GET TO KNOW YOUR FREELOADERS: The Fanjul Brothers

[ClosedCaption]

Alfonso--or, as he prefers to call himself, Alfy--Fanjul was on the line, wanting to talk about the sugar business. This, in itself, was nothing unusual. In his most famous call on the subject, the Palm Beach, Fla., sugar billionaire was on the phone with Bill Clinton one afternoon in February 1996, trying to persuade the then president not to support a sugar tax. It was two years later--when Fanjul saw Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr's report--before he discovered that while he was trying to bend the president's ear, Monica Lewinsky was in the Oval Office trying to get Clinton's attention in other ways. "I heard no heavy breathing or nothing," Fanjul recalled last week. "I was really handling my own business, and I didn't know anything else was going on."

Last week, Fanjul was back in the public eye, talking up his company's takeover of the Domino sugar refineries in this country from Britain's Tate & Lyle. The $180 million deal will give Florida Crystals Corp.--part of the Fanjuls' privately held holding company, Flo-Sun--control of the sugar manufacturing process from cane fields to supermarket shelves. But once again, Fanjul found his interlocutors had other subjects on their minds. Did Fanjul and his younger brother Pepe, during the presidential recount in Florida last winter, underwrite the legal fees for Secretary of State Katherine Harris, whose attorney, Joseph Klock, is also their chief counsel and spokesman? (They didn't, they insist.) And had the Cuban-born Fanjuls paid the legal expenses for the Miami relatives of Elian Gonzalez last year? (They did.) "It was a small amount," Pepe Fanjul said. "Less than $20,000."

When it comes to talking business with the brothers whose names are synonymous with Big Sugar, politics is an essential ingredient. Last week, their Domino deal sparked renewed calls on Capitol Hill for an end to the federal government's $560 million-a-year subsidy to sugar growers--an estimated $65 million of which goes to the Fanjuls. Five years ago, Florida Rep. Dan Miller failed to kill the 20-year-old subsidy, but he vows to try again this fall. Miller and others blame the program for creating a crisis in the domestic sugar industry. Facing an end to subsidies for other crops in the 1995 farm bill, hundreds of farmers tore up their wheat fields to plant sugar beets--producing a glut. At a time when sugar is selling at 9 cents a pound on the world market, the program has forced U.S. industries that gorge on the sweetener to pay domestic growers more than twice that amount.

Candyland. A report by the General Accounting Office last year estimated the scheme has cost U.S. consumers $1.9 billion in higher prices for baked goods and bonbons. Last month, Chicago Mayor Richard Daley blasted it for costing his city 8,000 jobs in the past decade, as candy makers moved offshore. But Pepe Fanjul waved off that argument. "Jobs are moving abroad," he said, "because they can make their products with cheaper labor."

The subsidy scheme has clearly sweetened the Fanjuls' sumptuous lifestyle. Since their 1959 flight from Cuba, where their family ruled the sugar industry--entertaining the Duke of Windsor and Hollywood's royalty--they have toiled to reclaim that lost glory. Their secretive web of global holdings now includes 180,000 acres of sugar cane in Florida and 240,000 more in the Dominican Republic. Still, the Cuban Revolution taught them not to leave their political fate to chance. During the last election cycle, the sugar industry contributed $3.3 million to candidates in both parties--about a third of that from the Fanjuls' own larder.

Sharing the political duties, Pepe tends to the Republicans, Alfy the Democrats--which landed him in the Starr report three years ago. But by the time he interrupted Lewinsky's Oval Office visit, he was already miffed by the Clinton administration's apparent lack of appreciation for Flo-Sun's efforts to clean up the Everglades, where its toxic pesticide runoff has been blamed for widespread degradation. Nor was he enthusiastic about the possibility of a victory by environmentalist Al Gore. Last year, Gore received only $7,750 of the sugar growers' largess, while Bush got nearly five times that amount--$36,700.

No wonder then that under Bush, Pepe Fanjul now predicts the sugar industry's prospects are sweet. Or that he admits cheering the sight of the Fanjuls' own pit-bull-style attorney, Joe Klock, at Katherine Harris's side. He claims Klock's hiring was a surprise. "Of course," Fanjul quips, "I congratulated Joe that Katherine Harris had such a good counsel."This story appears in the August 6, 2001 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.

A Sweet Deal for Big Sugar's Daddies - US News and World Report

 

[ClosedCaption]

So in short, these guys get subsidies for their sugar to the tune of 65 MILLION. Instead of the price for sugar being around 7-9 cents which is the case worldwide Americans pay 3 times more costing US 1.9 BILLION cause sugar goes in everything right?

They're able to do that because they donate heavily to both parties in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.

To put it plain. They walk in throw money on the table (donations) for a favor (kickback). Later they come back and that favor is costing 60 times more than the money they gave. Then they flip over the table, piss on the rug (the everglades) then leave...

Until next time..

 

[Claudette]

Get rid of all subsidies, entitlements and tax breaks.

That includes everyone and every company.

End of problem.

 

[LilOlLady]

Don't leave out GE who made a $40 million profit and paid no taxes on it> THEY call it a tax loop.

 

[LilOlLady]

Don't leave out GE who made a $40 million profit and paid no taxes on it> THEY call it a tax loop.

 

[georgephillip]

When it comes to freeloaders...

Let us not forget Wall Street banks responsible for looting roughly $17 trillion (in the US) "in wages, savings and retirement benefits from ordinary citizens."

"The 10 major banks, which control 60 percent of the economy, determine how our legislative bills are written, how our courts rule, how we frame our public debates on the airwaves, who is elected to office and how we are governed.

"The phrase consent of the governed has been turned by our two major political parties into a cruel joke.

"There is no way to vote against the interests of Goldman Sachs.

"And the faster these banks and huge corporations are broken up and regulated the sooner we will become free."

This Is What Resistance Looks Like | Truthout

 

[editec]

This is what comes of a system of campagin financing that encourages bribery, folks.

We can spend all day pointing out where the GOP or DNC accepts bribes like these.

And if you're a particularly stupid partisan you'll keep thinking that one party is the problem.

The problem is that there really only is ONE PARTY.

The insiders' party.


And the agenda of the inisders' party is NOT a strong vibrant America.

It's weak national governments and strong international corporations calling the shots.

LOOK at the policies and outcomes of same and tell me how you guys are still failing to recognize this.

Its so clear to me, and I don't think myself especially insightful.

It's obvious folks, what the long range plan is.

 

[georgephillip]

This is what comes of a system of campagin financing that encourages bribery, folks.

We can spend all day pointing out where the GOP or DNC accepts bribes like these.

And if you're a particularly stupid partisan you'll keep thinking that one party is the problem.

The problem is that there really only is ONE PARTY.

The insiders' party.


And the agenda of the inisders' party is NOT a strong vibrant America.

It's weak national governments and strong international corporations calling the shots.

LOOK at the policies and outcomes of same and tell me how you guys are still failing to recognize this.

Its so clear to me, and I don't think myself especially insightful.

It's obvious folks, what the long range plan is.

"After all, over the last three decades the policies crafted in Washington have led to the most massive upward redistribution in the history of the world. The richest 1 percent of the population has seen is share of national income increase by close to 10 percentage points. This comes to $1.5 trillion a year, or as Representative Ryan might say, $90 trillion over the next 75 years.

"That's almost $300,000 for every man, woman and child in the United States.

"This upward redistribution creates the real possibility that many of our children will be poorer than we are. If Representative Ryan and his followers really cared about future generations, then we might expect him to push for policies that reverse some of this upward redistribution."

It's Time for Representative Ryan to Man Up | Truthout

Paul Ryan serves as Dean Baker's punching bag in this article, but virtually every Democrat currently "serving" in congress presents the same threat to future generations of Americans.

 

[ClosedCaption]

I agree both parties are taking advantage of the big money in politics. What makes the Fanjuls different is each brother donate exclusively to both political parties. These two guys are able to donate sooo much that the want / needs of the people are pushed aside to pay them back.

In fact, the immigration of Haitians to America was for the sole purpose of providing the Fanjuls with cheap labor. Paying the workers sometime 20-30 dollars for a entire days work.