MEN OF HONOR
Apparently, if you want to cheat on your wife or spurn the
mother of your unborn child, cover up and easily settle your
institution’s criminal efforts to help Americans avoid paying
their federal income taxes, or just avoid paying your own fair
share, the place to be is on President Barack Obama’s
economic-recovery advisory board. Because that’s where
Robert Wolf, chief executive of UBS Group
Americas, the U.S. arm of one of Switzerland’s largest banks, UBS
AG, sits, as do Charles E. Phillips, President
of Oracle Corporation, Peter Orszag, the
director of the Office of Management of and Budget, and Treasury
Secretary Tim Geithner. One imagines that’s
where they can get together to compare notes.
Roberts’ parent bank, UBS AG, agreed last year to pay the
U.S. government $780 million to settle accusations that it
assisted more than 52,000 American clients to defraud the
Internal Revenue Service by hiding their wealth overseas to avoid
paying income taxes. The White House claims that it determined
that Wolf’s wing of the company was not involved, but according
to a former Obama White House Counsel staffer, internal White
House research determined that just about every client involved
in this scam at one time or another was a client of UBS Group
America.
Phillips became an
instant celebrity last week, when his former mistress paid for
billboards highlighting his philandering ways to go up in San
Francisco, Atlanta and New York. Phillips, who reportedly has
reconciled with his wife, kept his mistress housed in an
$11 million estate near his corporate headquarters in the Bay
Area, and bought the estate through the use of shell corporations
in Nevada.
Orszag recently dumped his pregnant girlfriend to become
engaged with an ABC News reporter he recently met at a Washington
dinner. And finally Geithner famously was found to have not
properly paid his federal incomes taxes prior to his confirmation
to the Obama administration’s Cabinet.
According to the former White House Counsel aide, who was
transferred from that office after the resignation of White House
Counsel Gregory Craig, each of the above
executives answered “No” to Question 10S of the SF-86 supplement
form traditionally filled out by potential nominees for
presidential appointments.
The question:
10S. Is there anything in your personal life that could
be used by someone to coerce or blackmail you or is there
anything in your life that could cause an embarrassment to you
or the President if publicly known?
____ Yes ___ No
If so, please provide full details.
But to date, neither Roberts or Phillips have been formally
vetted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. “There may have
been preliminary work done, but those kinds of commissions aren’t
a high priority,” says the former counsel office aide. “Then
again, Van Jones wasn’t properly vetted,
either.”
BLOGGERS
PROPANDISTS
As Attorney General Eric Holder hunkers down to
avoid questions about his decision to try the Christmas Day
bomber in federal criminal court and to have the bomber’s Miranda
Rights protected, more information emerges on the Obama
Administration’s decision to house propagandist “new media
specialists” in most major Cabinet-level Offices of Public
Affairs. These bloggers, paid with taxpayer funds, routinely pass
along “Administration approved” talking points to bloggers and
online journalists, monitor conservative or “adversarial”
websites, and post comments in support of the Administration on a
number of those sites.
In the case of Justice, that “blogger,” as
reported by the Muffled Oar blog is Tracy
Russo, a former Democrat National Committee staffer,
with ties to Sen. John Edwards’ campaigns. But
similar jobs also exist at the Department of Treasury, the
Department of State and the Department of
Education.
According to a reporter, who has covered the
Department of Justice for a major financial wire service during
the current administration, a number of daily newspaper reporters
were aware of the work Russo was undertaking at DOJ, and yet
withheld reporting the situation, “because those reporters were
being given access and information from OPA that helped them with
their daily news filings.”
Meanwhile, according to a career employee in the Department
of Justice, both the House and Senate Judiciary Committees sent
formal letters of inquiry to the Department of Justice regarding
its “blogging” policies, but DOJ officials have yet to even
acknowledge the letters.
