What if you had $10 million a year to...

iVillage Member
Registered: 10-18-2008
What if you had $10 million a year to...
3
Sat, 10-25-2008 - 8:02am

What if you had $10 million a year to spend on your own political agenda?



  • Would save for ten years and start your own media company to spread your ideas?
  • Would you find candidates who supported your agenda and fund them?
  • Would you start your own think tank to spread your ideology?
  • Would you spend money digging up dirt on politicians hostile to your agenda?
  • Would you use your money to run for office yourself?
  • Other (Post how you would use your largesse to promote your political agenda.)


You will be able to change your vote.


iVillage Member
Registered: 10-18-2008
Tue, 10-28-2008 - 1:56am

Here's what Russian oligarchs do:


Oleg Deripaska and the Buying of Washington: Controversial oligarch funds local think tanks

By Ken Silverstein


Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska has recently been the subject of a number of unflattering news accounts. An oligarch close to Valdimir Putin, Deripaska is a former metals trader who “survived the gangster wars in the post-Soviet aluminum industry.”


Deripaksa ranked number 9 on this year’s Forbes list of the wealthiest people, with assets of $28 billion. But it appears that the chaos in global financial markets has hit Deripaska hard. “Deripaska, the nuclear physicist turned post-Soviet corporate raider, has ceded more than a billion dollars in assets to jittery creditors as his aluminum-to-automobile empire reels,” the New York Times recently reported.


Deripaska has spread plenty of money around the United States, especially in Washington, D.C., to try to win himself friends and influence. Foremost on his mind, it seems, is reversing a current visa ban that keeps him from entering the United States over concerns that he has ties to organized crime.


So how has Deripaska tried to woo Washington and gain a patina of respectability? Well, as has been previously reported, he used Rick Davis, John McCain’s campaign chairman, to set up a meeting with McCain back in 2006. The Wall Street Journal (which has done a series of excellent pieces on Deripaksa) has reported on his ties to GlobalOptions Management, a Washington consulting firm.


Here are a few more details of Deripaska’s PR offensive.


Through his holding company, Basic Element, Deripaska is a major donor to the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). According to the Council’s website, Basic Element is a member of the “President’s Circle,” the second-highest corporate donor level.


Basic Element is sponsoring a series at the CFR on, of all things, “corporate governance.” The series “will focus on the burgeoning trend of best-in-class companies originating from emerging market countries, and by virtue of their global reach and often unconventional business models, reinventing the nature of global competition.”


Basic Element has also offered “generous financial support” to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Back in December 2005, Deripaska gave a speech at Carnegie entitled “Restructuring Soviet Enterprises: Challenges and Solutions.” His funding for the think tank soon followed.


The talk started about 90 minutes late because Deripaska’s private plane was delayed in New York, someone who was on hand told me. When he did turn up, Deripaska gave a brief PowerPoint presentation about his truck factory. “People were stunned,” this person said. “There was nothing detailed about finance, foreign business, tariffs, or other subjects you would have expected to hear about.”


Deripaska’s event was hosted by Carnegie’s Anders Aslund, who later offered this comment to the Washington Post about the Russian oligarch: “He’s not the nicest in terms of law abidance. But he is by no means among the worst.”


Deripaska has also bought himself a Harvard pedigree. Thanks to a contribution to the university, he serves as an International Council Member at Harvard’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs.


Note also that Anders Aslund, incidentally, is now at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, where he recently wrote an incredibly flattering profile of former Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma. “Kuchma looks good, much healthier than when he was in office,” Aslund reports. “I asked him to characterize himself. True to his personality, he answered with one word: ‘pragmatist’.” Than came this penetrating follow-up question from Aslund to Kuchma: “What was your greatest deed?”


Peterson’s board of directors includes Victor Pinchuk–Kuchma’s son-in-law. Pinchuk emerged as an oligarch in the Ukraine during the controversial rule of Kuchma. http://www.harpers.org/archive/2008/10/hbc-90003753




Edited 10/28/2008 1:58 am ET by friendwithbenefits
iVillage Member
Registered: 09-08-2008
Tue, 10-28-2008 - 2:03am
I would find and support political causes that

iVillage Member
Registered: 10-18-2008
Tue, 10-28-2008 - 2:14am
That would be great. I think I'd give my money to organizations that promoted funding publicly financed elections. Ultimately my goal would be to make publicly financed elections, through