EXPOSING THE DEMOCRATS 54,692

EXPOSING  THE

DEMOCRATS

*  Special thanks to "Google Images", "Wikipedia.com", "The Los Angeles Times",

"NPR", "The Washington Post", "NBC News", "The New York Post"
and "The New York Times"

BLOG  POST

by Felicity Blaze Noodleman

Los Angeles, CA

1.2.15

Welcome to 2015 and the new 114th. Congress in Washington DC which will be lead by the Republicans!  The Democrats suffered a loss in both the House of Representatives and the Senate so it is clear that Voters opted for change in Washington and have sent the President a clear message about the kind of change they want.  

First this week we will look at some of the prioritises for the New Congress and then look back at some of the problems Democrats have created in the past.  We will close out with a book review from the "New York Post" entitled "You Lie"  by Jack Cashill exposing the lies of the Obama administration.  2015 should hold many revelations as the new Congress begins it's work with President Obama!

"NPR"

Republicans Sort Their Priorities For The New Congress

DECEMBER 29, 201410:56 AM ET

The 114th Congress convenes on Jan. 6 and GOP leaders are preparing their to-do list for the new year, when they will control both chambers. The November elections were a victory for Senate and House Republicans and the change in Congressional leadership will mean a new legislative landscape for President Obama, who entered the White House with a Democratic majority behind him.

First on the list, according to incoming Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, will be the Keystone XL oil pipeline. NPR's Ailsa Chang reported Monday on the tone of that first legislative action.

"It will kind of be the first test for McConnell to see if he holds true to his promise that he'll let both Republicans and Democrats propose amendments to shape bills. He's said he would on Keystone, even contentious amendments."

The most-watched issues going forward will likely be immigration reform and Obamacare. McConnell has promised a vote to repeal the Obama Administration's health care law, telling Roll Call that it was "a very big issue in the election." As for immigration reform, a big sore spot for Republicans who were angered by the President's recent executive action, USA Today referred to it as one of the "tough sell" actions for a GOP-led Congress, calling the issue "politically flammable."

"Republicans are searching for a response that will appease hard-charging conservatives who want the GOP to block the president's action — but that doesn't alienate the fast-growing, politically powerful Hispanic population."

Last week, NPR's Tamara Keith examined the coming year in Congress and how it might signal a change in the President's political tactics.

"As viewed from the left, President Obama agreed to water down every major piece of legislation in those first two years to keep moderate Democrats on board and unsuccessfully trying to get Republican support. The great, new era of bipartisanship never arrived. Six years and two wave elections later, the big Democratic majorities in Congress are gone. Republicans are about to hold more House seats in the 114th Congress than they have since the 1920s. Oh, and they've taken back the majority in the Senate, as well. Will this change President Obama's approach to governing?"

Maybe. NPR's Steve Inskeep sat down with the President before he left Washington for the holidays. Mr. Obama said he was prepared to use his veto power more often but is optimistic for a productive year with the GOP leadership.

"What I've said repeatedly is that I want to work with them; I want to get things done. I don't have another election to run.

There are going to be areas where we agree and I'm going to be as aggressive as I can be in getting legislation passed that I think help move the economy forward and help middle-class families. There are going to be some areas where we disagree and, you know, I haven't used the veto pen very often since I've been in office, partly because legislation that I objected to was typically blocked in the Senate even after the House took over — Republicans took over the House.

Now I suspect there are going to be some times where I've got to pull that pen out. And I'm going to defend gains that we've made in health care; I'm going to defend gains that we've made on environment and clean air and clean water.

But what I'm hopeful about — and we saw this so far at least in the lame duck — is a recognition by both Speaker Boehner and Mitch McConnell that people are looking to them to get things done and that the fact that we disagree on one thing shouldn't prohibit us from getting progress on the areas where there's some overlap."

A deadline is already approaching on February 27th, when the Department of Homeland Security will run out of funding. That deadline was specially planned by Republicans in order to quickly revisit immigration reform once the GOP took control of Congress.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2014/12/29/373766674/republicans-sort-their-priorities-for-the-new-congress

Remember the Washington Bridge scandal in New Jersey a back in 2013?  Remember how the national press corps all but crucified Republican Gov. Chris Christie and relished smearing his character as they reported the story watching his twist in their wind of hot air?  We could not really see what the problem was here since it’s not uncommon for problems to develop after the completion of such a big project.  A story like this has the strong odor of political corruption from both Democrats and Republicans all around it and smells to high Heaven! 

As it turns out the smell of corruption leads to the Democrats who were trying to scandalize their Republican Governor.  A newly completed internal report has cleared Governor Christie and his administration from the false charges made against he and his staff which is not so surprising since the claims were so ambiguous and weak in the first place.  The Washington Bridge project was nothing compared to the Boston Tunnel or "The Big Dig" as it was called, which partially collapsed in 2006.  In Massachusetts the blame was placed on the Turnpike Authority chairman Amorillo who stepped down from his position relieving Massachusetts Governor Romney and the State Legislature from a scandal.  

When it comes to political corruption we can think of no better example than the disaster which unfolded in Louisiana during Hurricane Katrina in August of 2005.  Katrina was a category five hurricane which devastated the City of New Orleans and their Levee system which were built 100 years ago.  Designed to hold back lake Pontchartrain and the Mississippi river, New Orleans it self sits below sea level and could not exist with out these levees.  The old and weak levees were destroyed by the force of Katrina's power.  

It was discovered after the hurricane that Louisiana and the city of New Orleans allowed the Levees to fall into disrepair over the years.  Finger pointing began at every level of Government for the disaster with no one willing to except the responsibility.  Democrats in office at the State and Municipal levels demonstrated how political corruption was responsible for a high number of catastrophic deaths due to this natural disaster.  A number of serious questions still are unanswered concerning the maintenance of these levees and the money which should have been spent to keep them effective.   

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:New_Orleans_Elevations.jpg

State and local politics often become tarnished as they unfold from coast to coast in our country.  This week we’ve collected some real scandal stories to illustrate just how corrupt Government sometimes becomes.  First in the California Senate which is where our investigation began and follows the FBI probes which have brought down politicians from Senators to Mayors and Assembly people in Government recently from coast to coast. 

"The Los Angeles Times"

State Senate Suspends Three Lawmakers Accused Of Crimes

California State Senate votes to suspend Yee, Calderon, Wright

By Patrick McGreevy

March 28, 2014, 11:36 a.m.

SACRAMENTO -- The state Senate voted Friday to suspend three Democratic lawmakers, all accused of criminal wrongdoing, from office with pay.

The vote comes two days after Sen. Leland Yee of San Francisco was charged by federal authorities with conspiracy to traffic in firearms without a license and accepting campaign funds in exchange for political favors.

Also suspended were Sens. Roderick Wright of Inglewood and Ronald Calderon of Montebello, who had both previously taken voluntary leaves of absence to fight separate criminal cases.

http://abclocal.go.com/kfsn/story?id=9483343

President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento), who in previous weeks had blocked Republican attempts to oust Calderon and Wright, on Friday said the allegations against Yee "changed my point of view." He said all three lawmakers should be treated equally.

Senators who are suspended can return to office only if approved by a Senate vote. 

Yee, 65, had ignored Steinberg's demands to resign. The Senate president had warned after Wednesday’s arrest that if Yee refused to quit he would face a suspension vote. Steinberg said the allegations against Yee were “appalling” and cast a cloud over the Legislature.

“Leave. Please,'' Steinberg said Friday just before the 28-1 vote to suspend the three lawmakers.

Sen. Joel Anderson (R-San Diego) voted against the suspensions, saying the three should be expelled. He criticized the Democratic leadership for favoring suspending the three lawmakers with pay --which he called a "Roman holiday" -- instead of removing them from office.

"Senators are not above the law," Anderson said.

Under the state Constitution, a lawmaker can be expelled from the Legislature on a two-thirds vote of his or her house, or suspended by a majority vote.

Though getting his pay, Yee will not be eligible to receive the per diem expense of $163 per day provided to lawmakers who attend the senate session in Sacramento.

Steinberg said none of the suspended lawmakers "can serve another day in this Senate going forward unless they are exonerated."

He called the allegations against Yee "unfathomable" and canceled the April 7 floor session so all Senate offices can review the ethics rules.

"An official suspension puts this house on formal record that we ... distance ourselves" from the behavior of the three senators, he said.

Sen. Kevin De Leon (D-Los Angeles) said the Yee affidavit reads like a "bad Hollywood movie.''

"All of us are shocked, dismayed by the allegations," he said.

The state Constitution does not allow the Senate to withhold pay from a suspended lawmaker, so Yee and the others will continue to draw their $95,291 annual salary.

However, Steinberg is expected to introduce a constitutional amendment, to be put before voters, that would allow the withholding of pay when lawmakers are suspended in the future, according to Steinberg's spokesman, Rhys Williams.

Yee has been released on bond but was not present for the Senate vote.

He has been charged by federal authorities with conspiracy to traffic in firearms without a license and scheming to defraud citizens of honest services by accepting tens of thousands of dollars in campaign funds in exchange for political favors.

A 137-page FBI affidavit alleges that Yee offered to help an
undercover agent buy automatic weapons and to assist another undercover agent posing as a medical marijuana businessman to meet influential legislators who could affect regulation of marijuana.

Calderon took a leave of absence earlier this month after he was indicted for allegedly taking bribes. Wright was found guilty of perjury and voter fraud.

Senate Secretary Greg Schmidt said he could not find any record of a senator being suspended by his colleagues over criminal allegations.

http://www.latimes.com/local/political/la-me-ln-state-senate-suspends-three-lawmakers-20140328,0,4464252.story#axzz2xeHJzsaN

http://www.toonpool.com/cartoons/corruption_4333

"The Washington Post"

FBI Conducts Raids Targeting Elected Officials In Three States

        REID WILSON

        March 26 at 2:47 pm

Federal law enforcement officials arrested two public officials in California and North Carolina and raided the office of a New York state senator in connection with separate corruption investigations on Wednesday.

Hundreds of federal agents conducted searches of offices around the San Francisco Bay Area and arrested several people on Tuesday, including state Sen. Leland Yee (D) and a former head of a Hong Kong-based crime syndicate, as part of a major public corruption probe.

Charlotte Mayor Patrick Cannon (D) was arrested Wednesday and charged with theft and bribery after an FBI sting operation, the U.S. Attorney’s office said. The mayor, first elected in November after serving for two decades on the Charlotte city council, allegedly solicited and accepted bribes from undercover FBI agents.

And in New York, FBI agents raided Assemblyman William Scarborough’s (D) offices and questioned Scarborough at his Albany hotel room. Scarborough told reporters the FBI asked questions about per diem reimbursements he received during his service in the state legislature.

A spokesman for the FBI confirmed the arrests and the charges, but couldn’t comment further.

The arrests come just days after federal agents raided the home and offices of Rhode Island House Speaker Gordon Fox (D), as part of an investigation by the U.S. Attorney’s office, the FBI, the IRS and Rhode Island state police. Fox resigned his position on Friday and dropped his bid for reelection.

In California, FBI agents arrived to search Yee’s Capitol office in Sacramento at 7 a.m., while hundreds of federal and local law enforcement personnel searched locations around San Francisco and San Mateo, local media reported.

Local media outlets reported that the investigation targeted Raymond “Shrimp Boy” Chow, whom federal officials have accused of being one of the U.S.-based leaders of the Wo Hop To crime syndicate, based in Hong Kong. Investigators raided the Gee King Tong Free Masons offices in Chinatown, which Chow runs.

Chow had been convicted of gun charges in the 1990s, but was released from prison after cooperating with federal officials seeking to investigate another leader of a prominent Chinatown gang.

Yee, the first Chinese American elected to the California state Senate, is among several candidates running for Secretary of State. His campaign spokesman and chief of staff both declined to answer questions from local media outlets.

Yee is also the third California state senator, all Democrats, to be tied to corruption investigations this year. Last month, state Sen. Ron Calderon (D) was indicted on bribery charges, and in January, state Sen. Roderick Wright (D) was convicted on eight counts of voter fraud and perjury, after being indicted in 2010.

Calderon and Wright have taken indefinite leaves of absence from the state Senate, costing Democrats their super majority status and threatening key elements of the party’s platform. State Senate President Darrell Steinberg’s spokesman told the San Jose Mercury News Steinberg wasn’t ready to comment on Yee’s arrest, though Democrats have blocked Republican-led efforts to oust Calderon and Wright in recent weeks.

In a statement released Wednesday morning, U.S. Attorney Anne Tompkins, of the Western District of North Carolina, said Cannon had been under investigation since 2010, when federal officials received tips that the then-city council member was “involved in illegal activities associated with his position as an elected official.”

A criminal complaint filed Wednesday accuses Cannon of accepting bribes from undercover FBI agents on five occasions, including as recently as last month, when he allegedly accepted $20,000 in cash in the mayor”s office. Cannon allegedly took more than $48,000 in cash, airline tickets, a hotel room and a luxury apartment “in exchange for the use of his official position,” the U.S. Attorney’s office said in a statement.

Cannon was elected in November to replace Anthony Foxx, who resigned as mayor to become the U.S. Secretary of Transportation.

In Albany, Scarborough told reporters FBI agents had implied he would be indicted, apparently over travel vouchers he submitted for reimbursement. Scarborough submitted vouchers worth $825 for a five-night stay in Albany earlier this month,Capital New York reported, when his public schedule showed he attended a town meeting in Jamaica Queens. In a statement, Richard Hartunian, U.S. District Attorney for the Northern District of New York, said Scarborough had not been charged, but that an investigation was ongoing.

Two New York state senators, John Sampson and Malcolm Smith, are under federal indictment on corruption charges.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/govbeat/wp/2014/03/26/fbi-conducts-raids-targeting-elected-officials-in-three-states/

The roads political corruption follow can change from generation to generation and vary at Local, State and Federal levels.  Our opening "Thomas Nast" cartoon of the late 1800's was aimed at the corrupt Republican politicians of the day and their political machines.  Today it would seem that the Democrats have accomplished their own form of corruption in a little different fashion!  Democrats like to boast of their "Grass Roots" support but this is more like corruption from the Grass Roots passed up the line to the Party Bosses at the National Level of the Democratic Party. 

 The above chart illustrates the "Money Trail" as it works it's way into and through a political party.  As the sources of revenue multiply from a number of organizations this process begins to resemble a "money laundering" scheme.  Government contractors pay their kickback to politicians through an independent political action group to cover their trail.  These schemes become very elaborate and complicated to hide the "Money Trail".
This chart was obtained from:
http://whichwaync.com/2012/07/25/campaign-finance-interactive-desktop/

From every pocket near and far to Government Projects; from your local traffic cop issuing citations to Federally funded projects the Democrats take their kick back Thur an elaborate scheme to hide the money trail.  It is at this point we would like to consult "wikipedia" for some basic definitions of the process.  We would like to stress that new schemes are coming along all the time and the game changes as the years go by.

Political corruption is the use of powers by government officials for illegitimate private gain. An illegal act by an officeholder constitutes political corruption only if the act is directly related to their official duties, is done under color of law or involves trading in influence.

Forms of corruption vary, but include bribery, extortion, cronyism, nepotism, patronage, 
graft and embezzlement. Corruption may facilitate criminal enterprise such as drug trafficking, money laundering, and human trafficking, though is not restricted to these activities. Misuse of government power for other purposes, such as repression of political opponents and general police brutality, is not considered political corruption. Neither are illegal acts by private persons or corporations not directly involved with the government.

Types

Bribery

A bribe is a payment given personally to a government official in exchange of his use of official powers. Bribery requires two participants: one to give the bribe, and one to take it. Either may initiate the corrupt offering; for example, a customs official may demand bribes to let through allowed (or disallowed) goods, or a smuggler might offer bribes to gain passage. In some countries the culture of corruption extends to every aspect of public life, making it extremely difficult for individuals to stay in business without resorting to bribes. Bribes may be demanded in order for an official to do something he is already paid to do. They may also be demanded in order to bypass laws and regulations. In addition to using bribery for private financial gain, they are also used to intentionally and maliciously cause harm to another (i.e. no financial incentive). In some developing nations, up to half of the population has paid bribes during the past 12 months.

In recent years, efforts have been made by the international community to encourage countries to dissociate and incriminate as separate offences, active and passive bribery. Active bribery can be defined for instance as the promising, offering or giving by any person, directly or indirectly, of any undue advantage [to any public official], for himself or herself or for anyone else, for him or her to act or refrain from acting in the exercise of his or her functions.(article 2 of the Criminal Law Convention on Corruption (ETS 173) of the Council of Europe). Passive bribery can be defined as the request or receipt [by any public official], directly or indirectly, of any undue advantage, for himself or herself or for anyone else, or the acceptance of an offer or a promise of such an advantage, to act or refrain from acting in the exercise of his or her functions (article 3 of the Criminal Law Convention on Corruption (ETS 173)). The reason for this dissociation is to make the early steps (offering, promising, requesting an advantage) of a corrupt deal already an offence and, thus, to give a clear signal (from a criminal policy point of view) that bribery is not acceptable. Furthermore, such a dissociation makes the prosecution of bribery offences easier since it can be very difficult to prove that two parties (the bribe-giver and the bribe-taker) have formally agreed upon a corrupt deal. In addition, there is often no such formal deal but only a mutual understanding, for instance when it is common knowledge in a municipality that to obtain a building permit one has to pay a "fee" to the decision maker to obtain a favorable decision. A working definition of corruption is also provided as follows in article 3 of the Civil Law Convention on Corruption (ETS 174): For the purpose of this Convention, "corruption" means requesting, offering, giving or accepting, directly or indirectly, a bribe or any other undue advantage or prospect thereof, which distorts the proper performance of any duty or behavior required of the recipient of the bribe, the undue advantage or the prospect thereof.

Trading in influence

Trading in influence, or influence peddling, refers a person selling his/her influence over the decision making process to benefit a third party (person or institution). The difference with bribery is that this is a tri-lateral relation. From a legal point of view, the role of the third party (who is the target of the influence) does not really matter although he/she can be an accessory in some instances. It can be difficult to make a distinction between this form of corruption and some forms of extreme and loosely regulated lobbying where for instance law- or decision-makers can freely "sell" their vote, decision power or influence to those lobbyists who offer the highest compensation, including where for instance the latter act on behalf of powerful clients such as industrial groups who want to avoid the passing of specific environmental, social, or other regulations perceived as too stringent, etc. Where lobbying is (sufficiently) regulated, it becomes possible to provide for a distinctive criteria and to consider that trading in influence involves the use of "improper influence", as in article 12 of the Criminal Law Convention on Corruption (ETS 173) of the Council of Europe.

Patronage

Patronage refers to favoring supporters, for example with government employment. This may be legitimate, as when a newly elected government changes the top officials in the administration in order to effectively implement its policy. It can be seen as corruption if this means that incompetent persons, as a payment for supporting the regime, are selected before more able ones. In nondemocracies many government officials are often selected for loyalty rather than ability. They may be almost exclusively selected from a particular group (for example, Sunni Arabs in Saddam Hussein's Iraq, the nomenklatura in the Soviet Union, or the Junkers in Imperial Germany) that support the regime in return for such favors. A similar problem can also be seen in Eastern Europe, for example in Romania, where the government is often accused of patronage (when a new government comes to power it rapidly changes most of the officials in the public sector).

Nepotism and cronyism

Favoring relatives (nepotism) or personal friends (cronyism) of an official is a form of illegitimate private gain. This may be combined with bribery, for example demanding that a business should employ a relative of an official controlling regulations affecting the business. The most extreme example is when the entire state is inherited, as in North Koreaor Syria. A lesser form might be in the Southern United States with Good ol' boys, where women and minorities are excluded. A milder form of cronyism is an "old boy network", in which appointees to official positions are selected only from a closed and exclusive social network – such as the alumni of particular universities – instead of appointing the most competent candidate.

Seeking to harm enemies becomes corruption when official powers are illegitimately used as means to this end. For example, trumped-up charges are often brought up against journalists or writers who bring up politically sensitive issues, such as a politician's acceptance of bribes.

Electoral fraud

Electoral fraud is illegal interference with the process of an election. Acts of fraud affect vote counts to bring about an election result, whether by increasing the vote share of the favored candidate, depressing the vote share of the rival candidates, or both. Also called voter fraud, the mechanisms involved include illegal voter registration, intimidation at polls, and improper vote counting.

Embezzlement

Embezzlement is theft of entrusted funds. It is political when it involves public money taken by a public official for use by anyone not specified by the public. A common type of embezzlement is that of personal use of entrusted government resources; for example, when an official assigns public employees to renovate his own house.

Kickbacks

See also: Anti-competitive practices, Bid rigging, Fraud, and Charbonneau Commission

A kickback is an official's share of misappropriated funds allocated from his or her organization to an organization involved in corrupt bidding. For example, suppose that a politician is in charge of choosing how to spend some public funds. He can give a contract to a company that is not the best bidder, or allocate more than they deserve. In this case, the company benefits, and in exchange for betraying the public, the official receives a kickback payment, which is a portion of the sum the company received. This sum itself may be all or a portion of the difference between the actual (inflated) payment to the company and the (lower) market-based price that would have been paid had the bidding been competitive.

Another example of a kickback would be if a judge receives a portion of the profits that a business makes in exchange for his judicial decisions.

Kickbacks are not limited to government officials; any situation in which people are entrusted to spend funds that do not belong to them are susceptible to this kind of corruption.

Unholy alliance

An unholy alliance is a coalition among seemingly antagonistic groups for ad hoc or hidden gain, generally some influential non-governmental group forming ties with political parties, supplying funding in exchange for the favorable treatment. Like patronage, unholy alliances are not necessarily illegal, but unlike patronage, by its deceptive nature and often great financial resources, an unholy alliance can be much more dangerous to the public interest. An early use of the term was by former US President Theodore "Teddy" Roosevelt:

"To destroy this invisible Government, to dissolve the unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics is the first task of the statesmanship of the day." – 1912 Progressive Party Platform, attributed to Roosevelt and quoted again in his autobiography, where he connects trusts and monopolies (sugar interests, Standard Oil, etc.) to Woodrow Wilson, Howard Taft, and consequently both major political parties.

Involvement in organized crime

An illustrative example of official involvement in organized crime can be found from 1920s and 1930s Shanghai, where Huang Jinrong was a police chief in the French concession, while simultaneously being a gang boss and co-operating with Du Yuesheng, the local gang ringleader. The relationship kept the flow of profits from the gang's gambling dens, prostitution, and protection rackets undisturbed.

The United States accused Manuel Noriega's government in Panama of being a "narcokleptocracy", a corrupt government profiting on illegal drug trade. Later the U.S. invaded Panama and captured Noriega.

"wikipedia.com" 

Corruption happens at all levels of Government but because State and Local Government is not in the bright spotlight as Washington DC is, little attention is focused on Government corruption at these levels.  Another California scandal article on corruption we would like to post involves the recent corruption scandal which took place in the City of Bell, CA here in Los Angeles county.   This scandal was exposed in 2010.  We have a summary  and background information for this case from "wikipedia.com" and a follow up time line of the Court case.  This story is so big  in scope and includes charges against eight Bell City officials, six of which were prosecuted.  We are only able to summarize this unbelievable story.

2010 City Official Corruption Scandal

Main article: City of Bell scandal

In July 2010, when two Los Angeles Times reporters, Jeff Gottlieb and Ruben Vives, were investigating possible malfeasance in the neighboring city of Maywood, it was revealed that Bell city officials were receiving unusually large salaries, perhaps the highest in the United States. The salaries came into the public eye after the newspaper's investigation, based on California Public Records Act requests, showed that the city payroll was swollen with six- to seven-figure salaries.  Robert Rizzo, the City manager, received $787,637 a year, almost double the salary of the President of the United States. Including benefits, he had received $1.5 million in the last year.  Rizzo's assistant, Angela Spaccia, was earning $376,288 a year, more than the top administrator for Los Angeles County.  The police chief, Randy Adams, was paid $457,000, 33% more than Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck.  All three resigned following news reports and public outcry. All but one of the members of the city council were receiving $100,000 for their part-time work, salaries which were authorized by a sparsely attended special election, giving the city "Charter" status. By comparison, council members in cities similar to Bell in size make an average of $4,800 a year, prosecutors have noted.

In September 2010, the California Attorney General's office filed a lawsuit against eight former and current City of Bell employees, requesting the return of what the suit calls "excessive salaries" as well a reduction in pension benefits accrued as a result of those higher salaries.  Allegations about irregularities in the 2009 election also were examined by the FBI and California Secretary of State office.  The city's high property taxes are also being investigated.

On September 21, 2010, former city manager Robert Rizzo, Mayor Oscar Hernandez, former assistant city manager Angela Spaccia and council members George Mirabal, Teresa Jacobo, Luis Artiga, George Cole and Victor Bello were arrested and charged with misappropriation of public funds.  The mayor and council members have all resigned or been recalled.

The revelations about the salary amounts paid to city officials in Bell led media inquires into salaries paid in other cities. After a review, the L.A. Times found frequent failures in audits of public agencies in other municipalities in California.

“Wikipedia”

Timeline: Bell Corruption Scandal

After a Los Angeles Times report on huge salaries for council 

officials in the small city, investigations were conducted and 

criminal charges were filed

By Andrew Lopez

|  Monday, Dec 2, 2013  |  Updated 12:54 PM PDT

Jurors reached a verdict on March 20, 2013, after weeks of deliberation in the infamous "Bell 6" corruption trial.

A look at the key events of the Bell corruption scandal, which sparked outrage when it was revealed that city officials from the small city were pocketing sky-high salaries.

July 15, 2010: The Los Angeles Times publishes an article titled “Is a city manager worth $800,000?” In it, they detail the high salaries for several Bell city officials, including a nearly $800,000 salary for city manager Robert Rizzo. The story draws widespread outrage.

Sep. 21, 2010: Eight Bell city officials are arrested as part of the investigation into the city’s salary scandal.

Feb. 7, 2011: A judge offers plea deals to several former Bell city council members, the Los Angeles Times reports. Lawyers for six of the defendants said their clients rejected the offers.

April 7, 2011: Five newly elected City Council members are sworn in after some former members are charged in connection with the salary scandal.

Jan. 25, 2013: Trial begins in the case of six former city of Bell officials, including the ex-mayor and five other council members.

March 20, 2013: Five former Bell City Council members accused of padding their paychecks are found guilty on half of the counts they each faced. Former Councilman Luis Artiga is the only defendant to go free after he was found not guilty on all 12 counts he faced.

• Ex-mayor Oscar Hernandez: guilty on five counts; not guilty on five counts. No verdict on 10 counts.
• Former Councilwoman Teresa Jacobo: guilty on five counts; not guilty on five counts. No verdict on 10 counts.
• Former Councilman George Mirabal: guilty on five counts; not guilty on five counts. No verdict on 10 counts.
• Former Councilman Victor Bello: guilty on four counts; not guilty on four counts. No verdict on eight counts.
• Former Councilman George Cole: guilty of two counts; not guilty on two counts. No verdict on four counts.

Oct. 3, 2013: Former city manager Robert Rizzo, who is at the center of a city government corruption scandal, pleads no contest to 69 counts. His sentence could range between 10-12 years.

Oct. 23, 2013: The trial of Angela Spaccia, the former assistant city manager of Bell, begins. She is accused of 13 felony corruption charges.

http://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/Timeline-of-Bell-corruption-scandal-234114761.html

  

"NBC News"

In conclusion; since many Washington DC politicians have experience in other elected Government positions before bursting onto the national scene.  President Barack Obama is no exception; in fact he might be the prototype for politicians with corrupt backgrounds.  In Obamas case these ties with corruption have even followed him into the White House.  We are posting an article from the "Washington Post" which appeared in 2008.  The President has close ties with some corrupt co hearts and seems to keep them far enough away from himself so as not to become directly involved him self.  We can say this for sure:  we have never seen any President come with so much questionable baggage in Washington DC as Barack Obama!

"The Washington Post"

Former Obama Fundraiser Convicted of 

Corruption

By Peter Slevin

Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, June 5, 2008

CHICAGO, June 5 -- Antoin Rezko, a Chicago businessman and longtime fundraiser for Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), was convicted of 16 felony corruption charges Wednesday in a case that alleged influence peddling in the upper reaches of the administration of Gov. Rod Blagojevich (D).

After two months of vivid testimony about political profiteering in Illinois state government, the 12-member jury found Rezko guilty of using his clout as a Blagojevich insider to shake down companies hoping to do business with the state. The 16 counts included fraud, money laundering and abetting bribery. Rezko was acquitted of eight counts, including extortion.

Rezko surrendered to federal authorities as soon as the verdicts were read. He explained through his attorney that he wants to begin serving his sentence immediately.

The successful prosecution adds to the pressure on Blagojevich, who rode into office in 2002 with a promise to end corruption in Springfield, the state capital. His Republican predecessor, George Ryan, was convicted of corruption in the same Chicago courthouse in 2006.

"It's another chapter in the sad history of Illinois government," Jay E. Stewart, executive director of the Better Government Association, told reporters. "I don't think this is the 'No more business as usual' we were promised when Rod Blagojevich became governor back in 2002. He can't blame this on George Ryan."

Blagojevich, now in his second term, has steadfastly denied wrongdoing. For Obama, who was unconnected to the criminal case but once counted Rezko as a friend and loyal contributor, the verdict makes it certain that critics will continue to question their relationship. Indeed, within 20 minutes of the jury's announcement, the Republican National Committee sent reporters an e-mail under the heading "Rezko: Obama's Longtime Friend and Money Man."

GOP Chairman Robert M. Duncan soon followed with a contention that the verdict creates doubts about Obama's judgment, and Duncan's staff posted a video designed to highlight Obama's connections to Rezko and to raise doubts about the explanations of the presumptive Democratic nominee for president.

Obama has said whenever asked -- and he has been asked repeatedly -- that his relationship to Rezko, who had a history of befriending up-and-coming Illinois politicians, never strayed into official business. Obama said Rezko asked no favors and that he did him none.

Rezko has not raised money for Obama since 2004, and the Obama campaign gave to charity the donations linked to Rezko.

"I'm saddened by today's verdict," Obama said in a statement Wednesday. "This isn't the Tony Rezko I knew, but now he has been convicted by a jury on multiple charges that once again shine a spotlight on the need for reform."

The prosecution of Rezko was an intricate web of testimony about money-minded contributors and advisers headlined by a Republican political fixer named Stuart Levine, an admitted con man who made and spent millions, including significant sums on day-long drug binges.

Levine told the jury that he bribed his way to government contracts for his clients and associates. He said he used his connections to win appointments to state regulatory boards, including the panels that made decisions about the state's $30 billion teacher pension fund and another that oversaw lucrative hospital expansions.

Rezko, Levine testified, helped him preserve his clout and his schemes to keep the illicit money flowing after Blagojevich entered office. An FBI agent testified that Rezko raised $1.4 million for the new governor's campaign.

"I have never been in a better position than I am right now," Levine boasted in a conversation secretly taped by the FBI. He said of Rezko, "This guy is making decisions . . . and can get anything done that he wants done."

Staff writer Kari Lydersen contributed to this report.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/04/AR2008060402824.html

http://www.commonsenseevaluation.com/tag/politics/#sthash.5mENBtu7.dpbs

http://gulagbound.com/31759/austerity-and-how-to-avoid-it-in-america/octopus-2-print-wlg/

The subject of corruption is so big and lives in such dark places that it has almost no boundaries and is almost every where. Sometimes corruption lives in broad daylight and operates in a very normal fashion!  

Sentencing continues is the City of Bell corruption scandal which out six city officials on trial for bilking the city of millions of dollars!  We should feel glad to the system is working and catching criminal like this; or maybe we begin to wonder just how many other scams are happening across the nation which haven't been detected as of yet.  It is no surprise people are feeling over taxed!

Rizzo Gets 12 Years In Prison, Marking End To Scandal That Rocked Bell

After countless court appearances, Robert Rizzo finally learned his fate: the former Bell city manager was sentenced to 12 years in state prison and ordered to pay $8.8 million in restitution. Patrick Healy reports from Bell for the NBC4 News at 6 on Wednesday, April 16, 2014.  (Patrick Healy/Scott Meadows/Tom Bravo)

http://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/Bell-City-Administrator-Robert-Rizzo-Corruption-Scandal-255498601.html

By Corina Knoll and Jeff Gottlieb

"The Los Angeles Times"

April 16, 2014, 10:36 a.m.

Robert Rizzo, the city administrator who oversaw an era of corruption and graft in one of Los Angeles County’s poorest cities, was sentenced Wednesday to 12 years in state prison.

Rizzo stared straight ahead, his palms pressed against the defense table as the sentence was read.

“Mr. Rizzo, you did some very, very bad things for a very long time,” Superior Court Judge Kathleen Kennedy told the former Bell city administrator.

The judge said Rizzo transformed himself into a “godfather of sorts” in Bell, an all-powerful ruler who plundered the city’s treasury to pay lavish salaries and dole out loans to fellow employees.

Kennedy also ordered Rizzo to pay $8.8 million in restitution to Bell, but agreed to credit him for money he and the city’s former police chief have already returned to the city.

For the first time since the salary scandal erupted in 2010, Rizzo spoke publicly about his role in the wrongdoing.

In a soft voice, and again staring straight ahead, Rizzo said he was “very, very sorry.”

“If I could go back and make changes. I would,” Rizzo said. “I've done it a million times in my mind."

But a series of speakers, including another Bell elected official, pushed back on the notion that Rizzo was genuine in his apology or had any empathy for the citizens of the city.

“The damage has been done and the money is gone,” said City Councilwoman Violetta Alvarez, who was elected as a reformer after authorities arrested Rizzo and seven other Bell city leaders.

"This is not about him anymore,” added a Maywood resident who said his town also suffered at Rizzo’s hands. “This is about the people getting justice."

Rizzo was already sentenced to 33 months in federal prison Monday for a tax fraud scheme in which he claimed hundreds of thousands of dollars in phony losses, mostly tied to his sprawling horse ranch outside Seattle.

He will be allowed to serve his sentences concurrently.

Once the highest paid municipal administrator in California, and possibly the nation, Rizzo became the face of the widespread corruption in Bell. When he was forced to resign in 2010, Rizzo had a total compensation package of roughly $1.5 million a year and was on track to become the highest paid public pensioner in California when he retired.

When Rizzo and the others were arrested in the summer on 2010, then-L.A. County Dist. Atty. Steven Cooley called the case “corruption on steroids.” Since then, five city council member have been convicted of misappropriating city funds and the town’s second-in-command, Spaccia, last week was sentenced to 11 years and eight months in prison for her role in the wrongdoing.

One council member, a preacher in the working-class town, was acquitted.

Kennedy order Rizzo to surrender to authorities to begin serving his sentence on May 30.

http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-rizzo-set-to-be-sentenced--20140415,0,3785008.story#ixzz2zA1aGvqe

"The Los Angeles Times" 

To begin uncovering this kind of political corruption we must really begin thinking "out side the box".  This it what happened to me as I began researching this subject two weeks ago.  I began to realize that all kinds of corruptions runs ramshackle throughout the Government and is never detected by law enforcement.  

We've just made some very large claim about corruption - now to look at the details and at least start thinking differently about things we take for granted as being normal in Government and politics.  We could say this kind of political corruption is the new form of corruption of the future.  

As in war; politics and politicians along with their respective political party's enjoy the conformation of legitimacy; "To the victor go the spoils of war". This may be true to a certain point, but we have limitations in place to protect our democracy and insure freedom of choice and a strong free Government.  Have we made our case yet?

During WWII The Federal Government under the Democrats and President Franklin Roosevelt began a military spending and build up of US forces never seen before in this country.  The Democrats in Washington DC now had the power to reward their friends and punish their enemies as they issued Government Contracts to support the war effort.  

It is at this point that Noodleman must boldly stand up and charge that "back room deals" and "under the table" bribes and kick backs have been going on for a very long time now!  All which have benefited the DNC (Democratic National Committee) through an unparalleled and unprecedented string of wars.  First against Germany then Japan the US engaged in war after war under the Democrats in Washington DC.  Japan was followed by Korea and then by Vietnam.  The United States was at war continuously from 1939 until 1975.  The Vietnam war it self lasted from 1956 until 1975.

President
Dwight D. Eisenhower

During this time Democrats under the presidencies of Roosevelt, Truman, Kennedy and Johnson learned the finer points of  benefits from war and the avenues to profiting from this win fall on a global scale.  Politics and war profiteering American style was now operating as never before.  This was indicated by President and X-Army 5 star General Dwight D. Eisenhower who had observed this phenomenon from a unique perspective.  Eisenhower felt strongly enough on the subject to warn America in 1961 to beware of the "Military Industrial Complex".  This speech is available on youtube.com. 

Three US Democratic Presidents who profited from and used the Korean and Vietnam wars to validate their administrations  Truman (left) Kennedy and Johnson (right) all used the 

"Military Industrial Complex" for political gain.  Johnson was by far the worst of the three as

he continued US involvement in Vietnam; as Americans became disenchanted with his 

campaign to fight Communism.  To this day, the Vietnam conflict which lasted form 1956 until 1975 is the biggest failure in US foreign policy and was finally concluded under the President Nixon's Administration.

Today it is not unusual for X-Presidents to write books, conduct speaking tours in American Universities and build their Presidential Library's.  This is all very normal.  With President Clinton however, something new is happening on a global scale and may be a remnant of what Democratic Presidents had learned while conducting War in the past!

The "Clinton Global Initiative" raises our curiosity because it is unclear as to what the "Global Initiative" is.  As we began to research Bill Clinton's new organization we learned that he, wife Hillary and daughter Chelsea seem to be involved a series of speaking symposiums concerning what may be considered as global problems and issues.  We are doubly concerned at this point because agendas like these are undertaken by the United Nations.  So many questions here!  Is Bill making a bid to run for the Secretary General position in the UN?

As a part of the Clinton Foundation, the mission of the Clinton's as reported by "wikipedia.com"

"The Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation (originally, the William J. Clinton Foundation) is a non-profit foundation established by former President of the United States Bill Clinton with the stated mission to "strengthen the capacity of people throughout the world to meet the challenges of global interdependence." The Foundation focuses on four critical areas: health security; economic empowerment; leadership development and citizen service; and racial, ethnic and religious reconciliation. The Foundation works principally through partnerships with like-minded individuals, organizations, corporations, and governments, often serving as an incubator for new policies and programs. They have offices located in New York City and Little Rock, Arkansas."

"wikipedia.com"

Their Global Initive web site define themselves as:

"The mission of the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) is to turn ideas into action.

Established in 2005 by President Bill Clinton, the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI), an initiative of the Clinton Foundation, convenes global leaders to create and implement innovative solutions to the world's most pressing challenges. CGI Annual Meetings have brought together 180 heads of state, 20 Nobel Prize laureates, and hundreds of leading CEOs, heads of foundations and NGOs, major philanthropists, and members of the media. To date, CGI members have made more than 2,500 commitments, which are already improving the lives of more than 430 million people in over 180 countries. When fully funded and implemented, these commitments will be valued at $88 billion.

The 2014 CGI Annual Meeting will be held from September 21-24 in New York City. CGI also convenes CGI America, a meeting devoted to economic recovery and job creation in the United States, and CGI University (CGI U), which hosts an annual meeting for undergraduate and graduate students who are developing commitments in their communities and around the world."

http://www.clintonglobalinitiative.org/aboutus/

Clinton Global Initiative

Political & Diplomatic Event

Coinciding with U.N. Week each fall, former President Clinton's marquee annual event has brought together 150 heads of state and garnered some $73 billion in pledges for global aid. Next: September 23-26, 2013Photo: Adam Schultz/Clinton Global Initiative.

http://www.bizbash.com/clinton-global-initiative-1-political-diplomatic-eventcoinciding-u-new/gallery/114130#.U1AZT1VdUyc

Upon further research we learned the Clinton's are referring to their annual speaking symposiums as "CGI U" (Clinton Global Initiative University) and are accomplishing some very big dollar fund raising which is again curious since the Clinton Foundation defines itself as a nonprofit.  This brings many questions to mind.  Are the Clinton's in the information and influence business in exchange for cash disguised as donations?  At any rate the Clinton Global initiative seems to be primarily about fund raising.  Oh; and by the way, if you think there is a University with a campus called the Clinton Global Initiative University, there is not.  So many issues to unravel about this organization.  The FBI and NSA really need to probe Clinton's foundation and it's activities.

For some further background on the Clinton's Foundation we are publishing this article from "The New York Times".

Unease at Clinton Foundation 

Over Finances and Ambitions

Jason Henry for The New York Times

Hillary Rodham Clinton speaking at an American Bar Association meeting in San Francisco on Monday.

By NICHOLAS CONFESSORE and AMY CHOZICK

Published: August 13, 2013  

Soon after the 10th anniversary of the foundation bearing his name, Bill Clinton met with a small group of aides and two lawyers from Simpson Thacher & Bartlett. Two weeks of interviews with Clinton Foundation executives and former employees had led the lawyers to some unsettling conclusions.

The review echoed criticism of Mr. Clinton’s early years in the White House: For all of its successes, the Clinton Foundation had become a sprawling concern, supervised by a rotating board of old Clinton hands, vulnerable to distraction and threatened by conflicts of interest. It ran multimillion-dollar deficits for several years, despite vast amounts of money flowing in.

And concern was rising inside and outside the organization about Douglas J. Band, a onetime personal assistant to Mr. Clinton who had started a lucrative corporate consulting firm — which Mr. Clinton joined as a paid adviser — while overseeing the Clinton Global Initiative, the foundation’s glitzy annual gathering of chief executives, heads of state, and celebrities.

The review set off more than a year of internal debate, and spurred an evolution in the organization that included Mr. Clinton’s daughter, Chelsea, taking on a dominant new role as the family grappled with the question of whether the foundation — and its globe-spanning efforts to combat AIDS, obesity and poverty — would survive its founder.

Now those efforts are taking on new urgency. In the coming weeks, the foundation, long Mr. Clinton’s domain since its formation in 2001, will become the nerve center of Hillary Rodham Clinton’s increasingly busy public life.

This fall, Mrs. Clinton and her staff will move into offices at the foundation’s new headquarters in Midtown Manhattan, occupying two floors of the Time-Life Building. Amid speculation about her 2016 plans, Mrs. Clinton is adding major new initiatives on women, children and jobs to what has been renamed the Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation.

Worried that the foundation’s operating revenues depend too heavily on Mr. Clinton’s nonstop fund-raising, the three Clintons are embarking on a drive to raise an endowment of as much as $250 million, with events already scheduled in the Hamptons and London. And after years of relying on Bruce R. Lindsey, the former White House counsel whose friendship with Mr. Clinton stretches back decades, to run the organization while living part-time in Arkansas, the family has hired a New York-based chief executive with a background in management consulting.

“We’re trying to institutionalize the foundation so that it will be here long after the lives of any of us,” Mr. Lindsey said. “That’s our challenge and that is what we are trying to address.”

But the changing of the guard has aggravated long-simmering tensions within the former first family’s inner circle as the foundation tries to juggle the political and philanthropic ambitions of a former president, a potential future president, and their increasingly visible daughter.

And efforts to insulate the foundation from potential conflicts have highlighted just how difficult it can be to disentangle the Clintons’ charity work from Mr. Clinton’s moneymaking ventures and Mrs. Clinton’s political future, according to interviews with more than two dozen former and current foundation employees, donors and advisers to the family. Nearly all of them declined to speak for attribution, citing their unwillingness to alienate the Clinton family.

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Last Thursday, Mr. Clinton arrived two hours late to an exuberant welcome at a health clinic about 60 miles north of Johannesburg. Children in zebra-striped loincloths sang as Mr. Clinton and Ms. Clinton made their entrance, and the former president enthusiastically explained how his foundation had helped the South African government negotiate large reductions in the price of drugs that halt the progress of HIV. Aaron Motsoaledi, South Africa’s minister of health, heaped praise on the effort. “Because of your help we are able to treat three and a half times more people than we used to,” he told the crowd.

The project is typical of the model pioneered by the Clinton Foundation, built around dozens of partnerships with private companies, governments, or other nonprofit groups. Instead of handing out grants, the foundation recruits donors and advises them on how best to deploy their money or resources, from helping Procter & Gamble donate advanced water-purification packets to developing countries to working with credit card companies to expand the volume of low-cost loans offered to poor inner city residents.

The foundation, which has 350 employees in 180 countries, remains largely powered by Mr. Clinton’s global celebrity and his ability to connect corporate executives, A-listers and government officials. On this month’s Africa trip, Mr. Clinton was accompanied by the actors Dakota Fanning and Jesse Eisenberg and the son of the New York City mayoral candidate John A. Catsimatidis, a longtime donor.

For most of the foundation’s existence, its leadership has been dominated by loyal veterans of the Clintons’ political lives. Ira C. Magaziner, who was a Rhodes scholar with Mr. Clinton and ran Mrs. Clinton’s failed attempt at a health care overhaul in the 1990s, is widely credited as the driving force behind the foundation’s largest project, the Clinton Health Access Initiative, which, among other efforts, negotiates bulk purchasing agreements and price discounts on lifesaving medicines.

Mr. Band, who arrived at the White House in 1995 and worked his way up to become Mr. Clinton’s closest personal aide, standing behind the president on golf courses and the global stage, helped build the foundation’s fund-raising structure. He conceived of and for many years helped run the Clinton Global Initiative, the annual conference that draws hundreds of business leaders and heads of state to New York City where attendees are pushed to make specific philanthropic commitments.

Today, big-name companies vie to buy sponsorships at prices of $250,000 and up, money that has helped subsidize the foundation’s annual operating costs. Last year, the foundation and two subsidiaries had revenues of more than $214 million.

Yet the foundation’s expansion has also been accompanied by financial problems. In 2007 and 2008, the foundation also found itself competing against Mrs. Clinton’s presidential campaign for donors amid a recession. Millions of dollars in contributions intended to seed an endowment were diverted to other programs, creating tension between Mr. Magaziner and Mr. Band. The foundation piled up a $40 million deficit during those two years, according to tax returns. Last year, it ran more than $8 million in the red.

Amid those shortfalls, the foundation has sometimes catered to donors and celebrities who gave money in ways that raised eyebrows in the low-key nonprofit world. In 2009, during a Clinton Global Initiative gathering at the University of Texas at Austin, the foundation purchased a first-class ticket for the actress Natalie Portman, a special guest, who brought her beloved Yorkie, according to two former foundation employees.

In interviews, foundation officials partly blamed the 2008 recession and difficulties in getting donors to provide operating support rather than restricted grants for specific programs for the deficits.

But others criticized Mr. Magaziner, who is widely seen within the foundation as impulsive and lacking organizational skills. On one occasion, Mr. Magaziner dispatched a team of employees to fly around the world for months gathering ideas for a climate change proposal that never got off the ground. Another time, he ignored a report — which was commissioned at significant expense from the consulting firm McKinsey & Company — on how the foundation could get involved in forestry initiatives.

Mr. Magaziner’s management style and difficulty keeping projects within budget were also raised in discussions that surrounded the 2011 Simpson Thacher review. (One person who attended a meeting with Mr. Magaziner recalled his lying on a conference room table in the middle of the meeting because of terrible back spasms, snapping at a staff member.)

Mr. Band repeatedly urged Mr. Clinton to fire Mr. Magaziner, according to people briefed on the matter. Mr. Clinton refused, confiding in aides that despite Mr. Magaziner’s managerial weaknesses, he was a visionary with good intentions. The former president, according to one person who knows them both, “thinks Ira is brilliant — and brilliant people get away with a lot in Clinton world.”

Indeed, by then, Mr. Magaziner had persuaded Mr. Clinton and the foundation to spin the health initiative off into a separate organization, with Mr. Magaziner as its chief executive and the Clinton Foundation appointing a majority of its board members. The financial problems continued. In 2010 and 2011, the first two years when the health initiative operated as a stand-alone organization, it ran annual shortfalls of more than $4 million. A new chief financial officer, hired in 2010, left eight months later.

A foundation official said the health initiative had only three chief financial officers in 10 years and that its financial problem was a common one in the nonprofit world: For all the grant money coming in — more than $160 million in 2011 — Mr. Magaziner had also had difficulty raising money for operating costs. But by the end of 2011, the health initiative had expanded its board, adding two seats. Chelsea Clinton took one.

Growing Ventures

As the foundation grew, so did the outside business ventures pursued by Mr. Clinton and several of his aides.

None have drawn more scrutiny in Clinton circles than Teneo, a firm co-founded in 2009 by Mr. Band, described by some as a kind of surrogate son to Mr. Clinton. Aspiring to merge corporate consulting, public relations and merchant banking in a single business, Mr. Band poached executives from Wall Street, recruited other Clinton aides to join as employees or advisers and set up shop in a Midtown office formerly belonging to one of the country’s top hedge funds.

By 2011, the firm had added a third partner, Declan Kelly, a former State Department envoy for Mrs. Clinton. And Mr. Clinton had signed up as a paid adviser to the firm.

Teneo worked on retainer, charging monthly fees as high as $250,000, according to current and former clients. The firm recruited clients who were also Clinton Foundation donors, while Mr. Band and Mr. Kelly encouraged others to become new foundation donors. Its marketing materials highlighted Mr. Band’s relationship with Mr. Clinton and the Clinton Global Initiative, where Mr. Band sat on the board of directors through 2011 and remains an adviser. Some Clinton aides and foundation employees began to wonder where the foundation ended and Teneo began.

Those worries intensified after the collapse of MF Global, the international brokerage firm led by Jon S. Corzine, a former governor of New Jersey, in the fall of 2011. The firm had been among Teneo’s earliest clients, and its collapse over bad European investments — while paying $125,000 a month for the firm’s public relations and financial advice — drew Teneo and the Clintons unwanted publicity.

Mr. Clinton ended his advisory role with Teneo in March 2012, after an article appeared in The New York Post suggesting that Mrs. Clinton was angry over the MF Global controversy. A spokesman for Mr. Clinton denied the report. But in a statement released afterward, Mr. Clinton announced that he would no longer be paid by Teneo.

He also praised Mr. Band effusively, crediting him with keeping the foundation afloat and expressing hopes that Mr. Band would continue to advise the Global Initiative.

“I couldn’t have accomplished half of what I have in my post-presidency without Doug Band,” Mr. Clinton said in the statement.

Even that news release was a source of controversy within the foundation, according to two people with knowledge of the discussions. Mr. Band helped edit the statement, which other people around the Clintons felt gave him too much credit for the foundation’s accomplishments. (The quotation now appears as part of Mr. Band’s biography on the Teneo Web site.)

Mr. Band left his paid position with the foundation in late 2010, but has remained involved with C.G.I., as have a number of Teneo clients, like Coca-Cola, Dow Chemical and UBS Americas. Standard Chartered, a British financial services company that paid a $340 million fine to New York regulators last year to settle charges that it had laundered money from Iran, is a Teneo client and a sponsor of the 2012 global initiative.

Last year, Coca-Cola’s chief executive, Muhtar Kent, won a coveted spot on the dais with Mr. Clinton, discussing the company’s partnership with another nonprofit to use its distributors to deliver medical goods to patients in Africa. (A Coca-Cola spokesman said that the company’s sponsorship of foundation initiatives long predated Teneo and that the firm plays no role in Coca-Cola’s foundation work.)

In March 2012, David Crane, the chief executive of NRG, an energy company, led a widely publicized trip with Mr. Clinton to Haiti, where they toured green energy and solar power projects that NRG finances through a $1 million commitment to the Clinton Global Initiative.

Officials said the foundation has established clear guidelines for the Clinton Global Initiative to help prevent any favoritism or special treatment of particular donors or sponsors.

Teneo was not the only worry: other events thrust the foundation into internal turmoil. In 2011, a wave of midlevel program staff members departed, reflecting the frustration of much of the foundation’s policy personnel with the old political hands running the organization. Around the time of the Simpson Thacher review, Mr. Lindsey suffered a stroke, underscoring concerns about the foundation’s line of succession. John D. Podesta, a chief of staff in Mr. Clinton’s White House, stepped in for several months as temporary chief executive.

While much attention has focused on Mrs. Clinton’s emerging role within the foundation, advisers to the family say her daughter’s growing involvement could prove more critical in the years ahead. After years of pursuing other career paths, including working at McKinsey & Company and a hedge fund, Ms. Clinton, 33, has begun to assert herself as a force within the foundation. Her perspective is shaped far more than her parents’ by her time in the world of business, and she is poised to play a significant role in shaping the foundation’s future, particularly if Mrs. Clinton chooses to run for president.

She formally joined the foundation’s board in 2011, marking her growing role there — and the start of intensifying tensions between her and Mr. Band. Several people close to the Clintons said that she became increasingly concerned with the negative impact Mr. Band’s outside business might have on her father’s work and that she cited concerns raised during the internal review about potential conflicts of interest involving Teneo.

It was Ms. Clinton who suggested that the newly installed chief executive, Eric Braverman, be considered for the job during a nearly two-year search. A friend and a former colleague from McKinsey, Mr. Braverman, 38, had helped the Clintons with philanthropic projects in Haiti after the earthquake there. And his hiring coincided with Ms. Clinton’s appointment as the vice chairwoman of the foundation board, where she will bear significant responsibility for steering her family’s philanthropy, both in the causes it tackles and in the potential political and financial conflicts it must avoid.

Ms. Clinton has also grown worried that the foundation she stood to inherit would collapse without her father, who turns 67 next week. Mr. Clinton, who had quadruple-bypass surgery in 2004 and no longer eats meat or dairy products, talks frequently about his own mortality.

Mr. Catsimatidis said Ms. Clinton “has to learn how to deal with the whole world because she wants to follow in the footsteps of her father and her mother.”

Shifting the Emphasis

Over the years, the foundation has dived into virtually any cause that sparked Mr. Clinton’s interest: childhood obesity in the United States, sustainable farming in South America, mentoring entrepreneurs, saving elephants from poaching, and more. That list will shift soon as Mrs. Clinton and Chelsea build their staffs to focus on issues including economically empowering women and combating infant mortality.

In the coming months, as Mrs. Clinton mulls a 2016 presidential bid, the foundation could also serve as a base for her to home in on issues and to build up a stable of trusted staff members who could form the core of a political campaign.

Mrs. Clinton’s staff at the foundation’s headquarters includes Maura Pally, a veteran aide who advised her 2008 presidential campaign and worked at the State Department, and Madhuri Kommareddi, a former policy aide to President Obama.

Dennis Cheng, Mrs. Clinton’s deputy chief of protocol at the State Department and a finance director of her presidential campaign, will oversee the endowment drive, which some of the Clintons’ donors already describe as a dry run for 2016.

And Mrs. Clinton’s personal staff of roughly seven people — including Huma Abedin, wife of the New York mayoral candidate Anthony D. Weiner — will soon relocate from a cramped Washington office to the foundation’s headquarters. They will work on organizing Mrs. Clinton’s packed schedule of paid speeches to trade groups and awards ceremonies and assist in the research and writing of Mrs. Clinton’s memoir about her time at the State Department, to be published by Simon & Schuster next summer.

"The New York Times"

The New York Post"

5 Lies That Have 

Shaped The 

Obama Presidency

By Jack Cashill

September 13, 2014 | 1:55pm

If past presidents are remembered for their signature achievements, Obama will be remembered for his signature lie: “If you like your health care plan, blah, blah, blah.” The reader knows the rest. Although the most consequential of Obama’s lies — it got him re-elected — it’s far from his only prevarication.

I’ve counted 75 significant lies since his campaign for president began, but that doesn’t begin to tally the casual fibs and hyperbole he spouts seemingly every day. Here are five that illustrate just how much Obama’s presidency is built on falsehoods.

5. “My father left my family when I was 2 years old.”

Photo: EPA

Obama made this claim in September 2009, when addressing the nation’s schoolkids. By then, the blogosphere knew that baby Obama had never spent a night under the same roof as his father, let alone two years.

For years, Obama and his advisers invested enormous political capital in what biographer David Remnick called Obama’s “signature appeal: the use of the details of his own life as a reflection of a kind of multicultural ideal.”

Remnick called Obama’s autobiography “a mixture of verifiable fact, recollection, recreation, invention and artful shaping.” In other words, the truth is never good enough.

4. “The Fast and Furious program was a field-initiated program begun under the previous administration.”

Photo: WireImage

Obama spun this fiction at a September 2012 Univision forum knowing it was false. In fact, the bizarre, deadly idea to let American guns “walk” into Mexico, where they were used by drug cartels to kill dozens, began in October 2009.

Three months earlier, White House press secretary Jay Carney had made the same bogus claim virtually word for word at a press conference and got shot down on national TV. “It began in fall 2009,” corrected White House correspondent Jake Tapper, then with ABC.

Carney refused to acknowledge he lied, and the president continued to lie weeks later. It’s all part of Obama’s ducking of responsibility — it’s always someone else’s fault.

3. “Not even a smidgen of corruption.”

Photo: Getty Images

Obama said this in response to Bill O’Reilly’s question about the IRS scandal: “You’re saying no corruption?”

If there were not even a “smidgen of corruption,” as Obama insisted, it is hard to understand what outraged him, or at least seemed to, when news of the IRS scandal first broke. “It’s inexcusable, and Americans are right to be angry about it, and I am angry about it,” Obama said in May 2013. Obama routinely expressed anger when some new scandal erupted on his watch — IRS, the failed ObamaCare website, the VA scandal, Fast and Furious — but never before had he shoved a scandal down the memory hole so quickly.

And how could Obama know there wasn’t a smidgen of corruption before the investigation was even over? Perhaps because the administration knew that any proof of that was gone with deleted emails and destroyed hard drives?

2. “We revealed to the American people exactly what we understood at the time.”

Photo: AP

During that same Super Bowl Sunday interview, Obama made this claim in response to O’Reilly’s inquiry about the attack on the American consulate in Benghazi. Obama continued to dissemble: “The notion that we would hide the ball for political purposes when a week later we all said, in fact, there was a terrorist attack taking place and the day after I said it was an act of terror, that wouldn’t be a very good coverup.”

In fact, it was exactly a week after the attack, on Sept. 18, that Obama took his first questions about Benghazi. Bizarrely, he did so to David Letterman. “Here’s what happened,” Obama said.

“You had a video that was released by somebody who lives here, sort of a shadowy character who — who made an extremely offensive video directed at — at Mohammed and Islam.”

We know now that the administration knew this wasn’t true. Not a week later; not even the very night of the attacks.

On many levels, this was Obama’s most telling lie. He only deals with the world as he sees it, not as it is.

1. “Transparency and the rule of law will be the touchstones of this presidency.”

Photo: AP

Obama told this whopper to his assembled staff on his first day in office. He promised it to the press. Instead, his administration refuses to hand over documents and Obama refuses to answer questions. As liberal constitutional scholar Jonathan Turley assessed the presidency, “Barack Obama is really the president Richard Nixon always wanted to be.”

What do these lies, just a sample of many, tell us? Obama never stopped “artfully shaping” his life.

The scary thing is he might actually believe these lies. He believes that posting a shot from his personal photographer online is “transparent.” That targeting conservative groups for audits isn’t corrupt. That everything that has gone wrong with his presidency is Bush’s fault.

Knowing that, how can we believe anything that he says?

Jack Cashill is the author of “You Lie! The Evasions, Omissions, Fabrications, Frauds and Outright Falsehoods of Barack Obama” (Broadside Books), out Oct. 7.

http://nypost.com/2014/09/13/how-falsehoods-and-fibs-have-shaped-the-obama-presidency/

So the trail of political corruption continues. In all it's forms both by individuals and institutions. Sometimes illegal and sometimes skirting the law.  One thing is for sure; the Democrats are taking their cut any way possible and doing their peculiar fund raising near and far.  This has been Felicity for the "Noodleman Group"!

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