EnemiesList.info

The complete, annotated Nixon's Enemies List

EnemiesList.info

Nixon Enemies List entry for
Robert Batinovich:

List and position:	Second, #80
Name as originally listed:	Robert Batinovich
1972 location:	Foster City, CA

Comments

Name/Date:	David Cay JohnstonMar 9, 2019 3:49pm
Comment:	Bat, as he was known, was very proud to be on the list. He was an extraordinarily successful entrepreneur who Jerry Brown appointed to the PUC and whom I profiled in the LATimes in 1978 when he was the state Public Utilities Commission president because of his innovative ideas about how to improve utility regulation and change tax policy to make legal monopolies like PG&E more tax efficient. The ideas remain sound. Bat was a key figure in converting the hedge dodge of lodgings owned by the Pritzkers into the Hyatt concept. He came up with the Hugo's Restaurant concept that helped Hyatt go upscale. He ran ran his own real estate investment trust, including a Hyatt franchise on the beach at Maui. Not sure why you show Foster City as his Glenborough Corporation real estate trust was in neighboring San Mateo. Bat lived in Hillsborough. He was born in Long Beach in 1936. He died in Hawaii in 2012. When he started out in business he bought old liquid-ink photocopiers on the cheap and put them in grocery and drug stores. On the advice of someone he out in slug catchers, only to realize after the first week that when they jammed the machine he didn't collect another dime. Bat removed the slug catchers and washed the money roll in, the slugs he subsequently found being a mere pittance compared to the real revenue, a good example of his business acumen,
Name/Date:	Randal ThornallyJan 11, 2020 10:40am
Comment:	I joined Glenborough Corporation as the in-house income tax manager in late 1984 and stayed for 10 plus years. Shortly after joining the Company Bat told me the story of how he had contributed to a minor Democratic fund raiser and then months later found his name printed in the newspaper as part of this Enemy List. Soon after the newspaper publication there was a letter from the IRS demanding an audit of both his personal and his Company finances at his place of business. The Company controller gathered the requested supporting documents into neat stacks, along with a copy of the newspaper article, for the IRS auditor. The auditor showed up for the scheduled appointment, read the article first, and then said something like, according to what I remember Bat saying to me, "I am not going to be part of this! - and walked out. Ethics in the IRS? Good for him. Bat was never personally audited again during the ensuing 10 plus years that I was there. He believed that he was somehow "spared" further financial scrutiny because of how poorly the IRS had previously treated him.

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