Search Archives:

Custom Search
Showing posts with label Federal Bureau of Investigation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Federal Bureau of Investigation. Show all posts

Monday, October 03, 2011

Koch Crimes and Tea Party Chumps

Greenpeace blimp protests Koch-funded rally
We got a preview of how damaging an upcoming Bloomberg Markets magazine story on the Koch brothers would be last week. Salon's Justin Elliott reported that "an anonymous person or persons in the orbit of the billionaire conservative donors Charles and David Koch try to discredit a forthcoming story in Bloomberg Markets magazine."

"Based on the prebuttal items appearing this week in the Washington Examiner, the Daily Caller, and U.S. News and World Report," he continued, "the Bloomberg story focuses on alleged malfeasance and/or fraud and/or bad behavior by the conglomerate Koch Industries."

That's right, prebuttals. They want to discredit the story before it ever even hits the newsstands. But this weekend, Bloomberg put up what Politico calls an "early glance" of the article up on their website and what's there is explosive. And detailed.

There's plenty there; illicit business dealings with Iran, bribery in Africa, India, and the Middle East, firing the company's internal investigators for not turning blind eyes to obvious wrongdoing ("They didn't know what to do with me," says one. "They were really kind of baffled that I had ethics"), and general corporate culture of lawlessness and corruption. If you want an idea of what the perfect corporate climate would be for the Koch brothers and the Tea Party, look no further. Just imagine nearly everything they're already doing, only made legal.

Friday, September 16, 2011

Hot Water for Scott Walker

FBI sealAn unpopular governor, facing a near-certain recall election in the spring, gets caught up in an ongoing political corruption scandal. How do you think that scenario might turn out?

We may get a chance to find out, as Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker stands at the edge of an FBI probe. What the feds are investigating is unclear at this point, but it's almost certainly more serious than the original complaint.

But I'm getting ahead of myself here. Last year, a John Doe investigation began in Milwaukee County involving a staffer to then-Milwaukee County executive Walker. The staffer, Darlene Wink, was accused of using county resources to leave anonymous pro-Walker comments on political websites. Illegal, yes -- but not the biggest deal ever. Wink resigned. But the feds seized Wink's computer as evidence to build the case.

And it was at that point that the investigation seems to have widened.