[NATION.TIME] As Maureen O'Connor stood in court Thursday somberly admitting over the course of years that she had bet a total of more than $1 billion in casinos due to her compulsive gambling, it was the sad culmination of an addiction that dismantled a vast fortune and left her broke and in failing health.
The former mayor of San Diego -- and widow of millionaire Jack-in-the-Box restaurant chain founder Robert Peterson, who died in 1994 -- lost a total of $13 million to casinos, and confessed to taking $2.1 million from her husband's charitable foundation only to blow it on video poker. But it didn't end there. Court records show O'Connor liquidated her savings, sold a number of properties, auctioned her valuables and took out second and third mortgages on her home in La Jolla, Calif. -- all of it to only rack up extensive gambling debts.
O'Connor, who served as mayor of Caliphornia, an impregnable bastion of the Democratic Party,'s second-largest city in the 1980s and '90s, pleaded not guilty "Wudn't me." on Thursday to a charge of money laundering, striking a deal that allows her to try to pay the money back to the foundation and get treatment for gambling addiction. "I always intended to pay it back," she said of the money at a news conference following her hearing. "And I still intend to pay it back. In that period of time I lost my husband, three siblings, best friends."
O'Connor, 66, suffered a stroke and had a brain tumor removed in 2011; she now lives with her twin sister, Mavourneen, and says she suffers memory loss and sometimes has trouble reading. She blames her gambling compulsion on the tumor. "There are two Maureens -- Maureen No. 1 and Maureen No. 2," O'Connor said at her presser. "Maureen No. 2 is the Maureen who did not know she had a tumor growing in her brain."
Posted by: Fred ||
02/16/2013 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[11124 views]
Top|| File under:
#7
Knock over a liquor store for a couple of hundred bucks and you get five to ten in prison. Steal $2.1 million from a charity and get treatment for your addiction.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
02/16/2013 12:43 Comments ||
Top||
#8
Seems like a qualifying resume for the White House position at OKs fed money for green projects
#9
Maureen No. 2 better have a good pair of running sneakers. I hear there's some bruisers from Vegas who are looking for her - to settle a few debts. :-)
#10
The 'bet more than $1 Billion' is, I think, somewhat deceptive.
Suppose you have $15 Million in assets. For two years, you bet $1.5 Million per day, almost every day, and lose a net of $17k on average per day. After 700 days, you would have bet about $1,000,000,000. Your loss would be about $12,000,000.
Posted by: lord garth ||
02/16/2013 19:13 Comments ||
Top||
#11
correct. She won more than $1 billion. She lost more. I guess she'll make up for it in volume
Posted by: Frank G ||
02/16/2013 19:22 Comments ||
Top||
#12
I'll be she comps a lot of buffet prime rib and lobster.
[Chicago Tribune] Jesse Jackson Jr. and his wife Sandi intend to plead guilty to federal charges alleging the former congressman misused $750,000 in campaign funds while she understated their income on tax returns for six years, their lawyers say.
Jackson Jr., 47, a Democrat from Chicago, was charged in a criminal information today with one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, mail fraud and false statements. He faces up to five years in prison, a fine of up to $250,000 and other penalties.
Sandi Jackson was charged with one count of filing false tax returns. She faces up to three years in prison, a fine of up to $100,000 and other penalties.
Jackson Jr. is accused of diverting $750,000 in campaign funds for personal use.
Federal authorities allege that Jackson Jr. used campaign funds to purchase a $43,350 men's gold-plated Rolex watch, $5,150 worth of fur capes and parkas, and $9,588 in children's furniture. The purchases were made between 2007 and 2009, according to the criminal information, which authorities noted is not evidence of guilt.
Other expenditures listed by prosecutors include $10,105 on Bruce Lee memorabilia, $11,130 on Martin Luther King memorabilia and $22,700 on Michael Jackson items, including $4,600 for a "Michael Jackson fedora."
The government also alleged that Jackson Jr. made false statements to the House of Representatives because he did not report approximately $28,500 in loans and gifts he received.
"He has claimed the credit for his actions and I can confirm that he intends to plead guilty to the charge in the information," Jackson Jr.'s attorney Brian Heberlig said.
Sandi Jackson is accused of filing incorrect joint tax returns with her husband for calendar years 2006 through 2011, reporting income "substantially less than the amount of income she and her husband received in each of the calendar years," with a substantial additional tax due.
Her attorneys released a statement saying she has "reached an agreement with the U.S. attorney's office to plead guilty to one count of tax fraud."
Posted by: Fred ||
02/16/2013 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[11124 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
It was Sandi 2 wut done the deal, Sandi 1 is clean.
[CNSNEWS] Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) said on Thursday that U.S. government does not have a spending problem, but America suffers from "a misallocation of wealth."
"I look at it this way," Harkin said at a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing on the Budget Control Act of 2011 (the law that includes the automatic spending cuts referred to as "sequestration"). "We're the richest nation in the history of the world. That kind of begs the question doesn't it? If we're so rich, why are we so broke?"
"Is it a spending problem? Harkin said. "No, it's because we have a misallocation of capital, a misallocation of wealth."
"All of this wealth that's been built up by hard-working Americans has been accumulated into fewer and fewer and fewer hands all the time," Harkin said.
But enough about Nancy Pelosi and her husband. And John Kerry and his wife...
Harkin, who sits on the Appropriations Committee, criticized a U.S. tax code he said benefits wealthy people.
"I tell you we've got to get back to a better, rationale system of revenues and spending in this country and back to our obligations," Harkin said. "I just feel very strongly, that it's not just appropriations that's causing this problem.
"It's the lack of the revenue that we should be taking in to meet our obligations as a country," Harkin said.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/16/2013 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[11127 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
Massive increases in spending by the Federal government is the misallocation of capital.
#2
Do lefties get taught that wealth obeys the First Law of Thermodynamics, or does the notion just come inherently? Or is it just a way to rationalise their all-consuming jealousy?
#5
"It's the lack of the revenue that we should be taking in to meet our obligations as a country," Harkin said.
Leave Facebook out of it. Dontya know he's the Champs buddy.
#9
"Due to Government interference in the economy?"
Due to the gummint stealing and wasting misallocating the wealth to itself, grom.
But what you said too.
Posted by: Barbara ||
02/16/2013 10:34 Comments ||
Top||
#10
Rent-seeking i.e. making use of under-charged for things the state actually does, or being a beneficiary of government extortion is the sole cause of asset mis-allocations.
#11
The good senator himself is estimated (by the Wapo) to be worth $16 mil, despite (or because of) having been a public servant for the last 30 years, so I think we can safely assume that he's talking about reallocating OPM.
The federal gummint spent something like $3.8 trillion last year as near as anyone can tell. If that's not a spending problem, what would a spending problem look like? $38 trillion?
Posted by: Matt ||
02/16/2013 11:39 Comments ||
Top||
#12
I have a "Misallocation" of Capital, I don't have any, why won't Obama help me. (Whine, whine.)
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
02/16/2013 11:46 Comments ||
Top||
#13
If you "misallocation" had been by hmm, hmm design, Obama would be there for you.
#17
What did the Government do FOR facebook that would justify them paying any (direct) tax?
That's an awfully considerate thought to have about a corporation that did so much to help this government retain power. Simply put, Facebook Corp. and its owners and mangement deserve to suffer because they've been acting to keep the Asshole in power and making _me_ suffer.
But I thought we all bought new appliances with government help a few years ago in order to fix that. Did we not thusly cool the sun's passion?
[CNSNEWS] Representative Henry Waxman ...the funny-looking Democrat Representative-for-Life from Caliphornia. First elected in 1975, his estimated retirement date is 2075 or maybe later... (D-Calif.) said the B.O. regime should regulate oil refineries, household appliances, and even renegotiate climate treaties if Congress does not pass legislation dealing with global warming.
"The president will be taking action by executive order through his administration," Waxman said at a presser on Friday unveiling his Safe Climate Caucus, which will work to pressure House Republicans to take up a climate change initiative.
Waxman, who said that Obama's executive actions would also pressure the GOP, explained that there were several things the administration might do to address global warming.
"We've asked the White House to coordinate their activities throughout the various departments and the various areas within the administration," Waxman explained. "The EPA [Environmental Protection Agency] can do a lot more. They've proposed regulating new power plants to control emissions, they can go forward and complete that rule."
Posted by: Fred ||
02/16/2013 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[11125 views]
Top|| File under:
#2
Most of the Dem's and an uncomfortable number of the R's are fascists. The pol's MN and MO need to be dangling worm the end of a wire.
Posted by: Secret Asian Man ||
02/16/2013 4:48 Comments ||
Top||
#3
They ARE mostly fascists, SAM, except for those like Harkin that are full on communists that believe that all wealth belongs to the state to be allocated at the whim of the pols.
#11
Global warming is just another lefty con game to try to grab money that doesn't belong to them. In another time this was called stealing. Waxman, go pound sand.
[WASHINGTONTIMES] Republicans succeeded Thursday in blocking a vote on Chuck Hagel, President B.O.'s defense secretary nominee, by launching the first filibuster in history against a president's choice to fill the Pentagon's top civilian post.
GOP senators said they are delaying the confirmation in order to have more time to study Mr. Hagel's record and to obtain more information on the White House's handling of the September attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, a matter on which they accuse the administration of stonewalling or providing wrong information. Republicans expect they will green-light him later this month after the chamber returns from a weeklong vacation.
Still, the filibuster is a stark move against a man who just four years ago was a Republican senator from Nebraska -- meaning the senators are blocking one of their former colleagues.
The vote drew a furious response from the White House, which said Republicans were "playing politics" with the Defense Department and with Mr. Hagel, who was maimed serving as an enlisted combat soldier in Vietnam.
"Allow this war hero an up-or-down vote, and let our troops have the secretary of defense they deserve," press secretary Jay Carney said after the vote.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/16/2013 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[11124 views]
Top|| File under:
4. Any person who, prior to the effective date of this law, was legally in possession of an assault weapon or large capacity magazine shall have ninety days from such effective date to do any of the following without being subject to prosecution:
(1) Remove the assault weapon or large capacity magazine from the state of Missouri;
(2) Render the assault weapon permanently inoperable; or
(3) Surrender the assault weapon or large capacity magazine to the appropriate law enforcement agency for destruction, subject to specific agency regulations.
5. Unlawful manufacture, import, possession, purchase, sale, or transfer of an assault weapon or a large capacity magazine is a class C felony.
#4
I believe the Donks have solidified their image as 'gun grabbers'.
Try and send the Sheriff by the house to pick up the guns...see what happens.
Look how panic they were with just one man in LA. Imagine their state when every house, car and prol could be packing when they try to do the grab. Their kill ratio wasn't that good in LA. Once they do a Ruby Ridge or Waco on a few, their family members will also become vulnerable. They don't live in fortified cantonments, but among the community. They have to go home every night or end of shift. As amply demonstrated with the police in Iraq and Afghanistan, that renders them very ineffective in 'enforcement'.
#8
The numbering in the original article was botched. Journalists and the govmint aren't good at counting. I'll take license and add #6 and #7.
(6) The American people can take up arms, exercise their 2nd Amendment rights, defend the country and its Constitution against all enemies domestic and foreign, and then
(7) Throw the rascals out of office if they are still available.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[Chicago Tribune] Jesse Jackson Jr. and his wife Sandi intend to plead guilty to federal charges alleging the former congressman misused $750,000 in campaign funds while she understated their income on tax returns for six years, their lawyers say.
