Watcher's Council Forum: If The Clintons Committed A Felony, What Should Be Done?

Each week, the Watcher's Council hosts a forum as well as a weekly contest among it's members for best post of the week. This week's forum question is: If the Clintons committed a felony, what should be done? I have been kindly invited to respond.

Update: The Forum is now posted. I would urge you to click the link and read all of the responses to this week's question.

The Clintons are a sordid pair around whom the stench of scandal always hangs. Those of recent vintage are the multiple issues arising from Hillary's e-mail during her time as Secretary of State and her subsequent erasure of tens of thousands of those e-mails. Another brewing scandal lies with the Clinton Foundation, a cash machine for the Clintons that does not seem to be acting as a charity and indeed, may well be at the center of undue influence on government decisions while Hillary was Secretary of State.

There is a real question whether Hillary violated criminal laws concerning the handling of official e-mails and the transmission of classified information over non-government means of communication. There are also related questions of whether the State Dept. or Hillary herself committed perjury in their responses to legal requests for information that would have required production of Hillary's personal e-mails. Indeed, the threats she created to our national security by using a private e-mail address not reasonably secured far exceed those created by General Petraeus, who was recently prosecuted for divulging classified material. This is also an issue that ties directly into Benghazi. Because of the whitewash investigation of that incident, one that did not include either Hillary or top levels of the State Department, and because we have not had access to her e-mails, we still do not know what role Hillary played during and in the months leading up to the criminally reckless event that cost the lives of our Libyan Ambassador and several others. Hillary's refusal to hand over her e-mail server for expert analysis and her attempt to address these issues with a stage managed presser before foreign correspondents have all been just jaw dropping in their shamelessness.

Yet other issues surround the Clinton Foundation, Bill and Hill's personal money machine since Bill left office. It is a charitable foundation that has taken in well over half a billion dollars, yet fed out only 15% for actual charitable work, if it can be called that. It appears that much of the Foundation money that has been doled out has directly benefited rich friends of the Clintons, and it appears that numerous foreign sources have given money to the Clintons, and then soon after found themselves the beneficiaries of favorable U.S. government actions. The most notorious of these that we know about so far is the approval of a Russian's purchase of 20% of our nation's uranium mines, an approval signed off on by Hillary in the State Dept. after several large donations to the Clinton Foundation. Then there is the fact that the Foundation has, for years, failed to disclose it's foreign donors, either in its tax returns or as part of legally required disclosures regarding potential conflicts of interest during Hillary Clinton's time as Secretary of State.

I doubt that there is any direct quid pro quo so in any of this so clear as to sustain a criminal conviction. But it stinks like a three day old manure pile in the hot sun. We will know far more about that in a few days, when Peter Schweizer's new book Clinton Cash is published.

So what should be done? In a society where rule of law dominates, Hillary would be face down on a table right now along with her sever, both getting a colonoscopy from FBI agents as part of an investigation similar to that of General Petraeus. The MSM seems unsure of what to do at this moment regarding Hillary, but what they aren't doing is pressing her at any point on the e-mail issue. As to the Clinton Foundation, the MSM appears to be holding its breath, waiting for Schweizer's book release, apparently afraid that even they won't be able to stem the tide.

If Hillary and the MSM have an option, they will see her skate right through until her coronation. We will never have answers about the Clinton Foundation or the many issues surrounding Hillary's e-mail. What we should have is a press treating the Clintons like Nixon and a DOJ that has already opened up investigations. Unfortunately we have neither at the moment, and there will be no investigations until 2017, if ever. Rule of law does not seem to matter to the left in this country, and so long as they hold the levers of power, it will atrophy in this nation.

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Understanding The Dangers Of And To The House Of Saud

We have Islamic terrorism in the world today largely because of Wahhabi Islam out of Saudi Arabia and those other sects of Islam infected by Wahhabi Islam, including Khomeini's bastardized variant of Shia twelver Islam. But Wahhabi Islam, and now its variants, are as much a threat to the Saudi regime as they are to the rest of the world.

The Sauds were a warrior clan in 18th century Arabia. They made common cause with the Islamic spiritual leader Wahhab, that the Sauds would conquer under the moral authority of Wahhabism in return for Wahhabist support for their regime. The entire legitimacy of the Saudi monarchy rests on their appeasing and promoting of Wahhabism.

The Saudi wars of conquest were to go on for the next two centuries until, in 1932, Ibn Saud was able to claim much of the Arabian Peninsula as his own. Having finally achieved total control of an area with vast oil wealth, money and power soon corrupted much of the Saudi Royal family. The most notorious example of this corruption involved Crown Prince, later King, Fahd. As described by a BBC article in 2005:

For some, the most memorable image of Fahd bin Abdul Aziz Al Saud is as a young prince, emerging from a casino on the French Riviera in the early hours of the morning, an actress on each arm.

People remember him wearing an expensively cut Western suit and gazing out confidently, not in the least troubled by the wholly un-Islamic combination of drink, women and gambling.

This was not, of course, an aspect of the King's past which could be openly discussed in the Saudi media. But everyone knew the rumours.

There were stories of all night sessions at seedy clubs in Beirut, of affairs with belly dancers, and of the wife of a Lebanese businessman paid $100,000 a year to make herself available.

Then in 1969, Fahd was said to have lost $1,000,000 in a single dusk-to-dawn marathon of Scotch-fuelled gambling at the tables of a Monte Carlo nightclub.

Needless to say, many of the true believers in Wahhabism came to see the Saud clan, quite rightfully, as deeply corrupt. As to damage control in the wake of Crown Prince Fahd's actions, the Sauds didn't change their ways so much as become obsessive in controlling public exposure and scrutiny. Second, the Sauds attempted to reclaim their religious legitimacy by significantly enhancing support for the Wahhabi religion. This was when the Sauds started exporting Wahhabism around the world on an industrial scale and which continues to this day.

Unfortunately for the very wealthy Saud clan members, the vast majority of whom would much prefer reclining in the arms of a Western consort with a fine scotch to sitting in a Mosque, their lifestyle -- as well as their very pragmatic ties to the U.S. for self defense -- have made the Saudi clan the target for many of the Wahhabists outside of their control. As the David Ignatius wrote not long ago in the Washington Post, "Sunni and Shiite extremists, otherwise deadly adversaries, share a common dream of toppling the House of Saud."

So there you have it. The world's most vicious cycle, for the Sauds and the world. The Saudi clan must fully fund and support the Wahhabists to maintain their legitimacy. The Wahhabists they create want to destroy the Saudi clan because it is corrupt. The Saud's have every reason to help us, but they can't turn off the spigot that is the well spring of all Islamic terrorism today without destroying their regime. And if they do that, no Scotch, no prostitutes, only mosques. No, they'll ride this camel until it dies -- hoping against hope that we in the West can save them from their own Wahhabist terrorists. And the utter insanity of it all is that, even with all of that, it really is in our interests to cooperate with the Saudis.

Special thanks to the ever brilliant Andrea of Bookworm Room for inspiring and contributing to this post.

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Wolf Bites

Semper speed dial: If You Want Something Done, Ask A Marine

More Mysterious Than The Setting Of The Sun: CNN’S ‘Religion Expert’ Has Absolutely No Idea Why ISIS Is Targeting Christians

Given The Track Record Of The Blue Urban Governing Model, Who Could Have Seen This Coming: Chicago Nears Fiscal Freefall

Measured Against What Moral Code?: Can Atheists Be Moral Too

I Called This In 2008: Dodd-Frank institutionalized bailouts and bad banking practices

A Timely Public Service Announcement: Don't Drink

When Cops Go Bad: Video Exonerates Man Set Up By Louisiana Police

Stand At Attention & Salute: National Commando Day

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Godfather II & Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC): 'Where Is My Bribe?'

This one broken by CNN no less. There really is some common ground between the right and the left - and this is one piece of that common ground:



Think back to the scene from Godfather II where a young Vito Corleone is approached by NYC's then Godfather, Don Fanucci, who asks Vito nicely for "just enough" money to "wet my beak." The only difference between the Don and the Congresswoman is that he asked for his bribe money in Italian. Could this be any more corrupt?

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Planned Parenthood, Abortion & Feeding Off The Public Tit

Planned Parenthood is many things. First and foremost, it is our nation's largest abortion mill, performing 333,964 abortions last year.

Two, Planned Parenthood is a provider "sexual and reproductive health care." In addition to abortions, it engages in providing contraception, testing for STD's and for cervical cancer.

Three, Planned Parenthood is a far left advocacy organization, and indeed, it has been since its inception under Margaret Sanger, a deeply committed socialist with two goals. One, Sanger, a eugenicist, wanted to limit the number of children being born to blacks, and two, she wanted to remove from sex any hindrance of ethical and moral limits, as well as any physical consequence of pregnancy. She saw herself as a direct opponent of Christianity in our nation and actively sought to move religion from the public square.

Planned Parenthood was the recipient last year of "a record $542 million in taxpayer funding in the form of government grants, contracts, and Medicaid reimbursements," that accounting for 45% of their annual revenue. Like ACORN, the far left found a way to get one its primary advocacy organizations on the public dole in a huge way. As I've written before, the penchant of the Democrats for funneling hundreds of millions of our tax dollars to far left is one of the most corrupting aspects of our government and politics. No advocacy group, right or left, should be feeding off the public tit. That is doubly true for Planned Parenthood in consideration of the fact that Planned Parenthood is an abortion mill.

For years, it has been the law that federal funds cannot be used for abortion. That said, it is not hard to for Planned Parenthood to account for all federal funds as being used to fund everything but abortion - including overhead that allows it to do abortion in the first place.

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From Our Pockets To Far Left Activist Groups - Democrat Corruption At Work

That stench of corruption you smell is most likely the odor emanating from Obama Administration and Attorney General Eric Holder's Office. At least a portion of what you are smelling is how the Democrats are funneling tax dollars and bank fines to far left community activist organizations - for these organization to then in turn use in support of Democrats. It is as corrupt a practice as you will find in any banana republic.

It works like this. Democrats pass a law, take Dodd Frank for example, which could also reasonably be called the ACORN Full Employment Act. In it, the Democrats specify that a portion of our tax dollars are to be used to fund local organizations, ostensibly to conduct education and counseling of minorities or the elderly on financial matters. The government than enters into a multi-year contract with one of the many far left activist organizations for millions of dollars. A variety of far left organizations wholly survive on our tax dollars through this scam, the most infamous being, until their recent dissolution, ACORN.  It is completely legal.  It is utterly corrupt.  And because of contractual obligations, the Democrats are able to keep this scam going even during periods of Republican control of Congress.

But that is not the only method by which Democrats funnel millions in funds to partisan left wing groups. A variant on the above theme is for the Justice Department to direct that banks owing fines for "race discrimination" have to pay a portion of the fines directly to whatever private radical left organization the Justice Department directs. This too is ostensibly justified on the grounds of educating minorities.  The difference here, as the IBD article below makes clear, is that the left are on far shakier legal grounds when going this route.

Just as an aside, these shakedowns of banks for "racism" in lending practices are precisely what led to our economic meltdown in 2008 by destroying credit standards. Invariably in these cases, no single act of racial discrimination is ever proven to have occurred. Rather a bank is held liable if its lending practices show a disparate impact on minorities. That means that statistically, a bank did not make enough loans to minorities - irrespective of how colorblind the bank's lending standards are, irrespective of its outreach to minorities, and indeed, irrespective of whether it statistically rejected more applications from whites than minorities. It is a travesty. This use of disparate impact theory was held, for all intents and purposes, unlawful by the Supreme Court in the employment context in the pivotal 2010 Ricci v. Destafano case. It should be unlawful in all contexts. There is no place for racism in our society, but the disparate impact theory doesn't punish racism, it punishes institutions for results wholly irrespective of actual racism and thus it deeply distorts our economy.

At any rate, back to the topic at hand. It is the Justice Department funneling fines to left wing organizations that is rearing its ugly head today. This from IBD:

Last week, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith fired off a three-page letter to Attorney General Eric Holder warning that his recent punishment of Bank of America's mortgage unit seemed political. In fact, he may have abused his power.

As IBD first reported Jan. 4, 'BofA Must Pay Excess Settlement Funds To Acorn Clones," the $335 million lending-bias deal requires BofA to fork over a chunk of the payout to leftist groups not connected to the suit.

The unusual term is part of a secret Justice program to redistribute millions in settlement cash to third parties instead of alleged victims.

Critics told IBD it's a "political backdoor" to subsidize Democrat-tied bank shakedown groups. . . .

Under the order, excess funds will be handed to groups that "provide education, counseling and other assistance to low-income and minority borrowers."

The corrupt group, [ACORN,] which has re-emerged under other names after coming under investigation in 2009, continues to receive federal funds. Acorn Housing Corp. got some $700,000 in federal money after changing its name to Affordable Housing Centers of America.

Last year, Holder also ordered two AIG-owned banks to pay a minimum of $1 million to "qualified organizations" that help "African-American borrowers."

More recently, he ordered C&F Mortgage Corp. of Virginia to reward such groups. As of 2010, some $7.6 million was waiting to be handed out from his unsupervised grant program. Recipients aren't restricted in how they use the money. In 2008, Acorn bankrolled get-out-the-vote operations for Obama.

Justice would not provide a complete list of approved nonprofits, but a spokeswoman told IBD the National Urban League and Operation Hope are eligible for cash from the AIG case. Urban League has lobbied to water down credit standards. Operation Hope founder John Bryant serves on Obama's financial advisory council.

Smith demands that Holder furnish a full list of "qualified organizations," along with an audit of payments. Hearings are in order if his response is unsatisfactory.

Hats off to IBD for following up on this like a dog with a bone and getting the Republicans in congress to finally move off their posteriors.  Nothing that I am aware of authorizes the Justice Department to direct that fines otherwise payable to the government be directed to non-party organizations.

I am waiting for the day when a financial institution finally appeals the use of disparate impact theory in lending to the Supreme Court. This is social engineering at its worst, it was the "but for" cause of the 2008 economic crash and our continuing economic woes, and yet the Obama administration and the Holder Justice Department are pushing it harder than ever before. It is setting us on a second course for disaster.

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Teapot Dome II - Military Procurement, Obama & Crony Capitalism

The story of the Navy being forced to purchase millions of gallons of biofuel from Obama cronies at $16 a gallon - fully three times the cost of normal fuel - is corrupt crony capitalism off the charts.  It is a modern Teapot Dome scandal.   What makes it all the worse is that it is money coming out of a defense budget that has been cut down to beyond the bone, threatening our national security in order to line the pockets of Obama's cronies with our tax dollars. This from IBD:

SolyndraGate was no isolated case of corrupt government misspending. The U.S. Navy was just forced to buy 450,000 gallons of biofuels from an Obama-connected firm at an outrageous $16 per gallon. …

Now we find the Navy partnering with the Agriculture Department to purchase hundreds of thousands of gallons of alternative biofuel in place of standard JP-5 fuel for Navy aircraft — the biggest federal purchase of biofuel ever.

It’s part of the White House’s “we can’t wait for Congress” strategy as the 2012 election year looms. But JP-5 typically costs less than $4 a gallon. If a family on a budget started filling up with $16-a-gallon gas, it might want to adopt the motto, “we can’t wait to go broke.”

A look at the lucky seller of this environmentalist version of the proverbial $600 Pentagon toilet seat indicates that the move is not just wasteful, but ethically suspect.

As J.E. Dyer noted over the weekend on the Hot Air Green Room, “a member of Obama’s presidential transition team, T. J. Glauthier, is a ‘strategic advisor’ at Solazyme, the California company that is selling a portion of the biofuel to the Navy. Glauthier worked — shock, shock — on the energy-sector portion of the 2009 stimulus bill.”

Solazyme had already gotten a nearly $22 million chunk of change out of the taxpayers thanks to the 2009 stimulus. We heard the ludicrous excuse last week from Obama Navy Secretary Ray Mabus, as quoted in the National Journal, that “we are doing this for one simple reason: It makes us better fighters” because “our use of fossil fuels is a very real threat to our national security and to the U.S. Navy ability to protect America and project power overseas.”

What about the “very real threat” to the Navy of not having enough money for the ships, fighters and ammunition it needs to protect America? President Obama’s assault on the Pentagon could scrap 60 of the Navy’s ships, including two carrier groups.

Anyone in the military chain of command who supported this, up to and including the Secretary of the Navy and the Secretary of Defense, needs to fired, if not prosecuted. This screams for investigation every bit as much as Fast and Furious. This modern replay of the Teapot Dome scandal is pure corruption on a scale to make the Nixon administration look pristine by comparison.

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The Morning After A Year Long HopeyChangey Fairy Dust Bender

From He's Done Everything Wrong by Mort Zukerman in the Daily Beast, 21 Jan. 2010, the day after Massachusetts brought the fairy dust bender to an end:

He’s misjudged the character of the country in his whole approach. There’s the saying, “It’s the economy, stupid.” He didn’t get it. He was determined somehow or other to adopt a whole new agenda. He didn’t address the main issue.

This health-care plan is going to be a fiscal disaster for the country. Most of the country wanted to deal with costs, not expansion of coverage. This is going to raise costs dramatically.

In the campaign, he said he would change politics as usual. He did change them. It’s now worse than it was. I’ve now seen the kind of buying off of politicians that I’ve never seen before. It’s politically corrupt and it’s starting at the top. It’s revolting. . . .

Zuckerman is the, editor in chief, U.S. News & World Report, the publisher of the New York Daily News, and a trustee, Council on Foreign Relations. He was also a staunch Obama supporter in the last election. Do read the whole thing. There is much more.

You know, that fairy dust makes you feel great while your pounding back jello shots of the stuff. But the morning after, you wake up in an embarrassing position and just feel incredibly stupid. It's ok. I am sure there's a 12 step plan that can help them back to reality and self respect. Obamaholics Anonymous. Zuckerman looks like he's on step 9 or 10 already.

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Cafferty On A Roll

Jack Cafferty goes nuclear on Pelosi and the left again. A few days ago, he was calling for everyone to remember the hypocrisy of the Obama administration when they went to the polls. Today . . . . he seems to want a pound of flesh . . .



Cafferty is of course correct in all he says. I had marked off Cafferty years ago as just another far left ideologue with no intellectual honesty. I was wrong.

(H/T Hot Air)

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A Cromwellian Speech In NY

Is NY Gov. David Paterson channeling Oliver Cromwell? If you listened to his state of the state speech you might think so. Patterson is not as flowerly in his damnation, but the spirit is the same. Here is an overlay of Patterson's speech from a NYT article with Cromwell's speech to Parliament in 1653:

In a strikingly blunt State of the State address, Gov. David A. Paterson chastised the lawmakers seated before him . . . saying they had spent the state into near-ruin and stood by as a plague of political corruption destroyed New Yorkers’ trust in their government.

It is high time for me to put an end to your sitting in this place, which you have dishonoured by your contempt of all virtue, and defiled by your practice of every vice; ye are a factious crew, and enemies to all good government; ye are a pack of mercenary wretches, and would like Esau sell your country for a mess of pottage, and like Judas betray your God for a few pieces of money.

Their reluctance to make hard decisions and rein in its own excesses had plunged the state even deeper into crisis. “You have left me and other governors no choice. Whether it be by vetoes or delayed spending, I will not write bad checks, and we will not mortgage our children’s future.” . . . “No longer are we going to run New York like a payday loan operation,”

“Is there a single virtue now remaining amongst you? Is there one vice you do not possess? Ye have no more religion than my horse; gold is your God; which of you have not barter'd your conscience for bribes? Is there a man amongst you that has the least care for the good of the Commonwealth

“Prosperity hides all manner of sin, but no longer. We have to rise to the highest expectation of our people and bring them the lasting change they have long, long fought for and desired.” New York is facing a fiscal crisis decades in the making and a $7 billion shortfall projected for the coming year. Last year, buoyed in part by federal stimulus aid, state officials increased total spending by nearly 9 percent, even as the economy faltered and revenues plummeted.

Lawmakers had too often bowed to the wishes of powerful special interests, feeding an “addiction to spending, power and approval” and plunging the state into economic catastrophe. The moneyed interests — many are here today as guests — have got to understand that their days of influence in this town are numbered.

“Ye sordid prostitutes, have you not defil'd this sacred place, and turn'd the Lord's temple into a den of thieves by your immoral principles and wicked practices? Ye are grown intolerably odious to the whole nation; you were deputed here by the people to get grievances redress'd; your country therefore calls upon me to cleanse the Augean Stable, by putting a final period to your iniquitous proceedings, and which by God's help and the strength He has given me, I now come to do.

“Some say that we will not succeed — that the story has already been written and the ending is ordained,” Mr. Paterson told the lawmakers, . . . “But story lines change, and people change.”

- - - Gov. David Patterson, State of the State Speech, 6 Jan. 2010

“I command ye, therefore, upon the peril of your lives, to depart immediately out of this place! Take away that shining bauble there, and lock up the doors. You have sat here too long for the good you do. In the name of God, go!”

- - - Oliver Cromwell's speech dismissing Parliament, 20 April 1653

Not a bad speech at all by Gov. Patterson, though it would have been far more dramatic if he had just dusted off Cromwell's and finished by tossing the lot out into the street at bayonet point. But, this was at least a good start.

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Dr. North's One Man Crusade To Expose Corruption (Updated & Bumped)

The man above, appropriately attired in the Chairman Mao outfit, is Rajendra Pachauri. Whether you realize it or not, he is of immense importance to you. He is rich. He is very powerful. He has financial interests hidden under a hundred different rocks. And if he gets his way, he will be stealing money out of your pocket and significantly lessening your quality of life. Remember that as you read this post.

----------------------------------------------------

The UN's Intergorvenmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is a body expressly dedicated to informing us about the reality of climate science in a "comprehensive, objective, open and transparent" fashion. Don't laugh.

Please stop laughing, I am trying to make an important point . . .

My question is this . . . should the person who then is appointed Chairman of the IPCC be neutral, without any financial stake in the theory of anthropogenic global warming? That answer is clearly yes. If it were otherwise, it would be a massive conflict of interest the likes of which would be tortious were the IPCC a U.S. corporation. And were the IPCC a U.S. governmental organization, acting under such a pecuniary conflict of interest would likely be a crime under 18 U.S.C § 208. As bad as Al Gore is - he has made over $100 million if not much, much more in the past decade shilling for global warming - at least he holds no official position by which he can directly effect how AGW (anthropogenic global warming) science is portrayed and how it is pursued at the international level. But what if the Chairman of the UN's IPCC held every bit as much a stake in pushing the theory of AGW as Al Gore? Something would really stink in Denmark then. And that something would be Rajendra Pachauri, the UN's IPCC Chairman.

One would not know this from a casual look through the MSM. But some of the best investigative journalism on this issue is going on across the pond on a blog - EU Referendum. The blog's proprietor, Dr. North, has spent the better part of the last few weeks digging through the public record to paint a picture of an IPCC Chairman with massive financial conflicts of interest - and indeed, a purveyor of hypocrisy on a Gorian scale. This story is developing with time. It is getting some play in the newspapers and some play in the blogs - it deserves far, far more in terms of both publicity and in terms of rattling the cages of our elected representatives.

This from one of the earlier posts on this issue by Dr. North:

No one but the utterly naïve greenies believe that the Mann-made global warming hype is anything to do with climate – much less saving the planet. It is, as always, about power, influence - and money.

Out of literally thin air, the money-men have been able to conjure up a brand new product on which to increase their riches, the fabulous "carbon" which in less than a decade will – they hope – underpin an "industry" worth more than $2 trillion a year.

That alone justified the enormous effort which is being made to cement global warming as an issue in the public consciousness and, more importantly, in the legislative systems of the world. And it is the latter which is most important. Once the elimination of "carbon" is locked into enough legislative systems, it does not matter what people think – the revenue stream will be secure.

Bearing in mind that the issue is based on the central deception that the life-giving gas carbon dioxide is a "pollutant", behind the push to create this multi-trillion dollar industry is a vast nexus of influence, at or near the heart of which – it is emerging – is the chairman of the UN's IPCC, Dr Rajendra Kumar Pachauri.

Carefully cultivating the image of the concerned "scientist", he has on the back of the global warming hype not only been able to amass a considerable personal fortune (about which he is extraordinarily shy) but has also built a powerful global organisation under the brand-name "TERI", as the front for his lobbying and power-broking activities

That Pachauri heads the UN's IPCC while having a vast conflict of interest is pure corruption. And the bottom line is that until people like Pachauri are exposed and made to step down, if not locked down (which would be appropriate, since we are talking about theft that would make Bernie Madoff look like a mere pick pocket), then the science of AGW will always remain politicized and there is little chance of stopping this world record scam from reaching into our pockets.

Here, in order, are the posts (earliest to most recent in descending order) on this issue from EU Referendum. You should read them. Then you should be calling your elected representatives to ask why we are allowing such a massive conflict of interest at the UN IPCC and what they are going to do about it? You might want to cc Senator James Inhofe on this also. Unless you own massive amounts of stock in GE, Kleiner Perkins,or TERI, it is in the financial interests of you, your children, your grandchildren, and this nation to make those calls.

- Big Carbon
- We Woz Not Wrong
- All Roads Lead To Pachauri
- A Busy Man
- A Vast Nexus of Influence
- Corus In The EU Parliament
- Global Warming - An Economic War
- Conflict of Interest
- High Noon For Pachauri
- Wheels Within Wheels
- Protecting Big Carbon
- It's All Lies
- Indian Style
- The Power Of The Internet
- Slow Burn
- Eating Away At Civilization
- Pachauri In An Expenses Scam
- What Is With The Media?
- A Hypocrite As Well As A Liar
- Pachauri: Another Tata Link
- Pachauri: They've All Got It In For Me
- Pachauri: Moving The Goalposts
- Pachauri: Hornet's Nest Stirred
- Pachauri: Admits To $300,000 In Payments
- Pachauri: The Deutsche Bank Connection
- Pachauri: More Lucerative By The Day
- Pachauri: Not $300,000, But $800,000 Admitted
- Pachauri And Big Oil
- Pachauri And Hidden Subsidies
- Pachauri: TERI-Europe - The Enigma Part I
- Pachauri: Friend of Friends
- Nothing Is Ever What It Seems
Pachauri: TERI-Europe - The Enigma Part II
- Pachauri: TERI-Europe - The Enigma Part III
- Pachauri: How Much Is This Man Getting (New. Added 6 Jan 2010)
- Pachauri: Follow The Money (New. Added 6 Jan 2010)
- Pachauri: Nose In The Honey Jar (New. Added 6 Jan 2010)
- Pachauri: "No Leeway For Delay Or Denial" (New. Added 6 Jan 2010)
- Pachauri: The Cover Up Begins (New. Added 6 Jan 2010)
- Pauchauri: Teri-Europe - The Enigma Part IV (New. Added 6 Jan 2010)
- Pachauri: The Smoking Gun (New. Added 6 Jan 2010)
- Work In Progress (New. Added 6 Jan 2010)


I will update and bump this post as new information comes to light.

There are also other blogs out there that have dealt with the topic of IPCC / Pachauri corruption. They include:

- The Daily Stirrer: The Copenhagen Climate Conference - The Stink of Shit & Corruption
- Doug Ross: The UN's IPCC Global-Warming Bunko Scam

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Dr. North's One Man Crusade To Expose Corruption

The man above, appropriately attired in the Chairman Mao outfit, is Rajendra Pachauri. Whether you realize it or not, he is of immense importance to you. He is rich. He is immensely powerful. He has financial interests hidden under a hundred different rocks. And if he gets his way, he will be stealing money out of your pocket and significantly lessening your quality of life. Remember that as you read this post.

----------------------------------------------------

The UN's Intergorvenmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is a body expressly dedicated to informing us about the reality of climate science in an honest and unbiased fashion. Don't laugh.

Please stop laughing, I am trying to make an important point . . .

My question is this . . . should the person who then is appointed Chairman of the IPCC be neutral, without any financial stake in the theory of anthropogenic global warming? That answer is clearly yes. If it were otherwise, it would be a massive conflict of interest the likes of which would be tortious were the IPCC a U.S. corporation. And were it a U.S. governmental organization, acting under such a pecuniary conflict would be a crime under 18 U.S.C § 208. As bad as Al Gore is - he has made over $100 million if not much, much more in the past decade shilling for global warming - at least he holds no official position by which he can directly effect how AGW science is portrayed and how it is pursued at the international level. But what if the Chairman of the UN's IPCC held every bit as much a stake in pushing AGW as Al Gore? Something would really stink in Denmark then. And that something would be Rajendra Pachauri, the UN's IPCC Chairman.

One would not know this from a casual look through the MSM. But some of the best investigative journalism on this issue is going on across the pond on a blog - EU Referendum. It is a blog which is, for my money, the most consistently intelligent blog on either side of the Atlantic. The proprietor, Dr. North, has spent the better part of the last few weeks digging through the public record to paint a picture of an IPCC Chairman with massive financial conflicts of interest - and indeed, a purveyor of hypocrisy on a Gorian scale. Dr. North has bitten into this story, and like a dog with a bone, is not letting go. It is getting some play in the newspapers and some play in the blogs - it deserves far, far more in terms of both publicity and in terms of rattling the cages of our elected representatives.

This from one of the earlier posts on this issue by Dr. North:

No one but the utterly naïve greenies believe that the Mann-made global warming hype is anything to do with climate – much less saving the planet. It is, as always, about power, influence - and money.

Out of literally thin air, the money-men have been able to conjure up a brand new product on which to increase their riches, the fabulous "carbon" which in less than a decade will – they hope – underpin an "industry" worth more than $2 trillion a year.

That alone justified the enormous effort which is being made to cement global warming as an issue in the public consciousness and, more importantly, in the legislative systems of the world. And it is the latter which is most important. Once the elimination of "carbon" is locked into enough legislative systems, it does not matter what people think – the revenue stream will be secure.

Bearing in mind that the issue is based on the central deception that the life-giving gas carbon dioxide is a "pollutant", behind the push to create this multi-trillion dollar industry is a vast nexus of influence, at or near the heart of which – it is emerging – is the chairman of the UN's IPCC, Dr Rajendra Kumar Pachauri.

Carefully cultivating the image of the concerned "scientist", he has on the back of the global warming hype not only been able to amass a considerable personal fortune (about which he is extraordinarily shy) but has also built a powerful global organisation under the brand-name "TERI", as the front for his lobbying and power-broking activities

That Pachauri heads the UN's IPCC while having a vast conflict of interest is pure corruption. And the bottom line is that until people like Pachauri are exposed and made to step down, if not locked down (which would be appropriate, since we are talking about theft that would make Bernie Madoff look like a mere pick pocket), then the science of AGW will always remain politicized and there is little chance of stopping this world record scam from reaching into our pockets.

Here, in order, are the posts (earliest to most recent in descending order) on this issue from EU Referendum. You should read them. Then you should be calling your elected representatives to ask why we are allowing such a massive conflict of interest at the UN IPCC and what they are going to do about it? You might want to cc Senator James Inhofe on this also. Unless you own massive amounts of stock in GE, Kleiner Perkins,or TERI, it is in the financial interests of you, your children, your grandchildren, and this nation to make those calls.

- Big Carbon
- We Woz Not Wrong
- All Roads Lead To Pachauri
- A Busy Man
- A Vast Nexus of Influence
- Corus In The EU Parliament
- Global Warming - An Economic War
- Conflict of Interest
- High Noon For Pachauri
- Wheels Within Wheels
- Protecting Big Carbon
- It's All Lies
- Indian Style
- The Power Of The Internet
- Slow Burn
- Eating Away At Civilization
- Pachauri In An Expenses Scam
- What Is With The Media?
- A Hypocrite As Well As A Liar
- Pachauri: Another Tata Link
- Pachauri: They've All Got It In For Me
- Pachauri: Moving The Goalposts
- Pachauri: Hornet's Nest Stirred
- Pachauri: Admits To $300,000 In Payments
- Pachauri: The Deutsche Bank Connection
- Pachauri: More Lucerative By The Day
- Pachauri: Not $300,000, But $800,000 Admitted
- Pachauri And Big Oil
- Pachauri And Hidden Subsidies
- Pachauri: TERI-Europe - The Enigma Part I
- Pachauri: Friend of Friends
- Nothing Is Ever What It Seems

I will update and bump this post as new information comes to light.

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Afghanistan From An FSO's Perspective

Dave in Boca was a career Foreign Service Officer - and he still has his contacts, including with one FSO who has spent the better part of the last decade in Afghanistan. Among his important observations - Afghan's President, Hamid Karzi, is not corrupt. To the contrary, he is working dillegently to address the problem of corruption in his country. The meme that Karzi is himself a problem comes from Richard Holbrooke, who seems to be doing little in the Afghan area other than to bullox things up and creating a false narrative for Obama to justify using an off ramp out of Afghanistan if and when he wants to use it. Do see Dave's fascinating post on this.

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Corruption, ACORN & The NYT

Though you wouldn't know it from daily scans of the MSM, the left has, as the WSJ puts it, a "corruption problem." In Congress, Chris Dodd still sits as Chairman of the Senate Banking Committee. In the House, Charlie Rangel still holds his post as the Chairmen of the Ways and Means Committee. John Murtha, Jim Moran and Peter Visclosk still hold their seats and committee asignments. And is there any need to mention the bevy of tax cheats appointed to positions of power in the Obama administration. The media has gone silent on all of this, but it sure appears that there is a burgeoning culture of corruption going on in the left.

Indeed, Jonah Goldberg goes one further, surveying the facts and charging that the left is "wallowing in corruption." If there is any doubt about that, there is the left's continuing support and public funding for the Association of Community Organizers Now - ACORN - as corrupt an organization as we have seen in American politics since the days of Boss Tweed and "Tammany Hall Machine."

ACORN has played a very malignant roll in our recent history. For example, at Volokh Conspiracy, there are two posts on the origins of the mortgage meltdown at the heart of our current recession. One discusses how laws were changed by the Clinton Administration to force a lowering of lending standards - ostensibly to combat racist lending policies (only they weren't racist). A second post discusses the central roll played by ACORN - and one of their lawyers, Obama - who used these laws, along with claims of racism and intimidation, to force banks to adopt much looser lending standards. Indeed, it is an arguable point that we would not be eyeball deep in recession without the involvement of ACORN.

But though incredibly destructive, the above described acts of ACORN were not illegal. Where ACORN transgresses into corruption and illegality has been in its efforts to insure the election of left wing democrats, including Obama. This has primarily taken two forms - voter fraud and felony collusion in violation of campaign finance laws. As to the former, in 2008, ACORN registered over 1.3 million new voters in 17 states. As of today, they are under investigation and/or have been prosecuted in at least twelve of those states for voter registration fraud.

The second corrupt practice with which ACORN is suspected is collusion with the Obama campaign to approach donors who had already reached the legal limit of their contributions to his campaign. The story is, according to ACORN whistleblower Anita MonCrief, that the Obama camp supplied ACORN with a donor list for this purpose. If true, this would be a clear violation of campaign finance laws. That is a criminal matter that deserves - but likely will not get - a federal investigation.

But there is another twist. It appears now that, on the eve of the Presidential election, the NYT spiked this story. Michelle Malkin covers it today, as did Powerline the other day. If this is true, and it seems likely, then it is one of the more blatantly unethical acts of a major newspaper in recent history.

Despite blatant corruption, ACORN continues to be protected by the far left in Congress, the left continues to funnel taxpayer money to it, and the Census Bureau has contracted with ACORN to help in the 2010 Census. As to protection, following the story of John Conyers on all of this is instructive. In Oct, 2008, as reported by HuffPo:

In response to news last week that the F.B.I. has launched a secret investigation of alleged voter registration fraud by the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now ("ACORN"), John Conyers, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, has issued a hotly worded press release questioning the professionalism of the F.B.I. and questioning whether the investigation is politically motivated.

That was Conyers's knee jerk reaction to an ACORN investigation on the eve of the election. But, as reported by the American Spectator, Conyers in fact held a hearing in March of this year that touched on ACORN, and "after hearing the testimony of GOP lawyer Heather Heidelbaugh about ACORN's many misdeeds, Conyers said the allegations were "a pretty serious matter."' Indeed, so serious were the bill of particulars that Conyer's scheduled hearings to further investigate ACORN's corrupt practices.

Someone on the far left apparently read Conyers the riot act about protecting ACORN because, just recently, Conyers announced that he was cancelling the hearings, stating: "Based on my review of the information regarding the complaints against ACORN, I have concluded that a hearing on this matter appears unwarranted at this time." He did so on the same day that Nevada charged Acorn and two ACORN employees with 39 felony counts relating to to fraud in voter registration. Conyers now refuses to answer questions about his decision to cancel the hearings. The bottom line of all this, the far left are quite content with ACORN's corrupt practices and they are protecting ACORN to the limit of their ability.

That is horrendous, but it pales when one considers that the far left is not only protecting ACORN, but funnelling vast amounts of taxpayer money to it. During his campaign, Obama transferred almost one million dollars to ACORN to fund its voter registration drive on his behalf. But that was from merely donated funds. The real money comes from tax dollars that the far left has been funnelling to ACORN since 1994. Now that Obama is in power, the left are looking at transferring our tax dollars to ACORN on a massive scale. According to the Washington Examiner:

At least $53 million in federal funds have gone to ACORN activists since 1994, and the controversial group could get up to $8.5 billion more tax dollars despite being under investigation for voter registration fraud in a dozen states.

The economic stimulus bill enacted in February contains $3 billion that the non-profit activist group known more formally as the Association for Community Organizations for Reform Now could receive, and 2010 federal budget contains another $5.5 billion that could also find its way into the group’s coffers. . . .

Indeed, to make this even more nausea inducing, do note that $3 billion dollars is the same amount of funding that Obama cut from our Missile Defense program. This is nothing more than Obama and the far left in Congress inviting ACORN, with our money, to ramp up its corrupt activities to keep the far left in power.

Likewise is the otherwise unexplainable decision to have the Census Bureau team up with ACORN for the 2010 census. The politicization of the 2010 Census began almost as soon as the Obama administration took office. You will recall that when Obama announced that Republican Senator Judd Gregg would be his first choice for the Secretary of Commerce post, Obama simultaneously transferred control of the US Census from the Commerce Department and put it under the direct control of White House Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel. And one of the first acts of this newly politicized Census Bureau was to sign up ACORN to assist with the 2010 census.

It is critical that the 2010 Census be conducted accurately. The results of that Census will be used to determine the makeup of the House of Representatives as well as, in some cases, the allocation of federal resources and funds. Does anyone believe that this will happen with ACORN involvement? If you do, you need to get it from the horse's mouth - or more specifically, former organizer Greg Hall who, writing at the Washington Examiner, predicts massive fraud in the census by ACORN.

Having said all of that, if you're waiting for the Republican chorus to start harping on this daily to get and keep it in the news, don't hold your breath. The right is doing nowhere near enough on that front, thus allowing Obama and the left a pass - or, if you like, a "get out of jail free" card - while actually exploiting ACORN even more.

A culture of corruption indeed. We may not be hearing anything about it, but the stench is permeating the air.

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Hayek And Will On Socialist Thugocracies

Speaking of the rise of the socialist state, with its forced nationalizations and growth in power of the unions in post WWII Britain, author FA Hayek wrote:

The most serious development is the growth of a measure of arbitrary administrative coercion and the progressive destruction of the cherished foundations of British liberty, the Rule of Law . . . [T]he attempts at economic planning under the Labour government carried it to the point where it is doubtful whether it can be said that the Rule of Law prevails in Britain. . . . It is a despotism exercised by a thoroughly honest and conscientious bureaucracy for what they sincerely believe is the good of the country. . . .

Our modern day Mr. Hayek may well be George Will, who is emerging as the most cogent of observers of the Obama regime and its emerging practice of heavy handed tactics that mirror those which occurred in post WWII Britain. As Mr. Will observes, our new President is ruling this country with "a tincture of lawlessness."

This from Geoge Will, writing at the Washington Post:

. . . In February, California's Democratic-controlled Legislature, faced with a $42 billion budget deficit, trimmed $74 million (1.4 percent) from one of the state's fastest-growing programs, which provides care for low-income and incapacitated elderly people and which cost the state $5.42 billion last year. The Los Angeles Times reports that "loose oversight and bureaucratic inertia have allowed fraud to fester."

But the Service Employees International Union collects nearly $5 million a month from 223,000 caregivers who are members. And the Obama administration has told California that unless the $74 million in cuts are rescinded, it will deny the state $6.8 billion in stimulus money.

Such a federal ukase (the word derives from czarist Russia; how appropriate) to a state legislature is a sign of the administration's dependency agenda -- maximizing the number of people and institutions dependent on the federal government. For the first time, neither sales nor property nor income taxes are the largest source of money for state and local governments. The federal government is.

The SEIU says the cuts violate contracts negotiated with counties. California officials say the state required the contracts to contain clauses allowing pay to be reduced if state funding is.

Anyway, the Obama administration, judging by its cavalier disregard of contracts between Chrysler and some of the lenders it sought money from, thinks contracts are written on water. The administration proposes that Chrysler's secured creditors get 28 cents per dollar on the $7 billion owed to them but that the United Auto Workers union get 43 cents per dollar on its $11 billion in claims -- and 55 percent of the company. This, even though the secured creditors' contracts supposedly guaranteed them better standing than the union.

Among Chrysler's lenders, some servile banks that are now dependent on the administration for capital infusions tugged their forelocks and agreed. Some hedge funds among Chrysler's lenders that are not dependent were vilified by the president because they dared to resist his demand that they violate their fiduciary duties to their investors, who include individuals and institutional pension funds.

The Economist says the administration has "ridden roughshod over [creditors'] legitimate claims over the [automobile companies'] assets. . . . Bankruptcies involve dividing a shrunken pie. But not all claims are equal: some lenders provide cheaper funds to firms in return for a more secure claim over the assets should things go wrong. They rank above other stakeholders, including shareholders and employees. This principle is now being trashed." Tom Lauria, a lawyer representing hedge fund people trashed by the president as the cause of Chrysler's bankruptcy, asked that his clients' names not be published for fear of violence threatened in e-mails to them.

The Troubled Assets Relief Program, which has not yet been used for its supposed purpose (to purchase such assets from banks), has been the instrument of the administration's adventure in the automobile industry. TARP's $700 billion, like much of the supposed "stimulus" money, is a slush fund the executive branch can use as it pleases. This is as lawless as it would be for Congress to say to the IRS: We need $3.5 trillion to run the government next year, so raise it however you wish -- from whomever, at whatever rates you think suitable. Don't bother us with details.

. . . The Obama administration's agenda of maximizing dependency involves political favoritism cloaked in the raiment of "economic planning" and "social justice" that somehow produce results superior to what markets produce when freedom allows merit to manifest itself, and incompetence to fail. The administration's central activity -- the political allocation of wealth and opportunity -- is not merely susceptible to corruption, it is corruption.

Read the entire article. I could not agree more. Not only is the Obama administration displaying overt corruption, but it is of a kind that will have long term ramifications. Those industries in which Obama has inserted his malign influence may well find the cure more toxic than their original economic problems, particularly when they try to raise capital and lure private investment.

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Swamp Theater

From Instapundit:

Rangel refuses to step down as Ways & Means Committee chair. This could hurt -- if I were the GOP I'd put together an ad featuring Biden's credit-card connections, Dodd's sweetheart mortgage scandal, and Rangel's ongoing problems and run it all over. I can't believe they won't do something like that, since it's a gimme, and I'm surprised that the Dems couldn't get him out of the picture. . . .

I would add to that list Franklin Raines - the CEO of Fannie Mae who pulled in $100 million while overseeing an accounting scandal as bad as ENRON's. He is, if I am not mistaken, an economic advisor to Obama. And I would also add that the two largest recipients of contributions from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were Senators Dodd and Obama.

As an aside, its been two years since Nancy Pelosi and the far left road to power on a promise to drain the swamp. Instead she's filled it with fetid water and now the monsters are emerging from the muck.

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Pork 'n Palindemonium . . . At The Wall St. Journal?

The WSJ is a conservative paper and a fair one - but today it tosses out the intellectual honesty for which it is famous and jumps on the bash Palin bandwagon. If she is deserving, that's one thing. But that is far from obvious in an incredibly poorly written piece by Laura Meckler and John Wilke. In their bill of particulars against Gov. Palin, the authors completely obfuscate the difference between a legitimate spending request and that corrupt bane of our modern Congress, the earmark that passes outside the normal legislative channels to become law without debate or vote.
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The WSJ has today what amounts to a hit piece on Gov. Palin. The authors claim that, because Gov. Palin has requested funding for specific projects, she is not a fiscal reformer and, indeed, is every bit the porker at the public trough that Obama is. You can read the article here.

There is a lot of confusion surrounding the term "earmark." Historically, the term has meant no more than simply designating funds to a specifc project. In recent years, the term "earmark" has also come to refer to a corrupt practice whereby funding requests are inserted in committee reports, never being debated or voted upon, yet treated as having the force of law.

I wrote about this the other day here when it was clear from the questions he was asking that Charlie Gibson, in his interview with Gov. Palin, was unable to tell the difference between an earmark and a legitimate spending request. And indeed, in justifying her claim to being a reformer, that is precisely what Gov. Palin explained to Charlie Gibson. You can watch it here.

If you want to see how the corrupt version of earmarking works, Democratic Sen. Carl Levin provides the example. He is about to get $5.9 billion dollars worth of earmarks sent out of his committee in the Defense Appropriations Bill. None will be debated. None will be voted upon. They represent a wholly broken and corrupt process.

But as mentioned above, not all specific spending requests that fall within the generic definition of "earmark" are of the corrupt kind. Quite often, specific spending requests are to fund spending required of the state by unfunded federal mandates. And there are host of other reasons that justify reasonable specific spending requests that every state requests. They are not pork and they are submitted through the normal legislative process. All of this is ignored in the horrendous article in today's WSJ. The authors of that article lump together every spending request made by Gov. Palin as the Governor of Alaska and label it all as earmarks. To call this sloppy and biased reporting is a grotesque understatement.

It is beyond dispute that Gov. Palin has drastically reduced the spending requests for federal dollars made by the government of Alaska. As Gov. Palin wrote in an op-ed in an Anchorage newspaper some months ago:

[M]y administration has recommended funding for specific projects and programs when there is an important federal purpose and strong citizen support.

This year, we have requested 31 earmarks, down from 54 in 2007. Of these, 27 involve continuing or previous appropriations and four are new requests. The total dollar amount of these requests has been reduced from approximately $550 million in the previous year to just less than $200 million. . . .

Patterico takes a look at many of the requests made by Alaska under Gov. Palin:

. . . if you look at the document that Smith links, you quickly get feel for the fact that many of the earmarks are requests for funding that are completely legitimate, and many relate to unfunded mandates imposed upon Alaska by federal legislation like the Clean Water Act and the Endangered Species Act. Several examples are set forth after the jump.

Here is the link to the document setting forth the Alaska appropriation requests. Here are a few examples of the justification for the request:

“Meets the increased needs under the Magnuson-Stevens Act for developing regional fishery coordinated databases.”

“This is an ongoing effort to collect data on the recreational hailbut fishery that is conducted by federal agencies though relying on the state for data.”

“Provides state funding for management of federal fisheries, including Bering Sea and Aleutian Islands king crab and tanner crab, weathervane scallops and groundfish.” . . .

Read the entire post. As Patterico notes, taking even the most jaundiced eye towards the spending requests made by Gov. Palin, none come close to asking for a $1 million earmark for her spouse's employer which just happens to coincide with a tripling of her salary. And indeed, you can compare the requests made by Ms. Palin with the list of earmarks released by Obama during the Democratic primaries. Go ahead. Do a little research - and be a bit more discening than the WSJ has been today. More links to posts on this at Memorandum.

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