This post was archived from createpositivechange.org/. View the original on the Wayback Machine.
Category: Politics
-
Muck Tracker Obama Asks Paterson to Withdraw
This post was archived from createpositivechange.org/. View the original on the Wayback Machine.
-
Prosecutor John Durham is No Water Carrier for Obama
This post was archived from createpositivechange.org/. View the original on the Wayback Machine.
-
Benjamin vows to be America’s family doctor
If the symbolic power of President Barack Obama’s nominee for U.S. surgeon general is lost on anyone, they’re probably not old enough to remember house calls, personalized medical treatment, and a practitioner who cares more for patients than pelf.
Dr. Regina Benjamin, 52, whose nomination was announced yesterday, is a medical anachronism who rebuilt a microcosmic health care system – a rural clinic devastated by two hurricanes then destroyed in a fire – because she held the needs of patients as her highest priority.
Hint: Doubleclick on boxes with plus signs to expand, or click the tool bar at left for more options.
MAP HINTS: Boxes with + signs can be expanded by doubleclicking. Solid lines are current relations. Dotted lines are former relations. For more options, right-click on a box or click on the map tools to the left. (Requires Flash)“When people couldn’t pay, she didn’t charge them,” Obama said of the family practice physician. “When the clinic wasn’t making money, she didn’t take a salary for herself.”
Regina BenjaminAlmost 20 years ago, Benjamin opened her clinic in Bayou La Batre, Alabama, a fishing village of 2,500 known to fans of a 1994 hit film as the home of Forrest Gump’s shrimp boats. Four years later, it was ravaged by Hurricane Georges, again by Hurricane Katrina in 2005, and burned to the ground soon after it was rebuilt. Benjamin’s determination to rebuild each time won her a $500,000 MacArthur Foundation “genius grant” last fall. She chose to spend it on again reopening the clinic.
In accepting the no-strings award, Benjamin told the story of a poor patient giving her a few dollars toward the rebuilding effort. “If she can find $7,” Benjamin said, “I can figure out the rest.”
During yesterday’s Rose Garden announcement, Benjamin expanded on the theme. “As a physician, my priority has always been the needs of my patients,” she said. “I decided I would treat patients regardless of their ability to pay. However, it has not been an easy road.
“It should not be this hard for doctors and other health care providers to care for their patients. It shouldn’t be this expensive for Americans to get health care in this country.”
Fighting preventable illness and its cost in human suffering is personal for her, Benjamin explained. Her father died of diabetes and hypertension; her brother of HIV. Lung cancer killed her mother, a lifetime smoker, and has left her uncle “struggling for each breath.” While “I cannot change my family’s past,” she said, “I can be a voice to improve our nation’s health for the future.”
After earning her bachelor’s degree from Xavier University of Louisiana in 1979, her medical degree from Morehouse School of Medicine in 1982, and a medical doctorate from the University of Alabama at Birmingham in 1984, Benjamin finished her residency in family practice at the Medical Center of Central Georgia in 1987. In exchange for promising to practice in a medically underserved community, Benjamin’s training was paid for by the National Health Service Corps.
She was the first black women to serve on the board of the American Medical Association and also earned a master’s in business administration from Tulane University in 1991, which was interpreted by some as a sign of political ambitions.
If confirmed by the Senate, Benjamin said she intends to be “America’s family physician,” and promised “to communicate directly to the American people, to help guide them through whatever changes come with health care reform.
“I want to make sure that no one, no one, falls through the cracks.”
Click here to sign up for the Muckety Newsletter
Read related stories: Politics · Recent Stories
-
Union adviser Ronald Bloom heads auto task forceJuly 15, 2009 at 8:03am
Ronald W. Bloom, a Wall Street investment banker who went on to become a labor union adviser, is taking over as head of the auto task force.
Is John Coale handling another high-profile calamity?
When Republican Sarah Palin, the soon-to-be-former governor of Alaska, needs advice, she turns to John P. Coale, a Democratic lawyer with an impressive and varied range of connections.
A Bill and Hillary Clinton confidante, and the husband of Fox News’ Greta Van Susteren, Coale has supported numerous Democratic candidates through the years.
Hint: Doubleclick on boxes with plus signs to expand, or click the tool bar at left for more options.
MAP HINTS: Boxes with + signs can be expanded by doubleclicking. Solid lines are current relations. Dotted lines are former relations. For more options, right-click on a box or click on the map tools to the left. (Requires Flash)However, he endorsed Sen. John McCain, the Republican candidate, after Hillary Clinton lost the Democratic nomination to Barack Obama.
And during the campaign, Coale met Palin, the Republican vice-presidential candidate, through Van Susteren.
After the election, he became an adviser to Palin (unpaid, Van Susteren stressed on her blog).
According to Todd Purdum, who profiled Palin in the August issue of Vanity Fair, Coale helped Palin create a political action committee, SarahPac, after the election.
He also reportedly assisted Palin in establishing The Alaska Fund Trust, her legal expense fund.
Coale told The Washington Post that Palin’s decision last week to step down as governor was motivated in part by what she saw as attacks upon her family.
“She couldn’t ignore the hits on the kids,” Coale said. “She said, ‘It brought out the mama grizzly in me.’”
Coale and Van Susteren, who is also a lawyer, were married in 1988. For a while, they practiced together, but he is now a partner in the Washington firm of Coale, Cooley, Lietz, McInerny & Broadus.
Both are members of the Church of Scientology, a religion practiced by Tom Cruise and John Travolta.
Coale represented another Scientologist, Lisa Marie Presley, in her divorce from Michael Jackson.
As a lawyer, Coale’s “particular specialty is the high-profile calamity,” wrote Peter Boyer in The New Yorker in 1999.
The first of his calamity cases was filed in 1979, when Coale unsuccessfully, but prominently, represented a group of U.S. citizens who had been held hostage for months in Iran, asking $10 million in damages for each of the plaintiffs.
In 1984, Coale heard of a toxic gas leak at a Union Carbide plant that killed thousands in Bhopal, India. He rushed to the scene and signed up more than 60,000 plaintiffs. He didn’t prevail in court as the case was decided in India, rather than in a U.S. court.
In the 1990s, Coale was one of several lawyers who came together as the Castano Group in suing Big Tobacco.
To add clout to their suits, Coale, a regular visitor to the Clinton White House, signed up Hugh Rodham, a lawyer and Hillary Clinton’s brother, to work on the case.
Coale and his colleagues did this, Boyer suggests, to out-brother-in-law Richard “Dickie” Scruggs, the Mississippi lawyer heading up an opposing anti-tobacco lawyers’ group. Scruggs’ wife was the sister of then Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott.
Scruggs’ group got the better of the settlements, though he is now in federal prison, having been convicted of attempting to bribe a judge in another case.
After the tobacco suits, Coale turned his attention to organizing municipalities to sue gun manufacturers.
Click here to sign up for the Muckety Newsletter
Read related stories: Politics · Recent Stories1 Comments
-
don’t forget his ethics complaint for solicitation and ambulance chasing. run right out of west virginia. he and his wife implicated for hiring people to stalk injured people.
Leave a Comment
-
Benjamin vows to be America’s family doctorJuly 14, 2009 at 9:22am
Dr. Regina Benjamin, nominee for U.S. surgeon general, is a medical anachronism who rebuilt a microcosmic health care system.
Paterson’s choice of lieutenant governor draws opposition in NY
Richard Ravitch once got the subway trains to run on time in New York City.
Now he is taking on the more difficult task of getting the New York Senate to run at all.
Hint: Doubleclick on boxes with plus signs to expand, or click the tool bar at left for more options.
MAP HINTS: Boxes with + signs can be expanded by doubleclicking. Solid lines are current relations. Dotted lines are former relations. For more options, right-click on a box or click on the map tools to the left. (Requires Flash)In a move that has already been challenged, New York Gov. David A. Paterson Wednesday named Ravitch, 76, the state’s lieutenant governor.
Ravitch took the oath of office later in the day at the Peter Lugar Steakhouse in Brooklyn, signing the papers a few hours before Republicans got a restraining order blocking the appointment.
Matters were further confused Thursday when State Sen. Pedro Espada Jr. of Queens, who had created a 31-31 deadlock in the Senate by defecting to the Republicans, returned to the Democratic camp, giving it a 32-30 majority. He will serve as Senate majority leader.
Reportedly, Ravitch will not start performing the duties of office until the court issue is resolved. Andrew Cuomo, the state’s attorney general, has ruled that the state’s constitution does not allow the appointment.
As lieutenant governor, Ravitch could break tie votes in the Senate.
He would fill a position that has been vacant since March 2008 when then Lt. Gov. Paterson became governor after the resignation of Eliot Spitzer.
Ravitch is accustomed to straightening out messes, so much so that Clyde Haberman of The New York Times once referred to him as “the designated rescuer.”
A Yale Law School graduate, Ravitch chaired his family’s construction company, a builder of affordable housing, in the 1960s and 1970s.
In 1975, New York Gov. Hugh Carey, a Democrat, named Ravitch chairman of the state’s insolvent Urban Development Corporation. Ravitch led a bailout that saved the corporation.
In 1979, Ravitch became the chairman and CEO of New York City’s Metropolitan Transit Authority at a time when subway service was in disarray.
Ravitch devised ways to raise the money that was needed to overhaul the system.
Paterson turned to Ravitch last year to head a commission charged with coming up with ways to save the MTA once again.
The legislature approved a rescue plan this May, before the current crisis in the Senate began the next month.
Republicans took the Senate when Espada and Hiram Monserrate, of Queens, voted with them to depose the Democratic leadership.
Dean G. Skelos, a Republican, became the new majority leader. Espada was named Senate president, making him first in line to succeed Paterson, should Paterson leave office.
The Republicans control held for a few days. Then Monserrate chose to vote with the Democrats again, creating the 31-31 deadlock.
Click here to sign up for the Muckety Newsletter
Read related stories: Politics · Recent Stories0 Comments
-
There are no comments yet, be the first by filling in the form below.
Leave a Comment
-
Benjamin vows to be America’s family doctorJuly 14, 2009 at 9:22am
Dr. Regina Benjamin, nominee for U.S. surgeon general, is a medical anachronism who rebuilt a microcosmic health care system.
Obama Speechwriter Among Administrations Top Earners
This post was archived from createpositivechange.org/. View the original on the Wayback Machine.
Muckety This Tupac to Barack Obama Solution
This post was archived from createpositivechange.org/. View the original on the Wayback Machine.
Muckety This Tupac to Barack Obama
This post was archived from createpositivechange.org/. View the original on the Wayback Machine.
Chris Dodd’s Irish getaway won’t go away
Household finances continue to dog Sen. Christopher Dodd of Connecticut.
First there were reports on the favorable loans he received from subprime mortgage lender Countrywide Financial. Critics say he benefitted from sweetheart deals as a friend of Angelo Mozilo, former chairman and CEO of Countrywide.
Hint: Doubleclick on boxes with plus signs to expand, or click the tool bar at left for more options.
MAP HINTS: Boxes with + signs can be expanded by doubleclicking. Solid lines are current relations. Dotted lines are former relations. For more options, right-click on a box or click on the map tools to the left. (Requires Flash)Then there are the board entanglements of his wife, Jackie Clegg Dodd, in some of the same health companies Dodd is regulating as a member of Senate Committee on Health.
Christopher DoddAnd now there’s the getaway in Ireland, a house on Inishnee island in County Galway. Since 2002, Dodd had listed the value of the property as up to $250,000. After mounting criticism that he was undervaluing the home, he filed a financial disclosure form released last week raising its value to $658,000. This, despite plummeting real estate values in Ireland over the past two years.
Dodd had purchased the property with Kansas City real estate developer William Kessinger, whom he met through friend and campaign contributor Edward Reynolds Downe Jr. (Dodd successfully lobbied President Clinton in 2001 to grant Downe a pardon on charges of conspiring to commit wire fraud and subscribing to false income tax returns.)
Dodd bought Kessinger’s interest in the Irish property in 2002.
As Hartford Courant columnist Kevin Rennie notes, Dodd has given different amounts when asked how much he paid Kessinger. Dodd’s office said in February that he paid Kessinger $127,000. The following month, he told the Courant he paid $50,000 more. And last month Dodd told Newsweek he paid Kessinger $207,000.
Newsweek was moved to publish a story titled, Like father, like son, pointing out that Thomas Dodd, who also served as a senator from Connecticut, ended his career in ignominy. The elder Dodd was censured by the Senate in 1967 for allegedly diverting campaign funds for personal use.
Thomas Dodd lost his bid for re-election and died in 1971.
Click here to sign up for the Muckety Newsletter
This post is tagged with: Christopher Dodd, Edward Reynolds Downe Jr., Jackie Clegg Dodd, Politics, Thomas Dodd, William KessingerRead related stories: Politics · Recent Stories
-
R. Allen Stanford charged with fraud and obstructionJune 19, 2009 at 1:34pm
Texas financier R. Allen Stanford, under investigation in an alleged $8 billion fraud, is expected to be arraigned today on federal charges.
Roger Stone Caught Up in Nys Leadership Battle
This post was archived from createpositivechange.org/. View the original on the Wayback Machine.
Sarah Palin won’t sit next to Dave any time soon
Alaska governor and Republican vice-presidential also-ran Sarah Palin will not, repeat not, be appearing on David Letterman’s late night talk show.
That was just one round in a whizzing contest between the two that began last week when Letterman used a visit to New York by Palin as the subject of his nightly “Top Ten” list of topical gags.
Hint: Doubleclick on boxes with plus signs to expand, or click the tool bar at left for more options.
MAP HINTS: Boxes with + signs can be expanded by doubleclicking. Solid lines are current relations. Dotted lines are former relations. For more options, right-click on a box or click on the map tools to the left. (Requires Flash)Palin, who as a vice-presidential candidate was criticized for spending thousands of dollars of somebody else’s money to snazz up her wardrobe, “Bought makeup from Bloomingdale’s to update her ’slutty flight attendant’ look,” Letterman said.
But the corker, which has sent Palin and fellow conservatives into a froth of righteous ire and message spinning, was this: “One awkward moment for Sarah Palin at the Yankee game, during the seventh inning, her daughter was knocked up by Alex Rodriguez.”
Palin was accompanied to the game by her daughter Willow, 14.
The governor quickly characterized Letterman’s joke as an endorsement of child-rape and encouragement for those who practice it, and accused the talk-show host of perversion. In a statement released to the press, she said:
“Concerning Letterman’s comments about my young daughter (and I doubt he’d ever dare make such comments about anyone else’s daughter): ‘Laughter incited by sexually-perverted comments made by a 62-year-old male celebrity aimed at a 14-year-old girl is not only disgusting, but it reminds us some Hollywood/NY entertainers have a long way to go in understanding what the rest of America understands – that acceptance of inappropriate sexual comments about an underage girl, who could be anyone’s daughter, contributes to the atrociously high rate of sexual exploitation of minors by older men who use and abuse others.’”
Letterman sort of apologized for the imbroglio the same night, saying the offending joke referred to Palin’s daughter, Bristol, now 18, who campaigned with her mother, unwed, visibly pregnant and accompanied by her now former fiancée. The Palin camp held her out as a feminist standard-bearer for single teenage mothers.
“Speaking of stupid human tricks, I stepped into traffic the other day,” Letterman began.
“We made some jokes about Sarah Palin and her daughter … the girl who actually, excuse me, but was knocked up, is now 18 years old.”
But, glossing over the fact that it was Willow who was in New York, he repeated another of the Top Ten lines: “The hardest part of the trip was keeping Eliott Spitzer away from her daughter,” adding, “I’m surprised we haven’t heard from Eliott Spitzer either,” referring to the Democratic New York governor who resigned last year in a prostitution scandal.
“We do stuff all the time and our objective here is to get a laugh, and thank God we don’t have to, you know, go to the Hague before the world court to defend them.
“I would never, never make jokes about raping or having sex of any description with a 14-year-old girl. I mean, look at my record, it has never happened.
“Were the jokes in questionable taste? Of course they were. Do I regret having told them. Well, I think probably I do. But you know what? There are thousands of jokes I regret telling on this program.”
Letterman then invited Palin and her husband, Todd, to come on his show and work things out between them.
He got a response in another written statement:
“The Palins have no intention of providing a rating’s [sic] boost for David Letterman by appearing on the show. Plus, it would be wise to keep Willow away from David Letterman.”
When asked by the Today Show’s Matt Lauer if she was saying Letterman couldn’t be trusted around a 14-year-old girl, Palin replied: “Hey, take it however you want to take it.”
The goofy foofaraw finally ended, a week after it began, when Letterman unambiguously apologized during Monday’s show. The next morning, Palin accepted.
“It was kind of a coarse joke, there’s no getting around it,” he said. “But I never thought it was anybody other than the older daughter, and before the show, I checked to make sure, in fact, that she is of legal age, 18,” he said. “The joke, really, in and of itself, can’t be defended.
“As they say about jokes, if you have to explain the joke, it’s not a very good joke.
“I feel that I need to do the right thing here and apologize for having told that joke. It’s not your fault that it was misunderstood; it’s my fault that it was misunderstood.
“So I would like to apologize, especially to the two daughters involved, Bristol and Willow, and also to the governor and her family and everybody else who was outraged by the joke. I’m sorry about it, and I’ll try to do better in the future.”
The next morning, Palin accepted Letterman’s mea culpa “on behalf of all young women, like my daughters, who hope men who ‘joke’ about public displays of sexual exploitation of girls will soon evolve.”
This story was updated on Tuesday, June 16.
Click here to sign up for the Muckety Newsletter
Read related stories: Politics · Recent Stories0 Comments
-
There are no comments yet, be the first by filling in the form below.
Leave a Comment
-
Muckety this! Red Hot Chili Peppers to Glimmerglass OperaJune 17, 2009 at 5:39pm
Can you find the links that connect the rock band to the Glimmerglass Opera? Start with the one member of the Red Hot Chili Peppers who is also a part of the musical super-group Chickenfoot.
Yet Another Republican Joins the Obama Fold
This post was archived from createpositivechange.org/. View the original on the Wayback Machine.
Obama Bundlers Tapped for Diplomatic Jobs
This post was archived from createpositivechange.org/. View the original on the Wayback Machine.
‘Hillaryland’ is reborn at the State Department
Hillary Rodham Clinton may have reinvented herself as secretary of state, but she hasn’t exactly started with a blank slate.
The former New York senator has taken along some of her most loyal staffers from “Hillaryland,” the nickname given to the tightknit group that coalesced around her in the White House, and which advised and supported her as she charted her own political career.
Hint: Doubleclick on boxes with plus signs to expand, or click the tool bar at left for more options.
MAP HINTS: Boxes with + signs can be expanded by doubleclicking. Solid lines are current relations. Dotted lines are former relations. For more options, right-click on a box or click on the map tools to the left. (Requires Flash)For starters, there’s Melanne Verveer, who was chief of staff to First Lady Clinton, and who is now the nominee for a new State Department post – ambassador at large for global women’s Issues. It’s a natural stepping stone for Verveer, now the CEO and co-founder of an international nonprofit called Vital Voices Global Partnership, which grooms women for leadership roles around the world.
Hillary Rodham ClintonThere’s attorney Cheryl Mills, counsel to Clinton’s ill-fated 2008 presidential campaign, who has been reincarnated as her new chief of staff.
Mills is best known for defending former President Bill Clinton during his 1999 impeachment trial, when she was deputy White House counsel. After that, she took a breather from politics, working as an executive at Oprah Winfrey’s Oxygen Media and at New York University.
There’s the glamorous Huma M. Abedin, who started with First Lady Clinton as a college intern in 1996, and who moved up to become her “body” person, adviser and close friend, and who has now inherited the title of senior adviser to the secretary.
Abedin, who was the subject of a 2007 Vogue profile, is famous for her style, and shares an unusually close, almost sisterly relationship with Clinton.
While critics have questioned Abedin’s foreign policy experience, her supporters note that she is a fluent Arabic speaker who grew up in Saudi Arabia, and who has been a trusted Clinton adviser on the Middle East.
“Abedin has the energy of a woman in her 20s, the confidence of a woman in her 30s, the experience of a woman in her 40s, and the grace of a woman in her 50s,” Clinton wrote in an email to Vogue. “She is timeless, her combination of poise, kindness, and intelligence are matchless.”
Abedin is dating Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY), who is a possible 2009 New York City mayoral contender.
Other longtime Clinton loyalists joining her in the State Department include:
- Judith A. McHale, a longtime Clinton friend and donor, and former president of Discovery Communications, who has been nominated as undersecretary for public diplomacy. After two decades building Discovery, McHale, the daughter of a foreign service officer, helped found the GEF/Africa Growth Fund, a private equity fund that makes investments in consumer goods and services in Africa.
- James Steinberg, President Bill Clinton’s deputy national security adviser, who has been nominated as deputy secretary. Steinberg, whose articles criticizing the Bush Doctrine of pre-emption became a rallying cry for Democrats, brings experience as a former White House and congressional military policy adviser.
- Lissa Muscatine, a speechwriter, erstwhile book collaborator and “walking catalogue of everything the candidate has ever said about anything,” who was tapped as chief speechwriter at State.
- Andrew Shapiro, who advised Sen. Clinton on defense and foreign policy issues, who was nominated assistant secretary for political-military affairs.
- Philippe Reines, her Senate press secretary, who is reprising that role at State.
Click here to sign up for the Muckety Newsletter
This post is tagged with: , Andrew Shapiro, Anthony Wiener, Cheryl Mills, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Hillaryland, Huma Abedin, James Steinberg, Judith McHale, Lissa Muscatine, Melanne Verveer, Patti Solis Doyle, Philippe Reines, Politics, Vital Voices Global PartnershipRead related stories: Politics · Recent Stories1 Comments
-
Of course she will bring people she knows and trusts with her and what the article doesn’t mention is all the new people at State she has on her team.
Leave a Comment
-
Madoff trustee sues Fairfield Greenwich to recover fundsMay 19, 2009 at 3:26pm
The court-appointed trustee of Bernard Madoff’s defunct firm is going after the millionaire middlemen who acted as witting or unwitting accomplices to Madoff’s $65 billion Ponzi scheme.
Jon Huntsman Jr. nominated as U.S. ambassador to China
President Obama seems to have pulled off a slick three-fer today in announcing his nomination of Republican Utah Gov. Jon M. Huntsman Jr. as U.S. ambassador to China.
First, Huntsman, 49, has solid diplomatic credentials, having served as President George H.W. Bush’s ambassador to Singapore and U.S. trade ambassador for President George W. Bush. He learned to speak fluent Mandarin earlier in life as a Mormon missionary to China, and adopted his daughter from China.
Hint: Doubleclick on boxes with plus signs to expand, or click the tool bar at left for more options.
MAP HINTS: Boxes with + signs can be expanded by doubleclicking. Solid lines are current relations. Dotted lines are former relations. For more options, right-click on a box or click on the map tools to the left. (Requires Flash)Second, it was a high-profile display of Obama’s pledge of bipartisanship, albeit a choice that reflects many Democratic values in a moderate Republican who almost routinely rocks the ribs of the GOP’s never-say-die ultra-conservatives.
Jon Huntsman Jr.Third, and most significant politically, if Huntsman is confirmed it will effectively remove him from contention in an Obama re-election bid in 2012, at the same time pulling the only moderate out of a field of potential GOP candidates who play insistently to the party’s supposed base.
One significant example of Huntsman succeeding as a moderate among conservatives was the easing of Utah’s restrictive liquor laws to promote tourism, a move resisted by the state’s large Mormon population.
He also has endorsed civil marriage for gays – although he supported a successful amendment to his state’s constitution banning them in 2004 – and is a strong voice for environmentalism – especially in joint efforts with the Chinese.
If his appointment is accepted, Huntsman will replace Clark Randt as ambassador.
He is the son of Jon M. Huntsman Sr., founder and chairman of Huntsman Corp., a global chemical manufacturer and marketer.
Click here to sign up for the Muckety Newsletter
Read related stories: Politics · Recent Stories2 Comments
-
Governor Huntsman learned Mandarin as a Mormon missionary to TAIWAN, not China.
-
Never use our yardstick on human right on a developing country like China.
American contributes more pollution per capita than China esp. some pollution is caused by manufacturing for global consumers.
We can build carriers powered by two nuclear generators and China cannot build helicopters. What a joke!
Leave a Comment
-
Muck tracker – C. Robert Kidder to become Chrysler chairmanMay 20, 2009 at 5:14pm
C. Robert Kidder, the former chairman of Duracell International, will lead a newly restructured Chrysler after it begins its alliance with Fiat, the New York Times reports.
NY’s top ethics officer accused of ethical breach
The fallout from Eliot Spitzer’s short but contentious reign as governor of New York state continues.
This week, Joseph Fisch, the state’s inspector general, charged the state’s top ethics watchdog, Herbert Teitelbaum, with acting unethically.
Hint: Doubleclick on boxes with plus signs to expand, or click the tool bar at left for more options.
MAP HINTS: Boxes with + signs can be expanded by doubleclicking. Solid lines are current relations. Dotted lines are former relations. For more options, right-click on a box or click on the map tools to the left. (Requires Flash)Teitelbaum, the executive director of the Commission on Public Integrity, should be fired, Fisch concluded.
The charges came in a 174-page report (not counting appendices) that gives a detailed sense of the power of personal, professional and political connections in Albany.
The report also recalls a scandal that erupted just a few months after Spitzer took office in January 2007.
At first, the controversy focused on Republican Joseph L. Bruno, the then leader of the state Senate and a Spitzer opponent.
Allegedly, Bruno had been using state aircraft to fly to political events, a violation of law.
Rather quickly, the scandal did an about-face when it was reported that members of Spitzer’s staff had used state police to gather the damaging information on Bruno.
The use of the police for political purposes violated the law and the scandal got a label, Troopergate.
The Commission on Public Integrity launched an investigation, an investigation that posed a threat, if not to Spitzer, then to members of his inner circle.
Fisch, the inspector general, claimed in a report issued Wednesday that Teitelbaum compromised the investigation by leaking confidential information to Robert Hermann, then the director of Spitzer’s Officer of Governmental Reform and a member of Spitzer’s cabinet.
Hermann then passed information to Lloyd Constantine of Spitzer’s staff on several occasions, the report alleges. Hermann had once been Constantine’s supervisor in the state attorney general’s office.
Hermann also supposedly talked once about the investigation with Peter Pope, Spitzer’s director of policy.
Fisch also charges that the commission did not act properly when it was told of Teitelbaum’s conversations with Hermann.
Both Teitelbaum and Hermann have denied that they did anything wrong, and Teitelbaum has resisted the calls for his resignation.
Gov. David A. Paterson, Spitzer’s successor, has asked his seven appointees to the 13-member commission to resign. They, so far, have refused to step aside, just as they have refused to fire Teitelbaum.
Teitelbaum and Hermann, both Spitzer appointees and Spitzer supporters, had known early for years before they came to be officials in Albany.
As Fisch’s report explains, they first met when Hermann was at the law firm, Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP.
Hermann interviewed Teitelbaum for an associate’s position with the firm, a position that he took.
However, Hermann had left the firm by the time Teitelbaum began work. (Eliot Spitzer would later be a lawyer with Skadden, Arps.)
Later in their careers, Teitelbaum and Hermann worked together at Teitelbaum, Hiller, Rodman, Paden & Hibsher, P.C., another law firm.
They had also served at different times as the legal counsel for the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund.
Paterson was Spitzer’s lieutenant governor at the time of the Troopergate episode, and he was not swept up in the investigation.
However, he has a link to the latest news. In naming Fish inspector general last year, Paterson had returned a favor.
In 1982, Fisch, the chief assistant district attorney in Queens, hired Paterson, who was fresh out of law school.
Click here to sign up for the Muckety Newsletter
Read related stories: Politics · Recent Stories0 Comments
-
There are no comments yet, be the first by filling in the form below.
Leave a Comment
-
‘Hillaryland’ is reborn at the State DepartmentMay 18, 2009 at 6:58am
Hillary Rodham Clinton may have reinvented herself (again) as Secretary of State, but she hasn’t exactly started with a blank slate.
-
0 Comments
There are no comments yet, be the first by filling in the form below.
Leave a Comment