Harvey Weinstein, Anne Hathaway host Obama fundraiser
Harvey Weinstein arrives for a State Dinner in honor of British Prime Minister David Cameron at the White House on March 14, 2012, in Washington.
/ Brendan Hoffman(CBS News) President Obama on Monday evening will be rubbing elbows with movie producer Harvey Weinstein, actress Anne Hathaway and about 60 other well-heeled supporters at a Connecticut fundraiser expected to bring in more than $2 million for the president's re-election campaign.
Weinstein is hosting the $38,500-a-person fundraiser at his Westport, Conn., beachfront property, which the Hartford Courant reports is worth about $15.5 million. About 60 people are expected to attend, including the event co-hosts Hathaway and screenwriter and producer Aaron Sorkin. Paul Newman's widow Joanne Woodward is also on the guest list.
Before that event, Mr. Obama will be joining about 400 supporters, the Courant reports, at a $500-per-person event in Stamford, Conn.
Connecticut is a solidly blue state, but it's a reliable source of cash for both Mr. Obama and his Republican competitor Mitt Romney. The GOP candidate made a three-day fundraising trip through New York and Connecticut in May, raising more than $10 million.
The Romney campaign announced Monday that it raised $101.3 million in the month of July, besting the Obama campaign, which raised $75 million, for the third straight month.
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http://simonbau.blog.com/?p=31
He's a hypocrite socialist elitist like all communist leaders.
So are his left wing defenders anf fleabaggere who give him a pass.
For his work in the Hollywood blockbuster The Avengers, actor Robert Downey Jr. will make somewhere in the ballpark of $50 million. His co-stars Mark Ruffalo, Samuel L. Jackson and Scarlett Johansson are also slated to make millions of dollars each for their respective portrayals of Marvel superheroes.
Of course, paydays that high are much easier for a studio to stomach (in this case Marvel Studios, which is part of the Walt Disney Company) when they come after a film has made more than $1 billion at the global box office, as has The Avengers. But taxpayers should pause when they find out that they covered some of the cost of making the smash hit, sending free money to a huge multinational corporation at a time of economic distress.
The budget for The Avengers was a hefty $220 million, but a portion of it was defrayed by $22 million in subsidies that Marvel received from the state of New Mexico. Much of the film was shot at various locations around Albuquerque, New Mexico, and the state has decided to provide a 25 percent rebate for any film or television production done within its borders.
That New Mexico managed to find $22 million to subsidize a major motion picture should raise some eyebrows, considering that, in the last few years, it has cut funding for services for the elderly and the disabled, preschool, higher education, and its state workforce. "We could have spent that $22 million on all kinds of things, like education for our children. We could have spent it on roads," said New Mexico state Rep. Dennis Kintigh (R).
New Mexico is far from the only state providing subsidies for film and television production. In 2010, 43 states spent $1.5 billion on film and TV subsidies. Of the nine films that were nominated for best picture in 2012, five received state subsidies, including The Help, Moneyball and The Descendents.
The common rationale used to justify such a cost is that the subsidies attract jobs and other economic activity to a state that otherwise will go somewhere else, benefiting someone else. However, as the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities found, the subsidies only tend to create short-term jobs. Furthermore, those jobs are filled by already well-off film professionals who come from a state other than the one that's footing the bill:
"State film subsidies are a wasteful, ineffective, and unfair instrument of economic development. While they appear to be a "quick fix" that provides jobs and business to state residents with only a short lag, in reality they benefit mostly non-residents, especially well-paid non-resident film and TV professionals. Some residents benefit from these subsidies, but most end up paying for them in the form of fewer services — such as education, healthcare, and police and fire protection — or higher taxes elsewhere."
The few analyses done of state film and television subsidies have found that their rate of return in terms of economic activity borders on pathetic. For instance, Rhode Island found that it receives just 28 cents in direct economic investment for every dollar it spends on subsidies. A 2005 study by Louisiana's chief economist found that the economic activity generated by film subsidies only offsets 16-18 percent of their cost.
Piling on, in 2007, the Connecticut Department of Community and Economic Development found that its state "will not receive enough additional revenue from increased economic activity to pay for the estimated $16.5 million in tax credits" doled out to the film industry. The New England Public Policy Center at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston added that "film tax credits do not 'pay for themselves' by indirectly generating additional corporate income, sales, and property tax revenues."
Even the film industry's lobbying arm, the Motion Picture Association of America, can't find any hard data to support its contention that film subsidies help a state succeed economically. In fact, a recent report by the MPAA in defense of film subsidies cited only a hypothetical $10 million production, not a real film, as evidence that subsidies work.
Fortunately, some states, such as Arizona and Kansas, have ended their subsidy programs, bringing the number of states spending tax dollars on film and television production this year down to 35, according to the conservative Tax Foundation. But other states are doubling down, betting more on the film industry with the economy still struggling in the wake of the Great Recession. That may be a way for Hollywood to get ahead, but it's doing precious little for those taxpayers who are ultimately providing the dollars.
Weinstein has also cultivated a reputation for ruthlessness and fits of anger. According to Biskind, Weinstein once put a New York Observer reporter in a headlock while throwing him out of a party. On another occasion, Weinstein excoriated director Julie Taymor and her husband during a disagreement over a test screening of her movie Frida.
In a 2004 piece in New York magazine, Weinstein appeared somewhat repentant for his often aggressive discussions with directors and producers.However, an October 13, 2008 Newsweek story criticized Weinstein, who was accused of "hassling Sydney Pollack on his deathbed" about the release of the film The Reader. After Weinstein offered $1 million to charity if the accusation could be proven, journalist Nikki Finke published an August 22 email by Scott Rudin asserting that Weinstein "harassed" Anthony Minghella's widow and a bedridden Pollack until Pollack's family asked him to stop.
In September 2009, Weinstein publicly voiced opposition to efforts to extradite Roman Polanski from Switzerland to the U.S. regarding 1977 charges of unlawful sexual intercourse with a 13-year-old, to which Polanski had pled guilty before fleeing the country. Weinstein, whose company had distributed a film about the Polanski case, questioned whether Polanski committed any crime, prompting Los Angeles County District Attorney Steve Cooley to insist that Polanski's guilty plea indeed qualified his action as a crime, and that several other more serious charges were still pending.
Then they have the audacity to tell the rest of us what we should be doing. Hollywood is a big rip off.
During the Vietnam war Romney avoided military service at the height of the fighting after high school by seeking and receiving four draft deferments, according to Selective Service records. They included college deferments and a 31-month stretch as a "minister of religion" in France, a classification for Mormon missionaries that the church at the time feared was being overused.