Yesterday, Kos and other bloggers reported on a letter that was sent from a group of Clinton backers to Nancy Pelosi "urging" her to reconsider her comments on the role of super delegates in the party. This letter was a thinly veiled threat to cut off their funding to the DCCC should Pelosi continue to go against the Clinton party line on the Super Delegates.
These donors are the richest of the rich. They epitomize the "elites" and the "old guard" of the Democratic party. As we face a struggle for the soul of the party, a struggle over the influence of big money vs. the everyday American, these 20 individuals represent the major backbone of the side we are fighting against.
Their actions yesterday left a lot of us to wonder, "just who the hell are these guys?". This diary is an attempt to shed light on who some of these donors are, and the threat that they pose to the Democratic Party.
Yesterday, a group of 20 people signed a Letter to Nancy Pelosi that suggested that they would withhold funds from the DCCC if Pelosi did not reverse her stance on the role of superdelegates. These 20 individuals are:
Marc Aronchick
Clarence Avant
Susie Tompkins Buell
Sim Farar
Robert L. Johnson
Chris Korge
Marc and Cathy Lasry
Hassan Nemazee
Alan and Susan Patricof
JB Pritzker
Amy Rao
Lynn de Rothschild
Haim Saban
Bernard Schwartz
Stanley S. Shuman
Jay Snyder
Maureen White and Steven Rattner
All of these signers are multi-millionaires, with most worth in the hundreds of millions. A few of these signers are billionaires. Many of these donors have had previous positions in the Clinton Campaign. Mark Lasry is a security trader who put Chelsea Clinton on his payroll. Stanley S. Shulman was on the board of Newscorp for 22 years. Sim Farar was a Representative to the United Nations. But for the purpose of this diary, I am going to highlight in detail the records of 4 of the donors on this list that I think best represent who these donors are, and why they are a threat to the Democratic party.
1. Haim Saban is the richest on the list. He is listed as Forbes 102nd richest American, with a net worth of $3.4 billion. He's made his money primarily through media deals, including the sale of the Fox Family Channel, a joint venture he went into with Rupert Murdoch. Saban has donated predominately to Democrats over his career, including a $10 million donation by his Investment Group to the DNC in 2001-2002, which is the largest ever on record.
Saban has had some shady business dealings in the past. In addition to his close association with Murdoc, he was probed by Congress and the IRS for the tax shelter he set up in relation to the Fox Family sale. He was forced to pay $300 million dollars in back taxes. He blamed the tax error on "bad advice" from accountants. One has to wonder how bad the "advice" must have been to cause him to cheat the IRS by $300 million.
2. Many of you already know Robert Johnson. Worth $1.1 billion, he is most well known as being the founder of the BET network. Most of you probably remember him from his comments back in January, when he raised the issue of Obama's youthful drug use.
"As an African American, I'm frankly insulted that the Obama campaign would imply that we are so stupid that we would think Bill and Hillary Clinton, who have been deeply and emotionally involved in black issues when Barack Obama was doing something in the neighborhood that I won't say what he was doing, but he said it in his book,"
After he made the statement, he had the audacity to try to backtrack and say that the statement referred to Obama's time as a community organizer. This was particularly amusing, considering that while Obama was a community organizer in Chicago, Hillary was sitting on the board of Walmart.
Johnson is also a strong opponent of the Estate tax. He enthusiastically lobbied for its repeal, by taking out full page newspaper adds, and even by implying that the tax is racist.
The last time Congress voted to phase-out the estate tax (aka the Paris Hilton Tax) in 2001, Robert L. Johnson, founder of Black Entertainment Television, enthusiastically called for repeal. He took out full-page ads in national newspapers, granted interviews, even gave speeches claiming that a repeal "will help close the wealth gapbetween African-American families and white families."
But Johnson’s argument is seriously misguided. Roughly 38 million blacks live in the United States. Of those, an estimated 59 — yes, 59 — will pay estate taxes this year, and that number will drop to just 33 in 2009, according to American Progress economist John Irons (using estimates derived from The State Of The Estate Tax As Of 2006). The truth is the wealth gap between whites and blacks will only exacerbate when there are fewer tax credits and services offered to the rest of us who start out with zero inheritance.
3. Bernard L. Schwartz is the Former Chairman and CEO of Loral Space and Communications. During the soft money years, he was the largest donor to the Democratic party from 1992 to 1996. However, his biggest claim to fame was probably in 1996, when Loral Space and Communications passed along missile technology to China. They were investigated for breaking US export laws, and eventually agreed to pay the government a $14 million dollar fine.
U.S. satellite maker Loral Space & Communications Ltd. has agreed to pay a $14 million fine for passing missile technology to China.
The satellite and communications company will pay the fine over seven years to the U.S. State Department, through its Space Systems/Loral Inc. subsidiary.
The subsidiary neither admitted nor denied the charges but has agreed to pay the fine. It contends the information was "mistakenly sent to the Chinese."
The investigation started as a criminal case, after the U.S. government adjudged Space Systems/Loral might have broken export laws when it gave technical help to China, on its rockets.
Loral helped China investigate the February 1996 crash of a Chinese Long March missile that was carrying a Loral satellite.
Schawrtz was also at the center of a justice department investigation revolving around the White House's decision to grant Loral a waiver for a satellite launch in China was related to the million dollars Schwartz donated to Democratic committees since Clinton took office.
The Clinton administration has been good to Bernard Schwartz, and he to it. Schwartz, a lifelong Democrat and longtime political donor, dramatically ratcheted up his giving after President Clinton took office, contributing more than $1 million to Democratic party committees since then.
But as a result of his contributions, Schwartz is at the center of Justice Department and congressional investigations into allegations related to Chinese missile technology.
At issue: Whether Loral and Hughes Electronics Corp. helped improve China's missile guidance systems by analyzing a failed 1996 satellite launch in China; and whether the White House's decision this year to grant Loral a waiver for another satellite launch in China was granted on account of Shwartz's donations.
4. I saved my personal favorite for last: Susie Tompkins Buell. Tompkins Buell ran the fashion house Esprit de Corp with her husband for over two decades from 1968-1990. Originally founding the company on hippie ideals, Tompkins Buell let greed consume her, ultimately leading to the company's downfall.
After divorcing her husband in 1990, Tompkins Buell led a leveraged buyout of the company that both gave her control of the company, and netter her $150 million in profit. However, a combination of the buyout and Tompkins Buell's mismanagement of the companies finances, caused the company to enter into a complete financial collapse:
But Esprit de Corp. also ultimately came to epitomize the worst side of another decade, the me decade, the 1980s and its junk-bond daddies and S&L pirates and slick-suited sharpies. After helping manage the company with her then-husband, Doug Tompkins, for 22 years, Susie Tompkins led a 1990 leveraged buyout that gained her control of the company, and netted her an estimated $150 million.
Esprit emerged from the buyout so deeply in debt -- and Tompkins Buell's subsequent helmsmanship left the company in such desperate financial straits -- that it went into technical default on its outstanding loans within less than two years. Esprit then spent five years shriveling to a morsel of its former self before Tompkins Buell relinquished all ownership of and involvement in the company in December.
After eventually leaving the company after she had destroyed it, you think Tompkins Buell would have taken her $150 million and rode off into the sunset. But instead, she decided to go back for more by suing the company that she had previously destroyed.
This March Tompkins Buell filed a lawsuit demanding nearly $3 million in reimbursements from Esprit for tax payments she made after selling much of her stake in the company to investors in 1990 for about $62 million. The case's merits are questionable, some people familiar with the situation say.
Yes, this woman decided after she destroyed the company, she wanted to stick it to them one more time. As a result, Tompkins Buell and all of her family members were banned from the Esprit de Corp's corporate headquarters.
And there was also this little issue:
Yet Esprit de Corp. is the same company that was found by the National Labor Relations Board to have illegally interrogated and intimidated $2-an-hour Chinese workers, and then to have shut down a factory to keep them from unionizing.
The issue with these donors is not that they are Hillary supporters. When all is said and done, their blackmail aside, Barack Obama will be the Democratic nominee for president. Most, if not all of these donors will then support Obama, and continue to donate to Democratic groups. The issue is bigger than just Barack vs. Hillary. It is a struggle for the soul of our party.
The audacity of these donors astounds me. They think that they can intimidate the Democratic party leadership simply because they have larger bank accounts then the average rank and file Democrat. They are a part of the special interests that have controlled Washington for so long. They are the select few that try to keep control of the party to themselves, and away from the average American.
This is the struggle that the netroots was founded on. We were brought together as everyday Americans trying to take our party back from the special interests. We didn't fight back by writing big checks and then disappearing, only to reappear for a luncheon with party leaders or when we needed something. We fought back with $25 and $50 donations. We fought back by becoming precinct captains and canvassing our neighborhoods. We fought back by phonebanking and writing letters to the editor. And we are winning.
10 years ago, maybe their demands would have held some weight. However, things have changed in 10 years. The big money donors no longer have the control that they once had. Their influence is being diminished, and they are desperately trying to hold onto it. But no matter how hard they fight, they can no longer deny a simple truth. This is no longer their party. This is our party, and we own it now.
UPDATE: Thanks for the Recs everybody. I'm glad you think this is as important as I do.
And here's some more scoop on these donors from the comments courtesy of bubblebums:
At least 6 of these donors stayed in the Lincoln bedroom while the Clintons were in the whitehouse.
At least 7 of the donors have donated to Joe Lieberman's senate bid
UPDATE X2: More on Haim Saban from the comments:
Haim Saban is an Israeli citizen, who characterizes himself as "a one-issue guy, and my issue is Israel." He has been a major fundraiser for Clinton, and he is the founder of the Saban Center for Mideast Policy at the Brookings Institution, from which Clinton seems to get some of her foreign-policy advisors, e.g., Martin Indyk, the Center's director, and Michael O'Hanlon, an affiliate of the Center. The Center's Research Director is Kenneth Pollack, who with O'Hanlon pushed for the Iraq war and has been cheering the surge.
More recently, Saban was one of a small group that bought up Unavision, the major Hispanic TV network in the U.S.
(many sublinks within)
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/3/27/912/91904/66/485037
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