Thursday, February 17, 2011

Advisor to ex-NY comptroller gets prison sentence

Advisor to ex-NY comptroller gets prison sentence
Feb 17, 2011
Reuters

Henry "Hank" Morris, the chief political advisor to New York state's former comptroller, has been sentenced to one-and-a-third to four years in prison for "orchestrating" a pension kickback scheme, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman said on Thursday.

This is the maximum sentence under the law, Schneiderman said of the wide-ranging corruption probe into how Morris exploited his ties to Democratic Comptroller Alan Hevesi to reap millions of dollars in fees paid by firms seeking to invest the state's $132.8 billion pension fund.

"Today's sentencing decision by the Court sends a strong message to New Yorkers that those who abuse positions of power to line their own pockets will be held accountable by this office, Schneiderman, who inherited the probe when he took up his current post in January, said in a statement.

Last November, Morris plead guilty to a felony, forfeited $19 million of the fees he was paid by investment firms and money managers, and was permanently banned from New York's securities industry. This is the first sentencing decision resulting from the investigation.

Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat who was the attorney general before he became governor in January, led the probe and netted eight guilty pleas...

Wednesday, February 16, 2011

Workers toppled a dictator in Egypt, but might be silenced in Wisconsin

Workers toppled a dictator in Egypt, but might be silenced in Wisconsin
By Harold Meyerson
Washington Post
February 16, 2011

In Egypt, workers are having a revolutionary February. In the United States, by contrast, February is shaping up as the cruelest month workers have known in decades.

...But even as workers were helping topple the regime in Cairo, one state government in particular was moving to topple workers' organizations here in the United States. Last Friday, Scott Walker, Wisconsin's new Republican governor, proposed taking away most collective bargaining rights of public employees. Under his legislation, which has moved so swiftly through the newly Republican state legislature that it might come to a vote Thursday, the unions representing teachers, sanitation workers, doctors and nurses at public hospitals, and a host of other public employees, would lose the right to bargain over health coverage, pensions and other benefits. (To make his proposal more politically palatable, the governor exempted from his hit list the unions representing firefighters and police.) The only thing all other public-sector workers could bargain over would be their base wages, and given the fiscal restraints plaguing the states, that's hardly anything to bargain over at all.
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You might think that Walker came to this extreme measure after negotiations with public-sector unions had reached an impasse. In fact, he hasn't held such discussions. "I don't have anything to negotiate," Walker told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel last week. To underscore just how accompli he considered his fait, he vowed to call in the National Guard if protesting workers walked off the job or disrupted state services...

Thursday, February 10, 2011

Fresh conviction in Abramoff scandal: aide traded favors for World Series trip

Fresh conviction in Abramoff scandal: aide traded favors for World Series trip
Christian Science Monitor
By Warren Richey
February 10, 2011

A former congressional staff member was convicted on Thursday of charges that he accepted an all-expenses paid trip to the 2003 World Series in exchange for inserting amendments favorable to a company into the Federal Highway Bill.

Fraser Verrusio was found guilty of all three counts in his indictment following a 10-day trial in federal court in Washington, D.C.

The case is a spinoff from the investigation of former lobbyist Jack Abramoff. Mr. Verrusio’s conviction brings to 20 the number of lobbyists and public officials who have pleaded guilty or been convicted in the Abramoff scandal.

In addition to conspiring to accept an illegal gratuity and accepting that gratuity, Mr. Verrusio was convicted of failing to report the gifts on his financial disclosure statement...