Editor’s note: The following article is the alternate English version of an article that ran in a Hungarian national newspapers concerning Richard Field, a graduate of McCaskey High School and Columbia University. He is the son of NewsLanc publisher Robert Field and Terry Vance Field. Field resides in Budapest with wife Edina and children Martzi and Edvin. Field is alarmed that neo-fascist influences may gain control of the government as a result of a decade of government corruption by both major parties and economic dislodgment and poverty resulting from the current recession.
American real estate developer the largest support of LMP (Politics Can Be Different)
Sunday, March 14th, 2010
An American businessman dealing in real estate has already given 4.8 million forints and, along with the amount to be given in the next two installments, will give a total of 11 million forints to “Politics Can Be Different” (LMP).
Richard Field has been living in Hungary for twenty years, and besides his real estate businesses combats poverty with various social programs in cooperation with the Hungarian Red Cross.
Earlier he also supported the Civil Movement.
Politics Can Be Different maintains an open campaign account showing every expense and revenue. Accessible via the internet, it reveals that Richard Field wired 4.8 million forints to the party on March 3rd.
“I consider this donation an investment in Hungarian democracy,” Field told Index.”Hungary’s democracy needs new faces, as we’ve seen the same ones for years. A vacuum has been created on the left, and now there is a chance for a new party to get into parliament. LMP is willing to talk about topics that are important to me–poverty and the bereft.” In his opinion the crisis of Hungarian democracy arises from the fact that normal, every day people have been reluctant to play a role in government, and that for years the large parties have only been concerned with protecting their own power and not solving problems which have accumulated over the years.
11 million forints for Democracy
He met Andras Schiffer, LMP list leader, for the first time three weeks ago, whom he asked how he could help the party. “Apart from introducing Politics Can Be Different, he told me they had financial problems. I greatly respect the activities of the Hungarian Civil Liberties Movement (TASZ) and what Andras Schiffer and his colleagues did at TASZ, as well as the fact that Andras Schiffer and his colleagues have established a truly democratic party. I offered 11 million ($60,000) in three installments. I believe LMP embodies the reform Hungary needs. That does not mean I am not rooting for other parties as well,” he said.
Earlier Richard Field supported Maria Seres’ Civil Movement. When Maria Seres’ party contested the Csorna bi-election, Field’s colleague Szabolcs Datki ran the campaign. “According to my calculations I provided Civil Mozgalom with about 4 million forints worth of support, mostly in the form of services, but also financial,” said Field.
Maria Seres told Index that Richard Field helped her through his colleagues and provided intellectual support. However the cooperation ended some time ago. “We’re proud that our budget is virtually nothing, and that our candidates are using their own resources to finance their campaigns. I’m not aware of any of them having sponsors. We’re campaigning on ironing boards, and that says a lot. We hope that even this way we can put together a national list” said Maria Seres.
In 1990 Richard Field founded his Hungarian company, American House Ltd., which has undertaken EUR 20 million worth of Hungarian real estate projects. After building blocks of flats and an office building and shopping center in the countryside it took part in the Ferencvaros (Budpapest’s 9th District) urban renewal program and also in construction projects in Angyalföld (Budapest’s 13th District) as well.
Since 2007 it has been trying to realize a 300 million euro project called Park City in the 15th District. The company’s foundation participates in programs to feed children and help the homeless. Since December of last year it has spent 10,000 euros a month in the fight against poverty by delivering food to two 9th district schools and to day shelters, and is donating 25 million forints to the Hungarian Red Cross with which to purchase a homeless shelter.
Unsuccessful large project
The Park City project, however, is at a stand still, due, in Field’s opinion, to unrealistic terms set by the City and bureaucratic obstacles. Field’s company would finance the project entirely with private capital and bank loans, according to the project description. However, the construction has yet to start as the businessman has struggled for years with City government which does not want to sign a settlement regulating contract. The businessman dismisses the notion that business interests are behind his political support. He says that if that was his intention, he would have contributed money to the future governing party, Fidesz, which he will not do. Nor does he support MSZP, MDF, SzDSz, or the Jobbik. Field asked his friends and American relatives to support LMP as well.
Bálint Pinczés, LMP donation coordinator, told Index that the party’s ethical committee decided to accept Field’s donation. “We’ve seen enough parties supported by a few people with huge amounts of money,” he said. The LMP Ethical Committee ensures that contributions are clean and used in a proper manner. The contribution offered by Richard Field was accepted by the LMP Ethical Committee by decision no. 15/2010, the condition being that Richard Field agree to the posting of his name on the party website as prescribed by law.
Field should be barred from interferring in Hungarian politics. He and other radical leftists such as George Soros are a pox on Hungary.
Liberal bleeding heart anti-Hungarians should go back to their country of origin and leave the magyars alone. His pick and choose type of funding of projects has not helped one single ethnic magyar, only minority groups that seek to destroy the country!
If you think all liberal bleeding heart (but not necessarily anti-Hungarians) should go back to their country of origin, then even I would be forced to move back to a place that according to you, would not welcome me with open heart. So, no thank you. However I fully applaud Mr. Field for sponsoring a new Hungarian political party, that hopefully can show to all Hungarians that politics can indeed be different. It is about time.
It is people like Mr [Richard] Field that are the leaders and movers towards a more livable and enjoyable life…am sure that Susan was on the money here!
“Cautious, careful people, always casting about to preserve their reputation and social standing, never can bring about a reform. Those who are really in earnest must be willing to be anything or nothing in the world’s estimation.” -Susan B. Anthony, reformer and suffragist (1820-1906)
And lastly, he has created a masterfully beautiful letter to Morvai, long overdue, that someone had the balls and the know how to say it this clearly and succinctly.
“Only one who devotes himself to a cause with his whole strength and soul can be a true master. For this reason mastery demands all of a person.” -Albert Einstein
Field has become such a manifest idiot like his former ideal, the hungarian libsi (szdsz) party. It was their commitment to mezmorize themselves that there is nothing else in Hungary but racism, antisemitism. This idiotic party had no other word in its vocabular like these two.
The szdsz died, the voters kicked them out of the parliament. Nevertheless, their manifest idiot supporters have remained, and now restart their primitive combat again.
These people like Field really have no intelligence. Stalin and other communist leaders based their power on such brain damaged people like Field.
Stalin put people like Field in prison – the most famous one in hungarian prison actually was also an american named Field, Noel Field. and in a manner very similiar to the nationalist Hungarians today, the paranoid hunt for his “cosmopolitical” co-conspirers had antisemitic undertones.
But if Noel Field hadn’t come to Hungary, he would have become a victim of the “red scare” in the USA, which also showed a special love for all Jewish liberals and all immigrants. the right- and leftwing enemies of freedom have more in common as they think.