OBAMA'S LA RAZA PARTNERS for AMNESTY: SENS. BARBARA BOXER and DIANNE FEINSTEIN - THEIR BRIBES, LOOTING and STAGGERING CORRUPTION

FEINSTEIN IS ONE OF THE MOST CORRUPT POLITICIANS IN AMERICAN HISTORY. SHE’S GOTTEN RICH WHILE CA BURNED!

SHE TAKES HER BRIBES AND SALTS THEM AWAY AS “CONSULTANT FEES” TO HER SON, OAKLAND LAWYER, DOUG BOXER.

ONE OF BOXER’S BIGGEST BRIBSTERS IS FEINSTEIN’S PIMP HUSBAND’S, RICHARD C. BLUM. HE LIKES THE FACT BOXER VOTES FOR ANYTHING THAT FEINSTEIN IS PUSHING IN THE SENATE THAT WILL PUT MORE MONEY IN BLUM’S POCKETS!

 

Sen. Barbara Boxer (D‑Calif.), for example, paid her son Douglas $320,409.17 in campaign donations through his company Douglas Boxer and Associates from 2001 to 2006, CREW found. Douglas Boxer is a lawyer and a 10‑year veteran of her political team, a Boxer spokesman said.

BOXER DID RUN FOR OFFICE, AND WAS REELECTED BY ILLEGALS DUE TO HER OBAMA – FEINSTEIN – PELOSI PLATFORM OF NO E-VERIFY, NO WALL, OPEN BORDERS, DREAM ACTS, AND NO ID REQUIRED OF ILLEGALS VOTING!

To no one's surprise, Boxer is running for re-election

This just in from the state Democratic Party convention: Sen. Barbara Boxer announced she's running for re-election in 2010.

Now a lot of people are probably scratching their heads and wondering if they'd missed something: Wasn't she already running for re-election?

Well, yes. As a matter of fact, the three-term senator brought then-Illinois Sen. Barack Obama to San Francisco in February 2007 for a 2010 re-election fund-raiser at the St. Francis Hotel. And her campaign website has been up and running for months.

 

But, to quote from the senator's speech today, "I'm formally announcing, in front of this convention, that I am running again for the United States Senate."

There were plenty of yellow and black "Boxer 2010" signs in the hall and the delegates were happy enough to wave them and cheer the announcement, so no harm done. And it did give the senator a chance to plug her new line of campaign clothes, on sale at her campaign table. It includes a bib for "Babies for Boxer" and neckwear for dogs, also known as "Barkers for Boxer.''

"You should buy the new Boxer merchandise so you can be on the cutting edge of fashion,'' she told the crowd.

So far, Irvine Assemblyman Chuck DeVore is Boxer's only GOP challenger, although former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina has made noises about running.

"Don't listen to anyone who says our race will be easy,'' Boxer said. "My races are never easy.''

That depends on your definition of easy.

In 2004, she ran against former Secretary of State Bill Jones, who never raised enough money to run a television ad. A couple of weeks before the election, Boxer was doing a campaign swing through rural California. An October campaign appearance before a dozen people at a home in Amador City, population 196, shows just how concerned she was about re-election.

The final total: Boxer 58 percent, Jones 38 percent, which is definitely landslide territory.

BOXER HAS NO POSITIONS OTHER THAN PROTECTING FEINSTEIN FROM ANY SENATE INVESTIGATIONS INTO HER WAR PROFITEERING AND CORRUPTION.

THE SPECIAL INTERESTS KNOW BOXER IS EASILY BOUGHT AND PUMP MILLIONS OF DOLLARS INTO THIS UTTERLY WORTHLESS POLITICIANS THAT HAS NEVER GOTTEN A BILL PASSED IN HER LONG SORDID POLITICAL LIFE.

But Boxer is a fierce campaigner who takes no prisoners. She's tough on the stump and more than willing to defend any of her positions and rip apart those of her opponents.

"I hope no one runs against me,'' she told reporters after her speech to the convention. But if someone does, she warned, "You'll face a tough race and I'll win re-election. So think about it.''

*

"I see no evidence of anything improper in this body," said Senate Rules and Administration Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein (D‑Calif.) during the floor debate.

Senators Diverting Campaign Funds to Kin

Loophole in Ethics Rules Is One That the Senate Did Not Close Last Year

By Shailagh Murray

Washington Post Staff Writer

Sunday, February 24, 2008; A04

Under long‑standing congressional ethics rules, corporations, unions and other large organizations cannot directly pay senators stipends. But their contributions to senators' election campaigns can be paid without limit to the children, spouses, in‑laws and other relatives of the lawmakers, in a practice that has aroused controversy but is fully legal.

Since 2000, at least 20 members of the Senate dipped into their campaign contributions and wrote more than half a million dollars in checks to their own relatives, typically as payment for fundraising and other campaign work, according to a new report by the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW).

Sen. Barbara Boxer (D‑Calif.), for example, paid her son Douglas $320,409.17 in campaign donations through his company Douglas Boxer and Associates from 2001 to 2006, CREW found. Douglas Boxer is a lawyer and a 10‑year veteran of her political team, a Boxer spokesman said.

Sen. Mike Enzi (R‑Wyo.) paid his daughter‑in‑law Danielle Enzi $306,718.18 from his campaign accounts over the same period, according to the report. She was a fundraiser before she married into the Enzi family, an Enzi spokesman said. Sen. Jim Bunning (R‑Ky.) paid his daughter Amy Towles $138,933.37 over six years, CREW found. Bunning's office said it was for campaign accounting.

"It is an area that's ripe for abuse, for someone who wants to turn campaign funds into personal use," said Craig Holman, a lobbyist for the nonprofit group Public Citizen. Although most lawmakers do not abuse the practice, he said, "those campaign funds always come from special interests, and those special interests are always looking for something in return."

Information about the practice is not easy to find, because senators are required to disclose such payments only in the minutiae of their periodic public statements of campaign finance expenditure and do not flag the recipients as relatives. CREW staff compiled the data over nine months by looking at microfiche and electronic records for the 2002, 2004 and 2006 election cycles, and by tracing names.

 

None of these arrangements appears to violate federal election law (THESE FUCKERS MAKE THE LAWS!), noted Melanie Sloan, CREW's executive director. Although lawmakers are barred from hiring relatives as staffers in their legislative offices, family members may perform campaign work, as long as the pay is reasonable and the individuals are qualified.

Yet some lawmakers are seeking to restrict payments to some family members as part of a broader effort to eliminate opportunities for conflicts and improprieties ‑‑ an effort urged by watchdog groups such as CREW after ethics scandals over the past two years, including several cases involving lawmakers' family members on political payrolls who may or may not have performed much work.

The senators' family payments were relatively small, compared with the $5.1 million that 72 House members paid from campaign funds to relatives or to relatives' companies or employers during the same period, according to CREW. "We found much worse stuff in the House," Sloan said.

Yet the Senate has become a roadblock to changing the rules on family employment. The House, in contrast, approved legislation last July to ban payments from campaign or leadership funds to candidates' spouses and to require the disclosure of campaign payments to other immediate family members. The bill was sent to the Senate, where it has stalled indefinitely.

The House acted after disclosures that former lobbyist Jack Abramoff organized campaign contributions or other payments that wound up in the hands of several lawmakers' relatives. Rep. John T. Doolittle (R‑Calif.), who announced his retirement from the House last month, is under federal investigation along with his wife, Julie, in part related to employment for her provided by Abramoff and other lobbyists.

 

BOXER VOTES AGAINST STOPPING BRIBES SIPHONED THROUGH RELATIVES!

Senators took up the issue before passing the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act on Jan. 18, 2007. The law tightened rules on accepting meals, private plane rides and other perks from lobbyists. But an amendment to ban the practice of paying relatives for their campaign work was rejected 54 to 41, with Boxer voting "present."

Even senators with no relatives listed in the CREW report criticized the measure, offered by Sen. David Vitter (R‑La.), as overly harsh. "I see no evidence of anything improper in this body," said Senate Rules and Administration Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein (D‑Calif.) during the floor debate.

 

But Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D‑Calif.), who sponsored the House bill, said he thinks "there's some serious self‑interest involved" in the Senate's refusal to go along. Keeping a spouse on the payroll, Schiff said, "just struck me as an inherent conflict of interest. Most people are shocked that it's not a crime, and it should be outlawed." He is still seeking a senator to take up the cause in that chamber.

Some Senate family members do work for bargain prices, at least by Washington standards. Towles, who lives in Kentucky, has kept her father's campaign books since the 1990s, said Bunning spokesman Mike Reynard. He described her as "a one‑person office." Towles's Citizens for Bunning salary rose from $19,589.10 in 2001, according to CREW, to $23,180.60 in 2006. She received an additional $4,999 through the separate Political Hall of Fame PAC, the group found.

Enzi spokesman Coy Knobel said Danielle Enzi works as a contract fundraiser for the Wyoming senator and has other political and nonprofit clients. "I think it's essential to point out the work Danielle does for Senator Enzi is paid for by donors to his campaign," as opposed to public funds, Knobel said. "If the donors don't agree with something, then they don't have to give."

The campaign political director for Sen. Michael D. Crapo (R‑Idaho), whose wife, Susan, was paid $78,514.50 over six years, said Susan Crapo "has always been the top campaign hand." Jake Ball described her duties as "organizing and carrying out big events," along with keeping Crapo's schedule and driving him to events.

"She's able to make decisions and act on things that other campaign workers would not feel as bold at doing," Ball said. "Any dollars she's paid are dollars she has earned."

Other names on the CREW list include Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D‑Del.), whose sister, Valerie Biden Owens, has managed all of his Senate campaigns, dating back to 1972. She was paid $51,286.27 in 2002, according to CREW. Her daughter Catherine Owens, also known as Casey, was paid $3,618.51 for her job as a field organizer.

Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D‑Mass.) has paid nephews Joseph and Matthew Kennedy, who co‑chaired his 2006 reelection campaign, a total of $50,073.87 from his Kennedy for Senate 2012 campaign fund.

Sen. Richard Burr (R‑N.C.) reached to a farther branch of his family tree, employing Mary T. Fauth as the treasurer of his leadership political action committee, the Next Century Fund. Fauth is the wife of Burr's wife's brother, according to a spokesman for the senator, and earned $32,013 over six years, the report found.

...........................

From the Los Angeles Times

Opinion

Meet the new political bosses, worse than the old political bosses.

Democrats wallow in a 'culture of corruption'

 

Jonah Goldberg

May 5, 2009

Some days you have to ask yourself, my God, what if these people were Republicans?

Democrats took back Congress in 2006 and the presidency in 2008 in no small part because of their ability to bang their spoons on their high chairs about what they called the Republican "culture of corruption." Their choreographed outrage was coordinated with the precision of a North Korean missile launch pageant. And, to be fair, they had a point. The GOP did have its legitimate embarrassments. California Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham and lobbyist Jack Abramoff were fair game, and so was Rep. Mark Foley, the twisted Florida congressman who allegedly wanted male congressional pages cleaned and perfumed and brought to his tent, as it were.

Of course, it wasn't as if Democrats were without sin. Louisiana Rep. William Jefferson was indicted on fraud, bribery and corruption charges in 2007, after an investigation unearthed, among other things, $90,000 in his freezer. Then-New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer was busted in a prostitution scandal.

But that's all yesterday's news. Let's look at the here and now. Barack Obama, who vowed he'd provide a transparent administration staffed with disinterested public servants with the self-restraint of Roman castrati, appointed an admitted tax cheat to run the Treasury Department -- and he's hardly the only one in the administration.

New York Rep. Charles Rangel, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, is under investigation for, among other things, failing to report income from his Caribbean villa. Meanwhile, Sen. Christopher Dodd, chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, got sweetheart deals from subprime lender Countrywide and has yet to adequately explain his too-good-to-be-true deal on his million-dollar "cottage" in Ireland, which he may have gotten in exchange for finagling a pardon (from President Clinton) for a felon. Oh, Dodd also secretly protected those AIG bonuses that raised such a ruckus last month.

Rep. Jack Murtha of Pennsylvania, Nancy Pelosi's moral authority on military matters during the Iraq war, has been revealed as a kleptomaniac of sorts, delivering as much of the federal budget as possible to various cronies and lobbyists.

John Edwards, who had an affair even as he was scoring Oprah-points as the supportive husband during his wife's battle with breast cancer, is being investigated by the feds for the improper use of campaign funds. It looks like the silky haired champion of the little guys may have used their donations to bribe the alleged "baby mama" into silence.

And it would be a shame to let it pass that Obama's Senate seat was put up for sale by the then-Democratic governor of Illinois, Rod Blagojevich, and Illinois Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. is under investigation for trying to buy it.

But you know what? We ain't seen nothing yet. For starters, the real corruption isn't what the media are ignoring or downplaying as isolated incidents. It's what the media are hailing as bold, inspirational leadership. The White House, as a matter of policy, is rewriting legal contracts, picking winners (mostly labor unions and mortgage defaulters) and singling out losers (evil "speculators") while much of the media continue to ponder whether Obama is better than FDR.

If a Republican administration, staffed with cronies from Goldman Sachs and Citibank, was cutting special deals for its political allies, I suspect we'd be hearing fewer FDR analogies and more nouns ending with the suffix "gate."

Take Obama's "car czar," Steven Rattner. According to ABC's Jake Tapper, Rattner is accused of threatening to use the White House to smear a Chrysler creditor if it refused to back the administration's bankruptcy plan. He's also connected to a massive pension fund scandal involving the investment firm he used to run. One allegation is that conspirators used investments in the low-budget movie "Chooch" to expedite their alleged chicanery. Chooch, by the way, is Italian slang for "jackass," which just happens to be the Democrats' mascot.

More to the point, political corruption is inevitable whenever you give hacks -- of either party -- too much discretion over public funds. Businesses look to Washington for profits instead of to the market. The thing is, this has become the governing philosophy of the Democratic Party, from banking and cars to healthcare and now student loans. The federal government is taking over, and the culture of corruption inevitably trickles down. That in itself should be a scandal. Call it "Choochgate."

IF YOU HAVE ISSUES WITH BOXER’S CORRUPTION, SEND A COPY OF THIS TO HER SON, AND RECIPIENT OF HER BRIBES.

(AS LISTED IN CA STATE BAR)

DOUGLAS BOXER

300 FRANK H OGAWA PLZ, No 500

OAKLAND, CA 94612-2040

FAX 510-835 0415

 

 “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, Hillary Clinton and Barbara Boxer.”

*

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. Owen Blicksilver, Blum's spokesman, claims his boss and Sen. Feinstein have never talked shop at home in their gated mansion: "Mr. Blum and Sen. Feinstein have never had any discussions about outsourcing, government contracts, or URS." If this were a Republican senator's spouse scoring bundles off the spoils of war and passing it along to fellow Republicans, the liberals would be up in arms. But since Dianne Feinstein is a leading Democrat, mum's the word. Partisanship trumps ethics. 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 FranciscoÐbased 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.

 

http://californiainmeltdown.blogspot.com/2013/02/war-profiteer-and-obama-donor-sen.html   BUSH WAR PROFITEER AND MAJOR OBAMA DONOR, SEN. DIANNE FEINSTEIN LOOTS MEDICARE. THERE’S NOT MUCH THAT HAPPENS IN WASHINGTON THAT FEINSTEIN AND HER PIMP HUSBAND, RICHARD BLUM DON’T PROFITEER FROM.   FEINSTEIN, ONE OF THE MOST CORRUPT POLITICIANS IN AMERICAN HISTORY, HAS AMASSED A STAGGERING FORTUNE FROM DEALS HER HUSBAND COOKS UP AND FEINSTEIN AND BARBARA BOXER PUSH IN THE SENATE.   FEINSTEIN HAS LONG HIRED “CHEAP” LABOR ILLEGALS AT HER S.F. HOTEL, ONLY MILES FROM HER $16 MILLION DOLLAR WAR PROFITS WHORE MANSION.   http://californiainmeltdown.blogspot.com/2013/02/war-profiteer-and-obama-donor-sen.htm Husband's investments entangle Feinstein

LATEST FLAP OVER MEDICARE PAYMENT DENIALS

By David WhitneyMcClatchy NewspapersSan Jose Mercury News

WASHINGTON - California lawmakers are questioning whether an auditing company in which San Francisco investor Richard Blum, the husband of Sen. Dianne Feinstein, has a major financial stake is rejecting Medicare claims at California rehabilitation hospitals in order to reap millions of dollars in profits at the expense of patient care. The company, PRG-Schultz International, has a contract with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the overseer of the Medicare program, to check payments in California for mistakes. Its only pay is a bounty of up to 30 percent on the "overcharges" it identifies. The California Hospital Association first raised concerns in November that PRG-Schultz was targeting rehabilitation hospitals that cared for Medicare patients after knee or hip replacement surgery. The hospital association said PRG-Schultz has reviewed thousands of cases dating as far back as 2002 and has rejected nearly all as medically unnecessary. Melinda Staveley, president of the 38-bed Rehabilitation Institute at Santa Barbara, said more than 100 such cases from her non-profit institution had been rejected. The facility could face having to repay more than $2 million. Elderly patients As difficult as that would be financially for a small hospital with a $12 million annual budget, she said the bigger concern is future patient care. The frail and elderly surgery patients with compound medical problems no longer will have access to rehabilitation hospitals and will have to rely on home or outpatient services. "This is devastating," Staveley said of the audits. Her husband's business interests in PRG-Schultz have proved awkward for Feinstein, the state's Democratic senior senator, as the hospital association turns to Congress for relief. This is not the first time Blum's business interests have collided with his wife's job. Blum Capital Partners is a major investor in Northwest Airlines, which in 1995 won the first contract by an American air carrier to fly to Beijing. Feinstein had been friends with a former Chinese political leader since she was mayor of San Francisco. More recently, concerns have been raised in Republican circles about some of Blum's investments benefiting from defense contracts at a time when the senator was serving on the Senate military construction appropriations committee. Feinstein's press aide, Scott Gerber, said the senator played no role in the legislation creating the auditing program and did not intervene with program administrators to help PRG-Schultz get the three-year contract in 2005. Serious concerns “ On Thursday, after questions from McClatchy Newspapers, Feinstein sent a letter to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services that called the hospital association's concerns "potentially serious." She asked program administrators to investigate, saying the concerns are spreading beyond its determinations on rehabilitation hospitals to other aspects of Medicare-financed hospitalizations for the elderly, including short-stay hospital admissions. Feinstein made no mention of her husband's interest in PRG-Schultz, which she lists in her annual financial disclosure reports. According to PRG-Schultz, Blum's investment companies own 10.5 percent of its outstanding common stock, 53 percent of its outstanding preferred stock and 28 percent of its notes and securities. California House members soon will follow with a joint letter of their own asking for an investigation. Rep. Lois Capps, D-Santa Barbara, is taking the lead among Democrats. Her press aide, Emily Kryder, said 15 members - more than a quarter of the state's congressional delegation - have agreed to sign the letter so far. "The review and collection practices of PRG-Schultz threaten access to rehabilitation services in California," the letter said. "We urge you to examine the actions taken by PRG-Schultz International, Inc." The auditing program was set up as a demonstration project initially focusing on the three highest-cost Medicare states - California, New York and Florida. Separate contractors are used for each state. PRG-Schultz is the only for-profit contractor among them, and Medicare administrators believe it has been the most controversial because it alone has been zeroing in on rehabilitation hospitals. Highly lucrative On the brink of financial collapse when it won the contract two years ago, PRG-Schultz has found the job to be enormously lucrative. Government figures indicate that it had rejected $105 million in California Medicare overcharges as of Sept. 30, the end of the 2006 fiscal year. Medicare managers said they could not release figures for how much PRG-Schultz was claiming as commissions for finding the alleged overcharges, saying the information was proprietary. But based on bounties of 28 percent that were used in establishing the program, PRG-Schultz's entitlement could be as much as $29 million. The California Hospital Association said in a letter to Medicare administrators in November that PRG-Schultz should be suspended for improperly applying Medicare rules and using unqualified personnel. PRG-Schultz declined to comment. But officials of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services steadfastly defended PRG-Schultz, saying it's applying rules on medically necessary admissions that probably have been ignored in California for years. PRG-Schultz "coming to town is probably the first real look at these hospitals in many, many years," said Melanie Combs, senior technical adviser for the federal program. "These rules have been on the books since 1985," Combs said. "Maybe it's possible some have been overlooking them. Maybe there have been consultants out there helping hospitals to, quote, maximize reimbursements. And maybe perhaps some of that has entailed looking the other way." A call to Blum Capital Partners - of which Blum is board chairman - asking for comment was not returned. PRG-Schultz reported a first-quarter profit this year of $1.5 million, compared to a $10 million loss for the same period in 2006. * http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2013/02/obama-cuts-medicare-while-expanding.html   HE HAS WORKED HARD FOR HIS CRIMINAL BANKSTER DONORS. HIS ADMINISTRATION IS INFESTED WITH THEM. OBAMA HAS PROMISED THEM ENDLESS NO-STRING BAILOUTS, MASSIVE BONUSES AS WELL AS NO PRISON TIME. NOT ONE CRIMINAL BANKSTER HAS BEEN CHARGED WITH A CRIME OR EVER WILL. AS IS ALWAYS THE CASE OF WALL STREET’S WAVE OF CRIMES, THERE WILL BE A FEW PALTRY FINES, AND THESE WILL BE PAID OUT OF BAILOUT MONEY. NEXT TO BANKSTERS, OBAMA WORKS HARD FOR HIS LA RAZA PARTY BASE of ILLEGALS. NEXT TO BANKSTERS, HIS ADMIN IS INFESTED WITH LA RAZA SUPREMACIST. CONGRESS AND OBAMA ARE NOW HANDING OVER OUR BORDERS TO OPEN BORDERS ADVOCATE AND LA RAZA SUPREMACIST JANET NAPOLITANO. OBAMA HAS SQUANDERED BILLIONS PROTECTING THE BORDERS OF MUSLIM DICTATORS OVER THERE, WHILE PUSHING OUR BORDERS OPEN WIDER WITH NARCOMEX. WIKILEAKS and ALIPAC HAVE EXPOSED OBAMA’S OPEN BORDERS AGENDA… IT’S ALL ABOUT KEEPING WAGES DEPRESSED. OBAMA’S UNAUTHORIZED PRE-ELECTION GRINGO-PAID DREAM ACT HANDED MILLIONS OF JOBS OVER TO ILLEGALS, AND COST AMERICANS HALF BILLION DOLLARS. MORE TO COME… MUCH MORE! WE ARE MEXICO’S WELFARE, JOBS, PRISONS, AND COLONY FOR LOOTING! Published by the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI) White House zeros in on Medicare 4 February 2013 Both President Obama and a top economic adviser have confirmed that Medicare, the federal program that underwrites the cost of health care for more than 50 million elderly and disabled people in the United States, is a prime target in the budget-cutting negotiations now going on behind the scenes in Washington. While talks continue on social program cuts that will affect tens of millions and ultimately the majority of the American people, public attention is being diverted to a serious of secondary issues, such as prospective gun legislation. There was, for example, enormous media attention given to a photograph of Obama shooting skeet with a shotgun at Camp David, including a protracted debate over when the photograph was taken and whether the president could be said to be a hunter. The real business of the Democrats and Republicans, however, is laid out in the Saturday radio addresses by Obama and a spokeswoman for the congressional Republicans, both of them calling for substantial cuts in domestic social spending. Obama’s address repeated his empty claims of an economic recovery. He failed to note the radical divergence between the boom in business profits, stock prices and corporate CEO pay and the disastrous state of the job market, with workers’ wages and benefits continuing to decline. Obama then turned to the question of the deficit, with his usual mixture of doubletalk and demagogy, declaring, “We all agree that it’s critical to cut unnecessary spending. But we can’t just cut our way to prosperity.” In a passage from the brief address that was not quoted in media accounts, Obama continued, “Already, Republicans and Democrats have worked together to reduce our deficits by $2.5 trillion. That’s a good start. But to get the rest of the way, we need a balanced set of reforms. For example, we need to lower the cost of health care in programs like Medicare that are the biggest drivers of our deficit, without just passing the burden off to seniors.” The last phrase is typical of Obama speechmaking, and of all the declarations by big business politicians in Washington. First, you signal to your corporate masters what you plan to do, i.e., make drastic cuts in Medicare. Then you reassure the victims of this policy that they aren’t really the target. In truth, that is exactly what the White House and congressional Democrats and Republicans are planning. They will impose the burden of the fiscal deficit on the backs of the most vulnerable sections of the working class: the elderly, the disabled, young people and the poor. There is, as Obama emphasizes, general agreement in ruling circles that such cuts will be made. The only question—about which there is heated debate—is what mechanism to use and how to disguise, as much as possible, the real significance of the measures now being discussed behind closed doors in the US capital. Gene Sperling, head of the Obama’s National Economic Council, underscored the centrality of Medicare cuts to the deficit-reduction process in a speech Thursday to a health care group. Sperling began by declaring that the administration was opposed to any cuts in Medicaid, the entitlement program that underwrites health care for the poor and nursing home care for millions of elderly people. This is not out of any concern for the impact of such cuts on the poorest Americans. Quite the opposite. Since extending Medicaid eligibility is a central feature of the Obama health care overhaul, which goes into full effect at the end of this year, it is necessary to keep Medicaid afloat at least that long so as to sustain the fiction that health care “reform” is aimed at expanding access to care and conceal its real purpose—to cut the overall cost of health care for corporations and the government. Moreover, most Medicaid cuts are implemented at the state level, and state governments, led by Democratic as well as Republican governors, have cut back on benefits and eligibility across the country. “Medicaid cuts, from this president, from this administration, are not on the table,” Sperling said. But since “we’ve made a tough choice” to rule out Medicaid cuts, he continued, “It means we will have to look harder for Medicare savings.” Neither Sperling nor any other White House spokesman has spelled out exactly what cuts in Medicare are envisioned. But the failed budget agreement of 2011, reached by Obama and Republican House Speaker John Boehner, gave a glimpse. It called for raising the age of eligibility for Medicare from 65 to 67, which would force millions of retiring workers to pay for private health insurance for those additional years. It also called for increased means testing, a step towards turning Medicare into a welfare program reserved for the poor, like Medicaid, and undermining its universality. The Washington consensus that entitlement program cuts are unavoidable is justified on the grounds that, as countless big business politicians declare, “There is no money.” This is the mantra in the richest country on the planet from representatives of a ruling elite that is gorging itself on speculation, profit-gouging and outright swindling. The American financial aristocracy is raking in trillions while begrudging every penny spent on retirement income or health care for working people who have labored all their lives. The claim that there is no money is a lie. The resources exist in abundance, but the wealth produced by the labor of working people must be taken out of the hands of the financial parasites and billionaires and the major banks and corporations placed under democratic control and public ownership. Patrick Martin * AMERICAN’S BIGGEST WAR PROFITEER IS  SEN. DIANNE FEINSTEIN AND HER HUSBAND, OBAMA DONOR RICHARD BLUM. THE CRIME DUAL HAVE PAID OUT   BRIBES TO OTHER CORRUPT DEMS TO FEND OFF ANY INVESTIGATION OF FEINSTEIN’S LOOTING OF POLITICAL OFFICE.

 

http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2012/07/obama-donor-and-bush-war-profiteer-sen.html

 

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.