At last week's Congressional debate with New York Congressman John Hall, Nan Hayworth refused to denounce the actions of an exteme Tea Party organization, the Tri-State Sons of Liberty, which notoriously brands Democrats as "socialists" and "communists" and brazenly flies the Confederate Flag at their rallies. It made for some awkward moments for Hayworth, who wanted to appear as a mainstream candidate, while not denying her radical supporters. Awkward, indeed.
Hayorth's no fool, she knows that in order to win this election, she needs to convince the Tea Party crowd that she's one of them while also working as a double agent for one of their objects of ire, the pro-TARP, pro-outsourcing Wall Street interests that nearly destroyed the global economy only a few short years back.
Hayworth, we find, is now fine-tuning her message depending on her audience. Like her friend Glenn Beck, her eyes well up when talking in platitudes about "our freedoms" and "patriotism" to Tea Partiers. But when Hayworth talks about lowering oppressive taxes, she is really speaking about programs that will reduce taxes for the richest Americans while raising taxes for the middle class.
When she talks of reforming Social Security, she's talking about privatizing it -- and giving more business to her Wall Street cohorts -- while eliminating programs for the disadvantaged and disabled. When she talks about creating a better business climate, she talks about further deregulating industries, like the energy industry, and giving them free reign to destroy our environment and food supply. She talks like a populist, but she's corporate America to the core. This is a precarious tight-rope she's walking and if the Tea Party wakes up, they may think twice about supporting her.
Only last month, while John Hall stayed home in his district, taking time off from his campaign to donate his time and talents to save the Beacon Theater, Nan Hayworth was living the high life out of State, partying at her fundraiser thrown by Hedge Fund Kings Steven Shapiro and Charlie Parkhurst in tony Greenwich, CT.
Shapiro and Parkhurst have worked for both large investment banks and for so-called salon firms, tiny entities which can still hold billions in investor assets. Shapiro headed Intrepid Capital Investments, which managed to lose nearly 90 percent of investment capital between 2007 and 2009. Parkhurst, a former managing director at Smith Barney, moved on to Archeus Captial Management, which shut down when its hedge funds went from $3 billion to $700 million in assets in three years. After helping to form Centerlight Capital Management in the dust of Archeus, Parkhurst has gone on to be a trader at the British Investment Bank Barclays.
Despite investors losing their shirts on Archeus and Intrepid investments, times must not be too bad for Shapiro and Parkhust, neither of whom are residents of New York State or the 19th Congressional District. Both have donated the maximum $4,800 to Hayworth's campaign, as has Parkhurst's spouse.
Earlier this summer, Hayworth took in $50,000 in a fundraiser with vulture fund supporters, many of whom became rich betting against the global economy. Vulture funds are companies that buy up foreign debt at low prices from creditors who do not expect to be paid back in full and wish to cut their losses. The vulture funds often take the debtor governments to court and demand payments many times larger than the amount the funds paid to acquire the debt. Vulture funds, in fact, are a scam which pays unprecidented returns to wealthy investors, while treading mercilessly on the backs of the poorest people in the world and weakening our global economy.
But I don't think you're going to find many mixers between Hayworth's Tea Party followers and her Hedge Fund and Vulture Fund friends in Connecticut.
Should Hayworth win, it could be hard for her to remain a Tea Party populist while also trying to be Wall Street's best friend on Capitol Hill. After all, Wall Street has bankrolled a lot of her campaign and Wall Street got a massive bailout from the Federal government. So, Hayworth may be speaking in forked-tongue when addressing Tea Party groups, but her inconsistencies are easy to spot.
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