Illinois teacher pension funds end up in the pockets of the January 6th insurrectionists.
Blackstone Capital's Stephen Schwarzman.
My art is on Instagram at @klonskyart.
My Illinois Teacher Retirement System is heavily underfunded by our state legislature.
Illinois’s legislators have, over the years, allowed the debt to grow to well over a hundred billion dollars plus.
One result is that the TRS board of trustees has increasingly turned to alternative investments and private equity money managers who promise bigger faster returns than traditional investments.
It is no matter that they are often riskier.
Stephen A. Schwarzman is Chairman, CEO and Co-Founder of Blackstone, one of the world’s leading private equity firms with $915 billion Assets Under Management as of March 31, 2022.
Pension & Investments, an industry publication, recently reported on Illinois TRS:
Up to $100 million was earmarked for Blackstone Real Estate Partners AsiaIII. Blackstone Group is an existing manager for TRS and currently manages $620 million.
Here’s the thing about Stephen Schwarzman, Blacktone and the huge profits he and they make from investing the pension funds of teachers, police, firefighters and other public employees.
He makes huge contributions to politicians and groups who supported the January 6th insurrection and who are active in other anti-democratic bullshit.
Julia Rock in The Lever reports:
Schwarzman, CEO of the private equity firm Blackstone, is now wholeheartedly bankrolling the lawmakers who boosted that insurrection — and the resources come from teachers, firefighters, and other government workers whose pension systems enrich the billionaire.
Schwarzman is the single largest donor this year to the Congressional Leadership Fund (CLF), a super PAC closely linked to House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) that is dedicated to winning GOP control of the House. A majority of House Republicans including McCarthy voted to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election last January, and McCarthy himself was subpoenaed earlier in May by the House committee investigating the January 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, after refusing a request to appear.
Flush with mega-donor cash, CLF has already reserved hundreds of millions dollars worth of TV ads to flip seats currently held by Democrats.
Schwarzman donated $10 million directly to the super PAC in March, according to a recent campaign finance report. Meanwhile, Schwarzman’s massive and growing wealth is built on the back of public pension funds that are supplying much of the capital for his private equity empire.
Schwarzman once complained about increasing taxes on private-equity firms.
"It's like when Hitler invaded Poland in 1939."
Yes, Steve.
Exactly the same.
The Washington Post pointed out, “three fund managers alone — Schwarzman, Citadel CEO Ken Griffin, and Elliott Management CEO Paul Singer — together contributed about $118 million to GOP-aligned groups over the last two years. In that same period, all corporate political action committees combined gave $205 million to support the party, according to data from the Center for Responsive Politics.”
And we know that the GOP is a pro-Insurrectionist party.
The GOP members in Congress tried to sink any Congressional investigation into January 6th.
When it became known that Blackstone’s Schwarzman was financing the insurrectionists with profits from teacher pension funds like TRS, Democratic Illinois State Treasurer said, “We’re going to investigate and ask questions of our fund managers.”
“Are their giving patterns destabilizing our government, which would lead to the destabilization of our country? This is not about giving money to Republicans and Democrats — this is about extremists. We’re going to insist on a higher standard of disclosure when it comes to political giving, and we’re going to be asking a series of questions as part of our due diligence,” Frerichs told the Washington Post.
But since then?
Nothing.