The 1600 Crew does predictably well at raising money from the Wall Street Fat Cats...so well that one of their number at Merrill Lynch is a Pio-nanger or whatever.

At Merrill Lynch & Co. Inc., a suggestion from chief executive E. Stanley O'Neal is not to be taken lightly.

O'Neal eliminated 24,000 jobs, froze pay and steadily pushed out competitors for executive power, including colleagues who had championed his rise up the corporate ladder. "Ruthless," O'Neal has reportedly told colleagues, "isn't always bad."

So it came as no surprise that when O'Neal sent letters to senior executives at Merrill Lynch in early June asking them to contribute to President Bush's reelection campaign, the response was prompt and generous.

Between June 12 and June 30 of last year, the Bush-Cheney campaign was inundated with 157 checks from Merrill Lynch executives and at least 20 from their spouses; 140 checks were for the maximum allowed by law: $2,000.

Total take generated by the O'Neal letter: $279,750 in less than three weeks.

Who really needed the EPA to be honest anyway? Damn Bureaucrats.

Asked why so many of the top 10 employers of contributors are Wall Street securities firms, Scott Stanzel, spokesman for the Bush-Cheney '04 Campaign, said, "We are proud that we have over 1 million donors to the Bush-Cheney campaign representing every county in every state in this nation."

Altogether, personnel at these seven top 10 firms have given Bush $2.33 million, or a fifth of the $12.14 million from employees of the finance and insurance sector that has flowed to Bush this election cycle.