Jeffrey Scott
Shapiro6 Jun 201211post a comment
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
Follow
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.
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.
___
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.
*
“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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