Über-Vultures: The Billionaires Who Would Pick Our President

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Greg Palast on Billionaires’

Purchase of the Presidency

The untold story of the sources of the loot controlled by billionaires Paul “The Vulture” Singer, Ken Langone and the Kochs—and why they need to buy the White House

Greg Palast has a lot to say about the billionaire political machine. He is an investigative reporter whose name you should know: Palast has led investigations for government on three continents. In this era of economic disparity, his latest article on Paul Singer, Ken Langone, and the Koch Brothers is a must read. Following is an edited transcript of his original article, Über-Vultures: The Billionaires Who Would Pick Our President.

 

Billionaire economic message

 

Paul Singer likes to breakfast on decayed carcasses. What he chews down is sickening, but just as nausea-inducing are his new table mates: Ken Langone and the Koch Brothers, Charles and David.

Singer called together the Billionaire Boy’s club for the purpose of picking our next president for us. The old fashioned way of choosing presidents—democracy and counting ballots and all that—has never been a favorite of this pack… When the Statue of Liberty has nightmares, she dreams that these guys will combine to seize America via a cash-and-carry coup d’état.

Let me give you a run-down from my sulphur-scented files on these men who would be king-makers.

 

Billionaire Ken Langone

 

BILLIONAIRE 1: Ken Langone

Langone likes to be known as the founder of Home Depot, just your local tool guy in a blue apron with a little bag of screws.

He was also the man, with his right-wing partners, behind DBT, Database Technologies. It was in my first investigation of Langone in 2000 that I discovered that DBT had created a list of several thousand “felons”;most of them Black—all of them innocent, all of them purged from Florida’s voter rolls by DBT’s client, Katherine Harris. Langone’s company knew exactly what was going on.

What qualifies Langone to pick our president? In his own words: I’m nuts, I’m rich.

 

Billionaire Koch Brothers

 

BILLIONAIRES 2 and 3: David and Charles Koch

Think you’ve read all about the billionaire brothers? There’s more.

In 1996, FBI agent, Richard Elroy, told Palast’s team that oil was pilfered from the Osage Indian reservation in Oklahoma. The agent and other G-men filmed the filch—theft, say witnesses— personally ordered by Charles Koch.

One expert said a few barrels here, a few barrels there added up: to about a billion and a half dollars in looted petroleum, a third of the Koch Brothers’ fortune at the time. The booty was shared via their private company, Koch Industries.

 

Billionaire Paul Singer

 

BILLIONAIRE 4: Paul Singer

Carrion king, Paul Singer, is known as “The Vulture.” Palast give him the moniker. The name Vulture was tagged on him and his speculator colleagues by the Prime Minister of Britain and the World Bank. Recently, former Deputy Secretary-General of the UN Winston Tubman suggested I ask Singer or his business associates, “Do you know you’re causing babies to die?”

What does this guy do—put poison in kiddies’ milk? Worse: he takes away the milk.

Singer’s modus operandi is to find some forgotten tiny debt owed by a very poor nation (Peru and Congo were on his menu). He waits for the US and European taxpayers to forgive the poor nations’ debts; then waits at bit longer for offers of food aid, medicine and investment loans. Then Singer pounces: legally grabbing at every resource and all the money going to the desperate country. Trade stops, funds freeze and an entire economy is effectively held hostage.

Singer then demands aid-giving nations pay monstrous ransoms to let trade resume… Singer demanded $400 million dollars from the Congo for a debt he picked up for less than $10 million. If he doesn’t get his 4,000% profit, he can effectively starve the nation. I don’t mean that figuratively—I mean starve as in no food. In Congo-Brazzaville last year, one-fourth of all deaths of children under five were caused by malnutrition.

Singer’s first big vulture attack was on American asbestos victims.

Executives of a few asbestos companies, WR Grace, USG and Owens-Corning, knew their asbestos factories were killing workers. When caught and sued, the companies filed for bankruptcy, agreeing to pay almost all their earnings to those dying and injured by their asbestos.

Singer had a better idea. These companies, as you can imagine, were worth next to nothing; and Singer bought Owens-Corning for a song.

If he could cut the amount paid to the victims, Singer could boost Corning’s value big time. So, a PR campaign was begun attacking the dying workers, saying they were all faking it.

 

Billionaire Bush

 

One attacker was a guy named George W. Bush.

In January 2005, President Dubya held a televised meeting to promote an “expert” who pronounced that over half a million workers suing Singer’s industry were liars. If workers couldn’t breathe, he said to the grinning President, it wasn’t the fault of asbestos.

The “expert” was not a doctor… his “research” was partly funded by Singer. So was Bush. Since the death of Enron’s Ken Lay, Singer and his vulture flock at Elliott International became top contributors to the Republican National Committee. Some of that help comes in through the side door. Singer put money behind the “Swift Boat” smear on Bush’s opponent, John Kerry.

The legal, political and PR attacks on the dying workers chiseled away the compensation expected to be paid by the asbestos companies, boosting their net worth. Singer then flipped Corning, selling it for a neat billion-dollar profit.

It’s legal, it’s brilliant, it’s sick, it’s Singer.

One of my favorite Singer scores was his successful scheme to legally loot the Treasury of Peru. The nation’s US lawyer told me, aghast, how Singer let Peru’s rogue President, Alberto Fujimori, fleed his nation to avoid murder charges. One of Fujimori’s last acts as president before he fled was to order his dirt-poor nation to pay the billionaire Vulture $58 million.

 

Palast billionaire vultures

 

Why the Billionaires Need to Buy the White House

A Koch Industries executive (not knowing he was being taped) said he asked Charles Koch, who already had a billion from an inheritance, why Koch was pocketing a few bucks a week from poor Indians. Koch told him, “I want my fair share, and that’s all of it.”

And “all of it”, of course, includes the White House.

Putting Bush in the White House was worth his weight in gold to these gents—more, in fact. And now, the Kochs’, Singer and Langone have teamed to pick a candidate they pray can take back their real estate at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

Langone’s firm DBT’s “felon” scrub list included only innocent people, so you certainly wouldn’t find the name “Langone” on it. In 2004, New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer charged Langone with conspiracy, accusing the billionaire with subverting a stock exchange regulator’s investigation into monkey business by Langone’s investment bank.

A technicality ended the civil action on the conspiracy charge.

FBI man Elroy told Palast’s investigators that the Justice Department was going to let the FBI cuff Charles Koch on criminal charges for the theft of the Osage Indian oil. Then, fumes Elroy, Koch’s well-funded buddies, Senators Bob Dole and Don Nickles, stepped in. Koch walked. No charges.

US Senator Dennis DeConcini wanted to know why criminal or civil charges were never brought against the Kochs. That was not a wise question to ask. The Senator told me that the Kochs threatened his political destruction if the Congressional Committee he chaired continued with its investigations of the theft of Native oil. He continued, but his political career did not.

During the Clinton Administration, Koch Industries was charged with criminal violations of the Clean Water Act. Under President Bush, the charges, but not the water, were cleaned up.

Paul Singer placed a big bet on the asbestos industry; then, set out to fix the casino, helping install Bush in the White House. That is, he had a President willing to beat up on asbestos workers and push for so-called “tort reform” that undermined these victims’ claims. What the victims lost, Singer gained.

But there’s trouble on the horizon for Singer. In 2007, Britain outlawed Singer and all other Vulture speculators in Third World debt from collecting their pound of flesh in the United Kingdom. Other European nations are following suit.

Several US Congressmen and even Chevron is complaining about the billionaire Vulture’s attacks. (When Chevron calls bankers unscrupulous…) Without a veto pen over Congress, Singer stands to lose hundreds of millions of dollars.

To collect on some of his claims against Argentina, his lobbyists pushed a bill in Congress to put an economic choke-hold on trade with the South American nation. Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton blocked this crazy attack on our ally. As a result, Singer is not a happy gaucho. There will be blood. Obama will have to pay.

There’s one thing that every billionaire wants: another billion. And that’s threatened by Obama’s plan to tax the “carried interest” tax deferment.

Guys like Singer and Langone don’t pay taxes like you and I do. While we pay taxes on income, the profits from vulture speculation and arbitrage are often recorded as “carried interest,” effectively not taxed. It’s a billion-dollar benefit for billionaires, and every Republican candidate has sworn to keep this loophole open and make sure you and I pay Singers’ taxes for him.

Unfortunately for Singer, the Kochs and Langone, the GOP candidates currently kissing the billionaires’ behinds don’t seem electable.

So the Billionaire Boys Club prodded Gov. Christie, a bully-boy from Jersey, to muscle his way into the Oval Office. Christie didn’t fly, no surprise. But whether they pick the GOP candidate or retreat to their old tactics of smear-from-the-rear, the fragile thing called Democracy stands little chance against the tsunamic powers of the quartet’s combined checkbooks.


Mad Mike’s America profoundly thanks Greg Palast.

Greg Palast exposes billionaires political manipulation

Penguin will release Palast’s new book, Vultures’ Picnic: in Pursuit of Petroleum Pigs, Power Pirates and High-Finance Predators, a Tale of Oil, Sex, Radiation and Investigative Reporting on 11 November 2011. Excerpts are available now as a video-active e-book , in which Palast further exposes billionaires’ manipulation of politics, big oil, and the financial industry.


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Dorothy Anderson

I want to know what you think and why, especially if we disagree. Civil discourse is free speech: practice daily. Always question your perspective.
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