Thread: Senator Dianne Feinstein Resigns

Feinstein Resigns
Senator exits MILCON following Metro exposé, vet-care scandal
By Peter Byrne

SEN. Dianne Feinstein has resigned from the Military Construction Appropriations subcommittee. As previously and extensively reviewed in these pages, Feinstein was chairperson and ranking member of MILCON for six years, during which time she had a conflict of interest due to her husband Richard C. Blum's ownership of two major defense contractors, who were awarded billions of dollars for military construction projects approved by Feinstein.

As MILCON leader, Feinstein relished the details of military construction, even micromanaging one project at the level of its sewer design. She regularly took junkets to military bases around the world to inspect construction projects, some of which were contracted to her husband's companies, Perini Corp. and URS Corp.

Perhaps she resigned from MILCON because she could not take the heat generated by Metro's expose of her ethics (which was partially funded by the Investigative Fund of the Nation Institute). Or was her work on the subcommittee finished because Blum divested ownership of his military construction and advanced weapons manufacturing firms in late 2005?

The MILCON subcommittee is not only in charge of supervising military construction, it also oversees "quality of life" issues for veterans, which includes building housing for military families and operating hospitals and clinics for wounded soldiers. Perhaps Feinstein is trying to disassociate herself from MILCON's incredible failure to provide decent medical care for wounded soldiers.

Two years ago, before the Washington Post became belatedly involved, the online magazine Salon.com exposed the horrors of deficient medical care for Iraq war veterans. While leading MILCON, Feinstein had ample warning of the medical-care meltdown. But she was not proactive on veteran's affairs.

Feinstein abandoned MILCON as her ethical problems were surfacing in the media, and as it was becoming clear that her subcommittee left grievously wounded veterans to rot while her family was profiting from the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. It turns out that Blum also holds large investments in companies that were selling medical equipment and supplies and real estate leases—often without the benefit of competitive bidding—to the Department of Veterans Affairs, even as the system of medical care for veterans collapsed on his wife's watch.

As of December 2006, according to SEC filings and www.fedspending.org, three corporations in which Blum's financial entities own a total of $1 billion in stock won considerable favor from the budgets of the Department of Defense and the Department of Veterans Affairs:

* Boston Scientific Corporation: $17.8 million for medical equipment and supplies; 85 percent of contracts awarded without benefit of competition.

* Kinetic Concepts Inc.: $12 million, medical equipment and supplies; 28 percent noncompetitively awarded.

* CB Richard Ellis: The Blum-controlled international real estate firm holds congressionally funded contracts to lease office space to the Department of Veterans Affairs. It also is involved in redeveloping military bases turned over to the private sector.

You would think that, considering all the money Feinstein's family has pocketed by waging global warfare while ignoring the plight of wounded American soldiers, she would show a smidgeon of shame and resign from the entire Senate, not just a subcommittee. Conversely, you'd think she might stick around MILCON to try and fix the medical-care disaster she helped to engineer for the vets who were suckered into fighting her and Bush's panoply of unjust wars.

http://www.metroactive.com/metro/03....igns-0712.html



More background posted : http://www.bigbigforums.com/news-inf...l#post95552096

Am I missing something? Because I surfed over to the San Francisco Chronicle website, and as of 10:55am Eastern, I see nothing about Feinstein's resigation. http://sfgate.com/




Check out Memeorandum.

http://www.memeorandum.com/070329/p3#a070329p3

Blogger reax is, yes, mostly from the right.

http://mypetjawa.mu.nu/archives/187158.php

Now that Sen. Dianne Feinstein has resigned under an ethical cloud from the Military Construction Appropriations subcommittee, where she sat while voting for appropriations worth billions to her husband's firms, I am wondering: Will she also be resigning from the Senate Rules Committee?





hhhmmmmmm.....

Still waiting for Dianne Feinstein's hometown newspaper, the San Francisco Chronicle, to cover her reported resignation from the Military Construction Appropriations subcommittee. Basic questions to be asked and answered: Did she or didn't she? And if she did, was it because of the reported ethical cloud over her head or not?

Last week, I shared a reader's e-mail exchange with the paper's reader representative promising independent investigative reporting from San Fran's paper of record.

Another reader sent a separate e-mail exchange he had with the paper's website news director. It reveals a fascinating blue-on-blue spat between the Bay Area old media and new media.

In one corner, you have the establishment, left-wing Chronicle--longtime cheerleader and endorser of Dianne Feinstein.

In the other corner, you have Peter Byrne -- left-left-wing, anti-war, anti-establishment investigative journalist funded by The Nation Institute and longtime thorn in the Feinstein/Blum partnership's side. http://www.peterbyrne.info/ http://www.peterbyrne.info/feinstein_files/index.htm

With that context in mind, here's the e-mail exchange. Note the sneering, threatened tone of the SFgate.com editor:

-----Original Message-----
From: Joe
Sent: Friday, March 30, 2007 5:18 PM
To: vk@sfgate.com
Subject: Did Diane Feinstein Resign from her Committee?

Dear SF Chronicle,

I have been watching your paper. There have been rumors on the internet that Diane Feinstein has resigned from her Defense Committee over conflicts of interest.

Have you any idea if this is true or false? If it is true, should you report it? Are you interested in news like this?

It would be shocking if a little internet page had a story several days before you figure it out. Maybe it wouldn't... maybe you are hoping no one will figure it out.

Sorry, the genie is out of the bottle. You have lost your ability to censor news. I will show my classes the internet story and then your story when it breaks. It is fun to show the kids about credibility.

Catch a clue!

From: "Vlae Kershner"
To: Joe S.
Subject: RE: Did Diane Feinstein Resign from her Committee?
Date: Fri, 30 Mar 2007 17:24:36 -0700

Thanks for writing. Our Washington bureau says it is not true. You should show the report to your class as an example of how special interests can disseminate phony news on the Internet.

-- Vlae Kershner, news director, SFGate.com

***

A little later, Kershner amended her his sneering:

From: "Vlae Kershner"
To: Joe S.
Subject: RE: Did Diane Feinstein Resign from her Committee?
Date: Fri, 30 Mar 2007 18:26:29 -0700

just to clarify my prior message, I'm told that what happened was that when the Democrats won control in January, she got off the Military Construction subcommittee to take the chair of Appropriations Subcommittee on Interior instead.

-----End Messages-----

Yes, but why? Why would she give up her powerful position on MILCON--after years as ranking member in the minority and subordinate to Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison--to take the less prestigious position? As she said herself while serving in the minority a few years ago: http://feinstein.senate.gov/05releas...cmte-assig.htm "With so many military and veterans’ facilities in my home state, I will be working to ensure that California has the resources to fund the projects it needs."

Why would California need her less now in that position as chair than when she was in the minority?

CNS reports it tried to get a statement from Feinstein on Friday with no luck.
http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewPolitics....20070402a.html

I also followed up and called Feinstein's office today for a statement.
The press office says it will get back to me.

In the meantime, it will be interesting to see just what exactly the San Francisco Chronicle determines was "phony" about Byrne's reporting and whether the paper's editorial board will also turn up its nose at Feinstein's reported conflicts of interest--which, as we all know, would be a non-stop, front-page crusade if Feinstein were a Republican...

***

Where's the rest of the MSM? The liberal blogs?

Howie Kurtz, the NYTimes, the LA Times, anybody: How about a profile of Peter Byrne? Who is this guy? Shouldn't he be an example of the kind of investigative citizen journalism the MSM prefers over opinion blogging? How much funding has The Nation provided him? What is driving him? Is his muck-raking more right than wrong, or what? What does he think of the Chronicle's derision? Or the strange bedfellows he is making with conservative bloggers/websites publicizing his work?

There are good stories waiting to be covered here.

Hello?

-----


Jason Smith had an e-mail exchange with Kershner, too:
http://www.texasrainmaker.com/

From: Jason Smith
Sent: Monday, April 02, 2007 1:00 PM
To: vk@sfgate.com
Subject: Dianne Feinstein coverage
Importance: High

Ms. Kershner,

I'm curious whether you see a potential story in the fact that Senator Dianne Feinstein, while sitting on the MILCON committee, approved billions of dollars in awards to contractors owned by her husband? Have you assigned this story to one of your investigative reporters? Have you received any comments from Feinstein's camp? Do you find it ironic that Feinstein remains on the Senate Ethics Committee despite this apparent conflict of interest on her part?

Basically, I'm just curious whether your paper sees a story here at all. I'm sure if this had been a Republican involved, your paper would've done much more investigation on much less evidence. How do you defend the appearance of bias?

Jason Smith
TexasRainmaker.com

His chastened response:

From: Vlae Kershner
To: Jason Smith
Sent: Monday, April 02, 2007 3:04 PM
Subject: RE: Dianne Feinstein coverage

I'm just the editor of the website -- we don't have any online-only reporters. Maybe you should redirect that question to Dick Rogers, the Chronicle's reader representative, at readerrep@sfchronicle.com

Jason writes: "Somehow, I just picture the hands flying in the air as if to say, 'whoa, I'm not involved, I'm innocent I tell ya!'"



http://michellemalkin.com/

Feinstein’s Cardinal shenanigans
By David Keene
April 30, 2007

Anyone who knows much about real power in Congress knows that almost every member of the House and Senate lusts after a seat on the Appropriations Committee and hopes one day to achieve the status of Cardinal. The Cardinals, of course, are the folks who chair the various Appropriations Committee subcommittees and literally control the billions of dollars that pass through their hands.

California Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D) chairs the Senate Rules Committee, but she’s also a Cardinal. She is currently chairwoman of the Interior, Environment and Related Agencies subcommittee, but until last year was for six years the top Democrat on the Military Construction, Veterans Affairs, and Related Agencies (or “Milcon”) sub-committee, where she may have directed more than $1 billion to companies controlled by her husband.

If the inferences finally coming out about what she did while on Milcon prove true, she may be on the way to morphing from a respected senior Democrat into another poster child for congressional corruption.

The problems stem from her subcommittee activities from 2001 to late 2005, when she quit. During that period the public record suggests she knowingly took part in decisions that eventually put millions of dollars into her husband’s pocket — the classic conflict of interest that exploited her position and power to channel money to her husband’s companies.

In other words, it appears Sen. Feinstein was up to her ears in the same sort of shenanigans that landed California Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham (R) in the slammer. Indeed, it may be that the primary difference between the two is basically that Cunningham was a minor leaguer and a lot dumber than his state’s senior senator.

Melanie Sloan, the executive director of Citizens for Responsible Ethics in Washington, or CREW, usually focuses on the ethical lapses of Republicans and conservatives, but even she is appalled at the way Sen. Feinstein has abused her position. Sloan told a California reporter earlier this month that while”there are a number of members of Congress with conflicts of interest … because of the amount of money involved, Feinstein’s conflict of interest is an order of magnitude greater than those conflicts.”

And the director of the Project on Government Oversight who examined the evidence of wrongdoing assembled by California writer Peter Byrne told him that “the paper trail showing Senator Feinstein’s conflict of interest is irrefutable.”

It may be irrefutable, but she almost got away without anyone even knowing what she was up to. Her colleagues on the subcommittee, for example, had no reason even to suspect that she knew what companies might benefit from her decisions because that information is routinely withheld to avoid favoritism. What they didn’t know was that her chief legal adviser, who also happened to be a business partner of her husband’s and the vice chairman of one of the companies involved, was secretly forwarding her lists of projects and appropriation requests that were coming before the committee and in which she and her husband had an interest — information that has only come to light recently as a result of the efforts of several California investigative reporters.

This adviser insists — apparently with a straight face — that he provided the information to Feinstein’s chief of staff so that she could recuse herself in cases where there might be a conflict. He says that he assumes she did so. The public record, however, indicates that she went right ahead and fought for these same projects.

During this period the two companies, URS of San Francisco and the Perini Corporation of Framingham, Mass., were controlled by Feinstein’s husband, Richard C. Blum, and were awarded a combined total of over $1.5 billion in government business thanks in large measure to her subcommittee. That’s a lot of money even here in Washington.

Interestingly, she left the subcommittee in late 2005 at about the same time her husband sold his stake in both companies. Their combined net worth increased that year with the sale of the two companies by some 25 percent, to more than $40 million.

In spite of the blatant appearance of corruption, no major publication has picked up on the story, the Senate Ethics Committee has reportedly let her slip by, and she is now chairing the Senate Rules Committee, which puts her in charge of making sure her colleagues act ethically and avoid the sorts of conflicts of interest with which she is personally and so obviously familiar.


http://thehill.com/david-keene/feins...007-04-30.html

Feinstein – She, FBI Didn’t Fail, Govt Needs More Power, Disarmed Citizens

Posted on June 14, 2016 by Rick Wells

The most disconcerting thing underlying the other scary facts is that this talking trash bag sits on the Senate Intelligence Committee and actually co-chairs it. The results of the dumbing-down of those efforts by her inclusion show in the interview, in her alliance with the corruption of this regime and in the events that take place all around us on a daily basis. They have no clue what they’re doing beyond being experts at sabotage and generally screwing things up.

The newly created species of talking vegetable, Senator Feinstein, says, “What I can tell you is the FBI has been going through his ‘cell phone computer’” to see if it connects him to anything or anyone else, so we’ll have to wait and see."

What’s a cell phone computer, Feinstein?

She doesn’t think there was any type of intelligence failure associated with the attack.

Of course she wouldn’t, she’s got a vested interest in covering her own flabby rear end, so despite the Islamic terrorist being investigated twice and put aside, there was no failure. Maybe if the FBI didn’t have to devote 150 agents to investigating the criminal she and her fellow Democrats are trying to slip into the White House they would have had the manpower to investigate a little further. Maybe if Jeh Johnson wasn’t spending all of his time kissing the butts of terror-inciting imams in his mosques across America marathon he’s have time to spend on defense rather than focusing on consorting with the terrorist enemy.

This ignorant buffoon says, “What it points out is the enormous unpredictability of exactly who is going to be stigmatized and moved to this kind of jihadism.”

She admits they can’t tell which Muslims are going to go Jihadi on us but yet campaigns, allied with the criminals Clinton and Obama, against a pause in the importation of Muslims, actually advocating to greatly accelerate the process. So it’s inevitable these attacks will happen and she will come out with that same pitiful, “how did this happen, don’t look at me” story the next time.

Just like with her comrade Hillary Clinton, Feinstein takes the opportunity to blame guns and to advocate for restricting the rights of the American people. The medicated moron says, “I happen to be the main author of a piece of legislation that was written actually by the Bush justice department.” Most of us never realized that she worked for the Bush administration in any capacity.

She said her bill provides a mechanism for the Attorney General to prohibit the transfer of a weapon to certain people. What that means is classes of people, those that an Attorney General, such as the political tool Loretta Lynch, who is dragging her cankles on indicting Hillary Clinton, would choose to designate as too dangerous for the Constitution to apply to them. Naturally, Feinstein’s body guards would be exempt. It’s got one of those catchy names, “No Guns for Terrorists,” but it could also be labeled “No Blame For Terrorists,” “No Guns for American Citizens” or “All Americans Are Terrorists,” given it’s content and impact.

She attempts to argue as if this latest Islamic terrorist hadn’t passed a background check, but he did, he worked as an armed security officer. Jake Tapper points out that the FBI had looked at this guy and turned him loose, questioning what impact or benefit her new law would have had.

There would have been none, but it’s not about fighting terrorism or protecting people, it’s about controlling us, all of us. Feinstein can’t argue that it would have made a difference, but “it would have given the AG the authority to keep him on the watch list, that’s all I can say.”

We know why she is attempting to attach a benefit that doesn’t exist and change the question about her gun-grabbing bill. They have to get our guns away by whatever means possible. Slaves have to be disarmed or their masters end up getting hurt.

Wait a minute Feinstein; is this bill about putting someone on a watch list or taking their right to own firearms away from them? Can’t the AG already put someone on a watch list? She just said the FBI put Mateen on it and then took him off. What this bill does, she indicates, is allow for people to be placed on a terror watch list indefinitely and there is surely a component that forbids firearm possession as well. It’s something she alluded to but chose not to specifically mention. We can trust Loretta Lynch or a future AG to be objective, at least as objective as gun-grabbers Feinstein, Obama, Holder and Clinton.

http://rickwells.us/feinstein-govt-n...rmed-citizens/