From Howard Dean to Paul Hackett
How Beltway Democrats Kill Their Own
February 18, 2006
opednews.com
Excerpt:
McAuliffe tapped into these fat cats’ resources, scoring a bundle of cash -- some $18 million -- for himself when he ditched his Global Crossing stock in 1999. But McAuliffe’s tie to the anti-Deaniacs didn’t end there. Along with McAuliffe, Bernard Schwartz, who donated $15,000 to Jones’ group, was a plaintiff in a 1998 lawsuit over the alleged breaching of export regulations between the US and China.
In fact, Schwartz, the chairman and CEO of Loral Space & Communications, has a long history of complicity in Democratic scandals. In 1994, he gave the DNC $100,000 and visited China with President Clinton’s Commerce Secretary Ron Brown. Their trip yielded an annual $250 million package for cellular telephone service in the country. Two years later in 1996, Schwartz wrote Clinton urging him to allow Loral to use Chinese rockets to launch their multi-million dollar satellite. The Chinese and Loral officials had been in negotiations since 1994, under the auspices of a contract Loral had with their contractor Intelsat. Schwartz was upset, as his Republican-backing competitors, Lockheed Martin and Hughes Aircraft, had been operating in China for some time.
Despite overt objections by the Defense Department and Secretary of State Warren Christopher, Clinton personally transferred jurisdiction of satellite-export licensing from the State Department to Commerce Secretary and ex-chairman of the DNC Ron Brown. At the same time, Schwartz increased his contributions to the Democratic Party, making him the largest single contributor in the 1996 election cycle. Later that same year Clinton signed a waiver that allowed Schwartz’s Loral Space Company to export a satellite they had manufactured to China.
“[Schwartz] was honored on his 71st birthday with a private White House dinner. It's because of this access, Clinton's critics suggest, that the president rubber-stamped Loral's launches in China -- even after Loral apparently ignored security procedures in 1996 by faxing Beijing a draft report about a Chinese rocket crash that destroyed a Loral satellite,” Ken Silverstein wrote in Mother Jones in November 1998. “But campaign cash and personal ties are only the obvious way that Loral -- and the defense industry -- buys favors in Washington. An in-depth look shows that thousands of former Pentagon workers routinely go to work for arms makers and defense industry consultants upon their retirement, and confidential memos obtained by Mother Jones from such a company show how easily these cozy relationships influence legislation,” Silverstein contended.
And in 2002, Loral paid $14 million to the State Department after Schwartz was charged with aiding the Chinese’s missile technology research by faxing the draft report. Their payment was a sort of legal plea bargain intended to close the book on the 1996 matter. In July 2003, shortly after this payment, Loral went bankrupt. But thanks to a nudge from Republicans and their main advisory, Lockheed Martin, the company is now making its way back to the top. And while thousands of employees have since been laid off in Loral’s Silicon Valley home because of the ordeal, Schwartz is -- not surprisingly -- still riding high.
Given that this is how big money works for “Washington Democrats,” it is little wonder that Schwartz wanted to punish Dean for challenging the DC norm, even if the presidential hopeful had only stumbled into the role of “maverick progressive” by accident. The truth is, Schwartz didn’t want this new base of Democratic activists to take over the party he did business with.
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