“It just takes a random billionaire to change a race and maybe change the country...that’s what’s so radically different now.”
Paul Krugman wrote an Op-Ed in Friday’s New York Times titled “Privilege, Pathology and Power,” in which he mordantly observes that “those empowered by money-driven politics include a disproportionate number of spoiled egomaniacs:”
Oligarchy, rule by the few, also tends to become rule by the monstrously self-centered. Narcisstocracy? Jerkigarchy? Anyway, it’s an ugly spectacle, and it’s probably going to get even uglier over the course of the year ahead.
The Billionaires backing Ted Cruz are no exception.
The creation known as Rafael “Ted” Cruz, currently the Republican Presidential frontrunner in Iowa, is owned by four SuperPACS, all calling themselves “ Keep The Promise.” There are four iterations of “Keep The Promise,” cleverly styled as Keep The Promise I, Keep The Promise II, Keep the Promise III and Keep The Promise PAC. These are their primary (known) funders:
Keep the Promise I raised $11 million from New York hedge fund investor Robert Mercer. Keep the Promise II received $10 million from Texas private equity investor Toby Neugebauer. Keep the Promise III received $15 million from the billionaire Texas fracking family of Farris, Jo Ann, Daniel and Staci Wilks. Finally, Keep the Promise PAC received funds from a more diverse audience, including $500,000 from Houston Texans owner Robert McNair and $250,000 from investor John W. Childs, but only raised $1.8 million total.
Who are these people responsible for inflicting Ted Cruz on the country? What makes them tick? We begin with Cruz’s undisputed top moneyman, Robert Mercer:
Robert Mercer, 65, is co-CEO of Renaissance Technologies LLC, a $15 billion hedge fund. The IBM language-recognition whiz-turned-financier brought home $125 million in 2011, making him the 16th highest-earning hedge fund manager, according to Forbes.
When he's not bobbing about on his 203-foot Superyacht, the Sea Owl, Mercer might be found playing with his $2 million dollar train set, ensconced in one of his mansions (he sued its builders, claiming he was overcharged). But his real passion is, as you might suspect, making as much money for himself as possible notwithstanding the collateral damage he inflicts on the rest of us:
Mercer is a longtime Republican donor who shares Cruz's disdain for financial regulation. He has plowed millions into campaigns against lawmakers who have pushed to rein in Wall Street. Rep. Pete DeFazio (D–Ore.), who started an effort to tax high-frequency financial transactions, was the target of a Mercer campaign of more than half-a-million dollars. So was former Rep. Timothy Bishop (D–N.Y.), an ex-SEC prosecutor. In 2012, Mercer shoveled more than $900,000 into an effort to unseat Bishop. While Bishop held onto his seat, Mercer targeted him again in 2014—this time, with success. Also in 2012, Mercer pumped millions into two super PACs, headed by Karl Rove, that flooded the airwaves with ads for Mitt Romney and Republican candidates for Congress. Club For Growth, a free-market focused super PAC, has notched more than a half million from Mercer, too.
(All links are from the original.)
Mercer, like many of the Billionaires who seek to interpose their “guidance” on our country, is known as an “intensely private person” who rarely permits himself to be photographed. He is described by the financial cheerleader network CNBC as “little known by design.” His family foundation, technically run by his daughter, Rebekah, has donated heavily to right-wing think tanks that spread and foster “denial” of climate change. Personally, he seems to be something of a vindictive Scrooge:
In 2013, a group of former workers at his house sued him for not paying overtime. They also accused him of deducting money from their semi-annual bonuses as a form of punishment for, among other things, failing to replace shampoos, close doors and change razor blades.
Mercer’s highly successful Hedge Fund, Renaissance, has been under investigation by the I.R.S. for approximately six years:
Last year the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations accused Renaissance of using complex financial structures that allowed it to underestimate how much it owed the Internal Revenue Service by $6 billion.
Taxpayers “had to shoulder the tax burden these hedge funds shrugged off with the aid of the banks,” Senator Carl Levin of Michigan said at a hearing last summer.
Not coincidentally, Ted Cruz has run a virulently anti-IRS, pro-Wall Street and pro-finance campaign, urging the repeal of the Dodd-Frank Bill designed and passed by a Democratic Senate in 2010 to rein in, and hopefully prevent, the same reckless Wall Street practices that caused the 2007-8 Financial Collapse and the ensuing Great Recession. He has also proposed completely abolishing the IRS. As long as Mercer’s money continues flowing in, Cruz can be expected to tailor his policy proposals accordingly, even if deregulating Wall Street and sanctioning the practices of people like Mercer proves disastrous for ordinary Americans who have to deal with the real-world consequences to their lives, futures, and hopes for retirement.
Toby Neugebauer is next. If his name seems familiar, it should:
Mr. Neugebauer, the son of Representative Randy Neugebauer, Republican of Texas, is the co-founder of Quantum Energy Partners and has been an active investor in the oil and gas sectors, overseeing billions of dollars of assets.
Neugebauer previously tied his star to Rick Perry, whom he would take for happy rides on his private jet to discuss ways he could maximize his profits from shale drilling in North Texas. Since Perry proved to be an embarrassment as a Presidential candidate, Neugebauer has set his sights on Cruz. Like many Billionaires these days, however, Neugebauer’s personal fealty to the country he seeks to control has taken a back seat to personal tax avoidance, and he recently relocated to Dorado Beach, Puerto Rico:
Because of laws enacted in 2012, a move to the island guarantees that personal investment income (i.e. capital gains, dividends) will be completely tax-free.
Because Puerto Rico has a unique legal status, American can escape most U.S. taxes without renouncing U.S. citizenship to do so. The only requirement is to be a physical resident for 183 days out of the year.
With a dismal economy and 14% unemployment, Puerto Rico’s Department of Economic Development and Commerce has been recruiting America’s billionaires to come aboard. The list of new immigrants includes names like John Paulson, Peter Schiff and Rob Rill. It probably meant nothing to South Plains residents until Bloomberg reported on Puerto Rico’s newest resident two weeks ago: Toby Neugebauer, the son of District 19 Congressman Randy Neugebauer.
Neugebauer told Bloomberg News that he moved to Puerto Rico because he wanted his children to “learn Spanish” and attend a “top school.” Apparently this couldn’t be accomplished in Texas. In his leisure time, Neugebauer enjoys killing lions and other trophy animals for fun.
The problem with tax “avoiders” like Neugebauer goes well beyond their lack of any patriotic sense. The money Billionaires avoid paying in taxes by skedaddling to places like Puerto Rico is money that would have gone to our schools, to our roadways, to our community infrastructure, and to our armed forces. It’s money that people like Neugebauer blithely take out of Americans’ pockets even as they enjoy all the immense privileges of profiting off our free enterprise system.
Finally, the Wilks Brothers, who round out this small list of Cruz’s financial SuperPAC backers, made their money by getting in on the “ground floor” of the fracking business, selling the heavy equipment that has so despoiled much of our so-called “public lands. But as some of the world’s richest people, they have more pressing interests to impress upon us through their political puppets like Mr. Cruz:
While both Farris and Dan have given to conservative groups and candidates, it is older brother Farris whose foundation has become a source of massive donations to Religious Right groups and to the Koch brothers’ political network. Farris also funds a network of “pregnancy centers” that refuse, on principle, to talk to single women about contraception. (Married women need to check with their husband and pastor.)
Cruz very vocal embrace of Apocalyptic Christian theology, which motivates his base support in Iowa, dovetails in beautiful symmetry with the Wilks brothers personal beliefs:
Farris [Wilks]thinks conservative economics are grounded in the Bible. Like Mitt Romney, he says people shouldn’t vote for politicians who promise “free this, free that.” Like any number of Religious Right leaders, he saw Barack Obama’s re-election as a harbinger of the End Times and he believes God will punish America for embracing homosexuality. Unlike all of them, he’s on the list of the world’s richest people.
Wilks has a fixation about gays, equating homosexuality with bestiality, and regularly invokes what he sees as a betrayal of God by modern American mores, including women exercising their reproductive rights:
Think of all the murder that has happened in this country….all the babies that have been murdered…think of all the perversions in the realm of sexual perversion of all kinds…all the breaking of Yahweh’s covenant….and so you recognize that at some point Yahweh’s going to say it’s time to wrap up… it’s time to move on to a kingdom of people that want to serve me, that want to be redeemed, that want salvation…we have to draw some lines in the sand for ourselves….
Conveniently, Wilks’ “God” is Himself a big proponent of fracking and “free enterprise:”
Earlier this year, Farris preached on “Government That We Can Believe In.”…. Yahweh, he preached, is “someone who respects private ownership” and the Torah is “set up on the free enterprise system.”
Cruz himself told his supporters on Thursday to strap on their “Armor of God,” claiming the Republican race will be over by March. His campaign hauled in $20 Million last quarter to begin their final push in Iowa. If the profit-hungry Hedge Funders, tax-avoiding Billionaire expatriates, and bigoted Billionaire religious nutcases have their way, that is only the beginning. Perhaps the greatest irony is that Cruz’s evangelical (and increasingly libertarian) voter base, which is ultimately responsible for his success, thrives on the perception he’s cultivated as an “outsider" in Washington, which translated roughly means someone not beholden to “special interests."
The truth about Cruz is the exact opposite. What all of his moneyed backers have in common is a fervent desire to shape public policy to help themselves in a very big way, even while it makes life for the rest of us worse.
Ted Cruz is perfectly happy to be their stooge.