Welcome to the biggest cash register in politics

"Pioneers" buy influence in the Bush administration. Pioneers get Bush $100,000 by finding 100 friends to donate $1000. Ranagers, new to the 2004 campaign, get $200,000 in Bush's warchest. In return, Bush gives some jobs within his administration, other pioneers are lobbyists, and they've purchased influence. Really, it doesn't get any more blatant than this.

Of the 246 fundraisers identified by The Post as Pioneers in the 2000 campaign, 104 -- or slightly more than 40 percent -- ended up in a job or an appointment. A study by The Washington Post, partly using information compiled by Texans for Public Justice, which is planning to release a separate study of the Pioneers this week, found that 23 Pioneers were named as ambassadors and three were named to the Cabinet: Donald L. Evans at the Commerce Department, Elaine L. Chao at Labor and Tom Ridge at Homeland Security. At least 37 Pioneers were named to postelection transition teams, which helped place political appointees into key regulatory positions affecting industry.

A more important reward than a job, perhaps, is access. For about one-fifth of the 2000 Pioneers, this is their business -- they are lobbyists whose livelihoods depend on the perception that they can get things done in the government. More than half the Pioneers are heads of companies -- chief executive officers, company founders or managing partners -- whose bottom lines are directly affected by a variety of government regulatory and tax decisions.

Bush, of course, denies that any influence is being purchased. But pioneers won't talk, and Bush won't reveal all his pioneers. Get a load of their reason:

Pioneers interviewed for these articles were reluctant to discuss on the record their contacts with the administration. "That's dead man's talk," one said. The Bush campaign declined repeated requests to reveal the entire 2000 list of Pioneers, saying it is contained in computer files they can no longer access.

Contained in computer files they can no longer access? My ass they are. The rather unorganized Green Party I was a member of was able to keep track of their records on a less than shoestring budget, so to think a Bush campaign flowing with riches can't do the same is like believing there were WMDs in Iraq.

What do they have to hide?