Special Report
De-funder of the Left
When he wasn't defrauding charities and investors, Bernard Madoff was bankrolling liberal causes and candidates.
By swindling clients out of up to $50 billion, hedge fund manager Bernard L. Madoff has hurt -- and in some cases fatally wounded -- scores of nonprofit groups and charitable foundations.
Through his Social Security-like Ponzi scheme that paid older investors with incoming funds from newer investors, Madoff, a heavy donor to Democratic candidates, also did irreparable harm to the liberal and far-left causes he loves.
At least two major left-leaning charities are closing their doors as a direct consequence of the record-breaking fraud.
The giant Picower Foundation had the misfortune to choose Madoff to manage its more than $1 billion in assets.
The charity has given away more than $189 million since 1999.
A sizeable chunk of its funding has gone to abortion groups, including NARAL ($3.2 million), Center for Reproductive Rights ($2.5 million), Planned Parenthood ($2.4 million), and Center for Reproductive Law and Policy ($625,000).
Picower Foundation gave $2.9 million to the Southern Poverty Law Center, a public interest law firm that uses politically skewed definitions of racism to indoctrinate children while smearing conservatives who question racial preference programs. The foundation also gave $200,000 to Project Vote (a.k.a. Voting for America), an affiliate of the radical Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN).
Another affected charity is the JEHT Foundation, which said it expects to close down in January because its benefactors invested in Madoff’s hedge fund. JEHT, an acronym that stands for Justice, Equality, Human dignity and Tolerance, is a reliable funder of far left causes and has given away more than $72 million in grants since heiress and Democratic donor Jeanne Levy-Church founded it in 2000.
JEHT gave $1.7 million to the ACLU and its foundation, along with $839,500 to the ultra-leftist public interest law firm, the Center for Constitutional Rights. CCR helped to convince the Supreme Court in Boumediene v. Bush (2008) to confer habeas corpus rights for the first time in history on alien enemies detained abroad by the U.S. military in wartime. The decision gives terrorists a green light to manipulate our justice system and flout the well-established laws of civilized warfare.
JEHT gave $250,000 to the American Institute for Social Justice, an ACORN affiliate. The Saul Alinsky-inspired Institute trains community organizers and in recent years has served as a shadowy financial clearinghouse, directing $9 million to ACORN and two of its other affiliates.
JEHT gave $55,000 to Nan Aron’s Alliance for Justice, a group that systematically distorts conservative judges' records in an effort to block their elevation to higher courts. You may remember the Alliance helped to torpedo the Supreme Court nomination of Robert Bork in 1987 and nearly succeeded in "borking" Clarence Thomas in 1991. More recently, the group fought President Bush's nominations of Charles Pickering and Priscilla Owen to federal courts.
JEHT also gave more than $4.2 million to the Tides Foundation and its affiliates. Tides funds abortion rights advocacy, environmental extremism, anti-war activism, gun control, and opposes free trade.
The Madoff scandal has also ended Madoff’s personal philanthropic efforts.
Madoff Family Foundation, which reported assets of $19.1 million at the end of 2007, has given $110,000 to the anti-poverty Robin Hood Foundation since 2003.
Newsman Tom Brokaw and Children's Defense Fund president and Hillary Clinton pal Marian Wright Edelman sit on the Robin Hood board. The liberal foundation has given ACORN $821,000. George Soros's Soros Fund Charitable Foundation gave the Robin Hood Foundation a $9.8 million community development grant in 2000.
About the Author
Matthew Vadum is an award-winning investigative journalist at a conservative watchdog group in Washington, D.C. Vadum is also author of Subversion Inc: How Obama's ACORN Red Shirts are Still Terrorizing and Ripping Off American Taxpayers.
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Sangell| 1.5.09 @ 7:25AM
Charities? More like non-profits. Left or right maybe it is time to define more rigorously what we call charity. Funding a group that pays college tuition for the children of murder victims might be charity but is funding a gang of lawyers to file appeals on behalf of the killers?
justavtoer| 1.5.09 @ 7:41AM
I'm sure liberals have several Madoffs stashed away somewhere. Madoff doesn't even scratch the surface. The real scammers have been in power for two years and the new ones are getting ready to take office in a couple of weeks. They just haven't figured out when they take and take and take everybody gets hurt in the process. All in the name of helping the little guy.
syn| 1.5.09 @ 8:08AM
So much dirty money yet there is more than enough to keep the Party of Lawyers in the filthy lifestyle to which they have grown accustomed; and all of this is because the majority of Americans lust for a lousy 30 pieces of silver.
Robert Rosencrans| 1.5.09 @ 9:11AM
The saga of Bernie Madoff brings up some interesting moral issues. Should he be condemned because he stole from the rich left to donate to other rich left? Or is he simply a victim of his own largess, i.e., running a non profit for profit investment scheme that appeared to profit Bernie Madoff before all others.
In that way, he was God like, like many liberals. Their elitist philosophy justifies any type of unproven social cause, be it climate change or mass murder through abortion.
Unlike many politicians though, he doesn't have the authority to tax others, simply taking what he wanted through guile and stealth. In that sense though, he does resemble the politically liberal elite.
Here's an excerpt from an article where Bill Clinton's Me Fund received a $100,000 donation from an upper New York State developer, followed by legislation sponsored by Hillary Clinton where the developer received several million in taxpayers funds. Sort of an IOU bailout.
Bernie Madoff's problem is that he did not recognize the actual cash value of having a spouse in the U.S. Senate to rob the taxpayers with no strings attached, while you continue to receive your Presidential retirement annuity, and your spouse receives a Senate paycheck.
That would indicate to me that Bernie Madoff is not as clever as the Clintons, and perhaps is getting what he deserves for stealing directly, as opposed to indirectly.
Wise up Bernie.
http://www.ocala.com/article/20090104/ZNYT02/901043005/1368/googlesitemapnews?Title=A_Donor__x2019_s_Gift_Soon_Followed_Clinton__x2019_s_Help
An upstate New York developer donated $100,000 to former President Bill Clinton’s foundation in November 2004, around the same time that Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton helped secure millions of dollars in federal assistance for the businessman’s mall project.
Mrs. Clinton helped enact legislation allowing the developer, Robert J. Congel, to use tax-exempt bonds to help finance the construction of the Destiny USA entertainment and shopping complex, an expansion of the Carousel Center in Syracuse.
Mrs. Clinton also helped secure a provision in a highway bill that set aside $5 million for Destiny USA roadway construction.
The bill with the tax-free bonds provision became law in October 2004, weeks before the donation, and the highway bill with the set-aside became law in August 2005, about nine months after the donation.
Big Elk| 1.5.09 @ 12:02PM
democRATS are proven crooks, liars, and racists, and traitors. What with Chief Black Racist Pig Obama in charge, the leftist crimes will soar even higher as Obama makes American taxcpayer money available to his cronies and fellow-racists, Chicago style. As we have seen with the phoney latino Bill Richardson, and Obama's best friend Blago, and Subway Chuck Schumer and Freaky Al Franken and the rest of the democRAT crooks. All of the left-wing charties Madoff gave the stolen money to should have their CEOs charged and criminally prosecuted for receiving stolen property and receiving stolen funds, and their boards of directors should be put into prison. Start with the Tides of Frisco. All of that stolen money, with the rate of interest Madoff promised the investors he stole from should be taken from those Madoff gave it to and those non-profits should be shut down. Will it happen? Will we see justice? Not as long as black racist pig Obama is president. God save America from the crimes of the democRATS.
Editor| 1.5.09 @ 12:49PM
The political and financial developments of the last six months have been so dramatic that they must be leaving an imprint in our collective subconsciousness. Like with any significant experience, we learn lessons from it and involuntarily change our judgment when similar events in the future occur. This is what we mean.
1. There are no consequences for the 'elite masses'.
Billions of equity have evaporated, pensions have been obliterated for millions of (future) retirees, the global financial system is endangered for the years to come. Try to steal a Coke in a supermarket and you likely end up in jail. Do the same on a $50 billion scale and you’ll be put under house arrest. Employees are made 'redundant', CEO's take millions of bonuses home. Politicians who were supposed to regulate financial instruments and markets as they are regulating the Internet, your taxation, stem cell research and gay marriage, have not been doing so.
2. Politicians are clueless.
The global political class appears not to have any substantial clue on the causes, effects and remedies of the crisis. They act like a herd of cows in a wasp swarm. Window dressing, tax increase and printing money are the only way out for them. Politicians are not competent because they have not been prepared for this (unless your name is Kennedy, of course). The vast majority of politicians are caretakers, with the sole objective of getting re-elected. Guess who elected them.
3. Rich people are stupid, too.
4. We are not responsible.
The banks should not have given us the mortgage in the first place. The politicians should have regulated the markets. The SEC bears no responsibility for the financial crisis. The government should bail us out.
So how will this thinking impact the way we deal with future events?
A certain tendency to externalise responsibility is always present in any society, implying that sharing the pain will be an unattractive scenario. And the shameless last minute cash grabbing by the bank's top echelons will not help here. On top, we may expect a substantially more cynical attitude towards any authority. With an eroded credibility, governments will find it harder to sell and implement necessary stringent measures. This will especially become a delicate issue in times when social cohesion will be further strained as a result of the unavoidable hyperinflation. Consequently, political leaders will tend to react more harshly on developments as they occur. Both domestically as well as internationally.
New political leadership is needed, so much is clear. Or will it have to come from somewhere else?
Marc Jeric| 1.5.09 @ 2:35PM
Way back in the 1930's they called themselves communists. When the Gulag books showed up and the extreme terror and poverty of communist regimes became known, they changed their name to socialists. When socialist policies in Europe and the Third World countries proved poverty-producing and liberty-reducing, they renamed themselves as liberals or progressives. But they are still the same freedom-hating, absolute power- seeking bunch of criminals; they are now almost in total power - in the White House, in the Congress, in the universities, in the Main Stream Media, in most states governments, in the courts of all levels, in the government employees unions.
Well, welcome to the future - American voters!
F. Dempsey| 1.5.09 @ 3:10PM
Aren't the recipients of stolen goods required to surrender ill-gotten gains. These charities should be sued by the government to make restitution to the victims of Madoff's scheme.
Smitty| 1.5.09 @ 3:13PM
Madoff will take down more than the Keating 5, I'm guessing a whole lot of politicians have spouses on charity boards & used their spouses influence to quash investigations of Madoff, oh ya this will also lead to tax evasion charges for all those poilitical hacks with undisclosed offshore accounts that they'll need to declare when making a claim.
My guess is many so-called "Madoff victim investors" will mysteriously disappear & eat the losses in silence rather than admit they held undeclared offshore accounts.
The SIPC has less than 1.5 billion in assets, no way can they bail out anybody without a direct tax payer subsidy and besides the SIPC wasn't created to bailout ponzi victims or international hedge funds.
ruth| 1.6.09 @ 2:53AM
Where's Interloper? I'm sure he has a few pearls of wisdom for us; like liberals are squeaky clean and the big, bad repubs are the corrupt ones. What a nauseating group of losers liberals are.
fred lapides| 1.6.09 @ 1:56PM
What a dumb post! Charities get taken for a ride and that is good news? what of all the decent folks who are not "left" of your perspective that got screwed? They don't matter, right?
Johnny| 1.7.09 @ 12:07AM
These charities needed a lot of defunding. I hope there are more like it coming.
Deploy| 1.7.09 @ 4:12AM
Big Elk just mad 'cause he can't find any black racist cock to suck.
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Capital Research Center: links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:
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ADF Alliance Alert » Madoff Ponzi scheme hits left wing groups hard links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:
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Capital Research Center: links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:
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Bernard Madoff, De-Funder of the Left « NewsReal Blog links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:
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Dodgeblogium » Madoff does some good… not deliberately… links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:
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“Bernard Madoff, De-Funder of the Left” « the “silent” majority no more! links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:
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Government Keeps Pressing Ponzi Schemes « NewsReal Blog links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:
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Capital Research Center: links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:
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“Dirty Money” and the SPLC « Watching the Watchdogs links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:
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An Alternative To The Official Ponzi Scheme « NewsReal Blog links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:
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Big Elk just mad 'cause he can't find any black racist cock to suck.
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