{"id":176625,"date":"2020-05-02T19:17:00","date_gmt":"2020-05-03T00:17:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2020\/05\/02\/republicans-loot-because-republicans-loot\/"},"modified":"2020-05-02T19:17:00","modified_gmt":"2020-05-03T00:17:00","slug":"republicans-loot-because-republicans-loot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2020\/05\/02\/republicans-loot-because-republicans-loot\/","title":{"rendered":"Republicans Loot, Because Republicans Loot"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Remember that Republican political operative who terminated his fund raising business to start selling overpriced Covid-19 supplies, likely trading on his political connections, has now had his contract with Maryland terminated, and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.baltimoresun.com\/coronavirus\/bs-md-blue-flame-20200502-yowmpux5s5c7xf52wrjwb5dtp4-story.html\">there has been a criminal referral to the state Attorney General<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s pretty clear that this guy was profiteering off of his political connections, but his connections were not sufficient to acquire N-95 masks and ventilators, so now it is revealed that he sold stuff he did not have, and that, my friend, is fraud:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: blue;\">Maryland\u2019s governor is asking the attorney general to investigate a politically connected company that contracted to provide the state with millions of dollars\u2019 worth of medical equipment that never arrived.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">The state signed a $12.5 million deal April 1 with Blue Flame Medical LLC for 1.5 million N95 masks and 110 ventilators. The masks and ventilators were supposed to ship April 14, according to documents provided by the state.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">The state paid half of the money up front, according to the documents.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">The goods never arrived, and Maryland canceled the contract Friday.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">\u201cUnfortunately, despite numerous requests for information and order status, Blue Flame Medical has yet to deliver any items under this order, or provide any pertinent data as to a pending shipment,\u201d wrote Danny Mays, the state\u2019s director of procurement, in a letter sent to Blue Flame on Thursday.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">Blue Flame Medical was founded just weeks ago by Mike Gula, a former Republican Party fundraiser and consultant whose resume shows no experience in the medical field.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">A spokeswoman for Attorney General Brian Frosh confirmed receiving a referral about the contract. The office has a policy not to comment on pending or potential investigations.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">Gula started Blue Flame in late March with John Thomas, also a Republican consultant and former candidate, according to multiple news reports.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">When asked how political consultants could successfully switch to selling healthcare supplies in the midst of a global pandemic, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.com\/news\/2020\/03\/27\/republican-fundraiser-company-coronavirus-152184\">Thomas told Politico <\/a>in March: \u201cIt\u2019s just relationship-based. I can\u2019t say anything else.\u201d<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>There really is no situation so dire that some Republican won&#8217;t look at finding a way to loot it.<\/p>\n<p>Our society being what it is though, this guy will probably never see the inside of a jail cell.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Remember that Republican political operative who terminated his fund raising business to start selling overpriced Covid-19 supplies, likely trading on his political connections, has now had his contract with Maryland terminated, and there has been a criminal referral to the state Attorney General. It&#8217;s pretty clear that this guy was profiteering off of his political &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[368,435,364,575,440,572,374,460],"class_list":["post-176625","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-corruption","tag-crimes","tag-evil","tag-fraud","tag-medical","tag-pandemic","tag-politics","tag-public-health"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176625"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=176625"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176625\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=176625"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=176625"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=176625"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}