Groups fund Durbin's trips to exotic places

WASHINGTON - In January 2004, Sen. Dick Durbin and his wife spent six days in Honolulu at the expense of the privately funded Aspen Institute think tank where he attended a conference on U.S.-China relations.

Durbin and his wife, Loretta, traveled to Venice, Italy, where they spent 14 days in August of the same year for a conference on U.S.-Russia relations, also paid for by the Aspen Institute.

The Illinois Democrat also visited South Africa on the tab of other private groups last year, according to his personal financial disclosure statement released Tuesday. Durbin also traveled to India and Bangladesh in February 2004 in a trip that was mistakenly left off the report, his staff said. He planned to file an amendment later Tuesday.

While such privately funded trips are legal, members of Congress have found their free travel increasingly criticized in light of the recent controversy surrounding trips by House Majority Leader Tom DeLay that allegedly were paid for by lobbyists.

Durbin favors trips by the nonpartisan public policy group, Aspen Institute, because each trip has an in-depth focus and lawmakers can concentrate on issues without being lobbied, Durbin spokesman Joe Shoemaker said.

"These trips have enriched my understanding of key issues and made me a more engaged legislator," said Durbin in a statement issued by his office. "Were it not for travel, I probably would have an interest in these things, but not a passion for them."

Aspen Institute

Walter Isaacson
President & CEO

http://www.aspeninstitute.org/index.asp?i=53

Active Trustees

Madeleine K. Albright
Principal
The Albright Group LLC

Michael D. Eisner
CEO
The Walt Disney Co.

David Gergen
Professor of Political Science
John F. Kennedy School of Government,
Harvard University;
Editor-at-Large
US News & World Report

Ann W. Richards
Former Governor of Texas;
Senior Advisor
Public Strategies, Inc.

Mortimer B. Zuckerman
Chairman
Boston Properties, Inc;
Chairman & Editor-in-Chief
US News & World Report

******

Tuesday, Oct. 19, 2004 1:09 p.m. EDT

Billionaires Secretly Met in Aspen to Defeat Bush

In the days following the Democratic National Convention in Boston this past August, several billionaire Democratic activists secretly met at the famed Aspen Institute in Colorado.

The purpose of their clandestine meeting was "to use their fortunes to engineer the defeat of President George W. Bush," The New Yorker magazine reports in its most recent edition.

snip

The Aspen meeting was supposed to have been a top secret within Democratic Party circles.

snip

Apparently the leader of the secret cabal is billionaire Peter B. Lewis, chairman of the Cleveland, Ohio-based insurance company Progressive Corporation.

snip

Like another attendee, wealthy financier George Soros, Lewis has poured millions into Democratic 527 groups, including Americans Coming Together and MoveOn.org.

One of Lewis’ top agenda items has been the decriminalization of marijuana, a policy position also shared by Soros.

Another billionaire who attended was John Sperling, founder of the online University of Phoenix.

Also present were Herb and Marion Sandler from California. The couple founded Golden West Financial Corporation, a California bank reportedly worth $17 billion

snip

The wealthiest and most notable of those attending the meeting was George Soros, the 74-year-old Hungarian immigrant who desperately wants to defeat George Bush and has even compared him to the likes of Adolf Hitler.

snip

Soros hired a publicist and began a 12-city, $3 million personal crusade to defeat George Bush.

According to the magazine, Soros has nothing but contempt for Bush, who he considers "an ignorant fool."

More than that, he sees Bush as the face man for a secret cabal. "Bush was just chosen as a figurehead, an acceptable face for a sinister group," Soros told The New Yorker, adding, "Cheney is the Capo."

******

Alice Henkin, Vice Chair

Human Rights lawyer, Director of the Justice and Society Program at the Aspen Institute. Member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the most influential elite foreign-policy lobby. The President and CEO of the Aspen Institute is Walter Issacson, who is also Chairman and CEO of CNN News.

******

Ground Zero 9/11 Memorial

Educational and Cultural Center:

programming will draw on offerings from members of a university consortium being assembled by the Center and its partner the Aspen Institute.

George Soros, billionaire founder of Open Society Institute, the nonprofit foundation that helps fund Human Rights First was an early contributor to the IFC. Soros was also a principal funder of MoveOn.org. He spent 18.5 million of his own money to defeat George Bush, has been quoted as saying, "America, under Bush, is a danger to the world" and "defeating George Bush in 2004 is the central focus of my life." This lunatic has even said that the pictures of Abu Ghraib "hit us the same way as the terrorist attack itself."

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