Most people who puzzle over the efforts of Norman Hsu focus, and rightly so, on where Hsu came up with the boatloads of money that went to Democratic candidates and organizations. Flip Pidot at Suitably Flip decided to ask another question -- why did Hsu donate to certain candidates and not others? Flip discovers an indirect link to Bill Clinton's cabinet:
This is peculiar. As an A-list Democratic fundraiser, Hsu is typically the bundler in these transactions, not the bundlee. So what gives?Lillian Vernon is a trinket catalog company, perhaps best known for its constant lampooning on Mad TV. It was founded by Lillian Hochberg in Mount Vernon, NY (clever, eh?) in 1951. Lillian's son Fred is the current CEO and his brother David is an executive at the company.
If you run a search for Fred Hochberg's own federal political contributions, the telltale Hsu pattern once again emerges. The same goes for Lillian Vernon's corporate contributions. From all the federal and state records, as well as the municipal filings in New York, L.A., and San Francisco, I've compiled a full accounting of the donations made by both the company itself and Fred and David Hochberg and updated the Google spreadsheet with a separate Hochberg tab.
Who is Fred Hochberg? He's a fellow Hillraiser, and thanks to the serendipity of alpabetization, his name appears adjacent to Hsu on the Hillraiser roster. Hochberg also served as Bill Clinton's Small Business Administration administrator, a position which Clinton subsequently raised to Cabinet level (and Bush demoted). Hochberg also appeared on the infamous "White House Coffee" guest lists.
Read all of Flip's work. He's doing first-rate work, uncovering some uncomfortable connections.
Reminds me of 1997. Bill Clinton, John Huang, Charlie Trie, Johnny Chung....AMAZING the Clintons keep making the same mistake over and over and over.
I’d campaign for Flip Pidot for Attorney General, but he’s more valuable on his blog at http://www.suitablyflip.com
Bump for his outstanding research. The networks will come to this kicking and screaming, but with research like that, they WILL come.
Actually, it matters less and less if they do anyway. The train’s left without them.