Who's next?

Holder - Corzine connection explains lack of prosecution

Wondering why former Goldman Sachs honcho, former New Jersey governor, former frontrunner for Obama's secretary of treasury, former Obama fundraiser, and disgraced MF Global financial scam artist Jon Corzine seems to have evaded the long arm of the law?

Those wondering why the Department of Justice has refused to go after Jon Corzine for the vaporization of $1.6 billion in MF Global client funds need look no further than the documents uncovered by the Government Accountability Institute that reveal that the now-defunct MF Global was a client of Attorney General Eric Holder and Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer’s former law firm, Covington & Burling.

Also providing cover for Corzine may be former FBI director Louis Freeh, recently of the Penn State scandal report.

...the trustee overseeing MF Global’s bankruptcy is former FBI Director Louis Freeh. During Mr. Holder’s 2009 Senate confirmation hearing, Mr. Freeh appeared as a witness testifying on Mr. Holder’s behalf. While Mr. Freeh stated that the two men shared no “social relationship,” the former FBI director praised the legal work Mr. Holder did for him when Mr. Freeh, then the general counsel for MBNA Bank in Wilmington, Del., retained Mr. Holder to represent MBNA Bank. “As general counsel, I could have engaged any lawyer in America to represent our bank,” Mr. Freeh said. “I chose Eric.”

Are your friends and neighbors discussing the Corzine/Obama/Holder/Freeh cabal?  Are they even aware of the MF Global scandal?  Why not?  Many of Corzine's victimized investors are farmers, just like ours here in the Finger Lakes.  And farmer or not, all of us will pass on Obama's debt to our future generations.

Ohio solar heist was an inside job

Obama labor secretary Hilda Solis tours W&K, 2011

Back in April, we told you about another solar energy crime family, the W&K gang in sunny Ohio.  In addition to ripping off Italian investors, the green gonifs also got away with fifteen million dollars taken from Ohio taxpayers.  We feel bad for the Italians, who should have done due diligence before they parted with all those lira.  But why would the government of Ohio, a state whose economy was already swirling down the rust belt commode, allow its taxpayers to be hornswaggled?  Hadn't they heard about Solyndra?

Breitbart reports that the Toledo Blade has found the answer:  Ohio's then governor, Democrat Ted Strickland, was on the take.

So, as governor of Ohio, Ted Strickland saw that WK Solar was in trouble after the state loaned them $5 million. Why on earth would he make the decision to flush another $10 million of Ohians money down the toilet?

In 2010, WK Solar executives — including CEO Michael Cicak and president James Appold — donated almost $25,000 to Gov. Ted Strickland’s re-election campaign. Cicak also donated to Lt. Gov. Lee Fisher’s US Senate campaign. Fisher served as director of the Department of Development under Governor Strickland.
Later that year, in July of 2010, the Department of Development lent WK Solar an additional $10 million in taxpayer dollars. Strickland’s administration also approved multiple deadline extensions for required financial reports, as well as deferrals for required loan repayments. [emphasis added]

What a deal for "WK Solar executives" - a measly $25K to "green jobs" scammer Strickland got them a cool $15 million, coerced from Ohio families. 

We don't know if ex-governor Strickland is in the running to replace Steve "Ten bucks a gallon" Chu as Obama's energy secretary, but when it comes to "Strickland" and "energy," we'll stick with Strickland Propane.

US citizens: this can happen to you

Convicted Bomber Brett Kimberlin, Neal Rauhauser, Ron Brynaert, and Their Campaign of Political Terrorism

Juco player fouls out

Central Maine Community College Now Regrets Asking Student Body For Honest Teacher Evaluations

Read the Rumford Meteor.

Pitts rips Obama on drug war

The Finger Lakes' own Five Points prison

Overlooked in all the bruhaha generated by our one term president's recent trip to sunny Cartegena was Obama's renewed support of the government's endless war on drugs.  Leonard Pitts knocks it out of the park.

The president’s reasoning is about as sturdy as a cardboard box in a monsoon. Even he must know — who can still deny? — that the drug war has failed. When it comes to quantifying that failure, several numbers are stark and edifying:

Forty-one. That’s how many years the “War” has raged.

Forty million-plus. That’s how many Americans have been arrested.

One trillion-plus. That’s the cost.

Two thousand, eight hundred. That’s the percentage by which drug use has risen.

One-point-three. That’s the percentage of Americans who were drug addicted in 1914.

One-point-three. That’s the percentage of Americans who are drug addicted now.

One could easily conclude that the whole "war on some drugs" is nothing more than a government power-and-money grab.  We can't remember ever agreeing with Leonard Pitts on anything else, so read the whole thing.

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/04/17/2754331/if-not-drug-legalization-what.html#storylink=cpy

Solar energy thieves strike again

"Solar energy" thieves are getting bolder.  In Ohio, a gang of green jobs gonifs began dipping into the till the next day after gullible Italian investors ponied up five million bucks.

The executives of Willard & Kelsey Solar Group, a struggling solar-panel manufacturer, began lending themselves company funds the same day the firm received $5 million from a group of Italian investors, internal financial records show.

Michael Cicak, Willard & Kelsey's chairman of the board and chief executive officer, received a $40,000 loan that day. Mossie Murphy, chief financial officer at the time, received a $30,000 loan.

The loans to five company executives totaled more than $500,000 from August to October, 2008, records show. In addition, the top five executives also received payments of almost $1 million from November, 2008, through March, 2009.

In addition to the voluntary investment from sunny Italy, Willard & Kelsey also blew through over ten million Ohio taxpayer dollars.  Gullible, or complicit, Ohio government officials expected W&K to create thousands of jobs.  As of this writing, almost all of W&K's employees have been laid off.

Read all the details in the Toledo Blade's comprehensive report.  At what point to do we realize that the only difference between W&K, Solyndra, or you local BMW-driving green energy grant recipient and Bonnie and Clyde is that Bonnie and Clyde paid for their crimes the old fashioned way.

Easier than robbing banks

Bonnie and Clyde, who died in a hail of bullets, would be jealous:

Green Firms Get Fed Cash, Give Execs Bonuses, Fail

Local heroin ring linked to higher education industry

Heroin hotbed

The Finger Lakes' heroin crisis was apparently caused by the recent influx of college students:

A Cornell student was arrested along the 500 block of Stewart Avenue Dec. 19 for criminal possession of a “substantial quantity” of heroin, the Ithaca Police Department said.

Keri Blakinger ’11 was charged with criminal possession of a controlled substance in the second degree, a class A-II felony.

The report also makes clear that the reason Blackinger came to the Finger Lakes was to particpate in the area's higher education boom.

Blakinger is a former (Cornell Daily) Sun staff writer. She also previously served as editor of Red Letter Daze and features editor.

Further application of the same logic is available here.

GM profitable? So was Whitey Bulger

Whitey and Catherine hiding out from the feds

Now that crack federal gumshoes have finally located Whitey Bulger in his California condo, and just in time for the presidential election, Americans who get their news from the mainstream media have been inundated with the "General Motors Turns a Profit" story: all praise to Barack Obama for rescuing Detroit. Let's check in with Jerry Hirsch at one of the house organs of the Democrat party, the Los Angeles Times.

Three years after nearly collapsing into liquidation, a resurgent General Motors Co. has posted its best annual profit, surpassing what it earned during its heyday in the mid-1990s.

In earning $7.6 billion last year, the automaker demonstrated how it has capitalized on its 2009 bankruptcy reorganization and federal bailout to shed brands, slash debt, rewrite union contracts and close surplus factories.

The record annual earnings represented "a remarkable turnaround from what appeared to be a hopeless situation," said Jesse Toprak, an analyst with automotive information company TrueCar.com.

But there's a problem with  Comrade Hirsch's rosy analysis.  In a comment posted on that article, Teresa Trujillo fills in the missing pieces.

The only reason Chrysler and GM are profitable today is because the government allowed them the discharge huge amounts of debt. Vendors, shareholders--including many retirement acount vehicles like mutual funds--were forced to take HUGE losses on their GM stock holdings when the previous version of GM, was for all intent and purpose, dismantled.

The American taxpayer has assumed a very large burden for the GM "reorganization." Anyone can see what the individual federal deficit burden is by visiting usdebtclock.org 

The U.S. federal debt is now $15.4 trillion dollars, and the debt per citizen is nearly $50,000. Rather than bailing out the "too big to fail" organizations, the government could have written a check for $10,000 to every social security number that appeared on a 2007 tax return. The federal bailouts that were authorized by congress only bailed out the tycoons and oligarchy--they could have chosen to bail out families. 

Think how much faster the economy would have recovered, how many homes would have been saved, how many jobs would have been created.  I'm still waiting to see those "shovel ready" jobs get rolling.

The Times has neglected to tell the story of how a few people are benefiting on the backs of all Americans in this story. This story is a testament to the power of the autoworkers' union.

The celebrated "recovery" of GM is really part of the largest organized crime heist in American history.  You, dear reader, your children and your grandchildren are the victims.

Media ignoring US assassination?

Bagherzadeh protests Iranian theocracy, 2010

We're hearing a lot about Mitt's (100% legal) income tax rate today.  Why aren't we hearing about this?

Police are looking into whether a young Iranian molecular scientist shot dead in her car on Sunday night as she drove home to her upscale neighbourhood  was followed by her killer.

Just after midnight, Gelareh Bagherzadeh, a 30-year-old genetics student who lobbied on behalf of Iranian women's civil rights, was struck by a single bullet that entered the passenger door window as she talked on the phone with her ex-boyfriend.

The victim was a well known activist for Iranian civil rights.  It's hard to believe this cold blooded killing on US soil wasn't in retaliation for the recent rash of exploding Iranian nuclear bomb scientists.

Solyndra: Campaign Ad

From AFP.

h/t LC

Update:  Apparently Solyndra, for which Finger Lakes taxpayers are on the hook for half a billion bucks, is now completely worthless.

Upstate mayors in holiday spirit

 From Dresden:

The mayor of the Seneca Lake Village of Dresden has been arrested for drunk driving, according to the Yates County Sheriff’s Department.

Joe Gibson, 34, was stopped on Route 54 east of Penn Yan Friday, Dec. 23, by Yates County Sheriff Deputies for a routine traffic violation.

 Also, from Earlville:

The mayor of Earlville, who took over last year after the previous mayor was arrested on grand larceny charges, was arrested Christmas Eve on charges of driving while intoxicated.

Corzine? Who's Corzine?

Jet setters Obama, Corzine

Listening to the news yesterday, Finger Lakes taxpayers couldn't avoid hearing about thieving Wall Street tycoon Jon Corzine and his "disappearing" 1.2 billion bucks.  Why, this scheming charlatan personifies the "richest 1% millionaire billionaires" that Obama and his henchmen have been vilifying all year.

We're all suitably outraged, especially after hearing nonstop media coverage all day and evening.  One little detail of the story, however, seems to have been overlooked by the hard working newshounds of the mainstream press.  We listened to the radio all day and did not hear a single word about the fact that Criminal Corzine is a registered Democrat, much less the leading financial adviser to Obama and his administration.  In fact, one must dive 8 paragraphs deep into in to the CBS News story linked above to learn of the New Jersey gangster's political affiliation.

Those ink stained wretches must have a short term memory problem, because only a few weeks ago the very same former governor and senator was in line to be Obama's next secretary of the treasury!

Media tycoons may refresh their memories here and here.

If you did it, you'd go to jail

Gillibrand and Clinton, new faces of Tammany Hall?

One of Nine is reading Peter Schweizer's new book, Throw Them All Out, and reminds us that...

"Lyndon Johnson was born into absolute poverty, spent a lifetime in public service and died a multimlllionaire."

Schweizer's book is causing our rulers to run around like cockroaches caught in a flashlight's beam.  Read the entire post to learn how our junior senator, Kirsten Gillibrand, wants you to think she's fighting congressional corruption, while offering a bill that ensures the well-connected swells of our ruling class, like Kirsten, will continue to rake in the swag at your expense.

For more on Harry Reid's "hottest senator," check out our previous coverage:

Who is Kirsten Gillibrand?

On the wrong track and headed for you 

Amity Shlaes for US Senate 

New York's senators: on the job 

Amity Shlaes: Repeating 1937?

Some call him Maurice...

Hinchey with disbarred lawyer

..some call him the pompatus of corruption.

One of Nine rounds up the latest on Ithaca hearthrob/corrupt Democrat congesspersyn Maurice Hinchey's self dealing with your money. 

We recently alluded to Peter Schweizer's new book, Throw Them All Out, in connection with congressional insider stock trading.  Well, it turns out that's not the only way MC's profit from their specialized knowledge.

It turns out the Sultan of Gerrymander has been handing out taxpayer money to himself - read the whole thing.  Will Maurice follow Barney Frank onto the rolls of the "comfortably retired at taxpayer expense when they should be in prison?"

Light bulb rebels

Colonists throw CFLs overboard, 1773

Professor Reynolds quotes Claudia Rosett:

Please don’t think this is easy for me. I’m one of those crazed Americans who can’t walk into Home Depot, Target or my local grocery store right now without wanting to grab one of those king-sized shopping carts and stuff it to the gunwales with 100-watt incandescent lightbulbs.

Maybe it’s the sheer thrill of buying bulbs that in just over a month, as of Jan. 1, 2012, will be banned for sale in America. What fun, in this incandescent twilight, to acquire legally what the federal government will soon treat as contraband, should it appear in any American marketplace. Or maybe it’s that gut sense that with the dollar teetering toward an abyss of unfathomable and inflationary government spending, those beloved old 100 watt bulbs will at least provide a decent store of value, even if all I do is use them to read by for the rest of my life — meticulously taking care never to violate federal law by offering even a single bulb for sale to some fellow citizen willing to pay for it.

Or, just possibly, this urge to stockpile incandescents is the product of simmering outrage. For decades, I have written about America as the world’s beacon of freedom, which it has been. Yet here we are, wards of the nanny state, with politicians dictating that even that prime symbol of American ingenuity, Thomas Edison’s incandescent light bulb, shall be regulated into oblivion. All this has been ably exposed as an act of crony capitalism, designed to enrich manufacturers who prefer to sell pricier light bulbs that a lot of Americans, if free to choose, prefer not to buy.

Bold added.  The insane light bulb ban was signed into law by George W. Bush.  Read Claudia's entire piece.  

Do your neighbors have any idea about this?  Are you willing to spread the word?

Chu must resign immediately

Chu breaking ground at Solyndra

Obama's "energy" secretary, Steven "I want Finger Lakes families to pay 10 dollars a gallon for gasoline" Chu, is on the hot seat in front of Congress today.  

Now that the Solyndra bankruptcy has become a full-blown scandal for the current administration, we call on Chu to resign his $200K/year government job immediately. 

We have plenty of room room for Chu at the Finger Lakes' own Five Points.

Anniversary notice: we've now been covering Obama's Solyndra Solargate scandal for over one year!

Police search Obamaville for White House shooter

Suspect Oscar Ramiro Ortega

One might think this would be the lead story on the national news, not the bad weather somewhere.

Federal law enforcement authorities on Tuesday intensified the manhunt for a 21-year-0ld Idaho man who is suspected of shooting with a semi-automatic rifle at the White House last Friday night, as the Secret Service reported finding that at least one bullet had indeed struck the presidential residence...

Late on Friday, the police searched the Occupy DC protest camp, on McPherson Square just blocks from the White House, after reports that Mr. Ortega might have spent time there. Protesters there said on Monday that the police had been through their encampment several times since then, showing his picture around.

Have you heard that it happened again yesterday?

The Secret Service is looking into whether a bullet fired into a window at the White House is connected to a shooting nearby last Friday.

The bullet was stopped by a bullet-proof window and did not enter the White House, the Secret Service said Wednesday. Authorities also found another round in the exterior of the White House. The bullets were found Tuesday, the Secret Service said.

Update:  We have now received word that the suspect has been arrested in the college town of Indiana, PA.  

"Obamaville" background here.  Readers are welcome to help us understand why the "mainstream" media has been so hush-hush about an armed attack on the White House.  Use the comment button below.

Solyndra perps heist cash

Finger Lakes taxpayers were forced to contibute to the half billion dollars that Obama gave to the Solyndra conspirators.  Andrews Stiles summarizes how the solar panel gonifs split the loot.

• Karen Alter, senior vice president of marketing, received two $55,000 bonuses on April 15 and July 8 of this year, on top of her $250,000 annual salary.
• Ben Bierman, executive vice president of operations and engineering, received $120,000 in bonuses this year on top of his $276,000 salary.
• Paula Camporaso, vice president of information technology — $80,000 in bonuses on top of her $107,000 salary.
• Dave Sanat, vice president of supply chain — $80,000 in bonuses on top of his $111,000 salary.
• Bill Stover, the company’s CFO who took the fifth before Congress at a September hearing, was awarded at least $120,000 in bonuses on top of his $367,000 salary.

The document also reveals that Chris Gronet, one of Solyndra’s founders, was “transitioned to the role of adviser and consultant” from his position as CEO on July 1, 2011, and negotiated a severance package worth more than $450,000.

Until your neighbors understand that Karen Alters' two $55,000 "bonuses" and Chris Gronet's $450,000 "severance package" were stolen from American families, this crime wave will continue indefinitely.