[CITY-JOURNAL.ORG] Did New York City mayor Bill de Blasio run a pay-to-play money laundering operation out of City Hall? It’s looking that way. Corruption-busting U.S. attorney Preet Bharara is probing the progressive icon’s political fundraising to determine whether those seeking something from city government were expected to pony up substantial sums that were then funneled to the mayor’s political allies.
The clearest example of these machinations was the mayor’s 2014 effort to win the New York state senate for the Democrats. The mayor--or his advisers--allegedly circumvented limits on individual campaign contributions by having wealthy real-estate developers and powerful public-employee unions make major contributions to upstate county Democratic committees. Bharara’s office is now investigating claims that those committees passed the money they received directly to designated local candidates, in violation of state law. The candidates were supposedly informed that they had to spend the money through specific New York City strategic consultants, all closely tied to the de Blasio administration and, just as important, to the Working Families Party--the political engine that launched de Blasio’s unlikely rise in 2013. The only surprise is that it has taken this long for these schemes to come to light.
The Working Families Party was a late-nineties creation of labor unions and the now-defunct Acorn (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now.) Taking advantage of New York’s fusion-voting system that allows candidates to run on multiple ballot lines, the WFP gained traction in the 2000s by endorsing liberal "up-ballot" Democrats, and then encouraging people to vote the WFP line in order to maintain ballot position. Its goal, even then, was to wrest the state senate from Republicans’ decades-long control. The WFP leveraged its expertise in door-to-door campaigning to develop a superb political field operation that excelled at identifying likely voters and turning them out on Election Day. Funded heavily by public-sector labor unions such as DC 37 (municipal workers), the UFT (teachers), and SEIU 1199 (hospital workers), the WFP has become a major force in New York politics. It now has branches in New Jersey, Connecticut, and other states.
[NYPOST] The animal-rights group NYCLASS revealed Thursday that it has been subpoenaed as part of the widening corruption probe related to Mayor de Blasio’s fund-raising efforts.
News of the subpoena for the group -- which is fighting to ban horse carriages in the city -- came hours after de Blasio tried to rewrite history by denying he had ever promised to enforce such a ban immediately upon taking office.
During a testy exchange with news hounds, Hizzoner was confronted with the campaign pledge he made to curry favor with animal-rights activists.
"It’s just not accurate. I said my top priority was pre-K, and I think everyone on earth knows that," the mayor said.
But, as reported by The Post, de Blasio told a Midtown candidates forum in March 2013 that riding to the rescue of equine buggy-pullers was at the top of his political agenda.
"I would ban the horse carriages in Central Park within the first week on the job," he said at the time.
On Thursday, de Blasio was asked about his "somewhat confusing or bewildering" continued support for a carriage-horse ban, given the questions surrounding his ties to former Edison Properties boss Steven Nislick and Wendy Neu, director of Hugo Neu Recycling.
Nislick and Neu are leaders of NYCLASS, and records show they and other associates ponied up at least $900,000 in contributions to de Blasio’s 2013 mayoral campaign and his Campaign for One New York nonprofit, which he recently said was shutting down amid criticism.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/28/2016 00:00 ||
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#1
With all the demands from his 'progressive' supporters to ban all offshore oil & gas production, all fracking, and any pipeline or import terminal expansion or new high voltage electric lines, he'd better not ban horses - they'll be the only means of transportation of people and freight.
#5
He belongs behind bars for what he did to those students.
But this prosecution bothers me in that it smacks of thought-crime. Its now a crime to know what the law is in regard to reporting requirements and structure one's affairs in such a manner as to avoid them? That doesn't sound very small-government/liberty to me.
#6
The payment of the "hush money" was legal. The method, under "Structuring" laws was not. The structuring laws were an attempt to thwart "drug" cash and RICO cash. Now the Feds can ensnare almost anyone, not just those dealing in illegal or unreported cash. Remember, ultimately Capone only was convicted of tax evasion, not for any underlying conduct. Hastert was convicted for structuring and lying to the feds, not for any underlying conduct, but the judge did consider it. Thus his upward departure from the prosecutor's sentencing recommendation.
#5
Why's it so unbelievable? America wanted Europe to stop going to war with itself every generation and build a strong bulwark against the Soviets. Of course we would encourage unity. Tinfoil hat? Huh?
#6
A little late in the game. Charlemagne, Napoleon, that Austrian. I think the concept has been around for a while. If it was a CIA plot, someone succeeded in herding cats.
#7
Particularly in recent years, I have become very critical of the Klingon culture, but my views pale in comparison to the views of many in Europe and Africa. It's become something of a meme in some sectors.
#9
US might have pushed for Benilux (get Germany and her neighbors so economically entwined war seemed impossible) but political union that could form an uncontrolled counter to US power? Not likely.
[NYPOST] For the past few weeks, Republican campaign professionals and conservatives who are seeing the GOP nomination heading into Donald Trump’s hands have been counseling anti-Trump voters not to panic and consoling themselves with the notion that things will turn around for Ted Cruz when the final weeks of the campaign shift to the Midwest and mountain states.
After Trump’s astounding five-for-five primary night, by margins that were likely surprising even for Trump fans, it’s now Indiana or bust. If Trump wins the primary next week in the Hoosier State, Cruz is toast and Trump will almost certainly be the Republican nominee.
There’s no putting lipstick on this pig. Cruz’s numbers Tuesday night, like his numbers in New York last week, were beyond horrible. With six weeks to go before voting concludes, the man conservatives are hoping can overcome Trump with his clever delegate game and more serious mien is getting 10 to 15 percent of the vote in major states.
It isn’t only that the not-Trump vote is failing to coalesce around Cruz -- he’s going backward.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/28/2016 00:00 ||
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#1
Cruz isn't 'crumbling' - it's more like he's getting run over by Trump. Keep working the delegates, win a few out west, and 'we're on to Cleveland'.
#4
I thought asking the wall flower to dance after everyone else is on the floor was rather poor form. Someone should have given Fiorina the nod the day after she dropped out of the race. She appears to be the only one with solid plans for the economy and foreign affairs.
#5
Besoeker: If she ends up on the ticket against Hillary expect 10,000s of ex-HP workers to help Hillary destroy her.
She killed a lot of gooses laying golden eggs through poor business decision making.
#6
The amount of overt bias from parts of the supposedly "conservative" side of the media world has been astounding, with Breitbart and Drudge going over the cliff, and a lot of others doing a great job of mimicking the leftist media. Coulter and Ingraham fawning. Completely abandoning small government, pro-life, pro-family, policy and facts, and so on, all for a mob scene and the equivalent of Hope N Change.
She did a decent enough job at HP. Trends in the business were heavily against HP's business model, but the company survived and even prospered to an extent.
#8
I thought she would be Trump's running mate too. I guess Cruz is playing Go, not chess. Trump is playing Connect4, and Kasich is playing with himself.
Posted by: Injun Protector of the Sith6311 ||
04/28/2016 7:38 Comments ||
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#9
I voted for Cruz in the Texas primary, but picking a VP before the convention smacks of desperation no matter who the pick is.
#10
She killed a lot of gooses laying golden eggs through poor business decision making.
Posted by 3dc
Business trends, politics, and boards of directors are also contributing factors. As the old saying goes, 'Success has many fathers, failure only one.'
#12
I see this as a desperation move. Cruz wants to see if the polls in a Cruz/Fiorina vs HIllary match up go up or down. If they go up he'll stay in and fight for that second round of a contested victor. If they plummet he'll probably drop out before the convention and give it all to Trump to avoid a contested convention (with a different candidate) that might tear the party apart.
I suspect the later. Carly is impressive but the ex-HP folks I know would actively go against here. There is hostility and it is deep.
#13
She did a decent enough job at HP. Trends in the business were heavily against HP's business model, but the company survived and even prospered to an extent.
I've heard that argument. I don't buy it. Fiorina flopped at HP just like she flopped at Bell Labs. Instead of working to make HP's PC division competitive, she bought Compaq. Anti-competitive. Then the entire PC business went to China. These days HP is merely a wholesale importer of Chinese built computers and printers. Sooner or later the Chinese will put HP out it's misery. I want a national conversation about why we can't make computers in the USA anymore and Trump is the only one who will talk about it. Fiorina is part of the problem and if Cruz can't see that then so is he.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
04/28/2016 12:10 Comments ||
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#14
Besoeker: If she ends up on the ticket against Hillary expect 10,000s of ex-HP workers to help Hillary destroy her.
She killed a lot of gooses laying golden eggs through poor business decision making.
She was competing against the best in the very fast-moving and competitive technology sector. How many GOP pols could have revived HP? Nokia and Blackberry went from heroes to zeroes in the blink of an eye, not because their executives were incompetent, but because the competition was just better.
HP was a leader only in the crumbling printer and PC businesses. Printers were slowing down because of e-mail, and in PC's, even best-of-breed Dell ended up stumbling and going private, where it is starting to generate losses.
Note that any lingering resentment from HP workers was insufficient to derail her quest for the GOP senatorial nomination. Whether her residual CA political support is enough to help Cruz clinch the GOP nomination is something we'll find out real soon.
#15
I see I see this as a desperation move. this as a desperation move.
This isn't a desperation move. It's a CA move. Fiorina won the GOP senatorial nomination. If HP workers hate her guts, they don't vote in GOP primaries.
Cruz hopes she has residual support from that campaign. If Cruz denies Trump a victory in CA, Trump fails to hit 1237. Cruz has a good shot at the nomination if it goes to a second ballot, given that GOP delegates are much more informed about the candidates and would probably prefer an actual conservative over Trump.
#16
I want a national conversation about why we can't make computers in the USA anymore
Apple was the last major US computer manufacturer to assemble its computers stateside. It had the best gross margins in the business. Even it started losing money. If Apple can't bolt its computers together stateside, nobody can. If it hadn't moved production abroad, it wouldn't have survived the 90's.
Protectionism isn't some kind of magic economic salve. Most economies around the world are protectionistic. Brazil and Indonesia are way more protectionistic than Japan and Korea. Why aren't the latter world-beaters despite their closed markets?
#17
It's over Ted. You are a good man, go back to the Senate and fight the good fight.
Posted by: regular joe ||
04/28/2016 12:32 Comments ||
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#18
HP used to make way more than computers or printers. My co-workers and I, when developing the early digital cellular, used to buy their very expensive test equipment like a cocaine addict with coke. They didn't respond at all when others came out with cheaper and better products. Even the criminals came out with crack in response to cocaine's high price. I compare it to cocaine as any piece of test equipment from HP was usually priced from $50,000 to $90,000 and one was never enough for a testbed. One of our testlab's alone had over 1.5 billion dollars of equipment in it. At least a third of that was HP equipment at the beginning. By the end? Damn near nothing was HP.
The test equipment business is now a German company.
#19
I guess the HP point I am trying to make is that their whole suite of executive decision makers that Fiona put together didn't make decisions that favored the survival of a profitable company.
#21
HP used to make way more than computers or printers. My co-workers and I, when developing the early digital cellular, used to buy their very expensive test equipment like a cocaine addict with coke. They didn't respond at all when others came out with cheaper and better products.
And that's the result of superior competition, not necessarily inferior management. Gerstner at IBM was lionized as some kind of management genius, but when he left, IBM was no better off in competitive terms than it was before he started. His specialty was cost-cutting, not product development. The reason IBM survived was its pre-existing dominance in obscenely-profitable big iron (that had margins similar to or exceeding Apple's iPhone), which Gerstner really had little effect on, pro or con. Management can only do so much.
Steve Jobs was a product development genius, but he was very much an exception. And for every Jobs, there are numerous tech background CEO's who lost to him. Not because they were incompetent, but because others were better. Competition at that level is like the Olympics. It's hard to blame Fiorina for losing out to the top 1% of the top 1% of the top 1%.
#22
I don't see protectionism as being a dirty word if we're protecting ourselves from an aggressive, hostile, totalitarian dictatorship like China. Competition is a good thing but you can't expect American workers to compete against slaves in a communist country like that. When they start recognizing basic human rights and instituting policies to protect the environment like we do maybe we'll talk.
I would add that maybe Carly should offshore herself. I mean, if she wants to move all of her company's manufacturing and support operations overseas then why didn't she just move the whole damn company including headquarters and executive officers overseas?
But the bottom line is that we need to understand why we're not competitive anymore and try to do something about it instead of just admitting defeat and becoming a Third World country ourselves.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
04/28/2016 13:31 Comments ||
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#23
BTW, when Fiorina ran for the Senate against Barbara Boxer I voted for a third party candidate. If by some miracle she had won the Republican nomination for president and ran against Hillary I would have done the same again. There is indeed a great deal of resentment in this state among people who are familiar with HP. I was never an HP worker but my company was an HP customer for many years and I watched with sadness as they declined. The good HP workers either left or were laid off and if they were replaced at all it was with the mediocre and the foreigners.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
04/28/2016 13:40 Comments ||
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#24
She flopped at Bell Labs and Lucent (related) and HP? What did she have going for her?
Was she part Native American?
Posted by: Bobby ||
04/28/2016 14:26 Comments ||
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#25
Cruz today on Boehner's calling him Lucifer:
"I think John Boehner has made it crystal clear. John Boehner and his remarks describe Donald Trump as his “texting and golfing buddy.” So if you want someone that’s a texting and golfing buddy, if you’re happy with John Boehner as speaker of the house, and you want a president like John Boehner, Donald Trump’s your man."
#26
It will never happen, but wouldn't it be preferable if Presidential candidates campaigned with their intended Cabinet and other key appointees. Or at the very least, naming people they would like to appoint? It would be a lot more meaningful than the continual bombast we get - which is why it won't happen.
#28
Time to cut a real deal. Cruz bows out in return for open SCOTUS seat. If he's a real conservative, it'll give him more power to truly shape the next twenty years rather than 4 or 8.
#29
Cruz for Supreme Court? Arguably a better place for a Constitutionalist. And he is only in his 40s, so there would be a hard core conservative voice on the court for decades.
The problem is that Trump has to win. That's not going to happen. Media love fest ends at the GOP convention, and the knives come out. Plus the Clinton and Soros attack machine starts up. And the Trump University fraud trial happens to kick off too.
Trump is setting up for the biggest election flop of all time. His fans are too self blinded to see the huge flaws for what they are.
#30
This is not over yet. At least not until after Indiana and California.
The thing is if Cruz stops Trump, neither of them will be the nominee. He is fooling himself if the thinks establishment tools like Boehner and Ryan and company would give him any chance.
You are on the mark. In the U.S. due to an armada of government (local, state, federal) regulations, laws, wage controls, etc. etc. etc. etc. that are all anti-business, you cannot compete against third world slave labor.
The hypocrisy of it all is the Chamber has convinced the very people who built the anti-American business tar pit to import the third world workforce where ever possible. Cheap labor while still allowing for excessive/expensive regulations.
[WASHINGTONEXAMINER] Kathleen Matthews, wife of MSNBC host Chris My Thigh is Tingling! Matthews ... the late Tip O'Neill's former gopher who has magazines with centerfolds of Barack Obama in his bathroom... , was trounced Tuesday evening in Maryland's 8th Congressional District Democratic primary, but her husband's employer made no mention this defeat in its election coverage.
Polls closed in Maryland at 8 p.m. Tuesday, and State Sen. Jamie Raskin, 53, was declared the projected winner at around 11 p.m. that evening.
MSNBC's only mention of Matthews' role in the Maryland Democratic primary came at around 6 p.m., when Chuck Todd reported that she was in a three-way race for the nomination. His namedrop came well before Matthews was declared the loser in the race.
The failed candidate's husband, "Hardball" anchor Chris Matthews, took the evening off to be with her on election night.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/28/2016 00:00 ||
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#1
Another interesting point in that race was David Trone (owner of shopping store chain Total Wine) dumped over 9 million dollars of his own money to come in second place and get ~36k votes. That district must be worth hundreds of millions to the person who holds that congressional seat.
A "pervasive army" of more than 25,000 federal lawyers have raked in $26.2 billion from U.S. taxpayers since 2007, according to a new report by the non-profit government watchdog Open The Books.
"Today's federal government is protected by a pervasive army of attorneys," Open The Books founder and the report's author Adam Andrzejewski told The Daily Caller News Foundation. "At a force size of 25,000, that's bigger than a conventional combat division." Nearly 2 divisions, depending on the makeup of the unit
Open The Books also found:
In 2014, the top federal lawyer salary was $266,469.
Salaries paid to more than 50 attorneys on the federal payroll topped $250,000 since 2007.
Since 2007, 19 bonuses exceeded $50,000. The top bonus was $83,900 and the second largest was $62,895.
If the attorneys working for the federal government formed a nation-state, it would rank 158th in global GDP, with $3.3 billion in annual spending. That's more than combined GDPs of vacation paradises St. Lucia, the British Virgin Islands and Saint Kitts and Nevis.
"The lawyers aren't the problem per se," the report said. "They simply serve at the pleasure of entrenched politicians and bureaucrats. Federal spending on attorneys both reflects and perpetuates the size, scope, expanse and inertia of today's federal government." Little wonder that the lawyer special interest groups donate more to politicians than any other group.
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.
[CITY-JOURNAL.ORG] Did New York City mayor Bill de Blasio run a pay-to-play money laundering operation out of City Hall? It’s looking that way. Corruption-busting U.S. attorney Preet Bharara is probing the progressive icon’s political fundraising to determine whether those seeking something from city government were expected to pony up substantial sums that were then funneled to the mayor’s political allies.
Chris 
A "pervasive army" of more than 25,000 federal lawyers have raked in $26.2 billion from U.S. taxpayers since 2007, according to a new report by the non-profit government watchdog Open The Books.
