Category: Corruption

Rupert Murdoch’s NewsCorp Executives Directed Judith Regan To Lie in a Federal Investigation

No Comments

I have this theory about the nature of things. Specifically, there is always a sort of a tipping pointy, and after that, nothing goes right.

I think that we may be seeing that the right wing has truly jumped the shark, who in this case is Judith Regan, who I have been told has very sharp teeth.

Ex-Publisher’s Suit Plays a Giuliani-Kerik Angle
By RUSS BUETTNER

Judith Regan, the former book publisher, says in a lawsuit filed yesterday protesting her dismissal by the News Corporation, the media conglomerate, that a senior executive there encouraged her to lie to federal investigators about her past affair with Bernard B. Kerik after he had been nominated to become homeland security secretary in late 2004.

The lawsuit asserts that the News Corporation executive wanted to protect the presidential aspirations of Rudolph W. Giuliani, Mr. Kerik’s mentor, who had appointed him New York City police commissioner and had recommended him for the federal post.

Ms. Regan makes the charge at the start of a 70-page filing that seeks $100 million in damages for what she says was a campaign to smear and discredit her by her bosses at HarperCollins and its parent company, News Corporation, after her project to publish a book with O. J. Simpson was abandoned amid a storm of protest.

…

One of Ms. Regan’s lawyers, Brian C. Kerr of the firm of Dreier L.L.P., said she had evidence to support her claim that she had been advised to lie to federal investigators who were vetting Mr. Kerik and who might have sought to question her about their romantic involvement. But Mr. Kerr declined to discuss the nature of the evidence.

…

(emphasis mine)

Word on Olbermann is that there are tapes…..With Republicans, there are always tapes.

New York Times Says Mukasey Must Dump Paulose

No Comments

I’ve related some, and only some of the misdeeds of Rachael Paulose, a completely unqualified political hack appointed as US Attorney in Minnesota.

It appears that her litany of self-aggrandizement, racial epithets, mishandling of classified documents, and retaliation has come to the attention of the New York Times.

You can read the editorial, but basically, it can be reduced to three word advice to Attorney General Mukasey, “Ditch the Bitch”.

UK Investigation of BAE-Saudi Bribes Back On

No Comments

About a year ago, Tony Blair canceled a serious fraud investigation of a very large arms deal between BAE Systems* and the House of Saud under threat of cancellation of the order, and now two NGOs have been given permission to investigate an investigation of this decision under the OECD’s Anti-Bribery Convention.

It’s pretty clear that bribery was involved, I believe that Prince Bandar got over a billion dollars in “consulting fees”, for example, and the House of Saud was quite clear that any investigation of kickbacks would result in the cancellation of the contract for multi-billion dollar purchase of Eurofighter Typhoons.

*Full disclosure, I worked at a BAE Systems facility as a contractor from June 2005 (about, depends on when the sale went through) through Decmeber 2006 as a contractor. I had no involvement with this deal however.

One of the Fat Cat Televangelists Complains About Senate Investigation

No Comments

Here is a picture of the good Reverend Eddie Long:

He’s complaining about having to turn over financial data to a Senate investigating committee.

Boo F&^%ing who. I used to run the largest (only really) event for a 501(c)3 non-profit, and we had to do a form 990, which is publicly available every year. Churches do not.

It’s was a lot more of pain for this non profit, which did not break $100K in gross revenues when I was there, than it is for his multi-million dollar mega-church.

The real solution is to eliminate the 990 exemption for churches, and let them play by the same rules as other not-for profits. We’ve seen more than enough corruption by the “God Squad” and they should operate under the same rules as other non-profits.

Putin Appears to be Making Arrangements for His Installation as a Dictator

No Comments

It appears that following electionsRussia will attempt to institute constitutional reforms to create a position for Vladimir Putin of “National Leader, which sounds a lot like “president for life”.

I think that to a very large degree, the anti-Democratic forces in Russia are currently in the ascendancy because of Western actions following the fall of the USSR.

We defined democracy as allowing Russian property to be stolen by politically connected people largely for the benefit of Western bankers, actively cheered on Yeltsin when he shelled the Russian Duma, and allowed Boris Yeltsin’s re-election campaign to be neither free nor fair as a result (he controlled all public mass media, and the private mass media was controlled through the Oligarchs, whom he installed).

It’s no wonder that the Russian people, and the Russian political class, see Democracy as nothing more than the window dressing for an attempt to prostitute their people.

Coverup at the Reagan Presidential Library

No Comments

80,000 items missing.

If these had been stolen for profit, we’d be seeing them on eBay, and we are not. Someone scrubbed the documents so to remove embarrassing items, perhaps the deal with the Iranians in 1980, or evidence showing that Reagan knew of, and approved of, Iran-Contra.

The number of documents imply one of two things:

  • There is a lot of skullduggery to be covered up.
  • They took more things so that people would not get a good picture of what was stolen.

Or maybe a bit of both.

Another Specter Weasel

No Comments

Of course, the Very Serious People™ are claiming that it’s a compromise, but it’s a weasel.

You see, his “compromise” would make the Federal Government, as opposed to the telcos, the defendants. This allows for wholesale classification, foot dragging, sovereign immunity, and all the other tricks which would guarantee that nothing would come out.

Seriously, this sort of crap is why our government is so f*^%ed up.

Bush Dogs Move to Block Mortgage Reform

No Comments

It now appears that the Bush Dogs are taking the side of abusive mortgage issuers over the people harmed by this fraud. Chris Bowers has it right:

It’s time to understand that Bush Dogs are part of a working conservative majority. They are not our friends, they are not our allies, they are political opponents who want to bail out wealthy investors and hurt people trapped in subprime mortgage markets. Politically, they are also the people hurting Democratic capacity to differentiate ourselves as populists and capture swing areas and exurban Republicans hurt by the housing meltdown.

I would take it further. These people are so damaging to the party, and to the country, that liberals shoule provide significant opposition to them in both the primaries and the general election.

The Democrats are going to pick up seats in 2008. If alle of these seats are foregone in order to excise Bush Dogs from the party, it would be a good thing.

Kerik Expects Indictment Next Week

No Comments

Seeing as how the statute of limitations expires on November 15, this is not surprising in the least.

The most basic point is that Guiliani plucked this guy out of obscurity, and he will be going to jail because he is mobbed up.

Of course, there is also the bit where used an apartment that had been donated to the city for the benefit of ground zero workers to f%$# Judith Regan, but he’s still Rudy’s guy.

It raises the obvious question, just how will Rudy screw up in selecting his inner circle next? Is he going to select a pedophile priest or something?

Oh….Wait…He already has.

Right Wing Regenry Press Cheats Authors Out of Royalties

No Comments

It appears that Regenry Press, incubator of right wing nutjobs who can’t write*, is getting sued for cheating authors out of royalties. The claim is that Regenry, “orchestrates and participates in a fraudulent, deceptively concealed and self-dealing scheme to divert book sales away from retail outlets and to wholly owned subsidiary organizations within the Eagle conglomerate.”

In Regnery’s case, according to the lawsuit, the publisher sells books to sister companies, including the Conservative Book Club, which then sells the books to members at discounted prices, “at, below or only marginally above its own cost of publication.” In the lawsuit the authors say they receive “little or no royalty” on these sales because their contracts specify that the publisher pays only 10 percent of the amount received by the publisher, minus costs — as opposed to 15 percent of the cover price — for the book.

Mr. Miniter said that meant that although he received about $4.25 a copy when his books sold in a bookstore or through an online retailer, he only earned about 10 cents a copy when his books sold through the Conservative Book Club or other Eagle-owned channels. “The difference between 10 cents and $4.25 is pretty large when you multiply it by 20,000 to 30,000 books,” Mr. Miniter said. “It suddenly occurred to us that Regnery is making collectively jillions of dollars off of us and paying us a pittance.” He added: “Why is Regnery acting like a Marxist cartoon of a capitalist company?”

I love that last quote. FWIW, they are not acting like a “Marxist cartoon of a capitalist company“, they are acting like a Harvard Business School professor.

As a matter of law, I am not a lawyer. As a matter of the facts, this is rather complicated. Regenery has a long history of basically giving its books away to boost numbers, you see it all the time at places like Newsmax, where if you subscribe, they’ll throw in a bloody library of conservative hardcover tripe. This way, someone who writes a book that might sell 3,000 copies gets to do the pundit circuit as a someone who has sold 100,000 copies,

I’d love to be a part of the legal discovery process, but right now I’m basking in the Schadenfreude.

*Yeah, like I’m one to talk, but at least I don’t think that I’m the next Hemingway.

Great Smackdown of Tim Russert: Stop the Inanity | The American Prospect

No Comments

Paul Waldman has the same fantasy that I do:

I have a fantasy that at one of these moments, a candidate will say, “You know what, Tim, I’m not going to answer that question. This is serious business. And you, sir, are a disgrace. You have in front of you a group of accomplished, talented leaders, one of whom will in all likelihood be the next president of the United States. You can ask them whatever you want. And you choose to engage in this ridiculous gotcha game, thinking up inane questions you hope will trick us into saying something controversial or stupid. Your fondest hope is that the answer to your question will destroy someone’s campaign. You’re not a journalist, you’re the worst kind of hack, someone whose efforts not only don’t contribute to a better informed electorate, they make everyone dumber. So no, I’m not going to stand here and try to come up with the most politically safe Bible verse to cite. Is that the best you can do?”

It is a mark of the hacktacular nature of the Washington Punditocracy* that this man is treated with any respect.

*Which might be better described as a Kakistocracy.

What Chris Bowers Says

No Comments

The media in general, and the Washington punditocracy* protray the “Blue Dog Democrats” as brave people standing up to the extremists in their party. Chris Bowers makes a convincing argument that the opposite is true, that these are folks who are the most extreme sort of hysterical fear.

The concluding ‘graph:

Blue Dogs actually seem like the most scared people in all of Washington, D.C. as a result of this article. They are afraid of Republican attacks. They are afraid of conservative pundits. They are afraid of their constituents. They are afraid of motions to recommit that are meaningless in terms of actual policy. And they are protected by Emanuel and Hoyer, who seem petrified of all the same things. They seem to all operate in a perpetual state of fear, despite their surface machismo. And yes, it does seem like fear, rather than simply conservative beliefs in this case, because otherwise why would they be in favor of a meaningless procedural motion that has nothing to do with policy? The widespread fear in the tough guy wing of the Democratic Party is one of the great ironies of modern American politics.

I would add that not only does this make it more difficult to accomplish things, their behavior reinforces Republican attacks against the Democrats as without principle, or guts, and never willing to take a step to do the right thing.

It is a tragedy of the commons. By acting in their own perceived (and only perceived, look at Ron Paul, whose support is driven by his forthrightness, not the policies involved) best interest, they destroy the common resource of productive political discourse.

*Which might be better described as a Kakistocracy.

Iraqi Inspector General will Audit Iraqi Security Forces

No Comments

When the IG turns over these rocks, it will not be pretty.

IG to audit Iraqi security forces

By Megan Scully CongressDaily November 5, 2007

At the urging of Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction plans to review how many trained Iraqi personnel are actually serving in the nation’s security forces. The audit was sparked by an Oct. 31 letter to Stuart Bowen, the U.S. inspector in charge of investigating Iraq reconstruction, in which Dorgan expressed frustrations at the Bush administration’s inability to provide reliable statistics on the size of the nascent security forces.

…

Senate Investigating Top Televangelists, Demanding Financial Records

No Comments

I should note that it is Republican Senator Charles Grassley who is appearing to take the lead on this.

They want to see if too much of the tax exempt* money is going to fund a lavish lifestyle.

Ole Anthony, of the Trinity Foundation has been trying to get coverage of this for years, and finally went to Grassley because the press would not cover it.

My guess is that part of the reason for the lack of press coverage is a fear of being attacked by the religious institutions, and the other reason is because churches are allowed to conceal their financial dealings in ways that other non-profits are not,‡ which makes it tougher for the average reporter to get the information they need to make a story.

With the threat of congressional subpoenas, the information that Grassley gets should be more complete.

*I actually have some experience with laws involving tax-exempt religious and educational institutions, section 501(c)3 of the tax code. In 1990, I incorporated a group that put on a literary conferences, Arisia as a Massachusetts non-profit and a federal 501(c)3†.
†Truth be told, in a sane world, it would have had to incorporate as a 501(c)7, a membership organization, but the 501(c)3 code is lax enough to slip it in, and we needed the low postage rates available for a 501(c)3, but not a 501(c)7. It was legal, as to the ethics, I try to think about Arisia as little as possible for any number of reasons.
‡BTW, one of the problems about getting information about how churches are run is that unlike other tax exempt organizations, churches are not required to file form 990s, which are public documents with fairly full financial disclosure.