UC Regent Profiles

Richard C. Blum
A wealthy financier and Democratic Party insider, Regent Blum is married to Senator Dianne Feinstein, and has provided cash and a funding network that has fueled her rise in politics over the last two decades. Blum’s net worth is probably in the level of several hundred million dollars. Blum is the quintessential power elite. His financial contributions to the Democratic Party and related political action committees often exceeds $100,000 in a given year. He also serves on the boards of several influential policy organizations such as the Brookings Institution.

His financial holdings are primarily leveraged through his Blum Capital Partners, and Richard C. Blum and Associates capital investment corporations based in San Francisco. Through these entities Blum invests in numerous global corporations and business ventures. Blum holds considerable stock in CBRE, the largest commercial real estate firm in the world. Blum is also an owner of the Korean banking outfit, Korea First Bank, Northwest Airlines, and Playtex Products.

Blum holds millions in stock and serves as vice president for URS Corporation, a major military-industrial company that holds innumerable contracts with the U.S. military and is currently making millions of dollars off the “rebuilding of Iraq” through its Perini Construction, EG&G, and other subsidiaries. URS is the corporate parent of Lear Siegler Services and EG&G Inc., two companies that URS acquired from the Carlyle group. The deal handed $170 million in URS stock over the Carlyle group, making the Washington D.C. based merchant bank a major shareholder in URS along with Regent Blum. Carlyle sold of its stake in URS in 2003 (Engineering News Record, 5/31/2004). The exit of Carlyle has not reduced URS and Blum’s stake in the military-industrial sector.

Through URS, Blum remains a major player in the military-industrial complex. One notable example is URS’s contract for construction services at the UC managed Los Alamos nuclear weapons laboratory (LANL). As a UC Regent Blum is responsible for overseeing the overall operations of LANL, a “non-profit public service” according to Blum and the Board of Regents. As a Vice President and major shareholder in URS, Blum is responsible for increasing profits through contracts secured with the U.S. military and other clients like LANL. In July of 2000 URS was awarded a contract for “design and construction services at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.” This five-year contract (with a five “option” year extension) will enrich URS and Richard C. Blum by $25 million per year. It also builds up the U.S. nuclear weapons complex to the profit of many men like Blum. The line between Blum’s management of the University and his profit driven management of URS is blurred beyond distinction.

Gerald L. Parsky

At the UC Regents board meeting on May 25, 2005, Regent Parsky was asked by a group of UC students to define the word “peace.” The students were referring to the ultimatum he had just given them: you students can only stay in this room and observe the board meeting if you “remain peaceful.” He was threatening to remove the students by force if they continued to speak out against the UC’s management of nuclear weapons labs. “What do you mean by peaceful?” asked the students. Regent Parsky replied, “Peace means you don’t speak!”

Perhaps Regent Parsky gets his definition of peace from his friends in the Republican Party. Peace and Security is increasingly defined by the Bush administration and its allies as the severe restriction of civil rights, a perpetual war on terror, and unprecedented buildups of state military forces at the expense of nearly everything else. To put it simply, war is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength.
If Regent Parsky and President Bush seem to share the same definition of peace, that’s because they’re close allies. Parsky is Bush’s main man in California. In 2000 and 2004 Parsky chaired George W. Bush’s California election committee. This primarily meant that Parsky was responsible for tapping the state’s wealthy republican donors. Parsky raised enormous amounts of money for Bush’s campaign through his network of business associates and friends in high places. Parksy was a Bush Pioneer in 2000, and Bush Ranger in 2004. This means he successfully raised $100,000 for Bush in 2000, and $200,000 in 2004.

Regent Parsky got his start in politics in the Nixon administration working in the Federal Energy Office (FEO). The FEO was charged with managing the fuel crises of the 1970s caused by Arab oil embargos against the United States. In little time Parsky was promoted as Assistant Secretary of the Treasury where he worked under George Schultz (who would leave the post to become an executive at Bechtel Corporation). After this stint in government Parsky joined forces with William French Smith to found a legal practice specializing in the transnational movement of capital. (The Daily Princetonian.com 11/5/04). Not coincidentally, William French Smith would also become an executive at the Bechtel Corporation. Parsky and Smith’s legal practice was located in Los Angeles but had offices in places as far away and intriguing as Saudi Arabia. This period of Parsky career is worthy of more research.

Nowadays Parsky owns and manages Aurora Capital Partners. His Holdings in Aurora Capital are chartered in Delaware and the Cayman Islands. It is very likely that California sees few tax dollars from his business enterprises. Incorporating in Delaware is nothing unusual in American business, but the Cayman Islands remains a relatively more uncommon practice, mostly one designed to avoid all taxes whatsoever. Several branches of Aurora Capital are chartered in the Cayman Islands in order to avoid U.S. federal and state taxes, as if Delaware hadn’t set the bar low enough. Parsky sits on the boards of several corporations owned in part by Aurora Capital.

Paul Wachter

If ever a seat on the Board of Regents was a kickback for the governor’s most loyal cronies, Paul Wachter proves it. To say that Wachter and Schwarzenegger are close friends is a gross understatement. To say that they’ve done a little business together is equally off the mark. According to Daniel Weintraub, political columnist for the Sacramento Bee, within Schwarzenegger’s inner circle, “the most important are his wife, Maria, and longtime friends Paul Wachter and Bonnie Reiss.” Weintraub notes that Wachter is, “Schwarzenegger’s personal financial adviser, [and] has known him since 1981, when they met through Maria’s brother Bobby. Wachter began managing the actor’s financial portfolio in the mid-1990s and served as his spokesman on personal financial issues during the campaign. But his influence now extends beyond money.” (Weintraub. Sacramento Bee, October 19, 2003).

Paul Wachter is Schwarzenegger’s money-man. Before Schwarzenegger’s run for governor the two were business partners on innumerable deals. Wachter currently manages the blind trust into which all of Schwarzenegger’s investments were liquidated when he became governor. Blind trusts are required of elected officials to avoid conflicts of interest. But given Wachter and Schwarzenegger’s buddy-buddy relationship it’s hard to see how Wachter acts as an independent disinterested manager of the governor’s assets. Schwarzenegger’s financial holdings were briefly and partially disclosed during the recall campaign in 2003. They revealed a financial empire of tens of millions of dollars invested in securities, private equity funds, and over 100 business ventures, many in parternship with Wachter.

In addition to Wachter’s position as the governor’s most trusted advisor, Schwarzenegger has also appointed Wachter to his state Commission for Jobs and Economic Growth to serve alongside the Rand Corporation’s Chairman Ron Olson, billionaire investor F. Warren Hellman, and the Gap’s Chairman Donald Fisher.
Wachter’s financial company, Main Street Investment Partners, has managed Schwarzenegger’s money for decades. A particularly incestuous aspect of Wachter and Schwarzenegger’s relationship is that Wachter’s firm is actually located in a building owned by Schwarzenegger. Called Main Street Plaza, the building nets Schwarzenegger over $100,000 in rent each year from tenants like Wachter’s firm.

If you’d ever like to visit the address is 3110 Main St., Santa Monica, CA, 90405.
Now with Schwarzenegger’s money in a supposed blind trust, Wachter is expected to give advise to the Governor Schwarzenegger as a UC Regent, as a member of his state Economic Commission, and, not without serious conflicts of interest, as Schwarzenegger’s financial guru and possibly business partner? If it appears the Governor and the Regents are running the state like a business, to the profit of himself and his associates, that’s because they may very well be.

What About the Other UC Regents?