For the most part Orange County doesn’t have celebrities. At least not the Hollywood kind. Orange County has business celebrities. Donald and Igor. Henry S. and the late Henry S. Bill and Mohamed. And it has iconic biz-celebs. George and the General.
It also has Paul Musco.
You likely know Paul, perhaps in a fuzzy way. Founded his company in Santa Ana, year of the flood. Genesis? No Gemini. Precious metals, plutonium? No platinum. Maybe palladium. Makes catalytic converters? No, recovers the metals from spent catalysts.
That’s not important—for this space. What’s important is that you need to know Paul Musco.
I spent a few hours with the Rhode Island native, son of Italian immigrants. Born poor, but only on paper. There’s a saying in horse racing for the Seattle Slew’s of the sport—not regally bred, just run fast: “Out of nothing. By nothing.” Musco’s a tweak on the saw: “Out of nowhere. By a whole lot.”
His father was a janitor, mom a seamstress. Paul’s one of 10 Muscos. And still “my mother and father always gave,” he shared. “Never knew we were poor.” They gave Paul the gift of servitude. Because I’ll bet if you do KNOW Paul Musco, you know him for his outsized philanthropy.
Our lunch, Antonello’s of course, was with some of the Norbertines of St. Michael’s Abbey in Silverado, latest benefactors of Musco’s largess—$120 million from wife Marybelle, Paul and 26 disciples.
March 5 is our first “Largest Charitable Gifts” issue. You’ll learn more about Saint Paul—“actually I do have some issues”—and the Norbertine Fathers.
All you’ll learn about the businessman.
By the way, Musco’s business acumen has enabled his kids, grandkids, to in fact be “bred in the purple.” Two grandkids went full ride to M.I.T. They came west to ask their grandfather a question.
“How do we become entrepreneurs?”
“Easiest thing in the world,” Musco, replied. “Just open it up … and work your a off.”
Lunch with Musco, 92, ended around 4 p.m. Time for more meetings with Fr. Justin Ramos.
Then to the plant in Santa Ana. Still? “Every day.”
The taxman giveth….It’s been reported that Harvard University, the nation’s richest with an endowment north of $37 billion, may pay a first-ever endowment tax under the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, as much as $40 million say in 2017 because the endowment did well. Not really a sleep buster. Amendment 22 that would raise corporate income taxes in CA to a U.S. high of 15.8 percent. That’s a sleep buster.
