Tag Archives: corruption

Another top Chinese Communist Party figure nailed for corruption

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President Xi Jinping’s anti-corruption drive inside China’s Communist Party has reached a new peak with the arrest of one of the party’s highest-ranking figures:

China’s leaders said early Saturday that [Zhou Yongkang] the former domestic security chief has been arrested and expelled from the Communist Party over a long list of accusations including accepting bribes and disclosing state secrets.
[…]
Top leaders handed his case over to the courts and announced through state-run media a litany of accusations. Among the allegations: Accepting huge bribes, shifting money to mistresses and relatives, abusing his office for special interests and disclosing state secrets.

If found guilty — as most party officials are in such cases — Zhou would be China’s highest-ranking party leader to be taken down in more than two decades.
[…]
Zhou spent much of the last decade as one of China’s most powerful people, controlling every aspect of the domestic security apparatus and maintaining deep, lucrative ties to China’s oil sector. By targeting him, Xi has broken an unwritten party rule against going after current or former standing committee members.

 
President Xi has gradually been consolidating power around himself since taking office — in a break from the previous two decades that often veered closer toward rule-by-committee — and moves like this also help purge the party of potential rivals. But the main reason for pursuing such policies is one of self-interest for the Party as a whole: Cleaning up the Chinese Communist Party and making it more responsive and accountable to the population is the easiest way to maintain high enough levels of popular support to stall any push to adopt multi-party rule.

Added: Here’s an interesting pull quote from CCTV English, one of the official state media outlets:

Zhou’s conduct deviated from the Party’s nature and purpose, greatly damaged the Party’s image and caused huge losses for the cause of the Party and the people, the commentary [in Saturday’s People’s Daily] said. “The impacts are extremely bad.”

The resolute decisions of the CPC Central Committee guarded Party discipline and the socialist rule of law, the commentary noted.

“The Party and corruption are like water and fire,” the commentary said. “The Party’s nature and purpose require persistent combat against corruption. Upholding the Party’s leadership and cementing the Party’s [continued rule] also require persistent combat against corruption.”

 

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November 19, 2014 – Arsenal For Democracy 107

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Topics: Catalonia referendum, Soccer politics (FIFA, German hooligans, FC Chelsea, and more), and Illinois corruption. People: Bill, Nate, Persephone. Produced: November 17th, 2014.

Discussion Points:

– What does the unofficial Catalonia referendum really mean for the region and Spain?
– Soccer Politics:

  • What’s next for FIFA after a bogus inquiry report summary?
  • Why are German soccer hooligans rallying against Muslims?
  • From Chelsea to Man City and beyond: Is big foreign money tainting the game?

– US midterms: Will Illinois Governor-elect Bruce Rauner survive a brewing corruption scandal?

Episode 107 (52 min)
AFD 107

Related links
Segment 1

– AFD: Just 3 in 10 back Catalonia independence in ridiculous referendum
– AFD: Against Independence for Catalonia

Segment 2

– NYT: FIFA Inquiry Clears Qatar and Russia in World Cup Bids
– France24: German football hooligans join far-right protests
– The Globalist: Chelsea and Beyond: How the Rich Will Destroy Soccer

Segment 3

– AFD: Who wants to be … a millionaire Illinois ex-governor?

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Who wants to be … a millionaire Illinois ex-governor?

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It’s almost as if some politicians just set out to validate political stereotypes. Just drink in the fact Illinois’s wealthy Republican governor-elect made it one week from the election before the corruption and campaign finance violations came to light.

Illinois Governor-elect Bruce Rauner accepted more than $140,000 worth of campaign donations from executives affiliated with firms in which Illinois pension systems have investments, according to documents reviewed by the International Business Times. The campaign donations flowed to Rauner despite state and federal rules designed to prevent pension investment managers from donating to candidates for public offices that oversee state pension systems. As governor, Rauner will now appoint the trustees who oversee Illinois’ pension investment decisions.

When IBTimes first presented the campaign finance documents to officials at the Illinois State Board of Investment late last week, they said they had never been asked about the donations. Days later, those officials announced they are now conducting a formal review of the system’s private investment managers to see if they complied with campaign finance disclosure requirements.
[…]
The SEC’s 2011 “pay-to-play” rule effectively bars executives at firms that earn fees from managing public pension money from donating to candidates for offices that can influence public pension investments. The Illinois governor appoints trustees to the boards overseeing the $40 billion Illinois Teachers Retirement System and the $13 billion Illinois State Board of Investment.

 
Gov.-elect Rauner is also himself still a partnership stakeholder in a subsidiary of a company he used to run, which also manages public pension money.

I look forward to learning whether Wheaton City Councillor and Lieutenant Governor-elect Evelyn Sanguinetti is cut out to lead a state of 12.9 million people (to Wheaton’s 53,000!) when Gov. Rauner inevitably resigns, is removed by the legislature, or is sent to prison.

I also wonder if, as his hand-picked running mate, she’ll carry through his radical agenda to “reform” Illinois pensions and carve out special anti-union “Right to Work” economic zones, along with other big business goodies disguised as help for small businesses.

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New Jersey still no clearer on Charlie Baker’s role in scandal

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Weird that the Boston Globe Editorial Board endorsed Charlie Baker for Governor of Massachusetts after the paper’s own coverage back in June about the connections between Baker and the pay-to-play scandals of the Chris Christie Administration in New Jersey:

Baker’s new-found notoriety in the Garden State came to a head when the New Jersey State Investment Council agreed to seek a legal review of the $10,000 donation he made to the New Jersey GOP in May 2011 — just seven months before General Catalyst, the investment firm where he is listed as an “executive in residence” principal, received $15 million from the state’s pension fund.

The council’s decision sparked a series of headlines across the state that has put Baker in the middle of the ongoing media feeding frenzy that is swirling around Christie and his administration.

Just last week, a Washington-based campaign finance watchdog group, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, called on the Securities and Exchange Commission, the New Jersey attorney general, and the state’s Election Law Enforcement Commission to investigate a possible connection between the donation and the investment.

Here’s a sampling of some of the headlines over the past month: “N.J. pension fund’s investment draws pay-to-play inquiry” is the way the Philadelphia Inquirer’s website, philly.com, headlined its story. “Christie administration to investigate pension investment tied to Massachusetts Republican” topped the story in the Newark Star Ledger. The Asbury Park Press and the Bergen Record covered the meeting with stories detailing the controversy.

The Inquirer website salted the wounds with a huge photo of Christie on a stage with Baker, then the 2010 GOP gubernatorial nominee, when the New Jersey governor came to Massachusetts to campaign for him. It also carried a head-shot of Baker farther on in the story, with the phrase “pay-to-play” in the caption. The controversy is also drawing national media. Businessweek ran a piece about the council’s decision, Fortune magazine has weighed in, and CNN’s website has also followed the story.

 
According to David Sirota, writing in the International Business Times last week, Chris Christie is now actively suppressing information related to the inquiry into Baker’s involvement in the situation in New Jersey.

As chairman of the Republican Governors Association, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie has helped Charlie Baker with millions of dollars worth of ads supporting his Massachusetts gubernatorial campaign. But that’s not the only way he may be boosting the GOP candidate in the final weeks of a close election: Christie officials are blocking the release of the findings of New Jersey’s pay-to-play investigation into Baker.

The documents being withheld pertain to an investigation of Baker’s $10,000 contribution to the New Jersey Republican State Committee. The contributions came just months before Christie officials gave Baker’s company, General Catalyst, a contract to manage New Jersey pension money. New Jersey’s pay-to-play rules prohibit contributions to state parties from “any investment management professional associated” with a firm managing state pension money.

When the campaign donations and subsequent pension contract came to light in May, Democrats criticized Baker, who was then launching his 2014 campaign for governor of Massachusetts. In response, New Jersey launched a formal investigation into Baker’s contributions. The Newark Star-Ledger reported at the time that Christie officials “said the review would take several weeks.”

In a reply to International Business Times’ request for the findings of the audit under New Jersey’s Open Public Records Act, Christie’s Treasury Department said the request is being denied on the grounds that the documents in question are “consultative and deliberative material.” Despite officials’ assurances in May that the probe would take only weeks, the New Jersey Treasury said in September that the investigation is still “ongoing” — a designation the department says lets it stop the records from being released.

 
As a reminder: If the governor of Massachusetts has to resign for some reason — which, between scandals and promotions to Federal offices, is pretty common for U.S. governors in general these days — the lieutenant governor becomes Acting Governor of Massachusetts. From New York to Arizona, in the last six years, we’ve seen some pretty terrible lieutenant governors fail to rise to the challenge when suddenly promoted. If Charlie Baker becomes governor, and his term ends unexpectedly early for any reason, his current running mate, anti-gay Karyn Polito, would be the acting governor of Massachusetts.

5 crazy facts from Uganda’s parliamentary debt farce

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uganda-flagA new Al Jazeera article takes us inside the Ugandan MP debt crisis that is rapidly devolving into farce. Essentially, the elected members of Uganda’s parliament are massively paid by peer standards but somehow are also, almost across the board, massively in debt.

Interviewees vaguely cited failed business investments as if that were a common affliction of the world’s elected officials. Others cited a need to spend personal money to buy votes to be re-elected to keep the money coming. At this point, the MPs believe the only solutions are a huge pay raise (from taxpayers) or bailout (from anyone willing to buy their support).

Here are the 5 craziest things I learned from the eye-popping piece:

  1. Uganda’s members of parliament, who are part of Uganda’s nearly three-decade-old quasi-democracy, were given a huge bribe pay raise to remove presidential term limits in 2005. They now claim President Museveni — Africa’s 5th-longest-serving leader — is intentionally blocking further pay raises. Why? Supposedly, so he’ll have leverage for future bribery incentivizing along the same lines.
  2. Despite how much money they made already, Uganda’s MPs are making new innovations in greed, spending sprees, and legalized theft of public resources. Debt aside, they now legally earn $7,680/month in a country where the average annual income is $510 and per capita GDP is $558. In 2011, many of them voted themselves $8,000 extra in one-time grants to “supervise government projects.”
  3. The parliament, as an institution, literally started lending money to its own members to help them out. Eventually the non-elected staff cut the MPs off from this source of cash because other creditors were then hounding the parliament to pay off debts or collect loans back.
  4. A Chinese bank actually tried to buy off the whole parliament by purchasing up the debts (probably in exchange for political support later) and giving better repayment terms to the MPs. These members of parliament were so greedy and unwilling to face reality they basically tried to accept this openly corrupt (and unpatriotic?) proposal. They blame the president again for stopping this brilliant plan.
  5. Uganda still has debtors’ prisons! This is where some MPs have already started getting hauled off to, when they fail to make good on their debts, like some sort of Dickensian version of House of Cards.

One suspects that these MPs, who are the same ones voting through radical anti-gay legislation handed to them by American evangelical activists, are not exactly the brightest lights in Ugandan society. But I suppose that comes with the territory when real governance power is removed from the parliament and transferred to an autocratic executive who has ruled for 28 years. Tends to discourage better candidates from seeking office.

The unbearable wifeness of being Mrs McDonnell

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Bob-McDonnell-by-Gage_SkidmoreAh, Bob McDonnell, the once and former future Vice President of These United States. Now a retired Governor of Virginia and (as of today) 11-times-over Federal convict. His wife was also convicted soundly on similar charges.

You may recall past highlights from his corruption trial proceedings included refusing to take an amazing plea deal that would have spared his wife altogether from joining him in 14-indictment hell:

The Feds were even willing to offer an extremely generous — perhaps overly so — deal to former Gov. McDonnell that would have protected his wife entirely, even though she seems to have orchestrated much of the corruption and solicitations. All he had to do was plead guilty to one felony count and serve time (probably very little considering who he is). Yet he said no.

 
And so down she went with him. But, we were told, it was all part of a cunning plan! This marriage needed to look so awful (for the jury) that refusing to spare her the investigation was just the final step.

Ah Bobby McDonnell, your masterful and foolproof “my wife is so horrible and I hate her and she was only taking bribes because she was in love with the briber” defense strategy worked like … whatever the opposite of “a charm” is. Just how low did you go in an effort to slime her for your own failed exculpation? Let us consult the New York Times:

Mr. McDonnell, who carried his wife over the threshold of the Executive Mansion the day of his inauguration, portrayed her in his testimony as a harridan whose yelling left him “spiritually and mentally exhausted,” and who was so cold that after he sent her an email pleading to save their marriage, she did not reply.

 
BOBBY. FOR SHAME. You made the New York Times editors break out the word “harridan.” They probably nearly asphyxiated from the dust of opening their expanded-volume dictionary just to find that word which could so perfectly summarize your cold-hearted view of your longtime wife and the mother of your five children.

BOBBY, I HAD TO LOOK THAT WORD UP JUST TO READ ABOUT YOUR DEFENSE. That is how mean you were to your wife.

And how, pray tell, did you brace yourself for your multitudinous convictions, good sir?

Leaving the courthouse at midday Tuesday once the jury began deliberations, Mr. McDonnell said the past 18 months had been tough on his family, but he said he drew strength from his 38 years of marriage and the five children he shared with his wife. “I think we’re stronger than we’ve ever been.”

 
And the shackles of their love will only grow in strength, no doubt, while they are both shackled in respective Federal prisons. Being apart from an unloving, backstabbing, corrupt spouse can only make the heart grow fonder. That’s in Proverbs.

Confirmed: Ron Paul’s 2012 team bribed a state senator

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After a guilty plea this week, we now have confirmation that Ron Paul’s 2012 presidential campaign bribed an elected official $73,000.

A former Iowa state senator pleaded guilty Wednesday to receiving and concealing payments in exchange for switching his support from one presidential candidate to another in the 2012 election, the Justice Department said.

The former lawmaker, Kent Sorenson, resigned from the Iowa Senate last year after an investigation found that he probably violated ethics rules by taking money from presidential campaigns.

Mr. Sorenson, 42, of Milo, Iowa, had been the state chairman for the presidential campaign of Representative Michele Bachmann, Republican of Minnesota, but then switched his support to former Representative Ron Paul of Texas just days before the state’s caucus.

In a statement filed with his plea agreement, Mr. Sorensen admitted that he agreed to switch his allegiance in exchange for $73,000 in payments.

 
Please tell me more about Congressman Paul’s integrity and principles and blah blah blah. Though I suppose that buying elected officials is very free-market and all that.

The fallout began Friday night, as a Paul family insider, Jesse Benton, was forced to resign as Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s re-election campaign manager in Kentucky.

Benton has worked in high-ranking positions in Rand Paul’s first Senate bid in 2010 and Ron Paul’s 2012 campaign, and he has married into the family, as well. It’s not known whether Benton himself knew about the bribe, but there would be a lot of questions either way, and so he had to go. If he’s cleared, I’m guessing he’ll be back for Sen. Rand Paul’s 2016 presidential campaign team, which he had already been slated to join before this scandal broke.