Category: insider corruption

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insider corruption

A Safe Bet

Washington DC, corruption, sports gambling,

“We certainly cannot comment,” said a spokesman for the Chief Financial Officer of the nation’s capital city, “on documents that are not supposed to be public.”

Welcome to Washington, D.C., where governing is done opaquely.

In a typically shady political maneuver, a $215 million contract was awarded to Intralot, a Greek company, to manage the region’s newly legalized sports gambling. 

Citizens were not supposed to learn that Intralot subcontracted with city political insiders.

“Confidential city records obtained by The Washington Post,” the paper reported Saturday, “show that those who would benefit from the no-​bid contract include a former D.C. State Board of Education official, the head of a marketing company that worked on the political campaigns of Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) and her protege, council member Brandon T. Todd (D‑Ward 4), and an executive whose company lost a contract at a city homeless shelter because of allegedly falsified documents.”

“Every time, there will be politically connected CBEs attached to a contract of this size,” Council Chairman Phil Mendelson generously explained. “It’s how business is done everywhere.”

“This is why we have a competitive process to begin with,” Councilmember David Grosso countered, “to make sure that this kind of stuff doesn’t happen and you don’t give a contract to your friends.”

The sports betting bill was introduced by Councilmember Jack Evans, who just resigned from the troubled Metro transit system after an investigation found he “knowingly” broke ethics rules. He is also “the subject of a federal probe into whether he improperly used his public office to benefit paying clients of a consulting business he owns.” 

All in a day’s work.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob. 

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Washington DC, corruption, sports gambling,

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insider corruption term limits

House-​Cleaning & Law-Following

Catherine Pugh, corruption, Baltimore,

Larry Hogan, Maryland’s popular Republican governor, has vowed to “clean house” in the wake of the scandals rocking the “private” non-​profit University of Maryland Medical System (UMMS), set up by the State of Maryland. 

It isn’t just former Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh, who resigned from the UMMS board after it was disclosed the board had purchased $500,000 worth of her self-​published children’s book, “Healthy Holly.” Yep, it’s always for the children. (Pugh also resigned as mayor after the FBI raided her home and office.)

In fact, nine of the 23 UMMS board members had money-​making contracts with the system they “manage.” Not to mention that a recent Post exposé detailed how former state legislator and long-​time board member, Francis Kelly, whose legislation established the system, had multi-​million-​dollar insurance contracts with UMMS.

Yet, as The Washington Post reports, “state law long has called for housecleaning … specifying that board members can’t serve more than two consecutive five-​year terms.”

Gov. Hogan and his predecessors — both Republican and Democrat — simply ignored the law, reappointing board members beyond the limits.

“If members were allowed to essentially stay on the board in perpetuity,” former state senator, now U.S. Rep. Jamie Raskin (D‑Md.) argued, “it’s a direct threat to the independence and accountability of the board.” 

Abandoning term limits, State Senator Jill Carter (D‑Baltimore City) told the Post, was “part of the problem,” resulting in self-dealing.

Hmmm, think they’ll ever apply this knowledge to establishing term limits on their own powerful legislative bodies?

So much corruption, too few limits. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Catherine Pugh, corruption, Baltimore,

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initiative, referendum, and recall insider corruption

The Man Who Had No Idea

lorida Rep. Jamie Grant (R-Tampa Bay)

“I have no idea.” 

So responded Florida Rep. Jamie Grant (R‑Tampa Bay) to a question about how petition circulators on 2018 ballot initiative campaigns were paid. 

“Is there evidence that signatures collected by a person … paid per hour or paid per signature are more fraudulent?” asked Rep. Tina Scott Polsky (D‑Boca Raton), following up.

“If you’re asking specifically on the petition process,” Grant admitted, “I don’t know the answer to that.”

Rep. Grant should know. His 18-​page amendment — slapped onto completely unrelated legislation, House Bill 5, in the waning hours of the last day of the legislative session —  criminalizes paying petition circulators based on the number of signatures they gather.

Which is precisely what you pay circulators for: gathering as many voter signatures as possible. Grant claims his ban will prevent fraud — without evidence there has been any fraud.

Instead, a tap-​dancing Grant blurted out that Wells Fargo, the bank, is “a fantastic example” that “broken commission structures will lead to bad actions.” But his bill doesn’t address banking fraud. 

Not ridiculous enough? He went further, comparing Floridians enacting a constitutional amendment to the Russian government meddling in our elections. 

What does a foreign government’s black-​ops scheme have in common with the constitutional ballot initiative process whereby millions of Florida voters sign petitions and then must approve amendments by a supermajority vote of at least 60 percent?

Nothing. 

Which is the sum of Grant’s knowledge. 

Well, there is one thing Rep. Grant testified to with certainty: His legislation will hike the cost of initiative campaigns, making it even more difficult for citizens to check politicians … like Grant. 

Don’t sign it, Gov. DeSantis, veto.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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lorida Rep. Jamie Grant (R-Tampa Bay)

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Accountability initiative, referendum, and recall insider corruption

Representative or Reprehensible?

North Dakota, State Auditor,

Seventy-​seven million. 

That is the dollar amount of “financial errors” that North Dakota State Auditor Joshua Gallion discovered in the last year, after launching performance audits at twice the rate of his predecessor.* 

So, uncork the champagne! Huzzahs all around! Back slaps.

But the back-​slappers in the state legislature took a much different tack. 

In the waning days of this year’s now-​adjourned legislative session, in the opacity of a conference committee, a change somehow slipped into a bill. No future audits without legislative approval. 

As news hit of this handcuffing of the elected watchdog, taxpayers turned livid. And legislators started tap-​dancing, claiming that “the legislation had nothing to do with the new aggressiveness Gallion brought to the job.”

Finally, Rep. Keith Kempenich, the author of the change, confessed: “A lot of legislators started having some issues with the way things were going and wanted to reel him in.” 

Kempenich added that the auditor’s work “isn’t supposed to embarrass people.” At his Minuteman Blog, Arthur Mason countered that such financial mismanagement is “worthy of embarrassment.”

Governor Doug Burgum, who has “felt the sting of a Gallion audit,” signed the bill; calls for the legislature to reverse their gutting of accountability have fallen on deaf ears.

Concerned citizens were already organizing to defeat the legislature’s proposed constitutional amendment giving themselves a veto on voter-​initiated amendments, requiring a re-​vote if politicians don’t like the people’s first vote. Now an additional effort is forming to petition a referendum or new initiative onto the ballot to stop the power-​mad politicians from neutering the state auditor. 

Who do these legislators think they are? 

Seems North Dakota’s solons are in desperate need of still another reform measure: term limits. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob. 

* Prior to Gallion’s 2016 election, the state auditor post had for 44 years been a hereditary fiefdom, held by Republican Robert Peterson for 20 years and, before that, for 24 years by Peterson’s father. 

North Dakota, State Auditor,

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ballot access insider corruption local leaders

Clown Car of Felonies

Michael Madigan, Speaker, House, Illinois, corruption, machine

“It’s overkill of epic proportions,” John Kass writes in the Chicago Tribune, “like using a sledgehammer to kill a gnat, or firing off a nuclear weapon to kill a sparrow.”

In three columns, Kass tells the story of David Krupa, a 19-​year-​old DePaul University student, who gathered over 1,700 voter signatures on petitions to gain a spot on the ballot for alderman of Chicago’s notorious 13th Ward.

Why notorious? It’s Boss Madigan’s home.

Yes, the “Land of Lincoln,” home to nearly 13 million people, is ruled by one man, Michael J. Madigan, Speaker of the Illinois House, “the longest-​serving leader of any state or federal legislative body in the history of the United States.” 

And 13th Ward Alderman Marty Quinn, the incumbent, is Madigan’s guy.

Quickly, a lawsuit was filed challenging Krupa’s petitions and, as Kass explains, “A crew of mysterious political workers — perhaps they were Buddhist monks, or the gentle sun people known as the Eloi, or maybe Madigan precinct captains — filed 2,796 petitions of revocation of signature.”

While almost three thousand people executed affidavits stating that they wanted their signatures removed from Krupa’s petition, only 187 actually signed his petition.

Since the revocations require swearing to a legal document, under penalty of perjury, and perjury is a felony, more than 2,500 people — and their knowing helpers — appear to have committed what Krupa’s attorney calls a “clown car of felonies.”

Then — voilà! — the legal challenge evaporated. Young Krupa won’t be squashed; there will be a challenger on the 13th Ward ballot for the first time in decades. 

Is that enough? No. 

Election process corruption and the possible suborning of thousands of felonies must be investigated. 

No quarter for boss rule.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Michael Madigan, Speaker, House, Illinois, corruption, machine

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insider corruption tax policy

There You Go Again, IRS

IRS, free speech, taxes, censorship, corruption, surveillance

The old keywords were “Constitution,” “Patriot” and “Tea Party.”

The new ones? “Marijuana,” “oxycodone,” and “legalization.”

Paul Caron, the TaxProf blogger, calls attention to another IRS scandal — again about denying tax-​exempt status to organizations because of their political views. He had barely finished blogging about the scandal that came to light in 2013 when a new one burst into view.

You almost certainly remember the older scandal, in which the Internal Revenue Service had been caught intrusively scrutinizing and delaying the applications of conservative non-​profits picked on because of their conservatism.

To cover that mess, Professor Caron published a blog series called “The IRS Scandal, Day _​_​.” He added a post daily.

Every day.

For years.

The last installment, Day 1921, published on August 14, 2018, reported a settlement: meager taxpayer-​funded payouts to over a hundred victimized organizations. The IRS never admitted wrongdoing. No one was ever punished. According to the Washington Times, the agency said that it had “made changes so that political targeting can’t occur in the future.”

These changes don’t seem to include prohibiting political targeting by the IRS, however.

Now we have another case.

Caron points us to a Wall Street Journal op-​ed by David Rivkin and Randal Meyer, lawyers, who have discovered a dirty little secret in Revenue Procedure 2018 – 5. One provision authorizes IRS to withhold tax-​exempt status from applicants seeking to improve “business conditions … relating to an activity involving controlled substances,” including marijuana and oxycodone. Advocating legalization of marijuana would count as trying to improve such conditions.

Apparently, the IRS thinks its mandate entails enforcing the status quo by stifling dissent — instead of just doing its congressionally mandated (if all-​in-​all irksome) job.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

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