"Jesse Jackson Jr. to plead guilty to federal charges
Former Rep. Jesse L. Jackson Jr. (D-Ill.) will plead guilty to conspiring with his wife to illegally spend $750,000 in campaign funds on personal expenses, including a $43,000 Rolex watch, fur coats and memorabilia associated with Michael Jackson, Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X and Bruce Lee, according to information obtained by POLITICO.
The charges against him may include conspiracy, making false statements, and mail and wire fraud.
Prosecutors will recommend a prison sentence of between 46 and 57 months for Jackson Jr., as well as a fine of $10,000 to $100,000, and forfeiture of a yet-to-be-determined portion of the misspent $750,000 in campaign funds."
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-sd-mayor-gambling-20130215,0,4288688,full.story
"San Diego ex-mayor used charity funds to cover gambling debtsMaureen O'Connor, San Diego's first female mayor, admits in court that she took more than $2 million from her late husband's foundation to pay casinos. She agrees to repay the money in a plea deal.
SAN DIEGO — She married a fabulously wealthy man decades her elder, and became the first female mayor of San Diego. But when Maureen O'Connor left public life, she spent countless hours seated in front of video-poker machines.
Over a nine-year period, she wagered an estimated $1 billion, including millions from a charity set up by her late husband, who founded Jack in the Box.
That was the portrait that emerged in court Thursday as the frail former mayor tearfully acknowledged she skimmed more than $2 million from a charity founded by her late husband, Robert O. Peterson.
O'Connor, 66, admitted in a plea deal that she had a gambling addiction and is nearly destitute. Her lawyer, prominent defense attorney Eugene Iredale, suggested that a brain tumor may have impaired her reasoning; he gave reporters copies of her brain scan from a 2011 surgery.
O'Connor's rapidly declining medical condition "renders it highly improbable — if not impossible — that she could be brought to trial," according to court documents filed by federal prosecutors.
"This is a sad day for the city of San Diego," said Assistant U.S. Atty. Phillip Halpern. "Maureen O'Connor was born and raised in this town. She rose from humble origins.... She dedicated much of her life, personal and professional, to improving this city."
The $1-billion gambling binge stretched from 2000 to 2009, according to court documents. In 2008 and 2009, when the fortune she had inherited was not enough, she began taking from the R.P. Foundation to cover her losses.
Despite being ahead more than $1 billion at one point, O'Connor "suffered even larger gambling losses," according to prosecutors. Her net loss, Iredale said, was about $13 million.
She was considered such a high-roller that Las Vegas casinos would send a private jet to pick her up in San Diego. Records show that O'Connor won $100,000 at the Barona casino in San Diego County, while at roughly the same time she needed to cash a $100,000 check at the Bellagio in Las Vegas.
Those who knew the former political doyenne said she had become a recluse, inscrutable even to those she counted as friends.
"I considered myself one of her closest friends, but I would call her and she wouldn't return my call," said lawyer Louis Wolfsheimer. "I didn't want anything from her, just to know how she was. But it looked like she was becoming reclusive."
In a bargain with prosecutors, O'Connor agreed to repay $2,088,000 to the R.P. Foundation started by Peterson, which supported charities such as City of Hope, San Diego Hospice, and the Alzheimer's Assn., and was driven into insolvency in 2009 by O'Connor's misappropriation of funds, prosecutors said.
"I never meant to hurt the city," an emotional O'Connor told reporters gathered at a restaurant close to the federal courthouse. She promised to repay the foundation but declined to answer questions.
Prosecutors agreed to defer prosecution for two years. If O'Connor violates no further laws and makes restitution, the charge of making illegal financial transactions may be dismissed. Under the agreement, O'Connor acknowledged her guilt but was allowed to plead not guilty.
If convicted, O'Connor could have faced a maximum 10-year prison sentence and a fine of up to $250,000.
The daughter of a boxer who made his living as a cabbie and sometime bookie, O'Connor, a Democrat, rocketed to political prominence in 1971 when she was elected to the City Council at age 25. A onetime champion swimmer, O'Connor was working as a physical education teacher at a Catholic school and was pushed into politics when a group of students she took to a City Council meeting was treated rudely.
She met Peterson, 30 years her senior, when the Republican known for supporting liberal candidates and liberal causes offered to contribute to her council campaign. Political reform was in the air, and once elected, O'Connor helped persuade the council to adopt contribution limits, a reform later emulated by the state.
A close ally of then-Mayor Pete Wilson, O'Connor served two terms on the council and later was appointed to the Port Commission.
After marrying Peterson, O'Connor became a political anomaly in San Diego: although wealthy, she cultivated a base of political support in lower-income neighborhoods south of Interstate 8, the traditional dividing line of San Diego politics. When she traveled in minority neighborhoods, adults would come from their homes to wave at her; to all, she was known merely as Maureen.
As mayor, O'Connor organized a Russian arts festival and prowled the streets with the police chief, talking to prostitutes as she and Chief Bob Burgreen looked for information about a string of killings targeting streetwalkers. She went incognito as a homeless person to see how the homeless were treated in San Diego; she worked on a city garbage truck to experience the day-to-day life of blue-collar city workers.
As a politician, O'Connor was often a favorite of reporters, the bane of pro-growth business interests, and a frustrating enigma to Democratic candidates who unsuccessfully sought her endorsement. She preferred the company of longtime friends and members of her family, particularly her twin Mavourneen; the two reside together in La Jolla.
In 1986, after then-Mayor Roger Hedgecock was driven from office by campaign code convictions, O'Connor was elected mayor, the first woman to hold that office. Three years earlier, Hedgecock, a Republican, had beaten O'Connor in a divisive, angry campaign. Reelected in 1988, she declined to seek a third term as mayor, leaving office in 1992.
Peterson, who had made a fortune in the restaurant, banking and hotel industries, died in 1994 at age 78, after a long battle with leukemia. The couple had no children. After leaving the mayor's office, O'Connor dropped quickly from public life.
With the deaths of her other close friends — McDonald's heiress Joan Kroc in 2003, newspaper publisher Helen Copley in 2004, and actress Mercedes McCambridge in 2004 — O'Connor devoted more of her time to gambling as the addiction took hold. She became a regular at casinos in California, Las Vegas and Atlantic City, winning enormous sums at video poker and other games but losing even more, according to court documents.
Finally, she liquidated her savings, sold numerous properties and auctioned off her personal effects. But when that was not enough, she turned to the foundation, on which she served as trustee. Transferring foundation money to her personal accounts violated the foundation's tax-exempt status, prosecutors said.
Even when O'Connor won, she continued to gamble rather than repay the foundation, "throwing good money after bad," prosecutors said.
In the end, the Internal Revenue Service launched an investigation after noting that she was writing checks of $100,000 to casinos to cover losses. In 2011, O'Connor underwent surgery for the brain tumor, leaving her physically impaired.
As part of her plea agreement, O'Connor agreed to settle "all tax liability resulting from her receipt" of money from the foundation. She also agreed to seek treatment for her gambling addiction.
Although she is currently without income or a bank account, O'Connor's economic status could reverse if she wins a civil lawsuit filed against a German bank involved in the 2005 purchase of a resort in Mendocino County that O'Connor had purchased in 1998.
O'Connor sold the Heritage House for $19.5 million but has alleged that she was the victim of fraud in the sale. A settlement or victory at trial could provide the millions needed to pay restitution to the foundation and also the tax liabilities involved with the misallocation of its funds.
"No figure, regardless of how much good they've done or how much they've given to charity, can escape criminal liability with impunity," said U.S. Atty. Laura Duffy.
One of O'Connor's major worries, defense attorney Iredale said, "is fear of losing her reputation.""
Notice how she will not be proscecuted. I'm sure the same would happen to any one of us.
Comments
LOL, that made me laugh. Of course Democrats can be corrupt. I think you would be hard pressed to find any politician that isn't corrupt to some degree. I've seen some really good people that I know personally completely change their tune once elected. There's always a good reason for it. All politicians are human. They all make mistakes and they all can be bought. I've yet to see one that can't.
I'm actually not that hard pressed to find several, so try to avoid the hypergeneralization. I will name Peter DeFazio and Elizabeth Warren and Barbara Lee for starters. There are many more. Did anyone buy Dennis Kucinich? Do you think he will be singing FAUX tunes for money now?
William Proxmire, Sen from WI had a campaign chest of 1000 dollars and took no contributions in his 30 years of service. He used to award a golden fleece status to earmark waste and abuse. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Fleece_Award
NY Sen Daniel Patrick Moynihan was one of the great statesmen. He was also a former professor.
NY Sen Daniel Patrick Moynihan was one of the great statesmen. He was also a former professor.
Sorry Doug... Moynihan was as dirty as they come...
NY Sen Daniel Patrick Moynihan was one of the great statesmen. He was also a former professor.
Sorry Doug... Moynihan was as dirty as they come... “The United States wished things to turn out as they did (in regard to Indonesia’s invasion of East Timor), and worked to bring this about. The Department of State desired that the United Nations prove utterly ineffective in whatever measures it undertook. This task was given to me, and I carried it forward with no inconsiderable success." Daniel Patrick Moynihan
Making the world safe for maximum corporate exploitation has long been the US raison d'etre...
Dims or Repugs... little difference that matters...
NY Sen Daniel Patrick Moynihan was one of the great statesmen. He was also a former professor.
Sorry Doug... Moynihan was as dirty as they come... “The United States wished things to turn out as they did (in regard to Indonesia’s invasion of East Timor), and worked to bring this about. The Department of State desired that the United Nations prove utterly ineffective in whatever measures it undertook. This task was given to me, and I carried it forward with no inconsiderable success." Daniel Patrick Moynihan
Making the world safe for maximum corporate exploitation has long been the US raison d'etre...
Dims or Repugs... little difference that matters...
diary-of-a-man-in-despair illustrates that humanity exists in a vacuum, but struggles.
Quote:
Friedrich Reck might seem an unlikely rebel against Nazism. Not just a conservative but a rock-ribbed reactionary, he played the part of a landed gentleman, deplored democracy, and rejected the modern world outright. To Reck the Nazis were ruthless revolutionaries in Gothic drag, and helpless as he was to counter the spell they had cast on the German people, he felt compelled to record the corruptions of their rule. The result is less a diary than a sequence of stark and astonishing snapshots of life in Germany between 1936 and 1944. We see the Nazis at the peak of power, and the murderous panic with which they respond to approaching defeat; their travesty of traditional folkways in the name of the Volk; and the author’s own missed opportunity to shoot Hitler. This riveting book is not only, as Hannah Arendt proclaimed it, “one of the most important documents of the Hitler period” but a moving testament of a decent man struggling to do the right thing in a depraved world.
Quotes
Very, very rarely one comes across a book so remarkable and so unexpectedly convincing that it deserves more to be quoted than to be reviewed… . I beg you to read this bitterly courageous book by as good a German as one could well imagine.”
—Frederic Raphael, The Sunday Times, London
It is stunning to read, for it is not often that invective achieves the level of art, and rarer still that hatred assumes a tragic grandeur.
—The New York Times
Observations set down with passion, outrage, and almost unbearable sadness… astonishing, compelling, and unnerving.
—The New Yorker
In his visceral loathing of the Nazis, Reck was not, of course, unique. From our perspective, however, he had one great advantage over most of his like-minded friends: he possessed the makings of a great diarist. True, he was not at the centre of things, but he knew the world and had contacts in it. He was something of a connoisseur of rumours, collecting and savouring stories about the latest Nazi scandal or atrocity and adding to them his own trenchant reflections. And if he was a slightly gullible listener, he was a very acute observer.
—The Financial Times
Of course Dems can be corrupt.
That's why we got ObaminationCare instead of universal health care. Universal health care was off the table from the beginning.
Instead of a ten page Universal Health Care Bill like Canada, Dems passed a 2,000+ page Health Care Bill written by the insurance industry. It takes that many pages to maximize profits.
Next up, privatization of roads/education that Obama pointed to in his State-of-the-Union Address. We'll undoubtably peddle both for pennies on the dollar.
Retired Monk - "Ideology is a disease"
death-of-a-nation-the-timor-conspiracy is the story Norske mentioned. Just another genocide by one of our friends. Over 500,000 first killed. Journalists reported on it were hung upside down by their feet, penises cut off and stuck in their mouths, stabbed a few times but not enough to kill, just bleed and suffocate to death. Nixon and Australia thought Suharto was great and assigned him vip status. America didn't sign the anti-genocide treaty until '89. Proxmire read the treaty everyday on the floor for twenty years, I guess it took debate. Americans had no problem with genocide and may've signed the treaty with exemptions.