Meet Convicted 35-Count Rabbit Abuser
Top 5 White Collar Villains: Ulysses Currie, State Senator, Indicted of Taking Grocery's Bribes
Friday, September 10, 2010 at 9:00 am
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There really are no lengths to which a political party won't go to piss in their opponent's punch bowl. In Oakland County, Michigan, Circuit Judge Edward Sosnick's been empaneled as a one-man grand jury investigating allegations of election fraud related to filings on behalf of the Tea Party.
Former Oakland County Democratic party operative Jason Bauer notarized affidavits for 13 of 23 Tea Party candidates, one of whom lives out of state and didn't even know he was running. (When conducting a conspiratorial campaign designed to siphon votes from another party, it's often important that the people involved know they're participating.)
Bauer has resigned, as has Democratic Party Chairman Mike McGuinness, who recruited his former stepmother to run, without notifying her it wasn't for the Democratic party. (She was a little pissed when she discovered it.)
But in a typical display of Democratic incompetence, they failed to fill out the paperwork correctly. Among the problems cited was that the word "The" was not in 24-point boldface type as dictated by law. Last week the Michigan Supreme Court upheld the Court of Appeals decision, denying the Tea Party a place on the ballot. Ah, those crazy democrats, better with ideas than details.
Now Republicans know how to execute a dirty trick. In Arizona, the Green Party is trying to have three candidates removed from the ballet, after former Republican legislator Steve May recruited three homeless people to run for public office under the Green Party banner. In another race the roommate of a Republican's daughter ran for State Senate as Green Party candidate.
Hand it to the Republicans, they may not have any more integrity than Democrats, but at least they get the job done.
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Texas Representative Johnson claims she didn't realize the $25,000 in scholarships she handed out to two grandsons, two great-nephews and one of her aides two children violated Congressional Black Caucus Foundation eligibility rules. Since when couldn't you disburse awards to your friends and relatives? Nobody notified her that nepotism was frowned upon or downright illegal. (Why in Washington it happens all the time...)
There's also the fact that none of the students live or study in her district or that of any other black caucus member. But hey, the people in those districts are poor and stupid, right? Well, she didn't quite say that, just that "she might not have picked relatives had there been more qualified applicants." (No she didn't!)
Johnson says she will pay back the money, though fat lot of good it does for those denied scholarships by her familial largess. More than a third of the foundation scholarships she's awarded since 2005 have gone to relatives or those of her aide.
However, the 18-year veteran may have chosen a fortuitous time to get caught. With the House already investigating ethics violation of fellow Black Caucus member Charlie Rangel (D-NY) and Maxine Waters (D-CA), they may not have time (or the stomach) to reprimand Johnson too harshly.
Indeed Johnson's crimes seem negligible compared to intervening on behalf of a troubled bank on whose board her husband served (and in which he had between $500K and $1 million invested), as Waters did (the bank eventually received $12 million in TARP funds), or the 13 violations Rangel's charged with, including failing to disclose assets and accepting favors and benefits that may have influenced his congressional actions.
Maybe this explains why Democrats didn't go further to hold bankers responsible for the financial calamity they helped unleash. Thieves of the public trust have to stick together lest we turn on them all.
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What Pentagon oversight, you ask? Exactly. There's a reason it looks like a big toilet bowl.
Apparently we're paying the 765 employees of the Defense Department's Office of the Inspector General to play computer solitaire and surf Facebook. (Good work if you can get it.) During all of 2009, the OIG didn't audit any "major or non-major weapons contracts or contractors," according to a report from Senator Chuck Grassley's (R-IA) office.
Indeed, they're so lazy (or perhaps compromised) that they fail to follow up even when they found evidence of serious misdeeds. They dsicovered the Defense Department forgot to book $1 billion in proceeds from the sale of closed U.S. military bases in Europe, but when $107 million of that money turned up missing, senior officials turned down an auditor's recommendation that they investigate.
Grassley's office began their investigation after disgruntled OIG employees slipped anonymous notes under his door and followed up with information in anonymous faxes. (This is, in fact, how most business gets done in Washington.)
Despite employing 35% more auditors since 2003, the Inspector General's staff issued only 113 reports last year, the lowest staff productivity in at least 20 years. (Many of those reports were mandated by law, or requested by congress, which means they've mastered the skill of doing as little as they possibly can.)
The problem's become even more troublesome since the Pentagon adopted two automated systems that speed up payments to contractors by issuing checks before the contractors submit invoices documenting amounts owed. Yes you read that right. They've revolutionized accounts receivable by paying before anything's received. Got to admire American ingenuity.
While defense contracting doubled to $400 billion from 1993 to 2008 (adjusted for inflation), during the Bush Administration auditors sent 76% less fraud and corruption cases to the Justice Department. The FBI, which also is involved in such probes, sent 55% less cases to prosecutors. Apparently people just got more honest as more money became involved.
This year's Defense expenditures amount to $782 billion or 23% of our $3.5 trillion in federal spending, and about 4.7% of our GDP, after growing annually by 9% from 2000-2009. (Deficit? What deficit?)
In other words, can I interest you a $640 toilet seat or a $435 hammer?
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Perhaps one reason the FBI hasn't been investigating the Pentagon is because they're too busy with city corruption. This week Bobby Ferguson, a friend of former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, was indicted on eight charges of including conspiracy to defraud the United States, mail fraud and money laundering.
Ferguson's charged with obtaining millions of dollars of public work contracts through fraud, false statements and bid collusion. It's part of a larger ongoing FBI investigation of City Hall corruption that's led to at least 10 felony convictions.
Ferguson, who received over $170 million in city contracts since his buddy Kilpatrick took office in 2002, is accused of obscuring his ownership of a company to falsely create the impression of competition in a bidding process he won. (His were the only two companies bidding.) In another case, he recruited owners of two other companies to submit inflated bids to make his company appear to be the low bidder.
He hid cash withdrawals from his company's account by limiting them to $9,500, just below the the threshold that would require the bank to report the withdrawal, as part of a charge he laundered millions through one of his construction companies.
Ferguson also dumped construction debris and other materials at one of his public housing work sites to avoid paying hundreds of thousands of dollars of disposal fees as part of a contract with the Detroit Water & Sewage Department. It will cost the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development more than $1.2 million to clean up the site and properly dispose of the materials.
Ferguson faces up to 20 years in prison and fines of more than $2.5 million, while his companies could face fines as high as $10 million. Earlier this year, Ferguson wrote on his blog, "When did it become a crime having a friendship with someone in public office?"' Um, maybe when you started leveraging that for your own corrupt gains?
Detroit isn't the only rust belt city in the midst of an FBI corruption probe. In Cleveland, Cuyahoga County Auditor Frank Russo resigned yesterday when he was charged in a 21-count indictment over a variety of bribery charges from 1998 to 2009, totaling over $1 million. More than 57 individuals and businesses are named in the probe, and the investigation has already secured more than three dozen plea agreements from other defendants.
There's more reasons than outsourcing and changing demographics, why these once thriving cities are broke and in decline. It's probably not a coincidence that both have longtime Democratic governmental strangleholds that seems to have enabled a durable fountain of graft.
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You can almost hear Ulysses Currie screaming "Show Me The Money!!" The 73-year old Maryland State Senator had risen over the last 16 years to chair the Senate Budget and Taxation committee. He knew who to lean on, how to do it, and had enough power to make sure things happened.
With his help Shoppers Food and Pharmacy secured a needed liquor license, secured $2 million in improvements at a Baltimore more to ease the costs of opening a new supermarket, and acquired government land for a supermarket expansion without competitive bidding.
When the grocery first put Currie on their payroll in 2003, he received only $3000 a month. By 2007 that had grown to $7600 a month, perhaps with the help of a recovered document he wrote that year, entitled, "Accomplishments on Behalf of Shoppers." In it he cites a dozen actions carried out, writes that he's "in a unique position to assist Shoppers in expanding its mission and increasing its bottom line." and that he would bring the company "many more opportunities." By the time the FBI raided his house in 2008, Currie had collected $245,000.
Currie claims he was only a consultant, though he never listed any of their payments on his annual ethics income disclosure forms. In a move that can't help Currie, Shoppers reached an agreement with the prosecution to pay a $2.5 million penalty to end the case. They also fired two staff members named in Currie's indictment.
If you can't use your government position to line your own pockets or those of your friends, then what good is it?
Read last Friday's Top 5 White Collar Villains: Joel Pourier Bilks School To Pay For Strippers And Hummer.
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