FOR SALE: PROPERTY AT 1600 PENNSYLVANNIA AVE.

As of last week, nearly 200 corporate and individual patrons of President Bush had given between $25,000 and $250,000 to enjoy VIP access at inaugural parties with White House officials. The group comprises the usual roll call of corporations and wealthy executives with significant government interests -- energy firms, sub-prime bank lenders, federal contractors, and pharmaceutical companies. "It's the modern version of selling access to the White House," says Fred Wertheimer, president of Democracy 21, a group that advocates stricter campaign finance laws. The 2002 campaign finance reforms outlawed direct contributions to candidates in excess of $2,000, but it left open loopholes for donating unlimited sums to the party conventions and the inauguration. The White House has voluntarily limited the size of individual inaugural checks to $250,000. "There are only a couple of avenues left where you can put up a large sum of money that is of direct value to the president," Wertheimer said.

Nearly all of the inaugural donors have benefited—or hope to benefit—from the President's policies. For many of these companies, a six-figure donation is but a small part of their multi-million dollar lobbying strategies. Among the $250,000 donors are name brands like Exxon Mobil, Ameriquest Capital, FedEx, Bristol Myers Squibb and Lockheed Martin. The Nuclear Energy Institute, which has received White House backing for new nuclear power plants, chipped in $100,000.

Carl Lindner, the former owner of the Chiquita Banana brand and one of the most reliable of Republican moneymen, gave $250,000 under his own name. But so did two companies he controls, American Financial and New Energy Corp.The lesser-known New Energy, which is based in South Bend, Ind., is one of the nation's largest manufacturers of ethanol, a corn-based alternative and additive to gasoline, and a longstanding recipient of federal research funding. It will likely be among the biggest winners of the Energy Bill, which Congress plans to reconsider later this year. A previous version of the bill, which failed to pass in 2003, would have tripled the amount of ethanol produced in the U.S., costing taxpayers nearly $5 billion, according to the environmental group Friends of the Earth.

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People and corporations don't contribute $250,000 to what basically amounts to a party and not expect nothing in return. Quite the opposite, in fact.

For donating $250,000 to the president will get one all sorts of "access." Access that us common folk will never have, unless you happen to have a quarter of a million dollars lying about.

This kind of access gets paid back and then some. Paid back with laws uniquely crafted to benefit your pet cause or in this case, to help shovel even more tax payer money, in the form of subsidies, to ethanol factories.

And We the People are left standing out in the cold, not even allowed to look in thru the window to watch the ongoing shenanigans.

Unless you have $250,000 to spare.