Comedian George Carlin describing facts about this plutocracy/Oligarchy 2010

BIG BANKS WHO OWN EVERYTHING by George Carlin.
YOU KNOW WHEN YOU HEAR SOMETHING  FUNNY, IT MUST BE TRUE!

To paraphrase George Carlin, vote if you want to, I hope it makes you feel good,
but it's the owners who run this country, and you're not one of them.

1. Government by the wealthy.
2. A wealthy class that controls a government.
3. A government or state in which the wealthy rule.

How George Carlin deals with Globalism (NWO) 2008
George Carlin and "The American Dream"

Q: WAR WHAT IS IT GOOD FOR?
A: THE 1% WHO HIDE THIER MONEY IN OFFSHORE ACCOUNTS INSIDE AMERICA!!

Panama and the Criminalization of the Global Finance System

1952 - I like Ike – 4 Star Army General Eisenhower becomes the 34th  President  of the United States.
And like Marine Corps General  Butler Smedley - both know war is a racket and warns everyone who would listen.

1953 during Eisenhower's first term America entered the era of covert activity. Using the newly established CIA and the State Department run by Allen Dulles and his brother John Foster Dulles corporate interests wielding power in Washington to compel actions in their own economic interest. In this way, the CIA’s conduct increasingly blurred the line between America’s national interest and the private interests of entities friendly to the U.S. Government.

 

THE FIGHT FOR CONTROL OF THE WORLD'S WEALTH IS BETWEEN MERCHANTS AND ROYALTY 
The very essence of the banking system. To make us all slaves to debt.

Addicted to war: Since 1776, US has been at war 93% of the time - That's 222 out of 239 years!
The U.S. has only been at peace for 21 years total since its birth.

 

American Plutocracy

America’s parasitical oligarchs are masters of public relations.

The 10 Most Brazen War Profiteers Halliburton has become synonymous with war profiteering, but there are lots of other greedy fingers in the pie. We name names on 10 of the worst. By Charlie Cray September 4, 2006

Members of the Robin Hood Foundation
One of their favorite tactics is to masquerade as defenders of the common folk while neatly arranging things behind the scenes so that they can continue to plunder unimpeded. Perhaps nowhere is this sleight of hand displayed so artfully as it is at a particular high-profile charity with the nerve to bill itself as itself as “New York's largest poverty-fighting organization.”  British novelist Anthony Trollope once wrote, “I have sometimes thought that there is no being so venomous, so bloodthirsty as a professed philanthropist.”
The bank accounts of 19 billionaires on the Robin Hood Foundation’s boards, have ballooned 93 percent since 2008.  Hedge Clippers applied a delicious tactic to expose the hypocrisy at the heart of the Robin Hood Foundation with stark mathematical precision— they used the organizations own metrics as an analytical tool. The foundation is famed for using grantee evaluations, cost-benefit analyses, and performance measures, including a metrics system freakishly named “relentless monetization.” So the Clippers applied these methods to the foundation’s hedge fund backers themselves, systematically exposing the degree to which they increase inequality and poverty.
For every dollar the Robin Hood Foundation hedge fund managers studied give to the organization’s antipoverty efforts, they soak up $44 from the public in the form of tax avoidance and anti-tax advocacy.  The authors of the report believe that to be a conservative estimate.

"A risk to society of “an entrenched plutocracy,” caustic critic H.L Mencken wrote: 
"The plutocracy, in a democratic state, tends to take the place of the missing aristocracy, and even to be mistaken for it. It is, of course, something quite different. It lacks all the essential character of a true aristocracy: a clean tradition, culture, public spirit, honesty, courage– above all, courage. It stands under no bond of obligation to the state; it has no public duty; it is transient and lacks a goal… Its main character is its incurable timorousness; it is forever grasping at straws held out by demagogues… its dreams are of banshees, hobgloblins, bugaboos.”

Free Trade Is Not American

 

1% Power Elite Networks I THE 1% -  The Power of Networks

THE 1% -  The Power of Networks

Dulles Family and Harvard's Pig Club  
IVY LEAGUE SECRET SOCIETIES & CLUBS FOUNDED ON DRUGS  This is the outrageous story of how secret societies and eating clubs bring powerful families and networks together.

Definition Plutocracy - When these very families buy the politicians to protect their "special interests" also know as facism.

RETHUGLICAN CLASS WARFARE

12/4/17 The three ultra-rich families battling for control of the Republican party. The Adelsons, the Mercers and the #KochBrothers - 3 mega-donor families, 3 visions for the future of the GOP. Republicans have been cast into a growing civil war between mainstream conservatives, Tea Party-inspired libertarians, and the xenophobic and misogynistic groundswell that Trump has proven expert at tapping into. These schisms reflect genuine divisions in the Republicans’ voter base—and the Mercers, the Kochs, and the Adelsons are adept at exploiting them.

What is in the K12 Financial Literacy Curriculum that allows the Rich to decide what you learn.

The flag says it all. It's the flag of a modern day aristocracy and plutocracy. Don't mistake this for philanthropy.

Skull and Bones

In 1832-33 Skull and Bones was launched under the Russell pirate flag.

Skull and Bones was founded in 1832 after a dispute between Yale debating societies Linonia, Brothers in Unity, and the Calliopean Society over that season's Phi Beta Kappa awards. It was co-founded by William Huntington Russell and Alphonso Taft as "the Order of the Scull and Bones".

Their assets are managed by the society's alumni organization, the Russell Trust Association, incorporated in 1856 and named after the Bones co-founder. The association was founded by Russell and Daniel Coit Gilman, a Skull and Bones member, and later president of the University of California, first president of Johns Hopkins University, and the founding president of the Carnegie Institution.

Among the early initiates of the order were Henry Rootes Jackson (S&B 1839), a leader of the 1861 Georgia Secession Convention and post-Civil War president of the Georgia Historical Society (thus the false accounts of the ``good old slavery days'' and the ``bad northern invaders''); John Perkins, Jr. (S&B 1840), chairman of the 1861 Louisiana Secession Convention, who fled abroad for 13 years after the Civil War; and William Taylor Sullivan Barry (S&B 1841), a national leader of the secessionist wing of the Democratic Party during the 1850s, and chairman of the 1861 Mississippi Secession Convention.

Alphonso Taft was a Bonesman alongside William H. Russell in the Class of 1833. As U.S. Attorney General in 1876-77, Alphonso Taft helped organize the backroom settlement of the deadlocked 1876 presidential election. The bargain gave Rutherford B. Hayes the presidency (1877-81) and withdrew the U.S. troops from the South, where they had been enforcing blacks' rights.

Young William Howard Taft at Yale (S&B 1878) was U.S. President from 1909 to 1913 and the only man who has served as both President and Chief Justice of the United States. His father, Alphonso Taft (S&B co-founder 1833) was appointed Secretary of War by President Ulysses Grant, and later U.S. Attorney General. As Attorney General, Alphonso helped fashion the commission that decided who won the 1876 election. The commission found in favor of Rutherford B. Hayes, a member of Delta Kappa Epsilon, (DKE), originally a junior secret society at Yale, and the only national Greek letter fraternity initially founded at Yale. In 1882, Alphonso was appointed U.S. Minister to Austria-Hungary. He then moved to Russia for two years, leaving in 1886. He died in 1891. His son, William Howard Taft, appointed by President McKinley, to be the first civil governor of the Philippines, displaced a disgruntled General Arthur MacArthur (General Douglas MacArthur's father) who had been the military governor.

William Taft was elected President of the United States in 1909. During his administration, lawmakers sent Constitutional amendments to the states which provided for the direct election of Senators and a Federal Income tax. The foundation for the Federal Reserve System was laid during Taft's administration and was signed into law furtively by his successor, Woodrow Wilson on Christmas Eve 1913. W. H. Taft was appointed Chief Justice of the Supreme Court by President Harding in 1921, and served until his death in 1930. Teddy Roosevelt (DKE), who became president after McKinley's assassination, appointed Taft to serve as Secretary of War (1904-08). While Secretary, he was the "master overseer and troubleshooter" for the Panama Canal; provisional governor of Cuba; and acting Secretary of State, while the Secretary of State John Hay was ill.
President Taft made Henry L. Stimson (S&B 1888) his Secretary of War (1911-13). Stimson was appointed to high government posts by seven presidents. He was Governor General of the Philippines (1926-1928), Secretary of State under President Herbert Hoover (1929-1933) and Secretary of War under Presidents Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman (1940-1946). He was "ultimately responsible" for the internment of Japanese-American citizens in WWII and oversaw the Manhattan Project, America's atomic bomb program. Stimson also took credit for swaying Truman into dropping "the bomb" on Japan. Henry groomed a generation of "cold warriors," in what was known as "Stimson's Kindergarten". Among Stimson's students were General George C. Marshall, John J. McCloy, Dean Acheson (DKE), three "Bonesmen" from the Bundy family, and Robert A. Lovett (S&B 1918).

 

DULLES PLUTOCRACY

Merchant Joseph Heatly Dulles, (1795-1876) was born in South Carolina  but moved to Philadelphia Pennsylvania in 1812

He graduated from Yale in 1814. He spent time in South Carolina managing his plantation and his  family bought their slaves with the money from contract-security work for the British conquerors in India, was in a previous secret Yale group, the ``Society of Brothers in Unity.'' At Yale Dulles worked with the Northern secessionists and attached himself to Daniel Lord; their two families clove together in the fashion of a gang. The Lords became powerful Anglo-American White Shoe Wall Street lawyers, and J.H. Dulles's grandson was the father of Allen Dulles and John Foster Dulles.

Merchant Joseph Heatly Dulles Account book, 1835-1855 (Philadelphia)  documenting business and commercial ties between North and South in the decades preceding the Civil War.

 

 

Secrecy In Statecraft

A Brief Look
Into The Life Of Allen Dulles


~ by Elias Alias

American Historical Association
http://www.historians.org/info/AHA_History/gacraig.htm

There, we read:

“How the State asserts its authority in foreign affairs has been described by Stanley Hoffmann in a passage that emphasizes the degree to which its sphere of action is composed not of determinable but of uncertain factors that it is the duty of statecraft to assess, shape, and exploit. Statecraft, Hoffmann has claimed,

'emanates from a milieu—the domestic society—whose values, political and social institutions, experiences, and patterns of authority are never entirely fixed or coherent, never point only in one direction, and, while ruling out certain choices, leave a considerable margin for maneuver ...; and statecraft operates in a milieu—the international system—that has repeatedly been defined as an arena for competition for multiple stakes, with uncertain rules which the players ... hammer out by trial and error, and characterized by moves which, however cleverly calculated, are more like wagers than rational adaptations of means to ends.'”

(Hoffmann, Gulliver’s Troubles: or, The Setting of American Foreign Policy (New York, 1968), xvi.)”
 end quoted passage from American Historical Association article by Gordon A. Craig.

As we note Mr. Hoffmann's observation that 'statecraft' emanates within the system of a domestic society and comes to operate within what is called an 'international system', we approach also a phenomenon known as “Policy”. It is as though Statecraft produces or affects or influences Policy, and in some circles that supposition is upheld as the prime purpose of Statecraft. Policy is shaped, produced, and made manifest through history by the workings of Statecraft, so we may say as a premise that Statecraft in some ways produces Policy, and that Policy is the outcome of the practice of Statecraft.

I would suggest that there is Domestic Policy, and there is Foreign Policy, and there is, even for some individuals at this late date in American history, Personal Policy. I am supposing that Foreign Policy is derived from the sum total of activities within Domestic Policy, and that Domestic Policy must derive from the interacting and originating Personal Policy of as many individuals as may exist, interact, and/or compete within the domestic totality.

American history may be seen as a long sequence of competing efforts to shape Policy. Competitors in Statecraft within a society may be called “Players”. We may now like to view the world through the life of one very active and involved Player named Allen Dulles. But Allen Welsh Dulles had a brother, John Foster Dulles, and because both brothers contributed in significant ways to American foreign Policy it is difficult to treat of one without also treating of the other. But let us focus primarily on Allen Dulles.

 British Statecraft, British Policy

“We no longer have permanent principles, but permanent interests, which we pursue to the exclusion of all else.” ~ Lord Palmerston, British Prime Minister at the time of the Opium Wars

To begin, let us go back into history and note that in the late 1700s a handful of radical malcontents in the North American British colonies had taken a disliking for British “Policy”. Their consensus opinions, shared and enhanced by the pooling of their interacting perceptions, led to the American Revolution which we commemorate each Fourth of July as “Independence Day”. As an exercise of Statecraft, the American Revolution was hardly sophisticated. In fact, it was a rather blunt and brutal affair, a boisterous bout of Brit-bashing which cheered, in its final military victory, a previously meek and submissive western world, a world which sought a more direct and compatible representation of itself as regarded the Policy of governance.

What these Players did was quite illegal, and the authority of the Throne sought to control them by the employment of what we today would call “law enforcement” which acted in the name of British Security. Warrants were issued for the arrest of some of those Players. Other Players who preferred to be law-abiding and subservient to the Throne and who were content to prosper under the authority of that Throne and its Policy included traditional British Tory “Houses” of wealth, security, and comfort. A number of New England families of the Tory persuasion had long held business relations with the mother country, England.

To such families, George Washington's band of violent malcontents and illegal efforts at revolution seemed to pose a threat to their secure and profitable relations with England. It was from such understandable motives that the “Loyalist” opponents to the Revolution came. Many Tory families, to which we may refer as “Houses”, resisted the revolution, snitched-off the troop movements of Washington's army, aided the British soldiers, manipulated finances and other leverages, and in general tried to assist the Throne in maintaining its authority over its Colonies. The prevalent view of the day was that England legally owned the Colonies, which were therefore legally subject to the Throne's “foreign policy”, or, as we now may call it, the Throne's “distant domestic Policy”. In truth, our American Revolution was an act of outlawry, was illegal, employed much violence and death-dealing, and could successfully be prosecuted as such in any court which might try the culprits. In today's political jargon, our founding fathers would be called "insurgents" and "terrorists".

But perhaps any Policy is dependent upon, among other factors, the 'power' to govern the subjects of said Policy and to overcome any opposition to said Policy. The power of governance may be seen to be dependent upon at least one hierarchy in authority, so let us think about hierarchy and authority for a moment. We read in a book by Joel Kramer and Diana Alstad, entitled “The Guru Papers” (1), this accounting of it -

 “Hierarchy is a way of structuring power; authority is a way of exercising power; and ultimately morality is the way authority is justified.”

 Whether the Throne used the term or not, the British Policy consisted of what Stanley Hoffman in the quotation above called “Statecraft” as perceived and employed in the governance of the individuals who comprised the populations of the Colonies in North America. Statecraft. As Mr. Hoffman notes, Statecraft emanates from domestic society and operates in the international community as “Policy”. 

Remembering the fact that various New England Tory 'Houses' held close business ties with the British Empire, let us now recall this passage from Chaitkin and Tarpley:

“Young South Carolinian Joseph Heatly Dulles, whose family bought their slaves with the money from contract-security work for the British conquerors in India, was in a previous secret Yale group, the ``Society of Brothers in Unity.'' At Yale Dulles worked with the Northern secessionists and attached himself to Daniel Lord; their two families clove together in the fashion of a gang. The Lords became powerful Anglo-American Wall Street lawyers, and J.H. Dulles's grandson was the father of Allen Dulles and John Foster Dulles.” - From George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography by Anton Chaitkin and Webster G. Tarpley. (2)

I wish to note here that the British Empire has given us a precedent in which a Western Civilized Empire, of and with a “Christian bent”, did indeed exercise as a matter of official “Foreign Policy” the international smuggling of a narcotic drug (opium) for the expressed purpose of bolstering the Empire's economy, and displayed a willingness under Lord Palmerston (Prime Minister of Great Britain) to use military force (the British Navy's battleships) to protect and expand its smuggling enterprises.

This is now known history, and is a precedent.

The key word here is precedent. It was official Policy and it incorporated the Bank of England's relations with the Throne, so that we now can see a combination of financial and military forces working in tandem to effect and expedite British governmental Policy to smuggle opium into China. The unrestricted light of knowable history shows today quite clearly that the British Navy was employed to force China to accept British importation of opium into China, and shows that such deeds were matters of British Foreign Policy. Lord Palmerston contributed to that style of statecraft.

Joseph Heatly Dulles, while not working for the House of Russell in direct opium-smuggling, was instead involved in the slave trade until relocating to South Carolina and Pennsylvania. Because the British East India Company was involved in both opium-smuggling and slave-shipping, and because he was at Yale, we find it easy to understand that J. H. Dulles would have been in contact, directly or indirectly, with those New England Tory Houses who were in business with the opium-smuggling aspect of the East India Company, and we now know that J. H. Dulles was a member in a secret society at Yale. It is from those early associations that we today draw the parallels which may be seen by association as a, perhaps - or perhaps not - un-organized collusion. From such roots sprang Allen Welsh Dulles and John Foster Dulles.

THE 1%
VS.
all of us!

 

"The blackest despair that can take hold of any society is the fear that living honestly is futile." ~ Italian journalist Corrado Alvaro

Occupy Wall Street (OWS) < BIG DATA >
raises the issue of emerging oligarchy, based on wealth inequality, taking control of democracies worldwide through a small global elite composed of the very rich, powerful corporate executives in financial multinationals and other global conglomerates, and their allies in international financial organizations like the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank, and the Bank of International Settlements (BIS).

The chief architect of Booz Allen’s cyberstrategy is Mike McConnell, who once led the N.S.A. and pushed the United States into a new era of big data espionage. More than half its $5.8 billion in annual revenue coming from the military and the intelligence agencies. 

We are the 99% Occupy Wall Street: While the Wall Street Swells Drink Their Champaign

George Carlin describing facts about this Plutocracy/Oligarchy

MERCHANTS ARE THE LOWER CLASS

MERCHANT MARINES

OPIUM TRADE:
AND THE WHITE SHOE LAW FIRMS THAT HELP THEM

William H. Russell (Skull & Bones; co-founder-1833) cousin Samuel Russell formally established Russell & Co. on January 1, 1824 for the purpose of acquiring opium and smuggling it to China. Russell & Co. merged with the number one US trader, the J. & T.H. Perkins "Boston Concern" in 1829.

OPIUM DRUG SMUGGLING PIRATES

By the mid-1830s the opium trade had become "the largest commerce of its time in any single commodity, anywhere in the world." Russell & Co. and the Scotch firm Jardine-Matheson, then the world's largest opium dealer working together were known as the "Combination."

George HW Bush (S&B 1948) was born in Milton, Massachusetts not far from the historic home of Robert Bennett Forbes, a Russell partner.

Many great American, European and Chinese family fortunes were built on the "China"(opium) trade. Yes, they sold porcelain, tea, silks and other items at home in the US, but they "needed" the trade in opium for silver to pay for the desired goods and opium smuggling returned "handsome" profits.

THE DELENO'S

In the late 1700s England was involved in trade with China through the British East India Company. In 1800 China demanded of the British Throne that all British Captains of ships must sign a bond against smuggling opium into China. Which meant Britian would have a one-sided silver-outflow problem because they purchased tea, silk etc. from China and China never bought anything from Britian. The Throne's bankers, the Tory families in New England, who were "British loyalists" who had worked for the King against George Washington's revolution, would be contracted to carry a load which would pay their family shipping businesses. Thus British banking turned to a number of New England Tory Houses which were involved in the shipping business, in what was effectively a leasing instrument wherein these early-1800s former British Colonists could enjoy a profitable contract with the Throne. The more successful New England Houses boasted fine fleets of Clipper ships, and those ships, which were the fastest, bearing the American flag, were not suspected by the Chinese.
The infamous New England opium syndicates of Massachusetts and Connecticut furthered the development of the Ivy League system of colleges and universities. Tory opium-smuggling New England families founded Ivy League - Yale, Harvard, Princeton, Columbia, Universities for the British interests. It was a political extension of an economic interest centering around established British-Colonialist business arrangements which had existed long before the Revolution, and survives today. The Clipper Ships of the Boston-based “Russell and Company”, the great opium smuggling House in New England which later bought out its competition in Connecticut and Massachusetts, became lucrative assets for the family's shipping business, and, as opium smugglers, their activities under British orders helped to bring on the Opium Wars of the early-to-mid 1800s. The Russell and Company's ships flew the black and white flag of the Skull and Bones, the Company's logo. Russell and Company has dealings with the Perkins Syndicate in 1830 (Millegan 1-2). Russell and Perkins merged and made a fortune together. Rev. Nodiah Russell was another Yale founder. The Russell family became thereby a benefactor for Yale University, and W. H. Russell founded the Russell Trust at Yale in 1832.

1) The Hongs in Hong Kong that became major economic powerhouses beginning in the 1890s are usually credited to the British and other overseas merchants. In 1820, China accounted for 29 percent of the world's gross domestic product and China and India together accounted for more than half of the world's output. Tea became a major Chinese export product to Britain. The first tea arrived in London from China in 1652. By the late 18th century and early 19th century traders from newly industrialized Britain were importing millions of pounds of tea from China. They had hoped to trade finished goods such as textiles for tea and silk without having to go through the Emperors' greedy middlemen, but that didn't happen. Imperial China had no need for foreign products and they were importing virtually nothing from Europe. In an effort to get the Chinese Emperor to open up markets outside of Canton, British King George III, sent a regent to China that was welcomed with great ceremony but was told China has "no need of the manufactures of outside Barbarians." Opium was the perfect commodity for trading. It didn't rot or spoil, it was easy to transport and store, it created its own market and it was highly profitable. The standard measurement for opium was a 135-pound chest, which sold for as much as a thousand silver dollars.

2) The Cohong, often spelled as kehang or gonghang, was the Chinese import-export monopoly in Guangzhou (also called Canton) during the Qing dynasty (1644–1911). Over a time of about one century, before the First Opium War, the trade contacts between China and Europe were performed exclusively via the Cohong.
The cohong was a Guild of thirteen hong merchants authorized by the Chinese Central Government to handle trade, particularly rights to trade tea and silk, with the West. They were the only group at the time to authorize this, making them the main controllers of all foreign trade in the nation.
The Thirteen Factories was an area of Canton (Guangzhou), China, where the first foreign trade was allowed in the 18th century since hai jin ban on maritime activities. It is also referred to as the "Thirteen Hongs" or the "Canton Factories". The site where the factories stood is now Wenhua Park, and Thirteen Hong Street, onto which the factories backed is now named Shishanhang Road.
Factories were "foreigners quarters" outside the city walls in Guangzhou. These were business markets, not actual factories where goods were manufactured. The name came from the foreign agent term of "factors", who maintained offices or factories. Chinese citizens often referred to the factories as "Barbarian Houses".
The Western factors were allowed to occupy two- or three-story buildings, set back one hundred yards from the river. Each factory contained three or four houses. The warehouses occupied the first floors and elegant apartments were on the second and third floors of the houses. The square in front of the factories was fenced and reserved for foreigners. The streets immediately adjoining the factories were named Thirteen Factory Street, Old China Street, and Hog Lane. These streets were filled with retail stores selling a wide variety of Chinese goods.
The factories burned down in 1856 during the Second Opium War and the western traders relocated to warehouses across the Pearl River on Honam until the British succeeded in claiming the site of a sandbar (Shamian Island) in 1859, and it was developed to become a foreign enclave. The Hongs in Hong Kong that became major economic powerhouses beginning in the 1890s are usually credited to the British and other overseas merchants.
Opium was well known in China before the Opium Wars although its quality was inferior to the opium brought from India by the British. In the 1600s, the habit of smoking opium became popular in Formosa (now Taiwan) after Dutch sailors introduced tobacco smoking and residents of the island mixed tobacco and opium. The Formosans introduced the custom to the mainland, where tobacco was abandoned and opium was smoked alone.

3) High Commissioner Lin Tse-hsu came to Canton in 1839 with an order to "investigate the port affairs." The first edict against opium had come in 1729; another against smoking came in 1796. The trade had grown to 40,000 chests and growing by 1838. Lin Tse-Hsu's "Letter of Advice to Queen Victoria" was written before the outbreak of the Opium Wars.

4) In 1839, the Manchu Emperor ordered it stopped and named Commissioner of Canton, Lin Tse-hsu, to lead a campaign against opium. Lin seized 2,000 chests of Sassoon opium and threw it into the river. An outraged David Sassoon demanded that Great Britain retaliate. Thus, the Opium Wars began with the British Army fighting as mercenaries of the Sassoons. They attacked cities and blockaded ports.

The first, predominant American gang in this field had been the syndicate created by Thomas Handasyd Perkins of Newburyport, Massachusetts, an aggregation of the self-styled 'blue bloods'' or Brahmins of Boston's north shore. Forced out of the lucrative African slave trade by U.S. law and Caribbean slave revolts, leaders of the Cabot, Lowell, Higginson, Forbes, Cushing and Sturgis families had married Perkins siblings and children. The Perkins opium syndicate made the fortune and established the power of these families. By the 1830s, the Russells had bought out the Perkins syndicate and made Connecticut the primary center of the U.S. opium racket. Massachusetts families (Coolidge, Sturgis, Forbes and Delano) joined Connecticut (Alsop) and New York (Low) smuggler-millionaires under the Russell auspices.

William H. Russell (Skull & Bones; co-founder-1833) cousin Samuel Russell formally established Russell & Co. on January 1, 1824 for the purpose of acquiring opium and smuggling it to China. Russell & Co. merged with the number one US trader, the J. & T.H. Perkins "Boston Concern" in 1829.

OPIUM DRUG SMUGGLING PIRATES

By the mid-1830s the opium trade had become "the largest commerce of its time in any single commodity, anywhere in the world." Russell & Co. and the Scotch firm Jardine-Matheson, then the world's largest opium dealer working together were known as the "Combination."

George HW Bush (S&B 1948) was born in Milton, Massachusetts not far from the historic home of Robert Bennett Forbes, a Russell partner.

Samuel Russell, second cousin to Bones founder William H. Russell, established Russell and Company in 1823. Its business was to acquire opium from Turkey and smuggle it into China, where it was strictly prohibited, under the armed protection of the British Empire.
This started first Opium War, made huge profits for those firms that had held on to chests and left the Russell & Company the only trading firm left open in Canton. During that first Opium War, the Chief of Operations for Russell & Co. in Canton was Warren Delano, Jr., Grandfather of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
Warren Delano, Jr was also the US vice-consul and once wrote home, "The High officers of the [Chinese] Government have not only connived at the trade, but the Governor and other officers of the province have bought the drug and have taken it from the stationed ships … in their own Government boats."
The war ended in 1839 with the signing of "The Treaty of Nanking." The "peace treaty" included the following provision: Full legalization of the opium trade in China, Compensation from the opium stockpiles confiscated by Lin of 2 million pounds.

5) Russell Company partners included:

• Augustine Heard (1785-1868): ship captain and pioneer U.S. opium smuggler.
• John Cleve Green (1800-75): married to Sarah Griswold; gave a fortune in opium profits to Princeton University, financing three Princeton buildings and four professorships; trustee of the Princeton Theological Seminary for 25 years.
• Abiel Abbott Low (1811-93): his opium fortune financed the construction of the Columbia University New York City campus; father of Columbia's president Seth Low.
• John Murray Forbes (1813-98): his opium millions financed the career of author Ralph Waldo Emerson, who married Forbes's daughter, and bankrolled the establishment of the Bell Telephone Company, whose first president was Forbes's son.
• Joseph Coolidge: his Augustine Heard agency got $10 million yearly as surrogates for the Scottish dope-runners Jardine Matheson during the fighting in China; his son organized the United Fruit Company; his grandson, Archibald Cary Coolidge, was the founding executive officer of the Anglo-Americans' Council on Foreign Relations.
• Warren Delano, Jr.: chief of Russell and Co. in Canton; grandfather of U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
• Russell Sturgis: his grandson by the same name was chairman of the Baring Bank in England, financiers of the Far East opium trade. Such persons as John C. Green and A.A. Low, whose names adorn various buildings at Princeton and Columbia Universities, made little attempt to hide the criminal origin of their influential money.
• Cabots, the Higginsons and the Welds for Harvard. The secret groups at other colleges are analogous and closely related to Yale's Skull and Bones.

6) Russell & Co. and Perkins & Co. families, relations and friends are well represented in the Order of Skull and Bones. A "prize" from the Spanish-American War, the US had taken control of the Philippines and soon declared opium illegal there. William H. Taft (S&B 1878) had a huge hand in the establishment of US narcotics laws.

After the first Opium War, the port of Shanghai was opened up, with Russell & Co. as one of it first traders, and the Stars and Stripes was the first flag flown in the new concessions.
Russell and Company bought out the Perkins (Boston) syndicate in 1830 and moved the primary center of American opium smuggling to Connecticut. Shipping during the eighteenth century was the lifeblood of most of Boston's first families, (aka opium smuggling, slave trading pirates) who usually got their start with the help of "The King of Shipping" Colonel Thomas Perkins.
In 1841 Russell & Company brought the first steam ship to the Chinese waters and continued to develop transportation routes—as long as opium made them profitable. They also were invoved with early railroad ventures in China.

"In politics, nothing happens by accident. If it happens, you can bet it was planned that way." – Franklin Delano Roosevelt

7) White Trash / Slavers / Terroist / Opium Drug Smuggling Pirate Russell Trust Company founded

• Princton University - John Cleve Green
• Yale University - Yale was the northern college favored by southern slaveowning would-be aristocrats.
• Columbia University - Abiel Abbott Low

8) Yale See Yale / China program a story of Opium and Empire

9) The origin of the Skull & Bones in the U.S. begins at Yale
All the 1% Rich Pirates in the smuggling trade owned their own island between the U.S. and Canada. Skull and Bones owns an island in the St. Lawrence River in upstate New York named Deer Island.

In 1832-33 Skull and Bones was launched under the Russell pirate flag. Alphonso Taft was a Bonesman alongside William H. Russell in the Class of 1833.
Its founder was William Huntington Russell of Middletown, Connecticut. The Russell family was the master of incalculable wealth derived from the largest U.S. criminal organization of the nineteenth century: Russell and Company, the great opium syndicate.
The order was incorporated in 1856 under the name ``Russell Trust Association.'' By special act of the state legislature in 1943, its trustees are exempted from the normal requirement of filing corporate reports with the Connecticut Secretary of State. As of 1978, all business of the Russell Trust was handled by its lone trustee, Brown Brothers Harriman partner John B. Madden, Jr. Madden started with Brown Brothers Harriman in 1946, under senior partner Prescott Bush, George Bush's father. The protected 1% multiple intermarried grouping of families then ruling Connecticut. The blood-proud members of the Russell, Pierpont, Edwards, Burr, Griswold, Day, Alsop and Hubbard families.

IBC

The International Banking Corporation
was established by a special act of the Connecticut legislature in June 1901, which exempted it from state inspection and supervision.

Its purpose was to collect the $25 million Boxer Indemnity from China (which the Guaranty Trust also applied for), and expand US banking influence in Asia, the Americas, and the rest of the world. Many of Citibank's foreign branches originated with this firm. Thomas H. Hubbard was President of the Board of Directors of the IBC, and his son, John Hubbard, was Treasurer. Its President, Marcellus Hartley, who died soon after, was also President of Union Metallic Cartridges Company, the Remington Arms Company, and the Bridgeport Gun Implement Company, and a director of the American Ordnance Company, and the Equitable Life Assurance Society. Edward F. Cragin was Vice President, and Valentine P. Snyder was Vice Chairman of the board. Subscriptions for the company were taken at the Western National Bank, which was purchased by the Guaranty Trust-founded National Bank of Commerce in 1903. (Cabinet Names Agent to Collect Indemnity. New York Times, Jan. 1, 1902; Many Branch Banks to Be Established. New York Times, Jan. 2, 1902; International Banking Corporation. New York Times, Jan. 18, 1902 p. 3.) H.C. Frick and Eugene Delano of Brown Brothers and Company were elected to the board of directors the next day. (Banking Corporation Directors. New York Times, Jan. 3, 1902 p. 10.) The New York Times editorialized in its favor, assured readers that it would have no powers beyond that of a legal entity, and decreed that its affairs were "not a matter for public discussion." (International Banking. New York Times, Jan. 3, 1902 p. 6.) The Board of Directors was reconstituted, with James W. Alexander, James H. Hyde, and W.H. McIntyre, respectively the President and Vice Presidents of the Equitable; E.H. Harriman, Chairman of the Union Pacific; Abram S. Hewitt, ex-mayor of New York [who died in 1903]; Luther Kountze of Kountze Brothers; Edwin Gould, President of the St. Louis Southwestern Railway; H.E. Huntington, director of the Southern Pacific Railroad; George Crocker, President of the Pacific Improvement Co.; John J. McCook of Alexander & Green, attorneys, 120 Broadway, where the meeting was held; J.M. Ceballos, of J.M. Ceballos & Co., shippers; Edward F. Cragin, director of the Trust Company of America, and H.S. Manning, its Vice President; R.A.C. Smith, Vice President American Surety Co.; A.W. Paige of Bridgeport, Conn.; Jules S. Bache, Vice President of Toledo, St. Louis and Kansas City Railroad; John B. Jackson, President Fidelity Title and Trust Co., Pittsburgh; H.P. McIntosh, President Guardian Trust Co., Cleveland; H.S. Rogers, Vice President Merchants National Bank, Cincinnati; and H. Hardy, Secretary. (The International Bank. New York Times, Jan. 23, 1902.) J.B. Lee, a 22-year veteran of the Chartered Bank of India, Australia, and China, was appointed manager, and W.H. McIntyre, New York associate agent of the Colonial Bank of London, his assistant. (Banking Corporation Officials. New York Times, Feb. 25, 1902 p. 6.) Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt, Isaac Guggenheim, and John Hubbard joined the directorate. (Market Movement. New York Times, Apr. 22, 1902 p. 12.) The IBC and the Guaranty Trust were approved as the US Government's fiscal agents in Hong Kong and Manila by the Solicitor of the Treasury. (Government's Fiscal Agents At Manila. New York Times, Jun. 1, 1902 p. 5.) William L. Moyer, President of the National Shoe and Leather Bank, was elected President of the IBC; Alexander Green, Secretary; and Allen W. Page, Attorney. Executive Committee members were T.H. Hubbard, Moyer, Haley Fiske, Edwin Gould, J.H. Hyde, L. Kountze, J.J. McCook, William A. Read, and William Salomon. (International Banking Corporation. New York Times, Nov. 22, 1902 p. 13; Dec. 20, 1902 p. 13.) Massacusetts Ex-Gov. Crane Elected a Director. (New York Times, Jan. 10, 1903 p. 14.) In 1903, the IBC's subsidiary, the Sixty Wall Street Co., bought land at 58 to 62 Wall Street to construct a new 26-story headquarters building; the IBC purchased a controlling interest in the National Shoe and Leather Bank; and Walter Kutzleb, who was in charge of foreign banking at the IBC, was accepted as a special agent of the Russo-Chinese Bank. By March 1904, the Internal Banking Corporation had shipped $1.5 million of gold to Argentina, and planned to send several million dollars more in April; its ultimate destination being Paris (More Gold For Argentina. New York Times, Mar. 16, 1904 p. 10; Foreign Exchange Situation. New York Times, Apr. 1, 1904 p. 12.) During this period, the Russo-Japanese War had broken out. The Yalu River Timber Company interests, headed by a courtier named Bezobrazoff, had been a major incitement. According to a letter to the New York Times by Wolf Von Schierbrand, Bezobrazoff "took good care to disappear from the scenes of his exploits, St. Petersburg and Far Asia - at the very commencement of this present war. He is reported to live in Paris, enjoying his ill-gotten gains in luxurious idleness, but in disgrace with his monarch. (The Two Bezobrazoffs. New York Times, Aug. 19, 1904.) "Actually the 'economic enterprise' was set up in order to forward a policy of imperial expansion in the Far East which the group already favored, and far from shaping events to insure private gain, the members seem to have contemplated some economic loss for the attainment of their political objectives." (War and the Private Investor, by Eugene Staley, Ch. 3.)

Staley, Ch. 3 / World War I Document Archive, Brigham Young University

 

Directors of the International Banking Corporation, 1915: Charles B. Alexander, Jules S. Bache, Guy Cary, Haley Fiske, Frank P. Frazier, H.T.S. Green, Lionel Hagenaers, John R. Hegeman, William G. Henshaw, Erskine Hewitt, Colgate Hoyt, John Hubbard, Minor C. Keith, George H. Macy, Pierre Mali, Henry P. McIntosh, William Barclay Parsons, William Salomon, Hermann Sielcken, Valintine P. Snyder, Sir William C. Van Horne, James G. White. (Directory of Directors in the City of New York, 1915 Vol. 1939, p. 793.)

 

Jules S. Bache, as broker of the stock in the International Banking Corporation held by Thomas Hamlin Hubbard's estate, sold it to the National City Company, the investing company of the National City Bank. "When Mr. Vanderlip was asked if interests identified with his bank had not bought the Bache stock, he would only say: 'When you use that word 'interests' you open a wide range of possibilities.'" The bank had about sixteen in China, Japan, India, and the Philippines. (Bache Sells Bank to National City Co. New York Times, Oct. 29, 1915.)

William J. Wallace
Partner William James Wallace (1837-1917) was United States District Judge (Northern District) from 1874 to 1882, then Circuit Judge, and then Presiding Judge of the US Court of Appeals from 1891 until 1907, when he retired and joined the Butler firm. He was a native of Syracuse. (Ex-Judge Wm. J. Wallace. New York Times, Mar. 13, 1917 p. 11.) He represented the American Tobacco Company in the Sherman Anti-Trust suit of 1908. (Last Arguments in Tobacco Suit. New York Times, May 20, 1908.

FIRST FOREIGN BANK IN NEW YORK

 

Chartered Bank Established its New York branch in 1912,became the first foreign bank to be issued a license to operate in New York.

The Chartered Bank of India, Australia and China (or simply The Chartered Bank) was a bank founded in London in 1851/1853 by Scotsman James Wilson following the grant of a Royal Charter from Queen Victoria. It opened its first branches in 1858 in Calcutta and Bombay and then in 1863 in Karachi and Shanghai. The bank was keen to capitalise on the huge expansion of trade and to earn the handsome profits to be made from financing the movement of goods from Europe to the East.^[1]
The Shanghai branch of Chartered bank began operation in August 1858. Initially, the bank's business dealt specifically with large volume discounting and re-discounting of opium and cotton bills. Although opium cultivation gradually increased in China, opium imports still increased from 50,087 picul in 1863 to 82,61 picul in 1888. Transactions in the opium trade generated substantial profits for Chartered bank.^[2] Later, the Chartered Bank also became one of the principal foreign banknote-issuing institutions in Shanghai.^[3]

THE 1% VS. 99%
PLUTOCRACY
Lapham's Rules of Influence:

 

Lapham's Rules of Influence:
A Careerist's Guide to Success, Status, and Self-Congratulation - book "American Ruling Elite" Book

Lapham, the iconoclastic editor The DVD of Harper's Magazine, argues that brown nosing has a long tradition in America, and quotes no less a source than Alexis de Tocqueville, who in 1831 was shocked to find that the "courtier spirit" was alive and well in the rough-and-tumble American democracy. Besides the witty, incisive pieces that he regularly contributes there, he has produced nearly a book a year over the past decade. Consistently lampooning privilege and all its trappings, he zeroes in on the cultural elite, the press, the publishing industry, educational institutions, and politicians of every stripe. He rearms himself here and takes aim again. This latest offering is a Swiftian self-help manual written for careerists, whom Lapham suggests are adept in the arts of deference and carry on the "courtier spirit" that Tocqueville found flourishing when he traveled America. After a long introductory essay, Lapham offers aphoristic observations on subjects such as resumes ("the most important of literary forms"), cliches ("make unsparing use of them"), grant proposals ("remember to employ the word `enhance'"), and tact ("the deft careerist tends to swallow insults as if they were oysters served on silver trays"). Every page of Lapham's compact, acerbic guide contains a delight! David Rouse

The Price of Admission:
How America's Ruling Class Buys Its Way into Elite Colleges
and Who Gets Left Outside the Gates

A heavy-hitting, name-naming exposé by Wall Street Journal deputy bureau chief Golden concludes that Ivy League admissions offices do not practice meritocracy. Instead, top-drawer schools reward donor-happy alums and the "legacy establishment," which Golden defines as "elites mastering the art of perpetuating themselves." Moreover, the "preference of privilege" enables wealthy candidates to nose out more deserving working- and middle-class students, especially new immigrants and Asian-Americans. Golden backs his assertions with examples comparing the academic records of entering students: e.g., Al Gore's son was admitted to Harvard despite his shabby record, although a better prepared Asian-American was rejected at all Ivy Leagues because he was "unhooked" (in admission parlance, not well connected or moneyed). Asian-Americans, notes Golden, are the "new Jews," for whom a higher bar is set. Golden tracks shameful admissions policies at Duke, where the enrollment of privileged but under qualified applicants has helped elevate the school's endowment ranking from 25th in 1980 to 16th in 2005; Brown is skewered for courting the offspring of entertainment industry notables. Golden suggests reasonable, workable tactics for resurrecting the anti legacy campaign in Congress (led by Senator Kennedy) and devotes a laudatory chapter to the equitable admissions practices at Caltech, Berea College (Kentucky) and Cooper Union (New York City). (Sept.)

BookKindle

Charles Butler

In 1855, William Allen Butler worked in his uncle's office at 12 Wall Street, handling railroad bonds (New York Daily Times, May 2, 1855 p.6.) His uncle, Charles Butler (1802-1897), went to Chicago in 1833, when it was "a hamlet of less than 300 population," and became interested in real estate there. He persuaded his brother-in-law, William Butler Ogden (1805-1877), who was a member of the New York legislature, to take charge of his interests there, while he handled Ogden's interests in New York. In 1836, Charles Butler was one of twenty founders of Union Theological Seminary and continued on its board of directors for life, as president from 1870-97. Also in 1836, Charles Butler became a member of the Council of the University of New York, now New York University. He was president of New York University at his death, when William Allen Butler was elected in his place. (Auction Sales. New York Daily Times, June 13, 1855 p.6; Charles Butler Is Dead. New York Times, Dec. 14, 1897; Burial of Charles Butler. New York Times, Dec. 11, 1897; New York University. New York Times, Jan. 4, 1898 p. 14; Guide to the Charles Butler Papers. New York University Archives, Elmer Holmes Bobst Library.) Charles Butler's boyhood friend, Charles A. Briggs, spearheaded the liberal takeover of the Presbyterian Church. Briggs got his ideology at the University of Berlin. (The Fundamentalist / Modernist Conflict. The First Presbyterian Church.)

Charles Butler Papers / New York University
The Fundamentalist / Modernist Conflict / First Presbyterian Church

Charles Butler's oldest daughter, Emily Ogden Butler, gave $150,000 in cash and 223,109 as half the residue of her estate, as well as $300,000 before her death, to Union Seminary. Her friend and companion, Dr. Mathilda K. Wallin, received $11,437 in personal effects, $200,000 in cash, a life interest in $25,000, and the use of her country home and town estate. (Union Seminary Receives $300,000. New York Times, Dec. 25, 1924; Miss Emily O. Butler Left $2,105,063 Net. New York Times, May 22, 1929.) Wallin became Treasurer of the Women's Army General Hospital of New York in 1916, and a year later was named to the executive committee of the American Women's Hospitals, and held this post until her death. She was a longtime trustee of the New York Infirmary for Women and Children (C.H. Strong to Keep Old Infirmary Open. New York Times, May 12, 1928; Dr. Mathilda K. Wallin, a Physician, Dies; American Women's Hospital Official, 97. New York Times, Sep. 20, 1955.)

William Butler Ogden
In 1837, William Butler Ogden became the first Mayor of Chicago. In 1862, he was a Commissioner of the Union Pacific Railroad when it got its big subsidy from the US Congress, along with Thomas W. Olcott [the father of Central Trust trustee Frederick P. Olcott], John S. Kennedy of the Central Trust, Noah L. Wilson (later a director of the New York Guaranty & Indemnity Company), C.P. Huntington and D.O. Mills. (Public Notices. New York Times, July 14, 1862.) In 1863, he was on the first board of directors of the Union Pacific, along with Abiel A. Low, one of the founding directors of the New York Guaranty and Indemnity Company (Union Pacific Railroad. New York Times, Oct. 31, 1863.) Ogden was President of the Board of Trustees of the pre-Rockefeller University of Chicago, from which he resigned to move to New York (Chicago Affairs. New York Times, Jan. 1, 1874.) Ogden's widow and son contested his will because they were allowed an income only and no money, in his son Herman's case, until his "full and permanent reformation... from intemperance and evil habits to the full satisfaction of my Executors..." (He Wanted His Son To Reform. New York Times, Feb. 26, 1886.) Mrs. Ogden's bequest to her niece's son was conditioned on abstaining from alcohol and tobacco until he reached the age of twenty-one. (Mrs. Ogden's Estate Valued At $20,000,000. New York Times, Oct. 7, 1904.) Her sister was the wife of Guaranty Trust director George G. Haven. (Mrs. William B. Ogden. New York Times, Sep. 29, 1904, p.9).

The University and the City / University of Chicago

Richard Pettigrew in "Triumphant Plutocracy" said: "The situation is well summed up in the case of the Union & Central Pacific Railroads which were conceived in the womb of the Republican Party; were born into the world as the full-fledged children of corruption and iniquity, and which never for one day drew an honest breath."

The Pacific Railway Act / Historical Documents
William B. Ogden's niece, Frances Sheldon, married William Fitzhugh Whitehouse, Skull & Bones 1899, who was the grandson of Henry J. Whitehouse, the Protestant Episcopal Bishop of Illinois. William F. Whitehouse began his career at the Guaranty Trust from 1900 until 1904, when his father bought him a seat on the New York Stock Exchange. They were the parents of Edwin Sheldon Whitehouse, Skull & Bones 1905, and grandparents of Charles Sheldon Whitehouse, S&B 1947. Mrs. Sheldon Whitehouse (Mary Crocker Alexander), whose grandfather, San Francisco banker Charles Crocker, was associated with Leland Stanford, Collis P. Huntington and Mark Hopkins, continued her mother's interests on the board of Presbyterian Hospital. Her sister was Mrs. Winthrop W. Aldrich, whose husband was on the board of directors of the American Society for the Control of Cancer; and their father was Charles B. Alexander, counsel, a director, and a member of the Executive Committee of the Equitable Life, and grandson of a founder of Princeton Theological Seminary. (Miss Alexander to Wed S. Whitehouse. New York Times, Jul. 30, 1920; C.B. Alexander, 77, Noted Lawyer, Dies. New York Times, Feb. 8, 1927; W.F. Whitehouse, Newport Leader. New York Times, May 28, 1955; Sheldon Whitehouse Dies At 82; Career Diplomat for 26 Years. New York Times, Aug. 7, 1965.)

Thomas Hamlin Hubbard
Thomas H. Hubbard (1838-1915), joined the Butler firm before the Civil War, and was a partner from 1867-1896. He was the second son of Maine governor Dr. John Hubbard, who signed the infamous Maine Liquor Law in 1851. As a trustee of the estate of Collis P. Huntington, he served as First Vice President of the Southern Pacific and in the management of other Huntington properties. He was President of the Pacific Improvement Company, and President of the International Banking Corporation, which acted as agent of the U.S. in collecting the Boxer Indemnity from China; President of the Guatemala Central Railroad, Chairman of the Executive Committee of the American Light and Traction Company, and a director of the National Bank of Commerce, the Equitable Trust Company, Wabash Railroad Company, the Toledo, St. Louis and Western Railroad Co., the Western Union Telegraph Co., the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, and other companies. (Gen. T.H. Hubbard, Financier, Dead. New York Times, May 20, 1915 p. 11; Hubbard Estate $2,579,422. New York Times, Apr. 7, 1917 p. 11.) He was one of the attorneys in the litigation over the will of Francis Saltus of the Saltus Steel Co. of New Haven, Conn., and he was the executor of the will of Theodore Saltus, who left half his estate of $3,543,253 to be divided between the American Bible Society, the Home Missions of the Presbyterian Church, and the New York Association for the Improvement of the Poor. (Mr. Saltus's Brief Will. New York Times, Jan. 4, 1901; Brigadier General Thomas Hamlin Hubbard. Military Order of the Loyal Legion of the United States.) Hubbard was a director of the Shoe and Leather Bank, and his son, John was added to the board in 1904 (Annual Bank Elections. New York Times, Jan. 21, 1904.) Hubbard was a director of the Chicago & Alton Railroad, along with Joy Morton and Norman B. Ream. (Alton's control complete. New York Times, Oct. 3, 1907.) Hubbard was president of the Houston and Texas Central Railroad. His wife, Sibyl A. Fahnestock, was the sister of Harris C. Fahnestock, a former partner of Jay Cooke & Co. and Vice President of the First National Bank of New York. Harris Fahnestock's daughter, Ruth, married A. Coster Schermerhorn, S&B 1920 (Ruth Fahnestock Wed At St. Thomas. New York Times, Dec. 1, 1926.)

Brig. Gen. Thomas Hamlin Hubbard / Military Order of the Loyal Legion of the United States
A daughter, Sibyl Emma Hubbard, married Herbert Seymour Darlington of Philadelphia. He was associated with Joseph G. Darlington & Company until 1922, when he sold the business to Strawbridge & Clothier. He graduated from Yale Law School in 1897. (Obituary Record of Yale Graduates 1924-1925, p. 281.)
Obituary Record of Yale Graduates 1924-1925 / Yale University Library (pdf, 317 pp)

How insiders snatch millions from estates in the scandal-scarred Surrogate Courts 7/29, 2012
http://www.nypost.com/f/print/news/local/court_of_grave_robbers_sp0WdY7PIE7b0fuZ2VJ5uM

If you’re a lawyer in New York, there’s no sweeter deal than getting assigned to an estate case in Surrogate’s Court. The work is often routine — selling assets, paying bills, contacting heirs — but the pay can reach into the millions. Landing such a gig requires currying favor with one of the city’s seven surrogate judges, who handle wills and estates. They have the power to appoint lawyers and approve their sometimes jaw-dropping invoices. The jobs often go to the judges’ friends, associates or campaign contributors, court authorities admit. Looting of the estates can sometimes result.

The most recent example involves Bronx Judge Lee Holzman, who last week faced removal from the surrogate bench after he signed off on legal work that was never done. Another alleged thief preyed on a lucrative and largely unsupervised part of the system — cases in which there is no will. Such cases go to public administrators, who work with Surrogate’s Court judges in handling their finances. Judges who allow fraudulent pay-outs are “a disgrace to the legal profession and to the state of New York,” said Monroe Freedman, a Hofstra University professor and leading expert on legal ethics. “They should be removed from the bench and disbarred.”

Freedman said an entrenched system of favor-trading, with hints of bribery, has persisted for decades. “They’re stealing from the client, which is one of the worst things you can do,” he said. “I can’t think of much worse. The judges are not only condoning it, but they’re helping lawyers do it.” Even when there is no illegality, huge sums vanish.

A decade after Wall Street investment banker Ted Ammon was beaten to death in his East Hampton home, a group of politically connected lawyers pummeled his estate with $10 million in fees, records show. That amounts to 20 percent of his $50 million fortune, well above the 6 percent rate that court administrators deem acceptable. The staggering payments helped shrink the inheritance of Ammon’s adopted twin children — son Grego and daughter Alexa — to just $1 million each.

The hefty legal tab was rubber-stamped by Surrogate’s Court judges in Manhattan and Long Island. One of them, former Manhattan Surrogate Eve Preminger, approved $4.3 million to a single firm, Schulte, Roth & Zabel. That amounts to $9,710 per day between February 2002 and July 2003.

Preminger had personal ties to the firm. She privately worked with Schulte’s pointwoman on the case, lawyer Susan Frunzi. The two wrote a textbook, “Trusts and Estates Practice in New York,” together. The judge also owned stock in JPMorgan Chase, which she approved as estate executor. The bank picked Schulte, then submitted its own bill for $1.6 million. After Ammon’s widow, Generosa, died of cancer in 2003, the matter moved to Surrogate’s Court in Suffolk County, where Gerard Sweeney, an insider with the Queens Democratic machine, made a windfall. He and another lawyer, Michael Dowd, were executors to the estate of Generosa Ammon, but also got appointed as lawyers by the Suffolk judge, John Czygier. Together they scooped up a cool $2.2 million. Sweeney hired Eisner LLP, an accounting firm that charged $123,000 for just one month of work in April 2004.

State court authorities long ago recognized serious problems in the Surrogate’s Courts.

They conducted two blue-ribbon panel reviews, in 2001 and 2005, and found that there was “an opaque system that operates on the basis of connections and cronyism” and that its own rules were being ignored. So in 2002, they pushed through reforms, barring court employees and political party leaders from getting fiduciary appointments. Any lawyer who earns more than $75,000 in a given year on a single case he’s appointed to now must wait a year before getting a second appointment. There’s also a “sunshine” provision that demands the court system publish the names of appointees and their fees on its official Web site. But that hasn’t stopped the tide of scandal.

Former Brooklyn Surrogate Michael Feinberg was forced out in 2005 and disbarred for approving excessive fees of 8 percent to a law-school friend. His successor, Frank Seddio, stepped down in 2007 amid a probe by the watchdog Commission on Judicial Conduct into allegations he sent campaign cash to political cronies. A commission committee voted to boot Holzman last week, but he’s fighting to keep his job. His defense is to claim that other surrogates did the same thing — namely, signing off on fat payments without examining invoices, a practice that court authorities say is not OK. His examples, listed in rebuttal to the charges, include former Manhattan Surrogate Renee Roth, one of the four Ammon judges, who was ripped by the city bar association for handing two-thirds of her lucrative legal assignments to attorneys who funded her election.

Has anything really changed?
Not according to former Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Felice Shea, who was hired as a referee on the Holzman matter and dryly concluded last week that in Surrogate’s Courts “statutory compliance and transparency are not the norm.” Court spokesman David Bookstaver said the new rules have greatly improved the system. “They certainly lend themselves to much greater accountability and transparency and have gone a long way to increase the public’s understanding and confidence in the Surrogate Courts,” he said. Preminger, Roth, Frunzi, Sweeney and Dowd did not return calls for comment. Before his death in 2001, Ammon doted on children Grego and Alexa, who are now 21, but they stand to inherit far less than what has been paid to the court-approved experts — just $500,000 in cash each, plus $1million for them to share in a trust named after the widow Generosa. That trust has only one other asset: the East Hampton home where their father was killed by Generosa’s husband, Danny Pelosi. But the house, valued at $9 million, cannot be sold until their former nanny, Kathryn Ann Mayne, dies. She gets to live there for free for as long as she wants.

 

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