Are You a Crazy Billionaire? Antonio Villaraigosa Would Love to Hear More of Your Fascinating Ideas!

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Jon Schwarz

Jon Schwarz is editor of MichaelMoore.com and was research producer for 'Capitalism: A Love Story.' He's also contributed to the New Yorker, New York Times, Atlantic, Wall Street Journal, Slate, Saturday Night Live and NPR.

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December 4th, 2012 8:37 PM

Are You a Crazy Billionaire? Antonio Villaraigosa Would Love to Hear More of Your Fascinating Ideas!

By Jon Schwarz

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa (and chairman of the 2012 Democratic National Convention) has just joined the Steering Committee of Fix the Debt.

Fix the Debt is the latest Wall Street/Corporate America front group for their decades-long campaign to slash Social Security and Medicare. As always, it's not that they want to kill America's most popular social programs; it's just that if we don't the United States is going to run out of money in the next three minutes and explode in flame. (This might remind you of how in 2003 we had to invade Iraq in the next three minutes or Saddam was going to eat all your children. It's the same guys – they really only have one game plan.)

Anyway, because Wall Street and Corporate America fund both parties, Fix the Debt is "bipartisan," and it's no surprise to see Villaraigosa snuggling up to them. All you really need to know about him can be found in this long article:

One night last May, some twenty financiers and politicians met for dinner in the Tuscany private dining room at the Bellagio hotel in Las Vegas...The richest man in the room was Leon Cooperman, a Bronx-born, sixty-nine-year-old billionaire...he has gained notice beyond Wall Street over the past year for his outspoken criticism of President Obama. Cooperman formalized his critique in a letter to the President late last year which was widely circulated in the business community; in an interview and in a speech, he has gone so far as to draw a parallel between Obama’s election and the rise of the Third Reich…

The star guest at the dinner was Al Gore, who was flanked by Antonio Villaraigosa.

…[hedge-fund manager Anthony] Scaramucci, the organizer of the dinner, told me the next day that the guests had witnessed the “activation” of a “sleeper cell” of hedge-fund managers against Obama. “That’s what you see happening in the hedge-fund community, because they now have the power, because of Citizens United, to aggregate capital into political-action committees and to influence the debate,” he said…“If there’s a pope of this movement, it’s Lee Cooperman.”…

Cooperman had come to the dinner to give Gore a copy of the letter he’d written to President Obama. “I’d like you to read this,” he told the former Vice-President….

Al Gore was diplomatic when presented with the letter...but others in the room were enthusiastic. Villaraigosa gave Cooperman his direct phone number.

So if you're Villaraigosa and anxious to get input from billionaires who believe Obama's 2008 election was similar to Hitler's rise to power, it's no surprise you're also willing to shill for Fix the Debt. Their ideas on Medicare, as crazy and disgusting as they are, are actually a step up sanity-wise.