FPI / March 7, 2023

Corporate WATCH

Commentary by Joe Schaeffer

From Paul Ryan on the board of Fox News to Jeff Flake as Biden administration ambassador to Turkey and Adam Kinzinger as newly minted political analyst at CNN, The Swamp always takes care of its own.

It especially makes sure to look out for the RINOs who loyally toil in the “Controlled Opposition” wing of the progressive ruling establishment.

So there was never a doubt that anti-Trump obsessive Liz Cheney was going to be granted a soft landing after her crushing GOP primary defeat in Wyoming while seeking re-election to the House in 2020. The only question was who would be providing the pillows.

On March 1, we found out. From a University of Virginia release:
 

Former Rep. Liz Cheney has accepted an appointment as a professor of practice with the University of Virginia Center for Politics, center officials announced Wednesday.

The appointment is effective immediately and will run through the end of the 2023 fall semester with an option to renew.

Cheney will get to continue her tiresome charade of utilizing the loaded term “democracy” as a blunt weapon to attack political supporters of Donald Trump:
 

“I hope my work with the Center for Politics and the broader community at the University of Virginia will contribute to finding lasting solutions that not only preserve, but strengthen our democracy,” she said.

As World Tribune documented in June 2021, the University of Virginia has created a “Democracy Initiative” that aims to defend the governing institutions of the ruling status quo:
 

“The University of Virginia plans to invest $100 million in the study, teaching and promotion of democracy – a defining institutional ambition for the 21st century.” So reads a June 4 statement on the founding of the Democracy Initiative.

The “nonpartisan institute” will be headed up by an Obama administration alum who served for years as Ted Kennedy’s chief counsel on the Senate Judiciary committee. Melody Barnes is also a former vice president at the John Podesta-founded Center for American Progress who currently serves on the Board of Directors for Swamp defense contracting behemoth Booz Allen Hamilton and is an official at the globalist think tank the Aspen Institute.

Democracy will not die for lack of Deep State progressive connections.

This is what Liz Cheney has latched on to. An examination of the big money funding this partisan academic sham reveals just how dirty this ultimate Swamp creature’s golden parachute really is. The UVa Democracy Initiative was birthed due to $50 million in funding provided by law school alum Bruce Karsh, co-founder of Oaktree Capital Management, “a global asset management firm with assets under management of $150 billion.”

Karsh and his wife Martha have donated millions to Democrat candidates and toxic progressive social causes over the years. Let us count some of the ways. The website Open Secrets reveals Martha Karsh was a bundler for Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential campaign to the tune of $1,885,519. (see page 3 of link).

A Forbes article titled "Here Are the Billionaires Backing Joe Biden's Presidential Campaign, As Of September 2019" featured the Karshes:
 

Bruce and Marsha Karsh:

Net worth: $2.2 billion

Source of wealth: Private equity

Size of donation: $5,600

Also supported: Michael Bennet, Kamala Harris (dropout)

Other notable contributions: DNC Services Corp. / Democratic National Committee ($135,500)

In 2008, the Karshes were seated at Table 2 at a swank “$28,500-per-plate dinner” Hollywood fundraiser for Barack Obama. In 2012, the Karshes were at it again, attending a Hollywood fundraiser that helped net Obama a cool $4 million in two days in La-La Land. Bruce Karsh is listed as a donor (“from $25,001 to $50,000”) to the disgraced Clinton Foundation.

It comes as a surprise, then, to find these dedicated Democrat financial backers do in fact love some Republicans. Or does it?

Martha Karsh donated to Liz Cheney’s failed re-election campaign in 2020 and gave a hefty $50,000 to the faux Republican Lincoln Project. One more item on the Karshes’ long history of supporting Democrats. A 2013 Hollywood Reporter article related how they served as early backers of Cory Booker’s rise to the U.S. Senate:
 

On April 25, a glittering who’s who of Hollywood Democrats, and even a sprinkling of industry Republicans, will contribute $5,000 apiece to attend an “evening in support of Cory Booker for Senate” at the Beverly Hills mansion of producer and former United Artists CEO Jerry Weintraub and his longtime girlfriend, producer Susan Elkins....

According to a Booker spokesperson, Oaktree Capital’s billionaire founders Bruce Karsh and Howard Marks, whose names appeared as co-hosts on an earlier invite, are attending the event as supporters, along with wives Nancy and Martha. Karsh and Marks — whose firm owns the largest share in the Tribune Company — were strong backers of Obama during the last presidential election.

Barack Obama is not the only thing Oaktree’s dynamic duo strongly backs. The global financial speculating firm is a rabidly enthusiastic business partner of Asian communist superpower China. The Financial Times reported in February 2022:
 

The most striking financial news emanating from China in recent weeks has been the seizure by a US investor of a prized asset owned by Evergrande, the collapsing Chinese real estate giant. The asset seized was a sprawling residential development called “Venice” on the Yellow Sea coast near Shanghai. The US investor was distressed debt specialist Oaktree, a $161bn asset manager run by Howard Marks.

Marks is known for not shying away from bare-knuckle fights with delinquent companies and rival creditors. But this deal has a wider significance. Marks’ progress in claiming ownership of the Venice development runs counter to a narrative that China is becoming increasingly uninvestable, especially to foreign investors.

Marks made clear that Oaktree was all-in on the bloodstained tyrannical regime:
 

Marks himself sounded upbeat in comments to the Financial Times. “I personally believe China wants to be a member of the world financial community. And I think that desire will inform its actions,” he said. “I hope I’m not being Pollyanna... but, so far, there’s been no evidence to the contrary that we cannot count on the rule of law.”

A 2020 article in the Los Angeles Business Journal shows how thoroughly tied to the hip of China Oaktree is:
 

Oaktree Capital Management has become the first foreign distressed debt company to set up a wholly owned unit in China under the Phase I U.S.-China trade deal.

The subsidiary, dubbed Oaktree (Beijing) Investment Management Co., was established with $5.4 million in registered capital and will be based in the Chinese capital, according to a statement by Beijing’s financial regulatory department....

The move strengthens Oaktree’s already sizable presence in China. The downtown-based company has invested a total of $6.5 billion in China’s distressed debt market, according to the regulatory statement.

This is how Bruce Karsh made his money. Now, let's see how he spends it. A glance at his Karsh Family Foundation “philanthropy” tax filings posted by ProPublica reveals numerous contributions to the forces destroying American society. In 2020, the foundation gave $20,000 to the Equal Justice Initiative, which advocates for emptying America’s prisons of lawbreakers in the name of mass “decarceration,” and $10,000 to Planned Parenthood Los Angeles. Fiscal Year 2019 uncovers a whopping $100,000 donation to New Venture Fund, a lavishly funded operation that seeks to crush all opposition to the ruling establishment under the guise of combatting “misinformation”:
 

The sheer scale of networked money pouring into NVF is an eye-opener. “More than half of the 50 largest U.S. grant-making foundations have funded projects hosted at the New Venture Fund, including eight of the top 10,” the organization boasts on its website. The fund “in 2020 received the largest one-year commitment the [Bill & Melinda] Gates Foundation had made in more than half a decade,” Breitbart reported in May.

That month, New Venture Fund led the way in attacking Elon Musk, then in the early stages of his purchase of Twitter. NVF played a major role in organizing a pressure campaign urging a boycott of the social media site if Musk attempted to put an end to the rampant censorship operation deployed against conservative and anti-establishment opinion at the Blue Bird.

“The Media Democracy Fund has supported the government having more regulatory control over the internet and is a project of the New Venture Fund,” the Washington Examiner reported in December. George Soros’s Open Society Foundations is listed as a “Funding Partner” of the Media Democracy Fund. The Karsh Family Foundation Fiscal Year 2017 tax return shows donations to pro-migrant invasion NGO International Rescue Committee ($10,000) and the Planned Parenthood Federation of America ($5,000).

And now you know where all those feathers that line Liz Cheney’s pillow-soft landing came from.

Free Press International
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