Re-maligned Rich

It seems dozens of wealthy Wall Streeters that donated to Obama in 2008 are now realigning and donating to Mitt Romney. Many may just be hedging their bets as Obama is still raising plenty from Wall Street. In June he reportedly gathered $2.4 million at one event in a New York restaurant.
However

-According to a review of fundraising data, 67 people who work in the financial sector and live in the New York City metro area gave to Obama in 2008 and the former Massachusetts governor in 2011. This select group from Credit Suisse, the Blackstone Group, the Stanwich Group and Goldman Sachs has since donated more than $147,000 to Romney.

Supposedly these reversals come as a result of Obama’s “tough” rhetoric while pushing to pass the Dodd-Frank banking laws.
One aspect of this that is little hard to stomach given the fast pace of recovery on Wall Street compared to main street is the executives expressed feelings of “betrayal” by Obama. "Everybody I speak to is on the same boat -- disappointment," said one Wall Street executive who requested anonymity
They seem more fragile and easily offended than one might expect of hardened business execs. And there is this heartrending remark "It's not healthy for rich people to feel maligned," Or is that a tearful threat?

It could be taken so if you take seriously a recent warning from Warren Buffett, one of the World’s richest men

“There’s class warfare, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.”

So enjoy the upcoming Labor Day holiday and please be gentle with the wealthy. After all we have been warned that it isn’t healthy for the rich to feel maligned! Be thoughtful and try to keep in mind the burden it must be for the top 400 wealthiest people in this country to own more than the bottom half combined.

Corporate crush ‘n’ gusher makeover

Mitt Romney blurted out recently that in his opinion, "Corporations are people, my friend." So what are some of these incorporated “people” up to these days?

Two familiar corporate giants, Chiquita and Disney, are hooking up. Agreement Links Companies with Long History of Quality Products & Services reads the press release headline. Chiquita will bring its “healthy fresh” products to Walt Disney World Resort and Disney Cruise Line and receive brand exclusivity within their respective categories.
Chiquita, which started its long corporate life in Central America as United Fruit (where its involvement in internal politics led to the term banana republic), may still need an image assist.

In 2007 Chiquita pled guilty to violating US law by making illegal payments to the Colombian rebel group FARC and paid a 25-million-dollar penalty. This past May lawsuits against Chiquita involving this case and allegations of rebel killings of Colombian citizens were consolidated and will be heard in a Florida court this year.

But this is Disney World so: as part of their collaboration, Chiquita will serve as the sponsor of both the "Crush 'n' Gusher" at Typhoon Lagoon (themed around a tropical fruit processing center), and the "Living with the Land" attraction, where Chiquita will join forces with Disney to help teach guests about nutrition.

Amazing it didn’t occur to them that Crush ‘n’ Gusher sounds like a description of United Fruit’s method of repressing peasants, crushing union activity and subverting local governments in their banana-republic glory days. And Chiquita/Disney’s “Living with the Land” attraction more than likely will not highlight the lack of genetic diversity in monoculture growing practices that have already made one type of banana plant extinct and placed a second one now under the same threat.

Guess Disney World couldn’t be a better partner for Chiquita to help remake its image to more closely match the fantasy it wants the rest of us to believe.

Will the Real Brian Dubie Please Sit Down

Word is everywhere that Vermont's former Lt. Gov. Brian Dubie may be stirring himself for a second run at governor. The results of a recent Public Policy Polling shows our Dubie losing 40-48 percent in a re-match race with Governor Shumlin. However the same poll shows his favorability rating at 48%- very close statistically but still greater than Shumlin’s 45%.


This despite the notably nasty (for Vermont) 2010 race he ran. Many months later Dubie and his former campaign manager Cory Bliss were forced to issue personal letters of apology to settle a defamation suit. Also his 2010 campaign’s alleged illicit coordination with the Republican Governor’s Association on a campaign commercial is currently under investigation by the Vermont AG, following a complaint filed by the Vermont Democratic Party accusing the Dubie campaign of having directly aided in the production of an advertisement sponsored by the RGA. The filing also charges that former Gov. Jim Douglas "acted as an agent of both the Republican Governors Association and 'Friends of Brian Dubie'.”

As a result, a group of Dubie’s influential Republican supporters (including Douglas) formed Friends of Brian Dubie Legal Defense Fund to pay Dubie’s legal costs from his last campaign.

Since Dubie’s hard-edged campaign and subsequent loss, it’s easy to wonder whether he might have governed like Jim Douglas or more like Wisconsin’s right-wing radical Scott Walker. Dubie certainly didn’t hesitate to jettison large chunks of his renowned nice guy image in search of victory. Many of the new crop of Republican governors are following agendas well to the right of the rhetoric used in their campaigns and the overall political attitude of their states. New York Times data analyst Nate Silver pointed out that the pipeline of moderate Republican governors has run dry. Further, Silver says,

unlike the Democrats, there is no correlation between the ideology of the governors and the ideology of the states. Whether you have a Republican governor in a fairly liberal state like Maine, a moderate state like Ohio, or a conservative one like Idaho, that governor’s agenda is likely to be aligned with the extreme right.

Also highly conservative are Dubie's ‘friends,’ the major funders of the RGA.

Two major players in the RGA are alleged phone hacker Rupert Murdoch and David Koch, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s ultra-conservative backer.

In July 2010 Politico reported the RGA was the recipient of a whooping $1 million donation from Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. The RGA’s other seven-figure donor was David Koch. News Corp.’s media outlets play politics more openly than most, but the huge contribution to a party committee is a new step toward an open identification between Rupert Murdoch's media empire and the GOP.


If failed gubernatorial candidate Brian Dubie decides he needs to take another shot at the state’s top office, can we count on legacy media outlets to keep these less-than-flattering facts in front of the electorate next year?

also posted at greenmountaindaily.com

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