The Foreign-Outsourced Clinton & McCain Campaigns

Following the March bombshell of presumptive Republican nominee, Sen. John McCain's offshore fundraiser in London (3/20)

An invitation sent out by the campaign says the luncheon will be held at Spencer House, St. James's Place, "by kind permission of Lord Rothschild OM GBE and the Hon Nathaniel Rothschild." Tickets to the invitation-only event cost $1,000 to $2,300. Attire is listed as "lounge suits."

-- Washington Post  Saturday, March 15, 2008; Page A06

along with last week's sudden resignation of Clinton campaign manager Mark Penn, upon the discovery that he was a registered Foreign Agent, representing the Colombian government, and the weekend discovery that the Clintons have received $800,000 from shadowy Colombian organizations, a fresh new hell of a Clinton scandal broke this morning by Washington Post columnist Robert Novak.

Foreign campaign managers, foreign money, foreign influence...

Three weeks ago, the campaign hired as chief operating officer Howard Paster, who heads the London-based global advertising giant WPP Group. Penn is CEO of the public relations and lobbying company Burson-Marsteller, which is owned by WPP...A source who has had close connections with Penn got word to me that he believes the Clinton campaign is $10 million in debt to Penn, Schoen & Berland, which is owned by Burson-Marsteller.

--Robert Novak Column, April 14, 2008

So, the London media conglomerate, WPP Group, through its subsidiary  Penn, Schoen & Berland, has advanced the Clinton campaign $10 Million in credit. Legal questions about this "loan" under the campaign finance regulations aside, you dont have to be an isolationist, reactionary, nationalist or xenophobe to find it inappropriate for foreign interests to be investing eight-figure sums in our presidential politics.

This is, perhaps, less shocking following the $15 Million apparently raised by Sen. McCain at London's Spencer House, through the 'bundling' assistance of the Rothschilds. The world's most elite investment banking dynasty, Baron Rothschild and his forebears have been major shareholders in J.P. Morgan Co. since its inception.  McCain, whose top five campaign officers are leading Washington lobbyists, harvested this foreign bounty just three days after the Bush Treasury Department's unprecedented March 17th announcement, in which J.P. Morgan acquired Bear Stears in a sweetheart deal with U.S. Treasury guarantees, for pennies on the dollar.

But its not just about the money. Novak also reveals that Howard Paster, head of Britain's WPP Group, has now become the Chief Operating Officer of the Clinton campaign, replacing Colombia's Mark Penn, his subordinate at Burson-Marsteller.  At its most innocent, Paster's taking the reigns as COO gave WPP Group the confidence to extend Clinton's campaign such generous credit terms.  More cynically, foreign contributors underwriting this $10 Million investment in Clinton want to make sure their interests are protected, at the highest levels of her political apparatus.

The full extent of the corporate financial connection between the McCain-funding Rothschilds and the Clinton-funding WPP Group is still being determined.  The UK holding company Songbird Estates, plc. (yes, 'Songbird') counts among its directors both Philip Lader, Chairman of WPP Group, and Alex Midgen, a Managing Director of N.M. Rothschild & Sons and global co-head of the real estate advisory business for Rothschild's Investment Banking Division.

Actually, a Google search reveals 817 links between WPP Group and various Rothschild interests, covering their joint business interests in Media, Aerospace, Mining, Petroleum, and other industries.

Time was when a presidential candidate who took large amounts of money from foreign interests and appointed foreign agents to manage their campaign would have been diligently found out by investigative journalists, roundly excoriated by the Washington Press Corps, and ridden out of town on a rail by a rightfully incensed mob.

Instead, the Washington media is today engaged in some orgy of confusion over whether or not many unemployed working class voters can be properly described as "bitter".

They aint seen bitter yet...

•  Tip jar?

  Great diary!

  by Shelley99 on Mon Apr 14, 2008 at 03:13:28 PM PDT

  •  Don't be stealing Press to digitate's mojo!

    This is one whopper of a magical revelation! You pulled back the curtain on a totally unexpected set of monsters, even if they wear some dapper British top hats!  

    So, it would seem the British elite are once again invading the US political domain, trying to play US 'king-maker'!

    I suppose there's no point in revisiting the bipartisan efforts of Sen. Feingold and McCain to limit campaign funding sources to legitimate citizen sources?  Whoa...could this be why the FEC has been defanged and dismantled, and no one is complaining?  Can't have any enforcement agency poking into these under the massive table foreign funding sources, can we?  

    Well, if we hope to save our Democracy, something needs to reverse this invasive damage, and immediately.  Sen. Reid, Rep. Pilosi, Dr. Dean?  Judges of the Supreme Court?  Does anyone in office even care to object? Perhaps offering at least a strongly worded letter of disapprobation?  Perhaps  statement of questioning if not actually indigant disapproval to the press?  Big monied interests, regardless of national origin, sure seem to know how to shut the mouths of our 'patriotic' leaders.

    Sen. Feingold, are you still monitoring what's happening in campaign finance?  Where is your voice?

    Senator Feingold, Foreign Agents are involved in major financing of US candidates for highest office, do you still care yet?

    Attention all Senate and Congressional leadership:  
    Can we afford to allow British elites to own McCain and/or Clinton, or any high elected official?!!
    

    As punishment, it's probably most fair to demand these campaigns repay their illicit foreign booty in bags of Euros, barrels of oil, or bricks of gold buillion.

    by antirove on Mon Apr 14, 2008 at 03:41:26 PM PDT

•  This Is

  a very interestng diary.  Full of eyebrow lifters.  Pity any of it had to come from Novak, although he may be precisely why the story could gain "legs".  

  I look forward to comments from those more savvy than myself on these matters.

  Tipped and rec'd.

  by SherriG on Mon Apr 14, 2008 at 03:37:33 PM PDT

•  Elisabeth Murdoch (Freud) is also hosting one

  in London for Obama on April 23rd.

  by DWKING on Mon Apr 14, 2008 at 03:39:48 PM PDT

  •  What Are

    the laws on the books regarding foreign donations?  Guess I'd better just Google.

    by SherriG on Mon Apr 14, 2008 at 03:50:36 PM PDT

  •  That should be killed ASAP. This has to stop.

    This begging for funding from outside the US borders, from non-US citizens and groups, is just fundamentally wrong and truly Un-American.

    I suppose Senators Feingold and McCain never thought of this loophole, and now planeloads of globalized London loot and influence are being flown in through it.

    No US President should be beholden in any way to foreign entities or groups for their election. If real Americans aren't ponying up enough to fund your run,that's it baby.  You're out! Or you should be.  

    Here's the question for a flag-pinned Fox News moderator to pose to any of the remaining candidates:  For how many pieces of Sterling will you betray the interests of any American citizen?  Would you say $10, $20 or $30 Million would do it?  Just what sort of favors, considerations or agenda items does this amount of foreign cash buy?  What American interests will you be forced to diminish or squelch on behalf of your foreign benefactors?  

    You Foxies were so eager to expose a Judas character, well I dare you to take a close look at these foreign funders and influencers of US presidential campaigns (without Mr. Murdock holding your nuts if you please).  Or is silence too golden, or sterling, for you too?

    Barack Obama too? That's really disappointing.  I demand you Reject, Renounce, Denounce it!  You've got enough!  I may want my cash back!

    Hillary, well, sure, she really ought to renounce, etc. as well, but I couldn't bet on that fraying moral fiber still having much of a twitch left, not after these last few months of a scorched earth mucktapulting.  But, think about it, Hillary, you could be the first, the first to Reject, Renounce and Denounce these bags of British Sterling, before anyone else does...  If only you could afford to...  Ms. Ferraro, perhaps you might speak up?  (US) Friends of Bill?

    And McCain, the straight shootin' self-designated enemy of wiley lobbyists and illicit campaign monies is hustling for Sterling as well?  Taking our own US lobbyist corporate bales of money, well, that's just classic GOP.  But soliciting and accepting mega-bundles of un-American foreign campaign cash?  Say it isn't so! Ok, but mean it!

    by antirove on Mon Apr 14, 2008 at 04:08:50 PM PDT

    •  Actually

      after doing some reading on this, it would appear that Clinton has the most rigorous website policy regarding foreign donations.  This is because the campaign to re-elect Clinton/Gore had to return millions in foreign donations in 1996.

      As to donations by other methods..I really don't have a clue.  Lot's of possibilities for all three candidates in this area to be honest.

      by SherriG on Mon Apr 14, 2008 at 04:17:39 PM PDT

    •  In fairness, many of these fundraisers are

      attended (and thrown) by people who are ex-pats or Americans currently living overseas. Others have homes here/ and or businesses and investments here as well. So frankly I have no real problem with it. The same financial limits are put on these fundraisers and I doubt they account for as much as say an Elton John concert.

      Given how much we rely on foreigners to fund our debt, I think it is very difficult to disallow them at least some comment on who we elect. They cannot vote (unless still US citizens) so if they want to lend support to a candidate here, as long as they do so openly and within guidelines, I don't see a problem.

      by DWKING on Mon Apr 14, 2008 at 04:22:12 PM PDT

      •  Dont see the problem?!?

        I'm absolutely certain that all of the actual checks received and deposited by the campaigns will be from bona-fide ex-pat American citizens.  Where that money actually comes from, however, is another matter entirely.

        The influence will go to the "bundlers" - the fundraising organizers, who, at least in McCain's case, is the fourth Baron Rothschild - a billionaire investment banker with substantial holdings in J.P. Morgan-Chase, among other things.

        It hardly matters if he's tapped American friends, employees, and business associates to write the actual checks.

        In McCain's case, it has rescued an insolvent campaign, giving him his best fundraising month yet, and vitally needed resources to get through until the GOP Convention.

        Should the next administration's cleanup of the Wall Street mess be guided by the influence of foreign investment banking institutions?

        by Press to Digitate on Mon Apr 14, 2008 at 04:39:16 PM PDT

•  Disagreeing with use of the term the"shadowy"....

  .
  In reference to the use of the adjective "shadowy" here, there's nothing in the source cited about the group Gold Service International that says "shadowy."  I disagree with the goals of this group, but it seems to me that this group is sufficiently in the open and clear about its goals of supporting the Colombian FTA and thus is does not warrant the use of the term "shadowy" unless the writer comes up with additional evidence on why this group should be qualified as such.

  There are many things shadowy in Colombia, including its president, but the gratuitous use of this term here is stereotyping and implies that anything and everything related to Colombia is shadowy. Nothing is further from the truth.

  In reference to Colombia's current king, perhaps this fragment from the same source deserves more attention:

  "Lori Wallach, director of Global Trade Watch at Public Citizen" [says Mr. Uribe is ] "someone whose administration is under a cloud and under investigation for associations with murderous paramilitaries, and whose administration has seen hundreds of labor unionists assassinated but not prosecuted these crimes..."

  Now, that is sufficiently documented.

  That is the Colombian administration that supporters of the Colombian Free Trade agreement, from Mr. Bush on down, present as the US' "staunchest ally" and as deserving of "the reward" of a FTA.

  Let's not assume that anything and everything Colombian is surrounded by the shadows of evil, even if its current president indeed is.

  .

  by Mangrove Blues on Sun Apr 20, 2008 at 09:09:36 AM PDT