Press: Andy Stern’s Venture Capitalist GF Faces Possible Punishment at Polls

Remember when SEIU’s Andy Stern rushed to the defense of Gina Raimondo, a former venture capitalist who slashed the pensions of Rhode Island workers and then funneled a billion dollars of workers’ retirement money to her buddies at Wall Street hedge funds?

Well, Raimondo is now trying to become the Governor of Rhode Island… but is facing blowback from voters due to her pension-slashing extravaganza, according to the New York Times.

Raimondo, a Democrat, should have an easy time getting elected in Rhode Island, where Dems outnumber Republicans by 4 to 1.

But here's what the New York Times reported in an article over the weekend (“In Rhode Island Governor’s Race, Pension Issue Could Hurt Raimondo,” Nov. 1, 2014):

In this Democratic state, Ms. Raimondo could be expected to be doing well, but a Brown University poll released on Tuesday showed her and Mr. Fung running neck and neck. The nonpartisan Cook Political Report now calls the race a tossup. One big reason is the pension issue, which alienated the public-sector unions, an important ally in any traditional Democratic coalition.

If Raimondo loses tomorrow's election, let’s hope she’s consigned to the political dustbin for, uh, maybe an eon or two. 

Raimondo -- who critics describe as "a tool of Wall Street” who “trumped up the pension problem to enrich her Wall Street friends, in part through increased state payments in hedge fund fees” -- seems to symbolize everything that's wrong in a society where billionaires and hedge-fund fatcats enjoy unprecedented wealth at the expense of the rest of us. 

And Andy Stern, of course, represents everything that's wrong with corrupt union leaders who rush to the side of the Perelmans, Raimondos, and David Cotes instead of workers.

Former-SEIU-president-turned-hedge-fund-insider Andy Stern: “Don’t criticize my pals!”

Stern with Honeywell CEO David Cote

In case you're wondering what SEIU President Emeritus Andy Stern is up to these days, he’s super busy defending all his plutocratic pals at hedge funds and corporate penthouses -- like billionaire Ron Perelman, Honeywell CEO David Cote, and pension-slashing-venture-capitalist Gina Raimondo.

Here's the latest.

Stern, in yet another eloquent performance, recently told the Washington Post that he ain’t concerned at all that the United States now has the worst income inequality since 1928… and even trails countries like Poland, Hungary, South Korea and Estonia in terms of income distribution… as U.S. CEOs pocket billions while slashing workers’ pay, health insurance and pensions.

Check out this “Quote of the Month” featured in the latest edition of Labor Notes:

Quote of the Month: The Washington Post asked former-SEIU-president-turned-hedge-fund-insider Andy Stern his advice for the Democratic Party. Stern spoke out: "I think it's really not helpful for the Democrats to turn this into an attack on the 1 percent. I don't think it's the American spirit, or at least the Democratic Party's future spirit. As Republicans attack immigration, we attack rich people? If you've learned anything from the president, selling hope is better than selling hate."

SEIU Officials Are Linked to Pension-Slashing Scheme Backed by Enron Billionaire

Andrew McDonald

Remember how Andy Stern was recently trashed for supporting the efforts of Gina Raimondo, the Treasurer of Rhode Island, to slash workers’ pensions?

Well, check out this new development.

It turns out that Stern’s former spokesperson, Andrew McDonald, is linked to a “diabolical plot to loot worker pensions” that’s backed by a billionaire from Enron.

Who’s Andrew McDonald?

In 2008, McDonald was the “Assistant Director of Communications” at SEIU’s DC headquarters. He served as Stern’s press spokesperson and helped carry out SEIU’s attack against SEIU-UHW, which was then headed by union reformer Sal Rosselli.

In 2008, McDonald worked with Tyrone Freeman to try to prevent the Los Angeles Times from completing its investigation into his massive corruption scandal, according to internal emails that have not previously aired publicly.

Andy Stern

Below, Tasty has posted an email between Freeman and his communications staffer, Leigh Shelton, in which they discuss McDonald’s role in trying to fend off inquiries by LA Times reporter Paul Pringle. At the time, McDonald reported to Steve Trossman.

The email is important because it shows how SEIU’s top officials in DC directly aided Freeman in the midst of the scandal... perhaps as part of the cover-up operation allegedly directed by Trossman.

Now… let's turn back to McDonald’s link to the pension-slashing campaign that's raging across the U.S.

After leaving SEIU, McDonald took a job at the Pew Charitable Trusts, where he served as a “Communications Senior Officer.”

At that time, Pew partnered with an Enron billionaire, John Arnold, to launch an attack against workers’ pensions in the U.S., according to a report recently issued by David Sirota, a nationally syndicated columnist and author. 

The anti-pension partnership uses Pew’s supposedly “neutral” reputation to champion an ideologically driven plan to slash workers’ pensions and replace them with 401(k) plans, according to Sirota’s report, which is entitled “The Plot against Pensions: The Pew-Arnold Campaign to Undermine America’s Retirement Security – and Leave Taxpayers with the Bill.”

By “issuing joint reports and conducting joint legislative briefings,” says Sirota, “Pew and Arnold have successfully manufactured the perception of crisis -- which has prompted demands for dramatic action. Pew and Arnold have consequently helped shape those general demands into specific efforts to cut guaranteed retirement income…”

John Arnold, Enron billionaire

It turns out that McDonald played a role in pushing out these anti-pension reports to policy makers and the public. For example, when Pew issued a report entitled “The Trillion Dollar Gap: Underfunded State Retirement Systems and the Roads to Reform,” McDonald helped “disseminate” and publicize the report, according to the report’s acknowledgments.

Is it pure coincidence that McDonald and SEIU's President Emeritus are both working to promote the slashing of workers’ pensions?   

Interestingly, Pew and the Enron billionaire have specifically targeted a handful of states such as Rhode Island… where Stern recently rushed to the aid of the state’s pension-slashing treasurer.

The following are some excerpts from Sirota’s report... which raise an obvious question:

Why the f*ck are SEIU officials promoting efforts to slash the pensions of public-sector workers, especially given that SEIU's members include hundreds of thousands of state, county and municipal workers across the U.S? (Note: Freeman's email exchange regarding the LA Times and McDonald is below.)

In each of these states and many others now debating pension “reform,” Pew and Arnold have colluded to shape a narrative that suggests cutting public pension benefits is the only viable path forward. This, despite the fact that a) cutting wasteful corporate welfare could raise enough revenues to prevent such cuts; b) the pension “reform” proposals from Pew and Arnold could end up costing more than simply shoring up the existing system; and c) pension expenditures are typically more reliable methods of economic stimulus than corporate welfare.

Those inconvenient facts have been ignored in the political debate over pensions. Thanks to the combination of Pew’s well-known brand and Arnold’s vast resources, the pension-slashing movement’s extremist message has been able to dominate the political discourse in states throughout America.

The result is a skewed national conversation about state budgets – one in which middle-class public sector workers are increasingly asked to assume all the financial sacrifice for balancing the government books, and corporations and the wealthy are exempted from any sacrifice whatsoever.

   Tyrone Freeman's email to SEIU Communications Staffer about assistance from SEIU's Andrew McDonal...

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?  

SEIU's Andy Stern Finds New Romance in Pension-Slashing Adventure

SEIU's Andy Stern

Remember Andy Stern’s “bromance” with Ron Perelman, the billionaire venture capitalist?

Well, don’t tell Ron, but it looks like Andy has fallen head over heels for a younger venture capitalist who’s busy slashing workers’ pensions. 

Ain’t that a perfect match for SEIU’s President Emeritus? After all, SEIU-UHW's Dave Regan, one of Andy's best buddies, has already destroyed the defined-benefit pensions of tens of thousands of healthcare workers in California.

Who, exactly, is Andy’s new love object? 

She’s Gina Raimondo, a 42-year-old former venture capitalist who’s now the Treasurer of Rhode Island.

Gina Raimondo

Raimondo is waging a war on public workers' pensions and has rammed through a law that’s “slashing benefits of state employees with a speed and ferocity seldom before seen by any local government,” according to “Looting the Pension Funds” by Matt Taibbi, a contributing editor for Rolling Stone magazine.

What kinds of cuts?

She “raised the minimum retirement age, suspended annual cost-of-living increases and replaced the state's defined-benefit pension with a hybrid that includes a 401k-style plan,” according to the Providence Journal.

And that’s not all. 

She funneled a billion dollars of workers’ pension money to her buddies who run hedge funds on Wall Street. These hedge fund fatcats, who are charging Rhode Island taxpayers $70 million a year in "investment fees," are in turn showering Raimondo with campaign contributions for her expected run for governor.

Earlier this month, AFSCME released a 106-page forensic investigation performed by a national financial expert that shines the light on Raimondo's scam. The report begins this way:  

Two years ago, Rhode Island's state pension fund fell victim to a Wall Street coup. It happened when Gina Raimondo, a venture capital manager with an uncertain investment track record of only a few years… got herself elected as the General Treasurer of the State of Rhode Island with the financial backing of out-of-state hedge fund managers. Raimondo's new role endowed her with responsibility for overseeing the state's entire $7 billion in pension assets.

The report, which received prominent coverage in the Providence Journal, continues:

The Treasurer has emerged as the leading national advocate of a disingenuous form of public pension 'reform' which involves slashing worker's benefits and thwarting public access to information regarding the riskiest of pension investments while, in secret, dramatically increasing the risks to retirement plans and the fees they pay to Wall Street.

The financial expert, Ted Siedle, goes on to charge Raimondo with committing multiple violations of state and federal laws.

So… what does Andy Stern think about Raimondo?

Just days after Siedle and AFSCME trashed Raimondo in the Providence Journal, Stern rushed to her defense by publishing an op-ed in the same newspaper. In the op-ed, entitled “Raimondo Right to Use Investment Tools,” Stern says things like this: 

I have met and talked with Rhode Island General Treasurer Gina Raimondo… it is not helpful to attack her integrity and motives... While one can debate whether Rhode Island was right to alter benefits for current employees and pensioners, Rhode Island should be applauded for using all the tools in the modern investment manager’s toolkit to generate the returns workers are counting on to pay for their pensions.

Gimme a break! Once again, when workers are in a fight, Stern rushes to the Boss's side.

According to observers, Raimondo’s looting of public pensions is just the leading edge of a broader national attack against workers’ pensions. According to the Rolling Stone, one of Raimondo’s key supporters is “billionaire former Enron executive John Arnold – a dickishly ubiquitous young right-wing kingmaker with clear designs on becoming the next generation's Koch brothers, and who for years had been funding a nationwide campaign to slash benefits for public workers.”

Ron Perelman

Back on Wall Street, three of the hedge fund owners who are getting rich off Raimondo’s pension scam also happen to serve “on the board of the Manhattan Institute, a prominent conservative think tank with a history of supporting benefit-slashing reforms. The institute named Raimondo its 2011 "Urban Innovator" of the year,” according to the Rolling Stone.

Taibbi's article offers more details about the scam engineered by Raimondo, summarizing it this way:

This is the third act in an improbable triple-fucking of ordinary people that Wall Street is seeking to pull off as a shocker epilogue to the crisis era.

Where does all of this leave Stern?

Let's face it. Andy is a pathetic figure. He long ago threw in his lot with billionaire capitalists like Ron Perelman. Nowadays, Andy's corporate pals let him prance around in a business suit and salivate over stock options in exchange for Andy lending his title as SEIU's President Emeritus to anti-worker causes backed by big business. Stern, like so many other SEIU leaders, is for sale to the highest bidder.