Friday, September 21, 2012
Friday, August 31, 2012
Saturday, August 25, 2012
Wednesday, May 16, 2012
Progressive Donors Meet in Florida
from the Washington Free Beacon:
A secretive network of left-wing billionaires and their political operatives descended on the luxurious Biltmore Hotel in Miami over the weekend to discuss strategy for the coming elections.
The location of the conference had been kept a closely guarded secret by the members and guests of Democracy Alliance (DA), a collection of ultra-wealthy liberal donors formed in 2005, and is reported here in a Washington Free Beacon exclusive.
Attendees roamed the grounds at the 150-acre tropical resort on their way to cocktail gatherings, salsa dance lessons, and workshops such as “Occupy the Voting Booth” and “The 1 Percent Rule.” Local police guarded entrances as members attended a “partners only” meeting in the hotel’s Country Club Courtyard.
“Name badges must be worn at all times,” attendees were informed.
A Free Beacon reporter who tried to attend the conference after-party was intercepted by Alexandra Visher, the DA’s vice president of partner engagement and communications.
“These are individuals of considerable means” who often support policies that run contrary to their own interests, Visher said, as she escorted the reporter out of the party.
Earlier, the Free Beacon reporter was approached by a plain-clothes police officer who said taking pictures of the conference-goers was prohibited. The reporter was not taking pictures at the time.
Asked for an explanation, the officer said, “I can’t talk about it.”
The conference was attended by the biggest names in liberal politics, including billionaire financier George Soros, who has already pledged at least $2 million to pro-Democratic groups this cycle.
The actual amount Soros has contributed may be much higher, according to experts.
Contrary to Visher’s claim, in the past Soros has boasted that he “made many millions” off of similar political philanthropy, “which had at first looked like a fruitless venture.”
Andy Stern, the former president of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and frequent White House visitor, lounged by the Biltmore’s “lagoon sized pool.”
DA board member and Soros spokesman Michael Vachon swam laps.
Ari Rabin-Havt, executive vice president of Media Matters for America (MMFA), was overheard speaking to colleagues about his plans for a new MMFA fellowship, and bragging about a phone call he had received from Stephanie Cutter, deputy campaign manager for the Obama re-election team.
Soros publicly contributed $1 million to MMFA in 2010, after years of speculation that he was the group’s primary secret donor.
The Center for American Progress (CAP), a liberal think tank with deep ties to the Obama administration, was also heavily represented. CAP president Neera Tanden joined former Rep. Tom Perriello (D., Va.), president and CEO of the CAP Action Fund, and Van Jones, a senior fellow and former White House green jobs adviser, among others.
Jones did not respond to the Free Beacon’s requests for comment.
The Center for American Progress has been at the forefront of a coordinated campaign to discredit and demonize conservative donors and to demand transparency in political giving.
However, CAP does not disclose its donors, nor does it mention its participation in the Democracy Alliance on its website. Soros pledged an initial $3 million to the organization in 2003.
Perriello was overheard in between sessions talking to other attendees about President Barack Obama’s electoral prospects in Virginia.
“There’s going to be an insane amount of money on the other side, and we’ve seen what that can do in a Congressional [election]” he said, noting that a “gender gap” had opened up in Northern Virginia that may be “very helpful.”
Perriello, who represented Virginia’s Fifth Congressional District from 2009-2011, lost decisively to Republican Robert Hurt in the 2010 election.
When it comes to “insane amounts of money,” however, the Biltmore is hard to beat. Shiny black Maseratis, McLarens, and Jaguars fill the parking lots; exotic finches flutter about the lobby; and the hotel’s luxury spa offers “Antioxidant Foam Wraps” and “Moroccan Oil Scalp Massages” for a rate equivalent to $3 per minute (gratuity not included).
Inside the rooms, which cost as much as $3,000 per night, guests are invited to enjoy $8 bottles of Evian. The accompanying literature features advertisements for private Swiss banks such as E. Gutzwiller & Cie.
Controversial former Rep. Alan Grayson (D., Fla.), who nicknamed his most recent opponent and current congressman Daniel Webster (R., Fla.) “Taliban Dan,” cracked jokes in the elevators.
DA board members such as Steve Phillips, Donald Sussman, and Kelly Craighead, each with connections to major left-leaning political organizations, were less recognizable, but perhaps of equal or greater import.
Phillips, who serves as secretary for the DA, oversees a number of political action committees such as PAC+, which focuses on Latino voters, and PowerPAC.org, a “statewide social justice organization working with community organizations and activists to build political power in California.”
Sussman, a hedge-fund manager who invests in Chinese companies, is married to Rep. Chellie Pingree (D., Maine) and currently serves on the board of CAP.
Another prominent hedge fund manager, Thomas E. Steyer of Farallon Capital Management, also sits on CAP’s board.
Craighead is the DA’s president and managing director. She formerly worked as a “strategic consultant” to liberal groups like MMFA.
Other notable attendees include Cynthia Ryan, a principal at the investment firm Schooner Capital, who has bundled between $200,000 and $500,000 for Obama’s reelection campaign.
The SEIU’s Larry McNeil, identified as a long-time “Saul Alinski organizer” [sic] in one online biography, was there with his wife Anne Bartley, currently a trustee of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and a top contributor to the EMILY’s List Women Vote! PAC.
Sandor Straus, a prominent investment manager who has given at least $115,000 to Democratic candidates and liberal organizations this cycle, and Al Yates, the former Colorado State University president who played a pivotal role in the DA’s formation, were also in attendance.
DA founder emeritus Rob Stein has described the group as a “political investment bank” whose mission is to “balance the market place of ideas and political activism with center-left ideas, messages, and organizing strategy.” Members are required to pay annual dues starting at $30,000 and contribute at least $170,000 per year to recommended groups.
The timing of the conference was significant as the organization is said to be experiencing dissent within its ranks.
“There is heavy debate over whether to fund organizations closely aligned with the Democratic Party or those that operating outside it and pressuring it to move in a more progressive direction,” the Huffington Post’s Ryan Grim recently reported.
The resignation of billionaire insurance magnate Peter Lewis, the chairman of Progressive Insurance and one of the group’s founding members, was one sign of trouble for the organization.
The DA also caused a stir when it decided to stop funding a number of groups that operated outside the explicitly partisan realm of the Democratic Party, such as Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) and Third Way, a center-left think thank.
However, at least one Third Way board member, Tim Sweeney of the Denver-based Gill Foundation, was spotted at the conference in Miami.
Groups such as Media Matters and the Center for American Progress, both of which maintain extensive ties to the Obama administration, have retained their favored status within the DA.
Other liberal grassroots organizations that have not been ostracized by the DA include America Votes, the Campaign for Community Change, and Act Blue, a PAC that bills itself as “the online clearinghouse for Democratic Action.”
It is not clear whether any senior administration officials or campaign representatives spoke at the conference.
However, both Vice President Joe Biden and Bill Burton, chairman of the Obama-aligned Priorities USA Super PAC, have addressed secret Democracy Alliance summits in the past.
DA chairman and Big Taco baron Rob McKay, who also sits on the board of Priorities USA, hosted a $35,800-a-head fundraiser for Obama earlier this year.
Visher, the DA spokesperson, told the Free Beacon that the group’s members should be allowed to meet and advance their agenda in private.
She cited the New York Times’ Nicholas Confessore as a reporter whose work was appropriately respectful of the network’s privacy.
Confessore reported last week that the DA was planning to “convene near Miami,” but did not provide additional details such as the exact location of the event or notable invitees.
When contacted by the Free Beacon regarding his reasoning for not reporting such information, Confessore referred us to Eileen Murphy, the Times’ vice president of corporate communications.
“You are getting into a level of detail regarding our reporting and editing process here that we do not typically discuss publicly,” Murphy said in an email. “Sorry I won’t be able to be of much assistance.”
Friday, April 27, 2012
Ten Reasons for Progressives to NOT HATE Mitt Romney
(CBS News) Newt Gingrich is set to formally suspend his campaign next week and officially endorse his main rival for the Republican presidential nomination, Mitt Romney. It could be an awkward moment. Gingrich has not been shy about expressing a low opinion of Romney during the fight for the GOP nomination. Here's a countdown of 10 of the worst things Gingrich had to say about the former Massachusetts governor: 10. He's out of touch and thinks we're stupid "We're not going to beat Barack Obama with some guy who has Swiss bank accounts, Cayman Island accounts, owns shares of Goldman Sachs while it forecloses on Florida and is himself a stockholder in Freddie Mae and Freddie Mac while he tries to think the rest of us are too stupid to put the dots together to understand what this is all about." Mt. Dora, Fla. Jan. 26, 2012 9. He's a timid leader who can't bring about change Romney's a "Massachusetts moderate who, in fact, is pretty good at managing the decay." He's "given no evidence in his years in Massachusetts of any ability to change the culture or change the political structure." Des Moines, Iowa, Jan. 4, 2012 8. Romney's adviser was right to compare Romney to an etch-a-sketch "Now given everybody's fears about Gov. Romney's flip flops, to have his communications director say publicly to all of us, if we're dumb enough to nominate him we should expect by the acceptance speech he'll move back to the left, triggers everything people are worried about." "Their pictures aren't permanent. There's nothing locked down. You can re-do every time you want. And that's the problem." Lake Charles, La., March 21, 2012 7. He's full of "pious baloney" "Can we drop a little bit of the pious baloney? The fact is, you ran in '94 and lost. That's why you weren't serving in the Senate with Rick Santorum. The fact is, you had a very bad re-election rating, you dropped out of office, you had been out of state for something like 200 days preparing to run for president. You didn't have this interlude of citizenship while you thought about what you do. You were running for president while you were governor." NBC News/ Facebook debate, Jan. 8, 2012 6. He looted companies as head of Bain Capital "Now you have to ask a question - is that really, is capitalism really about the ability of a handful of rich people to manipulate the lives of thousands of other people and walk off with the money? Or is that in fact somehow a little bit of a flawed system? And so I do draw distinction between looting a company, leaving behind broken families and broken neighborhoods and then leaving a factory that should be there." Manchester, NH, Jan. 9, 2012 5. He profits off the poor "Maybe Governor Romney in the spirit of openness should tell us how much money he's made off of how many households that have been foreclosed by his investments." CNN debate, Jan. 26, 2012 4. His immigration reform plan is an "Obama level fantasy" "Now, for Romney to believe that somebody's grandmother is going to be so cut off she is going to self deport? This verges - this is an Obama level fantasy. He certainly shows no concern for the humanity of people who are already here..." "I think you have to live in worlds of Swiss bank accounts and Cayman Island accounts and automatic $20 million a year income with no work to have some fantasy this far from reality." Univision interview, Jan. 25, 2012 3. He can't win "I find it amazing the news media continues to say he's the most electable Republican when he can't even break out of his own party...The fact is, Gov. Romney in the end has a very limited appeal in conservative party." Concord, N.H., Jan. 4, 2012 2. He's not a conservative "It's just like this pretense that he's a conservative. Here's a Massachusetts moderate who has tax-paid abortions in 'Romneycare,' puts Planned Parenthood in 'Romneycare,' raises hundreds of millions of dollars of taxes on businesses, appoints liberal judges to appease Democrats, and wants the rest of us to believe somehow he's magically a conservative." CBS' "The Early Show," January 3, 2012 1. He's a liar CBS News chief White House correspondent Norah O'Donnell: "You're calling Mitt Romney a liar?" Gingrich: "Well, you seem shocked by it! This is a man whose staff created the PAC, his millionaire friends fund the PAC, he pretends he has nothing to do with the PAC - it's baloney. He's not telling the American people the truth..." "I just think he ought to be honest with the American people and try to win as the real Mitt Romney, not try to invent a poll-driven, consultant-guided version that goes around with talking points, and I think he ought to be candid. I don't think he's being candid and that will be a major issue. From here on out from the rest of this campaign, the country has to decide: Do you really want a Massachusetts moderate who won't level with you to run against Barack Obama who, frankly, will just tear him apart? He will not survive against the Obama machine."
Thursday, April 5, 2012
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