Now that presidential candidate Andrew Yang has
openly welcomed Super PAC money to help his campaign, he will be susceptible to
influence from ultra-rich donors who will now have the power to give Yang unlimited bribes through the newly formed Math PAC dedicated to supporting his campaign.
Undoubtedly, much of these oligarch donors will be sourced from Yang’s
supporters who backed his previous career in venture capital and technology
startups. Some of these backers of Yang’s company, Venture For America, include
unsavory characters ranging from staunch racist Trump supporters to highly
abusive employers to corrupt financiers.
Dan
Gilbert: Racist billionaire Trump supporter who loves his tax cuts
One of these unsavory Yang backers is Dan
Gilbert, Chairman and Founder of Quicken Loans and owner of the NBA’s Cleveland
Cavaliers. Gilbert provided $1.5 million of funding to Yang’s firm in
2013. He once found himself in the midst of controversy after his slave
owner-like mentality was on full display in his remarks regarding Lebron James in 2010.
Gilbert also has a close relationship with
President Donald Trump and his family, donating $750,000 to Trump’s inaugural
fund. President Trump personally considers Gilbert to be “a great friend.” For
sure Gilbert understands the power and influence he has as a political donor
and has used this power for material gain. Following his donation to the Trump
inaugural fund the areas of downtown Detroit in which Gilbert has heavily
invested in was chosen as opportunity zones under Trump’s tax law, giving
Gilbert massive tax breaks, despite the fact that these particular areas of
Detroit did not meet the poverty requirements. This is problematic because
these tax breaks were meant to go to impoverished communities, but instead were
gifted to a right-wing Trumpist oligarch.
After secretly donating who knows how many
millions of dollars to Math PAC, one might be a bit worried about what type of
tax policies Gilbert may be suggesting to Yang in their private phone calls
between one another.
Tony
Hsieh: Corrupt venture capitalist, abusive employer
Another problematic character within Yang’s group
of corporatist tech oligarchs is Tony Hsieh, founder of Zappos and former head
of Las Vegas-based incubator The Downtown Project. Hsieh was a corrupt and
abusive employer and as head of his entrepreneurial incubator he pressured employees to lie to city officials
regarding the nature of the incubator, skirt city permitting processes and
bypass city zoning laws. The pressure on employees to operate in this corrupt
and dishonest fashion proved to be too much for many. One employee, 24-year-old
Ovik Banerjee, eventually committed suicide in January 2014 by jumping from his
apartment in downtown Las Vegas due to the psychological pressure of having to
act against his principles of honesty in order to appease the power lust of an
immoral and corrupt supporter of Yang.
This was, in fact, the second suicide within the
tight-knit entrepreneurial community which operated almost like a college
dormitory with venture founders living together in what was essentially a
village of gentrifiers. The first suicide, before Banerjee, was Jody Sherman, 48, an entrepreneur who worked
from The Downtown Project. He shot himself in his car in January 2013. Following
Banerjee’s suicide, another entrepreneur working from The Downtown Project,
50-year-old Matt Berman hung himself in his home in May
2014. The first suicide sent psychological and emotional shockwaves throughout
the tight-knit, almost village-like, community of around 300 entrepreneurs at
The Downtown Project. However, Hsieh mostly went out of his way to keep the
suicide as secretive as possible and completely neglected to offer any type of
grief counseling to the venture founders at The Downtown Project. There were
not even any type of large scale gatherings for community grieving organized at
The Downtown Project. Hsieh was more interested in maintaining an image of
success and supposed happiness, than taking care of his employees and fellow
entrepreneurs.
It would be easy to imagine Hsieh donating to
Yang’s campaign the amount of, let us say, $1 million, the exact amount Hsieh was able to
easily afford to pledge to Yang’s Venture for America. One may wonder how much
influence over Yang’s policy choices that amount would buy for Hsieh. Perhaps
Hsieh may not be the best advocate for the need for mental health in Yang’s vague
healthcare plan which currently has plenty of room for details to be
filled in. Hsieh certainly would not be the best advocate for employee rights
as he uses his tech-hipster money to shape Yang’s labor policies. Undoubtedly,
Hsieh would favor loose regulations for real estate developers to make it easy
to streamline the gentrification process like he did in the Las Vegas incubator
project.
Sam
Altman: Pathetic tech bro with fragile Twitter ego, similar to Trump
Another Yang big donor whose behavior many may
find undesirable is Sam Altman, chairman of Y-Combinator and co-chairman of OpenAI,
who is now actively raising funds for Yang’s campaign through big dollar
elitist fundraisers. Altman is hosting a fundraiser for Yang in San Francisco in
November 2019 with tickets going for a minimum of $2,000 and a maximum amount
of $5,700. With seat prices like those, this is obviously not a grassroots
campaign powered by everyday people. This is a campaign for and by the elite
corporatist oligarchs which have supported Yang throughout his entire venture
capital career.
Not only is Altman helping turn Yang’s campaign
into less of a people-powered movement than it already was, Altman is also a
thin-skinned bully who cannot handle criticism and believes in attacking the
press, just like Trump. In 2017, Altman had banned journalist Sarah Lacy from a
Y-Combinator event due to a single critical piece written for Pando. He even
went on to libel Lacy’s and Pando’s reputation after Lacy posted a series of
Tweets detailing misogyny she witnessed in the tech world. Altman claimed Pando
was bias due to his competitor supposedly being the publisher’s only advertiser,
which was proven patently false.
There can be little doubt that the conversation
between Altman and Yang at the upcoming elitist fundraiser dinner will not be
helpful in pushing Yang towards protecting press freedom.
Robert
McCann: Chairman of corrupt bank and Wall Street insider
Speaking of elitist, there are not too many
things more elitist than Wall Street and its culture of corruption. Robert
McCann, chairman of one of the more corrupt banking firms on Wall Street, UBS,
arranged for his bank to invest $1.2 million into Venture for America in 2013.
This is a serious issue now that McCann and UBS will be able to donate
unlimited amounts of money to help Yang’s campaign through Math PAC. UBS was
fined $1.5 billion for rigging Libor as well as other benchmarket
interest rates.
Yang benefiting from money donated by UBS will
certainly have an influence on Yang’s willingness to implement any type of
banking reform to protect the American people.
Corporations and oligarchs have wreaked havoc on
American democracy. Candidates, like Yang, who happily accept the help of big dollar donors from
corporate elites are furthering the corrupting influence money has in politics
and should be shunned by all who believe in a free and fair democracy in
America.
