“The Most Opaque Investment Schemes Ever Devised”: Cities And States Paying Massive Secret Fees To Wall Street
California’s report said $440 million. New Jersey’s said $600 million. In Pennsylvania, the tally is $700 million. Those Wall Street fees paid by public workers’ pension systems have kicked off an intensifying debate over whether such expenses are necessary. Now, a report from an industry-friendly source says those huge levies represent only a fraction of the true amounts being raked in by Wall Street firms from state and local governments.
“Less than one-half of the very substantial [private equity] costs incurred by U.S. pension funds are currently being disclosed,” says the report from CEM, whose website says the financial analysis firm “serve(s) over 350 blue-chip corporate and government clients worldwide.”
Currently, about 9 percent — or $270 billion — of America’s $3 trillion public pension fund assets are invested in private equity firms. With the financial industry’s standard 2 percent management fee, that quarter-trillion dollars generates roughly $5.4 billion in annual management fees for the private equity industry — and that’s not including additional “performance” fees paid on investment returns. If CEM’s calculations are applied uniformly, it could mean taxpayers and retirees may actually be paying double — more than $10 billion a year.
Public officials are overseeing this massive payout to Wall Street at the very moment many of those same officials are demanding big cuts to retirees’ promised pension benefits.
“With billions of public worker and taxpayer dollars put at risk in the highest-cost, most opaque investment schemes ever devised by Wall Street for a decade now, investigations that hold Wall Street profiteers accountable are long, long overdue,” said former Securities and Exchange Commission attorney Ted Siedle.
Private equity firms have argued that their fees are worth the expense, because they supposedly deliver returns for investors that beat low-fee index funds, which track the broader stock market. But those private equity returns are typically self-reported by the firms over the life of those longer-term investments, meaning there are few ways to verify whether the returns are real. Indeed, a recent study from George Washington University argued that private equity firms are using their self-reporting authority to mislead investors into believing their returns are smoother and more consistent than they actually are.
In a 2014 speech, the SEC’s top examiner, Andrew Bowden, sounded the alarm about undisclosed fees in the private equity industry, saying the agency had discovered “violations of law or material weaknesses in controls over 50 percent of the time” at firms it had evaluated.
To date, however, the SEC has taken few actions to crack down on the practices, but some states are starting to step up their oversight.
In New Jersey, for instance, pension trustees announced a formal investigation of Gov. Chris Christie’s administration after evidence surfaced suggesting that the Republican administration has not been disclosing all state pension fees paid to financial firms.
In Rhode Island, the new state treasurer, Seth Magaziner, a Democrat, recently published a review of all the fees that state’s beleaguered pension fund has paid. The analysis revealed that the former financial firm of Democratic Governor Gina Raimondo is charging the state’s pension fund the highest fee rate of any firm in its asset class.
In Pennsylvania, the new Democratic governor, Tom Wolf used his first budget address to call for the state “to stop excessive fees to Wall Street managers.”
These moves are shining a spotlight on one of the most lucrative yet little-noticed Wall Street schemes. With so much money at issue – and with pensioners retirement income on the line — that scrutiny is long overdue.
By: David Sirota, Senior Writer at the International Business Times; The National Memo, April 24, 2015
“The Sheldon Adelson Primary”: The GOP Presidential Primary; A Brawl Of Billionaires?
There are few spectacles more absurd or horrifying (depending on your perspective) than a group of political leaders who want to be president of the United States trooping to the lair of a billionaire to genuflect before him in hopes of winning his favor — and, of course, his money.
If you’re looking for a symbol of what presidential politics has become, particularly in the Republican Party, look no further than the festival of grovelling that will occur this weekend in Las Vegas. Alex Isenstadt reports:
Before Iowa and New Hampshire, GOP candidates are competing in the Sheldon Adelson primary, and some will travel to his posh Venetian hotel in Las Vegas this weekend in hopes of winning it. But one candidate — Marco Rubio — has emerged as the clear front-runner, according to nearly a half-dozen sources close to the multibillionaire casino mogul.
In recent weeks, Adelson, who spent $100 million on the 2012 campaign and could easily match that figure in 2016, has told friends that he views the Florida senator, whose hawkish defense views and unwavering support for Israel align with his own, as a fresh face who is “the future of the Republican Party.” He has also said that Rubio’s Cuban heritage and youth would give the party a strong opportunity to expand its brand and win the White House.
Adelson came to many people’s attention when he dropped $20 million in a vain attempt to get Newt Gingrich the GOP nomination in 2012, an effort doomed by the identity of his chosen candidate. It’s a good reminder that money is a necessary but not sufficient requirement for winning the primary. I suppose there might be some level of funding that could propel even someone as ridiculous as Gingrich to victory, but whatever it is — $200 million? $500 million? — it’s more than even someone like Adelson is going to spend in a primary, particularly when there are other billionaires out there doing the same thing.
We may be about to see an unprecedented arms race among Republican plutocrats. The Koch brothers are supposedly leaning toward Scott Walker, though they haven’t made a final decision; they’ll be holding their own audition for candidates this summer. Ted Cruz is backed by a hedge fund magnate named Robert Mercer; investment manager Foster Friess will once again keep Rick Santorum funded, as he did in 2012.
But the real question isn’t whether a candidate can find the one donor that will bring him to victory, it’s what happens when the next president takes office.
All this money — not just the volume but the way it’s being moved around — is making a mockery of our already porous campaign finance laws. One of the last restrictions on funding that the Supreme Court has left standing is the limit on direct contributions to candidates. This year, if you’re a billionaire, you can only give Jeb Bush’s presidential campaign $2,700 for the primary and $2,700 for the general election, because everyone agrees it would be inherently corrupting if you could just write him a check for $1 million or $10 million or $100 million.
But that won’t stop you. Here’s what you can do. You can go over to the Right to Rise PAC, which exists in order to make Jeb Bush president, and write it a check for that $1 million. And since Jeb is not officially a candidate, he can raise money for the PAC, and plan and shape its strategy for the election. After he declares himself a candidate he will no longer be allowed to coordinate with it, but by then the preparatory work will be done.
Which is why, in an unprecedented move, Bush has decided to outsource entire sectors of his campaign to the PAC, like advertising and ground organizing, while the official campaign will do far less. It could well be the future of presidential campaign organization. Election law expert Rick Hasen explains why this is so troubling:
In the old days (think the days of the fundraising of Bush’s brother, George W. Bush), the main way of gaining influence was by becoming a campaign bundler. Bundlers not only give the maximum few thousand dollars to the candidate’s campaign; they also get friends, relatives, and acquaintances to do the same. Now, one doesn’t have to become a bundler for the campaign to curry favor: One can simply write a check for $1 million or more to Right to Rise.
By signaling that Right to Rise is his campaign arm, Jeb Bush has broken down the wall between his super PAC and his campaign committee in the eyes of donors. Preventing coordination and preserving independence was one of the last walls that were left.
The next step will be simply handing $1 million checks to candidates. Right now that’s still illegal, but campaign finance opponents will challenge those candidate contribution limits as ineffective since (the Bush campaign will show) super PACs can serve almost the same purpose. Indeed, campaign lawyer Jim Bopp (the brains behind the Citizens United lawsuit) signaled as much this week, arguing that the way to take unaccountable money out of politics is to let individuals give whatever they want directly to candidates.
I suspect Hasen is right about this: Democrats are going to say that 2016 shows we need stronger campaign finance laws, while Republicans will say 2016 shows that the laws are toothless and irrelevant, so we might as well just remove the restrictions altogether.
The candidates themselves probably aren’t too worried about getting attacked as bought and paid for. They see the benefit they’ll get from being backed by a donor like the Kochs or Adelson on the one hand, and the bad press they’ll get from seeming like they’re in the pocket of a billionaire on the other hand, and say it’s a deal worth taking. What’s a few reporters’ questions that can easily be batted away (“I’m grateful for the support of any American who shares my vision for the future”) against all that cash?
“Dark money” — cash which is channeled through shadowy groups, obscuring where it originally came from — is extremely worrisome. But this new development is something else entirely. Sure, we’ll maintain the fiction that these PACs are “independent” and therefore there’s no corrupting influence associated with that money. But if you actually believe that at the end of a campaign in which he was showered with eight or nine figures worth of casino money, President Rubio wouldn’t be particularly open to hearing what Sheldon Adelson has to say about, say, internet gambling (which the magnate has worked hard to stamp out), I’d have to wonder whether you get to drink rainbows and ride unicorns on the fantasy planet you live on.
By: Paul Waldman, Senior Writer, The American Prospect; Contributor, The Plum Line Blog, The Washington Post, April 23, 2015
“Rick Perry, People Person?”: Only Connect, Says Rick Perry, Only Connect
It’s a little strange that Rick Perry has gotten so little attention so far in the presidential race. OK, so his 2012 run was kind of a disaster, but the guy was the governor of the country’s second-biggest state for 14 years, and he’s as conservative as they come. Why should he get less notice than, say, Ted Cruz?
Well RickPAC, the totally non-affiliated and non-coordinating organization that exists to help conservatives like Rick Perry, though, legally speaking, not Rick Perry in particular, is hoping to change that. They just came out with a slick video that gives a hint at where Perry is coming from. Do you like Enya? Then you’ll love this:
The theme here seems to be that if his predecessor George W. Bush was The Decider, Rick Perry is going to be The Connecter. “I grew up 16 miles from the closest place that had a post office, in a house that didn’t have running water,” he says. “If I can’t get down there and connect with the blue-collar worker, then no one can. That’s where I came from.”
We then see a headline touting Perry’s ability to connect with the business and tea party wings of the GOP, and we see him connecting with all sorts of people who apparently are hungry for connection. Old folks, young folks, men and women, black, white and Hispanic, Rick Perry is connecting with them all. He’s shaking their hands, laying a comradely hand on their shoulders as he passes, putting his arm around them, connecting, connecting, connecting. And also walking quickly — but not too quickly to connect! — suggesting that a Perry White House might have some of that “West Wing” walk-and-talk feel to it.
Does this foreshadow the theme of the upcoming Perry campaign? “Rick Perry: People Person”? After all, Jeb Bush likes to tell people he’s an introvert, so while he’s back in his house poring over wonky think tank reports, Rick Perry can be out there connecting with people. I guess there are worse things to build a campaign around.
By: Paul Waldman, Senior Writer, The American Prospect, April 22, 2015
“Clinton Cash”: Yet Another Charles And David Koch Production
The more closely we look at Peter Schweizer — right-wing author of Clinton Cash and new best friend of the New York Times and Washington Post — the more he appears to be a wholly owned subsidiary of the Koch brothers. Schweizer’s forthcoming book on Bill and Hillary Clinton and the Clinton Foundation was supported by a “think tank” called the Government Accountability Institute, which has reportedly received millions from Koch-connected donor funds over the past two years.
Crooks and Liars points toward Donors Trust, the huge Koch-funded “dark-money ATM of the right,” as a key source of funding that made Schweizer’s book possible. He is, after all, the president of the Government Accountability Institute, where tax-exempt money was used to finance a couple of nasty, inaccurate political hits on President Obama during the last election cycle, almost as soon as the “non-partisan think tank” sprang up.
If that isn’t suggestive enough, here is video of Schweizer himself, delivering a February 2014 speech at the Charles Koch Institute, an “educational organization” based in Arlington, VA. Its tax-exempt activities are subsidized by the CEO of Koch Industries, Inc. — yes, that Charles Koch.
Maybe the Times and Post editors should have taken a closer look before they leaped into a deal to promote this Kochtopus production. Or did they look and not care?
Update: Not surprisingly, Media Matters for America provides further detail on Schweizer’s financing by the Koch brothers, Robert Mercer, and the right-wing billionaire political nexus.
By: Joe Conason, Editor in Chief, The National Memo, April 23, 2015
“Steve King Unveils Radical Court Scheme”: GOP Radicalism Stripping Federal Courts Of Jurisdiction To Hear Cases Related To Marriage
Under the American system of government, elected legislators are responsible for writing laws. If those statutes are legally controversial, they’re challenged in the courts and evaluated by judges. It’s Civics 101.
But once in a while, some far-right lawmakers decide they’re not entirely comfortable with separation of powers and the idea of judicial review. Yesterday, Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa), usually known for his fierce opposition to immigration, issued a press release announcing a new proposal related to marriage equality.
Congressman Steve King released the following statement after introducing his bill “Restrain the Judges on Marriage Act of 2015.” This bill strips federal courts of jurisdiction to hear cases related to marriage. The effect of the bill would prevent federal courts from hearing marriage cases, leaving the issue to the States where it properly belongs. […]
“My bill strips Article III courts of jurisdiction, and the Supreme Court of appellate jurisdiction, ‘to hear or decide any question pertaining to the interpretation of, or the validity under the Constitution of, any type of marriage.’”
The “Restrain the Judges on Marriage Act” has already picked up seven House co-sponsors – all of them Republican – including some familiar names like Louie Gohmert (R-Texas), Ted Yoho (R-Fla.), and Jeff Duncan (R-S.C.).
And that’s a shame because, even by 2015 standards, this idea is just bonkers.
This came up a couple of weeks ago when Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), soon after launching his presidential campaign, told an Iowa audience “he would prod Congress to strip federal courts of jurisdiction over the [marriage] issue, a rarely invoked legislative tool.”
As we talked about at the time, it’s “rarely invoked” because the approach – known as “court-stripping” or “jurisdiction-stripping” – is so radical, it’s just too bizarre for most policymakers to even consider.
The idea isn’t complicated: under this scheme, Congress would pass a federal law effectively telling the courts, “We’ve identified a part of the law that judges are no longer allowed to consider.”
To reiterate what we discussed two weeks ago, let’s say you live in a state with a law that discriminates against same-sex couples. You decide to challenge the constitutionality of the law, get an attorney, and go to court. Under Steve King’s bill, the judge would have no choice but to ignore the case – the courts would have no legal authority to even review lawsuits related to marriage equality because congressional Republicans say so.
Whatever one thinks of marriage equality, court-stripping is itself ridiculous. The constitutional principles of “separation of powers” hasn’t disappeared just yet, so the idea that the legislative branch will dictate to the courts what kind of cases judges are allowed to hear is more than a little crazy – it undermines the very idea of an independent judiciary.
And it sure as heck isn’t “constitutional conservatism.” Indeed, it’s effectively the congressional version of “legislating from the bench” – King and his cohorts want to adjudicate from the legislature.
To be sure, this isn’t entirely new. Back in the 1980s, Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) repeatedly tried to prevent federal courts from hearing cases related to school prayer. About a decade ago, Sam Brownback and Todd Akin (remember him?) worked on similar measures related to the Pledge of Allegiance. Now, a handful of House Republicans are dipping their feet in the same radical waters.
As a matter of history, Congress has never actually passed a court-stripping scheme – we can only speculate about the constitutional crisis it would invite – and even if the GOP-led House tried to pursue this idea in 2015, there’s simply no way it’d overcome a Democratic filibuster in the Senate or get President Obama’s signature.
But the fact that several members of Congress are pushing such a proposal – all while Ted Cruz expresses interest in the same idea – speaks to an ugly strain of radicalism among Republican lawmakers.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, April 23, 2015
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