Chad “Rosa Parks” Griffin, president of the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) is due to speak at at confidential and off-the-record American Unity Conference of high-dollar Republican pro-gay (and anti-everything else human)) donors today in Washington, D.C.
The American Unity Fund and the American Unity PAC, are related groups that seek to elect pro-LGBT Republican candidates (Isn’t that what the Victory Fund does now? ) and both organizations are funded by philanthropist and billionaire hedge fund manager Paul Singer who “virtually invented vulture funds”: a form of speculation that’s one of the worst contributors to Third World poverty, is also in bed with the Koch brothers, is anti-union, anti-immigration, and also anti-woman’s choice. Singer – whose son Andrew is gay – is also scheduled to deliver remarks this morning to kick off the event.
Today billionaire investor Paul Singer’s American Unity super PAC plans to donate at least $2M to the campaigns of GOP House candidates that endorse same-sex marriage. Singer as you know has recently been donating heavily to the the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) also. So far in the excess of $3 million dollars to spread the word of marriage equality “Internationally” Unfortunately, there’s a catch. Singer is a progressives worst nightmare. He “virtually invented vulture funds”: a form of speculation that’s one of the worst contributors to Third World poverty ever. Singer is also in bed with the Koch brothers, is anti-union, anti-immigration, and also anti-woman’s choice. And yet HRC has no problem taking his money.
Singer, who runs a hedge fund called Elliott Management (Source: Bitcoin kaufen bei der comdirect Bank), and underwrote last year’s GOP National Convention with $1 million of largesse. One operative called him “the big power broker in the Republican financial world.” The Wall Street Journal wrote that he has given more to the GOP and its candidates—$2.3 million this election season—than anyone else on Wall Street, helping make his hedge fund … one of the nation’s biggest sources of political donations, the vast majority to the GOP.
The New York Times writes that Singer “believes in the doctrine of American exceptionalism and is wary about United States involvement in ‘international organizations and alliances.’” Singer is a nexus of con in neocon and chairs the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank that is “focused on promoting free-market principles” and has a mission to “develop and disseminate new ideas that foster greater economic choice and individual responsibility.” (Translation: The rich get richer and the poor die. Who cares?)
“The Manhattan Institute concerns itself with such things as ‘welfare reform’ (dismantling social programs), ‘faith-based initiatives’ (blurring the distinction between church and state), and ‘education reform’ (destroying public education),”
Singer has also ladled at least $3.6 million to the self-styled Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a hawkish outfit which Glenn Greenwald called “basically a Who’s Who of every unhinged neocon extremist in the country.” which has a 10-year history of engaging in alarmist rhetoric and fear mongering including in 2002 FDD airing a series of ads conflating Osama bin Laden, Yasser Arafat and Saddam Hussein — and helped promote the “Bush doctrine” which led to the invasion of Iraq
Singer has even given sizable sums to the billionaire Koch brothers’ dark-money projects as well as to the Club for Growth, an anti-tax and anti-gay group that has helped tea partiers.
Even New York Times columnist Frank Bruni in what I am sure was an HRC backed fluff piece about Singer showed some underlying misgivings in his “positive” publicity piece of Singer.
Singer is donating millions of dark money dollars to HRC who gleefully accept it, Money that was made Singer’s vulture that funds that starve third world countries – their economies wrecked, their incomes shipped abroad, their resources squeezed and stolen to pay off odious debt. But no one talks about it. Not the LGBT media and obviously not the Human Rights Campaign. The LGBT media is either disregarding or too afraid to talk badly about the HRC and the fact that Singer has donated to and helped bankroll many right wing extremist groups and initiatives that harm many of our allies, ones that we currently work with makes this even more unconscionable.
Is this what our movement has become? Getting into bed with likes of Singer for his blood money? Not caring about more than our issues? Selling out everyone who ever stood besides us?
I SAY NO. And its time that activists and LGBT media stand up and speak out!
If HRC had any shame they would be. And as for integrity its quite obvious that after this they have none.
First HRC tried to change our history. Now they want to sell our souls for for some gold.
It’s time to be done with them. And its well past time they were exposed for money grubbing whores and business that they are.
UPDATE:
I just received this Anonymous email:
Hello,
This morning I saw the story about Paul Singer’s American Unity group giving money to Republicans that support the freedom to marry.
I then noticed you both talking about his funding HRC. I am on staff at Freedom to Marry and while I love the organization I work for, it really bothers me that we too take a lot of money from Paul Singer. I actually think he is our single largest donor. Of course we want more Republicans who support the freedom to marry in office, but I wish Paul Singer wasn’t involved in paying my salary.
