Tag: corruption

Capital Jack

Jack Evans, corruption, Washington D.C.,

“If I can make it there,” goes the song New York, New York, “I’ll make it anywhere.”

But, when it comes to self-dealing, corrupt politics, isn’t it really Washington, D.C. that deserves the moniker of Big Rotten-to-the-Core Apple?

Meet Jack Evans, who is making it … er, competing … for a seat on the city council in the nation’s capital city.

Which seat, you ask?

His own.

For the last three decades, 29 years to be precise, Evans represented (theoretically, at least) Ward 2 … the council’s longest serving member.

Until Councilmember Evans resigned his position mere weeks ago, on January 17. Under pressure, both from constituents by way of a recall petition and from the council, which was set to expel Evans, after finding him guilty of “prolonged and egregious wrongdoing.”

Not to mention that Evans is also the subject of a federal probe, with the FBI raiding his home last year. And Evans had previously resigned his position as Chairman of the Board of the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) for the same longstanding pattern of egregious influence peddling.

Now Capital Jack enters the political arena anew as the consummate professional, undaunted by his unfitness for gainful employment outside of politics.

“It is tremendous chutzpah to do that,” one Ward 2 resident observed of Evans’ quick comeback.

Not to mention that the special election for Mr. Evans to compete for the council seat he resigned from in disgrace will cost city taxpayers a cool million bucks.

“I want to wake up in a city” — hum a few bars! — “where corruption never sleeps.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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insider corruption

Nepotism Today

nepotism, Hunter Biden, Chelsea Clinton, corruption,

The Democrats’ impeachment of Donald Trump has made us all familiar with Joe Biden’s son, Hunter — for his Burisma boardroom gig, anyway. Raking in millions despite lack of knowledge of the country or the business of the Ukrainian corporation in question certainly has the appearance of corruption.

But don’t forget Chelsea Clinton, also recently in the news.

“Chelsea Clinton reaps $9 million from corporate board position,” read the headline at The Hill, referring to her position on the board of IAC/InterActiveCorp (ticker: IACI). That’s a bit of spin, since the Barron’s article it’s based on has a more informational headline: “Chelsea Clinton’s IAC Stock Is Now Worth $9 Million,” which clearly shows that it is not her $50,000 per annum retainer that’s making her rich.

It’s her annual booty of $250,000 in restricted IAC stock units that’s the source of her boon.

And the fact that IAC stock has increased “89%, 50%, and 36% in 2017, 2018, and 2019, respectively.”

Since the company is going gangbusters, her position doesn’t look worthless.

But why would she be valuable?

There’s no more evidence for her ‘business genius’ than for Hunter’s.*

It’s connections that matter, especially those that make up the systemic corporatism of our Big Business/Big Government reality.

And that family angle? Well, economist Joseph Schumpeter argued that class is based on family success, coordinated and accumulated generation by generation. But since the advantages that the children of Democratic pols bring to corporations actually depend on government policy, this makes modern technocracy look less democratic and more old-fashioned oligarch.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* Chelsea Clinton holds a Doctor of Philosophy in international relations from the University of Oxford. And, by the way, she also doesn’t “care” about money.

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crime and punishment insider corruption

Good Golly, Healthy Holly

One reason to talk about corruption a lot is that there is a lot of corruption to talk about.

The scheme was to get Kaiser Permanente to buy 20,000 copies of her children’s book, Healthy Holly, at a decidedly non-discounted price of $5 a pop, while the health provider was negotiating a contract with UMMS and while she was serving on the UMMS board deciding that contract.

It’s been several months since I’ve discussed Baltimore, Maryland, a hotbed of Big Government degeneracy. Now that former Mayor Catherine Pugh has been indicted — this Tuesday — on multiple federal charges, we should take a moment to appraise her own tricky larceny against the city’s taxpayers and the patients of University of Maryland Medical System (UMMS).

What a scam.

And not her only one. She leveraged this scam to fund her mayoral campaign, for example.

So, it is good that she is being prosecuted.

Odd, though, that it is the federal government doing the prosecuting. Baltimore is a corporate entity under the sovereignty of the State of Maryland, not the United States.

What have state and local investigators and prosecutors been doing?

While this might seem a picky point, the federalization of law and order is, as the college crowd says, ‘problematic.’ Tasking the Federal Government to the rescue is great, insofar as it actually rescues. Yet, it is also an unmistakable sign not only of the corruption of the criminal justice system, but also of a failure of representative democracy to hold government officials accountable in that state or locality.

This is certain: government, removed from citizens’ vigilance, almost necessarily breeds corruption … and not just in Baltimore.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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crime and punishment property rights U.S. Constitution

Injustice Blocked

asset forfeiture, theft, police, corruption,

Civil asset forfeiture is one of those government practices that good people, when informed of it, often express, at first, incredulity. How can something like that exist in these United States?!?

Good question.

One reason seems to be that very incredulity. Normal Americans trust their government not to be evil. When shown that it regularly engages in actual highway robbery, then denial — ‘this cannot be happening.’

But it is.

Another reason it exists? It is so profitable.

For those in government, anyway. They get to fill their department coffers without having to ask for tax hikes. They — and by ‘they’ I mean ‘the police’ and government attorneys at state and local levels — just take the wealth.

Indeed, police routinely “keep whatever they can grab off anybody they arrest, claiming it’s all proceeds or property connected to criminal activities,” writes Scott Shackford at Reason, “and using it to line their own pockets. This incentivizes police to look for people who have assets that can be seized.”

In South Carolina, Shackford reports, police agencies “across the state had seized more than $17 million in assets across three years. In one-fifth of the cases, nobody was charged or even arrested for a crime.”

Fortunately, there is good news. “Circuit Judge Steven H. John has ruled that the South Carolina’s civil asset forfeiture regulations violate the Fifth, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendment rights of the citizens.”

Unfortunately, the fight against this evil practice is far from over.

But maybe the judge’s ruling will inspire citizens to petition their government and place politicians’ greed into check.

And might not this judge inspire other judges around the country?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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insider corruption

A Safe Bet

Post author By Redactor
Post date July 1, 2019
1 Comment on 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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insider corruption term limits

House-Cleaning & Law-Following

Post author By Redactor
Post date June 10, 2019
No Comments on House-Cleaning & Law-Following

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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