Thursday, February 27, 2020

EX-BALTIMORE MAYOR PUGH GETS 3 YEARS PRISON - ANY BLACK POLS NOT IN PRISON? WELL, OBAMA IS STILL ON THE LAM - David Bernstein & The Heritage Foundation - “Lawless: The Obama Administration’s Unprecedented Assault on the Constitution and the Rule of Law.”

Corrupt Ex-Baltimore Mayor Looks Forward to Rebuilding Her Life After 3 Year Prison Sentence

 
Daniel Greenfield

Just another of the plague of rats in old Baltimore.
 A federal judge in Maryland sentenced author and former Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh to three years in prison Thursday over a fraud scheme related to a series of children's books she's written.
In addition to the prison time, Pugh was ordered to serve three years of probation and pay $669,000 in restitution.
Pugh pleaded guilty last November to two counts of conspiracy to defraud the United States and two counts of tax evasion. Federal prosecutors said she was involved in a corrupt scheme involving the sales of her Healthy Holly books and used proceeds to fund her political campaign and buy a house.
She at one point sold 100,000 of the books for $500,000 to the University of Maryland Medical System, where she was a board member, and was part of a state Senate committee that agreed to partly fund the hospital system at the time.
Now Pugh is talking about rebuilding her life.
But what the media isn't telling you is that she's part of Baltimore's Dem culture of corruption.
Mayor Sheila Dixon, who had been forced to resign as part of her plea agreement from a trial that stemmed from, among other things, stealing toys from poor children.
Dixon was replaced by Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake who announced, during the riots over a drug dealer’s death, “we also gave those who wished to destroy space to do that as well.” Arrests were cut in half while the murder rate increased 63%, until it passed safer cities like Detroit and Chicago.
Rawlings-Blake decided not to run for reelection, even, unprecedentedly, without being indicted.
Despite being a convicted criminal, Dixon tried to make a comeback in the 2016 election. The race pitted Dixon, who had been convicted of embezzlement, against Pugh. Dixon won the black vote, while Pugh won the white vote. After Pugh was forced to step down, Dixon’s Facebook page displayed a 2020 Mayor post. Dixon blamed the post on hackers.
Cummings, the target of Trump’s Twitter barrage, had endorsed Pugh. But, before that, he had been listed as a witness in the Dixon trial. After Dixon resigned, he issued a press release praising the “long history of effective service to our city” of a politician who stole from poor children.
Charm city. These are its charms.


Ex-Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh Gets 3 Years in Jail for Children’s Book Deal Fraud

Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh speaks at a news conference at City Hall in Baltimore, Tuesday, April 4, 2017, in response to the Department of Justice's request for a 90-day delay of a hearing on its proposed overhaul of the Baltimore Police Department. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)
AP Photo/Patrick Semansky
2:41

Former Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh was sentenced to three years in prison on Thursday for her role in a children’s book deal scheme.
Pugh pleaded guilty in November to federal conspiracy and tax evasion charges as part of an agreement with prosecutors that had requested a roughly five-year sentence for the 69-year-old. On top of the sentence, Pugh will serve three years of supervised release following her prison term and must pay in excess of $411,000 in penalties.
Before handing down the sentence, U.S. District Court Judge Deborah Chasanow criticized submitted documents lauding Pugh’s previous achievements, saying “it was precisely that reputation for good work that allowed her to commit these offenses and continue the fraud for as long as she did,” according to the Baltimore Sun.
“It is astounding and I have yet frankly to hear any explanation that makes sense. This was not a tiny mistake, lapse of judgment. This became a very large fraud. The nature and circumstances of this offense clearly I think are extremely, extremely serious,” added Chasanow.
Pugh released a video on Wednesday in which she apologized for her role in the book scheme. “I messed up. I really messed up,” she said. “I accept total responsibility. I pled guilty and I’m sorry. I don’t know any other words that could be strong. I am so sorry.”
Prosecutors say Pugh, helped by aide Gary Brown Jr., double-sold the illustrated “Healthy Holly” children’s books and failed to deliver them to institutions they were purchased for, including the Baltimore City Public Schools. Pugh used the proceeds to fund straw donations to her mayoral campaign and buy a new house. She resigned under pressure in May.
The University of Maryland Medical System — one of the state’s largest employers — was Pugh’s biggest book customer. The system paid her a total of $500,000 for 100,000 copies that were meant to be distributed to schoolchildren, but about 60,000 of those books were sent to a city warehouse and a Pugh office where thousands were removed to give to other customers. Prosecutors say Pugh never delivered the other 40,000 books the health system purchased for city schools.
Pugh had previously served in the state Senate, where she sat on a committee that funded the medical system. She also sat on the hospital network’s board from 2001 until the scandal erupted in March. The former mayor returned the last $100,000 payment and described the deal as a “regrettable mistake” after the scheme was uncovered.
The Associated Press contributed to this report. 


David Bernstein & The Heritage Foundation - “Lawless: The Obama Administration’s Unprecedented Assault on the Constitution and the Rule of Law.”

“The Lawlessness of the Obama Administration: A never-ending story.” Michael
Barone – American Historian – Washington Examiner

Obama has found fortune by greatly benefiting in his post-presidency from companies who coincidentally benefited greatly during his time as president. 

They knew he was a catastrophe. They knew ObamaCare was a train wreck. They knew. Yet they proceeded, and they may have destroyed our country. For that, they can never be forgiven.

They knew Obama was an unqualified crook; yet they promoted him. They knew Obama was a train wreck waiting to happen; yet they made him president, to the great injury of America and the world. They understood he was only a figurehead, an egomaniac, and a liar; yet they made him king, doing great harm to our republic (perhaps irreparable.) ALLAN ERICKSON

We are talking about the Clintons, Pelosi, Reid, Schumer, Frank, Wasserman-Schultz, Biden, Leahy, Durbin, Murray, Kennedy, Hagel, Kerry, Dodd, Hoyer, Baucus, and many others.

They all knew Obama was an empty suit; yet for private gain and personal advancement, they trampled on the flag, betraying the very people they claim to serve, preferring Party to principle. During the 2008 campaign, they said he was unqualified, ill-prepared, and unsuited for the office. Yet when his crooked ways carved out primary victory, they jumped on board the Ship of Fools, stoking his engine with lies, deception, and propaganda. Hillary knew he stole victory; but like a good Party operative, she buttoned her lip and took orders, submitting to authority and covering criminality.

For those of us not seduced by pretty words and skillful theatrics, the Obama years were a cesspool of corruption that brought back the stench of the Clinton years in a fashionable new package.  

The corruption of Barack Obama


The national media are flabbergasted that Americans won't consent to President Trump's removal from office.  How can so many of his compatriots be indicted and so many government bureaucrats condemn his behavior without giving them what they desire: self-assurance that they are "on the right side of history"?
If they ever wish to understand, the critical starting point in their education is not the current presidency, but the last one.  Although there are numerous ways to describe the present divide in America, one of the simpler is thus: those Americans who take Barack Obama at his word that his presidency was historically "scandal free" and those Americans who see the unrelenting stream of Deep State attempts to take down President Trump as a continuing coup and the natural extension of an unethical, criminal, and at times unconstitutional Obama presidency.
For those of us in the latter camp, Barack Obama presided over a corrupt administration and used his historic election as the first non-white American president as a get-out-of-jail-free card to abuse his power while silencing his critics.
Whataboutery is frowned upon now that President Trump is in office, but if President Trump had done a tiny percentage of what Obama orchestrated, he actually would be in federal prison.  Imagine what would have happened if President Trump had done the following:

  • used a recession to bilk a trillion dollars from the public to stuff the pockets of campaign donors like Solyndra

  • facilitated Agent Brian Terry's murder by arming the Mexican cartels

  • targeted American citizens for assassination without a whiff of due process

  • lied to voters that their doctors would be protected and premiums reduced, while illegally funding Obamacare and covering illegal aliens' health care

  • stolen from victims of Iranian terrorism by plundering escrow accounts protected by law while handing over $1.7 billion in untraceable European currency and planeloads of American cash, releasing twenty-one Iranian convicts, and shutting down a decade-long DEA operation against Hezb'allah's double-whammy assault of smuggling cocaine into the U.S. and financing terrorism against us, all for the glory of an "Iran deal"

  • spied on reporters while putting a record number of their sources in jail

  • used the IRS as his personal gang of thugs to target conservatives before the 2012 election

  • allowed a 9-11 anniversary terrorist attack to unfold without sending reinforcements while falsely blaming the four resulting American deaths on a YouTube video and American free speech

  • sent an untold number of American veterans to early deaths through widespread negligence and corruption at the V.A.

  • protected his attorney general who lied to lawmakers on the president's behalf so persistently that Democrats joined Republicans to make him the first A.G. to be held in contempt of Congress

  • protected his CIA director, who spied on lawmakers and lied about it

  • protected his director of National Intelligence, who illegally spied on all Americans and lied about it

  • protected his heir apparent, who used an illegal and compromised email server and lied about it

  • promoted his U.N. ambassador to national security adviser for unashamedly circuiting Sunday-morning talk shows and peddling demonstrable lies to the American public

  • and all of this while betraying his oath of office by vigorously attacking Americans' constitutionally protected free speech, religion, and right to bear arms; squeezing colleges and private companies to submit to his socialist vision; and punishing his ideological foes by using a corrupt Justice Department and FBI to hunt his enemies
If President Trump had done all this and everything else Obama pulled off, well, then the American media might finally see how luminous the federal government's corruption over these many years truly has been.  Instead, not only have they rebuffed Obama's critics as mere racists, but they flood their editorials and airwaves with the commentary of the very actors who took part in his crimes.  Never before have we seen intelligence chiefs and justice department officials so quickly run to television studios to demean themselves as propagandists intent on protecting the last president by taking down the current one.
For those of us not seduced by pretty words and skillful theatrics, the Obama years were a cesspool of corruption that brought back the stench of the Clinton years in a fashionable new package.  Obama ignored court orders and congressional oversight, protected his friends from criminal prosecutions, and stirred up racial tensions by creating unnecessary controversies and playing whites and blacks against each other for electoral gain.  He entered the White House as one of our poorest presidents, and he will die as one of the richest ex-presidents.  Whereas the Clintons found fortune through their charity, Obama has found fortune by greatly benefiting in his post-presidency from companies who coincidentally benefited greatly during his time as president.  Wherever he goes, he picks up checks, including a staggering sixty-five-million-dollar book deal advance from Penguin Random House, a publishing house taken over in 2013 by Bertelsmann, a privately held German company; one of the world's largest media conglomerates; and the parent of Bertelsmann Investments, an international network of private banking funds in the services and natural resources industries, including those in Iran.  The "most transparent president in history" has now become the "most transparent billionaire in history," adding to his vast wealth in ways the public can only imagine.  
So, for the preening junior senator from Utah who manages to be on the wrong side of every issue, the formerly esteemed conservative pundits who now push Bernie Sanders's communism on the United States, and all the news personalities who pretend to have original thoughts by repeating endlessly what the Democratic Party has written for them, if you are dense enough to misinterpret the unprecedented coup against the sitting president instead as crimes worthy of his repeated condemnation and impeachment, it is way past time to sit down, open your mind, and begin learning about the presidency of one Barack Obama.  It will be a lot to take in; it certainly was for those of us who endured it.  


THE RISE TO POWER OF BANKSTER-OWNED BARACK OBAMA
'Incompetent' and 'liar' among most frequently used words to describe the president: Pew Research Center
The larger fear is that Obama might be just another corporatist, punking voters much as the Republicans do when they claim to be all for the common guy.



No comments: