Thursday, November 7, 2013

SEIU’s Andy Stern Suffers Smackdown in Latest Romance with Venture Capitalist




SEIU's Andy Stern
Remember the recent post about Andy Stern’s budding romance with Gina Raimondo, the venture-capitalist-turned-State-Treasurer in Rhode Island?

Ten days ago, SEIU’s President Emeritus rushed to Raimondo’s defense by publishing an op-ed in the Providence Journal after AFSCME rightfully attacked Raimondo for slashing workers’ pensions and lining the pockets of her Wall Street pals.

Well... Andy’s defense of Raimondo hasn’t gone unnoticed.

Earlier this week, Stern suffered a searing smackdown delivered by a national financial expert who performed the forensic analysis of Raimondo’s corrupt pension scheme. 

The expert, Edward Siedle, is a former lawyer for the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). He also founded the Whistleblower Forensic Opportunity Trust and has conducted over $1 trillion in forensic investigations of the money management industry.

On Sunday, Siedle published an op-ed in the Providence Journal that begins like this:

Let me congratulate Andy Stern (“Raimondo right to use investment tools,” Commentary, Oct. 27) on his good fortune after leaving the Service Employees International Union in 2010 — in particular, the two positions he has taken associated with a private equity titan, Ronald D. Perelman.

Stern recently accepted a paid position on the board of directors of the biochemical company SIGA, owned by billionaire Ron Perelman’s private equity firm MacAndrews & Forbes. Stern also recently accepted an endowed position at Columbia University as a Ronald O. Perelman Senior Fellow at the Richard Paul Richman Center for Business, Law, and Public Policy. While The Journal identified Stern at the bottom of the piece as the former president of SEIU and a senior fellow at Columbia, the fact that he is compensated by the private equity industry was omitted.

Mr. Stern opines that it is critical that we try to focus the discussion of pension issues in Rhode Island on facts. I couldn’t agree more. Let’s start with a recitation of irrefutable, indisputable facts…

Ouch!

How much more pathetic can a so-called ‘labor leader’ possibly get… than to be ridiculed for being a bought-and-paid-for tool of a gang of venture capitalists and Stern's billionaire sugar daddy, Ron Perelman?