Rex Sinquefeld is a billionaire (or maybe just a multi-millionaire) who has poured millions of dollars into political campaigns in Missouri.
He is not satisfied with what he has. He wants lower taxes, less government, and the privatization of public schools. He doesn’t want workers to have any rights.
Read about him and his political activities in these reports prepared by the Center for Media and Democracy: here, and here, and here.
What does Sinquefeld want?
Here is a quote from the third reference:
“Sinquefield is doing to Missouri what the Koch Brothers are doing to the entire country. For the Koch Brothers and Sinquefield, a lot of the action these days is not at the national but at the state level.
“By examining what Sinquefield is up to in Missouri, you get a sobering glimpse of how the wealthiest conservatives are conducting a low-profile campaign to destroy civil society.
“Sinquefield told The Wall Street Journal in 2012 that his two main interests are “rolling back taxes” and “rescuing education from teachers’ unions.”
“His anti-tax, anti-labor, and anti-public education views are common fare on the right. But what sets Sinquefield apart is the systematic way he has used his millions to try to push his private agenda down the throats of the citizens of Missouri.
“Our review of filings with the Missouri Ethics Commission shows that Sinquefield and his wife spent more than $28 million in disclosed donations in state elections since 2007, plus nearly $2 million more in disclosed donations in federal elections since 2006, for a total of at least $30 million.
“Sinquefield is, in fact, the biggest spender in Missouri politics.
“In 2013, Sinquefield spent more than $3.8 million on disclosed election-related spending, and that was a year without presidential or congressional elections. He gave nearly $1.8 million to Grow Missouri, $850,000 to the anti-union teachgreat.org, and another $750,000 to prop up the Missouri Club for Growth PAC.
“However, these amounts do not include whatever total he spent last year underwriting the Show-Me Institute, which he founded and which has reinforced some of the claims of his favorite political action committees. The total amount he spent on his lobbying arm, Pelopidas, in pushing his agenda last year will never be fully disclosed, as only limited information is available about direct lobbying expenditures. Similarly, the total amount he spent on the PR firm Slay & Associates, which works closely with him, also will not ever be disclosed. These are just a few of the tentacles of his operation to change Missouri laws and public opinion.
“Even more revealing is how Sinquefield behaved when Missouri was operating under laws to limit the amount of donations one person or group could give to influence elections. In order to bypass those clean election laws, he worked with his legal and political advisers to create more than 100 separate groups with similar names. Those multiple groups gave more, cumulatively, than Sinquefield would be able to give in his own name, technically complying with the law while actually circumventing it. That operation injected more than $2 million in disclosed donations flowing from Sinquefield during the 2008 election year, and it underscored his chess-like gamesmanship and his determination to do as he pleases. (Sinquefield is an avid chess player.)
“Shortly after that election, the Missouri legislature repealed those campaign finance limits, with his backing. Those changes benefited Sinquefield more than anyone. As a result, in 2010, Sinquefield made disclosed political donations more than ten times greater than what he spent in 2008…..
“In Missouri, Sinquefield’s strategy has been to focus on a few issues dear to him.
“First, he spent lavishly to try to prohibit some cities in the state from imposing an income tax. He shelled out more than $11 million underwriting the “Let Voters Decide” ballot proposition in 2010, which won by a two-to-one margin. He spent about $8.67 a vote.
“The proposition required Kansas City and St. Louis to hold a referendum on whether to keep the municipal income tax in 2011, and every five years after that. To Sinquefield’s dismay, in April 2011, citizens voted overwhelmingly to keep taxing themselves, with 78 percent in favor in Kansas City and 87 percent in St. Louis.
“But he hasn’t given up.
“Now Sinquefield is trying to do away with the 6 percent state income tax. Doing so would enrich him personally, since the investment firm he co-founded still manages more than $200 billion in investments, some of which he may still own. Plus, if the business is ever sold, he stands to make a windfall.
“To help replace lost revenue from the income tax, Sinquefield favors an increase in the sales tax (and a broadening of it to include such things as child care). A study he commissioned also recommends increased taxes on “restaurants, hotels, cigarettes, and beer,” while “shift[ing] the major tax burden from companies and affluent individuals,” like Sinquefield. And it recommends selling off the public’s assets, like the St. Louis airport, trading a short-term infusion of revenue in exchange for giving for-profit corporations access to decades of revenue.
“He doesn’t want an increase in property taxes. Can you blame him? He has a 22,000-square-foot house on an estate of hundreds of acres in the Missouri Ozarks, and another home in St. Louis worth at least $1.78 million, replete with a private elevator. He also owns a lot of cars, including a 2008 Bentley Continental Flying Spur that retailed for $170,000.
“Sinquefield’s taxation proposals would necessitate cuts in the state’s provision of services many people take for granted as part of living in a modern, civil society: public education, public libraries, and other public goods.”
One of his major goals is the privatization of public education.
Sinquefield’s approach takes us straight into the embattled streets of Ferguson, MO. Teacher Unions are the least of it. Michael Brown offered up his very promising life so that America can wake up. Hands Up! Wake Up!
Amen!
All consistent with red-necked Missouri. I can say that since I’m from Missouri but truly do not want to return there. However, my relatives reside there and I am drawn to it. Hopefully, the state will liberalize and allow young people a reason to return and enrich their future, otherwise, it will continue to be stagnant and conservative.
And his name is Rex. He wishes.
Of course, make those who earn less pay more of their disposable income on necessary items – in other words, an unfair (and greater) percentage of their income, but not of his!
I was under the impression that Missouri was already an anti-union right to work state but maybe I was mistaken. So we have yet another libertarian (Ayn Randian?) multi-millionaire who wants to destroy unions and public education. One can only hope that the great mass of Missouri voters will vote for their own best economic interests and not the best economic interests of some greedy rich guy. What’s the matter with Missouri?
I love the “threat” language anti-labor activists use. Labor union membership has been in decline in this country for the last 30 years thanks to the dedicated work of lobbyists and their politicians.
Yet labor unions somehow remain the Greatest Threat To America Ever.
It’s absolute nonsense, yet it’s repeated as fact. To listen to these people, one would think a majority of people belong to a labor union.
The truth is they won’t quit until there are NONE left. ONE is too many.
They’re too cowardly to attack middle class workers directly (and they’d never get elected if they did) so they’ve created this boogeyman to act as a punching bag and deflect attention from why the middle class is disappearing.
The land of opportunity is becoming the land of heartless opportunism. What kind of economics is this? Egonomics?
The attack on labor unions coincides with the flouting of laws that protect workers. It should panic people that the two things are happening at the same time, because labor unions are the only non-governmental protection workers have and the legal protection that non-union workers have are insufficient, unenforced and haven’t been updated or modified to cover the vast number of people who aren’t even “employees” anymore. It gets worse every year.
We have never needed labor unions more; and yet everyone and their brother, both political parties and most lawmakers, are anti-union and anti-labor.
Workers cannot rely on federal and state protections for basic things like “getting paid for work” They need a non-governmental actor, and the only game in town is labor unions.
If you’re in a union, stay there. The non-union workplace for working class and middle income workers gets worse every year and no one in DC or at the state level will be riding to the rescue of non-union employees anytime soon. The employees are winning some court cases, but that means their only protection is a lawsuit. Obviously, very few people are in a position to sue their employer.
http://www.retailhellunderground.com/my_weblog/2014/08/subway-franchise-owner-created-fake-employees-so-she-could-avoid-paying-overtime-.html
Are there any political forces remaining in Missouri who can move to reign in the state police? Can we reach out to them somehow?
Can any teachers in Missouri who have organized themselves to defend education step forward and assert moral authority? Some nutcases really are trying to move toward civil war, and I think Sinquefeld may be funding them.
Here’s good coverage of last night, from Australia. My God.
http://www.news.com.au/world/ferguson-journalists-ryan-j-reilly-wesley-lowery-arrested-as-warriorcops-stalk-streets/story-fndir2ev-1227024317404
The political reaction from Democrats is anemic.
http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/215107-sen-mccaskill-to-talk-ferguson-with-holder
So if he’s buying politicians to destroy labor rights, you should assume he’s also buying politicians who won’t then enforce, update or renew existing protections for workers who aren’t in a union.
The two things go together. The anti-labor movement ALSO guts existing legal protections for people who aren’t in a union. One never operates without the other.
It isn’t just about union members. They don’t stop there.
Another big name joins anti-labor movement:
Harvard law professor Lawrence Tribe will join board of pro-Vergara group @studentsmatter, reports @Morning_Edu Uh oh, tenure defenders.
So what’s the scorecard, so far? Big names in media, “celebrated” lawyers (to quote Brown), the US Department of Education and the Obama Administration and now Lawrence Tribe.
I hate to say it but there isn’t any way teachers unions survive this government/private sector onslaught. It’s a shame because I think the only thing standing in the way of privatization of public schools is public employees and their unions. I wonder if there will be political blowback for Democrats when people lose universal publicly-owned and publicly-run schools. I certainly hope so. It’s the only universal public system we have in the US. Once it’s gone we’ll never get it back. We’ll get some weak imitation of a public system, like the health care insurance exchanges.
I myself am skipping the top lines of my ballot in the fall. I’m voting exclusively in local races.
Abandoning public schools is a deal-breaker.
Chiara, isn’t there a pretty big difference in views on education between Kasich and Fitzgerald…or is this race a lost cause anyways?
Just read this excerpt (from “A Prayer for Owen Meany” quoting “The Great Gatsby”):
“They were careless people,” the book says “…they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made….”
I thought the Walton family already owned Missouri. Was I wrong? Do they own other states?
Arkansas. The Walton family is from Arkansas.
Are you sure they haven’t bought any other states? only Arkansas. You think with all the money they’ve spent over the last few decades, they wouldn’t only own one state. They would own several.
I wonder what states Bill Gates owns—maybe California. Then there are the Koch brothers who may own two or three. And evidence indicates that hedge fund billionaires own New York and New Jersey and are attempting to buy Texas, and maybe a few others.
They own Arkansas although Kroenke, who married into the Waltons but has made his own fortune grew up in and lives in/near Columbia, MO.
Seems too many billionaires can’t see the elephant in the room 😦
Yes, this relates directly to the militarization and lack of transparency in the St Louis Police. It was a special project of Sinquefields’. Everybody read this and do some investigative political reporting.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rex_Sinquefield#Local_control_of_St._Louis_Metropolitan_Police_Department