When you are in a high level business, it is also your responsibility to make sure that none of the money that goes into the business, or through the business is illegal.
Keeping Mafia or Drug Cartel money out can be difficult – but the Chumph’s desperation because he was near bankrupcy made him look the other way.
As I said in an earlier piece, you can’t be involved in a major real estate deal in that part of the world and not wind up with some shady connections….
And the Trump is dirtier than most.
In his signature book, The Art of the Deal, Donald Trump boasted that when he wanted to build a casino in Atlantic City, he persuaded the state attorney general to limit the investigation of his background to six months. Most potential owners were scrutinized for more than a year. Trump argued that he was “clean as a whistle”—young enough that he hadn’t had time to get into any sort of trouble. He got the sped-up background check, and eventually got the casino license.
But Trump was not clean as a whistle. Beginning three years earlier, he’d hired mobbed-up firms to erect Trump Tower and his Trump Plaza apartment building in Manhattan, including buying ostensibly overpriced concrete from a company controlled by mafia chieftains Anthony “Fat Tony” Salerno and Paul Castellano. That story eventually came out in a federal investigation, which also concluded that in a construction industry saturated with mob influence, the Trump Plaza apartment building most likely benefited from connections to racketeering. Trump also failed to disclose that he was under investigation by a grand jury directed by the U.S. attorney in Brooklyn, who wanted to learn how Trump obtained an option to buy the Penn Central railroad yards on the West Side of Manhattan.
Why did Trump get his casino license anyway? Why didn’t investigators look any harder? And how deep did his connections to criminals really go?
These questions ate at me as I wrote about Atlantic City for The Philadelphia Inquirer, and then went more deeply into the issues in a book, Temples of Chance: How America Inc. Bought Out Murder Inc. to Win Control of the Casino Business. In all, I’ve covered Donald Trump off and on for 27 years, and in that time I’ve encountered multiple threads linking Trump to organized crime. Some of Trump’s unsavory connections have been followed by investigators and substantiated in court; some haven’t. And some of those links have continued until recent years, though when confronted with evidence of such associations, Trump has often claimed a faulty memory. In an April 27 phone call to respond to my questions for this story, Trump told me he did not recall many of the events recounted in this article and they “were a long time ago.” He also said that I had “sometimes been fair, sometimes not” in writing about him, adding “if I don’t like what you write, I’ll sue you.”
I’m not the only one who has picked up signals over the years. Wayne Barrett, author of a 1992 investigative biography of Trump’s real-estate dealings, has tied Trump to mob and mob-connected men.
No other candidate for the White House this year has anything close to Trump’s record of repeated social and business dealings with mobsters, swindlers, and other crooks. Professor Douglas Brinkley, a presidential historian, said the closest historical example would be President Warren G. Harding and Teapot Dome, a bribery and bid-rigging scandal in which the interior secretary went to prison. But even that has a key difference: Harding’s associates were corrupt but otherwise legitimate businessmen, not mobsters and drug dealers.
This is part of the Donald Trump story that few know. As Barrett wrote in his book, Trump didn’t just do business with mobbed-up concrete companies: he also probably met personally with Salerno at the townhouse of notorious New York fixer Roy Cohn, in a meeting recounted by a Cohn staffer who told Barrett she was present. This came at a time when other developers in New York were pleading with the FBI to free them of mob control of the concrete business.
From the public record and published accounts like that one, it’s possible to assemble a clear picture of what we do know. The picture shows that Trump’s career has benefited from a decades-long and largely successful effort to limit and deflect law enforcement investigations into his dealings with top mobsters, organized crime associates, labor fixers, corrupt union leaders, con artists and even a one-time drug trafficker whom Trump retained as the head of his personal helicopter service…Read the Rest of This Damning Information Here…
Anyone familiar with the DC Government, and who drives into the city is likely familiar with their Parking Gestapo, who write tickets and tow away cars to the tune of millions of dollars a month.
A new line of theft has recently opened up for the DC Government Mafia, the theft of homes from the poor and elderly stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars of equity, often for tax bills as little as $200. Often the people who are ultimately robbed of their property are sick and old, and in a number of cases the property owners have been in the hospital dying while most of their paltry savings in the value of their homes is ripped off.
And here you thought the only criminals in the city were Gangbangers and carjackers. They should have it so good.
Unscrupulous law firms facilitate the theft, as does a dirty courts system – through charging sky high rates, rapidly pushing up the bills owed by the property owners beyond reach.This is a criminal enterprise, no different than the Tammany Hall of yore, which dispossessed Irish immigrants to make way for developers in the notorious 5 Points section of New York City.
The Federal Government is complicit. To be honest, if they really gave a damn about anything except the press for catching a city Mayor smoking crack with his mistress – they would have put a stop to this.
On an overcast morning earlier this year, Bennie Coleman walked past his old house on the way to the corner store. But he said he could not look at it — the memories were too painful. Bennie, who suffers from dementia, had his $200,000 property foreclosed for a $134.00 tax lien, and the company which foreclosed kept the difference under DC Law.
On the day Bennie Coleman lost his house, the day armed U.S. marshals came to his door and ordered him off the property, he slumped in a folding chair across the street and watched the vestiges of his 76 years hauled to the curb.
Movers carted out his easy chair, his clothes, his television. Next came the things that were closest to his heart: his Marine Corps medals and photographs of his dead wife, Martha. The duplex in Northeast Washington that Coleman bought with cash two decades earlier was emptied and shuttered. By sundown, he had nowhere to go.
All because he didn’t pay a $134 property tax bill.
The retired Marine sergeant lost his house on that summer day two years ago through a tax lien sale — an obscure program run by D.C. government that enlists private investors to help the city recover unpaid taxes.
For decades, the District placed liens on properties when homeowners failed to pay their bills, then sold those liens at public auctions to mom-and-pop investors who drew a profit by charging owners interest on top of the tax debt until the money was repaid.
But under the watch of local leaders, the program has morphed into a predatory system of debt collection for well-financed, out-of-town companies that turned $500 delinquencies into $5,000 debts — then foreclosed on homes when families couldn’t pay, a Washington Post investigation found.
As the housing market soared, the investors scooped up liens in every corner of the city, then started charging homeowners thousands in legal fees and other costs that far exceeded their original tax bills, with rates for attorneys reaching $450 an hour.
Families have been forced to borrow or strike payment plans to save their homes.
Others weren’t as lucky. Tax lien purchasers have foreclosed on nearly 200 houses since 2005 and are now pressing to take 1,200 more, many owned free and clear by families for generations.
Investors also took storefronts, parking lots and vacant land — about 500 properties in all, or an average of one a week. In dozens of cases, the liens were less than $500.
Thomas McRae ran a flower shop on the first floor in this house on Sherman Avenue NW. But a tax lien investor from Florida foreclosed while McRae was under hospice care.
Coleman, struggling with dementia, was among those who lost a home. His debt had snowballed to $4,999 — 37 times the original tax bill. Not only did he lose his $197,000 house, but he also was stripped of the equity because tax lien purchasers are entitled to everything, trumping even mortgage companies.
“This is destroying lives,” said Christopher Leinberger, a distinguished scholar and research professor of urban real estate at George Washington University.
Officials at the D.C. Office of Tax and Revenue said that without tax sales, property owners wouldn’t feel compelled to pay their bills.
“The tax sale is the last resort. It’s also the first resort — it’s the only way in the statute to collect debt,” said deputy chief financial officer Stephen Cordi.
But the District, a hotbed for the tax lien industry, has done little to shield its most vulnerable homeowners from unscrupulous operators.
Foreclosures have upended families in some of the city’s most distressed neighborhoods. Houses were taken from a housekeeper, a department store clerk, a seamstress and even the estates of dead people. The hardest hit: elderly homeowners, who were often sick or dying when tax lien purchasers seized their houses.
One 65-year-old flower shop owner lost his Northwest Washington home of 40 years after a company from Florida paid his back taxes — $1,025 — and then took the house through foreclosure while he was in hospice, dying of cancer. A 95-year-old church choir leader lost her family home to a Maryland investor over a tax debt of $44.79 while she was struggling with Alzheimer’s in a nursing home.
Other cities and states took steps to curb abuses, such as capping the fees, safeguarding houses owned by the elderly or scrapping tax sales altogether and instead collecting the money themselves.
“Where is the justice? They’re taking people’s lives,” said Beverly Smalls, whose elderly aunt lost her home in Northeast Washington. “It’s just not right.”
In a 10-month investigation, The Post chronicled years of breakdowns and abuses in a program that puts at risk one of the most fundamental possessions in American life.
Of the nearly 200 homeowners who lost their properties in recent years, one in three had liens of less than $1,000.
More than half of the foreclosures were in the city’s two poorest wards, 7 and 8, where dozens of owners were forced to leave their homes just months before purchasers sold them. One foreclosed on a brick house near the Maryland border with a $287 lien and sold it less than eight weeks later for $129,000.
More than 40 houses were taken by companies whose representatives were caught breaking laws in other states to win liens.
Instead of stepping in, the D.C. tax office created more problems by selling nearly 1,900 liens by mistake in the past six years — even after owners paid their taxes — forcing unsuspecting families into legal battles that have lasted for years. One 64-year-old woman spent two years fighting to save her home in Northwest after the tax office erroneously charged her $8.61 in interest. (more)
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Alan West, Tea Bagger darling and torturer, has another issue with his connections to a violent biker gang – The Outlaws. At some point, I don’t care what the polls supposedly are saying – the American people have to be asking themselves do Mr West, and a number of the other Tea Bagger whack jobs running as Republicans who have ties to violent, racist, and extremist groups…
Really represent where the American people want this country to go for the next 2 or more years?
Allen West, a national tea party favorite and the Republican nominee for Congress in Florida’s 22nd Congressional District, has (to put it mildly) some controversial friends. According to a new report from NBC News, West has been a fan and defender of the Outlaws Motorcycle Club, a national group targeted by the FBI for involvement in racketeering, “violent crimes” and “attempted murder.”
As NBC reported tonight, West has had personal dealings with the Florida chapter of the Outlaws, which lists on its website “Brothers In Prison,” which NBC correspondent Lisa Meyers says includes “many” who “were convicted of violent crimes, including murder.”
Meyers reports on email correspondence between West and a supporter nervous about his interactions with the group that appears to show West defending the group against a characterization that it’s “criminal.”
But as the FBI noted in a June press release announcing a federal indictment of American Outlaw leadership, the national group is suspected of being a “a highly organized criminal enterprise with a defined, multi-level chain of command.”
West – for your choice to associate yourself with this sort of people – you get the Stepin’ Fetchit Award.
Alan West Stepin Fetchit Black Republican of the Year Award for Association with Organized Crime Biker Gangs
Looks to me that ACORN was destroyed intentionally, damaging the rights of millions of poor people in the United States. I think there minimally should be a criminal investigation into this, and a class-action lawsuit on behalf of communities formerly served by ACORN, former ACORN employees, and the former corporate entity.
The Right Wing Mafia and Hit Squad Should Be Held Accountable
Report Finds ACORN Did Not Support Voter Fraud; O’Keefe Is the Real Criminal
A new government report debunks claims made by right-wing politicians and media that the now defunct community advocacy group ACORN violated elections law and supported voter fraud.
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) report released Monday also confirms that two former ACORN employees in Maryland did not break the law when they offered advice to conservative activist James O’Keefe and columnist Hannah Giles, who secretly videotaped a meeting with the employees while posing as a couple interested in starting a brothel.
O’Keefe and fellow activists pled guilty last month to a misdemeanor charge for illegally entering Sen. Mary Landrieu’s New Orleans office and tampering with her phone.
ACORN fired the employees that advised O’Keefe and Giles and then filed a lawsuit against the pranksters, alleging they broke a Maryland law stating that both parties must agree to sound recordings.
The media firestorm created by O’Keefe’s video was the tipping point in a right-wing war against ACORN that can be traced back to the Bush administration. Congress quickly acted to strip the organization of funding, and both public and private donors dropped their sponsorship.
ACORN had been the largest poor people’s rights and community organizing group in the nation, but, starved for funds, the national organization folded in March.
ACORN voter registration drives in poor and minority neighborhoods were apparently a threat to the Bush administration as early as 2004, according to a Truthout investigative report. Emails that surfaced in August 2009 revealed the role that Karl Rove and other administration officials played in the firings of nine US attorneys, two of whom had refused to bring criminal charges against individuals affiliated with ACORN.
The media was quick to report on an alleged history of voter fraud and election violations attributed to ACORN and its affiliates during the 2008 election season, but the GAO report found that, in every case identified, complaints filed against ACORN with the Federal Elections Commission were dismissed.
The report also showed that four of six FBI investigations into alleged voter fraud committed by ACORN employees were closed due to lack of evidence. The two other investigations were also closed and referred to local and state jurisdictions.
The report detailed five cases in which ACORN employees pled guilty to misdemeanor counts of voter registration fraud, but stated that these cases did not allege any wrongdoing on behalf of ACORN or any affiliated organizations. In fact, ACORN offered materials to local election officials that helped initiate the prosecution of the guilty individuals, and each case stated that ACORN had properly trained the individuals to legally register voters.
The GAO report also states that agencies providing funding to ACORN generally did not report “any problem with grants,” although reviews are ongoing.
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Politicians Who Have Been "Elected" By 12 Jurors
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