Category: Corruption

Top Televangelists Refusing to Respond to Senate Inquiries

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About a month ago, I mentioned that Senator Grassley (R-IA) was requisting spending data from major televangelists, in order to look for evidence of things like self dealing, living high on the hog, etc.

As I said then, requiring churches to file form 990, like other tax exempts, would make all of this data publicly available, and the cost is minimal.

It appears now that most of the televangelists are ignoring the Senate’s Finance Committee’s request. Only the Joyce Meyer Ministries has turned over data to this point.

I have to figure that some of them are overcompensating their preachers.

I would remind you that the Trinity Foundation has been doing good work for years documenting fraud, waste, and lavish spending.

Huckabee Pressured Parole Board to Pardon Rapist Who Later Murdered

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This could be compared to Willie Horton, but it’s not.

With Willie Horton, Dukkakis supported a furlough program to rehabilitate people. He had no other connection with the guy. With Wayne Dumond, Mike Huckabee specifically lobbied for his release, because the victim was a relative of Bill Clinton, and the daughter of a Clinton contributor.

According to Murray Waas, who has also been all over the Plame affair, Huckabee went so far as to imply that he would grant clemency if Drumond was not paroled.

Noose Tightens Around Curt Weldon: Aide Copps Plead

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It should be noted that Caso was Weldon’s chief of staff, so the ties here are pretty solid.

Former congressman Curt Weldon’s chief of staff has agreed to plead guilty to conspiracy charges for allegedly helping a consulting firm championed by Weldon obtain federal funds and for concealing money the firm paid his wife, according to court papers filed yesterday.

Russell James Caso Jr. and a top official at the unnamed nonprofit consulting firm met repeatedly with Weldon to seek the Pennsylvania Republican’s help in obtaining federal funds for the organization’s defense projects, according to the court papers.

The ways things work, they got the plea, and now he has to roll on someone else. FWIW, Weldon is identified as “Representative A” in the document.

Military Takes Control of Contractors, State Department Bozos Who Screwed Up Contractors Get Bonuses

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The military has basically taken control of oversight of contractors, “The agreement requires all State Department convoys in Iraq to coordinate their movements with the military’s main operations center in Baghdad, sets minimum standards for training the contractors and outlines when armed guards may use force in self-defense.”.

In related news, “two key deputies who worked closely with the security contractors, Kevin Barry and Justine Sincavage, received quiet promotions“, and “On November 20, an internal cable, listed as State 158575, went out to State employees announcing the recipients of bonuses ranging from $10,000 to $15,000 for “outstanding performance.” Among them: Kevin Barry and Justine Sincavage.”

My head hurts.

Florida Pension Investments in Big Sh#@ Pile

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Well, a few days ago, it was the short term money market type funds for local Florida governments and school boards, and today, it’s the state of Florida’s pension fund.

More Structured Investment Vehicles (SIV), more downgrades, more losses.

I think that what has been going on for the past 18-24 months is that the investment banks have realized that the stuff is illiquid (economist speak for worthless), so they fobbed it off on a lot of people with more money than brains, state pension and similar funds.

Given that the level of leverage and complexity is greater than in 1929, the consequences of the collapse might be a lot worse than in 1929. This is not just subprime….It’s almost everything out there.

Corruption in Alaska Too Severe for Company

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This surprises me…..From ages 1-7, I lived in Alaska, and for most of that time, my dad was on Governor Bill Egan’s (D) cabinet, and it was not a particularly corrupt place. Now, it appears to resemble Nigeria.

Too corrupt for an energy company, in this case MidAmerican Energy Holdings Co. is a level of corruption that I did not expect to see in the US.

“As you are painfully aware the ongoing corruption investigations coupled with previous indictments, guilty pleas and convictions draw into question virtually every major Alaskan project participant and governmental levels from State to Federal,” says the letter from MidAmerican CEO David Sokol. “Obviously your administration had no involvement in these previous shenanigans nor did we; however, you and we alone cannot develop the pipeline project through AGIA’s expected process.”

MidAmerican was expected to be among the companies applying by Friday’s deadline for a package of financial and other pipeline incentives under Palin’s Alaska Gasline Inducement Act.

Oil creates bad government, which explains Texas.

Some People in the Subprime Loan Trap Qualified for Better Loans

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This is what an unregulated lending market gets you, people with good credit steered toward sub prime loans because the lenders made more money that way.

According to the WSJ article, 55% of all sub prime loan borrowers were qualified for prime loans.

The brokers make big bucks over this.

This is a legacy of Republithug philosophy….The idea that, unfettered by regulation, sophisticated players will be honest.

Waxman Has Just Made the Plame Investigation More Interesting

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Bush and His Evil Minions™ have been stonewalling on releasing Patrick Fitzgerald’s Plame investigation to Henry Waxman, Chairman of the Committee ON Oversight and Ggovernment Reform, has sent a letter to Attorney General Michael Mukasey saying that the White HOuse is blocking release of these documents to his committee, and said that:

Equal application of the law means tþat there should not be one standard applied by the Justice Department to congressional investigations of Democratic administrations and another standard applied to congressional investigations of Republican administrations. I ask that you personally look into this matter and authorize the production of the documents to the Committee without any further delay.

He also notes that Janet Reno cooperated with Congressional committees, which I think is a subtle way of saying that if he does not make a statement for turning over the documents, that Reno is a better man than he is (insert Janet Reno jokes here).

Personally, I think that Mukasey is probably too much one of Bush’s lackeys to to the right thing, but I won’t be disappointed if I am wrong.

Bush and His Evil Minions™ Claiming Secrecy Needs for Details on Abramoff Visits

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You have GOT to be kidding me. Just when I thought that this group of criminals have gotten me so jaded about their venality and corruption that they can no longer shock me, they do something like claiming that details about Abramoff’s visits to the White House are somehow deep state secrets that must never be revealed.

This is even more transparent than the Libby pardon.

Nasty Rudy Shows Self to Journos

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Well, the press if finally seeing the real Rudy Giuliani. Now that they have something on him that does not reflect well, the city money for his assignations, the authoritarian and paranoid control freak is coming out:

“We’ve already explained it,” he said, walking past reporters after a town hall meeting.

Giuliani, who is normally friendly to reporters, bristled past them, and campaign staffers were unusually physical in keeping the press away. Several campaign aides told campaign reporters to return to the press area, and some of his security detail manhandled reporters.

This is is something that New Yorkers, and those who have followed his exploits, already know.

He is, after all, the man who fired his wife on TV on Mother’s Day.

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot????! Florida SHORT TERM Funds Parked in CDOs and Other Shaky Investments???

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We are talking accounts used for day to day expenses and salaries, and when it was discovered that. “after learning that the money- market fund contained more than $700 million of defaulted debt”, there was a run on the fund, with over 35%, over $10 Billion of the $28 Billion in the fund, of its assets being withdrawn.

As a result, they have suspended withdrawals from the fund, which may leave some governments unable to pay their employees this week. (See also here.)

It’s gets better:

Stipanovich raised the possibility of having the state pension fund shoulder the risk of some of the troubled securities with a credit-default swap, through which the retirement fund would guarantee the debt in exchange for an insurance premium.

“It will be a wonderful diversifier,” Stipanovich said.

Sink immediately rejected the executive director’s plan.

A “Wonderful Diversifier”???? Talk about throwing good money after bad.

A brief list of bad investments:

  • $168 million of debt from KKR Atlantic Funding Trust cut to D, or default, from B by Fitch Ratings on Oct. 8
  • $356 million issued by KKR Pacific Funding Trust, cut to D from B by Fitch Ratings on Oct. 2
  • $180 million of paper from Ottimo Funding, cut to D from C by S&P on Nov. 9. S&P said an auction of Ottimo’s collateral “did not generate cash proceeds” to repay the asset-backed commercial paper.
  • $175 million of short-term debt issued by Axon Financial Funding, an SIV. It was cut to D from C by S&P when Axon failed to pay liabilities maturing Nov. 26, causing an “automatic liquidation event.”
  • $650 million of certificates of deposit from Countrywide Bank FSB, a unit of Countrywide Financial Corp., that now amounts to more than 3 percent of the pool’s assets. The bank’s rating was cut to Baa1, three levels above junk, by Moody’s on Aug. 16.

In a MONEY MARKET FUND? I’d sooner have Sweeny Todd give me a shave than trust Florida’s financial judgement.

Lott’s Brother-in-Law Indicted on Bribery Charges

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Well, the fact that his brother-in-law, Rickard “Dickie” Scruggs, was indicted on bribery charges may go a bit of a way towards explaining his leaving the senate.

Scruggs is perhaps best known for suing tobacco companies in multibillion-dollar lawsuits in the late 1990s. But he also acted as Lott’s lawyer, as well as the attorney for many Mississippi homeowners, in a successful lawsuit against State Farm Insurance when the firm denied thousands of claims in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

So, even if Lott has done nothing illegal, he probably does 3 wrong things before having breakfast, it sounds like it was a good time for him to look at the DC lobbying gig.

Giuliani Used City Money for Visits to Then Mistress, Judith Nathan

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What’s more, he also cooked the books to conceal this:

The documents, obtained by Politico under New York’s Freedom of Information Law, show that the mayoral costs had nothing to do with the functions of the little-known city offices that defrayed his tabs, including agencies responsible for regulating loft apartments, aiding the disabled and providing lawyers for indigent defendants.

But wait, there’s more, he also provided a police driver and city car for his chippie.

In a world of real journalism, this would be the lead story for the next week…In Rupert Murdoch’s America??? Page 12.

I Wish that I Were a Right Wing Moron

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You may not remember the last time that I quoted Amity Shlaes. It was an indirect quote by way of Rich Karlgaard, who is so stupid, that he should be getting a personal aide to cut his meat, where Karlgaard implied that the reason for the 1937 recession was that “the investor class” were somehow sick and tired of FDR’s “soak the rich policies”, when even the most solidly Chicago School economist could tell you that it was caused by a reduction in federal spending to balance the budget.

Well, Amity Shlaes is at it again, suggesting that potential shortfall in Social Security in 30+ years should be kept at a level of bare survival for 1935, the date of establishment of the program.

As an FYI, 45 million Americans did not have indoor plumbing in 1930, and you had similar numbers in terms of electricity. This was out of a total population of 123 million, giving about 37% of the population without these amenities.

So, why do I wish that I were a right wing moron? Because Amity Shlaes is a senior fellow in economic history at the Council on Foreign Relations, and with those connections, she makes more in 90 days than I do in a year.

The right wing intellectual infrastructure is an artifact of subsidies for bad ideas and opaque thought processes, which since people like the Coors family and Richard Mellon Scaife are aggressively buying*, leads to more bad ideas and opaque thought processes through the invisible hand of the market place.

*I believe that over the past 30 years, these folks have spent over two billion dollars, that’s $2,000,000,000.00, or about $800 for every man, woman, and child in the US, for think tanks and related activities. When you add in Olin, Bradley, DeVos (Amway), and the rest of these folks who never worked a day in their lives for their money, you are probably well over $3 billion….A quick Google shows spending of just the major organizations from 1990-2000 to be $1B.

Arabs Bail Out Citigroup…AGAIN!!!!

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In 2001, Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal rescued Citigroup, and this time, it’s the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority.

BTW, look at the terms:

  • They get a 4.9% stake.
  • In exchange for its investment, ADIA will receive convertible stock in Citigroup yielding 11% annually. (They are making the loan at 11%, when junk bonds get 9%, WTF????)
  • The shares are “required to be converted into common stock at a conversion price of between $31.83 and $37.24 a share over a period of time between March 2010 and September 2011.” (It’s currently trading at $29.75, the lowest since 2002, so this means that the conversion essentially means that they are very nearly paying for this investment)
  • This gives them a bigger stake in the firm than Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal. (remember him?)

If this company isn’t functionally insolvent, then its management needs to go to be fired, and criminally investigated, because the only way a non-insolvent company takes a deal this bad is if someone is breaking the law.

Investors have increasingly expressed concerns about Citigroup’s “tier 1” capital levels — a common measure of a bank’s capital adequacy — which for the first time in years fell below its 7.5% target in the third quarter. Although the bank is still considered to be well capitalized, investors worried that Citigroup would be forced to cut its dividend.

H/T The Big Picture.

Republican Rivals Start Opposition Research Huckabee

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Well, this is pretty good evidence that he has them running scared.

I’m not sure really why the need to do the research though. They already have the very public case of Wayne Dumond, where Huckabee lobbied for the convicted rapist’s parole, and Dumond later raped and murdered a neighbor.

He did this because Dumond’s first victim was a distant cousin of Clinton, so the wingers were claiming that he was “railroaded”, because…well…it involved Bill Clinton.

This is how Wingnuts thing.