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Muck tracker – Prince Harry to make first visit to NY
Prince Harry, 24, will visit New York City for the first time, May 29 and 30, making a stop at the World Trade Center site and participating in the official naming of the British Memorial Garden in Lower Manhattan, the British Consulate announced.
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Monsanto’s lobbying cloutJuly 25, 2015 at 8:16am
Central to the argument over labeling genetically modified food is the point raised by opponents, who say that government regulators have declared the practice safe.
Ex-Surgeon General Antonia Novello pleads not guilty
New York politicians and political appointees are falling faster than bank stocks these days.
The latest to be criminally charged is former U.S. Surgeon General Antonia Novello, who pleaded not guilty Tuesday to forcing state employees to work overtime to handle her personal chores when she was New York’s health commissioner from 1999 to 2006.
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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 case reminiscent of the one that ended the career of former state Comptroller Alan Hevesi, who pleaded guilty in 2006 to using state workers to chauffeur his wife, Novello faces a 20-count indictment charging her with theft of government services, defrauding the government and filing a false instrument.
Now an executive with Disney Children’s Hospital at Florida Hospital in Orlando, Novello, 64, could face up to 12 years in prison if convicted of all charges.
It is a huge fall from grace for the politically connected physician and public health administrator. When George H.W. Bush appointed her Surgeon General in 1990, she was the first Puerto Rican and the first woman to serve in that job.
Novello has long been a darling of the Republican Party, as well as a star in the public health world. During her tenure as Surgeon General, which continued until 1993, Novello focused on the health of women, children and minorities, as well as on underage drinking, smoking, and AIDS.
But she was controversial among abortion rights advocates for supporting a policy prohibiting family planning program workers who received federal aid from discussing abortion with their patients.
When former New York Gov. George Pataki, a Republican, appointed her health commissioner in 1999, she was considered a catch for New York.
But almost from the start, there were complaints from those who worked with her. A scathing, January, 2009 report by state Inspector General Joseph Fisch found that she habitually abused the services of four state health department employees, requiring them to serve as her personal chauffeurs for shopping trips, driving around visiting relatives, buying her groceries, moving furniture and even watering the plans in her apartment when she was out of town.
Medicaid fraud investigator Noreen Schifini, told state investigators that she was too busy driving the commissioner to Macy’s and Saks Fifth Avenue, among other destinations in New York City, to carry a portfolio of investigations.
On numerous occasions, the report found that Novello had state workers drive her or her mother from the Albany area to Newark Liberty International Airport, roughly 300 miles round trip, to fly to Puerto Rico for personal business.
On one occasion, she purchased a heavy statue of Buddha during a shopping excursion in Troy, N.Y., then required a Health Department security guard to move it into her apartment, and then a few days later move it to another spot in her home because she didn’t like how it looked, according t the report.
Security guards who acted as her drivers said in interviews with state investigators that she would embarrass and yell at them if they did not do things the way she wanted and expected them to be at her beck and call at all hours.
Fisch referred the case to Albany County District Attorney David Soares’ office, which brought the case to a grand jury.
Novello’s attorney, E. Stewart Jones, said the charges were politically motivated and should have been addressed in a lawsuit, not a criminal case.
“She is here because she has a bull’s-eye on her back,” he told the Asssociated Press. “Because politics is a contact sport. Because there are people who are vindictive and who wanted to get her ever since she left the state.”
The investigation against Novello started in July 2007 under former Inspector General Kristine Hamann, an appointee of Democratic former Gov. Eliot Spitzer. Soares, Albany County’s district attorney, is also a Democrat.
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This post is tagged with: Antonia Novello, Crime, David Soares, Disney Children’s Hospital, E. Stewart Jones, George H.W. Bush, George Pataki, Joseph Fisch, New York state health department, Noreen Schifini, Surgeon GeneralRead related stories: Crime · Recent Stories0 Comments
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Characters in Lost would be lost without JacobMay 15, 2009 at 10:26am
In NBC’s hit drama Lost, connections count. And the season finale this week introduced viewers to the most connected character of all: Jacob.
Muck Tracker Prince Harry Will Visit Nyc
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Jeff Sessions Comes Out on National Stage
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Ex Surgeon General Antonia Novello Pleads Not Guilty to Defrauding Ny
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Lawyer Marc S. Dreier awaits sentencing after plea
But for Bernard L. Madoff, Marc S. Dreier might be a household name.
Accused of money laundering, wire fraud, securities fraud and other charges, Dreier pleaded guilty Monday in federal court in Manhattan. He had been charged with selling nearly $700 million in fake promissory notes. Investors may have lost as much as $400 million.
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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)He faces a sentence of 20 years to life on each of the most serious charges against him.
“I understand that everything I was doing was illegal,” Dreier told U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff on the day before his 59th birthday, Bloomberg news reported.
Rakoff allowed Dreier to remain under house arrest until his July 13 sentencing.
By a purely monetary standard, Dreier’s offenses did not match those of Madoff, who took investors for as much as $68 billion.
However, Dreier beats Madoff on style points, according to Robert Kolker of New York Magazine.
“Dreier took a starring role in his own financial drama,” Kolker wrote. “Where Madoff was outwardly quiet and self-effacing, Dreier was openly egotistical, even smug. He seemed to think he could lie to his victims’ faces and get away with it, to thrill, even, in the art of deceiving people.
A graduate of Harvard Law School, Dreier was the founder of Dreier LLP, a 250-member firm that had offices in New York City and Los Angeles before it fell apart after Dreier’s arrest.
Seemingly successful, Dreier lived the high life before his troubles became public. He collected cars, art, celebrity friends. He gave to charities; dated beautiful women.
He also created a financial house of cards that began to tumble last year as some investors asked for their money back.
Scrambling for funds, Dreier flew to Toronto in December. While there, he represented himself to a hedge fund executive as an official with the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan.
Something seemed wrong to the hedge fund guy; the police were tipped off. Dreier was arrested for impersonation. He spent a few days in jail and then was released on $100,000 bail.
Unshaven, looking like someone coming up for air after a binge, Dreier headed back to the U.S. Authorities welcomed him a LaGuardia Airport with an arrest warrant.
He stayed in jail until February when he was released on a $10 million bond.
Under the terms of his bail, Dreier, who is represented by defense attorney Gerald L. Shargel, can’t leave his Upper East Side apartment without court permission.
He has to pay for security guards and can’t have a cell phone. (The apartment is now for sale for $10 million.)
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GM considers move from Detroit’s Renaissance CenterMay 14, 2009 at 8:08am
When GM CEO Fritz Henderson raised the possibility that the automaker could vacate the Renaissance Center, it raised the threat of both real and symbolic devastation for Detroit.
Can Warren Hellman save the San Francisco Chronicle?
Billionaire financier F. Warren Hellman is already beloved in his native San Francisco for underwriting an eccentric music festival called Hardlly Strictly Bluegrass.
But if the California mogul can figure out how to save another bit of endangered Americana, the community newspaper, he will surely be regarded as a national, as well as a local treasure.
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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)Hellman announced last Friday that he and a team of business and media experts are working on a plan for a new, sustainable model for community journalism in the Bay Area.
While his immediate focus is on his hometown, where the Hearst Co.-owned San Francisco Chronicle has been hemorrhaging staff and money, Hellman has his eye on a model that might be adopted across the country where intense financial pressures are driving many papers into bankruptcy.
“If we can conceptualize a model and bring it to life here, the world will take notice,” he said. “It is that simple.”
A spokesman for Hellman told the the San Francisco Business Times that the team includes Andrew Woeber, managing director of investment bank Greenhill and Co.’s San Francisco office, consultant Susan Hirsch and representatives of the Media Workers Guild. Other participants in the regular meetings Hellman has convened include San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, former Chronicle Publisher and San Francisco Chamber of Commerce President Steve Falk and executives of several local investment funds.
He said the group has adopted a two-month timeline for reporting back to the community.
Hellman said he began thinking about the newspaper conundrum in late February when the Hearst Corp. announced plans to sell or shutter the 144-year-old Chronicle “within weeks” unless it could win significant concessions from two major unions, the Media Workers Guild and the International Brotherhood of Teamsters.
The unions agreed to concessions that cut dozens of jobs for yet another downsizing, but the paper is by no means out of the woods.
Hellman, now in his 70s, has a decades-long reputation as a financial whiz.
The youngest person (at age 28) ever to have been named a partner at now-defunct Lehman Brothers, he has been a director of more than a dozen corporations and serves as a member of the University of California Walter A. Haas School of Business Advisory Board.
After deciding to return to San Francisco, he co-founded Hellman & Friedman, LLC, the San Francisco-based private equity investment firm, in 1984 and has been a successful investor and philanthropist ever since. He has chaired the board of The Magnes Museum, and his wife, Chris, has chaired the San Francisco Ballet. The couple also funds the San Francisco Free Clinic, an organization that provides free health care to the needy and is run by one of their children.
But even he admits that saving newspaper is a tougher challenge than it first looked.
“In the beginning, this may have looked like addition and subtraction,” he admitted, “but in reality we’re doing advanced trigonometry here. The one thing I am certain about is that this region deserves the best journalism, and that a way must be found to ensure that we continue to get it for decades to come.”
He said his group is looking around the world to see if there are viable models that can be emulated and, if not, “how do we develop one?”
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This post is tagged with: Andrew Woeber, Chris Hellman, Hardly Strictly Bluegrass, Hellman & Friedman LLC, Newspapers, San Francisco Chronicle, Susan Hirsch, Warren HellmanRead related stories: Newspapers · Recent Stories1 Comments
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He said his group is looking around the world to see if there are viable models that can be emulated and, if not, “how do we develop one?”
Indeed his business methodology will be his first notion(look to see if some elses idea provides solution). However, what we see here is that the politics (yes indeed), business models and the overall national press markets economic implementaion is the very “ROOT” cause of this predicament that Hellman perpetuates. The solution must be counteractive to this model. As a result I think you will see degraded quality, information control and increased complexity for the paper instead of a simple solution sadly. He hasn’t the solution but actually the reason for its demise….
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GM considers move from Detroit’s Renaissance CenterMay 14, 2009 at 8:08am
When GM CEO Fritz Henderson raised the possibility that the automaker could vacate the Renaissance Center, it raised the threat of both real and symbolic devastation for Detroit.
Lawyer Marc S Dreier Awaits Sentencing After Plea
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Can Warren Hellman Save the San Francisco Chronicle
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