Wednesday, October 29, 2008

MA state senator Dianne Wilkerson accepted $23,500 in bribes

Politician Allegedly Stuffed Bribes in Bra
By GLEN JOHNSON and DENISE LAVOIE
AP
Oct. 29, 2008

A state senator who lost the Democratic primary last month was arrested by the FBI on Tuesday and charged with accepting $23,500 in bribes from undercover agents she believed were local businessmen.

Sen. Dianne Wilkerson was charged with attempted extortion as a public official and theft of honest services as a state senator. She did not enter a plea during an initial court appearance Tuesday.

On the Take?

Massachusetts state Sen. Dianne Wilkerson was charged Tuesday with taking $23,500 in bribes from undercover FBI agents. This image made from video, which was included in an affidavit filed by the FBI, allegedly shows Wilkerson stuffing cash under her sweater and inside her bra on June 18, 2007.(Note: Please disable your pop-up blocker)

She faces up to 20 years in prison and $250,000 in fines on each count.
Wilkerson, 53, lost the Democratic primary in September to former teacher Sonia Chang-Diaz despite support from Mayor Thomas Menino and Gov. Deval Patrick. She is running a write-in campaign for the Nov. 4 election, in hopes of retaining the seat she has held since 1993.

Wilkerson was ordered Tuesday to have no contact with witnesses and retain any documents related to the extortion case or to her personal finances.

In asking for those conditions, Assistant U.S. Attorney John McNeil said Wilkerson has a "long history of acting as if she is above the law."

Tuesday, October 21, 2008

Code Pink rescues mother of Iraq casualty from foreclosure

How a Victim of the Housing Crisis Was Saved from the Brink of Eviction

By Linda Milazzo
AlterNet
October 20, 2008
video

Code Pink, American News Project, and community organizers worked together to save a woman's home from the auction block.

Jocelyn Voltaire is an émigré from Haiti who has lived in this country for 45 years. She's a United States citizen, a college graduate, and the mother of four. She recently suffered the unbearable loss of her eldest son -- a Marine who had served in the Gulf. Atop the unthinkable pain of losing a child, Jocelyne's Queens, New York home of twenty years was set to be auctioned on Friday (October 17th), due to a predatory lender scam.

But miracles do happen! Thanks to the brilliant work of independent media, American News Project (ANP), which captured Jocelyn's story in the video below, and Codepink Women For Peace, who after seeing ANP's video launched an appeal for funds to stop the auction, Jocelyn's home was saved. Miraculously, in one day, Codepink raised $30,000 from 650 patriots who stepped up to "spread their wealth." Below is the incredible video produced by American News Project that captured the "heart" of Codepink and inspired Jocelyne's patriotic "angels."

Needless to say, corporate media was much too busy camped out at the home of plumber Joe to pay Jocelyne Voltaire any mind. It took the efforts of independent media heroes ANP, generous spread-the-wealth patriots, and the inspired community organizing of Codepink to let humanity prevail. As Codepink says,

While our government has taken billions of our tax dollars to bail out the wealthy, we came together to bail out a desperate mother We modeled exactly what we want our government to do -- bail out families facing personal disaster, not financiers...

Friday, October 10, 2008

But wasn't this exactly why Palin used Yahoo for state business in the first place?

There is some concern that vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin's emails might have been erased, since she was using Yahoo email to conduct state business. This problem will have to be added to a long list of concerns about disappearing public records, since the George Bush White House has seen tens of thousands of emails disappear even though government email accounts were used.

AOL News
October 10, 2008

"...Palin has occasionally used private e-mail accounts to conduct state business, and her Yahoo accounts were hacked last month. The hacking of Palin's private account was significant because it showed that using private e-mail accounts to conduct state business would be vulnerable to being exposed.

"It wasn't widely known that the governor and her staff were using private e-mail accounts until McLeod filed the first of several open records requests earlier this year that yielded some of the e-mail traffic — much of it redacted for what were deemed privacy reasons.

"'The judge ordered the attorney general to contact Yahoo and other private carriers to preserve any e-mails sent and received on those accounts. If the e-mails were destroyed when the accounts were deactivated, he directed state officials to have the companies attempt to resurrect the e-mails.

"'We shouldn't be in a position where public records have been lost because the governor didn't do what every other state employee knows to do, which is to use an official, secure state e-mail account to conduct state business," McLeod said after the 90-minute hearing.

"'It's a dereliction of the governor and her duties," she said."