Soros blasts Hastert over drug allegation (crybaby Soros says his "character's" defamed)

George Soros, the billionaire financier who has given millions of dollars to liberal and Democratic-leaning advocacy groups, launched a blistering counterattack on Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) yesterday, saying he should be “ashamed” of allegations he made Sunday.

Hastert had suggested that Soros’s wealth came from criminals, and in a letter Soros challenged the Speaker to substantiate his claims or publicly apologize.

In a tartly worded demand faxed to Hastert, Soros wrote: “Your recent comments implying that I am receiving funds from drug cartels are not only untrue, but also deeply offensive. You do a discredit to yourself and to the dignity of your office by engaging in these dishonest smear tactics. You should be ashamed.

“I must respectfully insist that you either substantiate these claims — which you cannot do because they are false — or publicly apologize for attempting to defame my character and damage my reputation.”

The spat began in an interview on Fox News with anchor Chris Wallace, in which Hastert said, “You know, I don’t know where George Soros gets his money. I don’t know where — if it comes overseas or from drug groups or where it comes from. …”

Asked if Soros had earned money from drug cartels, Hastert added, “Well, that’s what he’s been for a number years — George Soros has been for legalizing drugs in this country. So, I mean, he’s got a lot of ancillary interests out there. … I’m saying I don’t know where groups — could be people who support this type of thing. I’m saying we don’t know.”

Soros, a Hungarian Jewish immigrant, earned billions from investments and currency speculation. In 1992, he bet $10 billion that the British central bank would devalue the pound. The gamble paid off and Soros earned $650 million that year. Soros Fund Management LLC was hammered in the late 1990s and Soros has since retired, although he remains chairman.

In 1993, he started the Open Society Institute, which promotes democracy in Eastern Europe and around the world. He began funding programs to reform the U.S. justice system several years later. As part of that effort, he has funded marijuana-legalization referendums in California and Arizona. Besides the Open Society Institute, Soros is also a major contributor to the International Crisis Group, a Brussels-based operation that monitors violence in global hot spots.

But he is most widely known in this election season as a big contributor to MoveOn.org, the Center for American Progress, a Democratic think tank, and America Coming Together, a so-called 527 political outfit that is exempt from limits on campaign contributions.

John Feehery, a spokesman for Hastert, said, “George Soros has an agenda. He supports the legalization of drugs, and the statement stands. [Hastert] has been fighting Soros on this for years because it is a character flaw. The Speaker thinks legalizing drugs is wrong.”

Documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) say that no company official in Soros’s investment fund is involved in a criminal proceeding or a party to a civil proceeding.

Feehery cited no evidence and would not comment on whether Hastert would ask law enforcement to investigate.

Soros told The Washington Post last year: “America, under Bush, is a danger to the world. … And I’m willing to put my money where my mouth is.”

Conservatives have sought to discredit Soros by attacking his foreign and Jewish roots and his support of liberal causes, and by saying that his currency speculation actually hurt the very people he claims to want to help.

“No other single person represents the symbol and the substance of globalism more than this Hungarian-born descendant of Shylock. He is the embodiment of the Merchant from Venice,” wrote GOPAC, an organization that helps elect GOP candidates, on its website last year.

In William Shakespeare’s “Merchant of Venice,” Shylock was the Jewish banker whose venality would not stop him from cutting human flesh to repay loans.

Tony Blankley, the editorial-page editor of The Washington Times, said Soros is “a robber baron, he’s a pirate capitalist, and he’s a reckless man” in an interview on Fox News.

Democrats were quick to criticize Hastert’s latest suggestion. “That’s totally absurd. It fits a pattern of simply throwing out whatever slander occurs to them,” the Republicans, said Matt Bennett, a spokesman for the Democratic National Committee in New York. “This is what the Republican leadership does. They lie about people.”

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Soros and Kerry's Liberal Credo

1. Capitalism creates oppression; government creates opportunity.

2. Traditional gender roles are artificial but feminism and homosexuality are government-protected lifestyles.

3. Self-esteem is paramount; government must undertake to guarantee each citizen-victim self-esteem no matter the cost.

4. The ACLU is good, because destroying religion and silencing believers are protected by the Constitution and the First Amendment; The NRA is bad because it defends the Constitution;

5. Standardized IQ tests are racist; racial quotas and affirmative action are not.

6. Conservatives are racists; everybody knows that black people can't make it on their own without big-buck government assistance programs and Hollyweirdos to proselytize the message 24/7.

7. Normal sex is perverted. Threesomes, bestiality, necrophilia, homosexuality are just new ways to get a thrill.

8. Moral indignation is liberals' standard strategy for endowing our output with superiority.

9. Victimization is our basic belief by which we blame and find others responsible for our own personal failures, then expect taxpayers, deep pocketed individuals, or the courts to bail us out. It feels good to be in the throes of "victimization" and either A) causing victims, B) concocting victims, C) playing victim, D) commiserating over victims, or E) creating another class of victims to bleed over.

10. It's our duty to treat working class voters in the manner of raising mushrooms, that is to say, keep them in the dark and feed them lots of horse manure.

Soros Pledged At Least $15.5 Million In Soft Money To Defeat Bush, and Is The Single Largest Political Contributor In American History.

BACKGROUND George Soros was born in Budapest, Hungary in 1930. He emigrated to England in 1947 and graduated from the London School of Economics in 1952. In 1956, he moved to the United States. His real family name is Schwartz. Michael T. Kaufman published his biography: Soros, the Life and Times of a Messianic Billionaire (Alfred A. Knops publishers, New York, 2002). He explained that "Soros had developed a contempt for tribal sectarianism of all kinds and found much of the zeal of pro-Israel Zionists to be unappealingly chauvinistic. (http://www.jewishpost.com/jp0807/jpn0807e.htm ) But no one knows Soros' contributions to other Israeli factions.

Soros, who amassed a fortune currently worth $6.9 billion by speculating in financial markets, has since turned his sights to philanthropy. His Open Society Institute and network of foundations around the world spend about $500 million yearly, much of it dedicated to encouraging democracy and economic growth in developing countries.

Soros, 71, earned both admiration and scorn through his hedge fund, the Quantum Fund, which earned 31 percent a year over its 32 years. He achieved the stunning gains mostly through speculating in foreign currencies - a risky game that can wreak economic havoc. In 1992, he earned $1 billion in a single day by betting - correctly - that the British pound would fall in value. His critics say he profited unfairly because his predictions that currencies were overvalued led others to sell them, allowing him to reap big gains as well.

Remember the 1997 Asian economic crisis? Some world leaders thought Soros' bets against the Thai baht caused it, though he does not agree. (http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/business/personal_finance/3026933.htm )

His investments are not going too well (circa 2003).....And then it all went to hell. Soros lost $2 billion in Russia's default in 1998. The following year he made a big bet that Internet stocks would fall. The basic idea was right, but he was about a year too early, and he quickly lost $700 million. Then he rushed to buy up a bunch of tech stocks, which sank. His embarrassing losses mounted to almost $3 billion when the NASDAQ ultimately did crash in the spring of 2000.

That's when Soros announced that he was withdrawing from an active role at Quantum, which he would transform from a high-risk speculative fund into a conservative institution -- a move like Babe Ruth pledging that he would only try to hit singles from now on. SALON: http://dir.salon.com/people/bc/2001/03/27/soros/index.html

Soros is radically pro-abortion and according to this site, Soros is for legalization of Drugs:
http://www.nationalfamilies.org/guide/gsoros.html

Soros, who has donated more than $1 billion to "promote" democracy in Russia , Soros has urged President Bush to let Valdmir Putin, know he is taking Russia in the wrong direction. Soros is distubed by "persecution" of oil baron Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Russia's richest man, who resigned as chief executive of OAO Yukos, the country's largest oil producer, after just over a week in pre-trial detention. He was refused bail at a closed hearing and may now stay in jail at least another two months, according to deputy prosecutor general Vladimir Kolesnikov (circa 2003). It would seem Soros donations to Russia were to promote oil ventures within Russia.......not for friendship.........but for profit.

We may yet get to the bottom of who Soros is.

Source: Las Vegas Review-Journal

Clark County Deputy District Attorney Gary Booker claims he never said drug cartels are funding Question 9, the ballot initiative that would amend the Constitution to legalize possession of up to three ounces of marijuana. But he did.

Booker is on tape using the word before the state Board of Health, referring to a speech made by state Sen. Joe Neal, the North Las Vegas Democrat who is running for governor.

Neal, in turn, read about the cartel allegation in an issue of Executive Intelligence Review, a publication put out by perennial presidential candidate Lyndon LaRouche.

LaRouche, an ex-felon, claims that financier George Soros is connected to South American drug cartels. Then again, LaRouche also claims the Queen of England is connected to the global drug trade.

"LaRouche noted that Soros has been the main source of funding for the entire drug legalization drive -- in the United States and around the world," reads a Sept. 20 article in Executive Intelligence Review. "How can the United States expect to press Colombia and Peru to crack down on the drug cartels, when the same cartels are now attempting to establish a beachhead inside the United States, LaRouche demanded to know."

Neal says he called the Review's editors, who stood by their story. And he says he believes it, too, which is why he put it in his anti-Question 9 speech.

And Booker, who has something of a history of exaggerations when it comes to Question 9, stood by his story, too. He says he never claimed the cartel was behind Question 9.

But he did. (Booker didn't return a second phone call placed to inquire about the tape of the meeting.)

Defeating Question 9 has become something of a cause celebre in the law enforcement community. Metro Deputy Chief Bill Young, a candidate for sheriff, said passing Question 9 will lead to "nothing but a continuous 24-7 Grateful Dead concert here." Incumbent Sheriff Jerry Keller said it would lead to a "public safety nightmare." Stop DUI chief Sandy Heverly compared anti-Question 9 citizens to David fighting the giant Goliath.

Fair enough. They're cops and citizens, too, and they have the right to let the public know their views.

But to suggest, as the Executive Intelligence Review, Neal and Booker did, that drug cartels are behind Question 9, is ridiculous. Drug cartels are the biggest fans prohibition ever had, since prohibition makes the product scarce and therefore valuable. Legalize it, even by selling the drug at state-sponsored stores, and the bottom falls from the market. That means anyone who supports continued prohibition is on the side of the cartels.

"Gary Booker has a long history of making things up in this campaign," says Billy Rogers, the campaign manager for Nevadans for Responsible Law Enforcement. "When they make a claim, either they don't cite a source, or they cite a nutcase like Lyndon LaRouche."

Among the dueling charges: Booker says the law -- which will prohibit "dangerous driving" and repeal all contrary laws, should it be approved by voters twice -- will gut anti-drug driving laws currently on the books. The pro-Question 9 team counters that it has a legal opinion from lawyer JoNell Thomas that says otherwise.

Booker says that 3 ounces of marijuana -- chosen by Nevadans for Responsible Law Enforcement since that's what several other states allow medical marijuana users to possess -- could make more than 250 marijuana cigarettes. But Roger says four packs of cigarettes (at 20 per pack, or 80 total) weighs in at three ounces.

And Booker said that medical marijuana patients could get their stash from the state -- an early plan considered by the Legislature that was never adopted. This he now admits was a mistake. "I put my foot in my mouth," he says.

Rogers denies that Question 9 is the first step toward outright legalization of marijuana, or of drugs in general, although he does admit that younger people are more amenable to the idea. "It's inevitable that this (legalization of small amounts of marijuana) is going to happen," he says. "I don't ever think you're going to see outright legalization."

Let's hope he's wrong. Booker claims that 30 percent of the fatal crashes prosecuted by his office involve marijuana, either alone or in combination with other drugs. Assuming he's accurate, it's clear that prohibition isn't working. A legalized, regulated market that cuts the profits from cartels could hardly be worse. Of course, laws against the use by minors, driving under the influence or public intoxication would still apply, as they do now to liquor.

But cartels funding Question 9? No one should be able to say that with a straight face. Gary Booker says he didn't.

But he did.

Steve Sebelius is a Review-Journal political columnist.

Source: Las Vegas Review-Journal (NV)
Author: Steve Sebelius, Political Columnist
Published: Tuesday, October 08, 2002
Copyright: 2002 Las Vegas Review-Journal
Contact: letters@lvrj.com
Website: http://www.lvrj.com/

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