What do Jerry Brown and Samuel L. Jackson Have in Common?

"You either die a hero or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain."

So says Aaron Eckhart as fictional District Attorney Harvey Dent in the movie The Dark Knight, not long before his kidnapping and horrible disfigurement by Heath Ledger's Joker turns him in exactly the way he predicted. In real life such transformations are far more subtle and usually take far longer to reach fruition. Two such contemporary figures who both happen to hail from the great and wacky state of California but who could not have more disparate backgrounds, beloved actor Samuel L. Jackson and current California Governor Jerry Brown, are living proof that for reputation's sake it is rarely a good idea to hang around too long in the public eye.

Let's start with Jackson, who American moviegoers love for his admittedly intense performances in such movies as Pulp Fiction and the remake of Shaft (can you dig it?). Few popcorn munchers are aware, however, that during his student days Jackson became so outraged by Martin Luther King's assassination that he joined the Black Power movement and in 1969 participated in holding members of the Morehouse College board of trustees hostage on the campus, demanding reform in the school's curriculum and governance. You can readily imagine Jackson going into that battle carrying a wallet with "Bad Motherfucker" etched in the leather. He was later convicted of a second degree felony for his actions, and clearly this was a young man willing to go to jail or even risk his life in order to fight systemic abuse and injustice directed toward black Americans.

Flash forward 45 years later, and the bad motherfucker has mellowed out a bit. In fact he's mellowed out so much that he has become unavoidable on commercial teevee as a pitchman for Capital One, hawking credit cards to already seriously over-indebted American citizens consumers idiots. Not only was Capital One bailed out by the taxpayers during the financial crash to the tune of over $3.5 billion, but the company's current credit card interest rate charged for purchases is 24.9% on money that the bank can, of course, borrow from the Federal Reserve for next to nothing.

It should go without saying that credit card debt most heavily burdens lower income Americans, who are disproportionally black and minority. But more surprisingly is that even middle class black families have come to lean heavily on high interest credit card debt, to the point where nearly four out of five such families are so indebted. Yet there is nary a negative word publicly uttered about Jackson's massive sellout of his previous principles despite the fact that his net worth is currently estimated at $170 million, and he hardly has any financially motivated reason to be out hawking debt to those, especially those of his own race who he once seemed to care about so passionately, who can ill afford it.

Next we have the example of Jerry Brown, who for much of his career campaigned vigorously against the corrupting influence of big money in politics. So how is all that going these days? Here's the Sacramento Bee with the scoop:

Brown began his political career in the 1970s as a radical governor who would take down political corruption and outsized donations from lobbyists. The Brown we see today courts millions in campaign contributions from big corporations and looks the other way when a key government official is caught red-handed trying to protect the company he is supposed to be investigating.

In the case of disgraced PUC President Michael Peevey, Brown has not demanded Peevey immediately resign from office, despite the recent unearthing of his blatantly improper and unethical intervention on behalf of PG&E. The PUC is supposed to hold PG&E accountable and protect the public in the aftermath of the 2010 San Bruno pipeline explosion. What we find instead are backroom deals, bribery, questionable rate hikes, and hand-picking judges who will be favorable to PG&E and the utility industry Peevey comes from.

---

Brown’s governance has failed to set a standard condemning influence peddling in Sacramento.

The changes in Brown’s campaign fundraising over the years are a signpost of the kind of leader he has become. Unlike his first gubernatorial campaign in 1974, during which he attempted to ban direct contributions from lobbyists, or his campaign for president in 1992, when he wanted candidates to cap donations at $100, Brown’s most recent campaigns have been marked by raising some of the largest sums in the country. The $25 million in the 2014 race came overwhelmingly from big corporations, labor unions, oil companies and wealthy individuals known for lobbying state government.

The means by which Brown secures such hefty contributions came under suspicion in January, when he asked the California Supreme Court to reverse lower court rulings blocking high-speed rail. Brown filed the appeal just three days after Tutor Perini Corp. – the contractor that won a $1 billion contract for the project despite having the lowest technical rating of those bidding – donated the maximum $27,200 it could to Brown’s campaign.

Is it any surprise that in September Brown vetoed an ethics bill (Senate Bill 1443) that would have required more campaign finance disclosure and reduced the value of gifts lobbyists can give state officials?

No it really isn't a surprise given that it has been quite awhile since anyone, even a politician of Jerry Brown's stature, could be elected to a major post like Gubbner of California WITHOUT pocketing vast sums of cash from such sources. At some point "Governor Moonbeam," who during his first stint as governor during the mid-1970s lived in a modest apartment instead of the governor's mansion and drove around in a Plymouth Satellite sedan instead of being chauffeured by limousine, recognized that he either needed to compromise his principles or give up politics, and we can see which route he chose.

I highlighted these two examples to demonstrate just how commonplace and mundane the selling out and/or corruption of American public figures has become these days. In fact, it has become so much so that those involved in it can no longer see that they are just as big a part of the problem as those they may choose to vilify, as shown by this amazingly clueless quote from Jackson about Supreme Court Justice Clarance Thomas:

He (Jackson) compared his Django Unchained character, a villainous house slave, to black conservative Justice Clarence Thomas, saying that "I have the same moral compass as Clarence Thomas does".

No, Samuel, sadly it is not just your "Uncle Tom" character who has the "moral compass" of Clarance Thomas, but YOU as well. You and Thomas are part of the same massive hypocrisy, and are both useful "tools of the man" as you and your brethren no doubt put it back in the 1960s. And along with your esteemed governor, Jerry Brown, you are hardly alone.


Bonus: "The path of the righteous man is beset on all side by the inequities of the selfish and the tyrannies of evil men"

Games Governments Play

image: former 1960s hippie chick greets former Khmer Rouge practitioner of genocide

My recent visit to Cambodia rekindled my interest in beleaguered country (even if I did not personally get to witness much of its beleaguerment), and since I got home I've been reading a copy of Cambodia's Curse, a recently published history written by journalist Joel Brinkley. Through hundreds of interviews with Cambodian citizens and politicians as well as westerners who have recently worked in or served in country, Brinkley meticulously details how the Cambodia people have been repeatedly abused and sold out by their own corrupt government and venal national politicians even after the hideously evil Khmer Rouge movement passed into the dustbin of history.

The book's primary focus is on Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen (pictured above with Hillary Clinton), a true Machiavellian dictator who has effectively run the country since 1985. Sen was originally an officer in the army of the genocidal Khmer Rouge who defected to Vietnam about a year before the invasion that drove his previous patrons out of power. Installed as a communist Vietnamese puppet in 1985, Sen has somehow managed to survive the withdrawal of the Vietnamese army, the fall of the communist bloc and intractable opposition from anti-communists in the U.S. government to remain in power for more than a quarter of a century. Like most strongmen in charge of the world's poorest countries, Sen and his cronies have dedicated themselves to stealing everything that isn't tied down, including pocketing vast amounts of foreign aid money along with the proceeds from the illegal clear cutting of the country's few remaining hardwood forests. All the while, the vast majority of Cambodians suffer from abject poverty, malnutrition and among the highest rates of infant mortality in the world.

There are a couple of anecdotes in the book that struck me as being particularly relevant to those of us living in the west who have watched as our own governments have become gradually more corrupt and unaccountable to the citizenry. One involves Sen's habit of routinely having his thugs toss live grenades into opposition rallies and then having his police blame the opposition for the attacks claiming that they benefitted politically. The other is Sen's repeated promises to foreign aid donors to pass anti-corruption laws, promises he then conveniently forgets as soon as the aid money comes rolling in, which it always does. Both of these tactics are so ham-handed and obvious that a fifth grader should be able to see through them. And yet Sen's regime continues to do them repeatedly because, guess what, they succeed in achieving his ends.

I wrote in yesterday's post that one of the big mistakes made by many in the peak oil community in the wake of the 2008 oil price spike and subsequent market crash is assuming that governments will not do literally everything they can do to avoid a fast collapse. And while Americans might be tempted to smugly believe that their own government is too "civilized" to ever stoop to tactics like grenading its own citizens in order to maintain power, I would merely ask whether there is any real moral difference between that action and the drone missile campaigns, the assassination of American citizens without trial or the maintenance of a concentration camp in Guantanamo Bay. What is particularly odd is that I was able to purchase my copy of Cambodia's Curse for $8 in a market stall in Siem Reap, despite the book's rigorous lambasting of Sen. That tells me that just like in America, the Cambodian government believes people who actually read and know what is really going in the world are such a tiny isolated minority as to no longer pose a threat worthy of the expense of suppressing them.

To date, most of the actions governments have needed to take in response to the world wide financial crisis have been in the financial arena. There is no reason to expect, however, that more forceful tactics will not be employed as the long emergency drags on. The abuse of Occupy protesters by police around the country serves as a mere hint of what is likely to come in the future. Many in the peak oil community thought that the market crash of 2008 was beginning of the end, whereas I would humbly assert that the response to it was in fact the opening salvo of a dirty war against reality that will be going on for a very long time.


Bonus: "But I found out only two years ago that we don't live in a democracy"

John Edwards: A Peak Behind the Mask Of A Big Time Politician

The John Edwards case has been an interesting sideshow during this political season. Actually, "freak show" might be a more apt term to use. Though Edwards is hardly the first politician caught with his wank in a crack where it shouldn't have been, what's unusual in this case is the level of sordid detail that has come spilling out during his corruption trial. I don't really care how Edwards spent his campaign funds. If you aren't a millionaire or a billionaire, donating to any politician is akin to pissing your money down the sewer. If he didn't use it to pay off his mistress, it would have gone to something else equally worthless.

That said, I did have a brief flirtation, so to speak, with Edwards early on during the 2008 presidential campaign. His standard "two Americas" campaign speech seemed to indicate that he actually understood the harsh economic realities so many Americans were facing even before the financial crash that year. As it turned out it was all a mirage, carefully constructed by yet another ego-maniacal political psychopath.

Consider for a moment, as this snippet from a Talking Points Memo indicates, just how far removed the "real" John Edwards has turned out to be from his previous public persona:

Here’s the 5 best pieces of evidence that make that case so far:

Edwards Referred to Hunter as a ‘Crazy Slut’

Former aide Andrew Young testified that Edwards called mistress Rielle Hunter a “crazy slut” after she told Edwards she was pregnant in June 2007. Young said Edwards told him there was “a 1-in-3 chance” that the child was his.

He Asked Sean Penn For PR Advice

Edwards reached out to Sean Penn, Madeleine Stowe and Crash director Paul Haggis before admitting to fathering a child with mistress Rielle Hunter, former campaign speechwriter Wendy Button testified. Button helped Edwards work through 13 drafts of a statement admitting paternity in the summer of 2009 but did not end up admitting paternity until January 2010.

Justice John Edwards?

Former Edwards campaign adviser Leo Hindery testified that Edwards told him to reach out to then-Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama to make sure they knew he was up for the VP slot despite the unfolding mistress scandal. Edwards allegedly said he would trade his endorsement in exchange a spot on the ticket. Hindery testified that Edwards believed he could be attorney general if he wasn’t made vice president.

“We talked about a more elaborate long-term goal of Mr. Edwards, which was to be a Supreme Court justice,” Hindery testified.

Told Aide To ‘Go Fuck’ Himself

Edwards allegedly told Peter Scher to “go fuck [himself]” when he confronted him about the affair.

“I told him if it was true that he was having an affair with Ms. Hunter, he should not run for president,” Scher testified. “If it was true, eventually it would come out and it would destroy his political career.”

Bunny Thought Edwards Should Pay For His Own Girlfriend

Designer Bryan Huffman, an interior designer who is close with 101-year-old Edwards donor Bunny Mellon, testified that the heiress wasn’t one to judge someone having an extramarital affair but did have an opinion about how her money was spent.

“She thought maybe you should probably pay for your girlfriend yourself,” Huffman testified.

One point here should be plainly obvious, but because so few people seem to understand it I will repeat it: ALL big time politicians who rise to the level where they can at least consider making a serious run for the presidency these days are massive narcissists. You would have to be to put yourself through what they have to go through just to compete on that stage. The ones who win are the ones who are best able to deceive the public regarding their true nature. It is something every voter should consider before thinking they would "like to have a beer" with a particular candidate, or that because he is black he MUST be empathetic to the concerns of the average person.


Bonus: "I broke our home...and left you nowhere to run"

The Exiled: Failing Up With Citigroup's Dick Parsons

Mark Ames, editor-in-chief of The Exiled and all around journalistic rabble rouser, just came out with a blistering story recounting the sordid career of former Citigroup Chairman Dick Parsons. Parsons my not be as well known as such other Wall Street jackals as Lloyd Blankfein and and Jamie Dimon, but after reading Ames's account, I think you will agree he is every bit as bad if not worse. And as you can see by the picture above, Parsons has a lot of friends in high places.

Last month, shareholders finally rebelled against Citigroup, the worst of the Too Big To Fail bailout disasters, by filing a lawsuit against outgoing chairman Dick Parsons and handful of executives for stuffing their pockets while running the bank into the ground.

Anyone familiar with Dick Parsons’ past could have told you his term as Citigroup’s chairman would end like this: Shareholder lawsuits, executive pay scandals, and corporate failure on a colossal scale. It’s the Dick Parsons Management Style. In each of the three companies Parsons was appointed to lead, they all failed spectacularly, and somehow Parsons and a handful of top executives always walked away from the yellow-tape crime scenes unscathed.

This past April, for his final act as Citigroup’s chairman, Dick Parsons made sure that Citi’s top executives were handsomely rewarded for their failures. He arranged a pay package for CEO Vikram Pandit amounting to $53 million despite the fact that Citi’s stock plummeted 44% last year, and has woefully underperformed other bank stocks even by their low standards. Citigroup, as you might recall, got the largest bailout of any banking institution, larger than BofA’s– $50 billion in direct funds, and over $300 billion more in “stopgap” federal guarantees on the worthless garbage in Citi’s “assets” portfolio. Those are just the most obvious bailouts Citi received—this doesn’t take into account the flood of free cash, the murky mortgage-backed securities buyback programs, the accounting rules changes that allowed banks like Citi to decide how much their assets “should be worth” as opposed to what they’re really worth on their beloved free-market, and so on…

So just as Dick Parsons stepped down as Citigroup chairman last month, shareholders finally rebelled, suing Parsons, CEO Pandit and a handful of executives for corporate plunder.

Again, with Parsons, it’s the same story every time: Three executive jobs, three disasters, each worse than the previous one.

Before Citigroup, Parsons headed AOL Time Warner, where he helped pull off what is widely considered the single worst business deal in corporate American history: a fraud-rife merger that wiped out $200 billion in shareholder value, ruined employees, retirees and investors, sparked numerous criminal investigations and dozens of lawsuits, and yet somehow managed to enrich a tiny handful of executives—including Dick Parsons—to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars.

Why would the government agree to name the AOL Time Warner failure Dick Parsons, Chairman of Citigroup in January 2009, just as the world’s largest banking institution was taking the biggest bailout packages, and just as its legal ownership was taken over by the American public?

It’s a basic question that goes to the heart of Dick Parsons’ rise to the top. It’s a question that should have been put to AOL Time Warner when he was thrust to the top of that firm, considering the giant S&L failure Parsons oversaw before moving over to AOL Time Warner.

From the late 1980s through the mid-1990s, Parsons served as a top executive and then chairman of Dime Savings, the Northeast’s poster child for savings & loan criminal fraud. Dime was Parsons’ first executive job—and Dime turned out to be the New England region’s closest equivalent to Charles Keating’s Lincoln Savings, a giant criminal fraud mill with victims ranging from gullible low-income home buyers to entire regional economies laid waste to fraud-pumped housing bubble.

At least in the S&L crisis of the late 80s and early 90s, some people went to jail—and Dime’s affiliates in the New England states sent scores of fraudsters to prison. Those investigations led to Dime’s New York headquarters where Dick Parsons was, but for some strange reason, even with a federal judge openly demanding criminal charges for Dime’s senior executives, in the end, Parsons and the others got away with it.

Read the rest here.

Leon Panetta's Weekend Commutes Cost As Much As That GSA Party

Maybe we shouldn't be so hard on those Las Vegas partiers at the GSA. After all, the Secretary of Defense has been blatantly wasting taxpayer money for his own personal convenience as well. Atlantic Wire has the details:

That Leon Panetta has spent an incredible $860,000 to fly between his day job in Washington and his home in Northern California since taking office may not exactly be his fault, but even the thrifty secretary of defense himself this week can't help but notice the irony of that flight bill. Today, the airfare bill is even getting compared to the Government Services Administration's now infamous Las Vegas bender.

A brief rundown of the controversy: Earlier in April, the AP revealed that the secretary of defense, pushing to get the military to stop spending money like it's still the Cold War, billed the government $32,000 per private flight home since taking office in July, reimbursing the government only $632 for each, an amount dictated by law. Now, Panetta had no choice but to fly on the government's dime, if he wanted his weekends home. "No one understands the budget pressures on the Pentagon better than Secretary Panetta," a Defense spokesperson defensively noted. "As a required-use traveler, he must use government aircraft for all travel." But this Monday, Panetta had his hat in hand, saying he regretted the burden the trips put on taxpayers. And in a comparison of ironies, Foreign Policy notes today that $860,000 is only $28,000 more than the clown-filled Vegas conference for the GSA, an agency tasked with curtailing spending.

But really, Panetta and his flights aren't worthy of the ire of GSA's party. "I’ve gone home because my wife and family are there and because, frankly, I think it’s healthy to get out of Washington periodically just to get your mind straight and your perspective straight," Panetta explained to reporters Monday. We want our family-man military chief to be happy, too. As Time's Mark Thompson puts it, "It is a grueling, relentless job. If Panetta wants to jet off to his California walnut farm to tend to a different kind of nut than those he has to deal with daily in the capital, he should."

But ultimately, the flights are for personal use and not business, so we do have a modest request, Secretary Panetta: as you look for ways to cut military spending, consider your flight bill. If not for taxpayers, then just for the sake of good optics as you push more significant spending cuts elsewhere.

I've got a better idea...why not have Secretary Panetta MOVE HIS FUCKING FAMILY TO WASHINGTON, like any other government official has to do. Or better yet, if he wants to be with them so goddam badly, let the fucker resign. It's not as if there aren't another couple of dozen or so completely amoral high ranking assholes who wouldn't take the fucking job in a minute if he stepped down. We have have a trillion-and-a-half dollar annual federal budget deficit that is actually the gravest national security risk we face. SOMEBODY has to make fucking sacrifices, and it might as well start with the guy who heads the fucking war machine.


Bonus: This sounds like an idea that's actually long overdue

GSA Scandal Addendum: What I Did On My Taxpayer Paid Las Vegas Vacation

Protip: If you are a government official who wastes a shit pot load of taxpayer money taking completely frivolous trips to Las Vegas with your wife, you should probably make sure wifey doesn't post the vacation photos on the internet. Here is Atlantic Wire with the story:

G.S.A. regional commissioner Jeffrey Neely had a rough Monday as he very publicly invoked his 5th Amendment rights during a Congressional hearing into his agency's spending scandal, and photos of he and his wife doing all that aforementioned spending leaked around the internet, thanks to ABC New's Jake Tapper.

Neely's wife posted photos of their trip to the Las Vegas M Hotel in 2009 on her Google+ account. The trip was one of eight pre-conference "scouting" forays the agency apparently required just to make sure they weren't, you know, wasting $800,000 of taxpayers' money on hotel with small tubs or bad views. Judging from Neely's contented smile in the hotel tub, they weren't. (Insert your own "in hot water joke" here.)

We'd like to think being a hotel scout for your agency's indulgent conference is about as awesome a job as testing all the well-fed king's food for poison. That's to say, it's pretty awesome gig, until you get poisoned, or, in Neely's case, you get a Congressional hearing and possible criminal investigation. As the executive responsible for the conference itself, he was subpoenaed to testify Monday for the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, and as expected, he took the Fifth and was quickly dismissed from the hearings. Perhaps it was the best legal move, but choosing silence over self-incrimination never plays very well in the press.

You want a real laugh? From Wikipedia, here is the mission statement of the General Services Administration:

The General Services Administration (GSA) is an independent agency of the United States government, established in 1949 to help manage and support the basic functioning of federal agencies. The GSA supplies products and communications for U.S. government offices, provides transportation and office space to federal employees, and develops government-wide cost-minimizing policies, and other management tasks.

Truth is not only stranger than fiction, sometimes it is downright absurd.


Bonus: "I think I'm dumb...maybe I'm just happy"

GSA Chief Resigns After Throwing $800,000 Taxpayer Funded Party In Las Vegas

Maybe it isn't being repeated often enough so that the political appointee types in Washington are getting the message: America has a trillion dollar plus annual federal budget deficit that desperately needs trimming. Now is not the time to be blowing taxpayer money frivolously. Got it?

Well, apparently not. Here is the Atlantic Wire with the sordid details:

Martha Johnson, chief of the General Services Administration, and two of her top executives resigned today. You probably would too if you spent over $800,000 of taxpayer dollars on an extravagant "conference" off of the Las Vegas Strip. If you don't know the General Services Administration (GSA) was created to, in their words, "streamline the administrative work of the federal government" and it "oversees the business of the U.S. federal government." Somehow, Johnson and her crew parlayed those tenets into a "regional meeting" in Henderson, Nevada (having the discretion to not be at a hotel on The Strip--that's a modicum of modesty right?).

Thanks to an investigation and report from GSA Inspector General Brian D. Miller, The Washington Post, and the Associated Press, we now know how Johnson and her team spent all that money. Here's how it breaks down (keep in mind that in 2010, according to Inspector Miller's report, the meal and incidental expenses allowance was $71 per day):

$31,000 on a "networking reception" that featured $19-per-person "American artisanal cheese display" and $7,000 in sushi

$3,200 on a session with a mind reader

$5,600 for in-room parties

$100,405.37 in employee travel costs to scout the event--meaning, these people returned to the Las Vegas area multiple times to visit hotels before settling on the fancy M Resort and Casino.

$3,700 for T-shirts

$2,800 in water bottles

$1,500 for "Boursin scalloped potato with Barolo wine-braised short ribs" and a $525 bartender fee for a cash bar.

Three officials spent almost $400 for rented tuxedos

$1,840 for vests for the 19 “regional ambassadors” and other employees

$146,527.05 was spent on catered food during the entire conference

$6,325 was spent on commemorative coins in velvet boxes to reward all participants for their work on stimulus projects (because a certificate and the $800,000 party they're at wouldn't do)

$75,000 for a “team-building” exercise — the goal was to build bicycles (which would later be donated to a Boys & Girls Clubs)

But, we felt this one deserves a special shoutout: "Another agency employee sought a discount on a $98 purse from the hotel gift shop. She received a $30 break," reported the AP. Because hey, when you're making it rain with $7,000 sushi, who has $98 dollars to spend on a tacky gift shop purse?

WTF? $3200 for a freakin' mind reader? Seriously?

The very first question I had when I read this story was to wonder was this idiot's background is and what she was doing before Obama appointed her to the job. Fortunately, the Washington Post had me covered. First up, here is what Martha Johnson had to say upon taking office:

In her resignation letter, Johnson acknowledged a “significant misstep” at the agency that manages real estate for the federal government. “Taxpayer dollars were squandered,” she wrote. At the start of her tenure in February 2010 she called ethics “a big issue for me.”

Okay, that's a really funny joke. What could possibly top that? Well, how about her resume:

Career History: Computer Sciences Corp., vice president of culture (2007 to 2008); SRA-Touchstone Consulting Group, director and vice president, (2004 to 2007); Council for Excellence in Government, vice president of leadership and performance, (2002 to 2004)

I swear, you really can't make this shit up. But I have an idea that might put a stop to this kind of garbage. Instead of just letting Johnson resign, stick her with the bill for the total cost of the conference. Then maybe the next asshole political appointee who takes her place might think twice before trying to so blatantly fuck over the taxpayers.

Addendum: This story has been ballooning pretty quickly. After I wrote the initial post, CNN posted this rather ridiculous update:

The same week that a report documented massive overspending at the General Services Administration, a video emerged Thursday showing an agency employee joking about the excess spending and saying he would never be investigated for it.

The video also mentions an awards program for employees that gave out $200,000 worth of taxpayer-funded iPods, electronics and gift cards to entry-level government employees.

"I buy everything your field office can't afford," raps the employee in the video. "I'll never be under OIG investigation."

OIG refers to the Office of the Inspector General, who originally looked into the GSA's spending on a 2010 training conference held in Las Vegas. His report found the federal agency spent $822,000 on the event, including $75,000 on team-building exercises, $6,000 on commemorative coins, and $6,000 on canteens, keychains, and T-shirts.

The revelations prompted GSA Administrator Martha Johnson to resign this week.

House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa's office, which is investigating the excess spending, received the video from the inspector general and released it to the public on Thursday.

The video was the winning entry in an employee video contest at the 2010 conference. In handing out the award for the video, the deputy commissioner of the Public Building Service appears to mock oversight of the GSA.

The revelations about the GSA's overspending are prompting outrage among lawmakers who are furious about taxpayer money being wasted. The inspector general's staff briefed congressional investigators Wednesday, and a source familiar with the briefing told CNN they were "pretty astonished at the blatant misuse of funds."

As it turns out, they aren't the only ones.


Bonus: I'll bet Martha Johnson wishes she had taken Sheryl Crow's advice

The Greatest Day in South Carolina?

Hat tip to Satori at Silent Country.

Last September 30th, I posted a Friday Rant entitled, "The Impotence of Positive Thinking," in which I blasted South Carolina's Tea Party Governor Nikki Haley for her asinine directive forcing beleaguered Palmetto State employees to answer the phone with the phrase, "It's a great day in South Carolina." Well, maybe soon that will really be true for every citizen of the state. Here is Palmetto Public Record with the details:

Two well-placed legal experts have independently told Palmetto Public Record they expect the U.S. Department of Justice to issue an indictment against South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley on charges of tax fraud as early as this week.

A highly ranked federal official has also privately confirmed rumblings of an investigation and possible indictment of the governor, though the official was not aware of the specific timeframe.

Yesterday, Palmetto Public Record exclusively reported that the Internal Revenue Service has been investigating since March of 2011 the Sikh worship center run by Gov. Haley’s father. At least five lawsuits have been filed against the Sikh Society of South Carolina since 2010, alleging that the group bilked contractors out of nearly $130,000 for the construction of a new temple.

Gov. Haley is reported to have managed the temple’s finances as late as 2003, and our sources believe any indictment would center on what happened to the missing money.

You can bet that if Governor Haley is indicted, those state employees will be saying that stupid phrase as they answer the phone while trying to keep from laughing.

Chicago Called Most Corrupt City...Ooh Look, Boobies!

A story appeared this past week that caught my eye for the right reasons, but reading it filled me with loathing and disgust for the precisely the wrong reasons. As I've mentioned a number of times before on this blog, I originally hail from the Great State of Illinois, and actually lived within the Chicago city limits for three years after college. For someone who grew up in a small town, the Windy City was a stimulating and exciting place to spend my young adulthood. It still had a reputation for corruption, of course, but in the early-90s era in which Mayor Daley the Younger (and far more articulate) was first elected mayor, that all seemed like a relic of the distant past, no more relevant to my generation than were the riots at the 1968 Democratic convention.

Well, apparently Chicago has not buried its history of corruption, as reported by CBS Chicago.com:

A former Chicago alderman turned political science professor/corruption fighter has found that Chicago is the most corrupt city in the country.

He cites data from the U.S. Department of Justice to prove his case. And, he says, Illinois is third-most corrupt state in the country.

University of Illinois at Chicago professor Dick Simpson, who served as alderman of the 44th Ward in Lakeview from 1971 to 1979, estimates the cost of corruption at $500 million.

It’s essentially a corruption tax on citizens who bear the cost of bad behavior — police brutality, bogus contracts, bribes, theft and ghost payrolling to name a few — and the costs needed to prosecute it.

“We first of all, we have a long history,” Simpson said. “The first corruption trial was in 1869 when alderman and county commissioners were convicted of rigging a contract to literally whitewash City Hall.”

In the Northern District of Illinois, which includes Chicago, there have been a total of 1,531 public corruption convictions since 1976, Simpson found. A distant second is California’s central district in Los Angeles with 1,275 public corruption convictions since 1976, Simpson found.

Statewide, that number hits 1,828. Only California and New York have more, but those states have much higher populations. Per capita, only the District of Columbia and Louisiana have more convictions.

Since the 1970s, four of Illinois’ seven governors have been convicted (Otto Kerner, Dan Walker, George Ryan and Rod Blagojevich). In addition, dozens of Chicago alderman and other city and county public officials have been found guilty, Simpson said.

Corruption, Simpson said, is intertwined with city politics. Simpson found that about a third of sitting alderman since 1973 have been corrupt.

“We have had machine politics since the Great Chicago Fire of 1871,” he said. “Machine politics breeds corruption inevitably.”

Now that is an important story that ought to be read by every resident of the City of the Big Shoulders so maybe they can be stirred to finally take action and do something about ithis appalling state of affairs, right? Well, not withstanding the fact that very few people actually still read these days, the text of this story was wedged on the website page between a column highlighting other stories labelled, "Don't Miss This," with flashy color pictures on one side and an column of intrusive Google ads on the other.

The Don't Miss This stories included:

Remembering Whitney Houston (with a picture of Whitney singing)

Grammys: Who Looked Good? (with a picture of the relentlessly untalented but big-chested, hypocritical Christian singer Katy Perry)

Oscar Nominees (with a picture of some actress I didn't recognize because I rarely go to the movies anymore. Not because I don't like movies but because most of what Hollywood produces these days is pure shit)

Hottest Celebs With Babies (with a picture of Brittany Spears wearing a releaving outfit showing off her cellulite while "singing")

Victoria's Secret Fashion Show (with a picture of a lingerie clad Victoria's Secret model)

The Google ads opposite also had pictures and the text of the article was actually bent around them. There were also links to other serious news stories, but they were down at the bottom of the page where the reader would actually have to search them out and had no associated pictures.

Now I know some will argue that page view volume is the only way these websites can make money, so they deliberately place the most eye-catching links to their other stories where viewers will be most likely to see them. Britain's Globe and Mail newspaper website is particularly notorious for doing this, running a picture-laden, celebrity-driven column of pap chauvinistically labelled, "Femail Today," down the far right column next to every news story. The overall effect is to subtly indicate that a serious news story like the one above is not any more important than the sheer fluff that is being otherwise highlighted.

I had a cyber conversation the other day on an online forum in which the subject turned to whether the Internet is now serving to destroy people's attention spans even more so than television had already been doing for a couple of generations. Thinking about it, I realized I myself have had a problem with the distracting effects of the Web. I've been an avid book reader my whole life, but I've become so used to clicking from story to story online just long enough to get the gist before moving on that I've noticed my patience for sitting down and reading a serious work of fiction or nonfiction for an hour or two is not the same as it used to be. If that is what is happening to someone with the level of concentration it takes to be a writer, and I am actually aware that it's happening, what corrosive effects are the countless hours of Internet viewing having on the critical thinking skills of those who read books rarely if at all?

I don't think you have to look too hard to see what effect our mass distraction is having on our culture as a whole. The infantile rhetoric spewing forth from the Republican presidential primary campaign and the fact that Obama's approval ratings have been soaring lately despite his manifest failure to keep any of his campaign promises are strong indicators of a society that has completely lost its ability to think critically.

Anyway, food for thought. As for Chicago, it sounds like my former place of residence is in deep do-do. Maybe someday, someone who lives there will give more of a shit about the endemic local corruption than they do about who looked good at the fucking Grammys.


Bonus: Tift Merritt is the anti-Katy Perry

Kinetic Concepts Inc. to Lay Off 114 in San Antonio After Leveraged Buyout

This story caught my attention because the scenario is very similar to the one that caused my father to be laid off for six months back in 1986: a leveraged buyout attempt by a UK based equity firm. My dad was eventually rehired. These folks may not be so lucky, as reported My SA.com:

San Antonio-based medical devices and biotechnology firm Kinetic Concepts Inc. announced 127 layoffs on Tuesday, 114 of them in San Antonio, most involving administrative positions, as the company realigns its three business units.

The company employs about 7,100 globally, 2,100 in San Antonio. The layoffs account for a little more than 5 percent of the San Antonio workforce and less than 2 percent companywide. The 13 layoffs outside of San Antonio involved positions within the United States.

The layoffs mainly eliminated positions in finance, human resources, information technology and corporate communications. To a lesser degree, layoffs occurred in marketing and research and development, a corporate spokesman said.

Okay, lay some corporate FlackSpeak on me:

“Throughout our 35-year history, we've been a stable employer and provided good jobs to thousands of employees — even during the global economic challenges of the past few years. With the changing landscape in healthcare, and with an eye toward the future, we need to match our workforce to the needs of the business and our customers.

“We will continue to maintain a significant employee base in San Antonio and look forward to opening our new global headquarters here this summer,” the statement concluded.

KCI last year acquired 8.3 acres at 12930 Interstate 10 West, south of Hausman Road, where a three-story, 100,000-square-foot building is being built for its new headquarters.

The layoffs follow the November leveraged buyout of KCI by a group led by London-based private equity firm Apax Partners. The deal was valued at $6.1 billion.

So typical...the billionaires play their buyout games and the workers get the shaft. That's how it is in our crony capitalist system these days.


Bonus: "Games people play...you take it or you leave it. The things that they say don't make it right"

Smith & Nephew Eliminating 800 Jobs Due to Corporate Malfeasance

Bad: getting laid off. Worse: getting laid off because your company had to pay huge fines because it got caught paying bribes. Here is the Fierce Markets Network with the details:

It has been a tough few days for medical device manufacturer Smith & Nephew ($SNN) and particularly for its Memphis, TN-based division.

The company announced Monday that it would pay the U.S. $22.2 million in fines and profit disgorgement to settle claims that it won business in Greece by bribing doctors in that country's public health service. Its U.S. subsidiary, Smith & Nephew Inc., based in Memphis, is shouldering $16.8 million of the settlement with the Justice Department.

The settlement came days after the company announced that it would cut about 800 jobs from its orthopedics unit and place emphasis on emerging markets and research and development.

The bribery charges date to 2007 when an investigation found that the company, with the help of a distributor, paid $9 million in bribes to Greek doctors. The company agreed to maintain an enhanced compliance program to be reviewed by an outside monitor for 18 months.

But of course, none of the corporate managers who either made the decisions to pay the bribes or looked the other way while it was happening will lose their jobs. Because accountability is only something that applies to peons, who suffer even if they had nothing to do with the original crime.

The Scum Also Rises: The 50 Most Powerful People in Washington

Once again, GQ Magazine has put together its list of the 50 Most Powerful People in Washington (other than Obama and Biden). The article is a slideshow with details on each person listed and why they were chosen, but I've reprinted the actual list below. Even though I think some of the choices are a bit daffy (the list includes Washington Nationals pitcher Steven Strasburg, but not Harry Reid or Nancy Pelosi...WTF?), it really is all you need to know to know why we're screwed.

1. Eric Cantor: Virginia Representative, House Majority Leader

2. Mitch McConnell: Kentucky Senator, Senate Minority Leader

3. David Plouffe: Senior Advisor to the President

4. Leon Panetta: Secretary of Defense

5. Hillary Clinton: Secretary of State

6. Ben Bernanke: Chairman, Federal Reserve

7. David Petraeus: Director, CIA

8. Kevin McCarthy: California Representative, House Majority Whip

9. Peter Rouse: Counselor to the President, the White House

10. Tom Donohue: President, U.S. Chamber of Commerce

11. Tim Geithner: Treasury Secretary

12. John Boehner: Ohio Representative, Speaker of the House

13. Karl Rove, Steven Law, Ed Gillespie: American Crossroads & Crossroads GPS

14. Tommy Boggs: Chairman, Patton Boggs

15. Dan Pfeiffer: White House Communications Director

16. Gene Sperling and Jack Lew: Director, White House National Economic Council & New White House Chief of Staff

17. Chuck Schumer: New York Senator

18. Grover Norquist: President, Americans for Tax Reform

19. Chuck Todd: Chief White House Correspondent, NBC News

20. David Rhodes & Ben Rhodes: President, CBS News; Deputy National Security Advisor and speechwriter

21. Paul Ryan: Wisconsin Representative

22. Denis McDonough: Deputy National Security Adviser

23. Heather and Tony Podesta: Heather Podesta + Partners; Podesta Group

24. Chris Van Hollen: Maryland Representative

25. Paul D. Clement: Partner, Bancroft

26. Jim DeMint: South Carolina Senator

27. Kathy Ruemmler: White House Counsel

28. Joe Pounder: Research Director, Republican National Committee

29. Tim Scott: South Carolina Representative

30. Nancy Hogan: Director, Presidential Personnel

31. Brian Deese: Deputy Director, White House National Economic Council

32. Arne Duncan: Secretary of Education

33. Jake Sullivan: Director of Policy Planning, State Department

34. Ezra Klein: Blogger, The Washington Post

35. Rob Nabors: White House Director of Legislative Affairs

36. Bill Daley: (Former) Chief of Staff, White House

37. Patty Murray: Washington Senator

38. Capital Weather Gang: Bloggers, The Washington Post

39. Liz Cheney: Co-Founder, Keep America Safe

40. Mike Allen: Reporter, Politico

41. José Andrés: Restaurateur

42. Svetlana Legetic, Jayne Sandman, Barbara Martin: Party planners

43. Marco Rubio: Florida Senator

44. Jeremy Bernard: White House Social Secretary

45. Charles Krauthammer: Syndicated Columnist

46. Chris Dodd: Chairman, Motion Picture Association of America

47. Stephen Strasburg: Pitcher, Washington Nationals

48. Jack Quinn: Chairman, Quinn Gillespie & Associates

49. James Alefantis: Restaurateur and Bon Vivant

50. Bradley Graham & Lissa Muscatine: Owners, Politics & Prose

Bonus: Imagine how much better off we'd all be if Washington's very own Fugazi topped the list instead

New Navy Minehunter Ship Can't See or Stop Mines

Despite having massive and unsustainable federal government deficits, we just CAN'T cut the Pentagon's budget...or the Red Chinese hordes will descend upon upon us and um, eat our babies, or something. That's what the many Congresscritters who are bought-and-paid for appendages of the military-industrial complex want a gullible public to believe so they have an excuse to keep lining those defense contractors' pockets (and hence keep the campaign cash a-flowing). Meanwhile, as reported this last week by Danger Room, the Pentagon continues to waste that taxpayer money in massive quantities:

It’s bad enough that the Navy’s newest ship has had wicked problems with corrosion, missed out on the latest naval wartime missions and is generally something of a Frankenstein’s monster. Now the Pentagon’s top weapons tester has found problems with its abilities to find and withstand mines — which is a big problem for a ship that’s supposed to be the Navy’s minehunter of the future.

That’s the assessment of the director of the Operational Testing and Evaluation office, summing up a year’s worth of trials for the Littoral Combat Ship, the Navy’s cherished — and expensive — next-generation ship for warfare close to a shoreline. Little wonder that defense analysts think the ship is headed for the budgetary chopping block, even though the Navy wants 55 of the things and only has three.

The report finds that the Littoral Combat Ship’s systems for spotting mines, the AN/AQS-20A Sonar Mine Detecting Set and the Airborne Laser Mine Detection System, are “deficient” for their primary task. That deficiency, if uncorrected, will “adversely affect the operational effectiveness” of a ship that’s already “not expected to be survivable in a hostile combat environment.”

And here is what a military blogger had to say about this latest boondoggle:

So, we have a warship design that is not expected to fight and survive in the very environment in which it was produced to do so. Poorly-armed, poorly-protected, with an over-abundance of speed that will eat through a fuel supply in half a day.

Yet, the Navy leadership on whose watch this abomination was delivered is hypersensitive to criticism of either their performance or the LCS itself. That such a questionable and limited capability will cost taxpayers UNDER $500 million per copy is a seeming source of pride for them.

Warships remain the single most expensive combat system a nation can buy. Has been so since the beginnings of the iron warship. Those who run the United States Navy (not just NAVSEA) are entrusted with billions of this nation’s treasure. And this is the result. A half-billion dollar counter-drug and counter-piracy platform.

Combat in the littorals is characterized by fierce and unexpected engagements, from small and fast surface vessels, submarines, shore-based weapon systems, missiles, mines, and aircraft. Putting US Navy Officers and Sailors on a platform such as LCS borders on criminal. It is an act of sheer folly, or one of desperation.

Actually, you left one out. For what it really is represents is an act of sheer greed on the behalf of the defense contractors who build these expensive-but-useless pieces of shit and don't care that they are ripping off the taxpayers in the process. Moreover, the Navy is hardly alone in such fraudulent procurements. The war machine marches on, devouring around one-trillion dollars in direct and indirect federal spending every year because it is profitable to everyone involved in getting these projects approved. If this country still had any common sense, the defense contractors are the people we'd been hauling off to Guantanamo, for they are doing far more collective damage to America as a nation than the terrorists ever did.


Bonus: "Listen son, said the man with the gun, there's room for you inside"

What's the Matter With Philadelphia?

Nothing, really, that isn't wrong in the rest of a nation where voters just unthinkingly keep reelecting the same corrupt fucking assholes time and time and time again. Here is Philly.com with the details:

City Councilwoman Marian Tasco will retire on Friday, collect a six-figure pension payment and then return to work after she is sworn-in on Monday to serve her seventh term.

Francis Bielli, executive director for the city’s Board of Pensions and Retirement, said he was recently notified that Tasco, who is enrolled in the controversial Deferred Retirement Option Plan, will retire on Friday and collect $478,057.

Tasco did not respond to requests for comment.

Tasco was reelected despite her participation in DROP, which drew public ire after elected officials entered the program, ran for re-election and retired for a day to get hefty pension payments, only to return to office.

All is not completely bleak in the City of Brotherly Love, however:

Retiring Councilman Frank DiCicco, who is also in the program, considered running for re-election, but after controversy erupted over DROP, he decided not to. Retiring Councilwoman Donna Reed Miller, who is also enrolled in DROP made a similar decision. Councilman Frank Rizzo lost reelection due in-part to his participation in DROP.

I care not one whit which political party City Councilwoman Marian Tasco represents. Nor should anyone else. The fact that some political hack would so blatantly rip off the taxpayers regardless of partisan affiliation is the real problem. Officerholders of both parties do shit like this and they do it all over the country. And until the electorate wakes up and votes them out of office it is going to continue to happen.


Bonus: The voters of Philadelphia need to start exercising some of this

SEC Investigating Dirty Baseball Stadium Deal in Miami

Anyone living in the state of Minnesota who doubts that the brakes should immediately be placed upon the Vikings stadium deal needs to read this story published yesterday by Yahoo Sports about how the Securities and Exchange Commission woke up from its employees surfing porn on their office computers and realized that they were shocked, SHOCKED to discover dirty dealings in the public financing of the Miami Marlins' new baseball stadium:

For two decades now, Major League Baseball has funded its rise from corporate slacker to gilded cash cow on the backs of taxpayers bullied into building new stadiums. It’s a marvel the government took so long to sniff out the rot that emanates from these deals, though not much of a surprise that the Miami Marlins were the target when they did.

The Security and Exchange Commission on Thursday launched guided warheads at the Marlins, requesting the team’s financial records, communications with MLB officials including commissioner Bud Selig, minutes of meetings with local government leaders and political campaign-contribution information, according to a report in the Miami Herald.

While the subpoenas issued by the SEC do not explicitly detail the purpose of the investigation, the feds’ motives are evident: They want to understand how, exactly, a group of county commissioners agreed to fund 80 percent of the Marlins new stadium, which cost more than $600 million, without ever seeing the team’s financial records – and whether bribes had anything to do with it.

This just got real.

Very real.

Until now, the Marlins were another rich corporation trying to get richer on the backs of its fans. Teams everywhere do it. Cities kowtowing to those that want them to pay for stadiums is as commonplace as it is abhorrent.

The Marlins pushed the limits on exactly how much a team can hold its city hostage. They cried poverty and threatened to move unless they got a new stadium while refusing to disclose their financial records – records that were later leaked and showed a team swimming in tens of millions of dollars in profits and funneled millions more to a corporation run by team owner Jeffrey Loria.

Miami-Dade County commissioners nevertheless voted 9-4 in favor of taking out loans that will cost the county $2.4 billion over 40 years to help build the stadium in Little Havana, about two miles west of the city. Critics across south Florida panned the deal, which gives the Marlins all stadium-related revenue and imbued the team with a new attitude entering this offseason.

The article then goes on to spell out the much larger and more long term problem:

And such deals are everywhere in baseball. Since 1991, 25 of the game’s 30 teams have built a new stadium or undertaken major renovations on an old one. Baseball’s rise from a $2 billion industry 20 years ago to one verging on $8 billion a year is correlated directly to its stadium boom, which turned baseball from a staid game played in cavernous buildings to one in more intimate venues suited for families.

ANYONE who decries public money being given to the unemployed, or to welfare mothers, or to those without health insurance who does not FIRST decry practices like this is completely full of shit. Sports team owners are the one-percenters' one percenters. They are among the wealthiest members of our society. For them to be given billions of taxpayer dollars to build their fancy sports palaces is absolutely unconscionable. This is a particularly important point that needs to be made as sports fans tend to be among the most conservative groups in our society. They need to wake up and realize how they are being ass raped by the owners of the teams to whom they give their hard earned dollars.

Federal Judge Does the Banksters Bidding in Harrisburg Bankruptcy Case

Just like in Europe, if the banksters don't get what they want from the popularly elected "leaders" of a bankrupt government entity, they will find some unaccountable, unelected officials to do their bidding instead, as Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, has now found out to its chagrin:

A federal bankruptcy judge on Wednesday dismissed the petition by the City Council of Pennsylvania's debt-choked capital of Harrisburg, saying it had been legally barred by state law from seeking bankruptcy protection and, in any case, had no authority to file it.

Federal bankruptcy Judge Mary D. France issued the ruling after hearing more than two hours of arguments by lawyers as to whether the bankruptcy petition, filed last month by a divided City Council, satisfied various legal issues and could move forward despite the objections of the city's mayor, Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett, Dauphin County, bond insurers and others.

A City Council member said the group will decide whether or not to appeal. In the meantime, the Corbett administration is moving to take over many of the city's financial operations in a bid to force it to pay down about $300 million in debt tied to the city's ill-starred trash incinerator.

Memo to the citizens of the state of Pennsylvania: your current governor is quite obviously in the back pocket of the banksters. I don't care what your partisan affiliation is, this scumbag should be defeated the next time he faces the voters for wanting to take your tax money and give it to Wall Street assholes to protect them from taking losses on their own bad bets.

Occupy Harrisburg.


Bonus: in the end, is there really any difference between the banksters and the gangsters?

Health Care Companies Paid $37 Million for "Access" to Newt Gingrich

I'll say one thing for Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich: the man has more gall than you would have thought it possible for any single human being to have. Whatever else you might have thought about Obamacare (as I've said before, I consider it a corporate-giveaway boondoggle), the whole thing was driven by a desire to address the spiraling costs of health care in this country. One side issue that doesn't get examined nearly enough is WHY are health care costs of control? Perhaps part of the problem lies with WHO is getting paid, as reported Thursday in the Washington Post:

A think tank founded by GOP presidential candidate Newt Gingrich collected at least $37 million over the past eight years from major health-care companies and industry groups, offering special access to the former House speaker and other perks, according to records and interviews.

The Center for Health Transformation, which opened in 2003, brought in dues of as much as $200,000 per year from insurers and other health-care firms, offering some of them “access to Newt Gingrich” and “direct Newt interaction,” according to promotional materials. The biggest funders, including firms such as AstraZeneca, Blue Cross Blue Shield and Novo Nordisk, were also eligible to receive discounts on “products and workshops” from other Gingrich groups.

Given Gingrich's past sexual escapades, "direct Newt interaction" has an unfortunate connotation I don't think the author of this piece intended. I'm sorry, but one man's "access" is another man's "bribes." The health care companies were bribing Gingrich to push their agenda, plain and simple. And what was that agenda, exactly?

The health center advocated, among other things, requiring that “anyone who earns more than $50,000 a year must purchase health insurance or post a bond,” a type of insurance mandate that has since become anathema to conservatives.

The group also pushed proposals to build centralized electronic medical records and use such data to research treatment effectiveness, both central features of President Obama’s health-care reforms.

So in essence, Gingrich was given $37 million in bribes to push for...drumroll please...Obamacare!

And yet, here is how the Newster has positioned himself on the campaign trail:

Gingrich has clashed with other Republican presidential candidates over his evolving positions on health-care issues. Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, whose own state health-care reform plan was a model for Obama’s national approach, attacked Gingrich at one debate: “We got the idea of an individual mandate from you!”

The Gingrich health center’s support for such a mandate was part of an “Insure All Americans” plan that appears to have disappeared from the center’s Web site Thursday.

Gingrich has characterized his previous support for insurance mandates as a response to President Bill Clinton’s more government-focused health-care proposal in the 1990s, and he has said he turned against the idea.

“I am completely opposed to the Obamacare mandate on individuals,” he says in a recent campaign video. “I fought it for 2&1/2 years at the Center for Health Transformation.”

The amazing thing here, of course, is not that Newt engaged in the same same kind of legalized corruption as do all major politicians, especially after they leave office and "cash in" on their service, but that he has the audacity to then turn around and run for president and campaign against the exact same thing he was bribed to help implement. That this thoroughly corrupt little toad just rocketed to the top of the polls for the Republican presidential nomination shows exactly how hopeless the whole political system has become. Welcome, to third world America.

Criminal Prosecutions for Financial Fraud FALLING Under Obama

In the latest example of the Same-Old-Shit We Shouldn't Believe In, it was reported on Tuesday that prosecutions of financial institution fraud under the Obama administration are far LOWER than they were under President George Bush the Lesser (though in fairness, as you can see in the chart above, the annual total dropped throughout Bush's presidency and would have no doubt continued to do so had he stayed in office).

Federal prosecutions for financial institution fraud have continued their downward slide despite the financial troubles reported in this sector. The latest available data from the Justice Department show that during the first eleven months of FY 2011 the government reported 1,251 new prosecutions were filed. If this activity continues at the same pace, the annual total of prosecutions will be 1,365 for this fiscal year, down 28.6 percent from their numbers of just five years ago and less than half the level prevalent a decade ago. See Table 1.

The comparisons of the number of defendants charged with financial institution fraud offenses are based on case-by-case information obtained by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) under the Freedom of Information Act from the Executive Office for United States Attorneys.

What more evidence do you need that Obama has merely been running Bush's third term? After the financial crash of 2008, the federal government should have put at LEAST as much effort in combating financial fraud as it does on terrorism. The numbers on that chart should have quickly doubled or more from Bush's last year in office, and yet exactly the opposite has occurred.

Newt Gingrich was Paid $1.6 Million by Freddie Mac for His "Counsel"

Yesterday, I posted a story about the outrage sparked in the Imperial Capital about the nearly $100 million in compensation being paid out to the top executives of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Notable from that article was that much of the outrage was coming from Congressional Republicans. And now, incredibly, less than 24 hours later comes a report from Talking Points Memo that the now-rising Republican presidential hopeful, Newt Gingrich, took $1.6 million in bribes consulting fees from Freddie Mac over a four year period:

Self-proclaimed housing historian Newt Gingrich had two contracts with mortgage company Freddie Mac and was paid between $1.6 million and $1.8 million in consulting fees, two sources familiar with the agreements have told Bloomberg.

Mitchell Delk, Freddie Mac’s chief lobbyist, was Gingrich’s key contact. But Delk told Bloomberg that Gingrich — who was paid a monthly retainer of $25,000 to $30,000 between May 1999 until 2002 — “did not do any lobbying” and was instead provided counsel on public policy issues.

That's an awful lot of coin just for some consulting work. So what did the old Newtster do for that money, anyway?

“I spent about three hours with him talking about the substance of the issues and the politics of the issues, and he really got it,” Delk told Bloomberg, adding that they discussed “what the benefits are to communities, what the benefits could be for Republicans and particularly their relationship with Hispanics.”

One of Gingrich’s ideas, according to Bloomberg, was for Freddie Mac to start a program with the Boy Scouts of America that would teach them the importance of saving money and maintaining good credit so they could buy a house down the line. Freddie Mac didn’t pursue it.

Wow--it sure sounds to me like the taxpayers really got their money's worth, all right. And this is the same guy who is riding high in the Republican presidential polls right now having spent his whole career bashing federal gvernment spending. The official corruption runs so deep these days that it has all become accepted standard practice, and BOTH parties are up to their necks in it.

You just can't make this stuff up.


Update:

Now Gingrich says he doesn't even know HOW he got the Freddie Mac money. In-fucking-credible.

Responding to reports that housing giant Freddie Mac paid him $1.6 million, GOP presidential contender Newt Gingrich said he didn’t know exactly how the transaction came to be.

“I have no idea about the details… It was paid to Gingrich Group. Gingrich Group has many clients,” said Gingrich.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac Execs Take Home Nearly $100 Million in Taxpayer Money

Completing today's trifecta of posts regarding legally sanctioned corruption taking part at the behest of the Obama administration is this outrageous story from CNN:

Mortgage finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac received the biggest federal bailout of the financial crisis. And nearly $100 million of those tax dollars went to lucrative pay packages for top executives, filings show.

The top five executives at Fannie Mae received $33.3 million in 2009 and 2010, while the top five at Freddie Mac received $28.1 million. And each company has set pay targets of as much as $17 million for its top managers for 2011.

That's a total of $95.4 million, which will essentially be coming from taxpayers, who have been keeping the mortgage finance giants alive with regular quarterly cash infusions since the Federal Home Finance Agency (FHFA) took control of the companies in September 2008.

Of course, all of this is sparking "outrage" in the Imperial Capital:

That published report sparked a political firestorm on Capitol Hill that could lead to legislation to put strict limits on pay at the two firms. But it only told part of the story. The full extent of salary, deferred pay and bonuses are only found in the filings.

Rep. Spencer Bachus, the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, has scheduled a vote in his committee Tuesday on his own legislation that would suspend the compensation packages of top executives at the firms.

"The fact that the top executives of these failed companies are receiving multi-million dollar pay packages, plus millions more in bonuses, is an added insult to the taxpayers who are forced to foot the bill," Bachus said in a statement announcing plans to hold the vote.

Ummm...not to be a contrarian there, Representative Bachus, but shouldn't you assholes have included a provsion about CEO compensation in the original Fannie and Freddie bailout packages? Or, is it more likely that you and your colleagues are merely looking for a way to deflect attention from that little 60 Minutes piece that aired on Sunday about all of your insider stock trading?

And it's not like the bailouts of these two entities are a thing of the past, either. Earlier this year there were reports that the two companies were begging for additional handouts, which means this outrageous CEO compensation is coming directly out of your taxes and mine. There was also another little tidbit to this story which sent me into spasmodic fits of cynical cackling:

The latest cost estimate from FHFA is that the two bailouts will end up with a net cost to taxpayers of about $124 billion through 2014, though that figure could rise as high as $193 billion. Even the lower cost estimate will make it the most expensive bailout of the financial crisis --far more costly than bailing out the nation's banks or automakers.

The CEOs and the other top executives at Fannie and Freddie get all their pay in cash, and none of it in company stock, which is generally deemed worthless.

Maybe if we'd given the fuckers a million shares of the stock instead of cash, they'd actually have an incentive to get things straightened out. But no, that requires far too much common sense.