Langone, K Home Depot

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BIG KOCH AND DARK MONEY AM ACTION NETWORK

2022 ROLLING STONE: Ken Langone, another massive GOP donor who felt 'betrayed' by Trump and switched to Biden; THEN BACK TO TRUMP

see manchin, sinema

Bernard Marcus

1.6 million

Co-founder of Home Depot.

BITCHING ABOUT TARIFFS 4 25

4 25 BOUGHT REP REHAB?

Smick's 2024 documentary America′s Burning had its world premiere at the 2024 Tribeca Film Festival and was shown nationwide on Regal Cinemas. The film describes the economic reasons for America′s division including the weakening of the middle class and decline of the American Dream. Its bipartisan cast includes James Carville, Leon Panetta, James Baker, Katherine Gehl, Larry Summers, Stan Druckenmiller, Arthur C. Brooks, Rahm Emanuel, Ken Langone, Ian Bremmer, Hawk Newsome of Black Lives Matter of Greater New York, and many others. The film is executive produced by Academy Award-winners Michael Douglas and Barry Levinson, and narrated by Michael Douglas. David Ignatius of the Washington Post called the film ″incredibly powerful.″ Whoopi Goldberg on The View (talk show) labeled the film ″imperative.″ In 2025, Smick executive-produced the documentary Bucks County, USA, directed by Levinson. The film premiered at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival.

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NYT

Mr. Gibney agrees that Mr. Spitzer was the author of his own downfall, but his film suggests there were plenty of eager hands ready to help that descent along. He points out that Kenneth Langone, the co-founder of Home Depot and a former director of the New York Stock Exchange who was assailed by Mr. Spitzer for signing off on a huge salary for the leader of the nonprofit exchange, seemed to know a lot about the governor’s day-to-day life.

Image

The Republican operative Roger Stone and friend.Credit...Magnolia Pictures

“How did Kenneth Langone know that Spitzer was in line at the post office sending money orders to the escort service? Whenever my conspiracy gene kicks in, I have to check myself, but I doubt that Langone even knows anyone who goes to the post office,” he said. So Mr. Spitzer was being followed? “Somebody was watching him.”

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Do you know about Donald J. Trump’s Executive Order 13950? If you don’t, be afraid. Be very afraid.

Just weeks before he was fired by America’s voters in 2020, President Trump issued this piece of nastiness which was quickly rescinded by just-inaugurated President Biden.

The Executive Order is a “DCL,” what the right-wing brilliantly calls a, “Divisive Concepts Law.” These DCL’s terrorize teachers with the threat of losing their jobs if they dare teach the truth of America’s racial history: That white people enslaved Africans, that the Klan enforced racial vote suppression with the hanging rope. And God forbid, they teach that women were banned from the vote until the 20th Century. The Executive Order bans teaching any historical facts if,

“….any individual should feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress on account of his or her race or sex….”

As a practical matter, it means teaching the truth of America’s racial stain will get you fired. In 2021, Tennessee high school teacher Matt Hawn lost his job because a student accused him of teaching—cover your children’s ears—“Critical Race Theory.” Hawn said he’d never heard of Critical Race Theory when he was canned.

(Critical Race Theory, taught in law schools, says many of America’s laws and their enforcement, contain a racial bias. Well, D’oh!].

On Thursday, Vice-President Harris told the American Federation of Teachers convention in Houston, epicenter of the anti-CRT hysteria,

“While you teach students about our nation's past, these extremists attack the freedom to learn and acknowledge our nation's true and full history; including book bans! Book bans — in this year 2024! Just think about it: we want to ban assault weapons and they want to ban books.”

It was a century ago, that Tennessee was the laughingstock of the nation for prosecuting a schoolteacher for telling his class about human evolution, a story recounted in the film, Inherit the Wind. Now, a hundred years later, Trumpsters are again passing wind over Tennessee.

And he’s baaaaack! Trump has put his fixation with censoring “divisive concepts” into the GOP platform. Details are provided in the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 master plan for the master race.

This ill wind originated in Georgia when Gov. Brian Kemp signed HB1084, threatening the jobs of teachers for teaching ‘divisive concepts’ that could make a white child feel “discomfort.”

Who would feel “discomfort” about the uncensored history of Georgia? Well, maybe it’s Gov. Kemp himself. Because it was the Kemp family, then known as the Habershams, that first brought Africans in chains to Georgia.

Maybe Kemp and family should feel a bit of discomfort. I spoke with Janie Banse, who told me she is she is heartsick that her cousin, Gov. Kemp, won’t admit that their family’s wealth originated in the African slave trade. Kemp’s ancestors held the largest auction of human beings in American history, still remembered by Black Georgians today as “Weeping Time,” when 436 men, women and their children were separated and sold.

Georgia’s HB 1084, passed in 2022,

Prohibit[s] the use of curricula that addresses the topics of slavery, racial oppression, racial segregation, or racial discrimination, including topics relating to the enactment and enforcement of laws resulting in racial oppression, segregation, and discrimination in a professionally and academically appropriate manner and without espousing personal political beliefs;

And what if a teacher expresses a personal distaste for slavery?

Since Georgia was among the first to pass a “DCL,” and at least 16 states have followed.

In Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis, dubbed his DCL the “Stop WOKE Act.”

He banned the College Board’s AP African American Studies course and supported new Black history standards that include the requirement to teach, “how slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.”

I can’t make this up.

Since 2021, at least 27 states have imposed or proposed bans or restrictions on teaching topics related to race and gender. Mississippi, Alabama, Arizona and Oklahoma all passed these Divisive Concepts laws. What do these states have in common? According to rankings by US News and World Report, they are all in the nation’s bottom third in educational achievement. Apparently, they won’t teach uncensored history—but then, it’s not clear that they teach much history at all.

Trump’s DLC brigade is not just putting a blindfold over students regarding slavery and Jim Crow. Oklahoma’s Divisive Concepts Law has effectively silenced the true story of the state that was once known officially as, “Indian Territory.”

Jim Gray, former Principal Chief of the Osage Nation, told me that teachers throughout the state have been yanking copies of David Grann’s book Killers of the Flower Moon off their classroom shelves. Killers, on which the Martin Scorsese/Leonardo DiCaprio movie is based, tells the true story about how, in the 1920s, over 100 Oklahoma Osage were murdered for their oil rights.

The insidious brilliance of the Oklahoma law is that it has a fuzzy general prohibition on “divisive” concepts—with teachers facing loss of their teaching credentials and the entire school district losing funding. Because teachers have to guess which books or films will get them fired, the result is mass self-censorship, with Killers culled from classrooms across the state.

A RAND corporation study found that a breathtaking two out of three K-12 teachers, “have decided on their own to limit instruction about political and social issues in the classroom.” Can you blame them?

Any student or parent can put a legal gun to a school principal’s head. But when the law says, “students,” as a practical matter, they don’t mean young kids on the Reservation. Every year, on April 22, Oklahoma celebrates “Sooner Rush Day”, the day in 1889, when any white man could simply stand on a plot of land and seize the surrounding 160 acres of what was, by treaty, Indian Territory. Indigenous kids have to re-enact the theft of their property whether they feel discomfort or not.

I have included this story of the Sooner Rush land grab in my documentary, Long Knife: the Osage Nation, Koch Oil and the new Killers of the Flower Moon. And for that alone, says Chief Gray, the chance it will screen in an Oklahoma school, even a state university, is zilch.

But some states are not shy about creating Black Lists of books to ban. Assigning anti-racist classics Huckleberry Finn or To Kill a Mockingbird, could kill a teacher’s career. PEN America counted 3,132 books banned in nine states in the 2022-23 school year.

Cui Bono? Who benefits from historical amnesia? Kemp alone was not the only white boy to make his fortune from a slaver’s whip. Historic amnesia is a profit center covering many historic misdeeds from Jim Crow to union busting to corporate corruption.

I found this out when I was physically ejected from the Georgia Historical Society in Savannah. I was having a polite interview with the Society’s in-house historian, Dr. Stan Deaton, who was explaining that the Klan took over control of the South when, in 1876, Republicans lost both the popular vote and the Electoral vote—yet a pact between the Klan-backed Southern Democrats and northern Republicans used a sly maneuver to overturn the vote and install the GOP candidate as President. It came down to one official, Dr. Deaton noted, then added, “We saw Mike Pence in that situation recently.”

The second the historian uttered the words, “Mike Pence,” the door flew open and the Society’s PR man halted the interview and expelled me from the building, saying, “We have to protect the new corporate donors on our board.”

I was curious. Who were these “donors” needing protection from history? I found their gala dinner on YouTube with their tuxedoed corporate money men: Georgia Pacific (owned by Koch Industries), Home Depot (owned by right-wing union buster Ken Langone), and Southern Company, whom I investigated some years ago for racketeering and the inexplicable death of whistleblowers. And the Chairman of the Historical Society? Gov. Brian Kemp.

Just below Savannah, at the Kemp family’s old plantation, I spoke with caretaker and Councilman Griffin Lotson whose own great-grandmother was sold at Weeping Time by Kemp’s progenitors.

Lotson emphasizes the connection between this legally enforced historical amnesia and the fight for voting rights. He says, “Suppressing history is suppressing the vote.”

Back in Oklahoma, the current Principal Chief of the Osage, Geoffrey Standing Bear, explained that if Oklahoma were to admit that its “Sooner Rush” was simply theft from the indigenous owners of the land, then it would force open eyes to what he calls, the “military occupation [of Native land] that continues today.”

Napoleon famously said, “History is a set of lies agreed upon.” Trump’s DCL crusade sees history as a set of truths silenced.

*Greg Palast (Rolling Stone, Guardian, BBC) is the author of The New York Times bestsellers including The Best Democracy Money Can Buy. His latest film is Vigilantes Inc.: America’s New Vote Suppression Hitmen to be released in September. GregPalast.com

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OBSERVER

Here’s Stone, who also takes objection to Gibney’s assertion that Ken Langone had Spitzer followed by private investigators:

Seriously —– “An attendee heard Mr. Stone saying the filmmaker and movie organizers could “eat shit.”

I never said this. I did say BULLSHIT out loud when I learned that “Angelina” the Hooker in the movie was an actress and that the movie nevers reveal the name or visage of a resal hooker who actually banged Spitzer. The unamed hooker is the source of the the claim that Spitzer did NOT wear black socks- a contrivance ! a device ! Gibney has NO on record source for that claim OR the claim that Langone hired a PI to “get the goods ‘ on Spitzer none at all. That is because he has prrof of neither.

Never said Gibney could “eat shit”. He is not a bad fellow at all- just an idelogue with an agenda.

Stone

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Kenneth Gerard Langone Sr. KSG (born September 16, 1935) is an American billionaire businessman best known for organizing financing for the founders of The Home Depot.^[1] He is a major donor to the Republican Party.^[2]

Early life

Langone was born in Roslyn Heights, New York, to Italian American parents. His father was a plumber and his mother a cafeteria worker.^[3] He was a student at Bucknell University and the New York University Stern School of Business.

Business career

In the early 1960s, Langone began his career at a Wall Street financial services company named R.W. Pressprich, where he helped develop new business. In 1968 Langone met and persuaded Ross Perot to let Pressprich handle Electronic Data Systems's IPO. In 1969, Langone was named Pressprich's president.^[4]

In 1974, Langone formed the venture capital firm Invemed. Langone organized financing for Bernard Marcus and Arthur Blank to found Home Depot. Now an international chain with over 450,000 employees, it is Langone's most notable business venture.^[5]

Langone was a member of the board of directors of General Electric from 1999 to 2005.^[6][7] He defended Jack Welch's tenure as chief executive of GE, blaming Welch's successors for the company's steep decline.^[6]

Langone was a member of the boards of Geeknet,^[8] Database Technologies,^[9] ChoicePoint Inc., Unifi, and Yum! Brands, Inc.^[10]

Langone was chairman of the New York Stock Exchange's Compensation Committee from 1999 to 2003. In 2004, New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer filed a lawsuit against the New York Stock Exchange's former Chairman Richard Grasso to return $100 million to the NYSE that were part of his $139.5 million pay package.^[11] The lawsuit named Langone, who had approved the pay package. Langone denied that the pay packages were illegal considering that the NYSE had direct knowledge of the board's decision. On July 1, 2008, the New York State Court of Appeals dismissed all claims against Grasso because the NYSE had changed its status from a nonprofit to a for-profit organization, which meant that the Attorney General had lost standing to sue Grasso.^[12]

According to Forbes magazine, Langone's net worth as of 2024 is approximately $8 billion.^[13]

Political involvement and campaign donations

Langone is a major donor to the Republican Party.^[2] He describes himself as a "loyal, enthusiastic Republican"^[14] and opposes single-payer healthcare, free college tuition, and guaranteed minimum income, deeming these policies to be a form of "socialism."^[15]

A friend of Ross Perot, Langone was part of the "Business Brigade" of executives who supported Perot's 1992 presidential campaign^[16][17] and he was an advisor to the Perot campaign.^[18] He donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to the Republican National Committee and to Republican-aligned outside spending groups, such as Karl Rove's American Crossroads super PAC, and Norm Coleman's dark money group, the American Action Network.^[17] In 2008, Langone supported Rudy Giuliani's presidential bid, and was a bundler for the Giuliani's campaign.^[17]

Langone heavily donated to efforts to defeat Barack Obama in the 2012 presidential election.^[17] He led an effort by a group of wealthy Republican donors to draft Chris Christie to run; when he declined, Langone backed Mitt Romney.^[17] He criticized the Affordable Care Act championed by Obama,^[19] although he was also critical of Republican congressional leadership for triggering a government shutdown in an effort to block the ACA.^[14] In 2014, Langone likened populist appeals to raise taxes on the rich in the United States to Hitler's rhetoric in Nazi Germany in the 1930s.^[2][20] In July 2022, Langone helped found a group of U.S. business and policy leaders who share the goal of constructively engaging with China in order to improve U.S.-China relations.^[21]

:{Langone initially endorsed Christie's campaign for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination; in early 2015, he donated $250,000 to a pro-Christie super PAC, but made no major further financial contributions to support Christie's campaign, and praised Donald Trump as "a very significant positive factor."^[22][23] After Christie dropped out of the race, Langone shifted his support to John Kasich.^[23] He also later donated to Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign.^[24]

In 2019, Langone praised Trump for raising tariffs on China.^[24] In 2017, following the deadly far-right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, Langone said Trump “completely mishandled the situation in Charlottesville" but continued to support Trump's economic policies.^[25] On January 13, 2021, days after the January 6 attack against the U.S. Capitol, Langone said he felt "betrayed" by Trump's actions during the assault.^[25] He nevertheless continued to back Trump after the Capitol attack, and contributed $1 million to a fund working to defeat Democratic senators and $500,000 to Americans for Prosperity, the Koch family-backed group.^[15]}:

In December 2023, Langone endorsed Nikki Haley's campaign for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination,^[26] and became a major donor to a super PAC supporting Haley.^[27] However, after the January 2024 Iowa caucuses, Langone said he would withhold further major financial support for Haley's candidacy unless she had a strong showing in the New Hampshire primary, and said that he believed Trump would likely win the nomination.^[28] He said he would "probably" vote for Trump if he were the Republican Party's nominee.^[28]

Personal life

He and his wife Elaine Langone have three children; Kenneth G. Jr., Stephen, and Bruce Langone. He lives in Sands Point, New York. He has lived on Elderfields Road in nearby Flower Hill,^[29][30][31] and has maintained a winter home in North Palm Beach, Florida.^[17]

Langone is a devout Catholic who has financially contributed to the church and sat on the board of St. Patrick's Cathedral.^[32][33] He was made a knight of the Order of St. Gregory the Great by Pope Benedict XVI.^{^}, taking issue with Francis's33] **:{He has been critical of Benedict's successor, [Pope Francis statements (for example, in the apostolic exhortation *Evangelii gaudium) condemning the indifference of the prosperous toward the poor.^[34][35]}:*

Philanthropy

Langone and his wife were early signatories to The Giving Pledge.^[32]

Langone has donated $300 million to the NYU School of Medicine and NYU Medical Center (later named NYU Langone Health in his honor);^[32] this includes a $100 million pledge in 2018 toward a $450 million program to make tuition free for all medical students at the NYU School of Medicine.^[32][36] Langone has been a member of the boards of trustees of NYU Langone Health, the Harlem Children's Zone, the Robin Hood Foundation, and the Center for Strategic and International Studies.^[32] He was a member of the Bucknell University board of trustees from 1981 to 1996;^[32] he and his wife gave $11 million to the university in 1999, to fund a new athletics center,^[37] and approximately $42 million to the university between 2013 and 2017.^[38]

In 2019, he donated over $5 million to the Animal Medical Center in New York City.^[39]

Awards and Honors

In 2024, Langone received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement.^[40]

In popular media

Langone is portrayed by actor Ray Iannicelli in the 2017 HBO Films production The Wizard of Lies. In the film, Langone rejects an offer to invest money in the schemes of convicted Wall Street swindler Bernie Madoff. Langone is extensively featured in the documentary Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer where he discusses his fierce rivalry with former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer.

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search?q=ken+langone&type=donors

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Toyota Motor Corp. was targeted by the anti-Trump group The Lincoln Project with a digital ad campaign this week assailing the company for resuming its political donations to members of Congress who voted against certifying the 2020 election on Jan. 6, 2021.

A new report by the liberal group Accountable.US finds that the carmaker is just one of many Fortune 500 companies that have resumed giving money to election certification deniers.

Vice News indicates that the group says that "hardware giant Home Depot and agricultural equipment manufacturer Deere & Company, donated more than $800,000 last month to Republicans who voted to overturn the 2020 election results."

Just in March, the home improvement retailer gave $95,000 to 20 House Republicans who voted to overturn the 2020 election results last January. Deere tossed $75,000 to more than a dozen Republicans and aerospace giant Boeing - the second-largest federal contractor in the U.S. - donated $45,000 to 32 different Republicans who objected to the 2020 results, according to FEC records. Boeing has more than $23 billion in federal contracts in FY2021, including the construction of the new planes that will serve as Air Force One.

Also donating more than $20,000 each to multiple GOP members in March were General Dynamics, Motorola Solutions, FedEx and Tyson Foods,according to the data.

According to Accountable.US, House Republicans who voted against the certification of the 2020 election raked in more than $800,000 from corporate and trade group PACs last month. Those groups have donated more than $12 million to Jan. 6 objectors since the insurrection.

“Corporations that have failed to align their political spending with their stated values supporting democracy should stop misleading the public about what they value far more - amassing political influence,” Kyle Herrig, president of Accountable.US, said in a statement to VICE News.

“It’s short-sighted for any corporation to marginalize concerns from its customers and shareholders when it comes to democracy, because a healthy democracy will always be what’s best for business.”

By far, Home Depot has been the biggest corporate donor to Republicans who voted to overturn the election. Its top recipients include House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy ($456,000), House Minority Whip Steve Scalise ($353,000), and Missouri Rep. Sam Graves ($290,000).

no lnx twt

Kyrsten Sinema is raking in cash from GOP and fossil fuel donors— but it may not be enough to win re-election

Meaghan Ellis February 01, 2022

Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) is amassing a sizable war chest as a result of Republican donors, according to new financial disclosures. But a new analysis explains why money may not even be enough to secure Sinema's re-election.

According to new Federal Election Commission (FEC) filings, the lawmaker raked in approximately $1.6 million in the 4th quarter of 2021. The New York Times' Shane Goldmacher recently took to Twitter with details about the donations Sinema has received as he revealed the names of some of her biggest donors.

Per The Rolling Stone, Goldmacher noted that Sinema's big donors include: "Harlan Crow, a massive GOP donor the Texas Tribune called 'one of the biggest whales in the country'; Ken Langone, another massive GOP donor who felt 'betrayed' by Trump and switched to Biden; Nelson Peltz, the aforementioned Manchin confidante; andMiguel B. 'Mike' Fernandez, a Florida health care billionairewho threw his fortune behind Hillary in 2016 after Jeb Bush fizzled out."

In addition to the donors Goldmacher listed, Sinema has attracted Republican fossil fuel donors like Continental Resources chairman Harold Hamm and ConocoPhillipsCEO Ryan Lance. Republican voters have also applauded Sinema for her adamant support of the Senate filibuster.

But despite raking in the big bucks, Sinema still faces a number of obstacles that could compromise her chances of re-election. According to the analysis written by The Intelligencer's Ed Kilgore, money from Republican donors won't necessarily help Sinema win over Democratic voters. In fact, Kilgore explains why Sinema's war chest likely will not prove to be beneficial on the Republican side either.

Kilgore argues that Sinema's moderate stance on key issues and voting record won't be enough to win unwavering support from Republican voters.

"Trouble is, smiling upon a pol for screwing up the hated opposition party’s agenda is not the same as voting to reelect her," Kilgore wrote. "According to FiveThirtyEight’s analysis of Sinema’s voting during her two years in the Senate when Trump was president, she voted with the 45th president half the time. That was about the same as Manchin’s level, but far lower than nearly all Republicans. The GOP is a party with extremely low tolerance for dissidence."

Voter registration is another barrier. "The Republican voters who give Sinema favorable ratings can’t cross over to support her in a Democratic primary," Kilgore explained, adding, "and aren’t going to vote for her in a general election against an actual Republican."

Sinema could also end up splitting the vote with a Democratic opponent that hopes to unseat her. But Kilgore is confident about one thing. He wrote, "Whether you view her as a brave and principled dissident or a scurrilous traitor, Sinema is probably, from a political point of view, toast."

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according to New York Times reporters Kenneth P. Vogel and Kate Kelly, Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona are attracting some wealthy GOP donors.

"Even as Ms. Sinema and Mr. Manchin, both Democrats, have drawn fire from the left for their efforts to shrink and reshape (President Joe) Biden's proposals," Vogel and Kelly explain, "they have won growing financial support from conservative-leaning donors and business executives in a striking display of how party affiliation can prove secondary to special interests and ideological motivations when the stakes are high enough. Ms. Sinema is winning more financial backing from Wall Street and constituencies on the right in large part for her opposition to raising personal and corporate income tax rates. Mr. Manchin has attracted new Republican-leaning donors as he has fought against much of his own party to scale back the size of Mr. Biden's legislation and limit new social welfare components." [twt]

the blue wave of 2018 showed how big a tent the Democratic Party is. Progressive allies of Sen. Bernie Sanders such as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York City and Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota were among the success stories of 2018, but so were Manchin (who was reelected) and Sinema — who has often described the late Sen. John McCain of Arizona as her political idol and has been on very friendly terms with his daughter, conservative GOP activist Meghan McCain. And with Democrats having only a razor-thin majority in the U.S. Senate, Manchin and Sinema have the power to make or break legislation.

"The stream of cash to the campaigns of Ms. Sinema and Mr. Manchin from outside normal Democratic channels stands out because many of the donors have little history with them," Vogel and Kelly observe. "The financial support is also notable for how closely tied it has been to their power over a single piece of legislation, the fate of which continues to rest largely with the two senators because their party cannot afford to lose either of their votes in the evenly divided Senate."

The legislation that the Times reporters are referring to is the Build Back Better Act of 2021, which recently passed in the U.S. House of Representatives and now goes to the U.S. Senate for consideration.

"Their influence has been profound," Vogel and Kelly say of Manchin and Sinema. "The domestic policy bill, which would expand the social safety net and efforts to fight climate change,started out at $3.5 trillion and has been shrunk — mainly at the insistence of Mr. Manchin — to around $2 trillion; it could get smaller as the Senate takes up the version passed on (November 19) by the House."

The Times reporters note that Stanley S. Hubbard, a billionaire Republican, made a donation to Sinema in September, and Kenneth G.Langone(a Republican billionaire andWall Street investor) recently donated to Manchin.

According to Vogel and Kelly, "One Wall Street executive joked that in his industry, Ms. Sinema — who, as a young politician, once likened political donations to 'bribery' — was now referred to as 'Saint Sinema' for opposing most of Mr. Biden's proposed taxes on the wealthy. She has, however, supported a 15% corporate minimum tax and other revenue-raising measures that will help pay for Mr. Biden's legislative spending."

http://www.alternet.org/economy/meet-hedge-funders-and-billionaires-who-pillage-under-shield-philanthropy

Meet the Hedge Funders and Billionaires Who Pillage Under the Shield of Philanthropy

For every dollar they give, they take 44 from the rest of us.

By Lynn Stuart Parramore / AlterNet July 29, 2015

America’s parasitical oligarchs are masters of public relations. One of their favorite tactics is to masquerade as defenders of the common folk while neatly arranging things behind the scenes so that they can continue to plunder unimpeded. Perhaps nowhere is this sleight of hand displayed so artfully as it is at a particular high-profile charity with the nerve to bill itself as itself as “New York's largest poverty-fighting organization.”

British novelist Anthony Trollope once wrote, “I have sometimes thought that there is no being so venomous, so bloodthirsty as a professed philanthropist.”

Meet the benevolent patrons of the Robin Hood Foundation.

Robin Hood in Reverse

The Robin Hood Foundation, named for that green-jerkined hero of redistribution who stole from the rich to give to the poor, is run, ironically, by some of the most rapacious capitalists the country has ever produced — men who make robber barons of previous generations look like small-time crooks. Founded by hedge fund mogul Paul Tudor Jones, the foundation boasts 19 billionaires on its leadership boards and committees, the likes of which include this sample of American plutocracy:

-Hedge fund billionaire Steven A. Cohen, who, when he is not being probed for insider trading  (his company, SAC Capital Advisors, pled guilty to securities and wire fraud) is busy throwing parties for himself worthy of a Roman emperor at his Hamptons palace and bragging about his $700 million art collection. He suspends a 13-foot shark in formaldehyde from the ceiling his office, perhaps as an avatar of his business practices.

-Billionaire Home Depot founder Ken Langone,who threatened to turn off the charity donations if Pope Francis dared to continue criticizing capitalism and inequality, and also likened the plight of the wealthy in America to Nazi Germany. The GOP megadonor doesn’t care for bank regulation and it’s no surprise that he is the main booster for New Jersey Governor Chris Christie’s presidential bid, as his plan to shred Social Security is a fond wish of the tycoon’s.

• Hedge fund billionaire Stanley Druckenmiller, funder of right-wing causes who dedicates himself to spreading deficit hysteria and ginning up generational warfare on college campuses by trying to convince young people that they are being robbed by seniors using Social Security and Medicare. A long-time anti-tax crusader and supporter of such anti-labor enthusiasts as Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, Druckenmiller warned President Obama that any attempt to tax the rich to pay for social services for the poor would be futile.

By occupation (the more useless and parasitical the better), it comes as no surprise that 12 of the 19 men in leadership positions at the Robin Hood Foundation happen to be hedge fund managers. A group called Hedge Clippers, supported by a coalition of labor unions and community groups and devoted to exposing how billionaires scheme to inflate their wealth and influence, has pointed out in a scathing report that the Robin Hood Foundation has close ties to an organization called the Managed Funds Association (MFA) that — shocker! —lobbies tirelessly for unjustified tax breaks for hedgies. Paul Tudor Jones’s top deputy, John Torell, chairs the MFA, and 31 members of Robin Hood’s governing board and leadership committees are executives at firms that belong to the highest membership levels of the organization.

The MFA was relatively small until 2007, when Congress started eyeing the “carried interest” tax loophole. Then it brought out the heavy artillery to protect elites from paying their fair share. The carried interest loophole is the MFA’s top priority.

The King of Scams...

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 Those on the RNC list who haven't been named Rangers or Pioneers include Home Depot CEO Robert Nardelli and his top lobbyist, Kent Knutson, whose wife Karen was once a top aide to Cheney.

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Ken Langone, the big-spending Home Depot billionaire and ally of Charles and David Koch, clumsily defended his March 2014 comments comparing populist criticism of the 1% with the rise of Nazi Germany, in an interview with Capital New York published this week.

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death match w/ Spitzer  : see client 9

Fortune's Peter Elkind, who contributed critical reporting to the film and is the author of the book Client 9, found evidence that Stone had bragged to a South Florida blogger that the "wealthy Republicans" -- called "The Group" -- were organized around a coordinating operative, Republican lobbyist Wayne Berman, and financiers including former AIG Chairman Hank Greenberg and Home Depot financier Ken Langone -- all major-league Spitzer haters. (Stone denies this.)   atlantic mag

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 Boards of broken trust

The overtures by Art Pope and the Kochs show how the American university itself has lately emerged as a hub of misanthrope philanthropy, offering both opportunities for long-term indoctrination as well as short-term plunder. A 2010 Chronicle of Higher Education study [42] found that boards of trustees, many composed of top university donors tasked with making decisions that “profoundly affect everyone on the campus,” frequently conduct business with trustee-affiliated companies. According to the Chronicle, one in four boards at private colleges have such financial ties, signing contracts involving “banks, law firms, construction companies, and insurance conglomerates” linked to trustees. And the trend is accelerating, with 58% of colleges (64% among private institutions) now allowing business relationships with trustees, as opposed to 46% just two years ago.

These sorts of boardroom entanglements have led universities into profoundly embarrassing situations, like the fallout at Dartmouth [43]after the 2008 financial crisis. As Todd Zywicki, a former Dartmouth trustee, later wrote, “The large contributions that were their ticket on to the board were functionally a mere down payment for the fees that they would later receive for managing [44] half a billion dollars of Dartmouth’s endowment,” 14% of which was at one point invested in trustee-affiliated hedge funds and private equity. By 2009, Dartmouth’s Wall Street-heavy board had packed 67.5% of its endowment into risky instruments, ending in a catastrophic crash that deepened the university’s debt and forced its credit downgrading [45].

Kenneth Langone, the $1.1 billion investor [46] who founded Home Depot, recently made headlines for similarly capitalizing on his neatly purchased trustee appointment. His $200 million donation to NYU’s medical center, the largest in the institution’s history, earned him the renaming of the facility (it’s now the Langone Medical Center [47]) along with what is now the Stern School of Business’s Langone Part-Time MBA. Also part of the deal was his appointment as vice co-chair of NYU and its medical center’s board of trustees [48], a position he abused in July [49] to email staff about donating to the reelection campaigns of his favorite (very corporate-friendly) members of Congress. Coming as the “medical school clamps down increasingly on salaries and tenure,” employees reported feeling threatened and pressured to follow through.

More broadly, the Langone board at NYU has produced a string of harshly condemned decisions [50] that in many ways encapsulate the world his brand of giving is working to create. It’s a closed circle of wealth, where money flows between toward massive expansion projects [51] and million-dollar payouts [46] for star staff’s condominiums while NYU students [52], among the nation’s most indebted, are left in the dust.

lisa g

http://www.prwatch.org/news/2010/09/9407/which-millionaire-fat-cats-are-backing-american-action-networks-ads-attacking-sen-

A new right-wing group, ":{American Action Network:(style="color:#000000"):}:," has entered the 2010 election with:{ }:{ }::{attacking Senator }::{Russell Feingold:(style="color:#000000"):}::{ }::{of Wisconsin. The American Action Network (AAN) was created by right-wing politicians and their funders around the time the}::{ }::{Supreme Court:(style="color:#000000"):}::{ }::{issued the}::{ }::{Citizens United:(style="color:#000000"):}::{ }::{decision that expanded}::{ }::{corporate rights:(style="color:#000000"):}::{ }::{to allow them to spend more money than ever influencing elections. AAN does not disclose its funding sources for the}::{ }::{$25 million it plans to spend this fall:(style="color:#000000"):}::{, but its board is}::{ }::{filled with politicians and millionaire businessmen on the right:(style="color:#000000"):}::{.}:

The ad is grossly misleading and blames Senator Feingold for the federal deficit, with the tag line ":{18 years, 9 trillion more in debt:(style="color:#000000"):}:." The ad ignores the budget surplus created in the Clinton Administration during Senator Feingold's first terms in the Senate, and the squandering of that surplus through President :{George W. Bush:(style="color:#000000"):}:'s economic policies and wars. And then it tries to blame Feingold for the deficit increases through the Wall Street bailout that was led by President Bush and his Treasury Secretary, :{Henry Paulson:(style="color:#000000"):}:, even though Senator Feingold voted consistently, not :{once:(style="color:#000000"):}: but :{twice:(style="color:#000000"):}:, against the Wall Street bailout and voted not :{once:(style="color:#000000"):}: but :{twice:(style="color:#000000"):}: to end the TARP. He also pressed Congress expressly to use the TARP funds to :{pay down the deficit:(style="color:#000000"):}:. (For more information on the true cost of the Wall Street Bailout check out our :{Wall Street Bailout Cost Table:(style="color:#000000"):}:.)

Exposing Those Responsible for the Attack Ads

So who is really behind these grossly misleading attack ads? The AAN does not disclose the names of the companies and individuals bankrolling it, but its board includes :{big spenders:(style="color:#000000"):}: who have bankrolled many GOP campaigns. Some of these fat cats are affiliated with some of the wealthiest corporations in the country, like :{Goldman Sachs:(style="color:#000000"):}:, :{Home Depot:(style="color:#000000"):}:, and :{ChoicePoint:(style="color:#000000"):}:. This is big money in a race that already pits multi-millionaire Ron Johnson up against one of the :{least wealthy U.S. Senators:(style="color:#000000"):}:, who does not have the deep pockets to finance his own race. Here is just a sample of the multimillionaire businessmen behind the attack ads and some of the companies they are affiliated with:

* :{Kenneth G. Langone:(style="color:#000000"):}: He's worth $1 billion and is listed as :{the 347th richest man:(style="color:#000000"):}: in the U.S. Here are some of the companies he has been affiliated with:

** Home Depot--Langone co-founded this home-remodeling store, one of the nation's largest retailers, whose top employees have given millions to the GOP and which, among other things, :{got a $48 million tax break in the Bush/Cheney energy bill:(style="color:#000000"):}: (lifting a tariff on Chinese-made ceiling fans), and was also rewarded by Bush, who used the store as the :{PR:(style="color:#000000"):}: backdrop for a speech about the economy.

** ChoicePoint--Langone co-founded this "'data-mining" company (mining your data to market to the government and businesses), which among other scandals was :{embroiled in the 2000 election debacle in Florida:(style="color:#000000"):}: under a $4 million no-bid contract to give Florida Secretary of State :{Katherine Harris:(style="color:#000000"):}: a list of 8,000 names of people :{to drop from the election rolls:(style="color:#000000"):}: who were supposedly felons, who turned out not to be. 

You probably recall that Harris declared Bush the winner of Florida by 1,784 votes and five :{right-wing:(style="color:#000000"):}: judges on the Supreme Court stopped the recount, making Bush president--so a couple thousand voters turned away could have been the difference, even without the flawed butterfly ballot that added up for Pat Buchanan. You may not recall how ChoicePoint contributed to the election of Bush through its faulty list. And you might not have known that ChoicePoint executives like Langone and (now deceased) Rik Rozar gave hundreds of thousands to the :{GOP:(style="color:#000000"):}:. (I have testified in favor of Senator Feingold's efforts to :{protect Americans from unwarranted data-mining:(style="color:#000000"):}: by the :{FBI:(style="color:#000000"):}:through National Security Letters and I have flagged the FBI's lucrative contracts with ChoicePoint.)

* :{C. Boyden Gray:(style="color:#000000"):}:, heir to the :{R.J. Reynolds:(style="color:#000000"):}: Tobacco Company fortune. Boyden has played a key role in most of the well-financed right-wing groups like :{Citizens for a Sound Economy:(style="color:#000000"):}:, founded by the :{Koch Brothers:(style="color:#000000"):}: and related to the beltway gang behind the :{Tea Party:(style="color:#000000"):}:, :{FreedomWorks:(style="color:#000000"):}:. Gray has helped orchestrate everything from :{the big business attack on the EPA's regulation of air quality standards:(style="color:#000000"):}: to the effort to pack the courts with right-wing ideologues through his attack machine, the ":{Committee for Justice:(style="color:#000000"):}:." When I worked as a staffer in the Senate, I helped fight Gray's efforts to use smear campaigns to pack the courts; and Gray's group was one of the recipients of files of mine and my colleagues taken by Republican political operatives. If you're disgusted with the Supreme Court decisions of right-wing ideologues like :{John Roberts:(style="color:#000000"):}: and :{Clarence Thomas:(style="color:#000000"):}:, you can thank Gray for helping them secure lifetime jobs as judges.

* :{Fred Malek:(style="color:#000000"):}:, whose net worth is reportedly $250 million and who paid a $100,000 :{fine:(style="color:#000000"):}: to the :{Securities and Exchange Commission:(style="color:#000000"):}: in a case involving a fraudulent pension fund scheme. He was :{John McCain's:(style="color:#000000"):}: National Finance Committee co-chair in the 2008 election. He served as a director of :{Fannie Mae:(style="color:#000000"):}: during the period in which CEO :{Franklin Raines:(style="color:#000000"):}: was forced out by regulators and when Raines left the federal mortgage guarantor with :{a pension worth over $100,000 a month:(style="color:#000000"):}: and over $5 million in stock options. Malek made his initial fortune as CEO of Marriott Hotels and is part of the :{Carlyle Group:(style="color:#000000"):}:. He is also a George W. Bush crony who was part of the syndicate that bought the Texas Rangers, one of Bush's failed businesses. His reputation has been :{tainted by evidence:(style="color:#000000"):}: he carried out some of President Nixon's dirty work in identifying Jewish federal employees, resulting in his resignation as Deputy Chairman of the :{Republican National Committee:(style="color:#000000"):}:, even though he was George H.W. Bush's pick for that post back in 1988.

* :{Robert Steel:(style="color:#000000"):}:, former Vice Chairman of :{Goldman Sachs:(style="color:#000000"):}: and former co-head of the firm's equities and trading business with :{Lloyd C. Blankfein:(style="color:#000000"):}:, Goldman's CEO who :{sold securities designed to fail:(style="color:#000000"):}: (and yet Blankfein is poised to receive up to a $100 million bonus this year). Steel also served as co-chair of the U.S. :{Chamber of Commerce:(style="color:#000000"):}: anti-regulation crusade before being appointed Under Secretary for Domestic Finance under Henry Paulson in George W. Bush's Treasury Department. He bailed out right before the Wall Street meltdown. He then took the helm at Wachovia which was then consumed as it was failing by Wells Fargo, which then took $371.5 million in TARP funds to be bailed out by taxpayers. And then he headed off for a post with the city of New York. (For more information on the role :{Goldman Sachs:(style="color:#000000"):}: has played in the financial disaster, check out our articles on the firm in SourceWatch.)

These are just some of the multimillionaires backing new political attack ads to try to influence the outcome of the mid-term elections. Regardless of how one views Senator Feingold's record in the Senate, it is right to ask questions about who is spearheading attack ads, what their records are and what their real agenda is.

Vulture's picnic palast:

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. 

But he was also the man, with his right-wing partners, behind 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. And 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."

http://www.alternet.org/module/printversion/152625

Kenneth Langone, who co-founded Home Depot and later founded ChoicePoint, an infamous data- mining corporation that helped Bush-Cheney grab Florida's electoral votes and the presidency in 2000.

* Kenneth G. Langone He's worth $1 billion and is listed as the 347th richest man in the U.S. Here are some of the companies he has been affiliated with:

** Home Depot--Langone co-founded this home-remodeling store, one of the nation's largest retailers, whose top employees have given millions to the GOP and which, among other things, got a $48 million tax break in the Bush/Cheney energy bill (lifting a tariff on Chinese-made ceiling fans), and was also rewarded by Bush, who used the store as the PR backdrop for a speech about the economy.

** ChoicePoint--Langone co-founded this "'data-mining" company (mining your data to market to the government and businesses), which among other scandals was embroiled in the 2000 election debacle in Florida under a $4 million no-bid contract to give Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris a list of 8,000 names of people to drop from the election rolls who were supposedly felons, who turned out not to be. You probably recall that Harris declared Bush the winner of Florida by 1,784 votes and five right-wing judges on the Supreme Court stopped the recount, making Bush president--so a couple thousand voters turned away could have been the difference, even without the flawed butterfly ballot that added up for Pat Buchanan. You may not recall how ChoicePoint contributed to the election of Bush through its faulty list. And you might not have known that ChoicePoint executives like Langone and (now deceased) Rik Rozar gave hundreds of thousands to the GOP. (I have testified in favor of Senator Feingold's efforts to protect Americans from unwarranted data-mining by the FBI through National Security Letters and I have flagged the FBI's lucrative contracts with ChoicePoint.)