2004 Republican Convention uncovered the fact that Billionaires for Bush had been among groups infiltrated by the NYPD by its undercover officers gathering intelligence in advance of the convention.[8]
2005 and beyond
[
](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Social_Security_Auction_%284100291353%29.jpg)Billionaires for Bush holding a "Social Security Auction" during Bush's 2005 inauguration to protest his planned privatization of Social Security
The group remained active after 2004, but was less prominent. It used its established meme to raise awareness to a myriad of economic issues including Social Security privatization, the Iraq War, the Estate Tax and gentrification.
The group was led by a triumvirate of co-chairs Elissa Jiji, Marco Ceglie, and Melody Bates.
Attire
Members typically dressed in stereotypically wealthy attire, such as tuxedos and top hats or evening gowns and pearls and adopt names like "Mo Bludfer Oyle" (more blood for oil, a reference to the Iraq war) and "Phil T. Rich" (filthy rich).
Members also dressed in less stereotypical attire to perform more subtle pranks, as described in the Forbes example, above.
Events
Examples of Billionaire events include:
- Musical entertainment at anti-Bush events
- Thanking George W. Bush on his birthday for their tax cuts
- Protesting protests of the Bush administration
- Taking a pro-war stance at peace rallies
- Cross-country limousine tours ^[9]
- A petition to allow oil drilling and logging of Golden Gate Park in San Francisco
- Bush League baseball
These events and message were designed to attract media coverage.
Slogans
Monet Oliver d'Place leads the Boston Million Billionaire March in a spirited chant of "Whose President? Our President!"
Billionaires ecstatically welcome Bush's Chief Advisor Karl Rove to a NYC fundraiser. Photo by the Associated Press
Obedient media swarm Karl Rove look-alike and his trophy wife. Photo by Fred Askew
An exquisitely crafted ice sculpture of the Billionaires logo. Thanks to Bush's tax relief, we can afford basic necessities like these. Photo by Diane Lent
"We Know a Good Thing When We Buy it"
Some of their political slogans include "Small Government, Big Wars,"[10] "Because We're All In This Together, Sort Of,"[11] "Two Million Jobs Lost—It's a Start," "Leave No Billionaire Behind,"[1] "Make Social Security Neither,"[12] and "Corporations are People Too."[13]
See also
- Don't Just Vote, Get Active, a protest organization set up for the 2004 presidential election that denounced the electoral system
- Swiftboat Veterans for Truth, an organization that attacked Kerry's 2004 bid.
- The Yes Men
- Billionaires for Wealthcare
References...
---
Billionaires for Bush
Snapshot
During George W. Bush's 2004 re-election campaign, the Billionaires for Bush used humour, guerrilla theatre, and creative media actions to dramatize economic inequality and political corruption in the US.
“Some people call you the elite,” George W. Bush joked to his wealthy funders, “I call you my base.” Whether US Republican presidential candidate Bush meant it as a joke or not, the Billionaires for Bush (B4B) campaign used humour, guerrilla theatre, and creative media actions to show the country how true the quip was. Working to expose how the Republican Party serves the interests of the super-rich, the Billionaires also addressed the broader issues of economic inequality and corporate greed.
An early version of the campaign in 2000, “Billionaires for Bush (or Gore),” had spread virally via the internet and mainstream media exposure. It rebranded itself for the 2004 election, taking as its crusade the defeat of Bush. The New York City chapter took the lead, assembling talented volunteers, among them professional designers, media producers, and actors. It then put the campaign pieces in place. A stylish logo swapped the Republican elephant with a piggy bank stuffed with bills. Satirical slogans — “Repeal the First Amendment,” “Free the Forbes 400,” “Corporations are people too” — adorned bumper stickers, buttons, and a slick website, often mimicking the look of Bush’s own propaganda. A songwriter produced tuneful renditions of what the super-wealthy really think, performed by meticulously rehearsed singers. “Billionaires” adopted personae, with names and costumes to match, spoofing iconic versions of the .01 percent: the Monopoly-style robber baron (Phil T. Rich), the dim-witted heiress (Alexis Anna Rolls), the trust-fund fuck-up (Monet Oliver D’Place), and so on.
The media was smitten by the Billionaires’ glamour and charmed by their say-the-opposite-of-what-you-believe theatrics.
Soon, the Billionaires could be found talking down to “the little people” at Bush campaign events, left-wing rallies, and street corners. They could also be found all over the mainstream media, garnering thousands of hits, including multiple features in the New York Times and on network and cable TV. Even the chant “Watch more Fox News, then you’ll share our right-wing views!” made it to the air . . . on Fox News.
Media coverage was generated by carefully planned hoaxes, such as the appearance, to a throng of adoring Billionaires, of a Karl Rove impostor (Bush’s senior advisor) at a GOP fundraiser. Other times, the campaign outsmarted the authorities to attract the media glare, such as when it held a croquet match in Central Park, from which a half-million anti-Bush demonstrators had been banned by New York’s mayor. The media was smitten by the Billionaires’ glamour and charmed by their say-the-opposite-of-what-you-believe theatrics.
The campaign was designed to be participatory and national. The core idea was easy both to replicate and embellish. Activists could download the materials they needed to do local actions, while a field organizer helped set up chapters in key swing states like Ohio. By late July, the hundreds of “Billionaires” from thirty states who showed up to protest at the Republican National Convention far exceeded the number of actual billionaires stumping for their President.
Deflated by Bush’s narrow victory, the B4B idea nonetheless lived on, generating spin-off campaigns such as Billionaires for Wealthcare, active in the health care debates of 2008-9 (see: STORY: Public Option Annie). Although, in 2004, the campaign sometimes felt like a clever joke in the wilderness, it in fact anticipated many of the core concerns of Occupy Wall Street and other “Great Recession”-era activism.
Originally published in* Beautiful Trouble.
Key tactics
Well-crafted actions, occurring simultaneously in disparate locales, amplified the campaign’s sense of unity, power, and reach. The B4B repertoire of distributed actions included Cheap Labour Day, “Education Is Not for Everyone Day” at the beginning of the school year, and others. “Dick Cheney is Innocent Day” began as a national day of action featuring coordinated, candle-lit vigils in front of Vice-President Dick Cheney’s residence in Washington D.C., state capital buildings, an official Cheney speaking engagement in Milwaukee, and outside the windows of the Fox News headquarters in New York City. Flyers were produced listing Dick’s many crimes (but protesting how baseless they were, of course!) and made available for easy download, alongside a national press release
:{The Billionaires for Bush spectacle was a mind-bending double- or triple-take: apparent Bush supporters, spewing over-the-top pro-Bush rhetoric, were really Bush opponents, who made the Republicans appear both venal and ridiculous. Some observers remained fatally confused as to the group’s message. Occasionally, true conservatives begged the Billionaires not to make Bush look bad by being so brazenly pro-rich, as with this email to the campaign from an exasperated Republican:
“Shut up! You are not helping the President get re-elected. You are making the Republican Party look like a bunch of out-of-touch elitists! Assholes!” Most people, however, soon got the joke: that the Republicans, despite their populist rhetoric, are a party of, by, and for the wealthy. Sometimes the Billionaires also playfully “jammed” the earnest culture of the political left. Retorting “This is what plutocracy looks like!” and “Whose Streets? Wall Street!” to familiar lefty chants, the Billionaires suggested that progressive advocates of We the People had little inkling of the wealth and influence they were up against. The Billionaires didn’t just try to speak truth to power, but also about power.}:
Key principles
The Billionaires differentiated themselves from other anti-Bush activists by their upper-crust look and ironic messaging, which denounced the Republicans by parodying their reactionary principles. As something new and different, B4B avoided the media’s boredom with the all-too-predictable angry protesters protesting, well, angrily. The result was media exposure of B4B messaging vastly disproportionate to the group’s size and resources.
Politicians often avoid any direct reference to their ultimate agenda, especially when their plan is to plunder. One of the jobs of the activist is to expose their true intent. This unmasking was central to B4B shtick, and was the basis for particular actions. In 2005, the Billionaires joined the fight against Bush’s plan to privatize social security, which would have been the biggest shift of capital out of the public sector in history. To dramatize this outcome, Billionaires for Bush auctioned off Social Security in the most public forum available: eBay. The auction limited bidding to Wall Street bankers and casino operators and broke down the numbers on exactly what was to be gained by the wealthy and lost by the rest. Though eBay quickly took down the auction, more than 25,000 people visited the sale, and bidding peaked at $99,999,999. For days, media coverage continued to spread the message: “Billionaires for Bush auctioned off Social Security on eBay.”
Learn more
2004
No Billionaire Left Behind: Satirical Activism in America
Angelique Haugerud, 2013
TRUTH IS A VIRUS: Meme Warfare and the Billionaires for Bush (or Gore)
Andrew Boyd, 2002
---
10 25 ggl
[### Billionaires for Bush
Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org › wiki › Billionaires_for_Bush](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billionaires_for_Bush)
Billionaires for Bush was a culture jamming political street theater organization that satirically purported to support George W. Bush.
[### Billionaires for Bush Beautiful Trouble
https://beautifultrouble.org › toolbox › tool › billionaires...](https://beautifultrouble.org/toolbox/tool/billionaires-for-bush)
The Billionaires for Bush used humour, guerrilla theatre, and creative media actions to dramatize economic inequality and political corruption in the US.
[### Billionaires for Bush Records - Archival Collections - NYU NYU
https://findingaids.library.nyu.edu › tamwag › tam_725](https://findingaids.library.nyu.edu/tamwag/tam_725/)
Billionaires for Bush was a grassroots media campaign that used culture jamming and street theater to satirize politicians supporting corporate interests and ...
[### Billionaires for Bush (or Gore)
Hemispheric Institute
https://hemisphericinstitute.org › hidvl-collections › item](https://hemisphericinstitute.org/en/hidvl-collections/item/3520-billionaires-for-bush-or-gore.html)
Billionaires for Bush (or Gore) is a street performance protest staged at the Philadelphia Republican National Convention in 2000. Largely seen as"Culture ...
[### Billionaires For Bush
billionairesforbush.com
https://billionairesforbush.com](https://billionairesforbush.com/)
Billionaires for Bush is a grassroots network of corporate lobbyists, decadent heiresses, Halliburton executives, and other winners under George W. Bush's ...
[### 70 Billionaires For Bush Photos & High Res Pictures
Getty Images
https://www.gettyimages.com › Stock photos](https://www.gettyimages.com/photos/billionaires-for-bush)
Browse 70 billionaires for bush photos and images available, or start a new search to explore more photos and images. show more
[### Billionaires for Bush Beautiful Trouble
https://beautifultrouble.org › toolbox › tool › billionaires...](https://beautifultrouble.org/toolbox/pt/tool/billionaires-for-bush)
The Billionaires for Bush used humour, guerrilla theatre, and creative media actions to dramatize economic inequality and political corruption in the US.
[### Billionaires for Bush
YouTube · Media Mouse
1.2K+ views · 18 years ago](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7oSqS1K0YtI)
Clip from the Billionaires for Bush street theatre outside of President George W. Bush's July 30, 2004 appearance in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
[### Billionaires for Bush
Hemispheric Institute
https://hemisphericinstitute.org › itemlist › category › 8...](https://hemisphericinstitute.org/en/hidvl-collections/itemlist/category/835-billionaires-for-bush.html)
Billionaires for Bush is a grassroots network of corporate lobbyists, decadent heiresses, Halliburton CEOs, and other winners under George W. Bush's economic ...
People also ask
What did the guy whisper in Bush's ear?
How much of the Rangers does Bush own?
Which president said 1000 points of light?
Who were George W. Bush's advisors?
Feedback
[### The Billionaires for Bush and the Art of Political Culture ...
The University of Chicago Press: Journals
https://www.journals.uchicago.edu › doi › abs › palgrave...](https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1057/palgrave.polity.2300104)
by ME Farrar · 2008 · Cited by 30 — In fact, groups such as the Billionaires for Bush use spectacle to advance their message(s) and to inspire political change. These groups have much in common ...
---