RINOs Boehner and Cantor Selling Us Out to Lobbyists

 

Congressional staffers voted former House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) and House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) the two best friends of lobbyists in this Congress.

In Washingtonian's biennial "best and worst" of Congress survey the magazine sends to congressional staffers, Cantor and Boehner placed first and second, respectively, in the "lobbyists' best friend" category. 

The magazine sent the survey to staffers "soon after Eric Cantor’s shocking primary defeat" to Dave Brat. Voters ousted Cantor in a June primary because of Cantor's ties to crony capitalism and embrace of amnesty legislation favored by the bipartisan political elite. Cantor resigned soon after and took a job for a Wall Street firm. 

Boehner has always been friendly with the lobbying community. According to Government Accountability Institute President and Breitbart News Senior Editor-at-Large Peter Schweizer's Extortion: How Politicians Extract Your Money, Buy Votes, and Line Their Own Pockets, Boehner is even known for collecting "tollbooth fees" before votes from industry executives. 

“You pay money at a tollbooth in order to use a road or bridge,” Schweizer writes in his book. “The methodology in Washington is similar: if someone wants a bill passed, charge them money to allow the bill to move down the legislative highway.”

Boehner and GOP leaders, as do Democrats, also demand secret fees to land top committee spots, as Schweizer's book reported.

via: Breitbart

Lois Lerner Literally Runs Away from Questions about IRS Targeting Conservatives

Widespread Corruption at the EPA

The lofty motto of the Environmental Protection Agency is "protecting people and the environment." In practice, however, EPA bureaucrats faithfully protect their own people and preserve the government's cesspool of manipulation, cover-ups and cronyism.

Recently, Mark Levin and his vigilant Landmark Legal Foundation went to court to ask federal district judge Royce Lamberth to sanction the EPA "for destroying or failing to preserve emails and text messages that may have helped document suspected agency efforts to influence the 2012 presidential election." The motion is part of a larger Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit to force EPA to release emails and related records from former EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson and others "who may have delayed the release dates for hot-button environmental regulations until after the Nov. 6, 2012, presidential election."


Thanks to Levin and Landmark, Jackson and other EPA officials admitted in depositions that they used personal, nongovernmental email accounts to hide communications about official EPA business sent and received on their government-issued BlackBerries and smart phones. The agency has continued to drag its feet for two years in response to Landmark's FOIA requests.

Levin minced no words: "The EPA is a toxic waste dump for lawlessness and disdain for the Constitution." Not to mention disdain for the public's right to know. As Levin added: "When any federal agency receives a FOIA request, the statute says it must preserve every significant repository of records, both paper and electronic, that may contain materials that could be responsive to that request."

The agency is legally obliged to notify all involved in the suit to preserve everything in their possession that could be discoverable in the litigation. But the feds have bent over backward to delay and deny. "(T)he people at the EPA, from the administrator on down, think they're above the law, that no one has the right to question what or how they do their jobs," Levin blasted. "Well, they're wrong. The laws apply to everyone, even federal bureaucrats."

That's a bedrock principle the EPA has defied over and over again. As I first reported 13 corruption-stained years ago in 2001, former EPA head Carol Browner oversaw the destruction of her computer files on her last day in office under the Clinton administration -- in clear violation of a judge's order requiring the agency to preserve its records. Browner ordered a computer technician: "I would like my files deleted. I want you to delete my files." In 2003, the agency was held in contempt and fined more than $300,000 in connection with another email destruction incident under Browner's watch.

Read More: Real Clear Politics

Mayor Ray Chocolate City Nagin on his way to Prison

 

Former mayor Ray Nagin, the businessman-turned-politician who became the worldwide face of the city after Hurricane Katrina, was sentenced to 10 years in prison.

Nagin, 58, was ordered to report to federal prison Sept. 8 and to pay restitution of $82,000. He was found guilty Feb. 12 of fraud, bribery and related charges involving crimes that took place before and after Katrina devastated the city in August 2005.

Prosecutors immediately objected to the sentence, which falls well below typical guidelines that called for 15-20 years.

"What Ray Nagin did was sell his office over and over and over again," Assistant U.S. Attorney Matthew Coman said outside the courthouse. "The damage that Ray Nagin inflicted upon this community ... is incalculable. We as a community need not and should not accept public corruption."

Coman said a decision on whether to appeal will be made by U.S. Solicitor General Donald Verrilli.

Judge Ginger Berrigan determined that Nagin did not have a leadership role in the criminal conspiracy, saying all defendants are "equally culpable."

"Mr. Nagin's crimes were motivated in part by a deeply misguided desire to provide for those closest to him," she said.

Before announcing the sentence, Berrigan indicated she would "downwardly depart from guidelines" and that "sentencing imposed should reflect Nagin's ability to harm the public again."

Nagin said he would "trust in God that this would all work out."

A jury convicted Nagin of accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes — money, free vacation trips and truckloads of free granite for his family business — from businessmen who wanted work from the city or Nagin's support for various hurricane recovery projects.

Prosecutors asked the court to send Nagin to prison for a long time. They argued that he was found guilty of 20 of 21 counts in the indictment, and that he participated in and orchestrated a years-long conspiracy to enrich himself and his family.

The government also argued that Nagin spent years covering up his crimes and that his testimony during the two-week trial showed an unwillingness to accept responsibility for his actions.

Coman compared Nagin's crimes with those of other public officials who drew stiff sentences, including former Detroit mayor Kwame Kilpatrick (28 years), former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich (14 years) and former Birmingham, Ala., mayor Larry Langford (15 years).

"Nagin's widespread and corrosive breach of the public trust — lasting through much of his tenure in office — equals even the worst of these state and local corruption cases," Coman wrote.

Read More: USA Today

PROOF Internal Revenue Service targeted Tea Party Donors

 

Despite assurances to the contrary, the IRS didn’t destroy all of the donor lists scooped up in its tea party targeting — and a check of those lists reveals that the tax agency audited 10 percent of those donors, much higher than the audit rate for average Americans, House Republicans revealed Wednesday.

Republicans argue that the Internal Revenue Service still hasn’t come clean about the full extent of its targeting, which swept up dozens of conservative groups.

“The committee uncovered new information indicating that after groups provided the information to the IRS, nearly one in 10 donors were subject to audit,” Rep. Charles W. Boustany Jr., Louisiana Republican and chairman of the Ways and Means Committee’s oversight panel, told IRS Commissioner John Koskinen at a hearing Wednesday.

“The abuse of discretion and audit selection must be identified and stopped,” he said.

Mr. Koskinen didn’t specifically address the accusations during the hearing, and the IRS didn’t respond to a request for comment late Wednesday evening.

The revelation was made on the same day that the House voted on a nonbinding resolution asking the Justice Department to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate the IRS targeting.

Investigators last year reported that the IRS singled out tea party and other conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status and gave them special scrutiny, including asking inappropriate questions about their activities and membership. The request for donor lists was among the inappropriate activities.

The IRS initially denied to Congress that it was singling out tea party groups, despite vocal complaints from groups that had their applications delayed for years. But faced with the internal audit, the agency admitted it had been subjecting these groups to special scrutiny.

Read More: The Washington Times

Anybody Remember Mayor Ray Nagin Mayor of "Chocolate City" ?

 

Why does ole Ray look so glum?

Ray Nagin came into the mayor's office in New Orleans as an avowed scourge of corruption and led the city through the worst disaster of its modern history.

He left a federal courthouse a convict, after a jury found him guilty of taking hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes and other favors from businessmen looking for a break from his administration. Of the 21 counts against him, he was convicted of 20.

"He got a lot of media attention as being a reformer, a non-politician, first run for office -- a businessman who was going to come in and get it right," said Pat Fanning, a veteran New Orleans lawyer and no fan of the former two-term mayor.

After Hurricane Katrina ravaged the city in 2005, the onetime cable television executive would reassure people queasy about sending taxpayer money to a state with an epic history of corruption by telling them, "Google me. You're not going to find any of that in my record," Fanning said, quoting Nagin. "Well, Google him now."

Nagin, who left office in 2010, had little to say as he left the courthouse Wednesday afternoon, telling reporters only, "I maintain my innocence." A small knot of supporters yelled, "Keep your head up" and "He's just a patsy," CNN affiliate WDSU reported.

His lead attorney, Robert Jenkins, told reporters his client would appeal the verdict.

"We did the best we could do," Jenkins said.

Prosecutors argued the 57-year-old Nagin was at the center of a kickback scheme in which he received checks, cash, wire transfers, personal services and free travel from businessmen seeking contracts and favorable treatment from the city. He faces up to 20 years in prison, but Fanning said a 14- to 17-year term was more likely.

A January 2013 indictment detailed more than $200,000 in bribes to the mayor, and his family members allegedly received a vacation in Hawaii; first-class airfare to Jamaica; private jet travel and a limousine for New York City; and cellular phone service. In exchange, businesses that coughed up for Nagin and his family won more than $5 million in city contracts, according to the January 2013 indictment.

During the two-week trial, prosecutors brought to the stand a string of businessmen who had already pleaded guilty to bribing Nagin. His defense did little to challenge their stories, Fanning said.

"It was too painful actually to watch. They just swamped him," he said. And when Nagin took the stand in his own defense, "He did a belly flop," often answering questions on cross-examination by saying he couldn't recall who paid for a trip or perk.

Read More: CNN

What does Hillary Clinton's Personal Scapegoat have to say?

 

You may not have heard of Raymond Maxwell, former deputy assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern Affairs. For reasons that are still unknown, he was fired along with 3 other diplomats in the aftermath of the Benghazi attack.

Maxwell has never been given an explantion and says he had absolutely nothing to do with security decisions that resulted in the death of Ambassador Stevens. The other three department officials let go were involved in diplomatic security.

Maxwell has broken his silence and talked to Josh Rogin:

"The overall goal is to restore my honor," said Maxwell, who has now filed grievances regarding his treatment with the State Department's human resources bureau and the American Foreign Service Association, which represents the interests of foreign-service officers. The other three officials placed on leave were in the diplomatic security bureau, leaving Maxwell as the only official in the bureau of Near Eastern Affairs (NEA), which had responsibility for Libya, to lose his job.

"I had no involvement to any degree with decisions on security and the funding of security at our diplomatic mission in Benghazi," he said.

Soon after being removed from his job, Maxwell was visited at his home late one evening and directed to sign a letter acknowledging his administrative leave and forfeiting his right to enter the State Department. He refused to sign, responding in writing that it amounted to an admission he had done something wrong.

"They just wanted me to go away but I wouldn't just go away," he said. "I knew Chris [Stevens]. Chris was a friend of mine."

The decision to place Maxwell on administrative leave was made by Clinton's chief of staff Cheryl Mills, according to three State Department officials with direct knowledge of the events. On the day after the unclassified version of the ARB's report was released in December, Mills called Acting Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Beth Jones and directed her to have Maxwell leave his job immediately.

"Cheryl Mills directed me to remove you immediately from the [deputy assistant secretary] position," Jones told Maxwell, according to Maxwell.

The decision to remove Maxwell and not Jones seems to conflict with the finding of the ARB that responsibility for the security failures leading up to the Sept. 11, 2012 attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi should fall on more senior officials.

"We fixed [the responsibility] at the assistant secretary level, which is in our view the appropriate place to look, where the decision-making in fact takes place, where, if you like, the rubber hits the road," Pickering said when releasing the ARB report.

Maxwell may have revealed the reason for his leave; he was set to retire. Rather than go after someone with their career still viable, it is not unknown to fire someone who is retiring anyway. 

Maxwell doesn't have any direct knowledge of the attack and is not a whistleblower. He is simply someone caught up in the CYA efforts of the State Department - and the effort to salvage Hillary Clinton's political career.

Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2013

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Is the EPA Playing Favorites? More Corruption?

Conservative groups seeking information from the Environmental Protection Agency have been routinely hindered by fees normally waived for media and watchdog groups, while fees for more than 90 percent of requests from green groups were waived, according to requests reviewed by the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

CEI reviewed Freedom of Information Act requests sent between January 2012 and this spring from several environmental groups friendly to the EPA’s mission, and several conservative groups, to see how equally the agency applies its fee waiver policy for media and watchdog groups. Government agencies are supposed to waive fees for groups disseminating information for public benefit.

“This is as clear an example of disparate treatment as the IRS’ hurdles selectively imposed upon groups with names ominously reflecting an interest in, say, a less intrusive or biased federal government,” said CEI fellow Chris Horner.

Most green groups, including Earth Justice, The Waterkeeper Alliance, and Greenpeace, saw their fees waived. In fact, according to the report, 92 percent of requests from green groups were waived by the EPA.

But of the requests that were denied, “the EPA said the group either didn’t respond to requests for justification of a waiver, or didn’t express intent to disseminate the information to the general public,” Conger reports, citing documents obtained by the Examiner. 

Read More: The Blaze

IRS Targets Conservatives

 

The Internal Revenue Service inappropriately flagged conservative political groups for additional reviews during the 2012 election to see if they were violating their tax-exempt status, a top IRS official said Friday.

Organizations were singled out because they included the words "tea party" or "patriot" in their applications for tax-exempt status, said Lois Lerner, who heads the IRS division that oversees tax-exempt groups.

In some cases, groups were asked for their list of donors, which violates IRS policy in most cases, she said.

"That was wrong. That was absolutely incorrect, it was insensitive and it was inappropriate. That's not how we go about selecting cases for further review," Lerner said at a conference sponsored by the American Bar Association.
"The IRS would like to apologize for that," she added.

Lerner said the practice was initiated by low-level workers in Cincinnati and was not motivated by political bias. After her talk, she told The AP that no high level IRS officials knew about the practice.

Agency officials found out about the practice last year and moved to correct it, the IRS said in a statement. The statement did not specify when officials found out.

About 75 groups were inappropriately targeted. None had their tax-exempt status revoked, Lerner said.

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky called on the White House to investigate.

"Today's acknowledgement by the Obama administration that the IRS did in fact target conservative groups in the heat of last year's national election is not enough," McConnell said. "I call on the White House to conduct a transparent, government-wide review aimed at assuring the American people that these thuggish practices are not under way at the IRS or elsewhere in the administration against anyone, regardless of their political views."

Read More: Associated Press

Big Easy Mayor Ray Nagin Indicted

 

Ray Nagin, former New Orleans mayor and the public face of the battered city in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, has been indicted by a grand jury on 21 federal corruption charges. 

The indictment, released Friday, alleges Nagin awarded lucrative city contracts to contractors in exchange for more than $200,000 in kickbacks and first-class trips to Hawaii, Jamaica and Las Vegas.

Nagin, 56, served two four-year terms as mayor, from 2002 to 2010, and currently lives in Frisco, Tex., outside Dallas. If convicted on all charges, he faces more than 15 years in prison. Nagin becomes the first mayor in the city's 295-year history to be indicted under federal corruption charges. 

Nagin could not be reached at phone numbers listed at his Frisco address. He's due in federal court Jan. 31 to be arraigned by a federal magistrate.

"This is a sad day for the city of New Orleans," current Mayor Mitch Landrieu said in a statement. "Today's indictment of former Mayor Ray Nagin alleges serious violations of the public's trust. Public corruption cannot and will not be tolerated."

READ MORE: USA Today