Progressive. Liberal. Enterprising. Quiet.
What Do Herbert and Marion Sandler Want?
Investigating the funders of ProPublica, the new investigative journalism outfit.
By Jack Shafer|Posted Monday, Oct. 15, 2007, at 10:45 PM ET
Slate.com
EXCERPT...
What do the Sandlers want for their millions? Perhaps to return us to the days of the partisan press. The couple made their fortune, which Forbes estimates at $1.2 billion, at Golden West Financial Corp. In recent years, they've spent millions on politics. The Federal Election Commission database shows the two of them giving hundreds of thousands of dollars to Democratic Party campaigns. In 2004, Herbert Sandler gave the MoveOn.org Voter Fund $2.5 million, again according to the FEC database. The Center for Responsive Politics Web site reports donations of $8.5 million from Herbert and Marion to the 527 group Citizens for a Strong Senate, in the 2004 cycle. CSS was formed by "a group of strategists with close ties to former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards," writes the washingtonpost.com's Chris Cillizza. American Banker reported in 2005 that Herbert also gave $1 million to the California stem cell initiative and that the pair have also funded the progressive Center for American Progress.
The Sandlers' enthusiasm for journalism and journalists is late in arriving. Back in April 1992, at the American Society of Newspaper Editors' annual convention, Marion ascribed partial blame for the savings and loan disaster to the press. "Where were you when it was happening?" she asked, according to a story by the Chicago Tribune's James Warren. Her husband accused the press of making "stars out of bums and charlatans" like swindler Charles Keating. "The press is susceptible to the Big Lie, no matter how patently nonsensical," Herbert said.
What sort of assistance did the Sandlers give the press to get to the bottom of the S&L scandal while it was happening? Um, not much. Warren writes, "Herbert Sandler conceded that, apart from being an occasional anonymous source for one Wall Street Journal reporter, he declined to help journalists as much as he probably should have."
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The Savings and Loan crisis is a subject near and dear to me. It's been my experience that the FSLIC bailout of the early 90s was a practice-run for the great Wall Street bailout of 2008-2012.
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