Casual Observation

6 Comments

1. 

   utried on July 17, 2012 at 2:46 am

   The banks are doing better at bribes than the Mob.
   HSBC has been found to be drug money launderers and violated the Iran sanctions. Not to mention sidestepping the IRS.
   Barclays and LIBOR.
   The banks are international and have a far reach.
   The bright side is that they are getting caught.
   It is very humid and 68 degrees.

2. 

   Oui on July 17, 2012 at 3:51 am

   .
   Shining city on the hilltop could just as well be Jerusalem: mafia, dirty politics, bribes and citizens trampled.

   Olmert wants US Jews probed for taking him down

   TEL AVIV (Jerusalem Post) July 11, 2012 – Right-wing American Jews should be investigated for their role in ending prime minister Ehud Olmert’s term in office and triggering indictments that ended in acquittals, Olmert’s associates said.

   “We are not looking for conspiracy theories, but we want answers to facts,” a source close to Olmert said. “Certain people became part of the political game and brought about investigations, which led to his resignation. You have to ask yourself whether these things should be investigated.”

   The source noted that in October 2007, an American Jew testified to the police that New York financier Morris Talansky gave bribes to Olmert, and that investigation led to the others. He complained that a woman who testified against Olmert from the US was later found to be married to a man who ran a right-wing, anti-Olmert blog. The source also cited the founding of the newspaper Israel HaYom by right-wing American Jew and casino magnate Sheldon Adelson as playing a role in bringing down Olmert.

   “People intoxicated by power toppled a prime minister,” former minister Haim Ramon told Israel Radio. “American right-wing Jews who filed countless complaints against Olmert have to be investigated. They saw Olmert as the man who could deliver an agreement with the Palestinians. Consider what Olmert could have done had he remained prime minister for two more years instead of Netanyahu.”

   “[Trying to make peace] was a killer for me,” he said. “I had to fight against superior powers, including millions and millions of dollars that were transferred from this country by figures in the extreme right-wing who tried to topple me. There is no question about it. I know the names of people who spent millions of dollars who tried to stop me. They wanted to prevent a government led by me from achieving peace.”

   Olmert first charged that American right-wingers were out to get him following a February 8, 2008, report by Channel 2’s Sivan Rahav- Meir that wealthy American Jews had put a million-dollar price tag on his political head. The report said private investigators and lawyers had been seeking information from Olmert’s former business partners.  

   [Links added are mine – Oui]

   Billionaires Have Fun With Citizens United

   Rove hits big: The birth of a mega-donor

   Steve Wynn, the flamboyant Las Vegas billionaire who claims to have voted for President Barack Obama in 2008, was the perfect get for Rove. Wynn was loaded, had soured on Obama and was just the kind of wealthy businessman who could help underwrite a plan hatched by Rove and other influential conservatives to spend close to $1 billion total to win the White House, Senate and House in 2012.

   • Investigating leading GOP moneyman Sheldon Adelson
   • Adelson is using his vast fortune to help finance conservative, pro-Israel, and pro-business causes

   "But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."

3. 

   Arthur Gilroy on July 17, 2012 at 9:01 am

   Shining city on the hilltop could just as well be Jerusalem: mafia, dirty politics, bribes and citizens trampled.

   Yes.

   It also could just as well be Washington DC, London, Beijing or Moscow. The underbelly of empire is always strewn with corruption. But as Robinson Jeffers wrote in his great poem “Shine, Perishing Republic”:

   But for my children, I would have them keep their distance from the thickening
       center; corruption
   Never has been compulsory, when the cities lie at the monster’s feet there
       are left the mountains.

   The gangster mentality that has quite literally ruled this country since the mid-’50s/early ’60s…JFK’s murder could well be considered a mob hit on a larger level…will not go easily. It will have to fail…as do all morally corrupt systems, eventually…and the failure will be neither easy nor neat. It will be messy, dangerous and violent.

   This year?

   Next year?

   20 or 40 or 60 years from now?

   Who knows.

   I hope I live to see it happen.

   Meanwhile, the Adelsons just keep on coming.

   Just as it’s always been.

   Money breeds power; power breeds corruption; corruption breeds more money and so he circle continues

   Also just as it has always been.

   Jeffers’s poem captures the whole cycle.

   Shine, Perishing Republic (Robinson Jeffers, 1941)

   While this America settles in the mould of its vulgarity, heavily thickening
       to empire
   And protest, only a bubble in the molten mass, pops and sighs out, and the
       mass hardens,
   I sadly smiling remember that the flower fades to make fruit, the fruit rots
       to make earth.
   Out of the mother; and through the spring exultances, ripeness and decadence;
       and home to the mother.
   You making haste haste on decay: not blameworthy; life is good, be it stubbornly
       long or suddenly
   A mortal splendor: meteors are not needed less than mountains:
       shine, perishing republic.
   But for my children, I would have them keep their distance from the thickening
       center; corruption
   Never has been compulsory, when the cities lie at the monster’s feet there
       are left the mountains.
   And boys, be in nothing so moderate as in love of man, a clever servant,
       insufferable master.
   There is the trap that catches noblest spirits, that caught – they say –
       God, when he walked on earth.

   “…life is good.”

   Yes, it is.

   And there are always left “the mountains.”

   One way or another.

   Bet on it.

   Stay in the heights, folks.

   It’s gonna get nasty down there in the trenches.

   Soon, I’m thinking.

   Watch.

   AG

4. 

   Marie2 on July 17, 2012 at 12:37 pm

   When the “suits” took over Vegas, analyzing casino operations for vulnerability to employee embezzlement, burglary, and robbery became much more difficult.  In part because the justice system under the Mob was a wee bit different than under the “suits.”  Both bought corporate insurance policies to cover such losses, but mob run casinos never filed any claims and it’s probable that they had fewer and smaller such losses.  

5. 

   JimF on July 17, 2012 at 2:18 pm

   Make sure you read the ProPublica piece linked to in the story.
   http://www.propublica.org/article/inside-the-investigation-of-leading-republican-money-man-sheldon-a
   delson

   • 

     Indianadem on July 18, 2012 at 9:16 pm

     Very interesting story, that and the photo could be of an aging godfather surrounded by purchased youthful beauty. I wonder if he has any grandchildren and an indoor orange garden to chase them around in?