Wednesday, April 22, 2009

IT MAY BE SPRINGTIME, BUT THERE'S MORE THAN FLOWERS BLOOMING IN WASHINGTON

It's bad enough that no one is hot on the trail of corruption in Washington; the names of Dodd, Rangle and Murtha are all targets of investigation into charges of using their influence and power to feather their own nests financially. But, oddly, no one seems to be moving toward digging out the answers.

It's also bad enough that Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the House who is targeting the rich, fails to mention that she and her husband Paul are by far the wealthiest in the Congressional halls; they have around $130 million in California real estate investments alone.

Then, of course, there's our pal Barney Frank of the now infamous House Financial Oversight Committee, who appears to have his fingers all over the $360 billion now missing and unaccounted for from the fall TARP Bailout emergency spending bills. Or, did you know about that?

Now appears... Senator Dianne Feinstein, (Number 8 on the list of wealth at the Capital), who arranged for the FDIC to get $25 billion in special funding right after that agency awarded C.B. Richard Ellis, (CBRE), a large property management firm in California, lucrative contracts to handle residential foreclosures at a higher rate than normal market price. The stench surrounding this deal is that it is her husband's firm, and the firm has substantially less experience in this type of management activity than competing firms that were summarily turned down. The allegation is that her husband, Richard Blum, purchased 10 million additional shares in the company just prior to the award and that he and Feinstein made $14 million in the process.

In the meantime, administration officials would label those of us who are sick and tired of this wide-open corruption and manipulation in Washington at our expense... "Right Wing Extremists" who need to be on the F.B.I. Watch List.

Now, who do we blame for this mess? An even more critical question urgently needing an answer is, what are we going to do about it?


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