Distracting From The Distractions That Distract From Other Distractions-- Paul Singer, Rubio And Bannon

Trump-world generates so much hair-on-fire news... how does anyone keep up? For example, I thought Bannon's pledge to Trump on Friday night to destroy GOP billionaire Paul Singer for financing the Steele pee-pee dossier on behalf of Marco Rubio, would be big news today. But then Trump's Kremlin-paid campaign manager Paul Manafort was indicted on 12 charges including "conspiracy against the United States" and Trump campaign advisor George Papadopolous already pled guilty to lying to the FBI about Russian interference.

Singer and his group are the single biggest contributors to the NRSC, so exactly who Bannon wants to cripple in his campaign to replace mainstream Republicans senators with fascists. Singer, a bloodthirsty vulture capitalist preying on misfortune throughout the world, is not exactly a sympathetic figure. After Singer worked to elect Rubio, then derail Trump, he contributed $1 million to Trump's inaugural committee-- money that went straight into Trump's own pockets. From the Axios report that broke the Singer-Bannon story:

Trump loathed Singer during the campaign, when the billionaire was a lead financier of the "Never Trump" movement. But the two made up earlier this year, and Singer has been financially very helpful since Trump won the presidency... Bannon has long despised Singer. In Bannon's worldview, Singer belongs to a "globalist" cabal that favors open borders and includes other bogeymen and bogeywomen such as George Soros and Hillary Clinton. It's also helpful to Bannon that Singer has close ties Mitch McConnell-- the Senate GOP leader whom Bannon is obsessed with destroying.

Breitbart has been obsessing about Singer (and Little Marco) all weekend. Want to wade through this sewage?

• 5 Times Paul Singer Funded Globalist Nonsense Before the Anti-Trump Dossier
• Anti-Trump Dossier Original Funder Paul Singer an Open Borders Establishment Republican Billionaire
• Paul Singer-Funded Washington Free Beacon Behind Initial Fusion GPS Trump Effort
• The Marco Rubio Connection: Senator Dodges Questions About Megadonor Paul Singer’s Funding of Anti-Trump Research Firm Behind Dossier

And while all this has the media's shared head exploding, Ryan and McConnell are moving to deliver on the one thing that keeps them glued to Trump: tax cuts for the billionaires (like Singer). As we pointed out on Sunday, the billionaires are threatening the abandon Trump and the GOP if they don't deliver the promised mammoth tax cuts. Ryan will unveil his final-- ever-changing-- plan on Wednesday. Ryan has been begging Trump to stop with all the twitter-feuds and distractions and just focus on the most important thing in the GOP universe: tx cuts for the rich. Trump, though, is heading for Asia for the early 2 weeks of the debate about some extremely controversial issues that the GOP needs his bold-faced lying for. They want him to keep repeating the Big Lie that the tax cuts will promote economic growth and jobs for Americans.

Ironically, when Ryan was asked if he worries that Trump will screw up the tax roll-out and tweet something insane that will blow up the whole project, Ryan's immediate response was "He’s going to be in Asia."

Key issues Ryan doesn't want Trump meddling in include the way the GOP is changing retirement planning by phasing out 401 (k) accounts, ending federal tax deductions for state and local taxes and mucking around the mortgage deductions. Trump admitted that the Republican plans are to use these popular programs as "bargaining chips." And while Trump blunders around he says if Ryan and McConnell can't get something passed-- he doesn't care what it is as long as it eliminates the estate tax-- they'll get the blame. "I’m not going to blame myself, I’ll be honest," he said oddly (since he's never honest... about anything... ever.)

Maddow May Not Get It, But Supporting Progressives Like Russ Feingold And Zephyr Teachout Isn't The Same As Backing ConservaDems Like Patrick Murphy And Pete Gallego

Early voting has started and, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll, Hillary leads Trump by a whopping 15 points among the 19 million Americans who have already cast their ballots-- leading not just in blue states but in Ohio, Arizona and, yes, even Texas. Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders are out on the road, working their asses off for Democratic candidates-- and although they've been smart enough and shown enough integrity to avoid pimping the worst of the Democratic establishment monstrosities (like Evan Bayh, Patty Justice, Ann Kirkpatrick and, worst of all, Patrick Murphy, who they can leave the the smartest dumbbell in TV news to pimp instead)-- I often wonder if they're getting any guarantees at all from moderates like Katie McGinty (PA), Maggie Hassan (NH), Kamala Harris (CA), and Tammy Duckworth (IL) to back a progressive agenda. We'll see, I guess.

Two people both Warren and Sanders are pushing in a major way certainly don't need to be asked for any guarantees at all. There is, after all, no reason to think Russ Feingold (WI) and Zephyr Teachout (NY) won't be every bit as powerfully committed to working families than Warren and Sanders are themselves. Yesterday, within minutes of far right billionaire Diana Hendricks giving neo-fascist incumbent Ron Johnson a cool $5,000,000 for his SuperPAC, Bernie sent a letter to his followers reminding them that Russ isn't just another hack politician the DSCC is trying to pass off as a progressive.

All across our country, as a result of the disastrous Supreme Court decision on Citizens United, billionaires are trying to buy elections for candidates who will represent the wealthy and the powerful.

There is no better example of this than in Wisconsin, where big money interests are spending millions to defeat progressive champion Russ Feingold. Russ, throughout his career, has led the effort for campaign finance reform, civil rights, the protection of our privacy and the needs of working people. He opposed the war in Iraq, led the effort against the Patriot Act and wants to see that the wealthy and large corporations pay their fair share of taxes.

It should be no surprise, therefore, that the Koch Brothers and the billionaire class want to keep Russ out of the Senate. The problem is, they're spending so much money in Wisconsin's Senate race that Russ could lose.

The billionaire class has already spent $7.5 million in outside spending to defeat Russ. He's seen his lead in the polls cut by more than half.

In my mind, this is exactly the kind of grotesque spending by millionaires and billionaires which is moving our country toward an oligarchic form of society. We need to overturn Citizens United, we need real campaign finance reform, and we need a progressive Senate

We need to help Russ Feingold win his election, and that means all of us need to stand together right now to support Russ.

...It is absolutely critical for Russ Feingold to win his election if we want to win a majority of seats in the Senate. As you know well, Paul Ryan is terrified of the prospect of losing the Senate.

Just imagine how much Paul Ryan doesn't want to see Senators Bernie Sanders and Russ Feingold working together.

You have already raised nearly $2.5 million to help candidates for the House and Senate since last week. Your contributions are completely changing races for Congress across the country.

Now we must focus our attention directly to support Russ Feingold. His race is critically important, and we need people to stand together to take on billionaires trying to buy this election.

Warren has made similar efforts for Feingold. And, by the way, if you want to send him any last minute contributions to help combat that $5 million he got from Hendricks-- who has given $5 million to Rick Scott's PAC, $5 million to the Koch brothers PAC, and millions more to right-wing candidates and organizations coast to coast-- you can do it on the Blue America Senate 2016 page.





Both Warren and Sanders have also been supportive of Zephyr Teachout's race. Again, Republican billionaires-- this time Paul Singer and Robert Mercer-- have been pouring incredible sums into the race against Zephyr, who is leading by 3 points in a new poll, doing even better than Hillary in the district! Zephyr has been crushing her lobbyist opponent, John Faso, in the debates and this week the biggest newspaper in the district, the Poughkeepsie Journal endorsed her. "Voters in the 19th Congressional District," they wrote, "are facing a fascinating choice between two starkly different candidates."

Republican John Faso has plenty of political experience as a state legislator and knows the area well, having lived here for decades.

Democrat Zephyr Teachout, a sharp law professor at Fordham University, ran a spirited campaign in her party’s primary against Gov. Andrew Cuomo in 2014. She is new to the area but would bring a fresh perspective to Washington and governance in general. Voters have plenty of compelling reasons to give her that opportunity.

The  two candidates recently exchanged ideas at a Poughkeepsie Journal Editorial Board meeting. That meeting was nuanced and substantive, indicative of the fact that voters will be choosing between two qualified candidates here.

Teachout wisely acknowledged she would have to work across the political aisle to get anything accomplished, recognizing the House of Representatives is most likely going to remain in GOP control after the November elections. And she pointed to specific places, such as in the fight against Lyme disease and getting broadband to rural places, where political consensus can and should be reached.

Let’s be clear: Teachout would have to employ such a strategy to be successful.

For his part, Faso is a veteran lawmaker who once served as state Assembly minority leader and unsuccessfully ran for state comptroller and governor. In the private sector, he has served as a lobbyist.

In general, Faso supports cutting taxes and regulations. He is in favor of lowering the maximum corporate rate but closing loopholes and limiting deductions. He also has offered several sound specific policies, including changing the tax code so that businesses could fully deduct investments in new equipment or technology in the same year those purchases were made. He believes this would be particularly helpful to small businesses, farmers and manufacturers, and he is right.

Teachout wants to close loopholes on hedge fund managers who exploit laws to get around paying a higher tax rate and end “taxpayer funded giveaways to oil and gas companies.”

She said more investment should be made to alternative energy sources, pointing to a fact that the Poughkeepsie Journal has long stated, “Renewable energy is not on an even playing field right now.”

Teachout would clearly be a strong defender of the Hudson River and the environment in general, calling for more cleanup of pollution in the river, opposing the Coast Guard’s  large-vessel anchoring proposal and being out front in the fight against hydrofracking.

Teachout also was the first national director of the Sunlight Foundation, a non-partisan group trying to make Congress more open and transparent, something that voters can be assured would be a high priority for her if elected.

To his credit, Faso did come across as more far moderate at the Editorial Board meeting than his voting record in the Assembly would suggest. He noted, for example, that a compromise is needed to keep Social Security solvent for generations and that raising the federal minimum wage should be looked at.

The Poughkeepsie Journal would urge the winner of this race to look at the person vacating this seat, Republican Chris Gibson, as a strong model. Gibson decided not to run again this year, but he built a strong and deserved reputation as a knowledgeable, honorable lawmaker willing to work across the political aisle.

At our meeting, Teachout acknowledged Gibson’s fine work, and she definitely brings a new and welcomed energy to politics. Voters should give her two years to see if she can use that energy and her intelligence to serve the district in the most fitting and admirable way.

As of yesterday, outside Republican groups had poured $5,470,727 into the race. The DCCC has responded, weakly, with $1,556,183. (They save most of their big money for Blue Dogs and New Dems like Pete Gallego, Joe Garcia, Josh Gottheimer and Charlie Crist, not for progressives like Zephyr.) Please consider giving her Get Out the Vote efforts a boost by tapping on the thermometer below:

Zephyr Teachout Challenges Billionaire Political Puppeteer And Hedge Fund Crook Paul Singer To A NY-19 Debate

This video is unbelievably great and awesome and I've never seen anything like it and it makes me so damn proud that Blue America endorsed Zephyr Teachout on the same day she announced she was running for Congress in the Hudson Valley/Catskills district Chris Gibson is leaving. Please watch the clip. Zephyr actually challenges one of the ruthless hedge fund managers underwriting the campaign of a puppet Republican opponent to a debate. She'll debate Faso too of course, but she wants to debate Republican billionaire and puppet-master Paul Singer. Karoli Kuns, the managing editor of Crooks and Liars turned me on to the clip yesterday and did this guest post for us:

Hedge Fund Billionaire Pledges $500,000 To Defeat Zephyr Teachout
-by Karoli Kuns

Zephyr Teachout's campaign for Congress is Ground Zero for fighting billionaires and SuperPACs. There is no clearer difference in political outlooks than the contest between Teachout and her Republican opponent John Faso.

After discovering that ultra-rich, reclusive New York hedge fund manager Paul Singer has pledged $500,000 to a SuperPAC supporting her opponent, Teachout issued a challenge in the video above. She's calling for Singer to come to her district and debate the issues faced by constituents there.

As she says, Singer is a privatizer who never met a trade agreement he didn't like. Offshoring is his middle name.

Howie Klein noted earlier this year that her district is definitely winnable. I view it as where the political revolution Bernie started can win and win big.

$500,000 is a lot of money, and her average donation is $15. So if you can help her fight the billionaires, please do.

This is how we fight a political revolution against millionaires and billionaires. One district at a time.

Update: Howie Klein tells me that it's not just Singer. Robert Mercer has also pledged $500,000 and Singer just added another $100,000. They're really afraid of her, aren't they? Their SuperPAC, which has already spent close to a million dollars in NY-19 this year is called  New York Wins PAC, to which there are only 4 donors, Mercer, Singer, Thomas Tisch and Peter Kalikow.

Let the political revolution begin HERE.

Billionaire Vulture Paul Singer Has Been Bribing Rubio To Help His Corrupt Business For Quite Some Time

Sunday started off with an explanation of the connection between Marco Rubio and vulture investor Paul Singer, who is now trying-- along with several other slimy billionaires-- to buy Rubio the white House. (Don't worry... Ted Cruz has his own equally horrid billionaires trying to buy the presidency for him.) Everyone more or less assumed that Singer was willing to invest heavily in Rubio because of their shared virulent Zionism and because of Rubio's consistent pledges to drastically lower taxes on billionaires, coupled with his perceived electability. But then Jonathan Marshall, writing for ConsortiumNews reported a key element most reporters have missed, not that the Singer's embrace signals an establishment shift away from Jeb, but that "Rubio earned that affection by advancing Singer’s high-stakes financial fight with Argentina."

Marshall points out Rubio's "political support for Singer’s efforts to drain more than $1.5 billion dollars from Argentina in payments on old bonds that lost most of their value after the country defaulted in 2001." In the Sunday discussion of Singer's corruption, we mentioned how he bribed GOP congressman Michael "Mikey Suits" Grimm with $38,000 to get him to use his congressional office to extort Argentina. Grimm is in prison for other (unrelated) corrupt practices but he isn't the only Republican who helped Singer with his disgraceful vulture operation against Argentina.

...Bloomberg noted, “Singer has repeatedly been labeled a ‘vulture investor’ by the emerging-market countries whose bonds he has bought and by development organizations such as Oxfam International that back forgiveness of poor countries’ debt.” The Guardian described the debt vulture model this way: “Vulture funds operate by buying up a country’s debt when it is in a state of chaos. When the country has stabilized, vulture funds return to demand millions of dollars in interest repayments and fees on the original debt. … It has been 16 years since most of the world began writing off the debts of the world’s poorest countries, but the vulture funds, a club of between 26 and 35 speculators, have ignored the debt concerts by pop stars such as Bono and pleas from the likes of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund to give the countries a break and a chance to get back on their feet.”

It now looks like Singer is repaying Rubio for his willingness to fight his anti-Argentine battles and drag the U.S. Senate into it despite warnings from the State Department not to.

Singer’s Elliott Management bought that debt several years ago for less than $50 million, and then successfully sued in U.S. court to demand full recovery of the face amount-- in the face of opposition from the Obama administration, most other bondholders, and, above all, Argentina’s government, led by President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner.

Singer, who is famous for his bare-knuckles tactics against foreign governments, has gone after Kirchner’s government on all fronts. Most strategically, he supported the highly questionable claims by an Argentine prosecutor that the Kirchner government tried to cover up the involvement of the Iranian government in the 1994 bombing of the Jewish community center in Buenos Aires, which killed 85 people.

The issue was perfect for a smear campaign: targeting alleged Iranian terrorism and government anti-Semitism, Singer could undercut the legitimacy of the one entity standing between him and huge profits on his speculative bond purchases.

Singer’s Elliot Management is a major backer of American Task Force Argentina, which advocates for full repayment of the Argentine bonds and has spent millions of dollars lobbying Congress. It also spends big bucks to blacken Argentina’s reputation.

As Huffington Post reported in 2013, the group “has launched a broad attack on Argentina in its PR campaign. … Politico ad, paid for by ATFA, slammed the country as a safe haven for narcotics traffickers. Another ATFA ad accuses Argentine President Cristina Kirchner of making a ‘pact with the Devil,’ pointing to a legal memo between her country and Iran involving Argentina’s effort to prosecute Iranian defendants in a terrorism case.”

As one of its lobbyists told Huffington Post, “We do whatever we can to get our government and media’s attention focused on what a bad actor Argentina is.”

An investigation by Charles Davis for Inter Press Service showed that employees of Singer’s Elliott Management contributed more than $95,000 to Sen. Mark Kirk, R-Illinois, who wrote a letter denouncing President Kirchner’s agreement with Iran to investigate the 1994 bombing.

Rep. Michael Grimm, R-NY, who received $38,000 from Elliott Management employees, co-sponsored legislation demanding that Argentina’s bondholders receive full compensation, and called for an investigation of Argentina’s ties with Iran. Other recipients of Singer’s largesse-- including AIPAC, The Israel Project and the American Enterprise Institute-- also hammered the Kirchner government, virtually accusing it of anti-Semitism.

Last year, another member of Congress got in on the act: Sen. Marco Rubio. While grilling President Obama’s nominee as U.S. ambassador to Argentina, Rubio complained that Buenos Aires “doesn’t pay bondholders, doesn’t work with our security operations. . . .  These aren’t the actions of an ally.”

Adding a dig at President Kirchner, he added, “We have this trend in Latin America of people who get elected but then don’t govern democratically. Argentina is an example of this.” His speech triggered an angry response from Kirchner’s Foreign Minister Hector Timerman-- an Argentine Jew-- calling Rubio an “extremist.”

This May, Rubio introduced a resolution in the Senate suggesting that Kirchner conspired to “cover up Iranian involvement in the 1994 terrorist bombing.” Rubio declared that the issues in the case “extend well beyond Argentina and involve the international community, and more importantly, U.S. national security.”

As Eli Clifton noted, “It turns out that Singer’s hedge fund, Elliott Management, was Rubio’s second largest source of campaign contributions between 2009 and 2014, providing the presidential hopeful with $122,620, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics.” Let's not forget that Singer gave Rubio $117,000 the same day Congress passed Dodd-Frank-- which Rubio voted to repeal 4 times.

When Kirchner herself had the temerity this spring to link Singer to various neoconservative attacks on her policies, citing a “global modus operandi” to coerce foreign states, the reliably neoconservative editorial page of the Washington Post published an editorial reply titled, “Argentina’s President Resorts to Anti-Semitic Conspiracy Theories.”

To which Jim Lobe and Charles Davis, citing a long list of Singer connections to Kirchner’s critics, replied, “follow the money.” That advice, made famous in the movie version of Watergate’s Deep Throat, remains the best guide to understanding billionaire funding of candidates in the 2016 election.

And believe me, this isn't going to be a topic brought up by any moderators in the next Republican debate... nor the one after that.

Why Has Vulture Fund King Paul Singer, Picked Rubio To Be President?

It was treated as huge news Friday evening when Nick Confessore and Maggie Haberman reported that Paul Singer has decided to back Marco Rubio. The media made such a big deal out of it because Singer is one of the biggest financiers of right-wing politics in America. He's contributed many millions of dollars to advance the Republican Party agenda, handing out 6 and 7-figure PAC checks the way normal people might give a $20 contribution through ActBlue (always a mitzvah). He also gives max donations to right-wing candidates, from outright crackpots like Joni Ernst (R-IA) to relatively mainstream conservatives like McCain. And he invested early and heavily in Paul Ryan; he was Ryan's biggest single donor in the 2012 cycle.

Most of Singer's millions in contributions, though, go to and through a interconnected network of shady right-wing SuperPACs. Oddly, his biggest recent contributions-- almost $5,000,000-- have gone to the American Unity PAC, which describes itself as being "focused exclusively on protecting and promoting candidates for U.S. House and U.S. Senate who support freedom for all Americans, regardless of their sexual orientation." Singer's son is gay and this is the big gay right-winger PAC. The biggest recipients of the American Unity PAC's largesse have been Richard Tisei (R-MA), Dan Innis (R-NH), Richard Hanna (R-NY), Mike Coffman (R-CO), John Katko (R-NY), Carlos Curbelo (R-FL) and Bob Dold (R-IL), although the PAC also contributed $125,000 to Rove's American Crossroads, which isn't exactly gay friendly. Other mega-contributions, as you can see in just one of a dozen Open Secrets pages that tracks Singer's contributions, have gone to Crossroads, to Romney's Restore Our Future SuperPAC, to the GOP opposition-research group America Rising, to Boehner's SuperPAC (the Congressional Leadership Fund), to the fake reform/bipartisan operation called EndingSpending, and to the criminal operation disguised as the so-called Progress for America Voter Fund, a nefarious operation that supported Bush's efforts to privatize Social Security and used lies and scare tactics to advertise and build support for the Iraq War. [Reminder: if Bernie and candidates like him are elected, scumbag billionaires like Singer won't have the excess cash laying around to undermine democracy anymore.]

Singer didn't just discover Marco Rubio. He's been sending him money all along. I see a $3,142 check to Rubio back in March of 2010 when the Florida Tea Party got Marco to run against against Charlie Crist for the Republican nomination for the U.S. Senate (Crist switched to Independent the following month; maybe Singer doesn't approve of closet cases). Singer is expected to contribute and raise and bundle millions for one of Rubio's two SuperPACs, Reclaim America and Conservative Solutions. Before Singer came along, Conservative Solutions has gotten the bulk of it's loot from Rubio sugar daddy Norman Braman ($5 million), right-wing Oracle founder Larry Ellison ($3 million), Cuban-born horse enthusiast Benjamin Leon ($2.5 million), LPL Investment Group CEO Mark Casady ($500,000), James Rubright of Privet Fund Management ($500,000), Benny Klepach (through his duty free operator DFASS Group, Travel Retail Group Holdings LLC and Collum’s Administration & Maintenance LLC-- $350,000), as well as from 10 rich wing-nuts who have tossed in $100,000 each, such as Arizona Diamondbacks owner Ken Kendrick's wife Randy. (Trump also wrote Conservative Solutions a $25,000 check.) Aside from Singer, it is widely believed that Israel's GOP agents in America, Sheldon and Miriam Adelson, are about to start investing big money in the easily-controlled Rubio.

So why did I refer to Paul Singer as a "scumbag?" Just because he's funding right-wing candidates and underwriting efforts to destroy American democracy? Well, those are good points, but that isn't why I decided to use such a pejorative term. Singer is a vulture fund predator who buys up the debt of third world countries at pennies on the dollar and then demands that he be paid in full. He preys on the weakest and most vulnerable people in the world whose corrupt and incompetent governments know how to play ball with monsters like Singer. And what Singer needs and wants from his candidates is a commitment that our government not regulate how his hedge funds operate. Hedgeclippers.org did the penultimate reporting on Singer last April, terming him "an opportunistic lawyer who has found a niche doing something that most people couldn’t stomach--suing some of the poorest nations in the world. Singer is the pioneer of a strategy called debt vulturism.

A 2012 Fortune profile called Singer “Mitt Romney’s hedge fund kingmaker” and described him as “a passionate defender of the 1% and a rising Republican power broker.” The article reported that in a confidential Jan. 23, 2012 report to his investors, Singer wrote that “income inequality has become a wedge issue.” The Fortune profile continued, “The billionaire shows little sympathy for the plight of the 99%. ‘Resentment is not morally superior to earning money,’ writes Singer.”

Perhaps not surprisingly, recipients of Paul Singer’s cash have gone to bat for him on various legislative issues. Recently, twelve members of Congress-- [corrupt Members from both parties, Matt Salmon (R-AZ), Gary Miller (R-CA), Chris Smith (R-NJ), Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA), Mario Diaz-Balart (R-FL), Ron DeSantis (R-FL), Albio Sires (D-NJ), Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL), Scott Garrett (R-NJ), Trey Radel (R-FL), Michael "Mikey Suits" Grimm (R-NY)--who received $38,000 from Elliott Management employees, co-sponsored legislation demanding that Argentina’s bondholders receive full compensation, and called for an investigation of Argentina’s ties with Iran-- and Grace Meng (D-NY)]--signed a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder, urging him to side with Singer’s hedge fund in their battle to extract profits from Argentina. The signatories of that letter received a combined $200,000 from Singer and his connected PACs.

Singer has a long history of funding some of the most conservative organizations in the country. Singer’s political reputation earned him the reputation, only half made in jest, of being “to the right of Attila the Hun.” Singer is the chairman of the Manhattan Institute, a Koch-funded rightwing think tank with a regrettable history of shilling for big tobacco, giving voice to climate change denialists, and hosting controversial social Darwinist Charles Murray as a fellow. Through his family foundation, Singer has contributed to conservative think tanks like the American Enterprise Institute, the Koch-backed Atlas Economic Research Foundation, and the Center for Individual Rights. Singer was recently revealed to be a funder of intractable climate change denialist Bjørn Lomborg, having provided nearly a third of Lomborg’s foundation’s revenue in 2013.

...Bloomberg noted, “Singer has repeatedly been labeled a ‘vulture investor’ by the emerging-market countries whose bonds he has bought and by development organizations such as Oxfam International that back forgiveness of poor countries’ debt.” The Guardian described the debt vulture model this way: “Vulture funds operate by buying up a country’s debt when it is in a state of chaos. When the country has stabilized, vulture funds return to demand millions of dollars in interest repayments and fees on the original debt. … It has been 16 years since most of the world began writing off the debts of the world’s poorest countries, but the vulture funds, a club of between 26 and 35 speculators, have ignored the debt concerts by pop stars such as Bono and pleas from the likes of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund to give the countries a break and a chance to get back on their feet.”

The Guardian noted that “according to the World Bank, the top 26 vultures have managed to collect $1bn from the world’s poorest countries and still have a further $1.3bn to collect. … The World Bank has described vulture funds as “a threat to debt relief efforts” and the former, Bush-era US treasury secretary Henry Paulson said: “I deplore what the vulture funds are doing” in testimony before the House of Representatives’ financial committee in 2007.”

Putting vulture fund profits in perspective, The Guardian pointed out that “The $1bn collected by the funds is equivalent to more than double the International Committee of the Red Cross’s entire budget for Africa in 2011. $1bn could fund the entire UN appeal for the famine in Somalia and is more than twice the amount of money raised by Save the Children last year.”

Vulture funds destabilize financial markets, keep poor countries poor just as they are attempting to get out from under debt, and scare off new investors from a country, critics point out. Debt vulturism has been condemned by the United Nations, the governments of the United States, France, Mexico, Brazil, Belgium and Germany, and various religious organizations.

Former Prime Minister Gordon Brown has described vulture-fund payouts as “morally outrageous.” Britain passed groundbreaking laws in 2010 reining in vulture practices.

...A Singer subsidiary’s actions in the Republic of Congo fit this sovereign-debt-acquisition script. Bloomberg reported that “In the late 1990s, Elliott Associates, through another of its subsidiaries, Cayman Islands-based Kensington International Inc., bought $30 million of defaulted Congolese debt at a significant discount, according to legal documents filed by the Congolese government.”  Kensington has litigated in courts around the world to try to claim Congolese assets in payment of the debt. By The Nation’s tally, “Kensington has filed at least fifteen separate lawsuits against Congo and its business partners, in places ranging from the British Virgin Islands to Hong Kong to the United States.” In November 2005, Bloomberg reported, Kensington was awarded $39 million when the U.K.’s High Court ruled that Glencore International AG, the world’s largest commodity trader, should pay the company for two consignments of Congolese oil rather than pay a Congolese government-controlled company.

While Singer was trying to strong-arm the Congolese government for significant profit, the country was in the throes of one of the most significant food shortages in the world, twice ranking top ten in the World Food Programme’s list of Hunger Crises.

As The Nation has commented previously, “Singer is unapologetic about the hardball tactics he pioneered.” Singer disregards the unspeakable damage his fund does to citizens. “Every country has poverty, including the USA,” he told The Nation via e-mail. “Our disputes have always been with sovereigns who can pay but refuse.” He dismisses his critics as “debtors who attempt to curry populist favor by paying just what they feel like paying” and “ideologically driven people and groups who do not realize that capital goes where it is welcome.”

Paul Singer is reported to have earned more than $1.5 billion on his play at Delphi, the troubled auto parts manufacturer that was bailed out by the U.S. government in 2009. Singer’s Elliott Management, along with Silver Point Capital and Dan Loeb’s Third Point, blocked an earlier sale proposed by the Treasury Department, which would have saved 15 of 29 Delphi plants and countless jobs. Holding Delphi at financial gunpoint, the hedge funds were able to extract additional compensation by shuttering additional factories across the country.   Dan Loeb, whose hedge fund also got in on the deal, boasted that “virtually no North American unionized labor” remained after the hedge funds rampaged through the company. In the final bankruptcy deal, Delphi’s 20,000 retirees lost up to 70% of their pensions, an estimated 8,500 workers lost their jobs nationwide, and all but four factories were shuttered.

An amoral, easily manipulated careerist like Marco Rubio is precisely what greed-obsessed billionaires like Singer want to see sitting in the Oval Office. As Confessore and Haberman wrote in their Times piece Friday, "[t]he decision by the donor, Paul Singer, a billionaire New York investor, is a signal victory for Mr. Rubio in his battle with his rival Jeb Bush for the affections of major Republican patrons and the party’s business wing. This week Singer sent a letter to the wealthy right-wing donors in his network describing Rubio as the only candidate who can "navigate this complex primary process, and still be in a position to defeat" Hillary Clinton in a general election. There is only one way the citizens of this country can protect themselves from Singer and his ilk: right here.

Will Paul Ryan And The GOP Be Slowed Down Watching Greece's Agony With The Same Austerity Agenda They're Ramming Through Congress?

The drachma was good enough for Plato

Last May, in a Times column called Eurodämmerung, Paul Krugman predicted that the Greece's exit from the Eurozone was not just nigh but that it would lead teethe dissolution of the whole project. A few weeks earlier he had laid out the reasons he was becoming more and more convinced that it was just a matter of time for Greece to leave the Eurozone.

Even with a debt restructuring, Greece will be in deep trouble, forced to engage in severe austerity-- and provoke a deep slump-- just to close the primary, non-interest deficit.

The only thing that could reduce that need for austerity would be something that helped the economy expand, or at least not contract as much. This would reduce the economic pain; it would also increase revenues, reducing the needed amount of fiscal austerity.

But the only route to economic expansion is higher exports-- which can only be achieved if Greek costs and prices fall sharply relative to the rest of Europe.

If Greece were a highly cohesive society with collective wage-setting, a sort of Aegean Austria, it might be possible to do this via a collectively agreed reduction in wages across the board-- an “internal devaluation.” But as today’s grim events show, it isn’t.

The alternative is a devaluation-- which means leaving the euro.

Any announcement of plans to leave the euro would, as Eichengreen points out, trigger disastrous bank runs. By the same token, any suggestion by outside players, like the ECB, that the option exists would amount to invoking a speculative attack on Greek banks, and therefore can’t be made. The whole thing is effectively undiscussable.

But that doesn’t mean it can’t happen. Greece is already starting to look like Argentina 2001.

Der Spiegel is reporting this week that German conservatives Angela Merkel (Chancellor) and Wolfgang Schäuble (Finance Minister) are threatening to expel Greece from the euro zone if it does not stick to the austerity dictates of the "troika" (the European Union, International Monetary Fund and European Central Bank)-- in other words, if progressive Alexis Tsipras and his SYRIZA party win the January 25 elections-- as looks likely. Johannes Stern:

The threat from Merkel and Schäuble underscores the antidemocratic character of the EU and the German bourgeoisie. The Greek people not only have no right to determine policy in their own country, they are to be punished if they vote for a party critical of austerity policies dictated by German imperialism.

Berlin’s aggressiveness is an expression not only of the EU’s antisocial policies directed against the working class, but also of the deepening crisis in Europe. Six years after the outbreak of the financial crisis and after years of deep social cuts in southern Europe, the political, economic and social tensions within and between European countries have reached the breaking point.

...From the standpoint of finance capital, the decision has already been made. Greece has to continue to bow to the austerity dictates of Germany and the EU, which have thrown a large section of the Greek population into bitter poverty and gone a long way towards destroying a functioning society.

“There will be no Greece law,” said Bavarian Finance Minister Markus Söder (Christian Social Union-- CSU), according to Monday’s Süddeutsche Zeitung. “It is clear for me that there will be no debt relief or reduction just because a new government comes to power.”

In Welt am Sonntag, Social Democratic Party (SPD) parliamentary fraction leader Thomas Oppermann warned, “We will insist that the structural reforms in Greece be implemented.”

Social Democratic leader and vice chancellor Sigmar Gabriel followed suit, demanding in the Hannoversche Allgemeine Zeitung that Athens implement plans for cuts and economic “reforms.” It was expected that “regardless who forms [the next Greek government], agreements reached with the EU will be upheld.” The German government would “not be blackmailed,” he added.

German threats are aimed not so much at preventing SYRIZA from forming a government, as at disciplining the party. The German government intends to compel SYRIZA and Tsipras to accept the debt Memorandum just as unconditionally as had the social democratic PASOK party under then-Prime Minister George Papandreou and the conservative New Democrats under the current Prime Minister, Antonis Samaras.

This week Michael Nevradakis interviewed Greg Palast about how the IMF, Austerity Agenda and Vulture Funds have destroyed Greece's economy and turned the country into a crime scene.

Michael Nevradakis: In light of the upcoming elections, Greece at the present time has unemployment that has surpassed 27 percent, youth unemployment at around 60 percent, hundreds of thousands of Greeks who have migrated abroad, a social state in shambles, and a government in the process of selling off key state industries, public lands and utilities. What is your take on the current economic situation in Greece?

Greg Palast: Well, it's fascinating, because if you read the Western press, Greece is now a "success story." By success meaning you're paying off your creditors; your stock market has recovered and the bond market has recovered somewhat. So as far as most of the press is concerned, everything is fine in Greece. The fact that people are unemployed, that people are still losing their homes and livelihoods, doesn't mean much to the press, because all that matters is the stock market and your creditors.

I've been investigating the causes of Greece's collapse; it's a crime scene; it's not something that was a matter of Greeks living beyond their means or being lazy, olive pit-spewing slackers, as the Germans would have it. In fact, I actually looked it up: The average Greek worker works 400 hours more a year than the average German worker. It's a hard-working nation. In fact, I think Greeks are harder on themselves than even the Germans are. It's a hard-working nation, a successful nation, and what happened was your economy was stolen from you.

Michael Nevradakis: Continuing this narrative of Greece being a so-called success story: After so many years of IMF and troika involvement in Greece, there are many who still maintain that Greece has no other choice but to continue along this path. You've done a lot of investigating into what entities such as the IMF and the World Bank have done elsewhere, in Latin America and in Asia. What has been the impact of IMF involvement and austerity policies in these other regions?

Greg Palast: Well, as my fellow economists Paul Krugman and Joe Stiglitz have noted, the austerity programs are like medieval bloodletting. If you're sick, they would drain the blood from you, and if you didn't get better, they would say "oh, the problem is that we didn't drain enough blood" and they would bleed you some more. That's how austerity works.

No one has yet beaten Keynes' formula, which is that when there's no demand for products, your economy is going to fall apart. Rebuilding demand is the opposite of austerity. This is when you need to borrow; this is when you need to go into deficit. This is when you need to devalue your currency so you can once again export. But you are chained like a prison sentence to the Deutsche mark, which is called the euro right now. You are forced to accept Germany's currency, which makes Greece and its economy overpriced.

So the way that your economy is balanced is by reducing wages rather than by reducing the value of your currency, and that's disastrous in many ways, because it's a death spiral. The fact that money is being sliced out of your gut to pay off bondholders-- to me that is not a sign of health, that is not a sign of recovery: that's a sign of jackals and vultures chewing at the national economic corpse.

...Argentina was tied to the dollar. Right now they're going through another fight with international financial vultures, and they're holding strong, and their economy has not only recovered, but they've roared ahead like a rocket, with high employment, and huge increases in national wealth and huge increases in salary in the past decade and a half while they were resisting the IMF diktats. So that's the path for Greece, I mean: Follow Brazil; follow Argentina; follow Ecuador. They did it, they said no. You can't beg your way out of this problem.

Michael Nevradakis: Sticking with what you've just said about Argentina in particular, you've done extensive investigative reporting on the activities of so-called vulture funds and how they have targeted countries such as Greece or such as those in Latin America or Africa. One individual in particular, Paul Singer, has been at the heart of your investigations, and is tied both to Greece and to Argentina. Who is Paul Singer and what does he have to do with the cases of these two countries?

Greg Palast: Well, if you read my book Vulture's Picnic, which should be coming out in Greek quite soon, these vulture funds-- and I didn't give them the name vulture funds, that's what they called themselves for many years-- they buy up debts of nations when there's a crisis like in Greece, when you can buy up the debts at pennies at the dollar, at a fraction of their face value, and then after a deal has been worked out with everyone else, they are the final holdouts and they demand, in the case of Greece for example, you had creditors who accepted a large cut in the principal of the bonds; the bonds were revalued downward, interest rates were cut-- Singer and one of his associates were the holdouts, and they not only didn't take a loss on their bonds, they were paid multiples and earned something in the area of 200 to 300 percent profit on their bonds. The Greek government made exceptions and paid them additional money.

What they do is they hold your nation ransom. They're doing the same thing in Argentina, but Argentina has said, the president of Argentina Christina Fernandez Kirchner, said "I do not pay ransom, I will not pay vultures." And they are simply refusing to pay these creditors. They're simply not going to pay ransom. Other nations have fought these vultures, and in fact, their activities. The people who have been attacking Greece like Paul Singer, the vulture, his activities have been outlawed in, for example, the British Commonwealth . . . England, Canada, and throughout the British Commonwealth. These are rogue financiers, their activities are banned and are criminal or quasi-criminal in some parts of the world, but these are the people who are dictating to your economics ministers.

Michael Nevradakis: Sticking on the topic of Paul Singer and his activities, there have been certain very notable cases, such as the examples of Peru and also the Congo, where he basically shook these countries down for large amounts of money . . .

Greg Palast: Right. I did a story for BBC television . . . If you go to my website, gregpalast.com, you can see my reports from the Congo. Paul Singer effectively grabbed the money that was set aside to fight a cholera epidemic in the Republic of the Congo. These are not nice guys. Other creditors, the treasuries of the United States or Europe, are used to help bail out countries that are in trouble, whether it's Greece or the Congo or Peru, and after the taxpayers of the US and Europe put up funds to help nations recover, Paul "The Vulture" Singer and his vulture fund friends - remember, they called themselves vultures until recently; they are proud of it - they swoop down, and they say, "Well, now that you've been given money by Europeans and Americans, now we're going to take your resources." And they have seized oil shipments on the high seas; they've seized metal resources, they're basically quasi-illegal pirates, and in fact, they actually seized a pirate ship, no kidding, one old, masted pirate ship they seized from the Argentine Navy, but Argentina got it back.

Michael Nevradakis: How has the Argentine government responded to the recent court decision that came out of the United States which led to the country's "default," and to the continued demands and pressure from Paul Singer?

Greg Palast: What's happened is that the Argentine government, because it told the IMF to go to hell and it told its creditors to go to hell back in the year 2000-2001, under the current president's husband . . . that allowed Argentina time to recover. And in return, while Argentina, 15 years ago, defaulted on its bonds deliberately, it did say that "we will pay back this money eventually, but only when we recover." And in effect, banks were given stock in the economy of Argentina. As the economy grew, they were paid off. So Argentina actually ended up paying the banks $165 billion, but then Singer said, "I don't want what everyone else has," because that would give him only a 300 percent profit. Instead, he's demanded a 3,000 percent profit on the old bonds he holds. And he found some crazy, 84-year old judge in the United States to not only order Argentina to pay him, but ordered Argentina to stop paying its other creditors, banks such as the United Bank of Switzerland, Citibank, the Bank of New York. George Soros was one of the bankers that was being paid by Argentina and had accepted its terms. So literally, a judge ordered Argentina to stop paying its creditors, and therefore, technically the nation has gone into default. Yet still, Argentina said "that's too bad, we'd rather be in default than pay ransom to vultures . . . we'd rather be in default than let our people starve or allow these pirates to seize our economy."

Once again, part of the way that they recovered was by getting rid of the US dollar as their currency, just as, at the moment, Greece is tied to the German currency, and that's just insane. People in Greece are so used to having the euro, they're told that the sky will fall if you step out of the euro. Well the sky has already fallen on Greece. You can't do worse. And if you had your own currency, if you freed yourself from the bondage of German currency, you would be able to begin to restore your economy. And then you could declare that you would pay your creditors in your own currency. The drachma was good enough for Plato, I'm sure it's good enough for you today.

As The GOP Doubles Down On Homophobia, Do Gay Republicans Have A Role To Play Any Longer?

Right wing hedge fund operator and vulture capitalist Paul Singer may be best known as one of the money bags behind Mitt Romney but the ardent defender of the prerogatives of the one percent and their right to rule without interference from government (he's been on an anti-Dodd Frank jihad, for example) is also one of the biggest supporters of bombing Iran and of gay equality inside the reaches of the Republican Party and its right-wing satellite groups. Odd combination? His son is gay and married his husband in 2009 and Singer is a Zionist... and a billionaire. Its all about him-- always.

Just under two years ago, late simmer, 2012, Singer gave his last check to GOProud, the extreme right-wing-- and very divisive-- gay organization he had been funding. As the Republican Party digs in its heels on gay reparative therapy, GOProud, which unofficially died when Singer pulled the financial plug, has now made it official. A group backing equal right for the LGBT community can't thrive among the bigots and hate-mongers that utterly dominate the right-wing of the Republican Party.

Although sane states have followed the lead of progressives like California state Senator Ted Lieu in banning the quackery of conversion therapy, no one has been able to get a straight answer if gay Republican political elites themselves have undergone conversion therapy. Since the Texas GOP is lining up behind it, maybe someone should ask closet case Rick Perry for an answer. Other tragic Republicans who may or may not have undergone conversion therapy who should comment on its effective include the two U.S. senators from South Carolina, lifelong gay bachelors Lindsey Graham and Tim Scott, not to mention Wyoming's John Barrasso, Mark Kirk, Miss McConnell and a dozen House members from gay wingnuts Aaron Schock (R-IL), Trent Franks (R-AZ) and Patrick McHenry (R-NC) to Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) and Adrian Smith (R-NE).

Under the new proposed plank, the Texas GOP would "recognize the legitimacy and efficacy of counseling, which offers reparative therapy and treatment for those patients seeking healing and wholeness from their homosexual lifestyle."

The American Psychological Association and other major health organizations have condemned such counseling, which generally try to change a person's sexual orientation or to lessen their interest in engaging in same-sex sexual activity. The groups say the practice should not be used on minors because of the danger of serious psychological harm.

But trying to strip the language from the Texas GOP platform could set off a contentious fight and result in altering the language even more. The therapy phrasing survived a key committee vote late Thursday, but hardliners had sought to change "homosexuality" in the platform to "sexual sins."

Also on the table is removing decades-old language that states, "homosexuality tears at the fabric of society." Davis said that was the only language his group sought to change at the convention, and that he still wanted to go home with that win.

The therapy language was inserted at the urging of Cathie Adams of Dallas, leader of the influential tea party group Texas Eagle Forum and a onetime chairwoman of the Texas Republican Party.

Adams, whose group backed tea party outsiders who dominated Texas Republican primary races this year, said she simply promoted language proposed by a man she said was helped by such therapy, which has been defended by some smaller groups, including the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality.

"He knows what he's talking about. He is one of those who has benefited," Adams said. "I think the majority of Texans feel that way too. It's not like this is mandatory. This is only a voluntary program."

Yesterday, Tim Mak, writing for the Daily Beast, covered the sad, messy GOProud implosion. "The decline of GOProud," he writes, "is a prime example of what happens to an organization that rises to prominence through confrontation-- and never bothers to do the grunt work needed to sustain the outfit, once the outrage dies down. It was feisty and controversial-- a Tea Party, of sorts, to the more establishment-minded Log Cabin Republicans." They may have decided to make it "official" this week, but what was left of the organization has been moribund since Singer, who had given them close to $600,000-- informed them they'd better find a new sugar daddy. Thegroup's founders, Christopher Barron and Jimmy LaSalvia, quit.

In the summer of 2013, LaSalvia and Barron sold GOProud’s brand name, one of the organization’s computers, a contact list, and some posters to three former interns, and stepped away from the day-to-day management of the group.

Matt Bechstein, now the executive director of what is left of GOProud, said they purchased it for less than three figures. Barron said it was a nominal amount, $1. “It certainly wasn’t fair market value,” Barron said.

In a way, GOProud had already died last summer. The former interns only filed the necessary paperwork to organize “GOProud 2.0” in January 2014. Bechstein had purchased a brand that was in bad shape.

“There was donor discontent, the organization was broke, they were having difficulty raising money, and they ruined just about every relationship possible,” Bechstein said, referring to the former management.

The future of GOProud, once a leading voice for gay conservatives, looks bleak. The organization still exists in theory, but it now faces the possibility of shutting down, changing its name, or changing its organizational type. “There’s high amounts of chaos and confusion,” he said, since any remaining donors have been spooked by reports that the group is closing down.

There’s no love lost between the former leadership and the current leadership.

“Most people assume GOProud died a year ago. GOProud was constantly part of the conversation, shaking things up. Over the last year… I never heard from GOProud. Quite frankly, I don’t know what they’ve done over the past year. I’ve seen nothing,” Barron said.

Countered Bechstein, “They’ve been antagonistic to me since Day One… we came to be the antithesis of Jimmy and Chris, who ruined the organization.”

GOProud first elbowed its way into the conservative movement in the spring of 2009, but struggled in its early days as a startup. Really, it was nothing more than Barron and LaSalvia and a Twitter account, crammed into a Capitol Hill basement office for which they paid $800 a month. The group’s first acts were small. Fundraising during its launch netted only about $3,000, LaSalvia said.

But GOProud’s prominence really emerged in 2010, after conservative activist Ryan Sorba denounced them from the stage at the Conservative Political Action Conference.

“I’d like to condemn CPAC for bringing GOProud to this event,” Sorba told the audience at the annual conservative gathering, to a smattering of boos. “The lesbians at Smith College protest better than you. Bring it.”

LaSalvia, sitting outside the room, looked down at his phone. Just moments after Sorba’s rant, a $500 donation came into GOProud’s account. Many major news outlets at CPAC, eager to write about something other than the typical rotation of politicians coming up to speak on stage, covered Sorba’s outburst.

“That’s really when we got famous,” LaSalvia said. Momentum flowed from controversy. They spent their last few hundred dollars on a trip up to New York City, obtaining donor commitments that kept them alive.

That summer, they held a prominent event with Ann Coulter and some 150 supporters at the New York City apartment of billionaire PayPal founder Peter Thiel, which attendees nicknamed “Homocon.” Months later, GOProud targeted four congressional districts with an ad parodying the television show Real Housewives, targeting gay men and women on Bravo and Lifetime, even running the ad during the Project Runway finale.

The 2012 presidential cycle smothered GOProud, LaSalvia argued, saying that the organization’s endorsement of Mitt Romney was a low point. The support of a candidate who opposed same-sex marriage-- and the noise of the presidential campaign-- combined to make them feel sidelined.

“We were following, we were falling in line… no one was out front that year,” he said.

The highlight of that year, LaSalvia said, was when more than 900 people showed up to GOProud’s 2012 Republican convention party in Tampa Bay, at a gay bar.