If you had to narrow down Republican megadonor Paul Singer’s three main causes, the list would probably look like this: deregulating the market, pushing a hawkish outlook on the Middle East, and, surprisingly for such a staunch conservative, supporting pro-gay marriage stance. In the 2016 presidential race, though, Singer seems to have abandoned the last of the three—and apparent fissures are opening up with other pro-gay Republicans.
Last month, Singer anointed Marco Rubio as his chosen GOP contender. No doubt the millions that Singer is known for dumping into political causes will follow in short order. Rubio certainly embraces the first two points of Singer’s agenda: he expresses a neoconservative-tinged view of the Middle East and has proposed steps to gut regulation of American businesses.
But on the third issue—gay rights—Rubio is an ill fit. In fact, it’s worse: Rubio is a retrograde anti-gay politician. According to the Human Rights Campaign’s dossier, he opposes a raft of gay rights positions, going well beyond simple opposition to gay marriage. Rubio is against discrimination protections for LGBT Americans and allowing LGBT parents to adopt children.
Singer’s Turnaround
According to the well-publicized story, Singer was, by his own admission, not very good on gay rights. Then his son came out to him and that changed everything: “He eventually became a steadfast supporter of gay rights,” CNN reported of Singer. CNN goes on:
In 2012, he launched the American Unity PAC, which aims to persuade fellow conservatives to support same-sex marriage. He has actively supported same-sex marriage campaigns and makes large donations to LGBT groups.
“I became very enthusiastic about his efforts to stop discrimination,” Singer told the Davos conference in 2014.
Singer has followed up with his pocketbook, contributing over $5.5 million since 2012 to the American Unity PAC and, in 2013, a $500,000 contribution to the Human Rights Campaign, a LGBT civil rights advocacy group.
In 2013, TheWashington Post landed a rare interview with Singer, albeit by e-mail. Singer told the paper that he was “heartened” by the progress of the gay rights movement in “both parties,” and he hoped that Republicans willing to take a pro-gay rights position would have “like-minded friends, activists and party leaders who will stand with them.”
The Post article had come after two Republican Senators had announced their support for gay marriage, prompting the Republican National Committee to issue a statement reaffirming its opposition. In contrast to that public spat, the Post described Singer’s effort as “influencing the debate more quietly.”
Too Quietly
When it comes to influencing Rubio on these issues, however, Singer seems to have been so quiet that Rubio didn’t even hear him. In a conversation with a group of evangelical pastors in Iowa, Rubio was challenged on taking money from Singer. “How do I know that he’s not going to direct you, that he’s not going to sway a large amount of influence over you because he has fought vehemently for same-sex marriage and now he’s backing you,” one pastor asked, with poor syntax. “What is it that he sees in you that he doesn’t see in somebody else?”
Rubio responded:
This is honest, this is the truth. Mr. Singer has never ever tried to change my mind or deeply discuss with me the issue. He knows where I stand on the issue. He’s quite frankly largely motivated in politics not so much by the marriage issue, he feels strongly about that issue and is on record as such but the thing that actually motivates him in politics is his association with the Federalist Society, his belief in federalism and also his support of the state of Israel. To the extent that I’ve discussed issues with him those are largely the ones.
According to Rubio, then, Singer, despite pledging support to Rubio that no doubt affords him special access to the candidate, barely even raises LGBT issues with the would-be GOP presidential nominee. What kind of funder hoping to foment change among Republicans would ignore an opportunity to tell the man he wants to lead the party that the time for bigoted stances against LGBT Americans has passed? Apparently the Paul Singer kind of funder.
Forsaking His Own Son
Singer basically isn’t pressuring Rubio to be better on gay rights issues. That leads us exactly where one might expect: Rubio keeps hawking retrograde anti-LGBT policies. Take, for example, Rubio’s recent comments to the Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN). Rubio told the televangelist channel that, if elected president, he would undo LGBT anti-discrimination policies put in place by Barack Obama as an executive order as well as seek to appoint justices to the Supreme Court that would not make “constitutionally flawed” decisions like the one that legalized gay marriage.
Rubio had previously said that the ruling that legalized gay marriage was the law of the land that, in a republic, needed to be respected. But talking to CBN, he insisted that legal gay marriage was “current law; it is not settled law,” explaining that such a status “doesn’t mean that we don’t aspire to fix it because we think it’s wrong.” (He offered mixed messages on whether, for the time being, public servants should be able to disobey the law because of their religious beliefs.)
Here’s the saddest part of Singer’s quiet-to-the-point-of-silent advocacy on gay rights when it applies to Rubio: Singer’s son Andrew stands to potentially lose rights under the administration of a man whom his father supports. Most astoundingly, this is not a hypothetical issue. Andrew Singer married his partner in 2009 in Massachusetts, the first state to legalize gay marriage back in 2004. Rubio would have the privileges bestowed on that union by federal law whisked away.
Like the two gay New York City entrepreneurs who (briefly) supported Ted Cruz, Singer is willing to strike an ugly Faustian bargain. He is willing to forsake something he cares deeply about—gay rights, and his own son—to achieve his other political aims, whether deregulating financial markets or push Middle East policy in a hawkish, right-wing direction.
Ali Gharib
Ali Gharib is a New York-based journalist on U.S. foreign policy with a focus on the Middle East and Central Asia. His work has appeared at Inter Press Service, where he was the Deputy Washington Bureau Chief; the Buffalo Beast; Huffington Post; Mondoweiss; Right Web; and Alternet. He holds a Master’s degree in Philosophy and Public Policy from the London School of Economics and Political Science. A proud Iranian-American and fluent Farsi speaker, Ali was born in California and raised in D.C.
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Greg Palastjournalist and a Puffin Foundation fellow for investigative reporting. His recent article is called “Rubio’s Billionaire Wins Ransom from Argentina.” Palast is currently working on a film on Paul Singer. He’s also the author of several books, including Billionaires & Ballot Bandits: How to Steal an Election in 9 Easy Steps.
Argentina has reached an agreement to pay U.S. hedge funds that have sought for 14 years to profit off the country’s debt. The hedge funds bought up Argentina’s debt for bargain prices after its financial crisis, then demanded full repayment. Former Argentine President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner had refused to pay the firms, calling them “vulture funds.” But under new right-wing President Mauricio Macri, Argentina has agreed to pay $4.65 billion to four hedge funds, including Elliott Management, run by billionaire Paul Singer. The deal would see the hedge funds take about 75 percent of what they demanded from Argentina—several times more than what they actually paid for the debt. Singer’s fund itself netted $2.4 billion—10 to 15 times its original investment. We speak to journalist Greg Palast. His recent article is called “Rubio’s Billionaire Wins Ransom from Argentina.”Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Argentina has reached an agreement to pay U.S. hedge funds that have sought for 14 years to profit off the country’s economic crisis. The hedge funds bought up Argentina’s debt for bargain prices after its financial crisis, then demanded full repayment. Former Argentine President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner had refused to pay the firms, calling them vulture funds. But under the new right-wing President Mauricio Macri, Argentina has agreed to pay $4.65 billion to four hedge funds, including Elliott Management, run by billionaire Paul Singer. The deal would see the hedge funds take about 75 percent of what they demanded from Argentina—several times more than what they actually paid for the debt. Singer’s fund itself netted $2.4 billion—10 to 15 times his original investment.
AMY GOODMAN: Paul Singer is the longtime Republican fundraiser who has endorsed Republican establishment favorite Marco Rubio in this election cycle.
For more, we go to Los Angeles, where we’re joined by journalist Greg Palast, Puffin Foundation fellow for investigative reporting. His recent article, “Rubio’s Billionaire Wins Ransom from Argentina.”
Greg Palast, explain.
GREG PALAST: Well, what happened is, is that Paul “The Vulture” Singer, who we’ve been—I’ve been following him for BBC and for Democracy Now! for about nine years. This is the guy who does—he’s called “The Vulture” not just by Argentina; he’s known by that by his friends in the banking industry. He grabs old debts of dying nations, dying companies, even dying people, and when there’s a famine or a war, for example, in Argentina, during the military dictatorship when Argentina went broke, he bought up old bonds for $50 million, just sold them back to the government of Argentina, a government he helped place in power, for two-and-a-half billion dollars. And he does this—he did this through what the Argentine government and the United States Treasury call extortion. He says, “If you don’t pay me, I’m going to stop you from borrowing money. I’m going to choke your nation to death.” He even seized an Argentine naval ship on the high seas. I mean, he’s basically a privateer or pirate.
And his—what’s important about what’s coming up in this election, the reason he influenced the Argentine election was to get a puppet president who would write him a check, which would give him a 10,000 percent profit. He’s looking for the same in the United States. Paul “The Vulture” Singer is the number one donor to the Republican Party—not the Kochs, by the way; Paul Singer. He’s the number one donor to American Crossroads, run by Karl Rove, which is basically your racial-vote-suppression-on-an-industrial-scale operation.
So, he is—why is he involved in the U.S. elections? Because during his attack on Argentina, the secretary of state, working with the president, the secretary of state sent her lawyers into a U.S. federal court and said, “Don’t force Argentina to pay off this guy.” She tried to stop the extortion on Argentina, and the president joined her and the U.S. Justice Department. And she even said, her lawyers said, that Paul Singer’s business model is a threat to the entire world financial order. This guy is like a kind of financial terrorist, actually. And that’s what Hillary Clinton accused him of. By the way, Bernie Sanders has taken a similar, very tough position against these vulture financiers.
So, Paul Singer—this issue of Argentina ain’t just 11,000 miles away, Amy and Juan. It is coming home to roost, literally, because he’s got to make sure that there is no Hillary president or President Bernie that will put him out of business. Hillary’s action probably cost him a half-billion or a billion dollars. And he’s going to—he wants blood. And he wants his guy in the White House, which means anyone but Bernie, anyone but Hillary.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, but, Greg, so why did he come behind Marco Rubio? Because, obviously—well, obviously, in Donald Trump, Trump is a candidate who’s never seen a bankruptcy he didn’t like. But what—on what basis did he go behind Rubio?
GREG PALAST: Well, Rubio did his work for him. Rubio made an unethical, frankly—it horrified a lot of people. He made direct approaches to the State Department on behalf of his top donor. Paul “The Vulture” Singer is the number one donor to Marco Rubio. And Rubio kept banging on the State Department to back his vulture donor against our ally, Argentina. This is just way out of line, even in a country where money talks. This was money screaming.
And the other thing is that, for example, Rubio was trying to help Puerto Rico by allowing Puerto Rico to have bankruptcy rights, like any American state, and then suddenly another vulture financier friend of Singer called Herenstein held a big fundraiser for Rubio. Rubio flipped around his position on Puerto Rico and said, “No, they shouldn’t have any rights. They should fire teachers and firemen and policemen, and cut pensions,” rather than cut payments to vultures like Singer and Herenstein and his donors. He literally flipped, literally within days of being funded by these guys. So Rubio showed that he’s a perfect puppet.
Now, do understand, I don’t think they expect Rubio to pull it off at this point. That would be their dream. But, you know, they’re happy with a Trump, who’s actually, you know, a member of the club. And they’re happy with any Republican at this point, mainly because both Democratic Party candidates have not only said that they don’t—that they’re not going to do what Singer wants, that they might actually put him out of business. And that, he is not going to tolerate. That’s why he’s backing Karl Rove and American Crossroads, because no matter who is there, he’s got to make sure that the—if all the votes are counted and you count the Puerto Rican-American vote in the United States, and, you know, if you count the progressive vote and the minority vote, they can’t win, so he’s got to come up with other ways of doing it. That’s—so, Singer is not just—it’s not just backing Rubio. It’s backing the whole vote suppression machinery that’s being run by the Republican Party. I’m not being partisan. You know, I’m an investigative reporter. I’ve been—
AMY GOODMAN: We have five seconds, Greg.
GREG PALAST: —following this guy for years around the planet. OK.
Ape Town
For Neocon Megadonor Paul Singer, Israel Trumps Gay Rights
Ali Gharib 1 Comment
by Ali Gharib and Eli Clifton
If you had to narrow down Republican megadonor Paul Singer’s three main causes, the list would probably look like this: deregulating the market, pushing a hawkish outlook on the Middle East, and, surprisingly for such a staunch conservative, supporting pro-gay marriage stance. In the 2016 presidential race, though, Singer seems to have abandoned the last of the three—and apparent fissures are opening up with other pro-gay Republicans.
Last month, Singer anointed Marco Rubio as his chosen GOP contender. No doubt the millions that Singer is known for dumping into political causes will follow in short order. Rubio certainly embraces the first two points of Singer’s agenda: he expresses a neoconservative-tinged view of the Middle East and has proposed steps to gut regulation of American businesses.
But on the third issue—gay rights—Rubio is an ill fit. In fact, it’s worse: Rubio is a retrograde anti-gay politician. According to the Human Rights Campaign’s dossier, he opposes a raft of gay rights positions, going well beyond simple opposition to gay marriage. Rubio is against discrimination protections for LGBT Americans and allowing LGBT parents to adopt children.
Singer’s Turnaround
According to the well-publicized story, Singer was, by his own admission, not very good on gay rights. Then his son came out to him and that changed everything: “He eventually became a steadfast supporter of gay rights,” CNN reported of Singer. CNN goes on:
“I became very enthusiastic about his efforts to stop discrimination,” Singer told the Davos conference in 2014.
Singer has followed up with his pocketbook, contributing over $5.5 million since 2012 to the American Unity PAC and, in 2013, a $500,000 contribution to the Human Rights Campaign, a LGBT civil rights advocacy group.
In 2013, The Washington Post landed a rare interview with Singer, albeit by e-mail. Singer told the paper that he was “heartened” by the progress of the gay rights movement in “both parties,” and he hoped that Republicans willing to take a pro-gay rights position would have “like-minded friends, activists and party leaders who will stand with them.”
The Post article had come after two Republican Senators had announced their support for gay marriage, prompting the Republican National Committee to issue a statement reaffirming its opposition. In contrast to that public spat, the Post described Singer’s effort as “influencing the debate more quietly.”
Too Quietly
When it comes to influencing Rubio on these issues, however, Singer seems to have been so quiet that Rubio didn’t even hear him. In a conversation with a group of evangelical pastors in Iowa, Rubio was challenged on taking money from Singer. “How do I know that he’s not going to direct you, that he’s not going to sway a large amount of influence over you because he has fought vehemently for same-sex marriage and now he’s backing you,” one pastor asked, with poor syntax. “What is it that he sees in you that he doesn’t see in somebody else?”
Rubio responded:
According to Rubio, then, Singer, despite pledging support to Rubio that no doubt affords him special access to the candidate, barely even raises LGBT issues with the would-be GOP presidential nominee. What kind of funder hoping to foment change among Republicans would ignore an opportunity to tell the man he wants to lead the party that the time for bigoted stances against LGBT Americans has passed? Apparently the Paul Singer kind of funder.
Forsaking His Own Son
Singer basically isn’t pressuring Rubio to be better on gay rights issues. That leads us exactly where one might expect: Rubio keeps hawking retrograde anti-LGBT policies. Take, for example, Rubio’s recent comments to the Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN). Rubio told the televangelist channel that, if elected president, he would undo LGBT anti-discrimination policies put in place by Barack Obama as an executive order as well as seek to appoint justices to the Supreme Court that would not make “constitutionally flawed” decisions like the one that legalized gay marriage.
Rubio had previously said that the ruling that legalized gay marriage was the law of the land that, in a republic, needed to be respected. But talking to CBN, he insisted that legal gay marriage was “current law; it is not settled law,” explaining that such a status “doesn’t mean that we don’t aspire to fix it because we think it’s wrong.” (He offered mixed messages on whether, for the time being, public servants should be able to disobey the law because of their religious beliefs.)
Here’s the saddest part of Singer’s quiet-to-the-point-of-silent advocacy on gay rights when it applies to Rubio: Singer’s son Andrew stands to potentially lose rights under the administration of a man whom his father supports. Most astoundingly, this is not a hypothetical issue. Andrew Singer married his partner in 2009 in Massachusetts, the first state to legalize gay marriage back in 2004. Rubio would have the privileges bestowed on that union by federal law whisked away.
Like the two gay New York City entrepreneurs who (briefly) supported Ted Cruz, Singer is willing to strike an ugly Faustian bargain. He is willing to forsake something he cares deeply about—gay rights, and his own son—to achieve his other political aims, whether deregulating financial markets or push Middle East policy in a hawkish, right-wing direction.
Ali Gharib
Ali Gharib is a New York-based journalist on U.S. foreign policy with a focus on the Middle East and Central Asia. His work has appeared at Inter Press Service, where he was the Deputy Washington Bureau Chief; the Buffalo Beast; Huffington Post; Mondoweiss; Right Web; and Alternet. He holds a Master’s degree in Philosophy and Public Policy from the London School of Economics and Political Science. A proud Iranian-American and fluent Farsi speaker, Ali was born in California and raised in D.C.
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Argentina has reached an agreement to pay U.S. hedge funds that have sought for 14 years to profit off the country’s debt. The hedge funds bought up Argentina’s debt for bargain prices after its financial crisis, then demanded full repayment. Former Argentine President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner had refused to pay the firms, calling them “vulture funds.” But under new right-wing President Mauricio Macri, Argentina has agreed to pay $4.65 billion to four hedge funds, including Elliott Management, run by billionaire Paul Singer. The deal would see the hedge funds take about 75 percent of what they demanded from Argentina—several times more than what they actually paid for the debt. Singer’s fund itself netted $2.4 billion—10 to 15 times its original investment. We speak to journalist Greg Palast. His recent article is called “Rubio’s Billionaire Wins Ransom from Argentina.”Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Argentina has reached an agreement to pay U.S. hedge funds that have sought for 14 years to profit off the country’s economic crisis. The hedge funds bought up Argentina’s debt for bargain prices after its financial crisis, then demanded full repayment. Former Argentine President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner had refused to pay the firms, calling them vulture funds. But under the new right-wing President Mauricio Macri, Argentina has agreed to pay $4.65 billion to four hedge funds, including Elliott Management, run by billionaire Paul Singer. The deal would see the hedge funds take about 75 percent of what they demanded from Argentina—several times more than what they actually paid for the debt. Singer’s fund itself netted $2.4 billion—10 to 15 times his original investment.
AMY GOODMAN: Paul Singer is the longtime Republican fundraiser who has endorsed Republican establishment favorite Marco Rubio in this election cycle.
For more, we go to Los Angeles, where we’re joined by journalist Greg Palast, Puffin Foundation fellow for investigative reporting. His recent article, “Rubio’s Billionaire Wins Ransom from Argentina.”
Greg Palast, explain.
GREG PALAST: Well, what happened is, is that Paul “The Vulture” Singer, who we’ve been—I’ve been following him for BBC and for Democracy Now! for about nine years. This is the guy who does—he’s called “The Vulture” not just by Argentina; he’s known by that by his friends in the banking industry. He grabs old debts of dying nations, dying companies, even dying people, and when there’s a famine or a war, for example, in Argentina, during the military dictatorship when Argentina went broke, he bought up old bonds for $50 million, just sold them back to the government of Argentina, a government he helped place in power, for two-and-a-half billion dollars. And he does this—he did this through what the Argentine government and the United States Treasury call extortion. He says, “If you don’t pay me, I’m going to stop you from borrowing money. I’m going to choke your nation to death.” He even seized an Argentine naval ship on the high seas. I mean, he’s basically a privateer or pirate.
And his—what’s important about what’s coming up in this election, the reason he influenced the Argentine election was to get a puppet president who would write him a check, which would give him a 10,000 percent profit. He’s looking for the same in the United States. Paul “The Vulture” Singer is the number one donor to the Republican Party—not the Kochs, by the way; Paul Singer. He’s the number one donor to American Crossroads, run by Karl Rove, which is basically your racial-vote-suppression-on-an-industrial-scale operation.
So, he is—why is he involved in the U.S. elections? Because during his attack on Argentina, the secretary of state, working with the president, the secretary of state sent her lawyers into a U.S. federal court and said, “Don’t force Argentina to pay off this guy.” She tried to stop the extortion on Argentina, and the president joined her and the U.S. Justice Department. And she even said, her lawyers said, that Paul Singer’s business model is a threat to the entire world financial order. This guy is like a kind of financial terrorist, actually. And that’s what Hillary Clinton accused him of. By the way, Bernie Sanders has taken a similar, very tough position against these vulture financiers.
So, Paul Singer—this issue of Argentina ain’t just 11,000 miles away, Amy and Juan. It is coming home to roost, literally, because he’s got to make sure that there is no Hillary president or President Bernie that will put him out of business. Hillary’s action probably cost him a half-billion or a billion dollars. And he’s going to—he wants blood. And he wants his guy in the White House, which means anyone but Bernie, anyone but Hillary.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, but, Greg, so why did he come behind Marco Rubio? Because, obviously—well, obviously, in Donald Trump, Trump is a candidate who’s never seen a bankruptcy he didn’t like. But what—on what basis did he go behind Rubio?
GREG PALAST: Well, Rubio did his work for him. Rubio made an unethical, frankly—it horrified a lot of people. He made direct approaches to the State Department on behalf of his top donor. Paul “The Vulture” Singer is the number one donor to Marco Rubio. And Rubio kept banging on the State Department to back his vulture donor against our ally, Argentina. This is just way out of line, even in a country where money talks. This was money screaming.
And the other thing is that, for example, Rubio was trying to help Puerto Rico by allowing Puerto Rico to have bankruptcy rights, like any American state, and then suddenly another vulture financier friend of Singer called Herenstein held a big fundraiser for Rubio. Rubio flipped around his position on Puerto Rico and said, “No, they shouldn’t have any rights. They should fire teachers and firemen and policemen, and cut pensions,” rather than cut payments to vultures like Singer and Herenstein and his donors. He literally flipped, literally within days of being funded by these guys. So Rubio showed that he’s a perfect puppet.
Now, do understand, I don’t think they expect Rubio to pull it off at this point. That would be their dream. But, you know, they’re happy with a Trump, who’s actually, you know, a member of the club. And they’re happy with any Republican at this point, mainly because both Democratic Party candidates have not only said that they don’t—that they’re not going to do what Singer wants, that they might actually put him out of business. And that, he is not going to tolerate. That’s why he’s backing Karl Rove and American Crossroads, because no matter who is there, he’s got to make sure that the—if all the votes are counted and you count the Puerto Rican-American vote in the United States, and, you know, if you count the progressive vote and the minority vote, they can’t win, so he’s got to come up with other ways of doing it. That’s—so, Singer is not just—it’s not just backing Rubio. It’s backing the whole vote suppression machinery that’s being run by the Republican Party. I’m not being partisan. You know, I’m an investigative reporter. I’ve been—
AMY GOODMAN: We have five seconds, Greg.
GREG PALAST: —following this guy for years around the planet. OK.
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