Exclusive: Sen. Marco Rubio is the new favorite of the Republican establishment, a shift away from Jeb Bush signaled by hedge-fund billionaire Paul Singer’s embrace. But Rubio earned that affection by advancing Singer’s high-stakes financial fight with Argentina, Jonathan Marshall reports.
By Jonathan Marshall
On the morning of Halloween, the New York Times broke the scary news that Republican presidential contender Marco Rubio had won a big jackpot: the endorsement of billionaire hedge fund investor Paul Singer. But aside from citing Singer’s praise for Rubio’s “message of optimism” and “work on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee,” the story offered little explanation of what could prove to be a decisive turning point in the GOP primary race.
On the policy front, Rubio clearly meets Singer’s requirement for a candidate who favors lower taxes on the rich and, even more important, a blank check for Israel’s right-wing government. With his hawkish stands on the Middle East, including fervent opposition to the Iran nuclear deal, Rubio had already won over another leading Republican “bundler,” New York attorney Phil Rosen, former chairman of American Friends of Likud and a believer that Israel’s conflict with the Palestinians “was, and will always be, a holy war.”
Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Florida.
Rubio is a protégé of Florida billionaire Norman Braman, who has contributed at least six figures to support the expansion of Jewish settlements in the occupied territories. Rubio reportedly leads the all-important “Adelson primary,” the race to tap the virtually unlimited cash box of gambling billionaire Sheldon Adelson, the single most prominent U.S. supporter of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
All that is music to Singer’s ears, but Rubio’s “work on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee” is about something else altogether: his political support for Singer’s efforts to drain more than $1.5 billion dollars from Argentina in payments on old bonds that lost most of their value after the country defaulted in 2001.
Singer’s Elliott Management bought that debt several years ago for less than $50 million, and then successfully sued in U.S. court to demand full recovery of the face amount, in the face of opposition from the Obama administration, most other bondholders, and, above all, Argentina’s government, led by President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner.
Singer, who is famous for his bare-knuckles tactics against foreign governments, has gone after Kirchner’s government on all fronts. Most strategically, he supported the highly questionable claims by an Argentine prosecutor that the Kirchner government tried to cover up the involvement of the Iranian government in the 1994 bombing of the Jewish community center in Buenos Aires, which killed 85 people.
The issue was perfect for a smear campaign: targeting alleged Iranian terrorism and government anti-Semitism, Singer could undercut the legitimacy of the one entity standing between him and huge profits on his speculative bond purchases.
Singer’s Elliot Management is a major backer of American Task Force Argentina, which advocates for full repayment of the Argentine bonds and has spent millions of dollars lobbying Congress. It also spends big bucks to blacken Argentina’s reputation.
As Huffington Post reported in 2013, the group “has launched a broad attack on Argentina in its PR campaign. Politico ad, paid for by ATFA, slammed the country as a safe haven for narcotics traffickers. Another ATFA ad accuses Argentine President Cristina Kirchner of making a ‘pact with the Devil,’ pointing to a legal memo between her country and Iran involving Argentina’s effort to prosecute Iranian defendants in a terrorism case.”
As one of its lobbyists told Huffington Post, “We do whatever we can to get our government and media’s attention focused on what a bad actor Argentina is.”
An investigation by Charles Davis for Inter Press Service showed that employees of Singer’s Elliott Management contributed more than $95,000 to Sen. Mark Kirk, R-Illinois, who wrote a letter denouncing President Kirchner’s agreement with Iran to investigate the 1994 bombing.
Rep. Michael Grimm, R-NY, who received $38,000 from Elliott Management employees, co-sponsored legislation demanding that Argentina’s bondholders receive full compensation, and called for an investigation of Argentina’s ties with Iran. Other recipients of Singer’s largesse — including AIPAC, The Israel Project and the American Enterprise Institute — also hammered the Kirchner government, virtually accusing it of anti-Semitism.
Last year, another member of Congress got in on the act: Sen. Marco Rubio. While grilling President Obama’s nominee as U.S. ambassador to Argentina, Rubio complained that Buenos Aires “doesn’t pay bondholders, doesn’t work with our security operations. . . . These aren’t the actions of an ally.”
Adding a dig at President Kirchner, he added, “We have this trend in Latin America of people who get elected but then don’t govern democratically. Argentina is an example of this.” His speech triggered an angry response from Kirchner’s Foreign Minister Hector Timerman, an Argentine Jew, calling Rubio an “extremist.”
This May, Rubio introduced a resolution in the Senate suggesting that Kirchner conspired to “cover up Iranian involvement in the 1994 terrorist bombing.” Rubio declared that the issues in the case “extend well beyond Argentina and involve the international community, and more importantly, U.S. national security.”
As Eli Clifton noted, “It turns out that Singer’s hedge fund, Elliott Management, was Rubio’s second largest source of campaign contributions between 2009 and 2014, providing the presidential hopeful with $122,620, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics.”
When Kirchner herself had the temerity this spring to link Singer to various neoconservative attacks on her policies, citing a “global modus operandi” to coerce foreign states, the reliably neoconservative editorial page of the Washington Post published an editorial reply titled, “Argentina’s President Resorts to Anti-Semitic Conspiracy Theories.”
To which Jim Lobe and Charles Davis, citing a long list of Singer connections to Kirchner’s critics, replied, “follow the money.” That advice, made famous in the movie version of Watergate’s Deep Throat, remains the best guide to understanding billionaire funding of candidates in the 2016 election.
Jonathan Marshall is an independent researcher living in San Anselmo, California. Some of his previous articles for Consortiumnews were “Risky Blowback from Russian Sanctions”; “Neocons Want Regime Change in Iran”; “Saudi Cash Wins France’s Favor”; “The Saudis’ Hurt Feelings”; “Saudi Arabia’s Nuclear Bluster”; “The US Hand in the Syrian Mess”; and “Hidden Origins of Syria’s Civil War.” ]
Joe Tedesky “Has any foreign country, in the history of the United States, ever had as much influence, as Israel does over on this American Republic?”
Not to differ, but the UK’s Cecil Rhodes has had far too great influence on America’s geopolitics.
That former Empire ruled the world from the 16th century until WW2, when the torch of world hegemony was passed to the USA.
My beef with Rubio stems from the great benefit his family, and other rich white skinned Cubans gained after Castro overthrew the US Mafia controlled Cuban dictator Bautista — a former slave colony of sugar plantations in the triangular Rum trade. — Where former slaves with brown hues existed as servants and sex workers for rich americans and mobsters.
That was the corrupt gov’t Castro threw out of Cuba while confiscating their sugar plantations and rum factories and gambling houses and prostitution farms.
The white Cubans, like Rubio, were allowed to flee to Florida with their millions to freely join the wealthy class of Jewish and Italian gangsters and right wing bigots in the monied enclaves of the sunshine state.
Our politicians disallowed all brown skinned Cubans entrance into “the-land-of-the-free.” White Cubans immediately identified as Republicans, giving thanks to their exclusionist benefactors.
Rubio’s family were of the original wealthy Spanish colonizers who were the rich owners of casinos and sugar plantations and rum producers and subjugators who greatly profited off the suffering of Cuban laborers, sex workers, poorly paid and mistreated casino staffs and other Mechanistic Objects of Capitalist Control and Mob Bosses like Miah Lanski, Luciano and others and the Rubio’s were among those on the criminal gravy train.
Rubio’s growth in US governmental politics is just another feather in the cap of dubious political favoritism adding itself to the legacy of assassinations, imprisonments, backstabings and/or public humiliations of Truth-tellers — while assassinations are covered-up by “commissions” and true history is written OUT of elementary school books and true cultural heritage is eclipsed by the authority of assimilationist leadings.
The Anglo-American Establishment WILL Have It’s Way
and the Sun Will Never Set On The English Empire… .
(universal language).
To: Joe Tedesky
Sir, I believe your comment is spot on. Israel swings the U.S. around by the tail, and we reward them for it. They arrogantly disrespect our president, manipulate us, attack us at will, and we continue, in effect, to thank them for it.
Regina, I’m glad we have common ground. I do want to empathize my criticism of any nation is strictly political. Just, as I being an American, and not wanting to be considered a Neocon, or something not good like that, I never want my ranting to be against an ethnicity, or race of people. Besides that, there are enough problems, and matters which need attended too here in the States, that worrying about Israel is certainly much of an overload. I think this whole chaotic mess America is involved with in the Middle East is a twofer, pipelines, and Israel. When, you read stories out there, reporting how American police departments, are being trained by Israeli’s, well just how far does this stuff go? Instead, of America exporting ‘that everyone is equal’ theme, America imports Israeli riot squad control methods. Excuse me WTF! What, an ideology to adopt. I mean too tell you, that’s nuts. So, we can be like them, and use jet aircraft to fight street fighters, yeah that’s what America should do. I know there are Jewish voices out there protesting the Netanyahu’s of Israel, but due to one reason, or another, these fine Jewish people are not being heard. All this, and yet, all Israel would need to do, would be to reconfigure it’s government, to become a true democracy representing all of it’s varied citizens. Humanity should always come first.
You are absolutely right. So what do we conclude from all this and what can we do about it?
The answer to my first question is that we ought to conclude that the Khazar impostors posing as Jews (the synagogue of Satan of Revelation 2:9 and 3:9) are the Antichrist of these end times who have hijacked our nation and world in their Satanic cult of the Babylonian Talmud of orthodox Judaism and that the Protocols of the learned Elders of Zion have now been fully implemented. In short, America is Israel’s servile slave and we are living in the final days of the end times of Bible prophecy.
The answer to my second question is dependent upon my answer to the first one. It too is quite simple, but not at all popular: confess and repent of our many sins and submit our lives fully to Yahushua (Jesus) as lord over our lives while there is still time in which to do so. 11 months from today (11/2/15) the great tribulation of Daniel 12 and Matthew 24 comes to an end. During the 45 days which follow, the prophecies of Matthew 24:29-31, followed by those of Revelation 19:7-9 have to be fulfilled with hair-splitting accuracy. After that 45 day window of time passes, the wrath of God will be poured out upon the wicked earth dwellers who remain behind in the gathering of Matthew 24:30-31. Where each of us stands with God makes all the difference in the world. Let the wise understand. The wicked never will. Daniel 12:10 assures us of this.
In short, America’s political corruption and fraud, while rampant, is pointing to something of much greater strategic importance that is of biblical proportions. This who fail to grasp this warning will soon regret it deeply. Nothing could be more obvious.
A collection of quote about the H-1B/foreign labor
Department of Labor:
“H-1B workers may be hired even when a qualified U.S. worker wants the job, and a U.S. worker can be displaced from the job in favor of the foreign worker.â€
Joel Stewart immigration lawyer:
“An employer who wants to hire a foreign national has an arsenal of legal means to reject any U.S. applicant.”
Sen. Robert Bennett (R-Utah):
“Once it’s clear (the visa bill) is going to get through, everybody signs up so nobody can be in the position of being accused of being against high tech. There were, in fact, a whole lot of folks against it, but because they are tapping the high-tech community for campaign contributions, they don’t want to admit that in public.”
Rep. Tom Davis (R-Va.):
“This is not a popular bill with the public. It’s popular with the CEOs…This is a very important issue for the high-tech executives who give the money.”
Cohen & Grigsby, holding seminars on how to legally avoid hiring qualified Americans:
Lawrence Lebowitz’s famous quote explaining of the PERM application process to employers.
“Our goal is clearly not to find a qualified and interested U.S. worker, and that, in a sense, sounds funny, but it’s what we are trying to do here.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCbFEgFajGU&list=PL243A162ED9AD5887
Milton Friedman”
“There is no doubt, that the [H-1B] program is a benefit to their employers, enabling them to get workers at a lower wage, and to that extent, it is a subsidy.”
Ben Bernanke, Chairman of the Federal Reserve He testified to Congress:
“Simply producing more engineers and scientists may not be the answer because the labor market for those workers will simply reflect lower wages or, perhaps, greater unemployment for those workers.â€
Vivek Wadhwa of Duke University, a supported of more foreign workers (he is one):
“…the problem isn’t the supply, it’s the demand…we have enough engineers and scientists. The problem is that the salaries aren’t there.â€
“I know from my experience as a tech CEO that H-1Bs are cheaper than domestic hires. Technically, these workers are supposed to be paid a ‘prevailing wage,’ but this mechanism is riddled with loopholes. In the tech world, salaries vary widely based on skill and competence. Yet the prevailing wage concept works on average salaries, so you can hire a superstar for the cost of an average worker.â€
Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.):
“What many of us have come to understand is that these H-1B visas are not being used to supplement the American workforce where we have shortages but, rather, H-1B visas are being used to replace American workers with lower cost foreign workers.”
Norm Matloff:
Here’s a personal example. Some years ago I gave a talk in a public debate on H-1B, and after the talk a man came up to me, introducing himself as the CEO of a Silicon Valley firm. He said, “You’re wrong about our hiring H-1Bs as cheap labor. There really is a tech labor shortage, and my company is having real trouble finding software engineers.†I replied, “Well, my wife is a software engineer. I’ll have her apply for a position in your company, and we’ll see what happens. Her surname is different from mine, so you won’t know it’s her.†He immediately backtracked, protesting, “No, that’s not fair, she’s probably making too much money!†Indeed. Clearly this CEO had cheap labor as his first priority; quality didn’t even enter into the conversation.
“Mr. James A. Malcolm, who….. knew that Mr. Woodrow Wilson, for good and sufficient reasons, always attached the greatest possible importance to the advice of a very prominent Zionist (Mr. Justice Brandeis, of the U.S. Supreme Court) ; and was in close touch with Mr. Greenberg, Editor of the Jewish Chronicle (London) ; and knew that several important Zionist Jewish leaders had already gravitated to London from the Continent on the qui vive awaiting events ; and appreciated and realised the depth and strength of Jewish national aspirations; spontaneously took the initiative, to convince first of all Sir Mark Sykes, Under Secretary to the War Cabinet, and afterwards Monsieur Georges Picot, of the French Embassy in London, and Monsieur Goût of the Quai d’Orsay (Eastern Section), that the best and perhaps the only way (which proved so. to be) to induce the American President to come into the War was to secure the co-operation of Zionist Jews by promising them Palestine, and thus enlist and mobilise the hitherto unsuspectedly powerful forces of Zionist Jews in America and elsewhere in favour of the Allies on a quid pro quo contract basis. Thus, as will be seen, the Zionists, having carried out their part, and greatly helped to bring America in, the Balfour Declaration of 1917 was but the public confirmation of the necessarily secret ‘gentleman’s’ agreement of 1916…†“The Balfour Declaration, in the words of Professor H. M. V. Temperley, was ‘a definite contract between the British Government and Jewry.’ The main consideration given by the Jewish people (represented at the time by the leaders of the Zionist Organisation) was their help in bringing President Wilson to the aid of the Allies.†“…many wealthy and prominent international or semi-assimilated Jews in Europe and America were openly or tacitly opposed to it (Zionist movement)…â€
From, ‘Against our Better Judgement: the History of how the U.S. was used to create Israel’ by Alison Weir
Sorry, for the length of this post, but it seemed necessary to make the point. Our current politicians, are just following the lead of their pass forefathers. This Zionist influence, has been with us for a very long time. The question is, how much longer will this corrupt bribery of our U.S. politicians, be allowed to continue.
Your analysis and summary is quite accurate. The answer to your question concerning how long will this sad state of affairs continue is rather easy to answer, however few have the discernment to see the objective truth. We are living in the final year of the great tribulation, foretold in Daniel 12 and Matthew 24 for thou7sands of years. In 11 months it’s over. The prophecies of Matthew 24:29-31, followed by those of Revelation 19:7-9 have to be fulfilled with hair-splitting accuracy in the 45 days which follow. Once that window of time passes, the wrath of God (YHWH) will be poured out upon the wicked earth dwellers who are left behind in the gathering of Matthew 24:30-31.
The bottom line is that this sad state of affairs does not have a happy ending for most people alive on the planet today. Nor is is a man-made one. It turns out that the Bible is, and always has been, 100% trustworthy, true and reliable in every respect. Imagine that.
A lot of other religious charlatans have also claimed to have figured out the dates when end time events that are allegedly predicted in the Bible are supposed to happen. I think the most recent was the late Harold Camping who predicted that the world would end on May 21, 2011.
One of the earliest such predictions was that by William Miller who predicted that Christ would return on October 22, 1844.
They have all been wrong.
And of course these charlatans have also made a point of claiming that the Bible is 100% trustworthy absolute truth.
You should see this guy and other religious extremists go at each other, absolutely convinced that HE is right and the other guy is wrong; hurling Bible verses at each other like snowballs in a snowball fight.
It’s a riot.
Has any foreign country, in the history of the United States, ever had as much influence, as Israel does over on this American Republic? Why, not just put Netanyahu into the U.S. Presidency, and get it over with? Instead of the tea party demanding their country back from Obama, maybe they should aim their demanding rant towards Israel. This form of Israeli funding of our U.S. Presidential candidates, goes all the way back to the 1948 Truman presidential campaign. We, need a George Marshall, and we need him bad. Meanwhile American politicians like Rubio, will use American taxpayer money to buy Israel even more state of the art weapons, and to fight what, street fighters, who only want their God given due to a fairer life.
I’m shocked, shocked to see for the thousandth time a US politician taking money from and working for the interests of a foreign entity.
You can’t be serious. America is owned and controlled by the Khazar “jewish” Illuminati Freemason Zionist global elites who hijacked America in their Satanic cult decades ago. Anyone who has the least bit of concern for the objective truth has figured this out already. the evidence for this is everywhere!
This is an important article and the little mistake at the very end (“funding of candidates in the 2015 election”) doesn’t matter.
Or was the election in Argentina meant? On November 22 a run-off election will decide if the successor of Cristina Fernandez will continue her social policies, which improved the life of millions of poor Argentinians, or make a sharp turn toward free-market policies as it is represented by US-capitalism.
Christina Fernandez was throughout her time in office ridiculed for her “free spending populism,” and the dangerous example of a country where social responsibility and compassion matter was for sure an additional motive to wage an economic war against Argentina.
It would be interesting to know who funded the campaign of Mauricio Macri. Bloomberg wrote already triumphantly: “Big Hedge-Fund Windfall in Store If Macri Wins Argentina Runoff.”
Capitalists of the world unite!
Thanks for the catch–I did indeed mean the 2016 (U.S.) election. I have asked for the text to be corrected.