Sunday, July 22, 2012

Sen. Dianne Feinstein Profiteers Off Foreclosures Her Criminal Bankster Donors Caused


Specifically, for at least 15 years, Feinstein has appeared to support government contracts that push federal funds toward companies co-owned or governed by her powerful, billionaire husband, Richard C. Blum.

The victor in yesterday's California primary in the U.S. Senate, incumbent Democrat Dianne Feinstein, has long faced questions about potential conflicts of interest in Congress, according to Breitbart News sources. Specifically, for at least 15 years, Feinstein has appeared to support government contracts that push federal funds toward companies co-owned or governed by her powerful, billionaire husband, Richard C. Blum.
Breitbart News found evidence of possibly inappropriate influence from the period when Feinstein served on the Military Construction Veterans Affairs and Related Agencies Subcommittee (MILCON), which supervises military construction and oversees quality of life concerns for veterans, including the building of clinics and hospitals for wounded soldiers and housing for military families.

APPROPRIATING FUNDS THROUGH THE U.S. SENATE MILITARY–CONSTRUCTION SUBCOMMITTEE
Financial disclosure reports from 2001-2005 indicate that MILCON--under Feinstein’s leadership--cleared appropriations that were eventually funneled as $1.551 billion worth of military construction contracts to URS Corporation, a San Francisco-based engineering services firm, and Perini (now Tutor Perini), both partially owned by her husband’s investment firms (and their investors) at the time (URS reportedly earned $791 million, and Perini earned $759 million).
Public records reportedly show that Blum paid only $4 a share for the Perini stock, but was able to sell three million shares in 2005 for $23.75 each. (Federal lawmakers are required to file financial disclosure statements under the Ethics in Government Act of 1978. The forms are published each year to disclose any potential conflicts of interest with their or their spouses' business decisions.)
The couple earned somewhere between $500,000 and $5M from capital gains on URS and Perini stock, and another $1.3M-$4M from CB Richard Ellis, a global real estate service company. In total, the couple’s worth rose $10 million to an estimated $40 million. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, Blum has served on the corporate boards for both URS and CB Richard Ellis.
Brian Weiss, a press spokesman for Feinstein at the U.S. Senate, told Breitbart News that no conflict of interest existed. In a detailed e-mail response to questions, Weiss wrote the following:
Senator Feinstein sought the advice of the Senate Ethics Committee about whether any conflict existed. The committee indicated that Senator Feinstein could consider, debate and vote on appropriations bills in the subcommittee, the committee and full Senate. The Department of Defense awards contracts—not Congress. Senator Feinstein (and her staff) had no involvement in which entities were awarded military construction contracts.
According to Peter Byrne, a veteran, left-wing, anti-war journalist who has spent several years investigating Feinstein on location in California, that’s not true.
“From 2002 to 2005, URS and Perini went from having very little in military construction contracts to having billions of dollars in such contracts,” he told Breitbart News in an series of exclusive interviews. “After December 2005, Feinstein no longer had a discernible financial interest in the contracts that were vetted by MILCON because her husband abruptly divested of his family's URS and Perini stock--taking a substantial profit worth many millions of dollars that was directly caused by the military construction bonanza.”
In a March 21, 2007 Metroactive story penned by Byrne, he wrote: “As MILCON leader, Feinstein relished the details of military construction, even micromanaging one project at the level of its sewer design. She regularly took junkets to military bases around the world to inspect the construction projects, some of which were contracted to her husband’s inquiries, Perini Corp and URS Corp.”
And that’s not the only allegation involving MILCON.
According to a 2004 San Francisco Chronicle report, “Feinstein has also received scrutiny for husband Richard Blum’s extensive business dealings with China and her past trade issues with the country.”
The story was that after URS bought a substantial stake in EG&G, a leading provider of technical services and management to the military, from the Carlyle Group in 2002, EG&G subsequently received a $600 million defense contract.
Byrne also reported in his March 2007 expose that according to SEC filings listed in December 2006 report, Blum’s entities owned a total of $1 billion in stock in three companies that all “won considerable favor from the budgets of the Department of Defense and the Department of Veteran’s Affairs,”--Boston Scientific Corporation, Kinetic Concepts, Inc., and CB Richard Ellis.
Owen Blicksilver, Blum’s personal spokesman, dismissed any improper connection between MILCON, Perini and Feinstein: “Positions in Perini and URS were both fully liquidated in 2005. My assumption is they have received government contracts in the last six years and undoubtedly received them in the years prior to Blum Capital’s investment.”
Surprisingly, MILCON isn’t the only shadow haunting the California senator.
ALLOCATING TARP FUNDS TO THE FDIC – THE CB ELLIS CONNECTION
On April 21, 2009, the Washington Times broke an exclusive story that Feinstein proposed legislation to direct $25 billion in taxpayer money to the Federal Depository Insurance Corporation.
The alleged Blum connection was that the FDIC had just awarded Blum’s real estate firm a profitable contract to resell foreclosed properties at compensation rates higher than the industry norms.
According to the Washington Times, “Mrs. Feinstein’s intervention on behalf of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. was unusual: the California Democrat isn’t a member of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs with jurisdiction over FDIC; and the agency is supposed to operate from money it raises from bank-paid insurance payments--not direct federal dollars.”
Documents obtained by the newspaper exposed that Feinstein had sent a letter to the FDIC on October 30, 2008 offering to help it secure funds to help them stave off ensuing foreclosures.
That letter was sent only a few days before CB Richard Ellis Group (the commercial real estate firm that Blum serves as board chairman) had won a contract to sell foreclosed properties that FDIC was taking on from failed banks.
According to Weiss, “this is an allegation that has totally been discredited.”

(THE STAGGERING NUMBER of FORECLOSURES IN CA ARE DUE PRIMARILY TO FEINSTEIN’S PAYMASTERS, CRIMINAL BANKSTERS WELLS FARGO and BANK of AMERICA)

Feinstein’s explanation was that the senator simply introduced legislation to allocate $25 billion from the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) in 2009 because California had the third highest number of foreclosures in the nation.
“Senator Feinstein learned of FDIC Chair Sheila Bair’s proposal for foreclosure relief from news reports, expressed her support in a letter, and introduced legislation to implement it,” Weiss wrote to Breitbart News. “She was unaware of CBRE’s bid for an FDIC contract so it clearly played no role in her decision to introduce legislation. The Inspector General at the FDIC reviewed this and concluded there was ‘no improper influence’ in the awarding of the contract.”
LaJuan Williams-Young, a spokeswoman for the FDIC, declined to explain why CBRE was chosen and instead simply defended the agency: “There are four other contractors that perform similar work for the Corporation.”
According to Tom Fitton, President of Judicial Watch, a non-profit organization dedicated to monitoring Washington ethics, Feinstein’s explanation isn’t adequate. He says that neither the FDIC nor MILCON connections pass muster under the U.S. Senate Ethics Rules or the U.S. Criminal Code.
“In these cases, she was voting on bills that ultimately benefited her husband’s companies . . . she knew, everyone knew what would come out of those bills, and at the least she should have known where that money could have gone, and that simply doesn’t stand scrutiny.”
When asked about Feinstein and her husband benefitting from all of these contracts as well as the FDIC legislation, Weiss simply responded, “All items referred to above are Richard Blum’s separate property relating to his business . . . Senator Feinstein is not involved with and does not discuss any of her husband’s business decisions.”
Blicksilver mirrored Weiss’ response, saying that, “Blum Capital Partners has a strict confidentiality policy which Mr. Blum and other members of the firm adhere to. As such, he does not discuss the Firm’s investments with the Senator.”
A MYSTERIOUS GRANT FROM THE U.S. DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY
Feinstein’s most recent controversy emerges from Breitbart News editor Peter Schweizer’s book Throw Them All Out, which reveals that on November 18, 2009 she and her husband invested $1 million into Amyris Biotechnologies, a “green” company focused on plant-based renewable fuels and chemicals.
Just weeks after her investment in Amyris, the company received a $24 million grant from the Department of Energy (DOE) to build a pilot plant where altered yeast would turn sugar into hydrocarbons. Shortly thereafter, Amyris went public with an IPO that collected $85 million. It is unknown at this time how much Feinstein’s investment benefited from the grant.
Weiss’ response?
“The purchase of the stock in Amyris by Richard Blum was disclosed on Senator Feinstein’s financial disclosure in May of 2010. In addition, the value of the stock in Amyris is also disclosed on Senator Feinstein’s financial disclosure forms as an asset that is owned solely by her spouse. Senator Feinstein never discussed the purchase of this stock with her husband. Senator Feinstein is not involved with and does not discuss any of her husband’s business decisions.”
Feinstein revealed the Amyris connection in her May 2010 public disclosure reports, but Schweizer says that’s not what’s most important.
“This is the standard politician's response,” Schweizer told Breitbart News. They say, ‘I disclosed it, so that makes it okay, or ‘I don't talk to my spouse about their financial decisions so I’m in the clear.’ There's a reason members of Congress are required to disclose their spouse's financial transactions. Let’s face it--politicians have been known to be less than straightforward with the truth.”



YOU CAN BLAME THE OLD WHORE SEN. DIANNE FEINSTEIN FOR THE FACT AMERICANS CAN’T RENEGOTIATE THEIR MORTGAGES IN BANKRUPTCY COURT.
WHORE FEINSTEIN, AMERICA’S BIGGEST WAR PROFITEER, HAS TAKEN HUGE BRIBES FROM CRIMINAL BANKSTERS WELLS FARGO and BANK of AMERICA. SHE FRONTED FOR THE BANKSTERS’ BANKRUPTCY REFORM EVEN THOUGH HER PAYMASTERS AT WELLS FARGO HAD HAD THEIR CA MORTGAGE LICENSE REVOKED SINCE 2003 FOR CORPORATE FRAUD.
NO CRIME BY ANY OF HER CRIMINAL BANKSTER PAYMASTERS UPSETS THIS OLD WHORE!
WHEN THE BANKSTER-WRITTEN “REFORM” CAME TO A VOTE, FEINSTEIN, BOXER, CLINTON AND BIDEN VOTED AS THE BANKSTERS INSTRUCTED. WHILE OBAMA DID NOT VOTE FOR THE BANKSTERS’ “REFORM”, HE WENT LIMP WHEN HE WAS HANDING OUT TO HIS BANKSTER DONORS BILLIONS IN WELFARE.
NO PRESIDENT IN HISTORY HAS TAKEN MORE MONEY FROM BANKSTERS THAN OBAMA!
HIS CRIMINAL BANKSTERS’ PROFITS ARE SOARING… SO ARE THEIR CRIMES…. And  FORECLOSURES!
California Gold Rush? Righting Underwater Mortgages
Posted: 07/16/2012 5:21 pm
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Ever since the housing bubble collapsed, the Federal government has refused to take major initiatives to help underwater homeowners. As a result, we are likely to see close to one million foreclosures both this year and next, with the numbers only gradually slipping back to normal levels by the end of the decade.
The inaction cannot be attributed to a lack of opportunity. At the time the TARP bailout was being debated in the fall of 2008 many progressive members of Congress wanted to have a provision that would at least temporarily alter bankruptcy law to allow judges to rewrite the terms of a mortgage.
Under current law, home mortgages are treated differently than any other type of debt. Bankruptcy judges are prohibited from altering the terms of a mortgage in any way. If a homeowner cannot meet the terms of the mortgage, they lose the house. Congress could have allowed bankruptcy judges to rewrite mortgages that were written during the housing bubble frenzy, but it backed away from this opportunity.
Similarly, Congress could have temporarily changed the rules on foreclosure to allow foreclosed homeowners to stay in their homes for a substantial period of time (e.g. five years) as renters paying the market rent. This would have assured underwater homeowners substantial housing security.
Either of these measures would have radically altered the relationship between investors and homeowners. They would have given homeowners a serious weapon that they could use to threaten lenders and hopefully persuade them to agree to modify underwater mortgages. However, since Congress did not take any action to shore up the position of homeowners, we are still sitting here with more than 11 million homeowners underwater five years after house prices began their plunge.
This failure at the national level provides the backdrop for a plan by a group of investors, Mortgage Resolution Partners (MRP), to try to get through some of the morass in the housing market. MRP has been working with public officials in San Bernardino, California, to arrange to use the government's power of eminent domain to condemn underwater mortgages.
As background, San Bernardino is ground zero in the housing bubble. Prices doubled or even tripled in the bubble years. They then plunged when the bubble burst, with prices now often less than half of their 2006 peaks. Half of the mortgages in the county are underwater.
This collapse has not only destroyed the life savings of hundreds of thousands of homeowners, it also has wrecked the economy of the region. In this context, the prospect of using the power to condemn property to bring many underwater homeowners back above water must sound very appealing.
MRP's plan is to have the county condemn underwater mortgages in private mortgage pools. The logic is that these underwater mortgages are causing serious harm to the community. When people are seriously underwater in their homes they are likely to lack both the means and the incentive to properly maintain their home. Of course, the monthly payment on a mortgage that might exceed the current value of a home by 50 percent or more (and carry a high interest rate) is a huge drain on the purchasing power of homeowners.
The case for focusing on mortgages in private mortgage pools is that it is generally quite difficult to sell these mortgages out of the pool. This means that even if, in principle, it might be advantageous for both the investors and the homeowners to have pools sell underwater mortgages to third parties like MRP who would rewrite the terms, the rules of the mortgage pools makes it unlikely that the mortgage will be sold.
This is exactly the sort of situation where public action like condemnation is appropriate. The public action allows for a solution that can benefit all the parties but is obstructed by bureaucratic rules that were written to cover a different set of circumstances. (It is important to remember that investors can contest in court the compensation they are provided for condemned mortgages to ensure that they get fair market value.)
It is difficult to see a good argument against this approach. Some have claimed that this sort of tactic will cause lenders to be more reluctant to lend in the future. If the point is that lenders may have second thoughts the next time house prices go into a bubble, then we should certainly hope that condemnation will have this effect.
Others have been critical because MRP is a private company that is doing this to make a profit. I've met with several of the top people at MRP, they certainly don't hide the fact that they expect to make money on this deal. But that hardly seems a reason for nixing the plan. There are very few instances where there has been a public condemnation in which private firms didn't stand to profit in some way.
MRP's plan is not going to rescue the country's underwater homeowners. At best it will directly help the limited segment of this group whose mortgages are in private label securities. However, it may serve as an example of the benefits of principal write-downs and perhaps prod Fannie and Freddie, as well as the banks, to be more willing to go this route.

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BARACK OBAMA IS NOTHING BUT BUSH’S THIRD TERM ON STEROIDS!
WAR, WAR, WAR, ENDLESS WAR TO PROTECT THE BORDERS OF MUSLIM DICTATORS WHILE OUR OWN BORDERS ARE LEFT WIDE OPEN TO THE NARCOMEX DRUG CARTELS AND MEXICAN INVADERS!
CA ALONE PUTS OUT $22 BILLION PER YEAR IN WELFARE TO ILLEGALS!
WHAT WOULD $51 BILLION HAVE DONE IF SPEND ON EDUCATION GRANTS TO LEGALS IN OUR BORDERS???????
WHO BENEFITS FROM THE OBAMA WAR MACHINE?
TRY OBAMA DONOR, SEN. DIANNE FEINSTEIN! ONE OF THE MOST CORRUPT POLITICIANS IN HISTORY! AS BUSH’S WAR PROFITEER SHE RAKED IN MILLIONS AND WENT OUT AND BOUGHT HERSELF ANOTHER MANSION, HER $16 MILLION S.F. PLACE ONLY MILES FROM HER S.F. HOTEL WHERE SHE HIRES ILLEGALS BECAUSE THEY WORK “CHEAP” COMPARED TO A LEGAL!
WE CAN’T FIX OUR NATION UNTIL WE RID OURSELVES OF THESE CORRUPT POLITICIANS!
Auditors say billions likely wasted in Iraq work
by ROBERT BURNS | Associated Press – 6 hrs ago
WASHINGTON (AP) — After years of following the paper trail of $51 billion in U.S. taxpayer dollars provided to rebuild a broken Iraq, the U.S. government can say with certainty that too much was wasted. But it can't say how much.
In what it called its final audit report, the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction Funds on Friday spelled out a range of accounting weaknesses that put "billions of American taxpayer dollars at risk of waste and misappropriation" in the largest reconstruction project of its kind in U.S. history.
"The precise amount lost to fraud and waste can never be known," the report said.
The auditors found huge problems accounting for the huge sums, but one small example of failure stood out: A contractor got away with charging $80 for a pipe fitting that its competitor was selling for $1.41. Why? The company's billing documents were reviewed sloppily by U.S. contracting officers or were not reviewed at all.
With dry understatement, the inspector general said that while he couldn't pinpoint the amount wasted, it "could be substantial."
Asked why the exact amount squandered can never be determined, the inspector general's office referred The Associated Press to a report it did in February 2009 titled "Hard Lessons," in which it said the auditors — much like the reconstruction managers themselves — faced personnel shortages and other hazards.
"Given the vicissitudes of the reconstruction effort — which was dogged from the start by persistent violence, shifting goals, constantly changing contracting practices and undermined by a lack of unity of effort — a complete accounting of all reconstruction expenditures is impossible to achieve," the report concluded.
In that same report, the inspector general, Stuart Bowen, recalled what then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld asked when they met shortly after Bowen started in January 2004: "Why did you take this job? It's an impossible task."
By law, Bowen's office reports to both the secretary of defense and the secretary of state. It goes out of business in 2013.
Bowen's office has spent more than $200 million tracking the reconstruction funds, and in addition to producing numerous reports, his office has investigated criminal fraud that has resulted in 87 indictments, 71 convictions and $176 million in fines and other penalties. These include civilians and military members accused of kickbacks, bribery, bid-rigging, fraud, embezzlement and outright theft of government property and funds.
Much, however, apparently got overlooked. Example: A $35 million Pentagon project was started in December 2006 to establish the Baghdad airport as an international economic gateway, and the inspector general found that by the end of 2010 about half the money was "at risk of being wasted" unless someone else completed the work.
Of the $51 billion that Congress approved for Iraq reconstruction, about $20 billion was for rebuilding Iraqi security forces and about $20 billion was for rebuilding the country's basic infrastructure. The programs were run mainly by the Defense Department, the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development.
A key weakness found by Bowen's inspectors was inadequate reviewing of contractors' invoices.
In some cases invoices were checked months after they had been paid because there were too few government contracting officers. Bowen found a case in which the State Department had only one contracting officer in Iraq to validate more than $2.5 billion in spending on a DynCorp contract for Iraqi police training.
"As a result, invoices were not properly reviewed, and the $2.5 billion in U.S. funds were vulnerable to fraud and waste," the report said. "We found this lack of control to be especially disturbing since earlier reviews of the DynCorp contract had found similar weaknesses."
In that case, the State Department eventually reconciled all of the old invoices and as of July 2009 had recovered more than $60 million.
The report touched on a problem that cropped up in virtually every major aspect of the U.S. war effort in Iraq, namely, the consequences of fighting an insurgency that proved more resilient than the Pentagon had foreseen. That not only made reconstruction more difficult, dangerous and costly, but also left the U.S. military unprepared for the grind of multiple troop deployments, the tactics of an adaptable insurgency and the complexity of battlefield wounds. It also left the U.S. government short of the expertise it needed to monitor contractors.
Although the audit was labeled as final, a spokesman for Bowen's office, Christopher M. Griffith, said several more will be done to provide additional details on what the U.S. got for its reconstruction dollars and what was wasted.
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Judicial Watch Announces List of Washington’s “Ten Most Wanted Corrupt Politicians” for 2007
4.  Senator Diane Feinstein (D-CA):  As a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee's subcommittee on military construction, Feinstein reviewed military construction government contracts, some of which were ultimately awarded to URS Corporation and Perini, companies then owned by Feinstein's husband, Richard Blum. While the Pentagon ultimately awards military contracts, there is a reason for the review process. The Senate's subcommittee on Military Construction's approval carries weight. Sen. Feinstein, therefore, likely had influence over the decision making process.  Senator Feinstein also attempted to undermine ethics reform in 2007, arguing in favor of a perk that allows members of Congress to book multiple airline flights and then cancel them without financial penalty.  Judicial Watch’s investigation into this matter is ongoing. 
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 “WHY HASN’T SHE EXPRESSED OUTRAGE ABOUT SOME OF THE POTENTIAL CONFLICTS WITH PEOPLE IN OR CLOSE TO THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION?... COULD IT BE THAT SHE HERSELF HAS SOME ENTANGLEMENTS?”

 "Why hasn't she expressed outrage about some of the potential conflicts with people in or close to the Bush administration?" Lewis said. "Could it be that she herself has some entanglements?"

Blum's firms win multimillion-dollar defense contracts in Iraq, Afghanistan Phillip Matier, Andrew Ross Sunday, April 27, 2003 When it comes to scoring mega-military-related contracts, Sen. Dianne Feinstein's multimillionaire husband, Richard Blum, is right in the thick of things.


 First up: a contract announced last week between the Army and URS Corp., the San Francisco planning and engineering company that specializes in defense work -- and that happens to be partly owned by Blum's investment firm. The contract -- which could grow to $600 million -- is to help with troop mobilization, weapons systems training and anti-terrorism methods. That's on top of a $3.1 billion Army contract that URS snared back in February for weapons systems and homeland defense. Next up: Perini Corp., which qualified earlier this month for as much as $100 million of defense work in Iraq and elsewhere. The Massachusetts-based company is already busy building barracks and other facilities for the new Afghan army -- a separate contract worth $28 million. Blum's investment firm controls about 20 percent of Perini's shares, with the majority held by a group of investors led by company chairman Ron Tutor. Some of Perini's stock is also held by Tutor's West Coast construction company, Tutor-Saliba -- the firm that built the Los Angeles subway system, rebuilt the Oakland Coliseum and put BART into San Francisco International Airport. Tutor-Saliba also oversaw construction of SFO's new international terminal - - work that is under investigation by the city attorney's office for alleged overbilling. But it's Blum's ties to URS -- in which he controls about a quarter of the stock -- that are certain to raise the most questions. In July, URS acquired defense contractor EG&G (the technical services branch that won the $600 million contract) from the Carlyle Group investment firm. That's the outfit that boasts ex-President George H.W. Bush, former Secretary of State James Baker and ex-British Prime Minister John Major as advisers. In exchange, Carlyle received cash and a chunk of URS stock worth a total of $500 million. What's more, a top Carlyle manager now sits alongside Blum on URS' board of directors. Celia Wexler, research director for Common Cause in Washington, D.C., says all the defense and homeland security deals involving Blum-connected companies raise concern of political hanky-panky -- especially with talk of the United States spending $100 billion to rebuild Iraq. "You don't want this process to be tainted by the possibility that there is any favoritism involved -- whether it's to the husband of a powerful Democratic senator or someone close to the Bush administration," Wexler said. "In the end, you want a process that is competitive, accountable and open. It's the only way there will be confidence the process is not larded by cronyism or inside deals." Both Blum and Feinstein -- along with representatives of both URS and Perini -- said all the deals have been on the up and up. "Sen. Feinstein has no say or involvement whatsoever in how (Defense Department) contracts are awarded," said Blum spokesman Owen Blicksilver. He added that URS -- with 27,000 employees worldwide -- is "a big public company that bids on dozens of public contracts . . . and as a matter of policy, the board of directors -- of which Mr. Blum is a member -- is never told what the company is bidding on." As for Blum's Perini involvement, Blicksilver said that Blum doesn't serve on the board and that the company represents less than 1 percent of his overall investments. "So his benefit from any contract to Perini is (minuscule)," Blicksilver said. Feinstein spokesman Howard Gantman similarly dismissed any ethics concerns, saying none of the contracts is voted on by the Senate. "We have checked with the Ethics Committee to make sure there is no conflict of interest, and have been told there are no conflicts," Gantman said. By the way, we questioned the office of Rep. Henry Waxman, the Los Angeles Democrat and House Government Reform Committee member whose protest recently halted the awarding of a defense contract to Vice President Dick Cheney's old company, Halliburton. "That's a fundamentally different situation," said Waxman's chief of staff, Phil Schiliro. His boss objected to a Halliburton subsidiary being awarded a no-bid contract to repair Iraqi oil fields because the firm had just paid $2 million to settle a claim that it had overcharged the government on an earlier contract, Schiliro said. "The government didn't allow any other bidders to compete for the contract, and gave Kellogg Brown & Root (the Halliburton subsidiary) the kind of contract it had just abused," Schiliro said. Charles Lewis, executive of the nonpartisan Center for Public Integrity watchdog group in Washington, says that "regardless of whether there is a direct conflict of interest, it's useful to know that the spouse of a sitting senator is getting richer because of what's going on in the world."
“WHY HASN’T SHE EXPRESSED OUTRAGE ABOUT SOME OF THE POTENTIAL CONFLICTS WITH PEOPLE IN OR CLOSE TO THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION?... COULD IT BE THAT SHE HERSELF HAS SOME ENTANGLEMENTS?” "Why hasn't she expressed outrage about some of the potential conflicts with people in or close to the Bush administration?" Lewis said. "Could it be that she herself has some entanglements?"




March 1, 2006 The Democrats' Daddy Warbucks
Feinstein family war profits, part II


Sen. Dianne Feinstein's husband, Richard Blum, could well be called the Democrats' Daddy Warbucks. He's scored bundles from war contracts. He has recently purchased a $16.5 million crib in San Francisco and along with his wife has handed hundreds of thousands of dollars over to fellow Democrats. Since the 2000 election cycle, Blum has contributed over $75,000 to the Democratic Senatorial Committee, and thousands more to individual Democrats, including John Kerry, Robert Byrd, Joe Lieberman, Ted Kennedy, and Barbara Boxer. Richard Blum's history as an entrepreneur began at the ripe age of 23 when he began to work for the San Francisco brokerage firm Sutro & Company. Blum quickly climbed the ranks and became a partner by the age of 30. According the San Francisco Chronicle, "Blum proved that he had an eye for fixer-upper properties when he led a partnership that acquired the struggling Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus for $8 million – then sold it to Mattel Inc. four years later for $40 million." In 1975, Blum went out on his own and formed a brokerage agency. Today, Blum's lofty firm, Blum Capital, holds positions in more than 20 companies, including real estate giants, credit bureaus, and yes, even military contractors. Blum sees himself as an altruistic capitalist, claims one of his ex-employees: "He likes to go after companies that are down and out, and bring their stock back to life. He thinks he's doing good." Blum shares a large stake in Perini, a civil construction company that is happily employed in Iraq and Afghanistan. But not all of Blum's war profits come from Perini. In 1975, his venture capital firm went after fledging construction and design company URS when the business was about to be bought out by another corporation. Since then, Blum has increased his stock in URS, capitalizing on its recent military contracts. Unlike Blum's dabbling with Barnum & Bailey, his current profits aren't so safe for child consumption. Here are the basics to date: Blum currently holds over 111,000 shares of stock in URS Corporation, which is now one of the top defense contractors in the United States. Blum is an acting director of URS, which bought EG&G, a leading provider of technical services and management to the U.S. military, from The Carlyle Group in 2002. Carlyle's trusty advisers, past and present, include former President George H.W. Bush, James Baker, and ex-SEC Commissioner Arthur Levitt, among other prominent neoconservatives and Washington power brokers. URS and Blum have since banked on the Iraq war, scoring a phat $600 million contract through EG&G. As a result, URS has seen its stock price more than triple since the war began in March 2003. Blum has cashed in over $2 million on this venture alone and another $100 million for his investment firm. "As part of EG&G's sale price," reports the San Francisco Chronicle, "Carlyle acquired a 21.74 percent stake in URS – second only to the 23.7 percent of shares controlled by Blum Capital." The Carlyle Group has long been accused of exploiting its political connections to turn a profit. And if Carlyle can come under the microscope for its government ties and war profiteering, as it did in Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11, than surely Blum's URS ought to be subject to the same scrutiny.

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

“WE MUST PROTECT BUSH’S FILTHY SAUDIS BED PARTNERS! IT MEANS MONEY IN MY PIMP’S POCKETS!” --- Senator Dianne Feinstein, Whore.



The Byrne Report Hawk Tale By Peter Byrne ON JAN. 18,

California senator Dianne Feinstein introduced Dr. Condoleezza Rice at a Senate nomination hearing for Secretary of State in terms so saccharine that molasses seemed to ooze out of her mouth. She was a precocious child, Feinstein purred. She has skill, judgment and poise. She loves football. Bush loves her. "The problems we face abroad are complex and sizable. If Dr. Rice's past performance is any indication, though, we can rest easy." That very same day, Feinstein's husband, Richard Blum, took advantage of a spike in the price of his URS Corporation stock. He sold a third of his holdings in the defense contractor for $57 million, according to filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. With Rice confirmed, the business of death and occupation looks rosy as hell for Feinstein, who--let's get real--benefits tremendously from sharing community property with Blum. URS' largest customer is the U.S. Army, which accounted for 17 percent ($587 million) of its cash revenue in 2004. In 2001, URS enjoyed a mere $169 million in defense contracts. Now, its war contracts total more than $2 billion. According to its annual report, the San Francisco based URS anticipates that profits will rocket up in 2005, because "operations in the Middle East are expected to generate increased work related to the development of weapons systems, the training of military pilots and the maintenance, upgrade and repair of military vehicles."

 Provided, of course, that our hawkish leadership remains as poised and lovable as the new Secretary of State. Feinstein, who sits on the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, is an advocate of first-strike warfare, even though it flouts international law and the standards of common decency. Interestingly, her Financial Disclosure Report for 2003 was more than three times the size of her 2002 disclosure (Feinstein's 2003 disclosure numbers 133 pages, compared to Sen. Barbara Boxer's six-page report). The Feinstein-Blum portfolio is crammed with multimillion dollar investments in the military-industrial-financial complex and corporations that heavily exploit Third World peoples.



The senator has a lot to lose should the neoconservative war machine falter. Hubby holds a controlling interest in another engineering firm, Perini Corporation of Framingham, Mass. Perini ranks No. 6 by dollar amount in war-related government contracts in the Middle East. According to its annual report, "Perini proudly supports the U.S. government with global rapid response capabilities for defense, reconstruction and security." Perini builds military facilities and roads in Afghanistan, electrical infrastructure in Iraq and U.S. embassies around the world. After the Senate, Feinstein included, approved Bush's war plans in 2002, Perini's defense contract awards soared from negligible to $2.52 billion. But, as with many of the sole-source, open-ended contracts awarded to politically connected firms, there are problems with accountability. Last summer, Department of Defense auditors determined that Perini could not adequately justify its costs in Iraq as fair and reasonable. That's government-speak for: They're gouging the #!$% out of us. Perini is heavily engaged in military and municipal public works projects inside the United States; at least two are also under investigation for contract fraud. For example, the city of San Francisco has sued general contractor Perini--which was in a joint venture with the Tutor-Saliba construction firm--for $100 million in cost overruns at a San Francisco International Airport project. The lawsuit alleges that the joint venture engaged in "a sophisticated pattern of fraud," including inflating costs, fabricating delays and setting up minority front companies to exploit affirmative-action preferences. The attorney general of Massachusetts is looking into alleged false claims made by a Perini joint venture in the "Big Dig" urban highway construction boondoggle in Boston. Ron Tutor, owner of Tutor-Saliba and CEO of Perini, bought into the latter company, along with Blum, as it teetered on the edge of solvency in the mid- 1990s due to a bad real estate investment. It rebounded, thanks to the firm's sudden ability to obtain lucrative U.S. military and government contracts, which, of course, had nothing to do with the fact that Blum's powerful wife has her hands on the military's purse strings. Remarkably, Perini grossed $1.37 billion in 2003, up 27 percent from the previous year, before the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq. Perini attributes its rocketing profits to "increased volume of work in Iraq and Afghanistan." As a risk factor, the firm notes that continued demand for its military services depends upon "the political situation in Iraq," which, logically, means that it desires the bloody war and useless occupation to continue indefinitely--a wish that hawktails with the foreign policy positions of Bush, Rice, Rumsfeld and Feinstein. I almost forgot: Perini Corp. is the nation's most active builder of Indian-fronted casinos. That explains a few things about Sen. Feinstein and the politics of gambling, soon to be revealed in greater detail in this space.












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