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German Publishing’s Man in the White House
Obama's ties to Bertelsmann are a massive conflict of interest yet to be fully disclosed.
Largely thanks to the Bertelsmann deal, Obama went from earning just over $85,000 in 2004 (see statement 3 in Barack and Michelle Obamas’ joint 2004 tax return here) to well over $1 million in 2005. His senate salary of $154,000 was dwarfed in that year by a reported $874,000 in income from Random House plus another $336,000 from literary agent Dystel & Goderich. (See statements 5 and 10 in the Obamas’ 2005 return here.) The Obamas’ most recent 2007 return lists a staggering $3,279,000 in income from Random House plus another nearly $816,000 from literary agent Dystel & Goderich, adding up to over $4 million in book-related revenues in all. (As so happens, Jane Dystel is Obama’s former literary agent, whom he is reported to have unceremoniously dumped before signing the Random House deal. That Obama should be receiving such large sums from Dystel & Goderich suggests some sort of complicated settlement between the three parties and this suggests in turn that the sums could well represent additional indirect payments to Obama from Random House. In any case, it is unusual for an agent to be paying a client rather than vice versa.) All told, from 2005 to 2007, Obama received some $4,556,636 in income from the Random House division of Bertelsmann and another $1,299,167 from Dystel & Goderich, adding up to nearly $6 million — presumably all of it related in one way or another to the Bertelsmann/Random House deal.
In the interest of transparency, Obama should surely now release the full details of his contractual relationship with the Bertelsmann Corporation. After all, if one is to judge by his recent tax returns, even as president, he will be paid far more by Bertelsmann than by the American taxpayers. For him to be taking advice from the Bertelsmann Foundation suggests conflict of interest on a magnitude that has perhaps never before been seen in the history of the American presidency. Although legally distinct, the foundation and the corporation are, in effect, just functionally distinct parts of a single entity. The Bertelsmann Foundation is in fact the majority shareholder in the corporation, presently holding roughly three-quarters of the company shares, to which, however, there correspond no voting rights. All the remaining shares are held by the Mohn family: family patriarch Reinhard, his wife Liz, and their children. The Mohns in turn control the foundation (to which Reinhard Mohn assigned a large part of the company capital in 1993), such that foundation and corporation are perfectly intertwined and both are, in effect, emanations of the Mohn family’s power.
It might be considered irrelevant today that Bertelsmann massively collaborated with the Nazi regime during World War II. (For more on this, see “Bill Clinton’s German Paymasters.”) But it is surely not irrelevant that when German researcher Hersch Fischler first brought this fact to light, the family proposed to have the matter further investigated by one Dirk Bavendamm. Bavendamm is the family’s “in-house” historian, having written no fewer than three commissioned histories of the Mohn family and the Bertelsmann Corporation. As so happens, he is also an open revisionist, who calls World War II “Roosevelt’s War” and suggests — à la contemporary 9/11 conspiracy theorists writing on George W. Bush — that Franklin Delano Roosevelt intentionally permitted the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor to occur. Bavendamm has even written a book on the subject with the curious title Roosevelt’s War 1937-45 and the Puzzle of Pearl Harbor [Roosevelts Krieg 1937 -- 45 und das Rätsel von Pearl Harbor]. “With the events of December 7-8, 1941 [i.e., the attack on Pearl Harbor], Roosevelt … had achieved his most important aims,” Bavendamm has written in an essay on the subject [German link], “America’s entry into the War occurred with the enthusiastic consent of the overwhelming majority of the American people — … Roosevelt had finally convinced them that it was their sacred duty, guns in hand to defend freedom, democracy, and prosperity around the world.” (For more on Bavendamm, see Hersch Fischler and John Friedman’s “Bertelsmann’s Revisionist” here.)
The theory that the Pearl Harbor attack was a set-up is, incidentally, standard neo-Nazi fare. Interestingly enough, in his infamous “God Damn America!” sermon, Obama’s longtime pastor Jeremiah Wright invokes precisely this theory as apparently well-established fact: “The government lied about Pearl Harbor too,” he says. “They knew the Japanese were going to attack. Governments lie.”
The Obama team and the Mohns would undoubtedly say that it is scandalous to suggest that the Mohns were using their millions to influence the American presidency or that Obama could possibly be corrupted. But as a reputed former professor of constitutional law, Obama will surely recall the famous words of James Madison in the Federalist Papers: “If men were angels, no government would be necessary.” The president-elect’s most fervent followers may well be convinced that he is divine. But his financial relationship to Bertelsmann proves, after all, that he is only human.
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John Rosenthal’s writings on European politics and transatlantic relations have appeared in English, French, and German in such leading publications as Policy Review, Les Temps Modernes, and Merkur. He holds a PhD in philosophy and he taught political philosophy and classical German philosophy before turning to journalism. More of his work can be found at Transatlantic Intelligencer.
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27 Comments
1. German Publishing’s Man in the White House:[...] German Publishing’s Man in the White House Obama’s ties to Bertelsmann are a massive conflict of interest yet to be fully disclosed. [...]
Nov 21, 2008 - 1:31 am 2. Jim:Change we CAN believe in. To the left of corruptness. Yay.
Nov 21, 2008 - 4:07 am 3. Lee:Check your reporting: It is not unusual for agents to “pay authors” as you say. The royalties from the publisher go to the agent who takes his or her 10-15% and then pays the author. I suspect Jane Dystel’s money is for the first book, for which she still gets a percentage of royalties even if Obama fired her before his second book. Check your reporting.
Nov 21, 2008 - 7:11 am 4. Brian Richard Allen:The change is that the self-and-own-cuture-loathing mobbed-up Marxist murtadd Muslim manifestation of Arab-African evil, B Milhous bin B Hussayn bin Hussayn Muhummad Ubambi’s so obscenly profiting from his close companionship with RICO racketeers, ratbag terrorists and from every other imaginable and unimaginable enemy of America and of Individual Liberty is so open to inspection.
This elitist empty galabia has learned from America’s worst and doesn’t care what we see.
Brian Richard Allen
Nov 21, 2008 - 8:01 am 5. Ian Thorpe:Los Angeles – CalifOBAMAcated 90028
Silly numbers are used in quoting book advances (I know from experience) A “million pound book deal” could mean “Here’s £5000 towards expenses, you get £80,000 for 100,000 sales £100,000 for 250,000 sales and then extra guaranteed sums for fiml rights, serialisations etc.
But who can blame Obama for milking his fame. If he is impeached for accepting illegal campaign contributions he is virtually unemployable. His CV barely qualifies him to stack shelves or flip burgers and what minimum wage employer would take on a man who spent most of his career as a civil rights agitator.
Nov 21, 2008 - 8:27 am 6. » Pajamas Media » German Publishing’s Man in the White House White House On Best Political Blogs: News And Info On White House:[...] Publishing’s Man in the White House Posted in November 21st, 2008 by in Uncategorized Pajamas Media » German Publishing’s Man in the White House On the day after the election of Barack Obama to succeed the outgoing demon-president, the channel [...]
Nov 21, 2008 - 8:39 am 7. Pajamas Media » German Publishing’s Man in the White House:[...] Pajamas Media » German Publishing’s Man in the White House After all, it was only in April of this year that we discovered that a reported $10 million book deal signed by former President Bill Clinton with Bertelsmann/Random House in 2001 had in fact been worth $15 million. … [...]
Nov 21, 2008 - 8:41 am 8. Self-hating boomer:Surely you jest. He won’t even cough up his Birth Certificate, and having gotten one lawsuit to produce it dismissed, is currently fighting to get another lawsuit dosmissed.
Transparency? Are you kidding?
Nov 21, 2008 - 12:51 pm 9. Robert Hurley:YOU OUGHT TO TRY FICTION
Nov 21, 2008 - 1:55 pm 10. Pee Wee Herman, Community Organizer:Egad. We’re finally starting to see the obots here crack up just like in this news report:
http://www.theonion.com/content/video/obama_win_causes_obsessive
Hurley, I think there are 12-step programs.
Nov 21, 2008 - 2:56 pm 11. Marie Claude:ooh la la, I smell a conspiration
I happened to watch Arte, cuz it’s one of the “cultural” medias left in the nowadays medias cafarnaum, didn’t see that they were “anti-americans”, OK Im not a TV watch, but bizarely our immigrants-pro Pals would rather say that Arte is sold to the Americano-sionism lobbie, cuz they can’t see their cause well spread
Nov 21, 2008 - 4:30 pm 12. thegr8_1:Truth is stranger than fiction.
Nov 21, 2008 - 5:55 pm 13. Jeff:This is just another area in which Obama and his leftist illuminati practices are questionable. There are going to be a lot of interesting things that come out of the woodwork over the next four years.
Nov 21, 2008 - 8:31 pm 14. Clem:Help me understand this controversy. A very public and popular politician and his agent sign a book deal with Random House and (OMG!)they get paid for it. That payment is fully disclosed. Because Random House is owned by a German company, you suspect that this politician is now under the direct influence and control of this foreign corporation and its investors. I am all for full disclosure but this article is wingnuttery at its best.
Nov 22, 2008 - 7:33 am 15. PJ:Of course, these questions will never appear in any newspaper or TV channel.
Nov 22, 2008 - 7:42 am 16. Chris in Toronto:“There are none so blind as they who will not see.”
Nov 22, 2008 - 8:07 am 17. sfcmac:–– Jonathan Swift, 1738, in his ‘Polite Conversation’
@Lee
The advance on his book isn’t exactly coming from an unbiased, non-political source, is it? Bertelsmann ain’t Random House.
Nov 22, 2008 - 8:09 am 18. Gladstone:So the puppet-master is himself a puppet? Who would have guessed!?
Nov 22, 2008 - 8:10 am 19. Gudrun Eussner:For those of you reading German here an article about The Bertelsmann Stiftung and its activities in Islamization of our society. Here you find an article from their site in English: “Muslims in Germany are very religious”. Watch the photo, please, to get an idea, how they are thinking about Muslim women: two joung ladies with headscarfs.
Nov 22, 2008 - 8:22 am 20. BD:Obama should do what Bush did with the proceeds of “A Charge to Keep” while he was in the White House: donate them to charity.
Nov 22, 2008 - 8:27 am 21. Suzanne H:I am curious. How many of Obama’s books sold and did that number justify his advances or the continuing payments of large sums?
Nov 22, 2008 - 8:37 am 22. Flopping Aces » Blog Archive » Obama’s Judgment In Question Once Again:[...] Rosenthal is asking the Obama campaign to fully disclose a obvious conflict of interest: The publicly funded Franco-German “cultural” [...]
Nov 22, 2008 - 10:35 am 23. AFNonline » Blog Archive » Revising “the Logic of Hegemony”:[...] Rosenthal has got a worthy piece of prose up on Pajamas Media that makes the skin crawl. “German Publishing’s Man in the White House” tells of Obama’s ties to Germany’s Bertelsmann Publishing and a massive conflict of [...]
Nov 23, 2008 - 6:30 am 24. Do Not Take Publishing Advice from the Folks at Pajamas Media « Tiny Cat Pants:[...] apparently John Rosenthal just discovered that Obama wrote some books and that SHOCKINGLY he makes money off of them. The Obamas’ most recent 2007 return lists a [...]
Nov 23, 2008 - 7:10 am 25. » German Publishing’s Man in the White House White House On Best Political Blogs: News And Info On White House:[...] German Publishing’s Man in the White House Posted in November 23rd, 2008 by in Uncategorized German Publishing’s Man in the White House [...]
Nov 24, 2008 - 3:23 pm 26. Streaming Headlines : AFNewsblog:[...] Rosenthal has got a worthy piece of prose up on Pajamas Media that makes the skin crawl. “German Publishing’s Man in the White House” tells of Obama’s ties to Germany’s Bertelsmann Publishing and a massive conflict of interest [...]
Nov 25, 2008 - 5:18 pm 27. Pajamas Media » What Bertelsmann Wants from Obama:[...] suggested in my earlier article on Bertelsmann’s “Man in the White House”, the issue of Obama’s financial relationship to Bertelsmann is particularly troubling, since [...]
Dec 15, 2008 - 1:04 am