Rep. Eric Massa's resignation created a week-long media buzz earlier this month amid allegations of a homosexual harassment scandal. ABC news asked on their web site, "should we be digging deeper?" Yes, you should, U.S. corporate media.
Instead of covering tabloid-like sex scandals 24/7, or trying to frame Massa's resignation in the context of the health care reform debate, perhaps a real look at Massa's ulterior motives for resigning are in order.
Today, investigative reporter Greg Palast published an article that does just that. Palast, however, like a real journalist, digs beyond the bovine excrement and superficial sound bytes that make up today's television news, or the newspapers that are most useful for catching your pet's droppings:
At first, [Massa] said he was quitting Congress because he has cancer. Then he said he resigned because a buck-naked Rahm Emanuel bullied him in the Congressional shower-room and then threatened him over his health care vote. (Foxhole wing-nut Glenn Beck fell for that canard.) Then Massa said he resigned because of an aide's accusation that the Congressman tickled the aide in an "inappropriate" manner. (The mainstream press swallowed that one whole.)
The public persona of Eric Massa portrayed by the corporate media drew of a picture of a liberal progressive, but his private persona (aside from the tickling and snorkeling) paints a picture of yet another politician bought and sold by corporate interests, whose past finally caught him by the tail.
Greg Palast was chasing Massa for an interview in a video segment that was broadcast on BBC.
I specifically wanted to ask [Massa] about Paul Singer: "Swift Boat" Singer, the guy who funded the vile attacks on Presidential Candidate John Kerry. "Swift Boat" Singer — reportedly the biggest funder of the Republican Party in New York. Our information was that the demi-billionaire Singer was backing Massa. Singer's nickname isn't really Swift Boat. It's "The Vulture." Singer is a speculator, the predator-in-chief of the flock of financiers, collectively known as "vultures," who buy up the right to collect on old loans made to the world's poorest nations.
A "vulture fund" is a fund or investment company that purchases debt claims as a secondary lender. This means that vulture funds are not primary lenders, but rather are entities that have purchased the debt from some other source, such as a bank. Generally, these funds purchase debt involving highly distressed countries, such as Liberia or Argentina.
In the mid-1990s, Paul Singer invented vulture funds. Companies that practice this sort of predatory capitalism buy debts racked up years ago by the poorest countries on earth, almost always when they were run by kleptocratic dictators backed by the CIA, before most of the current population was born. They buy it for small sums, as little as 10 percent of its paper value, from the original holder.
The sellers of these debts usually are more than willing to rid themselves of these debts because many of these debts may soon come into default or face restructuring negotiations. Since the vulture funds purchase this debt as it is about to be written off, banks will write off loans as a loss if they believe that the borrower will no longer be able to repay the loans.
The vultures then sue the debtor or borrower for the full value of the debt, plus interest. The lawsuits occur in national courts, often in the United States, Paris, or Brussels. If they can't pay, the vulture fund goes after anybody who is paying the poor country money, trying to force them to give it to them instead. In one instance, a fund tried to get a court order freezing Belgian aid payments to the Congo, saying it should go into their bank account.
Through litigation and negotiation, vulture funds have been able to secure a payout, sometimes 100 times greater than the cost of the vulture's purchase. Meanwhile, the governments and people in third world countries hit with this debt cannot afford basic needs, like food, clean water, or medicine to help combat AIDS epidemics.
But back to former Rep. Eric Massa - how does he fit into all of this? Progressives and liberals like to claim that Republicans in congress are for sale. That may be true, but it may also be true that Democrats like Eric Massa are for rent, and when their leases expire they move on to another venue.
The vultures had been looking for some morally challenged congressperson to front a bill to help them crank billions from the budgets of Third World nations. The law that could make demi-billionaire Singer a billionaire is called, "The Judgment Evading Foreign States Accountability Act" (H.R. 2493). In effect, the bill says that if Argentina (and other Third World nations) don't pay Mr. Singer and his vulture buddies the billions they demand, then the US government will act as Singer's enforcement arm, hanging out Argentina to dry, cutting off trade between our countries.
Palast also claims that two sources said, "Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was not amused at Massa's weirdo attack on the financial lifeblood of US allies, nor does the White House favor a law which would provoke seizures of US assets abroad."
It is unclear why Rep. Massa resigned, but if it was because he is a homosexual and tickled a staffer, or because he did not like the health care bill - then no problem. Senator David Vitter (R-LA), known as "Vitter The __itter," was caught getting diapered by the Washington Madame, and still remains in the Senate voting against what he calls Obama's "immoral" program.
And in case conservatives and Republicans think this is soley a democratic scandal, you may want to know that Rudy Giuliani's campaign was primarily funded by money from organizations involved in these same vulture funds.
If Massa resigned, however, because of his connections with the players that work vulture funds and because that contradicts his TV image as a progressive...or because the executive branch put some heat behind his tail due to his hypocrisy, then it makes more sense.
Comments
All of congress and Wall St. banks are crooks - I say get rid of them. Time to pluck the feathers, heat up the tar and get the ropes out!
Interesting. Good job using the neon sign of Eric Massas' resignation to discuss Singers business practices. I will admit. I am smarted after reading your piece than before.
;) Smarter
Palast is an excellent writer. Glad to see someone else reads his work. Great article, Gregory.
Congress and Wall St. bankers crooks? No way! Say it ain't so! As long as I have known how to talk they have always been like that, and always will be like that, the question that prevails is to what degree!
This remind me of reading the book Economic Hitman by John Perkins. His job was to go to third world country and make a unrealistic deal with the government. If the third world country can not pay, then they can give US government land,oil and other resource in exchange for paying off the debt.
I was suspicious of Massa's changing stories for why he quit. Now Palast has given us another dimension -- perhaps he was really afraid that he was about to be outted for aiding a vulture like Singer, and that his help has criminal implications. Quit now before the investigations start.
Also the mention of Giuliani -- imagine if a close associate of a prominent Dem, say Howard Dean, was convicted of felony charges and revealed to be a scumbag who misused facilities intended for 9/11 workers for trysts with his mistress and his position as NYC police chief for personal gain. The media would have field day excoriating the guy and Dean's chnaces of running for publci office would be permanently doomed. Yet there's Giuliani, contemplating a run for NY Gov. or Sen. after his close buddy and business partner Bernie Kerik has been sentenced to four years in prison. Our fair and balanced 'liberal media' at work.
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