Special to WorldTribune.com, May 11, 2023
Corporate WATCH
Commentary by Joe SchaefferIf you believe thoroughly addled and deeply unpopular installed President Joe Biden can’t possibly claim a re-election victory next year, consider the potent establishment forces he has in his corner. From U.S. intelligence agencies serving as de facto campaign staffers to a severely compromised election infrastructure filled with chaos that somehow always manages to go his way, to a judicial system weaponized against his political opponents and a dominant big-box media edifice wholly in the tank for him and more, Biden is going to have a lot of fat thumbs pressing on the scale in November 2024.
One of the biggest thumbs comes from Wall Street, and the enormous concentrated wealth found among private equity behemoths in particular. We’d like to illustrate one example as indicative of this daunting money machine that will be at Biden’s service.
In February, The Carlyle Group, a global private equity powerhouse, named former Goldman Sachs president Harvey Schwartz as its new CEO. Schwartz raised eyebrows in October 2020, just one month before the presidential election, by making a last-minute $100,000 donation to the Biden Action Fund, a committee that raised money for Biden’s campaign.
“Schwartz’s contribution to Biden this month was the biggest political donation he has ever made, according to data from the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics,” CNBC reported at the time. “It is also one of the largest donations the Biden Action Fund saw throughout the first two weeks of October.”
Schwartz undoubtedly feels right at home at Carlyle. The firm’s co-founder David Rubenstein has hosted Biden for Thanksgiving Dinner at his $20 million Nantucket home in the Hamptons in each of the last two years.
As World Tribune has documented, The Carlyle Group owes its success to $100 million in seed money provided by notorious progressive globalist billionaire George Soros in 1993. In May 2021, we wrote:
In 2016, the “Panama Papers” leak of elitist efforts to avoid taxes via secretive offshore accounts contained revealing information on the activities of progressive globalist billionaire George Soros. Among the findings were details of Soros’s stealth business ties to Carlyle, headed at the time by [former CEO and current Virginia Republican Governor Glenn] Youngkin.
The dealings were steeped in Deep State machinations.
“Soros Capital set up an offshore company in the Cayman Islands for the purpose of investing private equity with the Carlyle Group, alongside members of Saudi Arabia’s Bin Laden family,” Peter Byrne reported for Fox News at the time.
“Carlyle’s partners include ex-heads of state and former CIA officials. The private equity partnership specializes in buying and selling weapons manufacturing and intelligence gathering companies with government and military contracts and it also uses secret offshore companies to conduct business.”
Rubenstein is a former Board of Trustee member for Klaus Schwab’s World Economic Forum. “Federal committees reported receiving nearly $347.7 million during the 2022 midterm election cycle from private equity and hedge fund employees and PACs,” the Center for Responsive Politics reported last September. Though it has long been considered typical for Wall Street honchos to donate to both Democrats and Republicans in an attempt to purchase influence no matter who wins, the emergence of populist outsider Donald Trump has changed things dramatically.The professional speculators don’t hedge their bets when a reformist candidate is on the ballot. The Capital Research Center’s Shane Devine reported in December 2020:
Wall Street contributed over $74 million directly to Biden’s campaign, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Former Goldman Sachs president Harvey Schwartz gave $100,000 to the Biden Action Fund, a fundraising group controlled by the Biden Campaign and the Democratic National Committee. Jim Simons, founder of investment firm Renaissance Technologies, gave $350,000 to the Biden Action Fund and $7 million to super PACs supporting Biden. Henry Laufer, then-vice president of research at Renaissance Technologies, contributed $625,000 to the pro-Biden American Bridge PAC. Donald Sussman, founder of the hedge fund Paloma Partners, spent $9 million on Biden super PACs. The list goes on.
Trump meanwhile accepted $18 million directly from Wall Street in total, less than his 2016 total of $20 million. Wall Street donors were said to have backed off Trump in the 2020 cycle due to the lack of “predictability” with his presidency, according to comments given to CNBC by an unnamed GOP adviser.
A look at Carlyle personnel donations for the 2022 midterm elections taken from the Center for Responsive Politics’ Open Secrets website is in line with this disparity. Individuals associated with Carlyle gave the following to aligned organizations:Democrat:
- Senate Majority PAC $405,000
- House Majority PAC $350,000
- DNC Services Corp. $235,071
- American Bridge 21st Century $200,000
- Natl Republican Senatorial Comm. $146,420
- Natl Republican Congressional Comm. $141,914
- Senate Leadership Fund $100,000
What’s interesting about this is the organization itself. The Center for Reproductive Rights is a financial juggernaut, as its long list of well-heeled donors suggests. “Founded in 1992, CRR’s revenues totaled nearly $32,000,000 in 2016,” watchdog website Influence Watch states. Thirteen entries are to be found in the “$1,000,000+” donor listing for 2021 alone. And who’s helping to run this abortion colossus? A Goldman Sachs executive. Joseph A. Stern is Chairman of the Board at CRR. From his bio:
Stern is a Managing Director in the Legal Department at Goldman Sachs and is the general counsel for the firm’s mergers and acquisition advisory practice.
Louise G. Ritter is Treasurer of the Board. From her bio:Ritter has over 25 years of general management experience in the financial services industry. Since 2016, she has been President of Pisces, Inc., an asset management firm. Previously, Louisa worked at Goldman Sachs for 14 years, most recently serving as Managing Director in the Executive Office and President of Goldman Sachs Gives.
Cynthia Blumenthal, the wife of Democrat Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), is also a member of the Board at CRR. CRR’s President and CEO Nancy Northup came from the Soros-funded Brennan Center for Justice. Her bio states that she is a member of the arch-globalist Council on Foreign Relations.These are the deep and interconnected circles of networked power that hopelessly adrift Joe Biden will lean on as he seeks to be reinstalled in the White House in 2024 for another highly dubious four-year “elected” term.
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