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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsHow Mitch McConnell became very rich (w/o a job)
Daily Kos
How Mitch McConnell became very rich
by debtov
It seems, from opensecrets.org's review of his financial disclosure forms, that McConnell's wealth has jumped substantially in the last few years.
Back in 2005, McConnell's net worth was somewhere between $1,645,032 and $4,278,999, ranking him the 38th richest Senator.
After four years when the stock market has flatlined, McConnell now has a net worth between $7,102,036 and $32,756,000, and he's now the 12th wealthiest Senator.
Pretty good, for a guy who has evidently NEVER had a private sector job.
Obviously, the wide range of McConnell's estimated wealth is due to the way the disclosure forms allow a pretty wide range on reports of assets.
His top asset is his holdings in the Vanguard Tax Exempt Money Market, estimated at between $5,001,002 and $25,015,000. His next most valuable asset is his D.C. home (and carriage house rental) which is reported as worth between $1M and $5M.
The rest are investments in a wide variety of stock and bond mutual funds.
Let's look at his Vanguard investments.
Back in 2006, his major Vanguard investment was in its 500 Index Fund, estimated at between $650,003 and $1,350,000.
The next year, McConnell's wealth in that fund jumped to an estimated $1,100,002 to $5,250,000. Then in 2008 (not a good year in the market), McConnell's wealth in that fund dropped a bit (estimated from $500K to $1M), but all of a sudden he had $5,001,002 to $25,015,000 in the Vanguard Tax Exempt Money Market.
The year before, he had a pittance ($1K to $15K) in that fund.
Somehow, some way, McConnell got much richer in 2008, getting at least $5M from somebody.
That somebody was his second wife's father, who made his fortune in shipping Chinese-made goods to the USA.
Elaine Chao married McConnell in 1993, and was George W. Bush's anti- Labor Secretary for the full eight years.
According to Laura Flanders, her father, James Chao:
had the luck not only to attend one of his country's finest universities with Jiang Zemin, the future leader of the People's Republic, but also to fall in with the immensely powerful Shanghai-born family the Tungs, who shifted their operations to Taiwan for a time.
The Tung dynasty is powerful in Chinese politics and business to this day. Hong Kong's first chief executive after reunification with mainland China was Tung Chee Hwa, the first child of the magnate Tung Chao Yung, in whose Maritime Trust company James Chao got his start. James Chao married into another powerful family: the Hsus. His wife's family would later operate a shipping empire in Hong Kong.
So Mitch McConnell has moved from the upper-middle class of a lifelong government employee into the real upper class ($20M or so net worth) of someone who married a woman with a rich father.
Who just happened to become rich from his connections with the rulers of communist China.
Villagers would say that this is old news, "free" trade is great for everybody, we like Mitch and Elaine, and want him to return our calls, etc.
So they have not reported on the source of McConnell's mega-wealth (relative to the rest of us), and how that source has presumably, for 20 years or so, affected McConnell's positions on "free" trade and its devastating impact on millions of Americans who used to have decent manufacturing jobs.
McConnell and his wife are cheap-labor Republicans who hate the idea of American factory workers making more than $15 an hour.
Because that's what their benefactors want them to do.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/12/05/925858/-How-Mitch-McConnell-became-very-rich
ORIGINALLY POSTED TO DEVTOB ON SUN DEC 05, 2010 AT 08:10 PM EST.
ALSO REPUBLISHED BY DAILY KOS CLASSICS.
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Fred Sanders
(23,946 posts)America is exceptional in legalizing it.
Corruption, it is not just for banana Republics any more.
forest444
(5,902 posts)The sinner Senator from Kentucky.
http://m.thenation.com/article/186689-mitch-mcconnells-freighted-ties-shadowy-shipping-company
libdem4life
(13,877 posts)Banana Republic.
Kleptocracy, alternatively cleptocracy or kleptarchy, (from Greek: ??έ???? - kleptēs, "thief"[1] and ??ά??? - kratos, "power, rule",[2] hence "rule by thieves" is a form of political and government corruption where the government exists to increase the personal wealth and political power of its officials and the ruling class at the expense of the wider population, often with pretense of honest service.
This type of government is generally considered corrupt, and the mechanism of action is often embezzlement of state funds.
While the term can be used in its literal sense to mean a society based on theft, it is more commonly used derogatorily to point out a corrupt government or ruling class.
deminks
(11,017 posts)As we mentioned here prior to his re-election, Sen. Mitch McConnell is one of the wealthier members of Congress thanks to his wife Elaine Chao's family's shipping company and as Lee Fang reported in The Nation last month, their offshore business deals, which just happen to include smuggling a large amount of cocaine.
Mitch McConnells Freighted Ties to a Shadowy Shipping Company:
After drugs were found aboard the Ping May, a vessel owned by his wifes familys company, Colombian authorities are investigating.
Before the Ping May, a rusty cargo vessel, could disembark from the port of Santa Marta en route to the Netherlands in late August, Colombian inspectors boarded the boat and made a discovery. Hidden in the ships chain locker, amidst its load of coal bound for Europe, were approximately 40 kilograms, or about ninety pounds, of cocaine. A Colombian Coast Guard official told The Nation that there is an ongoing investigation.
The seizure of the narcotics shipment in the Caribbean port occurred far away from Kentucky, the state in which Senator Mitch McConnell is now facing a career-defining election. But the Republican Senate minority leader has the closest of ties to the owner of the Ping May, the vessel containing the illicit materials: the Foremost Maritime Corporation, a firm founded and owned by McConnells in-laws, the Chao family.
(end snip)
Mitch McConnells Freighted Ties to a Shadowy Shipping Company
http://www.thenation.com/article/186689/mitch-mcconnells-freighted-ties-shadowy-shipping-company
Before the Ping May, a rusty cargo vessel, could disembark from the port of Santa Marta en route to the Netherlands in late August, Colombian inspectors boarded the boat and made a discovery. Hidden in the ships chain locker, amidst its load of coal bound for Europe, were approximately 40 kilograms, or about ninety pounds, of cocaine. A Colombian Coast Guard official told The Nation that there is an ongoing investigation.
The seizure of the narcotics shipment in the Caribbean port occurred far away from Kentucky, the state in which Senator Mitch McConnell is now facing a career-defining election. But the Republican Senate minority leader has the closest of ties to the owner of the Ping May, the vessel containing the illicit materials: the Foremost Maritime Corporation, a firm founded and owned by McConnells in-laws, the Chao family.
Though Foremost has played a pivotal role in McConnells life, bestowing the senator with most of his personal wealth and generating thousands in donations to his campaign committees, the drug bust went unnoticed in Kentucky, where every bit of McConnell-related news has generated fodder for the campaign trail. Thats because, like many international shipping companies, Chaos firm is shrouded from public view, concealing its identity and limiting its legal liability through an array of tax shelters and foreign registrations. Registered through a limited liability company in the Marshall Islands, the Ping May flies the Liberian flag.
(end snip)
BrotherIvan
(9,126 posts)They like their turtle right where he is.
Dustlawyer
(10,497 posts)care enough to learn or give a damn about such things.
Demand Publicly Funded Elections!!!!
mopinko
(70,208 posts)is senator's disclosure forms?
erronis
(15,328 posts)These people aren't about to disclose anything about cash/bank transactions that are outside of normal IRS payrolls.
If the Turtle's wife happened to get $155M transferred into one of her off-shore accounts, do you think our fine Senator would need to (or volunteer to) disclose this.
Frankly my dears - disclosure, paying taxes, doing your duties - these are all for "you" people.
mopinko
(70,208 posts)i also know that little me w my little money doesnt stand a chance of cashing in like the insiders to.
Thinkingabout
(30,058 posts)Per diem. Yea, right, exactly.
safeinOhio
(32,715 posts)Just pull yourself up buy your wife's high heel pumps straps.
turbinetree
(24,720 posts)Lets put, ask or force him (turtle lips McConnell) to put on a JACKET to show who is BRIBING him just like when you see old Mickelson with his Barclay hat and golf shirt of all the corporations and the oligarpghy that pay his fees to golf, then the people will see how the corruption of political gain is making the few rich off the many and they (political, and corporations, oligarpghy ect...) rig the system just like pigs at a trough of greed.
Passing or attempting to pass laws for largeness for the few instead of for everyone.
FDR & Vice -President Wallace had it right and the Reagan trickle down economics for the last thirty-five years are showing how greed has corrupted the (small d) democracy and we need to say more about this and attempt to re-invigorate the FDR model and take back this country and the U.S. Supreme court who is backing this trickle down spiral of greed in everything, from the dismantling of voting, union representation, and whatever is in store for the health care, trdae deals, you name it
Omaha Steve
(99,708 posts)One of the family ships was caught smuggling illegal drugs!!! Lots of them.
erronis
(15,328 posts)While bribery, blackmail, skullduggery, and outright threats of murder are not uncommon in the powered elite, this particular era (say 1990-now) is exceptional.
Whether or not I like the turtle or the boner or the rabid morticians/pest-controllers of the right wing, or feel that the democratical (stet) party has lost its moorings, I do think that our apparatus has been totally co-opted by those dark forces that print $$$ whenever they need to influence governance.
There are honest and hard-working representatives in congress and I'm sure mine (VT) and yours are. They are not going to be allowed to influence the new rules of law. They can bluster, filibuster, write wonderful op-eds but they will not be allowed to change the rules.
Turtle and all the other swells that are soaking the taxpayers for their meager salaries are collecting many more millions from the greasy palms. Having lived in, worked around DC, for many years I know these people aren't playing by the same rules that they want YOU to play by. It's rigged - and you're not in the game.
blackspade
(10,056 posts)I can't believe KY elected him again.
It didn't help that we had a horrid Democratic candidate this year....