Posts Tagged ‘corrupt scumbags’
Thursday, February 16th, 2017
Via Dwight comes word that the offices of Democratic State Senator Carlos Uresti have been raided by the FBI and the IRS:
Agents have been confiscating documents from the office of the Democratic lawmaker.
“I can confirm the FBI and IRS are lawfully present and conducting a lawful law enforcement activity,” FBI spokeswoman Michelle Lee told the Express-News.
Lee also said no arrests have been made so far.
Uresti is currently facing a grand jury investigation into possible public corruption charges related to his involvement with FourWinds, a San Antonio oil-field services company accused of defrauding investors.
While Uresti is “innocent until proven guilty,” having both the FBI and IRS lawfully conducting lawful law enforcement in your office is not a good sign.
When last we checked on Sen. Uresti, he was sharing a bathroom with a female staffer not his wife and involved in the UT admissions scandal.
Here’s more on the FourWinds story, which I had not been previously following:
The one-time marketing director for a bankrupt San Antonio frac-sand company with ties to state Sen. Carlos Uresti has been criminally charged in an alleged scheme to defraud investors.
On Wednesday, Eric Nelson was charged in an information with conspiracy to commit wire fraud for allegedly altering a FourWinds Logistics’ bank statement to inflate the amount of money in the account. The bank statement was then mailed by an unnamed co-conspirator to prospective investors, according to the charging document.
Nelson has agreed to a plea deal, according to sources, but records show that it is sealed. His attorneys declined to comment.
The San Antonio Express-News in August chronicled the demise of FourWinds, which had more than $14 million in claims against it. Investors have alleged that CEO Stan Bates wasted their money on personal expenses, expensive gifts, exotic car rentals and lavish vacation, according to a court document. Bates has denied the allegations.
Uresti provided legal services for FourWinds and served as its outside general counsel for four or five months in 2014, he said in an interview this summer. He received FourWinds shares, as well as a $40,000 loan from the company that he failed to disclose initially. He also collected a $27,000 commission on a Harlingen woman’s $900,000 investment in a joint venture with FourWinds. The woman ended up losing about $800,000.
Really, who of us hasn’t forgotten a $40,000 loan? “Oh yeah! That little thing! Sorry, totally slipped my mind!”
Uncle Sam’s mills grind slowly, but exceedingly fine. One way or another, I suspect Republicans will view Uresti’s west Texas District 19 as a pickup target in 2020…if not sooner…
Tags:Carlos Uresti, corrupt scumbags, corruption, Democrats, Eric Nelson, FBI, FourWinds, IRS, Stan Bates, Texas
Posted in Democrats, Texas, Waste and Fraud | 3 Comments »
Wednesday, January 18th, 2017
The shoe has landed:
A grand jury has indicted state Rep. Dawnna Dukes on 13 felony corruption charges and two misdemeanors, with a maximum penalty of 28 years behind bars, a courthouse source said Wednesday.
Dukes, an Austin Democrat, faces two misdemeanor counts of abuse of official capacity and 13 felony counts of tampering with public records, a source with knowledge of the case said. Travis County prosecutors and investigators from the Texas Rangers presented the evidence to the grand jurors Tuesday, who indicted Dukes on the first day that they met to consider the case.
The indictment comes seven days after Dukes reneged on a promise to step down and took the oath of office for a 12th two-year term representing parts of North Austin, East Austin, Pflugerville and Manor.
Dukes posted a statement on Facebook following the indictment, which was first reported by Spectrum News: “Of course, I am disappointed but I expected that if I was sworn into office in January 10th that this indictment would follow. All I can say today is that I will be entering a plea of Not Guilty.”
One abuse of official capacity charge deals with Dukes using her legislative staff for personal purposes. In April, the American-Statesman reported that Dukes had arranged to give a taxpayer-funded raise to an aide to cover gas money for driving Dukes’ daughter to and from school.
With the other abuse of official capacity charge, the grand jury accused Dukes of using money raised from campaign contributors for personal purposes. Politicians may use campaign money to pay for election activities or for expenses related to carrying out their elected office, but state law forbids them from using it for personal purposes.
Dukes has made numerous questionable expenditures from her campaign account over the years, including $13,000 in payments to family members, $30,000 on gas and $2,700 to a seamstress, a Statesman investigation in June found.
$13,000 to family members? Yeah, that’s gonna raise red flags.
The grand jury accused Dukes of converting to personal use campaign expenditures that were earmarked for the African-American Community Heritage Festival, an East Austin event Dukes co-founded 18 years ago but ended last year after negative attention caused by the investigation. Dukes has listed at least $17,600 in campaign expenditures for the festival, including $303 to an electronics store for “replacement of digital camera broken by staff,” $146 for Mardi Gras beads and more than $7,000 for musical performers, the Statesman investigation found.
The 13 charges for tampering with public records concerns an allegation that Dukes collected pay from the state during the 2014 legislative interim for days that she did not travel to the Capitol, which is required under House rules. The American-Statesman in May reported that a former Dukes staffer had accused the legislator of filing requests for per diem payments for days that she never traveled to the Capitol and may not have worked at all.
So Dukes was getting paid for not working. In other words, she was living the Democratic Party dream…
(Previously.)
(Hat tip: Dwight.)
Tags:Austin, corrupt scumbags, corruption, Crime, Dawnna Dukes, Democrats, Texas, Texas Rangers, Travis County
Posted in Austin, Crime, Democrats, Texas | No Comments »
Tuesday, December 13th, 2016
Remember Philadelphia Democratic congressman Chaka Fattah, who “used millions of dollars from nonprofits, some of them taxpayer-backed, to pay ex-staffers, friends, and their relatives“?
Well, he’s been convicted and sentenced:
Former Democratic Rep. Chaka Fattah was sentenced Monday to 10 years in prison on federal corruption charges, including fraud, racketeering, and money laundering.
Fattah, who represented several areas of Philadelphia in Congress, was convicted in June on 23 charges of corruption. His prison sentence will begin on Jan. 25
Snip.
Fattah’s case primarily stems from a failed mayoral bid in 2007 during which Fattah took an illegal $1 million contribution. He was also accused of misusing campaign funds to pay off his son’s college debts, funneling money through a fake nonprofit to pay a political strategist, and taking $27,000 in bribes from a fundraiser.
The Philadelphia Democrat was elected to Congress in 1994 and only resigned his seat after he was convicted on the corruption charges in June.
If only he had blamed it on “Russian hackers”…
Tags:bribes, Chaka Fattah, corrupt scumbags, corruption, Crime, Democrats, Philadelphia
Posted in Crime, Democrats | No Comments »
Wednesday, December 2nd, 2015
It’s been a big week for Democratic Party corruption.
First, Democratic Speaker of New York’s Sheldon Silver was convicted of all the corruption charges against him:
“The Democratic speaker of the state Assembly for more than 20 years, Mr. Silver was found guilty by a 12-person federal jury in Manhattan of four counts of honest-services fraud, two counts of extortion and one count of money laundering.”
More on Silver from Steve Malanga of City Journal:
For years, New York State has ranked among the most litigation-friendly places in America. (Those unlucky enough to get caught up in the state’s civil justice system call it “Sue” York.) Lawsuit reform has bypassed New York largely because one of the state’s most powerful politicians, former assembly speaker Sheldon Silver, was himself a plaintiff’s attorney who benefited from the system he helped create. Over the years, Silver not only blocked attempts to change unique features of New York’s civil justice system, but he also appointed other trial lawyers to key legislative positions, including on the crucial Assembly Judiciary Committee. So it’s not shocking that when Silver himself finally fell from grace, the case revolved around state grants Silver arranged to a cancer researcher, who then referred mesothelioma patients back to the former speaker’s law firm so that they could become clients in the lucrative asbestos-litigation business.
Snip.
Silver thought the people’s money was his money. For years, he helped lead a regime in which legislators from both parties received millions of dollars to distribute as “earmarks”—money handed out directly by elected officials to favored organizations outside of the state’s regular contracting or granting process. The New York Times dubbed Silver the “king of earmarks” because he used them as a way of exercising power over members of his political caucus. In doing so, Silver was accountable to no one. He handed out millions of dollars of state money, for instance, to the Metropolitan Council on Jewish Poverty, an organization run by William Rapfogel, the husband of Silver’s longtime chief of staff. Judy Rapfogel sat in on meetings about funding for her husband’s group, according to press accounts. In 2013, William pled guilty to stealing some $3 million over a nearly 20-year period from the largely government-funded Met Council. He served 14 months of a 3- to 10-year sentence in an upstate prison and recently entered a supervised work-release program.
In New York, the earmark process is so corrupt that politicians can create their own nonprofits and then finance them with taxpayer money—a remarkably blatant display of conflict-of-interest.
Meanwhile, in Rahm Emmanual’s Chicago:
THERE’S been a cover-up in Chicago. The city’s leaders have now brought charges against a police officer, Jason Van Dyke, for the first-degree murder of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald. But for more than a year, Chicago officials delayed the criminal process, and might well have postponed prosecution indefinitely, had it not been for a state court forcing their hand.
They prevented the public from viewing crucial incriminating evidence — first one police car’s dashboard camera video; now, we learn, five such videos in total. And these senior officials turned a blind eye to the fact that 86 minutes of other video surveillance footage of the crime scene was unaccountably missing.
Snip.
The video of a police shooting like this in Chicago could have buried Mr. Emanuel’s chances for re-election. And it would likely have ended the career of the police superintendent, Garry F. McCarthy.
And so the wheels of justice virtually ground to a halt. Mayor Emanuel refused to make the dash-cam video public, going to court to prevent its release. The city argued that releasing the video would taint the investigation of the case, but even the attorney general of Illinois urged the city to make it available.
Then the city waited until April 15 — one week after Mr. Emanuel was re-elected — to get final approval of a pre-emptive $5 million settlement with Mr. McDonald’s family, a settlement that had been substantially agreed upon weeks earlier. Still, the city’s lawyers made sure to include a clause that kept the dash-cam video confidential.
Compared to those scandals, allegations of garden variety marital infidelity with a lobbyist by Texas Democratic State Senator Carlos Uresti is relatively small peanuts… (Hat tip: Push Junction.)
Tags:Carlos Uresti, corrupt scumbags, corruption, Crime, Democrats, New York, Rahm Emanuel, Sheldon Silver
Posted in Crime, Democrats, Waste and Fraud | No Comments »
Tuesday, October 7th, 2014
It’s no longer a surprise when Democratic cronies rake in the benefits from pork programs created by Democratic Senators and Representatives. After all, giving out taxpayer money to connected interest groups is pretty much the Democratic Party’s business model. However, the family of North Carolina’s Democratic Senator Kay Hagan has taken it to the next level:
Sen. Kay Hagan’s husband and son created a solar energy contracting company in August 2010, and then, using $250,644 in federal stimulus grant funds, her husband hired that same company to install solar panels at a building he owns.
Public records show that Green State Power was formed seven weeks before JDC Manufacturing — a company owned in part by Greensboro attorney Charles “Chip” Hagan III, Sen. Hagan’s husband — received the stimulus grant for the solar project at a 300,000-square-foot facility in Reidsville, N.C.
A story in late September on the Washington, D.C.-based website Politico revealed that JDC Manufacturing received “nearly $390,000 in federal grants for energy projects and tax credits created by the 2009 stimulus law, according to public records and information provided by the company.”
The story reported that JDC “was one of 27 in North Carolina to be awarded funds for energy-efficient projects, to the tune of about $250,000. The company received the money in 2011, after the first phase of the project was completed in late 2010.”
And needless to say, Kay Hagan voted in favor of the pork-laden stimulus her family so richly benefited from.
From a purely amoral viewpoint, you have to admire the brazen efficiency of sucking down the maximum amount of taxpayer subsidies at every stage of the project pipeline. It’s like The Human Centipede of recycled graft…
(Hat tip: Instapundit.)
Tags:Budget, Chip Hagan, corrupt scumbags, corruption, Democrats, fraud, Kay Hagan, North Carolina, Stimulus
Posted in Budget, Democrats, Elections, Waste and Fraud | No Comments »
Thursday, July 3rd, 2014
Enjoy Independence Day tomorrow. In the meantime, here’s another Texas vs. California roundup:
Burwell vs. Hobby Lobby wasn’t the only important Supreme Court case last year. The Harris vs. Quinn decision, invalidating mandatory union fees for home health care workers, could have a huge impact on SEIU in California. “where 400,000 state-paid in-home care workers are represented by the SEIU.”
Former CalPERS CEO to plead guilty to bribery and conspiracy charges.
At least 1,500 Bay Area employees have racked up $50,000 in yearly overtime. “A Monterey County jail guard who worked enough overtime to nearly triple his annual base pay to $264,000 last year.”
Wonder why San Bernardino is bankrupt?
“San Bernardino, California, said that to exit bankruptcy it must terminate a union contract that pays an average annual salary of $190,000 to each of its top 40 firefighters,” according to an article in Bloomberg. That’s just salary. Firefighters receive the generous “3 percent at 50″ retirement package that allows them to retire with 90 percent of their final years’ pay at age 50. And there are lots of pension-spiking gimmicks and other benefits on top of that.
“These cities are run for the benefit of those who work there. Public services are a side matter at best.”
Murrieta, California Protesters greet Obama Administration shipment of illegal aliens with protests, blocking them from being dumped in their community.
Judge strikes down Pacific Grove pension initiative.
Some bay-area California cities want to hike they local minimum wage. Hey, that won’t hurt businesses here in Texas, so knock yourselves out…
More on Toyota’s relocation to Texas, along with some tidbits on the Texas economy:
Toyota’s move to Texas is a high-profile relocation, but Texas has been used to adding — and filling — new jobs at a superlative pace. The state added more than 1.9 million new jobs over the period from December 1999 to April 2014, more than 35 percent of the entire nation’s total for that 15-year period, noted Michael Cox, an economics professor at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. And Texas had an unemployment rate of just 5.1 percent in May, 16th-lowest in the United States.
Meanwhile, Cox noted, Texas’s median wages are 28th-highest in the nation; and they rank 8th-highest after adjusting for taxes and prices. Texas schools rank 3rd, he said, after adjusting for variations in student demographics, a raw statistic which places Texas 28th in the nation.
“We’re able to accomplish all this and more because the business environment in our state is largely competitive, and free markets solve problems,” Cox told me. “Texas is a meritocracy, where incentives still work to produce good results.”
“Six current and former members of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department were found guilty Tuesday of obstruction of justice.
Grand Jury:”Hey, you might want to consider a pension reform task force.” City of Napa: “Get stuffed.”
Santa Ana-based Corithhian Colleges could be headed for bankruptcy.
Texas is now home to more Fortune 1000 Companies than any other state.
Liberals are still upset that Texas’ red state model is kicking the ass of California’s blue state model. Enter the Texas Tribune, which admits that:
Drive almost anywhere in the vast Lone Star State and you will see evidence of the “Texas miracle” economy that policymakers like Gov. Rick Perry can’t quit talking about….
This hot economy, politicians say, is the direct result of their zealous opposition to over-regulation, greedy trial lawyers and profligate government spending. Perry now regularly recruits companies from other states, telling them the grass is greener here. And his likely successor, Attorney General Greg Abbott, has made keeping it that way his campaign mantra.
It’s hard to argue with the job creation numbers they tout. Since 2003, a third of the net new jobs created in the United States were in Texas. And there are real people in those jobs, people with families to feed.
But the piece also notes that Texas has led the nation in worker fatalities for seven of the last ten years. I’m not going to get into the details of worker compensation that make up the bulk of the piece, and it is quite possible there is some room for improvement in worker safety. But I do want to note that, as the second largest state in the union, and the one with the biggest oil and gas industry, it’s not terribly surprising that Texas would have the largest number of fatalities, since oil and gas has a fairly high fatality rate (though not injury rate) compared to other industries (see page 14 here).
Tags:Border Controls, Budget, California, CalPERs, corrupt scumbags, corruption, Crime, fraud, Harris vs. Quinn, Los Angeles, Murrieta, Napa, San Bernardino, SEIU, Texas, unions
Posted in Border Control, Budget, Crime, Democrats | No Comments »
Tuesday, November 16th, 2010
Of 11 of the 13 counts against him by the House ethics committee.
And what will Rangel be sentenced to for tax evasion, rent control fraud, etc.? Most likely, a strongly worded letter. He’ll get to live on in the 112th congress as reminder of Nancy Pelosi’s “most ethical congress ever.”
And how badly did his ethics problems hurt him at the polls? He won his race against Michel Faulkner by 86% of the vote. Maybe if he had killed someone on live television, his poll numbers might have dipped into the 70s…
Tags:Charlie Rangel, corrupt scumbags, corruption, Democrats, Nancy Pelosi, tax evasion
Posted in Democrats, Waste and Fraud | 1 Comment »
Thursday, October 14th, 2010
A few days ago I covered a handful of the most competitive House races. With tides moving so strongly against the Democrats, now would be a good time to look at some House races that Republicans might view as hopeless in any other year.
But this year, all bets are off.
So here are some long-shot campaigns for the seats of particularly egregious incumbent House Democrats that just might fall the GOP’s way in this election:
- Jerry Costello of Illinois vs. Teri Newman for Illinois 12th Congressional District. (Teri, here’s a free hint: Auto-running movies with sound on your website isn’t going to win you any votes.) Costello is a Stupak bloc flip-flopper who voted for the Stimulus, but against TARP and Cap-and-Trade.
- Joseph Donnelly vs. Jackie Walorski for Indiana’s second congressional district. Donnelly is another Stupak bloc flip-flopper, and also voted for TARP and the Stimulus, but against ObamaCare. Walorski has been endorsed by Sarah Palin, so she might well have more money and attention than others on this list.
- Lloyd Doggett vs. Dr. Donna Campbell for the Texas 25th congressional district. Having endured having old liberal warhorse Lloyd Doggett as my Representative back when I still lived within the confines of The People’s Republic of Austin, I would be delighted to see a Republican take Doggett out. Doggett voted against TARP, but for the Stimulus, Cap-and-Trade, and ObamaCare. One issue in the campaign is Doggett’s writing language into federal law to deprive Texas of almost a billion dollars in federal education funds. In this Human Events piece on the race, Campbell notes that Doggett “voted 98% of the time with Nancy Pelosi. And him getting in again, is one more vote that keeps Pelosi in.”
- Barney Frank vs. ex-Marine Sean Bielat for Massachusetts’ Fourth Congressional District. Frank is as much responsible as anyone in the House for helping create the current recession by his steadfast opposition to tightening regulation of Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac at the same time he was having an affair with Fannie Mae executive Herb Moses. Frank, as you would expect, has a perfect liberal record in voting for TARP, the Stimulus, Cap-and-Trade, and ObamaCare. Here’s a Wall Street Journal piece on the race.
- Charlie Rangel vs. Michael Faulkner for New York’s 15th congressional district. Rangel is, of course, a corrupt scumbag. (The question of whether he’s the most corrupt scumbag in the House I’ll leave as an exercise for the reader.) Like Al Sharpton, he has a certain amount of venomous charm. Unlike Sharpton, he’s actually been elected. Like Frank, Rangel has a perfect liberal record in voting for TARP, the Stimulus, Cap-and-Trade, and ObamaCare. Faulkner has a good bit of name recognition from being a former New York Jets football player. The differences between Faulkner and Rangel are legion (not least of which is my working assumption that Faulkner isn’t a corrupt scumbag), but one of particular local interest may play a role if this race becomes the upset of all upsets: Rangel supports the Ground Zero Mosque while Faulkner opposes it. Polling for the race is non-existent (Democrats outnumber Republicans 15-1), but at least some observers think it might be more competitive than expected.
Remember, in 1994 no one expected Speaker of the House Tom Foley’s race to be even remotely competitive, but George Nethercutt still beat him, and there are some observers who say it could very well be much worse for Democrats this year than 1994. If that’s the case, then it’s a good bet one or more of the Republican candidates listed above will pull off an upset.
Tags:Barney Frank, Bart Stupak, Cap-and-Trade, corrupt scumbags, corruption, Democrats, Donna Campbell, Elections, Fannie Mae, Freddy Mac, George Nethercutt, Ground Zero Mosque, Herb Moses, Human Events, Illinois, Indiana, Jackie Walorski, Jerry Costello, Joesph Donnelly, Lloyd Doggett, Massachusetts, ObamaCare, Sarah Palin, Sean Bielat, Stimulus, Stupak, TARP, Teri Newman, Texas, Tom Foley
Posted in Austin, Democrats, Economics, Elections, ObamaCare, Regulation, Republicans, Texas, Waste and Fraud | 3 Comments »