New York Focus: The Ongoing Working Families Party Scandal

I got a fair amount of crap from people about my coverage of the Working Families Party scandal, wherein WFP was caught red handed violating campaign finance laws. Several people told me to lay off them because they are progressives. To me, though, corruption by people I agree with on policy is worse than corruption by Republicans, who I expect it from. So I covered the WFP scandal despite attacks from fellow progressives.

Well, now WFP and one of their star candidates, Developer Shill Bill de Blasio, have been subpoenaed by the U.S. Attorney's Office. So folks, it isn't just me who thinks WFP, Developer Money, and Bill de Blasio are rotten to the core despite their progressive rhetoric. From the New York Observer:

The Working Families Party has received a subpoena from the US Attorney's Office for the Southern District seeking information in connection with its efforts in the 2009 elections, a spokesman for the labor-backed party confirmed...

The party is being sued for its work on Staten Island Councilwoman-elect Debi Rose's campaign. A judge ruled last week that the trial can go forward.

It was also the subject of at least one complaint filed with the CFB.

Three days after the Nov. 3 elections, the party announced it had hired Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher and Flom to conduct a thorough review of the structure and relationship between the WFP and its for-profit arm, Data & Field Services. The review is being led by former Chief Judge Judith Kaye...

It's hard to overstate how bad this could be for the WFP.

I personally think that WFP skirted the edge of legality close enough that in the end there will be little actual punishment for their actions. But in my mind they have finally abandoned all pretense of being a reform organization. They have shown a complete willingness to bend and break laws and cooperate with corrupt political machines like the Vito Lopez machine in Brooklyn. WFP may well survive this scandal, but it is a real scandal nonetheless and one that finally shows their true colors: they are nothing more than another corrupt machine interested in their own power more than in actual governance. In this sense they are the same as the Vito Lopez or Clarence Norman machine which had perfectly respectable policy stands in most cases, but were corrupt as can be. I have high expectations of my fellow progressives. I don't accept corruption just because they have good rhetoric on policy. I find the corruption of Brooklyn's Democratic machine embarrassing as hell, and the corruption of the WFP is just as bad if not worse.

For a LOT more on the WFP scandal (I haven't covered it much recently due to taking some time off from blogging) please see the excellent coverage by the City Hall News here, here, here and here. And that's just the stuff published since I took a break from blogging.

(P.S. I know some of you out there are going to complain about this article, but how the hell can I speak out against Republican corruption if I don't speak out against this crap?)32

New York's "Hide the Predator Act"

This is one of those times where it isn't just Republicans I am disgusted with. This is a case where a corrupt political deal involving Brooklyn's Party Boss Vito Lopez is essentially protecting child molesters.

Assemblyman Vito Lopez, political ally of WFP and city council candidates like Steve Levin and Maritza Davilla, is under attack for his watering down a bill to protect children abused by sex offenders sheltering in religious institutions. Here's video from a local TV station (sorry, includes an ad at the beginning...thanks to a reader for passing it on to me).



Wonder how Working Families Party, Steve Levin and Maritza Davilla justify their ties to this kind of back room deal to protect child abusers from legal prosecution by their victims. Will WFP, Steve Levin and Martiza Davilla repudiate Party Boss Lopez's protection of child abusers or will they toe the line like good little hacks and support protecting child abusers? My guess is they will toe the line.

Some more background from Jewish Week:

According to Marci Hamilton, professor of law at Cardozo Law School and author of “Justice Denied: What America Must Do to Protect Its Children,” the “correct name for the new Lopez bill [should be] ‘The Hide the Predator Act.’”

“Unlike the Markey bill, this bill does absolutely nothing to help New Yorkers identify the many secret child predators in New York, who have been benefiting from the short statutes of limitations for decades. With the Markey bill, we have a proven method of finding the predators in our midst. The Lopez bill gives them continuing cover to abuse our children.”

Lonnie Soury, a spokesman for Survivors for Justice, a group of abuse survivors who grew up in Orthodox communities, urged the legislators to “stop playing politics with our children’s lives. Any support for the Lopez bill is at the behest of, and in the interest of, the Church and a few Orthodox Jewish institutions and not designed to protect children and their families from predators.”

From the Jewish Star:

Sexual abuse activists have criticized the Lopez bill saying that it would help sexual predators. They claim it is meant to detract attention from the Child Victims Act, stronger legislation sponsored by Assemblywoman Marge Markey (D-Queens), which would extend the civil and criminal statutes by five years and, more critically, open up a yearlong window to bring cases that currently are beyond the statute of limitations...

Marci Hamilton, a professor at Yeshiva University and the author of “Justice Denied: What America Must Do to Protect its Children,” said it was a “non-event” that the Lopez bill had made it out of committee, after all.

“The bill accomplishes nothing for victims,” Hamilton explained. “It’s classic form to make them look like they’re doing something, but it is keeping the secrets and keeping the predators under wraps.”

For Hamilton, the window is the most crucial element of the bill.

“We know how the window works,” she said, noting that when a similar bill passed in California, 300 previously unknown predators were identified. “It’s pretty simple — if you’re against the window, you don’t want the predators out.”

So next time you see someone from WFP, or Steve Levin or Maritza Davilla, confront them on this issue. Ask them if they support the "Hide the Predator Act" that their political mentor and ally, Vito Lopez, has proposed.

NORM COLEMAN: Abyssmally Stupid?

I cannot believe this one. Seems Norm Coleman, the very much FORMER Senator from Minnesota who wants to run again for his old seat, has just completely compromised his donors' credit card information. This was discovered last January and yet Coleman only alerted his donors to the fact that their credit card info was now public knowledge until now. [UPDATE: Daily Kos has a good, if a bit over done, explanation of just how stupid and irresponsible Coleman and his campaign was.]

From the Minnesota Independent:

...scrutiny by web enthusiasts exposed a bigger problem for the campaign: an unprotected database that contained information on campaign donors, including names, email and home addresses, credit card numbers and the three-digit security codes. On Tuesday, donors received an email from the website Wikileaks alerting them that the site has revealed some of the database information.

“We understand that Norm Coleman became aware of the leak in January,” the note reads, in part...

The Hill indicates that it’s been in contact with the Coleman campaign which aknowledged “that the private information of its supporters has probably been breached and is encouraging them to cancel their credit cards.”

Campaign spokesman Cullen Sheehan wrote in an email to supporters that that there was no “evidence that our database was downloaded by any unauthorized party,” but he doesn’t dispute the possibility that security has been breached. Several IT professionals interviewed by the Minnesota Independent in late January revealed they had downloaded the database, which was not password protected. This fact seems to contradict Sheehan’s report about findings by federal authorities looking into the case. They “did not find evidence that our database was downloaded by any unauthorized party.”

This seems to have violated Minnesota law, as pointed out in the comments of the above article:

The Minnesota Independent adds that Wikileaks pointed out that if the campaign knew of the leak and failed to alert donors immediately, there has been a violation of state law. Minnesota statute 325E.61 states: (a) Any person or business that conducts business in this state, and that owns or licenses data that includes personal information, shall disclose any breach of the security of the system following discovery or notification of the breach in the security of the data to any resident of this state whose unencrypted personal information was, or is reasonably believed to have been, acquired by an unauthorized person. The disclosure must be made in the most expedient time possible and without unreasonable delay, consistent with the legitimate needs of law enforcement, as provided in paragraph (c), or with any measures necessary to determine the scope of the breach, identify the individuals affected, and restore the reasonable integrity of the data system.

And has royally pissed off Norm Coleman's donors...NOT something a candidate wants to do if he is running to regain his old seat he just narrowly lost.


This shows the following characteristics of Norm Coleman: Incompetence, Irresponsibility, Disregard for the Law, and Dishonesty. Republican values at their best, aren't they? It also, along with his other scandals, probably ruins any chance of him reviving his political career.

Bank of America Seems to Like Pissing off Americans

Recently, I wrote about how Bank of America, right after grabbing taxpayer money through the bank bailout, went ahead and used some of that money to lobby against the very popular Employee Free Choice Act and tried to raise money for Republican Senators. By the way, the Employee Free Choice Act passed DESPITE this use of bailout money by Bank of America to lobby against it.

This led me to decide to not bank at Bank of America and to stop using my credit cards from them. Funny how they love corporate welfare but oppose anything that helps working class and middle class Americans.

I also decided to look into Bank of America's record in general on social issues. First thing I discovered was that according to Co-op America's Responsible Shopper, Bank of America is considered tied with Citicorp for worst bank or financial institution. Here are some comments (last updated 9/2008) from Responsible Shopper regarding Bank of America:

Bank of America is the second largest US bank and operates more than 5,700 branch locations.

• Bank of America has been sued by the New York State Attorney General for multiple instances of improper mutual fund trading, including the most costly trading scandal to date, which the company settled for $675 million.

• Bank of America claims to enrich communities with its nationwide reach, but its acquisition of MBNA, the country's third-largest credit card company, has raised concerns about continued predatory lending and soaring interest rates due to stifled competition.

• Bank of America is one of the largest investors in coal and coal fired power, which is responsible for nearly a third of the nation's CO2 emissions, and also funds surface coal mining.

By the way, according to Responsible Shopper, Wachovia, Wells Fargo and Suntrust are nominally the best of the big banks, though consolidations and buyouts may be shifting all this. But it is clear that as long as Bank of America's money grubbing CEO, Ken Lewis, is running the show, Bank of America will remain one of the worst financial institutions in America.

Which leads to some other sites I came across. Seems Bank of America is pissing off lots of people with their treatment of customers as well. Grabbing taxpayer money then stabbing the taxpayer in the back is pretty low. But treating your customers poorly goes even beyond that to outright poor business practices. Here are two examples of some pretty pissed off customers.

First, there is a gentle man named Robert G. Seketa, who runs two websites: Boycott Bank of America and Stop Bank Abuse. Both are dedicated to trying and stop the predatory lending practices that LED to the need for a bank bailout in the first place. Check out his websites to see more about Bank of America's lending practices and their poor treatment of customers. But there is one thing I want to post from his site: a breakdown of which banks get the most complaints from customers according to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency:


Bank of America: 7,230 complaints (25.5% of total)
J.P. Morgan Chase: 4,890 complaints (17.3%)
Citigroup: 3,742 complaints (13.2%)
Wells Fargo: 2,695 complaints (9.5%)
HSBC North America: 1,963 complaints (6.9%)
Wachovia: 1,265 complaints (4.5%)
U.S. Bancorp: 1,027 complaints (3.6%)
National City: 586 complaints (2.1%)
The Royal Bank of Scotland Group: 537 complaints (1.9 %)
Key Corp: 343 complaints (1.2 %)

Total Top 10 complaints: 24,278 complaints (85.7%)
Total complaints: 28,316 complaints (100%)

Note that Bank of America and Citicorp (the two worst financial institutions according to Responsible Shopper) also are among the three companies that get the most customer complaints filed. So by two different measures these two companies suck. I should note that the chart doesn't give a time frame, so I don't know if it is for a certain year or cumulative. It also would be interesting to break it down per customer, since some of these companies are much bigger than others.

Next we come to another pissed off Bank of America customer who is taking it to the web. From Times Square Gossip we get this complaint:

am calling for everyone that reads Times Square Gossip to boycott The Bank Of America. I have had it with their underhanded business practices. If you have their credit cards or have a account in their bank, cancel it. I never look at credit card bills, I just pay them online every month. I never look at the interest rates, I just always assume that they are the same as always. Well yesterday I just happened to look for once and was I shocked. They raised my rates from 17 percent to almost 26 percent. I could not believe it. I always pay on time, I always pay 2 or three times the minimum due and I have had this card for years. My credit score is 702 which is considered excellent. I was outraged. I called them up today, and they told me they had sent me a notice last March (One year I didn't notice the higher rate) and that I had the option of not using the card and still pay the low rate or if I used the card, the higher rate prevailed. I said, why would I care about a cheaper rate on a card if I couldn't use it and if I did I would pay the higher rate. I asked them why my rate was raised in the first place. They said they reviewed my account and I was now considered a higher risk. A higher risk? I pay on time, I always pay more than minimum, and I have a high credit score. They said that's what they decided but since I was unhappy, he could give me a rate of 23 point something. So I said let me get this straight, " I pay on time on the credit card for years, I pay more than minimum, I have a excellent history and score and this is the way you treat a customer for many years?" I told him to cancel my credit card. I don't want to deal with a sleazy bank like Bank Of America." I am paying off the credit card in full when the final bill arrives ( Besides it's only 15 hundred owed anyway) and next week I am canceling my checking and savings accounts with them too. They charge higher rates than the Mafia. This is also just one horror story on The Bank Of America. I have so many more on what they have done over the years to my checking accounts. I never switched because I have several direct deposits and didn't want to go through the task of finding another bank and calling all my direct deposits and switching them. But now I will find a new bank this week and The Bank Of America can go FU*K themselves. I have millions of readers, and I urge anyone that has accounts with them to close them. If you also have horror stories on them, please tell them below by clicking comment or e-mail them to me and I will post. I will also be posting this story on all our sister websites. I will be posting more horror stories every couple of weeks, so stay tuned.

Okay, so a gossip column is not my usual source. But consider this: progressive activist mole333, a NYC gossip columnist, and blue-collar type Robert Seketa all are pissed at Bank of America. If three such different people can agree Bank of America sucks, it is no wonder they lead in numbers of complaints filed against them.

I would add that there also was a discrimination suit filed against Bank of America by five black workers,

So, it comes down to this:

1. poor customer service (based on number of complaints filed against them)

2. poor business practices (leading to their needing a bailout)

3. Betrayal of the very taxpayers that bailed them out by lobbying against the Employee Free Choice Act

4. A discrimination lawsuit

5. Investment in polluting coal power plants

6. sued by the New York State Attorney General for a massive mutual fund trading scandal

Seems like there are a lot of reasons to not like Bank of America.

Dear Bank of America

Dear Bank of America,

I am a customer. That's right. I have a couple of Bank of America credit cards. My wife and I are also looking for a bank for some accounts. But you know, your ingratitude leads me to refuse to bank with you and to consider cutting up those credit cards.

First off, you never thanked us for that bail out. Yeah. WE bailed you out. That was OUR money that you so eagerly grabbed from the government.

Okay, so I was willing to overlook that little act of ingratitude on your part. But now I find out that your ingratitude goes even further. You see, after eagerly grabbing a government hand out (paid for by us taxpayers!) you then turned around and stabbed us in the back. You took the money and used part of it to lobby against the Employee Free Choice Act, a labor bill that is supported by a large majority of Americans.

From the Huffington Post:

Three days after receiving $25 billion in federal bailout funds, Bank of America Corp. hosted a conference call with conservative activists and business officials to organize opposition to the U.S. labor community's top legislative priority.

Participants on the October 17 call -- including at least one representative from another bailout recipient, AIG -- were urged to persuade their clients to send "large contributions" to groups working against the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), as well as to vulnerable Senate Republicans, who could help block passage of the bill...

Donations of hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars to Republican senatorial campaigns were needed, they argued, to prevent America from turning "into France."

Boy, you guys were eager as hell to grab taxpayer money from the government, but as soon as there is a fair labor bill coming up, suddenly it is the fucking end of civilization? And in the midst of huge popular support for Obama and the Democrats, many of whom supported your bail out, you decide now is the time to support the party that just ruined our economy over the last 8 years. This really is pretty disgusting on your part. I agree with the observations made on Daily Kos regarding your igratitude:

So Bank of America, fresh with taxpayer bailout boodle courtesy of American workers, is spending its time and money trying to screw those same American workers...

It's little wonder that the SEIU has called on BofA to fire CEO Ken Lewis. It's unconscionable for the receipients of government handouts to spend their time and money to try and defeat the Employee Free Choice Act -- the cornerstone of long-term economic revitalization. It's time for change in the boardrooms.

Bank of America: your actions have consequences. Next time you come for a government handout, I will lobby my Congressional Rep and Senators (all Democrats, I will add) that I oppose bailing out any banks because you use OUR money to lobby AGAINST us.

Furthermore, any Bank of America credit cards I now have will be shoved aside. I won't use them anymore. I don't want to patronize an ungrateful company that will turn against me right after I helped bail them out.

Of course should you decide that CEO Ken Lewis has overstepped the bounds of decency and fire the bastard, I will consider patronizing your company once again.

Sincerely,

A Customer

Republican Corruption Continues: RNC chief Michael Steele

The Republican Party just plain doesn't get it. In 2006 they lost big because of the massive corruption within their party. Then in 2008 they still maintained their corruption, to the point of actually having a VP candidate who didn't pay her taxes and who was actively under investigation for abuse of power.

Now the Republicans have a new chair of the Republican National Committee, one Michael Steele. Recently it came out that Steele is more than willing to let anti-Semitism be used on his behalf. But now it turns out Steele also is yet another corrupt Republican.

From the Washington Post:

Steele's Campaign Spending Questioned

Michael S. Steele, the newly elected chairman of the Republican National Committee, arranged for his 2006 Senate campaign to pay a defunct company run by his sister for services that were never performed, his finance chairman from that campaign has told federal prosecutors...

The recent allegations outlined four specific transactions. In addition to the payment to Steele's sister, Fabian said that the candidate used money from his state campaign improperly; that Steele paid $75,000 from the state campaign to a law firm for work that was never performed; and that he or an aide transferred more than $500,000 in campaign cash from one bank to another without authorization...

In one of his allegations, Fabian points to a February 2007 payment by Steele's Senate campaign of more than $37,000 to Brown Sugar Unlimited, the company run by Steele's sister, Monica Turner. Campaign finance records list the expense as having been for "catering/web services." Turner filed papers to dissolve the company 11 months before the payment was received...

In another allegation, Fabian claimed that payments to two vendors in 2006 for work on the Senate campaign were made from Steele's state account rather than from his federal coffers...

It is a violation of federal campaign finance regulations for a candidate to use funds raised for a state campaign to pay for expenses associated with a federal campaign...

Over the years, money trouble has been a persistent problem for Steele. His first race for public office, a 1998 bid for the Republican nomination for state comptroller, ended nearly $35,000 in debt, much of it to his sister. He was fined twice by state officials for missing deadlines to file campaign finance reports and was in debt and had faced foreclosure in 2001, the year before he was selected as Ehrlich's running mate. The state party threw Steele a financial lifeline, awarding him an unusual $30,000 consulting contract.

Typical Republican disregard for the law. And THIS guy, who has shown a persistent difficulty handling money and keeping within the law, was the guy the RNC chose to be their leader.

Republican Election Fraud: The Evidence Mounts

I still hear people dismissing accusations of Republican election fraud as crazy conspiracy theories. This dispite mounting evidence that Republicans and their corporate allies, like Diebold, HAVE systematically explored vote tampering. Right now the evidence is strongest for the 2002 Senate race in Georgia and now evidence links Karl Rove with election fraud in that race.

Anyone who first makes such accusations is almost bound to be accused of being crazy. One of the earliest whistle blowers was Clint Curtis in Florida, a former Republican and computer expert, who claims he was approached by his Congressman, Tom Feeney, and asked to design software that could alter vote totals on touch-screen voting machines. This was in 2000 BEFORE the Presidential election. Clint Curtis was horrified, left the Republican Party in protest and even made two runs against Feeney (whose corrupt ass was finally brought down this year by Kosmas). Many criticized Curtis for claiming that people were trying to subvert the touchscreen machines BEFORE the 2000 election when supposedly no one was thinking touch screen. Well, some actual investigativg journalism by Dan Rather eventually revealed that people WERE thinking touch screen before the 2000 election and, in fact, the problems that arose in 2000 in Florida may have been part of the push for touch screen machines. That makes two reports of Republican scheming to commit election fraud in Florida. Add to that evidence that Republicans deliberately tried to create an undercount in Florida's 2006 Congressional race in the FL-13 district (see here and here) and you have a pretty good case for Republican Fraud in Florida.

Now let's turn to Georgia where a second whistle blower is confirming that fraud was probably committed in the 2002 Senate election. Previously, I have written about Stephen Spoonamore, a REPUBLICAN cyber-security expert and former adviser to Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), who claims there is clear evidence that Diebold deliberately tampered with their own machines in Democratic districts in Georgia in 2002. Essentially, a computer patch was installed in person by Diebold CEO Bob Urosevich, who flew in from Texas to apply this patch in DeKalb and Fulton counties, both Democratic strongholds. Georgia's election board was not aware of this change in the voting machines until after the election. The patch was claimed to be to fix a problem with the computer clock but did NOT fix it. Democrats raised the alarm over this at the time but were, as usual, dismissed as crazy. Then Spoonamore (again...a REPUBLICAN) came out supporting their accusations. I should add that Spoonamore aslo believes there is evidence of Republican election fraud in Ohio in 2004.

Now comes another whistle blower confirming this story:

...a former Diebold vote machine contractor who was in charge of preparing the 2002 election between Saxby Chambliss and Max Cleland has stated that the software patches placed on the voting machines in the weeks prior to the election could have rigged the election in favor of Republican Chambliss.

We get confirmation directly from a former Diebold contractor. So, a Republican cybersecurity expert AND a former Diebold contractor agree that the 2002 Senate election in Georgia was probably rigged by Republicans and Diebold. But the conspiracy (a real one, it seems) goes one step further. The same article claims that Karl Rove himself was part of the fraud.

Three pieces of clear evidence for fraud in Florida in 2000 and 2006. Two pieces of clear evidence for fraud in Georgia in 2002, with a clear connection to Diebold's president, and a possible connection to Karl Rove. And the same cybersecurity expert who blew the whistle on Georgia's election fraud considers Ohio 2004 also suspicious.

How much evidence will it take before the Republicans and Diebold are held accountable for their fraud?