Archive for the ‘Politics’ Category

Obit watch: March 1, 2024.

Friday, March 1st, 2024

Richard Abath.

Mr. Abath was one of the two guards on duty at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum early in the morning on March 18, 1990. He was the one who let the two robbers, disguised as police officers, into the museum.

Over the next hour and a half, the thieves stole more than a dozen works of art, including pieces by Edgar Degas, Rembrandt van Rijn, Édouard Manet and Peter Paul Rubens, cutting the works from their ornate wooden frames. They also took an ancient Chinese beaker and a bronze eagle finial from a Napoleonic-era flagpole.

All together they took some $500 million in art, the equivalent of $1.2 billion today, making it by far the biggest art heist in history.
Suspicion immediately turned to Mr. Abath. City and federal investigators zeroed in on important details, like the coincidence of the thieves arriving so soon after the second guard left to make the rounds. A video camera outside the museum showed Mr. Abath briefly opening a side door not long before the robbery occurred.
Mr. Abath maintained his innocence throughout the rest of his life, and he was never named as an official suspect. He said that he regularly opened the side door to make sure it was locked and that while museum protocol forbade him from letting anyone in after hours, there was no contingency should the visitors be uniformed police officers.
“You know, most of the guards were either older or they were college students,” he told NPR in 2015. “Nobody there was capable of dealing with actual criminals.”

Brian Mulroney, former Canadian PM.

Smoking hyenas: February 16, 2024.

Friday, February 16th, 2024

The hyenas aren’t flaming, yet, but there is smoke.

And it seems oddly ironic in the first case.

Yesterday, the FBI searched the homes of two senior chiefs in the New York City Fire Department. They also searched offices in the FDNY department headquarters.

What could a chief do that requires FBI intervention? The chiefs in question were responsible for overseeing safety inspections.

The coordinated searches in Staten Island and Harlem were carried out as part of a corruption investigation that was initially focused on whether the chiefs had been paid nearly $100,000 each in a scheme to help expedite or arrange building inspections, several of the people said. The investigation began late last summer and was being conducted by the F.B.I., the U.S. attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York and the New York City Department of Investigation.

Nobody seems to think this is related to the other ongoing corruption investigations, but there’s been no official statement. Because the chiefs haven’t been charged with any crime yet, I’m not naming them here.

As of late last year, the investigation into the chiefs was examining, at least in part, whether they had accepted the payments as part of an effort to help expedite or influence fire inspections on building projects, some of the people said.
The payments of $97,000 apiece to the chiefs came from a recently retired firefighter, and at least one was made to a limited liability company registered to [edited – DB] home address, the people said. In 2023, the Fire Department paid [edited – DB] $241,119 and [edited – DB] $235,462, according to city payroll records compiled by the watchdog group SeeThroughNY.net.

There’s some weird stuff I don’t want to try to explain (read the article: it’s archived) with the Turkish Consulate and (allegedly) Mayor Eric Adams.

That broader inquiry has focused at least in part on whether the Turkish government conspired with Mr. Adams’s campaign to funnel illegal foreign donations into its coffers. In that investigation, the F.B.I. and prosecutors have examined whether Mr. Adams, weeks before his election in 2021, pressured Fire Department officials to sign off on the Turkish government’s new high-rise consulate in Manhattan despite safety concerns, people with knowledge of the matter have said. Mr. Adams has said he did nothing improper, and he has not been accused of any wrongdoing.

In other news, Mike the Musicologist has been texting me updates about Tiffany Henyard, mayor of Dolton, Illinois. I haven’t written about her because she hasn’t been charged with a crime yet. But the NYPost has a good summary of her craziness.

She has come under scrutiny in recent weeks for a laundry list of antics, including accusations of blowing thousands in public funds on luxury travel and dining, turning local police into both her personal bodyguards and backup dancers for music videos, and hiring DJs for town meetings — all while the village falls $5 million into debt.

…Dolton Trustee Kiana Belcher said former Dolton Chief of Police Robert Collins admitted the mayor forced him to target people.
“She’ll have the police follow you and give tickets,” Belcher said. “I went out of town and she had one of the officers … give me tickets … It was a manipulation tactic.”
When she confronted Collins, Belcher said, the chief didn’t hesitate to blame Henyard.
“He looked down at me and said, ‘She told me to write them,’” Belcher said.

“It started probably two weeks after she had been in office as mayor. We got a bill for the inauguration. The bill was like $15,000.”
“It was a big party, basically,” Belcher said, explaining that Henyard promised to pay with campaign funds, but the town ended up footing the bill instead. And it was just the beginning of town-funded parties.
“The spending has become unbearable for the residents. It’s parties and a lot of events. It’s resources in reference to making it look like something is being done but we really can’t afford it.”

When a Post reporter and photographer showed up at the “Love on the Ice” Valentine’s Day dinner Wednesday night, four police officers blocked them from entering the event — despite it being on public property.
One officer said she received “an order” to ensure that they stay put on the sidewalk and she and another cop watched the pair for more than an hour as Henyard went igloo to igloo, taking selfies with residents, while R&B music and chants of “Super mayor!” blasted from speakers.
Henyard was flanked by an assistant and two cops — including the highest-ranking police official in Dolton, Deputy Police Chief Lewis Lacey, who acted like her bodyguard the entire night.

Beyond parties, Belcher said bills to the tune of $1 million have piled up from paying overtime to cops made to serve as Henyard’s personal security detail, first assigned after a protest over a shooting in 2021.
“She just latched on and kept the detail,” Belcher said. “The contract says that you can have a detail but it should be on their shift and it changes. But with her people, they pick up at 10 and drop off at 12, 1 in the morning, so it’s all overtime hours.”
“They pick up her daughter from school, they go shopping,” she said. “A million dollars of overtime for the police department is absurd. We can’t afford it.”

Henyard, who also serves as Thornton Township supervisor, lashed out at the village trustees last week after they filed a lawsuit alleging she forged checks and withheld financial records.
“You all should be ashamed of yourselves because you all are black. You all are black,” she said during a meeting on February 5. “And you all [are] sitting up here beating and attacking a black woman that’s in power.”
Henyard — who takes home $285,000 in salary from her political positions — has also faced criticism for a salary ordinance she proposed and passed that would cut by 90% the pay for whoever takes her seat if she loses the next election, Fox 32 reported. Her salary, however, would remain the same.

You’re going down in flames, you tax-fattened hyena! (#114 in a series)

Wednesday, February 7th, 2024

I was stuck at the hospital all d–n day (not for myself, for Someone Who Isn’t Me), but I wanted to make note of this before it got past me:

Marilyn Mosby, former Baltimore State’s Attorney, can add a conviction on one count of mortgage fraud to her perjury conviction. (Previously.)

She was acquitted on a second count of mortgage fraud.

While much of the trial focused on Mosby’s failure to disclose a federal tax debt that with penalties and interest had grown to $69,000, the guilty verdict was for a “gift letter” she composed saying that her then-husband Nick Mosby gave her enough money to close on the condo in Longboat Key, Florida.

Nick Mosby, by the way, is the president of the Baltimore City Council. Ms. Mosby was $5,000 short when it came time to close on her real estate deal, and she had a “locked in” interest rate that was set to expire.

Her mortgage broker, Gilbert Bennett, had another solution. He downloaded a template for a “gift letter” from the lending company’s website, filled it out partially and told Mosby to take it from there.

She filled it out saying Nick Mosby was going to give her the money.

But, as the forensic accountant testified, he didn’t have that much money in his account. Marilyn Mosby waited until she received her next paycheck and transferred $5,000 to her then-husband. Nick Mosby transferred the money from his checking account to his savings account and back again.
Then, he wired it to an escrow agent for closing. The FBI accountant said the transaction was the only time Marilyn Mosby transferred money to her husband in the five years of the couple’s financial records that were reviewed.

I feel like I’ve got to be missing something here. Why go through all this when she could have just paid the money directly? It might have had something to do with “a federal tax debt that with penalties and interest had grown to $69,000” that she didn’t disclose.

On the whale sushi front:

Mosby faces a maximum of 30 years at sentencing, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office. While experts say she won’t receive a punishment anywhere near the maximum, separate federal convictions stemming from two trials makes it much more likely that Mosby, a mother of two, will be incarcerated for some amount of time.

And, on a related note:

Baltimore City Council President Nick Mosby said he regrets lying to the public about the status of his tax returns, a revelation that came last week during the federal trial of his ex-wife Marilyn Mosby, but he remains committed to running for office and sees no potential disruption to his ability to serve.

You’re going down in flames, you tax-fattened hyenas! (#113 in a series)

Tuesday, February 6th, 2024

Wow. This isn’t just flames, this is a four-alarm fire of political corruption.

Federal prosecutors in Manhattan unsealed bribery and extortion charges on Tuesday against 70 current and former employees of the New York City Housing Authority, a sweeping indictment of a troubled organization.

In describing the scheme, Mr. Williams said dozens of employees, including superintendents and assistant superintendents, had taken more than $2 million in bribes from contractors seeking to do work at apartment buildings throughout the city’s five boroughs.

Prosecutors said that the scheme revealed Tuesday involved small-dollar repairs — under $10,000 — to things like windows and plumbing, deals that do not go through competitive bidding.

According to the NYPost:

The defendants, all of whom were working for NYCHA at the time, sought between 10% and 20% of the contracts’ values — or kickbacks of between $500 and $2,000 — though some asked for higher amounts, authorities said.

This story is still developing. And all suspects are innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.

In case you were wondering: according to the Justice Department, this is, indeed, the “largest number of federal bribery charges” issued in one day.

Obit watch: January 31, 2024.

Wednesday, January 31st, 2024

Chita Rivera. NYT.

Jean Carnahan, former Senator from Missouri. As some may recall, she succeeded to the seat after her husband, Mel, died in a plane crash while campaigning.

Art (Acevedo), damn it! watch. (#AK of a series)

Tuesday, January 23rd, 2024

Art Acevedo is not taking the job in Austin. Repeat: Art Acevedo is not taking the job in Austin.

Acevedo notified Interim City Manager Jesús Garza Tuesday morning, following a firestorm about his appointment as an assistant city manager over the Austin Police Department (APD). On Tuesday afternoon, he posted a statement on X, the platform previously known as Twitter.
“It is clear that this newly created position has become a distraction from the critical work ahead for our city, the Austin Police Department, and the Austin Police Association,” Acevedo said in part, adding that he has always loved and admired the members of APD and, “as a long time member of their extended family, I will continue to support them in any way I can. Their well being has and will always [be] a priority for me, which is one of the reasons I have made this decision.”

I was actually surprised by the reaction to this, but haven’t had a chance to cover it. Many city leaders said, in essence, they felt bushwhacked by the decision and resented not being consulted.

“The biggest reaction, aside from surprise, is how does this make the Austin Police Department stronger and better,” Councilmember Ryan Alter, who represents a large portion of South Austin, told KVUE. “There were real problems that happened under his watch. To bring him back … Doesn’t honor the victims and the work that had to be done after he left.”

It was also particularly upsetting to victims of sexual assault. The city had a special apology ceremony this afternoon:

According to previous KXAN reporting, in 2016, an audit showed that APD lab technicians weren’t using proper techniques when calculating the odds of DNA results, potentially botching thousands of cases. The audit also found that evidence had been contaminated in at least one case and that lab technicians were using expired materials. The DNA lab closed in 2017.

The DNA lab problems, and the case mishandling, all took place under Chief Acevedo’s watch.

If we find out anything about what he’s doing next, we’ll post another Art Watch here. To be honest, we’re a little surprised he never got a position in the Biden administration…

Art (Acevedo), damn it! watch. (#AJ of a series)

Saturday, January 20th, 2024

Seriously. I bet you never expected this item to come back around. I certainly didn’t.

But Art Acevedo is back in Austin, baby!

Doing what?

He will be paid $271,000 as an interim assistant city manager. Acevedo will supervise the Austin Police Department (APD) and serve as a liaison between APD and the city manager’s office. Interim City Manager Jesús Garza said he created the position and hired Acevedo for the job to help lead the department through staffing challenges and continued reform in the aftermath of community demands following the May 2020 protests, among other issues.

Excuse me, but aren’t the city manager and city council supposed to be supervising the Austin Police Department? Doesn’t the chief report to the city manager? Why do we need to pay $271,000 a year for another layer of bureaucracy?

“…lead the department through staffing challenges”? Is Art going to have the ability to authorize new academy classes on his own? Because that’s how you’re going to get through “staffing challenges”: by staffing the department.

The position does not require city council approval and received no public input. Garza said that is consistent with how he has hired other executives, some of whom he said are “people I know and have tapped to help see if they can do the work that needs to be done.”

Am I unreasonable in thinking that a new position that pays over a quarter of a million dollars a year, plus benefits, should be signed off on by the city council? Doesn’t this seem strange to anybody?

As a recap, since it has been a minute since I posted one of these: Art Acevedo was, until this week, the police chief in Aurora, Colorado. Somewhere in there was also a gig as a CNN commentator. The job in Aurora was, according to reports, “interim”.

In 2021, Acevedo was hired to lead the Miami Police Department in what became a tumultuous tenure. He referred to the “Cuban mafia” that controlled the city, igniting a firestorm, and was fired six months later.

Before that, he was the chief in Houston.

…where he marched with protesters after the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis and incorrectly blamed “radicals” from Austin for unrest there.

It was on his watch that HPD narcotics detectives murdered two innocent people.

Acevedo served as Austin’s police chief from 2007 to 2016 with mixed reactions. He achieved near-celebrity status, appearing on magazine covers and marching in parades and rallies, but also led the department during multiple controversial shootings that critics said showed a lack of cultural shift. Acevedo was often criticized for cultivating the limelight more than leading the department.

Quick flaming hyenas update.

Thursday, January 4th, 2024

Mike the Musicologist sent me a text the other day mentioning that there’s a superseding indictment against Democratic Senator Robert “Buffalo Bob” Menendez.

This seems like reason enough to link the NYT: “What We Know About the Menendez Bribery Case”.

Obit watch: January 4, 2024.

Thursday, January 4th, 2024

Donald Wildmon has passed away at 85. I believe he was mostly forgotten now, but I remember a time when he was a hugely controversial figure in American politics.

Rev. Wildmon was a Methodist preacher. As the story goes, one night at Christmas he and his family gathered around the warm glowing glow of the TV set…and Rev. Wildmon discovered that the TV was full of what he considered to be vulgarity.

He kept switching channels — from a program with an adultery scene, to another with profanity, to a third with a man attacking someone with a hammer — before telling his children to turn off the set and resolving to do something about what he considered immoral content.

To make a long story somewhat shorter, he ended up founding an organization called the National Federation for Decency, which later became the American Family Association. AFA was one of the leaders in the controversy over the National Endowment for the Arts:

Mr. Wildmon had sent a photograph in 1989 to every member of Congress of a work by the artist Andres Serrano of a small crucifix submerged in the artist’s urine, which had appeared in an exhibition with partial N.E.A. funding. “I would never, ever have dreamed that I would live to see such demeaning disrespect and desecration of Christ in our country that is present today,” Mr. Wildmon wrote lawmakers.

Over more than three decades, groups that Mr. Wildmon led boycotted Target stores for substituting the word “holiday” for “Christmas,” ran full-page ads denouncing the 1990s police drama “NYPD Blue” for “steamy sex scenes” and picketed a Hollywood studio over Martin Scorsese’s “The Last Temptation of Christ,” which portrayed Jesus as having sexual desires.

The effectiveness of the AFA is questionable. They don’t seem to have any impact on “Last Temptation”, but they got 7-11 to pull “Playboy” and “Penthouse”, and were partially responsible for Proctor and Gamble pulling advertisements from “50 TV shows”.

I’m a First Amendement absolutist, and I didn’t care much for Mr. Wildmon or his organization at the time. But now that I’m older, and see stuff on TV airing during children’s waking hours, I wonder if the man may have had a point.

Of course, there’s alway the V-chip, which didn’t come into existence until 1996…

Obit watch: November 30, 2023, part 1.

Thursday, November 30th, 2023

Henry Kissinger. NYT. WP. LAT. McThag. Henry Kissinger official website.

Political satire became obsolete when Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

–Tom Lehrer

Yes, I know…

Wednesday, November 29th, 2023

Kissinger obits tomorrow, when I have a chance to search the ‘Tube for that Python bit.

Obit watch: November 20, 2023.

Monday, November 20th, 2023

Rosalynn Carter obit roundup: NYT (archived). WP (archived).

I’ve had one person complain to me that they can’t access archive.is links, and I’ve seen reports of this on Hacker News as well. The problem from what I’ve read is a DNS issue between archive.is and CloudFlare, and I don’t know how to tell folks to resolve it. I would love to be able to use another archiving service, but I’m not aware of another one. I feel like my choice is: knowingly post paywalled links (which has gotten me griped at in the past) or post archived links and take the complaints on that. If someone knows of another archiving service, please leave me a comment or drop me a line, and I’ll try switching to that as an alternative.

And I’m not linking to the Atlanta newspaper because, you guessed it, they’re excessively aggressive about ad blockers.

Bobby Ussery, jockey. Mostly noted here because I don’t get to use the “horses” tag as often as I would like, but he did win the 1967 Kentucky Derby (on Proud Clarion, a 30-1 shot). He won a total of 3,611 races between 1951 and 1974.

Joss Ackland, actor. Other credits include “K-19: The Widowmaker”, “The Hunt for Red October”, and “The Apple“.