Last week Southwest Airlines changed one of the main perks that made the airline standout - two free checked bags with any ticket. The prices are now similar to other airlines at $35 for the first bag and $45 for the second. This, after promising that it wouldn’t be among the changes it was implementing as recent as September 2024. In 2026, Southwest is getting rid of the other thing that made the airline special - open, first come, first serve seating.

When the vultures circle, companies dance. In this case the vulture that circled Southwest is Paul Singer’s Elliot Management. Elliot Management is what the friendly business journalists call “activist investors.” What they do is look for companies that they believe are not profitable enough and feast. They slowly buy shares in companies like Starbucks, Etsy, Honeywell and even Twitter others until they gain a board seat or enough to push the company to make changes to create more profit. At Starbucks that meant the CEO was pushed out, DEI goals were gotten rid of, customer points programs were slashed. But more profits were made and that’s all that matters.

Customers losing points on their mocha’s and airline passengers having to pay for their luggage isn’t why Singer is called “The Vulture.” It’s because of what he did to Argentina and Congo. Singer become a billionaire by essentially being an international debt collector. He would buy the debt of developing nations, ones that had debt racked up by dictatorships (like Argentina) and then sue in favorable international courts. Some lawsuits took years but so far, he has always won.

In Congo that victory meant children dying.

Let me have journalist and forensic economist Greg Palast (who I used to work with, and co-produced this BBC/Guardian investigation with):

There is a cholera epidemic in West Africa due to lack of clean water. Our investigation learned that Singer paid about $10 million for some “debt” supposedly incurred by the Republic of Congo. To collect on his $10 million, Singer had begun seizing about $400 million in the poor nation’s assets.

Clean water for the Congo? Forget it — Singer and his vulture colleagues grabbed it all.

The Congo was forced to hand over the only money they had - aid money. It went to the Upper West Side, not African wells.

In Argentina, the debt collection that made him officially a billionaire, he ransomed everything from an embassy to a Navy training ship. In 2016 he got his money, earning 10-15 times his original investment after the US Supreme Court refused to reverse a lower court’s ruling allowing Singer and others to collect.

The Vulture and Mitt Romney Tries to Bankrupt Detroit

Singer’s economic blackmails didn’t just fuck up the lives of people in South America and Africa it also destroyed at least 25,000 American’s livelihood. In another investigation I produced with Greg Palast, this time for The Nation magazine.

Flashback to 2012 before Mitt Romney was every centrist Democrats favorite Republican. The “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt” Romney was the man that personified what Occupy Wall Street protested over, infamously providing fantastic quotes like “Corporations are people, my friend,” And of course:

There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it. That that’s an entitlement. And the government should give it to them. And they will vote for this president no matter what…These are people who pay no income tax.

Ironically it would be his tax returns which would provide me with the proof that Romney was financially in bed with the Vulture. Romney’s investment with Singer wasn’t for the aid money of starving African children, just the jobs of 25,000 union auto parts workers. From The Nation investigation:

Mitt Romney’s opposition to the auto bailout has haunted him on the campaign trail, especially in Rust Belt states like Ohio. There, in September, the Obama campaign launched television ads blasting Romney’s November 2008 New York Times op-ed, “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt.” But Romney has done a good job of concealing, until now, the fact that he and his wife, Ann, personally gained at least $15.3 million from the bailout—and a few of Romney’s most important Wall Street donors made more than $4 billion. Their gains, and the Romneys’, were astronomical—more than 3,000 percent on their investment.

Singer had bought up Delphi Auto, a parts supplier for American auto manufacturers. It was THE supplier for General Motors. So when Obama’s Auto Task Force started Singer had the President by the balls.

Delphi, now in the possession of its hedge fund creditors, told the Treasury and GM to hand over $350 million immediately, “because if you don’t, we’ll shut you down.” His explanation was corroborated by Delphi’s chief financial officer, John Sheehan, who said in a sworn deposition in July 2009 that the hedge fund debt holders backed up their threat with “an analysis of the cost to GM if Delphi were unwilling or unable to provide supply to GM,” forcing a “shutdown.” It would take “years and tens of billions” for GM to replace Delphi’s parts. At that bleak moment, GM had neither. The automaker had left the inventory of its steering column and other key components in Delphi’s hands. If Delphi laid siege to GM’s parts supply, the bailout would fail and GM would have to be liquidated or sold off—as would another Delphi dependent, Chrysler.

Obama made that deal, making Singer and his fellow vultures around $4 BILLION. Delphi, not surprisingly didn’t make it out that well.

Of the twenty-nine Delphi plants operating in the United States when the hedge funders began buying up control, only four remain, with not a single union production worker. Romney’s “job creators” did create jobs—in China, where Delphi now produces the parts used by GM and other major automakers here and abroad. Delphi is now incorporated overseas, leaving the company with 5,000 employees in the United States (versus almost 100,000 abroad).

Watch the news report here:

Billionaires Buy Themselves a Court

If that story doesn’t ring a bell, you might recognize his name from the massive ProPublica story that exposed several billionaires extremely generous and unreported gifts to US Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito. Here’s a bit of it about Singer’s contribution:

In early July 2008, Samuel Alito stood on a riverbank in a remote corner of Alaska. The Supreme Court justice was on vacation at a luxury fishing lodge that charged more than $1,000 a day, and after catching a king salmon nearly the size of his leg, Alito posed for a picture. To his left, a man stood beaming: Paul Singer, a hedge fund billionaire who has repeatedly asked the Supreme Court to rule in his favor in high-stakes business disputes.

Singer was more than a fellow angler. He flew Alito to Alaska on a private jet. If the justice chartered the plane himself, the cost could have exceeded $100,000 one way.

In the years that followed, Singer’s hedge fund came before the court at least 10 times in cases where his role was often covered by the legal press and mainstream media. In 2014, the court agreed to resolve a key issue in a decade-long battle between Singer’s hedge fund and the nation of Argentina. Alito did not recuse himself from the case and voted with the 7-1 majority in Singer’s favor. The hedge fund was ultimately paid $2.4 billion.

Singer, who is according to Forbes is the 210th richest man in the world hasn’t just invested in Wall Street or in Justice Alito’s vacations, he’s also been a top donor to the Republican Party. In 2024 he dropped over $38 million to the GOP. Since Donald Trump has become a political figure about 10 years ago he has been a reluctant supporter, initially backing Marco Rubio in 2016 and Nikki Haley in 2024. After the primary Singer has made amends with the would be President, donating $5 million in 2024 to Make America Great Again INC. Singer, along with many other billionaires dropped a million on Trump’s 2025 Inaugural… you know, the one that was cancelled because it was “too cold.” Wonder where all that cash went?

“The Wall Street equivalent of the Federalist Society.”

The Vulture’s influence campaign doesn’t stop there. For years he’s been the head of the extremely influential Manhattan Institute. Just this month though he stepped down as Chairman passing on the position to former Trump Department of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos. During his tenure he’s raised $200 million for the policy house that Bloomberg calls the “Wall Street equivalent of the Federalist Society.”

The Institute has brought in donors like John Paulson, The Mercers, Harlan Crow and the Koch’s. While it’s long been focused against Trumpian populist ideas, according to Bloomberg’s excellent piece from last year Singer’s tenure has seen the institute move in an anti-DEI direction.

The Manhattan Institute’s president since 2019, Reihan Salam, says DEI programs often amount to “racialism” that can divide people rather than bring them together.

“An excessive emphasis on racial categories can actually be really pernicious,” says Salam, a 44-year-old son of Bangladeshi immigrants.

Singer was once praised by the ‘liberal’ main stream press for supporting marriage equality causes. He even worked with the Human Rights Campaign, funding one of their international campaigns. This was back when Republicans were slowing finding gay family members and coming around on the issue. One of Singer’s sons is gay and couldn’t get married in NY, having to do it in Massachusetts.

It could be argued that without his financial influence New York wouldn’t have passed marriage equality when it did. Coincidentally Singer was pushing for protections in New York for his vulture lawsuits around the same time.

After October 7th

Singer has always been more of a behind the scenes operator, not giving interviews, or speaking out like Musk or even his billionaire counterparts at The Manhattan Institute. There’s so much more I could write on Singer’s quiet influence on American politics, but I’ll finish this piece with his growing focus on Israel.

The 80 year old billionaire has donated millions to AIPAC, including a million dollar donation to their SuperPAC in 2022. He also, according to The Intercept donated to the American Israel Education Fund, an AIPAC cutout that funds Congressional trips to Israel. Congress isn’t the only one getting a free trip to the Holy Land, he’s even worked with the right-wing Christian Museum of the Bible to fund trips to Israel for Christians.

In 2024 he gave what could be generously described as a passionate speech to the Manhattan Institute against the anti-genocide protests on college campuses, professors and the United Nations.

Singer: They're supporting liars who would, if given half a chance, and do, murder people who are Jewish, not to mention any number of other minority groups. Moreover, these deluded, "useful idiots" are engaged in this marauding while wearing face masks, in some macabre tribute to the white-sheeted thugs of the Ku Klux Klan.

I note that many southern states banned public face coverings during the KKK's heyday. Maybe we could consider the same today, so we can see who are these cowardly protesters who are abusing the free speech that they dishonestly claim to champion, smack in the middle of the citadels and temples of so-called higher education. They are not only against the Jews and their tiny democracy, but they're also against the West and, of course, against the big Satan of America.

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