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I see Ms. Mort deleted my comment, #3. I am guessing that Ms. Mort took offense at my comments about Wall Street not being interest in building a better America.
In my comment, I described how the telecommunications scandal of the '90s played out. I mentioned Laurence Grafstein, managing partner at Lazard Freres and Goldman Sachs. Goldman Sachs formed MCG Capital as a vulture investment group to pick up telecom assets on the cheap when the telecom market went bust.
Perhaps Ms. Mort took offense because her employer, George Soros, invested $900 million in MCG Capital.
I'm not that great at writing but I think I'll take another stab at the telecom scandal in my TPM Cafe blog.
Ms. Mort deleted another one of my comments in a different post about whose side she is on. Bit thin-skinned, if you ask me.Posted at November 3, 2005 2:19 PM in response to Week of Davis-Bacon, Wal-mart, etc.
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robertdfeinman, An appeal to patriotism and sacrifice won't work with the robber barons. They'd steal the gold out of your dead grandmother's teeth if they thought no one was looking.
If I could, I would explain to the average taxpayer how much of the federal budget goes to protect and advance the interests of the wealthy around the world. I would advocate for a defense tax based on the value of foreign assets held by an indivdual or entity.
Here's what I mean.
Everyone I know is angry about the obscene profits being made by the oil companies. Some of them know about the huge tax cuts the whores in Congress just gave the oil industry. What they don't know is that the US military is establishing operations around the world to protect the oil industry's foreign investments.
I was livid when I read that the Pentagon spent millions to train Georgian troops to protect the Baku-Tsibilisi-Ceyhan pipeline. The BTC pipeline is a private investment and is not even wholly-owned by Americans. The American taxpayer will never benefit from the BTC pipeline. No profits, no taxes.
The investors which include Saudis were advised by James A. Baker's law firm, Baker Botts. These are some of the wealthiest people in the world yet they obtained low-cost financing from, I think, the World Bank.
Institutions like the World Bank only&nb sp;have so many projects that they can invest in so for every BTC pipeline, a more worthy project is jettisoned.
Most Americans would think that the US only sent troops to Georgia after 9/11. They would be wrong. I had to visit the Itar-Tass website and see a photo of a US soldier stationed in Georgia to learn that the Pentagon had troops in Georgia long before 9/11.
Most Americans have no idea that 20-30% of our oil will come from West Africa in the near future. It is no coincidence that the Pentagon raises the spectre of Al Qaeda in West Africa to justify building bases there. If the American taxpayer ever found out that the Pentagon is building bases in West Africa to protect offshore drilling projects owned by the oil companies, they would be as enraged as I am.
Using American troops as corporate security guards is amoral and should be illegal. But our "representatives" in Congress have been bought and sold so many times over, they have lost any sense of right and wrong they may have once had. When the oil industry tells Congress to bend over, they all pick up the soap.
If we had an even halfway fair tax system, the oil companies would pay for the use of the United States of America's very valuable and highly trained military, the best in the world. Instead, the oil companies get another free ride.
But try and explain all this to today's very busy average American taxpayer.
Posted at October 28, 2005 2:44 PM in response to Tax Reform
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I become furious every time I read about Congress cutting aid to education. The educational assistance I received has repaid the government's small investment in me several times over in increased tax revenue. The president has an MBA from Harvard. Did he skip the class on ROI?
Hardly anyone realizes how many so-called conservative Republicans are sponging off the government and it's about time we called them out on it.
I'll go first.
Money is being laundered and bribes are being paid through publicly traded companies, not only on the OTC and pink sheet exchanges but the American as well. The SEC knows it but Congress has gutted SEC enforcement capability. Great way to inspire overseas confidence in the US stock market!
One such company is Intelli-Check. Bush pioneer, Charlie Gargano, is the vice chairman of the NY Port Authority and head of the state economic development agency, the Empire State Development Corp. Gargano invested taxpayer funds in Intelli-Check before and after it went public in 2000. NYers now own 6.8% of Intelli-Check which has lost $40 million on $18 million in revenue in three years.
When Intelli-Check went public, two of the insiders were Larry Darnall and Donald Baker who, I believe, recently retired from the TVA - Golden Pond in Kentucky. Bechtel Jacobs has a big environmental cleanup contract with the TVA which involves nuclear waste. I'm 99% sure that Baker and Darnall were given the opportunity to invest in Intelli-Check as a payoff in connection with the Bechtel contract.
The Intelli-Check IPO was suspect for a lot of other reasons. Another insider, Joseph Perri has ties to organized crime dating back to at least the late '70s. Perri made more than $2 million selling Intellli-Check stock under his own name and under the name of one of his businesses, Jo-Ern Realty.
Norman Lebowitz is the owner of Mailmar and Mailco, mass mailing firms in New Jersey. I'm almost certain that this is the same Norman Lebowitz who, as an inside trader, made $1.5 million selling Intelli-Check stock. Who do you know would have benefitted from $1.5 million in free mailing in 2000?
Visit the Bechtel Jacobs website and note the list of subcontractors. For fun, try and pick out which ones are on the government dole. Here's a few hints - how many engineering and other consultants do you think Bechtel really needs? Which consultants do not give their names on their websites? Which subcontractors have a retired member of the military onboard?
I don't know about anyone else but I'm tired of supporting these leeches on society.
Next up - the biometrics industry.
Posted at October 28, 2005 9:18 AM in response to Brain Power Outage
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The IRS needs to be fixed before any tax reform takes place.
Our tax collection system is broken and is blatantly unfair to the honest citizens of this country.
Charlie Rossotti, the last IRS commissioner, talked about the problems in the New York Times on his way out the door. In his book, he likened the IRS to a police department that hands out parking tickets while organized crime is rampant.
In a November 2002 NYT story, Rossotti said that the IRS audit staff shrunk almost 30% since 1995. The IRS had pursued only 17,000 out of an identified 82,000 taxpayers using offshore accounts to evade income taxes.
Mark Everson, the current commissioner, acknowledged that the IRS has little money and has weak legal tools. The enforcement IRS budget is only $550 million. Everson said that Congress repeatedly refuses to fund more investigations.
In a March 2005 story, the NYT reported that Walter Anderson, the biggest known tax cheat in US history, only got caught because someone turned him in. Even then, the IRS had reason to believe that Mr. Anderson had more income than the $450 million it picked up.
I'm a CPA and, as an experiment, I didn't file couple of returns to see what would happen. I don't owe money, just the reverse. But the IRS doesn't know it. Five years later, nothing has happened. I get the occasional notice and that's it.
I know if the IRS ever presses me, I can negotiate a settlement. Create your own tax rate!
If I ran the IRS, I'd focus on strengthening the reward program and I'd make it available overseas. Most people don't know that if you turn in a tax cheat, you are entitled to 10% of a subsequent assessment.
The FBI has spent a lot of time and money investigating money laundering in the Carribbean. If the FBI could guarantee that information would be processed quickly and confidentially by the IRS, people in the Carribbean would be turning in tax cheats like crazy. The FBI could go to the beach and drink pina coladas.
As a symbolic gesture, I turned in a phony real estate deal to the IRS because Charles A. Gargano, vice chairman of the NY Port Authority and president of the Empire State Development Corp., was a participant. I did not try to claim a reward but I should have.
I was angry because Gargano, while on the public payroll, was a director of phony, penny stock company when, in April 2001, it bought an Italian company that made bombproof doors.
The company, Eagle Building Technologies, then tried to swindle the federal government out of $50 million after 9/11 by falsely claiming to have cargo scanning equipment, mail sterilization equipment and money laundering software.
Why should a public servant and a very rich man like Charlie Gargano cheat on his taxes while I pay mine?
If Congress won't fix the IRS, I have other ideas to level the playing field for the average taxpayer.
I'd start a grass roots organization to teach people how to form limited liability corporations (llcs) and take advantage of tax breaks offered to businesses.
I'd show people how to take aggressive tax positions and explain how little risk was involved.
I'd lobby Congress to repeal mandatory withholding laws so the average taxpayer could manipulate his income to his own advantage. We'd all find out pretty quick, too, how slow the IRS is to collect overdue taxes.
Honest taxpayers are being swindled out of billions of dollars in lost tax revenue. Fix the system if you want real tax reform.
Posted at October 28, 2005 8:01 AM in response to Tax Reform
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Clarification - That's half a trillion for the war on Iraq and half a trillion on homeland security. The biggest swindle in world history.
Posted at October 20, 2005 12:50 AM in response to Elections Without Monitors
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"...if people had appreciated these problems they would have been less likely to support the war."
Just about everyone I know that supported the war did so because the Bush administration scared the hell out of them. I never heard anyone talk about democracy in Iraq. No one I know cares now either. They just want to get the hell out of there.
I feel terrible that the US wrecked a country and will leave it more of a mess than before we invaded it but I didn't support the war.
Everybody from GE to Blackwater has a financial interest in continuing this war until the taxpayers pull the plug. We entered this war because the Republicans needed a reason to spend half a trillion dollars on themselves.
And you know what? I'm coming out of the closet. The investor class planned and executed 9/11. I'm sick to death of hearing about Osama bin Laden and so is everyone else I know. For pete's sakes, if the Long Island Railroad engineeers can talk openly about Americans being behind 9/11, so can I.
Duh - $1 trillion in profit for the investor class vs a mythical vision of Muslim world domination. I'm a damned good auditor and the investor class takes it.
Rattle on all you want. I'm not going to waste my time listening.
Posted at October 20, 2005 12:37 AM in response to Elections Without Monitors
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LOL- This is the second time tonight that I hear someone talking about politics in a tv show. My friend was telling me something about the Geena Davis show a little earlier.
I don't watch much tv these days but for my money, Car 54, Where Are You made some great political statements. Which I didn't appreciate the first time around. The one on urban renewal is priceless. The one on the secret service and the president at the UN is, uh, ....
Now I'm curious about West Wing. I stopped watching awhile ago fro some reason I don't remember.Posted at October 16, 2005 8:26 PM in response to Off Message
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I only have so much time but I took a look at the Teamsters website. I noticed that Hoffa only resigned from the Bush Advisory Committee on Trade at the end of June 2004.
There is exactly one news brief about the presidential election dated November 3, 2004.
Just because Hoffa got religion in July 2004 and the teamsters gave financial support to Kerry does not mean that Hoffa isn't in bed with the Bush administration. The big money in the Republican Party is not going through campaign funds.
The split in labor benefits the Republicans right off the bat if the services and teamster unions are going to concentrate on increasing membership and give less support to political causes.
No one can convince me that Hoffa got honest over the last decade. The fact that James Baker offered to get the Feds off his back tells me otherwise.
If I were a teamster, I'd want to see the all of the Teamsters pension plan financials and list of Hoffa's personal business interests. The plans have a shortfall and Hoffa's been battling to retain control of them.
There is a small item on the teamster website dated October 26, 2004 about Dennis Troha, a developer, who owes $9m to the teamsters' Central States Pension Fund. Troha, according to article, is known for unionbusting and the teamsters have battled him for a decade.
Troha wants to develop a casino in Kenosha County, Wisconsin. The teamsters support the casino project, just not Troha. I read a couple of short articles and learned that the casino would be in the third most lucrative gambling market in the US, given its proximity to Chicage.
The teamsters are calling on Governor Doyle for an investigation of Troha's involvement in another casino development.
Hmm..Troha, a unionbuster, ran up a $9m bill with the teamsters. Troha was associated with another casino development that the teamsters have reason to think was shady. And the teamsters have an interest in gambling because...? And the teamsters have tried to collect the $9m from Troha in the past how?
I'm sure everyone in this forum knows about Jack Abramoff and Adam Kidan's involvement in the Sun Cruz gambling scandal. IMO, the DeLay and Frist stories have been created to divert attention from the Sun Cruz and Indian casino stories. What everyone should be focused on is where Abramoff spent the $80m from the Indians and where the Sun Cruz cash went. I'm sure that the controller for Gus Boulis, Joan Wagner, I think is her name, knows a lot about the Sun Cruz cash.
The Foxwoods Casino in CT has an incredible financial arrangement with a Malaysian gambling family. The Malaysians get something like 9% of Foxwoods profits until 2015. The Klewin Company in CT headed by Michael D'Amato built Foxwoods and the Niagara Falls NY casinos. The construction of the Niagara Falls casino was financed by the same Malaysian gambling family.
Indian gambling is unregulated.
And on and on.
Re Delphi - If I were a union member, I'd want to see the Delphi financials for the last few years. I'd look for some indication that the company was deliberately run into the ground by management. For example, the gross profit percentage decreased, a marked change in cash flow, an increase in vendor prices, a buildup of inventory, an increase in unnecessary manpower. Stuff like that.
I'd snoop around in the personal financial affairs of Delphi management and union management, if I could. Stock investments, purchases of property etc.
GM has a big stake in the outcome of the Delphi bankruptcy.
As far as the 45m uninsured Americans go, push expanded Medicaid coverage for them. Hoffa and big business are in on this universal health care scheme and that bodes well for no one who works for a living.
Don't get me wrong, I'm on the side of the union members.
And what has Doug McCarron been up to?
Posted at October 16, 2005 6:13 PM in response to More on Labor's Demise and Our Sinking Standard of Living
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Ms. Mort, I just read your bio and see where your money is coming from. Take a hike. The last thing that that labor in this country needs is another shill bribed by corrupt union management.
Posted at October 15, 2005 1:05 PM in response to More on Labor's Demise and Our Sinking Standard of Living
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Are you in fairyland or what? Where the hell do you think all of this money to fund universal health care is coming from? Why should I care about unions when they have done zip all these years as the Walmarts of the world exploited cheap totalitarian government labor to fill Soviet-style box stores with junk?
Union management is in bed with the Republicans which can be taken as a given since the lowlife scum in the Bush administration suspendeded Davis-Bacon without so much as a "boo" from organized labor. We are talking a lousy $9 bucks an hour in a construction boom.
I knew for sure the teamsters were screwed when I read, in January 2001, about James Baker, the world's biggest bully and most crooked lawyer, courting Jimmy Hoffa. Google Jimmy Hoffa - the Bush administration has been knocking itself out for him. The teamsters are one of the last big unions with any real power and Hoffa is being paid to take them down.
You want to know what the White House really thinks about the teamsters? Right before the war on Iraq started, Gov. Pataki held a pro-war rally at the WTC construction site at noon. Bob Dole was the scheduled speaker and the rally was supposed to be televised. This despite the fact that only 34% of NYers supported the war
If you were watching CNN at about 10:30 am on the morning of the rally, CNN flashed a preview of what was happening at the WTC site. I saw a screen filled with men wearing teamster jackets. That was the last anyone saw of the rally on tv that day. Me, I didn't have problem if an honest teamster supported the war. Any number of misguided but honest liberals did, too.
I read the other day that the prevailing wage in NY is something like $60 an hour and half of it goes to medical and pension benefits. As a member of management, I've had all of two experiences with unions and they involved medical and pension funds.
The first was years ago with the plastics and novelty union on Long Island. This union at best can be described as sleazy. Workers had to wait a year before getting medical benefits. I forget the details but a member of the union management decided to start his own union and took a $250k overpayment refund due from the medical plan with him. Put it this way, union officials always pulled up in a black Lincoln town car to negotiate with my boss and 25 cents an hour was always the standard raise.
The second experience was with the teamsters. The local in Long Island City was known as the most corrupt local in the teamsters organization. Under the nose of the feds, the local was conducting an off-the-books pension plan.
I haven't read anything lately but I remember that Doug McCarron, president of the carpenters union, was flying around on Air Force One with President Bush a few years ago.
I know someone who is a member of the carpenters union in NYC and he's a fool. He knows the construction companies and the union are corrupt but won't connect the corruption to the safety of his pension fund. For years, this guy just considered it business as usual when Al D'Amato put the arm on companies like Nastasi & White on a regular basis and Senator Al was no friend of an honest working man.
Look at who contributes to Rep. Pete King. Unions. You think that King is pro-labor?
This week's story about Refco, the futures and commodities trading company going under should be a wakeup call to anyone with a pension. Read the pension plan financials and know where the money is being invested. That goes double for unions.
Thanks but no thanks. Unless union members and everyone else in this country who work for a living unite to clean out corruption in government, I'm not interested in universal healthcare. The way things are today, the system will end up as corrupt as every other facet of government.
Corporations pay fewer and fewer taxes every year. Let them at least keep picking up the tab for medical benefits. As costs continue to skyrocket for no damned good reason, there is some incentive from the business community for reform.
Here in NY, the NYT told everyone that at least 10% of medicaid expense is being ripped off of NY taxpayers every year. I live in NY and I am happy that the state provides somewhat decent healthcare for the poor but Elliot Spitzer should have been looking to get back some of that $4 billion stolen annually. The money he got going after Wall Street was chump change. Then again, that caped crusader, Rudy Giuliani got a whopping big deal nothing $100 million from Ivan Boesky when he should got have gotten $800m.
What this country needs is some old-fashioned muckraking and a few good auditors.
Posted at October 15, 2005 12:55 PM in response to More on Labor's Demise and Our Sinking Standard of Living
