90 Miles From Tyranny

Friday, December 6, 2019

If Statists Cannot Fix Potholes.....

Tucker Carlson’s Critique Of Paul Singer Is Part Of The Reckoning Underway In America

The Fox News host’s exposé on “vulture capitalism” goes to the heart of a debate on the Right about the role of government.
Tucker Carlson is perhaps the only major media figure in America willing to attack across party lines to make his point. On Tuesday night he went after Republican mega-donor Paul Singer in a withering 10-minute special segment on how Singer destroyed a small town in Nebraska in a hostile takeover of the sporting goods retailer Cabela’s.

For those who don’t know, Singer is a New York hedge fund manager who has made billions as a so-called “vulture capitalist,” buying up the sovereign debt of financially distressed countries at a discount and then cashing in later, using lawsuits to pressure governments to pay up. He’s done something similar with U.S. firms—buying up debt, shipping jobs overseas, firing American workers and cashing out—in some cases at taxpayer expense.

In addition to donating to the GOP and running his hedge fund, Elliott Capital, Singer also funds a lot of conservative media, which is why you won’t hear much criticism of him from right-leaning outlets or Republican politicians. That of course makes Carlson’s segment on Tuesday all the more remarkable.

Carlson’s report focused on the town of Sidney, Nebraska, population 6,282. Sidney was the longtime home of Cabela’s and once employed thousands of local residents. It was the economic anchor of the town. But Singer’s firm took an ownership stake in the company in 2015, when the Cabela’s was making nearly $2 billion in annual profits, and pressured the board to sell. A year later Bass Pro Shops purchased Cabela’s, the company’s stock price surged, and Singer cashed out for at least $90 million.

But Sidney was destroyed. As Carlson explained, “The town lost nearly 2,000 jobs. A heartbreakingly familiar cascade began: people left, property values collapsed, and then people couldn’t leave. They were trapped there. One of the last thriving small towns in America went under.”
What Role Should Government Play In Our Civic Life?

The point of highlighting the fate of this one town and the role of Singer in its demise isn’t to vilify capitalism or the free market in general, but to point out how the system is engineered to benefit the rich and powerful at the expense of everyone else. As Willis Krumholtz explains nearby in greater detail, the story of Cabela’s and the people of Sidney is an example of “financial engineering that paid a select few off, while the whole suffered.”

This critique goes to the heart of what the political right has been grappling with in the age of Trump. What is the proper role of the government and public policy in American society? Whose interests should it serve?

Much of what’s behind Trump-era populism, not just in America but across the West, is the dawning realization that the post-Cold War global capitalist system doesn’t necessarily benefit working- and middle-class Americans—or at least that free trade and global capitalism aren’t unmitigated goods. They have costs, and those costs are borne disproportionately by ordinary people, the kind of people who get laid off from Cabela’s for no good reason other than it made Singer a pile of money.

This isn’t just an economic question. The role of government is also at the center of the ongoing Sohrab Amari-David French debate on the right about whether the public sphere can really ever be neutral and what, if anything, conservatives should do to advance what they see as the good. Libertarian-minded conservatives like French look at drag queen story hour and conclude, hey, this is just the price of liberty. We can no more use government power to prohibit drag queens in public libraries than we can use it to prohibit any other kind of free speech

Ahmari and others have challenged this way of thinking, positing that liberty has an object, which is the good, and that government’s role is not just to protect liberty but also to promote and defend the good. Things like stable and intact families, prosperous communities, and vibrant churches and schools aren’t merely what we hope might spring forth from unfettered liberty secured by a neutral and indifferent government; they’re the entire purpose of securing liberty in the first place.

In the same way, champions of global capitalism might look at the desolation of a town like Sidney and conclude, hey, this is just the price of free markets. Carlson argues that no, this is the price of maintaining a system designed to benefit people like Singer at the expense of middle-class Americans.

All of this is part of a reckoning now underway in America about what our government is for and whose interests it should serve. The status quo of recent decades, in which both major political parties crafted policies that served the interest of an established donor class, is coming to...

Is This The Reason AT&T Is Spying On Republicans On Behalf Of Democrats?

AT&T's latest shareholder is a big GOP donor. Just not to Trump.

Washington (CNN)Elliott Management, a major investment firm run by billionaire Republican donor Paul Singer, alerted AT&T Monday of its $3.2 billion stake in the telecommunications giant. In a letter to AT&T's board, Elliott argued the company is underperforming and proposed AT&T sell its non-core businesses and restructure.

President Donald Trump tweeted Monday that the announcement was "great news" and used the opportunity to criticize CNN, whose parent company WarnerMedia is a division of AT&T.
Singer founded Elliott in 1977 and has gained a reputation as an activist investor who accumulates large stakes in public companies in order to force changes in management and strategy. Elliott declined to comment on Trump's tweet about the firm's investment in AT&T. A person familiar with Singer's operations denied the investment was related to politics.

"There's a total firewall between Paul's personal political activities and the firm's investment process," said the person.

In recent decades, Singer has become an influential donor to conservative and Republican causes. He has raised money for GOP presidential nominees George W. Bush, John McCain and Mitt Romney, as well as donated millions to Republican-aligned organizations for both federal and state-level elections, including the Congressional Leadership Fund, the Senate Leadership Fund and the Republican Governors Association.

But with Trump, Singer has been a notable holdout. He endorsed Marco Rubio in November 2015, prompting Trump to attack Singer as someone who "represents amnesty and ... illegal immigration pouring into the country."

In early 2016, Singer funded a super PAC supporting Rubio that ran TV and digital ads sharply critical of Trump. One asked if Republicans "can trust" Trump for holding more liberal positions on health care and economic stimulus. Another documented several of his disparaging comments about women.

After Trump won the nomination, Singer did not donate to his campaign. He did donate $1 million to Trump's inauguration, and in February 2017 met with Trump at the White House. After that meeting, the President claimed Singer had given Trump "his total support."

Since Trump has been in office, Singer has focused his political giving on congressional and state-level Republican campaigns, according to two people familiar with his donations. Singer has not donated to Trump's reelection campaign nor to the super PAC supporting him.

Singer has also not commented publicly on Trump since June 2016. Speaking at the Aspen Ideas Festival, he criticized Trump's proposed trade policies. "And I think if he actually stuck to those policies and gets elected president, it's close to a guarantee of a global depression, widespread global depression," Singer said, according to CNBC.

A regular Republican donor

Setting aside his issues with Trump, Singer has otherwise been a traditional Republican donor. He has long been the chairman of the board for the Manhattan Institute, a New York-based conservative think tank largely associated with influencing the policies of Mayor Rudy Giuliani. Singer would later serve as a regional finance chair for Giuliani's failed 2008 presidential campaign, his first significant foray into Republican electoral politics.

Singer has donated to other Washington-based think tanks and issue groups, including the American Enterprise Institute, the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies and the Federalist Society. He has backed both pro-Israel and politically neutral Jewish organizations. The Washington Free Beacon, a conservative online news outlet, is also largely funded by Singer.

The Free Beacon and Singer's involvement attracted attention after the outlet disclosed to congressional investigators in 2017 that it had funded the research firm Fusion GPS during the 2016 GOP primary. The Free Beacon stated it had contracted with the firm "to provide research on multiple candidates in the Republican presidential primary" -- including Trump.

After Trump secured the GOP nomination, the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton's campaign picked up the tab and paid Fusion GPS to continue its opposition research into Trump. Fusion GPS later hired former British spy Christopher Steele to tap into his network of...

In this May 22, 2019 file photo, Sumaira a Pakistani woman, shows a picture of her Chinese husband in Gujranwala, Pakistan. (AP Photo/K.M. Chaudary, File)

LAHORE, Pakistan (AP) — Page after page, the names stack up: 629 girls and women from across Pakistan who were sold as brides to Chinese men and taken to China. The list, obtained by The Associated Press, was compiled by Pakistani investigators determined to break up trafficking networks exploiting the country’s poor and vulnerable.

The list gives the most concrete figure yet for the number of women caught up in the trafficking schemes since 2018.

But since the time it was put together in June, investigators’ aggressive drive against the networks has largely ground to a halt. Officials with knowledge of the investigations say that is because of pressure from government officials fearful of hurting Pakistan’s lucrative ties to Beijing.

The biggest case against traffickers has fallen apart. In October, a court in Faisalabad acquitted 31 Chinese nationals charged in connection with trafficking. Several of the women who had initially been interviewed by police refused to testify because they were either threatened or bribed into silence, according to a court official and a police investigator familiar with the case. The two spoke on condition of anonymity because they feared retribution for speaking out.

At the same time, the government has sought to curtail investigations, putting “immense pressure” on officials from the Federal Investigation Agency pursuing trafficking networks, said Saleem Iqbal, a Christian activist who has helped parents rescue several young girls from China and prevented others from being sent there.

“Some (FIA officials) were even transferred,” Iqbal said in an interview. “When we talk to Pakistani rulers, they don’t pay any attention. “

Asked about the complaints, Pakistan’s interior and foreign ministries refused to comment.

Several senior officials familiar with the events said investigations into trafficking have slowed, the investigators are frustrated, and Pakistani media have been pushed to curb their reporting on trafficking. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they feared reprisals.

“No one is doing anything to help these girls,” one of the officials said. “The whole racket is continuing, and it is growing. Why? Because they know they can get away with...