Posted on 04/20/2009 11:28:40 PM PDT by Big_Monkey
On the day the new Congress convened this year, Sen. Dianne Feinstein introduced legislation to route $25 billion in taxpayer money to a government agency that had just awarded her husband's real estate firm a lucrative contract to sell foreclosed properties at compensation rates higher than the industry norms.
Mrs. Feinstein's intervention on behalf of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. was unusual: the California Democrat isn't a member of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs with jurisdiction over FDIC; and the agency is supposed to operate from money it raises from bank-paid insurance payments - not direct federal dollars.
Documents reviewed by The Washington Times show Mrs. Feinstein first offered Oct. 30 to help the FDIC secure money for its effort to stem the rise of home foreclosures. Her letter was sent just days before the agency determined that CB Richard Ellis Group (CBRE) - the commercial real estate firm that her husband Richard Blum heads as board chairman - had won the competitive bidding for a contract to sell foreclosed properties that FDIC had inherited from failed banks.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
Bush’s fault! Republican culture of corruption! Halliburton / Cheney! Did I leave out any of those nifty lefty catch phrases?
Oh, you mean just like the 20% commissions he got for the feds "buying" worthless rights of way from railroad companies? Just like swiping $14 BILLION in gold in the Desert Protection Act? THAT Chi-Fi Blum duo?
This is just a lot more of the same.
Her husband made a lot of $$$ off the war in Iraq.
conflict of interest AND insider trading!
And they won’t even get a slap on the wrist!
Pardon me while I yawn.
He’s the chairman of URL. They got IDIQ DoD contract for about $600 Million.
I was puzzled why I didn't realize someone had posted this earlier. I searched (as I always do) for the title, but nothing came up. Then, I realized that the title wrong was misquoted in the earlier post. It was written as "Senate" instead of "Senator".
well, pretty obvious Blum is damned talented even with his wife’s handouts notwithstnding
“Nothing new here. The stories of their conflicts go way back to the early 90s. Most of the stuff is not even hard to uncover. But the press is never interested. The two are coated in teflon.”
You are so right about that ElkGroveDan. Mr. Blum is also a big arms dealers, even supplied some in the Iraq war. I recall about 10 years ago that he got a waiver to import ‘assault rifles’ from China from the Clinton administration....this while his wife is clamoring for more gun control for us.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., has abruptly walked away from her responsibilities with the Senate Military Construction Appropriations Subcommittee after a report linked her votes to the financial well-being of her husband's companies, which received billions of dollars worth of military construction contracts she approved.
Bears repeating.
I was wondering why this wasn't broken by a California paper as she is our Senator.
So I looked on the front page of the SF Chron's website, nada.
Went to the news page, zilch.
Searched the site for any recent articles, no dice.
Rush said this afternoon (when speaking about this topic) that Fienstein sat for an interview late in the morning today. I believe he said it was MSNBC, but I could have misheard. In any event, in the 42 minutes that she was interviewed today, the reporter/anchor didn't ask one question about the story in the Washington Times. The absolute failure of our media is unbelievable.
I sent an email to all the political reporters / editors at the SF Chronicle. I’ll share any reply I get.
My theory is that there is no room for scandal in the “Hope and Change” White House.
My other theory is that they are building a house of cards that will come down hard.
So many of Obama’s screwups - bowing to the prince, Iran, Chavez, the $100 mil fake cut, TARP scandals - are like cards set on edge. You can only build so high.
No problem. When I post crosslinks it is mostly to let people read more comments, if they are interested.
I didn’t mean to be dinging you.
I didn't think you were. But it would have been well deserved if you had. I hate it when people double post. It takes up space and expensive bandwidth.
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