Category: Corruption

Randy “Duke” Cunningham Updates

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It appears that Cunningham is talking to federal prosecutors, but he’s not ratting out his fellow congressmen, yet.Imprisoned

Cunningham outlines depths of corruption to FBI

By George E. Condon Jr. and Marcus Stern
COPLEY NEWS SERVICE

8:53 p.m. July 17, 2007

WASHINGTON – In two days of prison interviews with federal agents this year, disgraced former Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham described a level of corruption on his part more extensive than previously known and dealt a potentially devastating blow to the defense being waged by one of the defense contractors alleged to have bribed him.

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According to an 11-page FBI summary of the sessions, obtained by Copley News Service, Cunningham was very much the initiator of his corrupt actions, demanding bribes, accepting envelopes with cash and displaying an insatiable appetite for more money, more cars, more drink, more fine food and more expensive goods.

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This actually makes Cunningham worse than I had initially believed. These were not bribes as much as they were extortion.

The interesting thing is that Cunningham’s military history predicted this. While a good fighter pilot, he was a disaster as an officer, who left a trail of destruction wherever he went, and he would have been RIFFed had it not been for his making ace.

While we’re at it, it appears that the House Intelligence Committee won’t release it’s report on him. It appears that both Republicans and Democrats are covering it up because it makes them look bad.

“They are so nervous about this report being out,” said one congressional official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “Members oppose putting this thing out because you read this and the natural question is: ‘Did you know this, and what did you do about it?’ I don’t think any members wanted that scrutiny.”

Even With the Sub Prime Market Crashing, Bad Paper Still Flows Freely.

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People know that this is crashing. People know that someone will be left holding the bag on trillions in bad loans, but they are still making bad loans.

It’s simple: In our “flexible and deregulated economy” the crooks make their money, and get out of town before the house of cards collapses.

At some point, a risk premium will be associated with investing in the US, and it will get very ugly here.

Subprime lending: Business as usual

A consumer group charges that many subprime lending abuses continue to plague the lending industry despite the recent crisis.
By Les Christie, CNNMoney.com staff writer
June 28 2007: 3:25 PM EDT

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — It would appear that subprime lenders have yet to learn from their mistakes. According to a consumer advocate group, abuses persist industry wide, despite the recent subprime mortgage meltdown.

At a Senate subcommittee hearing on ending mortgage abuse this week, the Center for Responsible Lending (CRL) presented its findings on subprime loans included in 10 recent packages of mortgage backed securities.

“A lot of the terms that make these loans so dangerous are still being used,” said Keith Ernst, CRL’s senior policy counsel. “We had been told that these things are going away.”

More than three quarters of the subprime loans CRL looked at turned out to be adjustable rate mortgages (ARMs). 90 percent of those were hybrid ARMs – otherwise known as “exploding” ARMs.

Hybrid ARMs have two- or three-year periods of cheap, low-interest, fixed-rate payments, or “teaser rates.” But after two years, the loans reset at much steeper rates, which can prove fatal for homeowners who can’t handle the higher payments.

On a $200,000 loan with a teaser rate of 5 percent, for example, borrowers would pay about $1,074 a month. At reset, the interest rate could jump to 8 percent, adding nearly $400 to payments, which could continue to increase every six months.

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Republican Sex

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I came across this very amusing quote while perusing news of More on David Vitter, Patron Saint of Schadenfreude:

Jeanette says that most of the clients who wanted to be dominated were Republicans. She cracks a smile, then adds, “They wanted to be spanked and tortured and wear stockings–Republicans have impeccable taste in silk stockings–and these are the people who run our country.”

There appears to be a lot of self loathing there.

Vacation, All I Ever Wanted….

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The fact that the Iraqi Parliament is going on vacation indicates that they know something that our morally bankrupt intelligentsia do not, that regardless of what they do, GW Bush will not pull out of Iraq.

If Lichtenstein were to conquer Texas, and claim it as their own right now, George Bush would not pull a single soldier out of Iraq to stop them and to take it back.

For Shrub, it’s all about him, and Iraq, for various oedipal and addictive personality driven reasons is what he thinks he is.

Please, Someone Lock These People Up With Leona Helmsley

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It appears that Blackstone partners may avoid taxes on their IPO profits completely.

Here is the short form:

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The paper says that of the $4.75 billion raised by the Blackstone IPO, the firm attributed $3.7 billion to good will, an accounting term that estimates the value of the intangible assets rather than tangible assets such as buildings and equipment owned by the firm.

That $3.7 billion is taxed at a 15 percent tax rate used for capital gains, meaning that the firms’ partners had to pay taxes of $553 million on their gain.

But by transferring that good will to a new corporate structure, the firm is able to deduct that $3.7 billion as a business expense at a 35 percent tax rate, reducing taxes by $1.3 billion over a 15-year period, according to the report.

The Times reports that under terms of the IPO, the Blackstone partners are entitled to 85 percent of those tax savings, or $1.1 billion. They are also able to account for those savings as a lump sum, when adjusting for the current value of those savings over the next 15 years. That brings current tax savings to $751 million, or $198 more than they had been required to pay in taxes on the $3.7 billion gain seen from the IPO.
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Damn!!! It’s enough to make one a Marxist.

Truth is, I am, but Groucho, Chico, Harpo, Zeppo, and Gummo, not Karl.

Justice, and Conrad Black, Have Been Served. Will Richard Pearle be Next?

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Well, it appears that my report of the jury being deadlocked was a bit premature. They just found Conrad Black guilty of guilty of three counts of mail fraud and one charge of obstruction of justice.

One wonders about some of his well connected board members, like Richard Pearle and Henry Kissinger, who might now be at some risk of either civil or criminal proceedings for enabling his larcenous habits.

One can hope.

Schadenfreude: 20 More Perps Edition

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According to Raw Story, Hustler magazine is involved in more than 20 sex scandal investigations.

Flynt is saying that about the hypocrisy, not the sex….Whatever.

Referring to his past court battles over indecency charges, the hardcore magazine publisher said the government “did everything it could for 15 years” to put him behind bars.

“This is payback time,” he said. “And payback’s a bitch.”

Gonzalez Lied to Congress

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Gonzalez should be under indictment.

Gonzales Was Told of FBI Violations
After Bureau Sent Reports, Attorney General Said He Knew of No Wrongdoing

By John Solomon
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, July 10, 2007; Page A01

As he sought to renew the USA Patriot Act two years ago, Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales assured lawmakers that the FBI had not abused its potent new terrorism-fighting powers. “There has not been one verified case of civil liberties abuse,” Gonzales told senators on April 27, 2005.

Six days earlier, the FBI sent Gonzales a copy of a report that said its agents had obtained personal information that they were not entitled to have. It was one of at least half a dozen reports of legal or procedural violations that Gonzales received in the three months before he made his statement to the Senate intelligence committee, according to internal FBI documents released under the Freedom of Information Act.

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Ummmm….Conrad Black is Guilty as Sin! What’s Your f%$#ing Problem?

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Sometimes the thought of a jury of one’s peers is kind of scary.

Black jury deadlocked
By Ameet Sachdev
Tribune staff reporter
Published July 10, 2007, 2:54 PM CDT

A Chicago federal jury weighing fraud charges against former Sun-Times publisher Conrad Black said today it was deadlocked.

‘We have discussed and deliberated on all the evidence and are still unable to reach a unanimous verdict on one or more counts. Please advise,’ jurors wrote in a note to the U.S. District Judge Amy St. Eve this afternoon.

In court, St. Eve responded by rereading a portion of the jury instructions which advised the panel to act in good faith and attempt to reach a verdict before sending the 9 women and 3 men back to the jury room to continue deliberations.

Tuesday was the ninth day of jury deliberations. The trial began March 20.

It is unclear if the jury has reached a conclusion on any of the 42 charges and four defendants before them.

Black faces 13 criminal charges, including racketeering and mail and wire fraud, tied to accusations that he and associated pocketed more than $60 million from non-compete agreements signed when his company Hollinger International Inc. sold several newspapers. If convicted, the 62-year-old member of the British House of Lords could spend the rest of his life in prison and forfeit much of his fortune.

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Guilty or No, This Trial is F%$%ed Up

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Kind of like Mumia. I think that Mumia did it, and I think that Mumiw was railroaded.

The trial of Former Gov. Don Siegelman (D-AL) is seriously screwed up.

You have Republicans testifying that it was politically driven. You have a judge who is a long time political enemy of Siegelman, and you have the judge imposing a fine for an offense for which he had been acquitted.

Originally, Siegelman had been ordered to pay the money to reimburse the state for losses based on a warehouse scandal. A jury acquitted Siegelman of charges relating to that scandal, but the prosecution pressed for punishment during the sentencing portion of the trial. The judge changed his mind yesterday, siding with Siegelman’s lawyers.

Judge decided that he had crossed a line in his vengance, I guess.

Still, the fact that HealthSouth CEO Richard Scrushyis going to jail too gives me mixed emotions.

Given the politicization of Justice under Bush and Abu Gonzalez (who ever thought that I would miss John f%$#ing Ashcroft) politics almost certainly played an important roll though.

Never Will You Find a More Retched Hive of Scum and Villany

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Here is an interesting story aboutMark Penn, Hillary Clinton’s main political strategist.

Penn is CEO of the global PR firm Burson-Marsteller, which has a union busting division.

It also turns out that he’s done extensive work for the Tobacco industry and the Nuclear Industry, among other unsavory characters, and his work for tobacco has continued since he has been advising Hillary on her senate campaigns.

You judge politicians by the company they keep, and this guy is bad news, perhaps as bad as the dope dealer and his racist father on the Guiliani campaign.

US Firms Commit Premeditated Murder.

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Here’s hoping that the people involved, up to the top eventually see the inside of a Columbian prison.

They asked for these guys to be murdered. This is the unavoidable consequence of targeting labor activists by right wing militias in Latin America.

Trial begins for killing of 3 union leaders

By Seattle Times news services

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — Jury selection began Monday for a civil trial in which U.S. coal company Drummond is accused of paying right-wing paramilitary gunmen to kill union leaders at a mine it operates in a war-torn corner of northern Colombia.

The civil case is believed to be the first to come to trial under a seldom-used U.S. law that dates back nearly two centuries, which lets foreigners sue U.S. corporations for their conduct abroad.

Drummond has denied involvement in the deaths of the three union leaders in 2001 near the sprawling open-pit mine it operates in Colombia.

The federal lawsuit was filed by the International Labor Rights Fund and Pittsburgh-based United Steelworkers union in March 2002 and seeks unspecified damages on behalf of the dead union leaders’ families.

The union leaders, Valmore Locarno, Victor Orcasita and Gustavo Soler had argued with Drummond about wage and safety issues.

Four witnesses have come forward claiming Drummond gave cash and cars to paramilitary fighters in exchange for killing the men.

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MediaBloodhound: Special Report: The Conflict of Interest Between Matthews and Coulter

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Here’s a surprise, Mr. Spittle is a slime ball.

Special Report:
The Conflict of Interest Between Matthews and Coulter

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But there is something else happening here, something that finally reveals why Matthews keeps going to the mat for Coulter. And that something is a direct conflict of interest that MSNBC – and especially Chris Matthews – should not only be ashamed of, but held to account for not informing viewers.

Ann Coulter’s Godless is published by Crown Forum, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, which is part of Random House. Who is Chris Matthews’ publisher for his upcoming book Life’s a Campaign: What Politics Has Taught Me About Friendship, Rivalry, Reputation, and Success? You guessed it – Random House.

But wait, there’s more.

Coulter showed up on Hardball this past Tuesday to promote the new paperback edition of Godless, which just happened to be released on the same day of her appearance. (Matthews also fails to point this out to his viewers.) And while this hour-long Coulterfest was nothing more than a deftly marketed, nationally televised promo book party posing as news, it only begins to touch on the disturbing synergy between the two. A little more digging reveals that Coulter’s forthcoming book If Democrats Had Any Brains, They’d Be Republicans: Ann Coulter at Her Best, Funniest, and Most Outrageous, published by the same Random House company, is scheduled for an October 2, 2007 release. And the release date for Matthews’ Random House publication Life’s a Campaign (his first, incidentally, with Random House)? Whaddya know: October 2, 2007.

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