Tag Archives: Corruption

Wife of US spy Jonathan Sacoolas on the lam after world record hit and run

The US Air Force flew one of its intelligence workersâ€™ wives out of the UK after she committed vehicular homicide, then claimed diplomatic immunity. The British press reports that the whereabouts of Anne Sacoolas are being concealed from journalists and investigators. The US media is conspiring to keep all personal details being made public. Freedom the the Press does not protect your freedom to know.

Anne Sacoolas, 42, wife of US “diplomat” Jonathan Sacoolas (reportedly an intelligence officer with the NSA), fled the UK after killing Harry Dunn, 19, when her Volvo collided with his motorbike while she was driving on wrong side of road. Sacoolas had just exited the RAF Croughton base in Northamptonshire, which is leased to the US and called the Joint Intelligence Analysis Centre (JIAC). Sacoolasâ€™ eldest of three children was in the car at the time of the accident. Usually diplomatic immunity only covers diplomats in London, but a special deal signed as early at 1994 includes this particular base. US media is reporting the story, without mentioning her name, or that her “diplomatic immunity” is a cover for intelligence work.

Curious things, these media moratoriums.

Junior Netanyahu’s strip club banter exposes father’s graft -TRANSCRIPT

Three twentysomething douches sit in an armored limo parked in front on a strip club. They’re arguing about who paid for whose prostitutes. Benjamin Netanyahu’s son wants the son of gas tycoon Kobi Maimon to spot him $115 because his father the prime minister just directed $20B his way. Someone recorded the conversation. The third douche, a playfriend hired by Australian billionaire James Packer to lobby Netanyahu’s son, says “God help us if this gets out!” So they threaten to kill both the bodyguard and the driver. The driver who taped the conversation is being accused of indiscretion, not self defense. Check out the transcript below. Annotated.

The English transcript has been softened by the censors and comprises only a portion of the conversation, which apparently was too explicit. Here’s what is pubic so far, with Google addresses so you’re right there: Clara, Pussycat, Benedict, and more!

Yair Netanyahu: I’ll text her to come “takeaway” with me bro … she’s coming with me as “takeaway.”

He thinks the stripper is coming with him, what a dumbass.

Can you tell him the stripper isn’t coming? Forget it.

Bodyguard: Forget it, he’s drunk. Where’s the lady?

Roman Abramov: Bro, she pulled a fast one on you, she wanted you to take her to a room and give her 800 shekels like an idiot … you’re dumbasses, if someone had photographed you outside a strip club, do you realize what that would have looked like?

Son of Kobi Maimon: Do you know how much I’ve spent today? It wasn’t even for me, I spent 400 shekels on him.

Netanyahu: No, it’s all right, he paid you back.

Abramov: No, I used cash as well.

Maimon: 2,000 at the strip club.

Bodyguard: Tomorrow morning you’ll wake up and remember nothing.

Abramov: No, I spent 400 in cash then as well.

Maimon: So you’re exactly at 100.

Netanyahu: I’m a little in overdraft, bro. Dudu stung us.

Maimon: I’ve spent 3,000 today.

Netanyahu: I don’t know how we’re going to Ibiza.

Abramov: On what?

Maimon: 3,000 shekels I wasted.

Abramov: On what?

Maimon: I spent 300 at Clara and I gave Netanyahu 400.

Abramov: He also gave you 400 shekels.

Netanyahu: No, that was for the whore.

Abramov: No, he wanted to show Maimon how much he’s spending, like he deserves respect.

Maimon: Dudu ran off on us, bro.

Netanyahu: But if you want, I’ll fix you up with [Lee Levi, his girlfriend at the time].

Maimon (laughing): How is that?

Netanyahu: I have to fix her up with everyone, I’m paying off my debts.

Maimon: You can’t get her for yourself. I want that stripper – that will settle my debt.

Netanyahu: But bro, Jackie is the best.

Abramov: What do you mean, she’ll come, you dumbass? Bro, he’s tripping but he thinks it’s real. He’s tripping.

Netanyahu: I took her phone number but I don’t think it’s real.

Abramov: Bro, think about it. Do you know how many strippers I have on my phone that I had.

Maimon: Bro, I have the number of a stripper.

Abramov: It’s about time, half of my phone numbers are of strippers.

Maimon: But I brought you the stripper, I paid for her first.

Nu, you jerk, it was my money.

Abramov: Your money, you jerk?

Netanyahu: Bro, that Sophie, she was the hottest.

Abramov: Me first, listen. I had like 2,000 shekels for the dances, I’m not kidding, I had two lap dances.

Netanyahu: But where’s all the rest?

Maimon: No, it was three dances.

Netanyahu: Where’s the rest?

Maimon: ‘Cause I spent it on you, on him, every second I was like, ‘Go dance on his lap,’ I paid for your dance, bro.

Netanyahu: You paid for Jackie too.

Abramov: Wow, bro, we have to go back there.

(The bodyguard laughs)

Maimon: Look, even the bodyguard is laughing at you. You saw her kissing me, didn’t you?

Bodyguard: I saw her shoving you away the whole time, that’s what I saw.

Abramov: Bro, do you know how many girls I was with at Pussycat, you dumbass?

Did they kiss you?

Yes.

Bro, what’s the big deal?

Bro, she’ll drive you nuts.

You’re not even on her radar, tomorrow it’ll be someone else.

Yes.

Abramov: What’s your problem, you dumbass, she’s a hooker, like, a hooker par excellence.

Netanyahu: It’s my mother on the phone? My mom is calling, how embarrassing, my mom, wow how embarrassing that she’s calling

Abramov: Your mom, is your mom awake at these hours on Friday?

Maimon: Is she cool with leaving the house?

Abramov: At this hour?

Netanyahu: Why don’t you get the Japanese girls…

(One of the three, to the bodyguards): If he quits, bro, we’ll to murder him … When you quit, be careful because you’ll die, too bad for the kids.

Netanyahu: Dudu stung us.

Abramov: Now, bro, he’s opening Leviathan [natural gas field], now we’re living off that, for two years, bro. What about Leviathan, tell us.

Netanyahu: My dad got a great deal for your dad.

(Laughter)

Netanyahu: Bro, you have to be nice to me. Bro, my dad got your dad a sweet deal, he fought for it at the Knesset, bro.

Maimon: What?

Netanyahu: My father really fought for it. I remember.

Abramov You owe us, you owe us 125 thousand.

Netanyahu: Bro, my dad just got you a 20 billion dollar deal and you can’t spot me 400 shekels?

Maimon: Are we talking about Sheshinski [head of commission on natural gas royalties]?

Netanyahu: Not this time, now it’s the new one.

Abramov: Sheshinski is hell.

Netanyahu: He screwed you on that, but then he made up for it. He just got you 20 billion dollars.

(Laughter)

Netanyahu: You’re crying over 400 shekels, my father arranged 20 billion dollars for your father and you’re crying over 400 shekels for me, you son of a bitch.

Abramov: I don’t want this conversation getting out, God help us. God, if this gets out…

Bodyguard: Where are we going, where do we drop him off?

Netanyahu: Can you put on Waze for a minute? Rothschild Boulevard, number 30 [Maimon’s Tel Aviv apartment] and then to the apartment [of billionaire Packer at the Royal Beach Hotel in Tel Aviv].

Netanyahu: If we’re already talking hookers, what’s open at this hour?

Maimon: Benedict.

Netanyahu: Wow.

Maimon: Are you coming to Benedict? It’s on Yair.

Netanyahu: It’s on me, despite the 400 … He needs to get out.

Bodyguard: No, no one is coming to replace me, don’t worry.

Maimon: Let’s go to Benedict, as long as Yair is paying.

Abramov: As long as Yair is paying I’m happy.

Netanyahu: Do you think the waitress will play along?

I don’t know, let’s check her out.

I don’t know…

Maimon: I’m going to sleep.

Come on.

Maimon: I’m going to sleep.

Abramov: Come on Yair, it’s on Yair, let’s go … he didn’t have money for a hooker, it was on Yair, it’s on me, you just got 20 billion and you’re crying.

Netanyahu: Son of a bitch, my father got you 20 billion.

Saudi ruler of impoverished tribal lands won’t share oil riches with own cousins

Saudi Arabia is a land of abject poverty, dominated by whichever tribal warlord claimed to hold the deed when the British started tapping it for oil. While the common inhabitants are subjugated under crushing poverty, fundamentalist Islam, and repressive injustice punctuated with beheadings, Saudi “royals” require gold plated escalators to descend from their jet planes. Now the “crown prince”, dubbed MbS, is consolidating power by arresting his fellow royal billionaires, accusing them of corruption. Isn’t that rich? Corruption defines feudal kleptocracy. As supplies of oil near their end, the robber barons get ever greedy about the last drop. Did you wonder why the Al Saud windfall wasn’t shared with the poor? Now they want to cut out their own relatives. No honor among thieves. Thereby settling the oxymoron of Saudi nobility.

FBI says Hillary Clinton was “careless” with classified secrets, not treasonous for evading public record.

Pundits are decrying the unfair scrutiny on the presumptive successor-in-chief, pointing out that Condoleeza Rice and Colin Powell were never called out for using private servers. Other miscreants too, who should have been hauled before the justice department, tarred and feathered and pilloried. Carl Rove and Dubya Bush purged email records. Are they the new role models for what behavior is acceptable?!

And all that is missing the point. Hillary’s use of a private server for state department emails was more than a security breach, it was an avoidance of keeping a public record. It was evasion of accountability. It was treasonable. Richard Nixon was in touble for erasing 18 minutes of taped conversation in the White House. Hillary has deleted millions of records in flagrant violation of rules of transparency meant to check government corruption. Fortunately Wikileaks snagged a bunch of them, and presumedly the NSA has archived them all, with the entirety of everyone’s public and private record. Funny no one is reopening that can of worms.

Hastert being a pedophile is not the story! Where did a former wrestling coach get millions to bribe his victims?!

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If Dennis Hastert was being treated like a convicted serial pedophile, he’d never see the light of day, you’d think. Instead the judge was asked to take into account his years of public service. Which is almost not missing the point of the whole scandal. Dennis Hastert being a pedophile pales next to the number of victims of his white collar crime. Paying hush money to the former victims of his predatory sexual abuse was the petty crime for which he was sentenced to 15-months in prison. Hastert’s biggest crime was his corruption as the longest serving Speaker Of The House. Dennis Hastert was a high school wrestling coach before running for office and becoming a multimillionare land speculator. Could Hastert’s record stint in Congress mean he didn’t break records for stealing from his constituents and their interests? It’s obvious where Hastert got the millions in cash with which to pay off his many underage victims. THAT’S the crime for which Dennis Hastert isn’t serving enough time. BY ALL MEANS, DO TAKE INTO ACCOUNT HIS PUBLIC SERVICE. Award his millions to his abused victims, put Dennis Hastert in jail forever, then, for betraying the public trust, hang him.

I have to ask: if Dennis Hastert was a perv as a wrestling coach, what predilections do you suppose he indulged as America’s second most powerful office-holder and corrupt multimillionaire? Are we to imagine Speaker Hastert kicked his pedophilia habit for graft? Those are two distinct abberations. One’s a mental disorder, the other is calculated greed.

At today’s sentencing the judge called Dennis Hastert a “serial pedophile” and expressed it was shocking to say serial pedophile and House Speaker in the same sentence. I doubt that. Mostly because we only learn these things after the fact. I think it would be more accurate in the future to wonder which if any of our speakers are not pedophiles.

If fellow congressmen and staffers knew anything of Hastert activities –and how couldn’t they not?– they should face prosecution as well.

Panama Papers expose only foes of US. Source unknown. Smells like Ickyleaks.

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Out of nowhere come the “Panama Papers” leaked from a lawfirm that assists money launderers and offshore investors of embezzled wealth. It’s great to see international corruption exposed. Apparently it’s rife only among world leaders adversarial to Washington DC. For example, Russia, Iran, Syria, etc, no usual suspect left ungathered. Aaaand.. the Prime Minister of Iceland is implicated! A new villain! This has prompted demonstrations in the tiny nation and bank-bailout holdout. Iceland is global banking’s public enemy number one. What do you bet those protests are backed by the same “pro-democracy” NGOs that fomented state-failure in Libya, Syria and Ukraine? There’s something fishy about leaked documents that taint only enemies of the New World Order.

Even if the Panama Papers have a second act wherein Western luminaries are revealed to be crooks, there’s something very convenient about their curation.

Now the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists has dissed Wikileaks, explaining that their controlled release of information will harm fewer innocents. Except Wikileaks didn’t produce any casualties and two, can any of the tax avoiders and public wealth pilferers be innocent?

Ickyleaks is an apt name for the ICIJ.leaks sneaks.

The History of the Denver Police Department

Before the Denver Police Department began murdering the men, women and children of Denver, they were burglarizing Denver homes and businesses.

In 1960, the largest police corruption scandal in the U.S. to date began to unfold. More than 50 area law-enforcement personnel – almost entirely Denver Police Officers were caught in a burglary ring. Cops had stolen over a quarter of a million dollars from businesses they were supposed to be protecting on their beats over a ten-year period. Police cars would close down a few blocks of a major business avenue, such as University or Broadway, then burglarized and stole the safes from the businesses along the closed down portion of the street. Alarms would be going off all up and down the street, they would take their loot, then respond to the alarms and take the reports. It all came to a crashing halt when an officer named Art Winstanley literally had a safe fall out of the back of his police cruiser. He testified against his fellow officers and then by the end of 1961, 47 police officers had lost their badges. The DPD called it “Back Friday”.

Art was sent to the prison in Canon City along with over 40 of his cop buddies. When the prison door swung shut on Art, he complained to the warden that no one liked or respected him, he said the other convicts were being mean to him and spitting on his food tray; these were the convicts that Art had arrested and sent to prison for crimes that he had committed.

Many of these crimes by the Denver Police Department were known and whispered about at the time by other policemen, citizens and politicians, but for fear of retaliation from the cops, they remained silent.

It was only when one rat with his foot in the trap, trying to save himself, exposed the true extent of the crimes of the Denver Police Department. Sixty five years have now passed and the DPD have moved on from burglary to murder.

There are many who speak out for respect for the policeman, they see his blue uniform and badge, read his propaganda of “Protect & Serve” and then slovenly give them a free pass in all matter, they mistakenly think they are incapable of a lie.

These people are the product of police propaganda and a media who quietly sweeps police crimes and brutality under the rug, never to see the eyes of the public.

One of the best examples I can give is of a recent event; A policeman who was called for a disturbance at a Target store, helped a young boy repair his bike.

It seemed the boys bike chain had come off and the policeman helped him put it back on, the incident was reported by another policeman who was also there. It was said the this incident went viral; So what would my complaint be?

Had You or I, ordinary citizens stopped to help this boy, you would never had heard of the incident and it certainly wouldn’t have went viral.

I didn’t see a cop helping the boy, I saw only a man helping the boy. A blue uniform and badge does not make him a saint.
Truth be known; most of the general public have little or no contact with their police department outside of traffic stops. They have little knowledge of how brutal the unchecked police powers have become. And while these brutal crimes go on unchecked by some policemen, the others remain silent; that in itself is a crime. To be a good cop, he must stand up and bear witness to the crimes he has knowledge of, especially when it is wearing a blue uniform and badge. To do less, is to become a partner in crime.

Would that same cop who helped this boy with his bike, if put in the situation where he saw one of his fellow officers commit a crime, speak out and make an arrest of his fellow officer? History has taught us that he would not.
Where the general public see’s a badge, a blue uniform and give’s their respect, I see a human being that is capable of both good and bad deeds, and should be treated as such just as any citizen would be treated.

A question we might ask: How is it that the DA has not filed one criminal case against the police and yet the juries in civil court have awarded million of dollars to victims of police abuse.

Mitchell R. Morrissey was elected District Attorney of Denver in November 2004 and was sworn into office on January 11, 2005. He is responsible for the prosecution of more than 6,000 felony and 18,000 misdemeanor criminal cases every year.

Media calls Hastert clean-as-a-whistle as he is indicted for “prior misconduct” but where did he get millions to pay?

Former Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert’s biggest crime isn’t whatever he’s paying hush money to cover up, it’s this: Where did the former high school teacher and wrestling coach get a discretionary fund of millions to pay off a blackmailer? While reporters try to dig up Hastert’s accuser, we should follow the money backward. WHERE DID SPEAKER HASTERT GET THE MONEY?! Or do we take for granted that all congressmen slash lobbyists are multi-millionaires who can spare several million for bribes of their own? It’s interesting that the media wants to indemnify Hastert’s “clean as a whistle” career from what they’re labeling “prior misconduct”. But that “clean as a whistle” firewall comes from Hastert having presided over the impeachment of Bill Clinton. So he’s a choirboy along the likes of Ken Starr. Otherwise Hastert’s long reign in the house was the usual shady. Details listed on the recent indictment indicate Hastert was being blackmailed for sexual misbehavior in the Duggar family tradition, not uncommon to born-again congressmen of Hastert’s hue.

I’ll believe corporations are people when one is not let off a criminal probe

I’ll believe corporations are people when one is declined the chance to pay a fine instead of face criminal penalties. Imagine OJ Inc or Pistorius Inc or Bernie Madoff being able to pay off US marshalls instead of going to jail. Next question, who is the beneficiary Toyota’s $1.2 Billion payoff?

Will Colo. Springs raise energy bills by 3% to give 50% raise to utilities CEO?

COLORADO SPRINGS residents are left to wonder what kind of leverage the public utilities CEO holds over his board of directors. City Council wants to raise Jerry Forte’s salary to half a million in spite of the coal-black hole in which he put the city’s energy portfolio. They won’t consider investing in renewables lest it bump utility rates by 1%, put they will raise the rates by 3% to resolve a payables problem, austensibly, (They want to act quick while higher winter usage means the rate hike will yield more) and I guess for the CEO’s raise.

The Obama Administration- how coach plebeian they do travel! …NOT.

One of the most sadly comical aspects of the Obama Administration and the rather dense liberal types that put their hopes for future change in them, is how it is pretended that The Obamas are of, AND FOR, the people. And many brainwashed Americans even believe that!!!????? However, if so, why does this Administration’s bosses spend so much money like this when they just travel a night or two? Joe Biden’s Paris Hotel Cost $585,000 For One-Night Vice Presidential Stay

And the one night in Paris was no aberration, it seems. Here, according to this Huffington Post news item, was just how much Biden spent in London previously! … $459,338.65 for one night! Incredible! And these are just the costs for the Hotel use!

Police are pretty much thugs here, there, and everywhere

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prison Mexico’s and the USA’s prison system is run by thugs!

Capitalism has long created and enforced a thug-like prison system. I have recently been told the experience of someone in this system and which thousands of people do too. I am also reading The Trial by Franz Kafka and I was reminded of this experience. As I listened to this person in tears both of relief because he got out, but also because of complete fear for what happened to those not as lucky as him, I felt sorry for him because even if he was not put back in jail, he won’t be able to become anything else because of capitalism’s structure. And so here is his story and I hope that this will not be the fate of him, and that someday Mexico’s thug-jails will be gone as will the criminality produced by poverty in an alienating system like Capitalism.

“I was at a party and two friends went to a store and stole some alcohol. They went back to the party and continued listening to loud music. The police showed up and I tried to run. I would have gotten away but my brother was in the house and I couldn’t leave him.

The police caught us and lined us up against a wall where they began to hit us. They hit the girl with the butt of their gun on her head and she fainted. They hit us on the shoulders, the head and the face and they kicked us and stepped on us. My brother yells as they hit him and I scream at them to let him go but they continue punching us on the face and then they put us in the car. My brother is sixteen and so he gets lucky and is only kept over night. I, however, was there for three months.

My friend was sent to Topo Chico where they tied him up and hit him with wooden boards. They then soaked him and connected him to the light where he was electrocuted.

They are tied up for three months where they lie in their own filth and some are shot in front of all the other prisoners. My friend owes the Zetas 20,000 Pesos and the police will continue to hit him until he pays the Zetas.

Sometimes when the police shoot someone that is tied up, they offer a prisoner to take the blame in return for 20 years in prison but without being tied up in their own filth and without the daily starvation and blows.

Most of them are innocent but they get us on the street and they torture us to get money from us; which isn’t much and sometimes their parents are forced to accept the cruelty of which is bestowed upon their kids. Sometimes it’s 4,000, sometimes it’s 30,000 but if you don’t give them money, they torture you.

They get us to confess by putting us on a board and then a towel on our face which will become drenched with water and we’ll feel as if we’re drowning. We begin to get sick from the filthy cells. I have sores all over my skin and I can’t stop itching, but I almost forget it because of how happy I am to get out.

I got lucky but I’m sorry for others that don’t because they can’t afford the quota. We are all poor and we don’t receive decent educations because even the public education is expensive and so we resort to petty crime and then get caught… Sometimes, even those with money get caught.”

Mexico has thug-like prisons that are run by cops that are no better than the organized crime. In fact, the Zetas, a major cartel group, came from the Mexican police force. And by having this alienating system and prisons, it creates a circle of even more crime. Good luck to all of the youth trapped in this unjust system that is full of corruption and which many people cannot escape.

Kellogg Brown and Root is unnamed Iraq War Contractor penalized $85M for poisoning US soldiers

Apparently Kellogg Brown and Root’s identity doesn’t merit mention in the current headline Iraq War Contractor ordered to pay $85 Million, even though the former Halliburton subsidiary, cut loose when earlier unsavory behavior became public, is not new to unflattering headlines, is already a household name as KBR, the largest construction contractor famous for tax-evasion, human trafficking, gang-rapes and toxic burn pits, etc.

When ‘health care’ is pure corporate corruption – Afghanistan as case study

Much of US health care is really a form of corporate corruption and government welfare for corporate interests, and plain medical dysfunction. So it is certainly to be expected that Pentagon-occupied Afghanistan would face the very same MESS us Americans do, just on a more gargantuan basis. See Government cannot afford to run any of the 19 new foreign-funded facilities due to come online in the next two years. Americans, as well as Afghans, deserve to have a medical system free of constant corporate corruption pushed by corporate-run government.

Springs Mayor Steve Bach’s downtown plans centered on real estate speculation and corruption

As I was listening this AM to Right Wing talk radio on 105.5 today, they had Colorado Springs mayor telling us in an interview that it was no secret that he wants a baseball stadium to be built downtown which he claims will somehow revitalize the center of the city. That’s as doubtful a claim as his idiotic boast that he personally will direct the city into ‘creating’ 6,000 new jobs during his term, which could only come about with a US economic recovery he banks on seeing happen though he would have no responsibility in bringing any such possible thing about.

The fact that he has such little common sense in making this comical boast in time of national economic downturn is underlined with his other ass backwards (to the real estate industry) drives to initiate FURTHER witch hunts against the city’s homeless population through a law making panhandling an illegal act, and now his budding personal campaign to convert the coal using Drake Power plant an area for a gigantic, wasteful, and totally UNNEEDED stadium bond project for his real estate cronies to personally profit off of. What other schemes will he soon be behind?

What a sorry cretin of a mayor the city is now saddled under! It is hard for me to believe that anybody worse than former Mayor Lionel Rivera could have been created but that’s exactly what the El Paso County Republican Party did in pushing steve Bach off onto the community. They brought us even worse than Rivera! They brought us Bach.

Bach as mayor is like having our very own local clone of dullard Mitt Romney running the show here at military elite’s home base, Colorado Springs. Makes us weep about what the future will soon bring to Colorado Springs, military show base central or not. More faceless, lifeless, and UGLY development by a real estate industry that only wants to build build build without any real thinking about how trashy their building really is? Certainly another big empty parking lot for a big empty downtown urban stadium like Bach is pushing for is just building more failure on top of the other major construction boondoggles in urban planning many other cities have already lost out on in having their own local corrupt politician and business crews stick it to the public and stick up the public with. It would be the crown followup for the real estate industry’s ugly SPRAWL to the north and east of the city, which is the real reason the downtown has so little to offer at this time. Much of the city’s public now lives miles and miles away from the core of the city in kind of dead zones. No! Make that really socially dead zones where they live in. YUCK! Now Back wants to bring their dead lands to us center city…

No thanks, Bach. We don’t need a huge lifeless stadium built downtown to add to the city’s sorrows. That building of stadiums downtown did not do any good for downtown Denver and it won’t do any good here in Colorado Springs either. We should not copycat the failures of others cities’ in their bad planning. Colorado Springs deserves something much better than a big empty stadium parking area to look at downtown, PLUS the years of paying off the bonds that would be sought to create an empty zombie stadium downtown. And we deserve much better than you as our mayor.

University of Colorado lease does not guarantee Memorial Hospital will continue to admit Medicare patients

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo.– Local voters have until next week to decide whether to accept the offer to lease the city’s Memorial Hospital to a University of Colorado non-profit entity, but there is no guarantee that the community health needs will continue to be met, in particular, that Memorial will continue to accept Medicare. Indications are not encouraging. At a symposium held tonight by 9 to 5 Colorado addressing privatization of public services, it was revealed that Memorial provides more care to indigents than any other hospital in the state. At the same time, the Denver hospital run by the University of Colorado currently ranks last there for indigent care. Apparently teaching hospitals prefer teachable cases, and excuse themselves from the cases that create billing difficulties because “it’s not their mission.” Alas, the prestige of becoming a teaching hospital is how politicians are selling the Memorial deal, now obviously dubious. And ordinarily the privatization of medical facilities in Colorado is regulated by what’s called a “conversion statute” except –it protects the public interest only in cases of hospitals sold, not leased! While a 40-year “lease” sounds less commital, it actually circumvents Colorado’s protections. Now let’s consider the implementation of President Obama’s Affordable Healthcare Act which may take some financial pressure off hospitals. Why-ever is Colorado Springs rushing to privatize before that card is face up? You can bet the medical industrialists have already factored that windfall into the profit they’re going to turn from cutting out everyone else who falls in the cracks. And we will have no say in the matter, because the lease makes that much clear. Why not ask our city attorney to confirm we’re screwed before the election and not after?

WWII vet, age 92, finally diagnosed with PTSD why, because we care?

Sgt. Stanley Friedman, a 92 yr-old veteran of the WWII North African campaign, was finally diagnosed with PTSD. Pro bono lawyers couldn’t even verify his service records, but after sixty years of denying his claims, the VA has at last been forced to grant Friedman compensation. Is this really the result of crafty legal work, at long last, or of a PR climate now overrun by Big Pharma, whose PTSD drug market windfall needed a poster boy for the baby boomer set, the type of veteran Americans favor over those from less “good” wars?

Now, here’s a surprise…

Our local District Attorney has declared the case closed that the Real Estate industry who own City Hall and the Mayor and the County Commissioners might be using the legislative and enforcement powers of City Hall and their appointed servants in the Police and Courts to rig deals that profit… The Real Estate Cartel. Couldn’t possibly be that Rich People would use their wealth to buy political power and use that power to route Public Money into their already swollen bank accounts.
No, they’re above that sort of behavior.
Or so we’re told, this time by their bought-and-paid (through stolen public money, perhaps?) District Attorney. Because wealth and the attendant Greed would never invite them into corrupt practices. No not never!

Do we need to speak truth to power? The powerful already know the truth. They bank on it.

So that much hasn’t been made clear to you with Occupy Wall Street? Common citizens are coming together across the globe, without need to apprise each other about Capitalism’s ravages. Does anyone still doubt these crimes are fully premeditated? SPEAKING TRUTH TO POWER may still be a laudable dare, but let’s not pretend it’s revelatory. Today netizens are being asked to petition congress to stand down its attack on Net Neutrality, because apparently the public’s freedom on the web might be something lawmakers are overlooking. Playing this speak-truth-to-power charade simply renders the public complicit in perpetuating untruth, that the actions of our corporate government, media and capital class are not absolutely, mendaciously callous and deliberate.

Colorado Springs corruption detectives sniff desperation of lottery ticket clerks

Colorado Lottery, don't forget to pay You’d think Colorado Springs’ many kleptocrats, considering our locale’s famously embarrassing lower than average IQ, must be stupid enough to get caught. Other than the odd treasurer with a gambling habit, law enforcement is not going after them. Instead, according to an article in today’s Gazette, local detectives are policing convenience store clerks, exposing the corruption of workers who have to tender anything over a five into a time-lock safe. A Colorado Lotto sting operation busted two out of twenty clerks surveyed this weekend who pretended their customers had losing tickets, and who later tried to redeem the tickets for themselves. One of the corrupted employees worked at the west side Farmcrest, now she’s on the lam, so I have a personal interest in calling the sweep an entrapment.

Obviously. In her shoes, a likely pretty awful daily grind, what might you have been tempted to do?

Here’s how it worked: the special Lotto detective, yeah, I carry a badge, hits random ticket outlets, equipped with a trick ticket which when fed into the Lotto equipment registers as a $100,000 winner. This is handed to each clerk under the pretext that the pretend-ticket-holder wants to know if his/her ticket is a winner. If it is, hurrays all around, the secret shopper leaves congratulated without further ado. If the clerk palms the ticket, inserts a bum ticket kept handy, and tells the mystery shopper theirs is a dud, the detective returns to the office to lay in wait for that clerk to visit in person to claim to the “prize”.

Now the story doesn’t say that particular clerks were targeted based on flagged irregularities, or for having redeemed a suspicious percentage of winning tickets, or for having entered the same non-winning ticket at repeated intervals during the same work shift. Actuarial predictors could probably narrow the hunt, but there the prey becomes perhaps too crafty. Instead the mystery shoppers cast a wide net, sweetened with a $100,000 lure.

You may think I’m too soft on a miscreant clerk betraying her fellow poverty-wage peers, those who tithe what they can’t afford for the regular vicarious, virtual delusion that any successive investment in the lottery could deliver them into riches. Perhaps it’s more obvious to her than to most that with lottery tickets the payoff is in holding the ticket, the dreams you entertain, before you confirm it’s very very unlikely to be worth more than nothing. Perhaps she knows the only way you’re going to quit the destructive habit is to lose the last umpteenth time. I know in Cripple Creek when I saw a slot machine paying out, or heard someone tell of returning from Las Vegas with a positive cash balance, I thought, oh no, that only encourages the idiots. Perhaps a lottery sales clerk gets to know her regular customers and knows how severely each cannot afford the deprivations which their gambling compels.

Of course the Lotto secret shopper is not going to be confused for a regular. But who knows what profile undercover officers project. Maybe they’re nasty customers, someone a clerk would hate to see win. I have no idea. Imagine you are that detective, eager to trip someone up, with the scruples of a condescending law enforcer who suspects all. I’ll bet you’d be as rude as your undercover video camera allows. If the clerk isn’t alerted by your undercover behavior, it might be the creepiness of your insincerity that prompts her to tell you your ticket is not a winner. Her disdain may even be compounded by the factor that you can’t even verify the ticket yourself at the DIY kiosks. On top of that you’re an asshole.

At the core, what you’ve done is dangle $100,000 in front of a clerk who earns minimum hourly wage, who’s not permitted to work more than 20 hours a week and thus has to hold two or three jobs, earning no overtime. You’ve targeted a person who is cannon fodder for armed robbery holdups, without cause. It’s a tribute to the average clerk’s honesty, or a sign of their heightened state of fright, that more do not fall to temptation.

The Colorado Lotto’s pretense for exemption from the state’s otherwise fairly puritanical isolation of gambling communities is that it’s tolerated because it funds Colorado’s park system. The contrivance of this Lotto police sting operation suggest the program also aims to supplement municipal and correctional system coffers.

You tell me whether publicizing such successful stings gives people more or less comfort in the lottery’s integrity. I’d be inclined to say no. If the Lotto really wanted, system safeguards could easily subvert the best efforts of dishonest clerks.

I draw consolation in thinking this entrapment scenario prompts an obvious defense for my poor Westside victim. She told the undercover shopper that the ticket was not a winner. In fact it was not a winning ticket, it was a fraud.

Springs congressman Doug Lamborn tells citizens he answers to private propertied constituents not to public

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COLORADO SPRINGS- Local citizens have had plenty to protest with Congressman Doug “Obama is a Tar-Baby” Lamborn, so now the Tea Party bigot has put up a sign, NO PROTESTING. Lamborn declined to meet with community leaders from the NAACP on Monday, or Move-On organizers on Wednesday. Are you in Colorado Congressional District Five? Well, you may neither SOLICIT a meeting with your government representative, nor LOITER hoping to wait him out. Politicians like Lamborn who want to shove undemocratic corrupt legislation down people’s throats, and spout deeply offensive racist rhetoric out of sheer stupidity, have to hide where constituents can’t reach them.

Situating your office where your constituents can’t reach you reminds me of former Senator Allard’s office in the Plaza of the Rockies, where security guards forbid entry to anyone who didn’t look investment-banker friendly.

The plaza complex is now the Booz Allen Hamilton building, the world’s largest weapons industry firms, chaired by James Woolsey and his wife, one of the Colorado College trustees. You’ll note that one of Lamborn’s neighbors is AECOM, another giant war profiteer.

At least Allard chose an office which was centrally located, only a block from Congressman Hefley. Doug Lamborn’s office is situated in an industrial office park where no one can hear you scream.

So is isolating yourself from you constituents now standard MO for legislative office-holders? Not really. Representative government is hardly where you want to take a stand against a public’s right to freedom of speech and freedom of assembly. Especially someone espousing to be a patriot for the Tea Party.

Actually, if Lamborn wants to assert that his corporate representation gig is “private property,” I’d say the crafty bugger is right.

Congressman Lamborn says NO SOLICITING, NO PROTESTING, NO LOITERING
No shirt, no shoes? No representation.

Koch Brother Philanthropissers

David Koch, whose timber companies steadily destroy the Earth (on public land, taken by force using a public-funded Army, slaughtering anybody who forcibly objected)… (including American babies)

Who funds Climate Deniers…

Who opposes, so he says, Public Broadcasting…

Who funds anti-science morons like, for instance, Every Tea Party/Republican…

“Gives” money to PBS, BUT it ain’t HIS money. He, anti-government “hero” (an Ayn Rand word for “self centered arrogant childish punk”) takes it off his tazes, And gets free advertising. “Free” from his point of view, that is.

Jesus, paraphrasing Isaiah, said, “Be ye not like the scribes (accountants, bill collectors) and Pharisees, hypocrites, who love long sleeves (cloth cost a LOT in that economy) and greetings in the marketplace, who have one to blow a trumpet before them when the do their Alms. “Give place, for I am holier than thou!!”, who oppress the poor, they devour the housed of widows and orphans (predatory mortgages) (and like the Army dispossessing every American Indian Tribe) And for a pretense make long prayers”. I threw some Isaiah in there because Jesus did too.

The He goes on to say “Rather, do thine Alms in secret, letting not your left hand know what the right hand doeth.”

$5 chance to win dinner with Obama could be available for price it’s worth

Democratic fundraisers are hawking the chance to win a dinner with President Obama for the donation of $5 or more to the 2012 election campaign. Rather than sit across the table from the smug insincere technocrat, can I opt for the immediate cash value of the prize?
Were I a corporation, that value would be precisely calculable, but as an ordinary citizen, we all know the real value is, excuse the pun, O. In which case I’d hope they offer a better investment option, that entries be permitted with no purchase necessary, as required by law for any other sweepstake scheme.

Given the recent city council and Chamber of Commerce funding

And endorsement… How, for instance, does Steve Bach afford signs plastered all over town the very minute he announces his candidacy? Princess Lisa Czeladtko, Jim Leigh?
Supposedly non-politicians, right? “Business” men and women, right?
Seems mighty coincidental. Also that they’re part of a so-called “isolationist” political party, or “strict nationalist” and whatever other bullshit way they want to describe their Überpatriotisch mask?
But wait, sez ye, what would the Chambers of Commerce have to do with, say, foreign governments including the (GASP!) British Crown financing the Republican and Tea Party candidates, especially since the Tea Party claim to be Revolutionaries, eh?
Celebrating the casting off of the Throne and the Crown Governors? OH… THOSE “grass roots” Corporate Astroturf “patriots”.
There’s what, Emirates chipping in bread to the Campaign Slush Funds of the ones who manipulate the Racist Freaks?
The anti-Muslim racists who think that Turkey is about to take over the world? Or Iran, or China, or Russia, or Mexican Migrant Workers or whoever their so-called preachers tell them the New AntiChrist is this week? Hmmmmm…
All those bright shiny professional looking signs, hundreds of thousands of dollars spent on campaigns for political offices which pay less than that for the entire term? Like Monty Brewster, character portrayed by Richard Pryor said “it’s because they’ll be able to steal it back—with interest”.
Now, the Chambers of Commerce were confronted with this when they were spending billions of dollars buying a Brand New Tame Congress…

Now, we KNOW why the Chamber of Congress would want to control government in America, it would be a perfect springboard for Korporate Diktatorship like Scott Walker in WI or Rick GoodHair in Texas, spending Public Funds to enforce slave wages and other economic giveaways for their Corporate Sponsors. The cops, prosecutors and judges needed to keep filing RICO charges against unions, the penitentiaries, the wars to seize assets from other nations, those cost a lot of money and the Chambers of Commerce are getting them delivered for a song. And massive tax breaks too.

So it’s easy to see why THEY would want to buy an election. Preferably with somebody elses money.

But what, what what would the Emir of Kuwait or the Queen of England want to buy an “american” election for? Ending a sentence a preposition with. Twice.

The Chambers of Commerce said that even though Foreign Princes clearly violates every principle of the Constitution and it’s THE single most “Commonly Consensual Original Intent” of the so-called Founding Fathers who their TeaBag Moron Minions worship as though they were gods…. that the princes and kings and queens and other foreign governing agents giving them more money than they get from American sources doesn’t mean anything because they, knowing that it’s illegal to use such funds for campaign contributions, bribery and other forms of lobbying, use those Foreign Funds for operating expenses and only spend the American Bread for campaigns, lobbying and other forms of bribery.
Let’s say I’ve got two jobs. Hasn’t happened in a while but..
But one paycheck goes to pay my rent, groceries, carfare, laundry, utilities, ~~Internet Por~~ errr “entertainment” yeah, that’s the ticket…
And the rest to spend on campaigning…
If I didn’t have the one source of income that keeps the bills paid, then I wouldn’t be able to spend so much on the campaigns, now would I?

But that’s the kind of bullshit lies they tell us is “standard accounting practices”.
That the Foreign Prince money doesn’t influence the amount of, say, Foreign Aid received by such Foreign Princes.
The U.S. Army fighting to prop up their hereditary dictatorships, for instance.

One hand washes the other with soap and water bought with stolen money, so what’s new about that?
Leigh said that personal problems like, say, anger issues about traffic tickets leading him to threaten a court with retaliation as soon as his Foreign Funded Chamber of Commerce (and the realtors associations in every flavor and color of sleazy) shouldn’t be a factor in his public quest for public power where he can pump public funds into his private business…

Why not take him up on that? Have a few or maybe a few dozen or, who knows, a few hundred people swarm the Publicly Owned steps of City Hall to let everybody know that his Private Sleaze shouldn’t be a factor in his Public ~~Sleaze~~ err Service, yeah, that the ticket, service?

There’s something in it for everybody, these sleazebags like Leigh, Czeladtko, Sally Clark, Bach, the usual suspects, they’re against everything. Workmens Rights, equal protection under the law for Persons of Limited Means, Shelter Challenged (poor, homeless) Student Aid, Peace, Social Security, Medical Care, Bus Service, anything that would prevent them from skimming even more of a profit off the sweat and labor of others.

Come out en masse and show your support for their right to be thieving lying scum.

al Maliki says he’s quitting in ’14

Smelling death in the air I suppose. He said that one of the symptoms of lack of democracy is when the leader stays in power for thirty years.
And I have to add, another symptom is if that government is propped up by the jack-booted Stormtroopers of a foreign Dictatorship..
He also made a grand gesture of giving half his salary back to “the people”… Just not, you know, redistributing any of that Blood Money that Halliburton pays him to launder the rest of the money they’ve stolen from Iraq and from the U.S.