Daily Archives: July 31, 2012

Greed and Corruption — No Comments
31
Jul 12

NY board keeps secret donors to pro-Cuomo lobbyist

New administration same old corruption in New York:

Boss Tweed

New York State’s Joint Commission on Public Ethics will keep secret the vast majority of millionaire donors who funded a lobbying group that promotes Gov. Andrew Cuomo.

The board decided Tuesday that a law passed a year ago requires revealing only donors to lobbying groups since July 1.

The Committee to Save New York has spent more than $10 million in an unprecedented, campaign-like TV ad blitz supporting Cuomo. Now it won’t have to reveal most of its contributors dating to December 2010.

The committee has helped boost Cuomo’s popularity through ads touting his accomplishments.

It recently received $2 million from gambling interests as Cuomo sought to expand casino gambling.

Common Cause has said the measure gives lobbyists a “grace period” from a law that the general public doesn’t get.

Government Waste — No Comments
31
Jul 12

Probe finds GSA paid additional $30M in undisclosed bonuses

This is just as outrageous as the massive Wall St. bonuses. In this case it’s your tax dollars that are going to pay them. They shouldn’t be getting a cent of bonuses at a time like this in our history:

The U.S. General Services Administration doled out an additional $30 million in undisclosed bonuses during the previous fiscal year, an investigation by WUSA-TV has revealed.

That brings the agency’s bonus pool to almost $44 million for fiscal 2011, which began Oct. 1, 2010, and ended Sept. 30. Pay records for federal workers released in May to the Asbury Park Press revealed the agency paid more than $13 million in bonuses to GSA employees for the period.

WUSA also says the payroll records show the GSA paid more than $8 million in overtime during fiscal 2011, with 85 employees earning $20,000 or more in OT.

WUSA and the Asbury Park Press are owned by Gannett, USA TODAY’s parent company.

The GSA has been under fire over disclosures of lavish spending for conferences, awards and perks after the former acting administrator helped organize the now-infamous $822,000 GSA convention in Las Vegas.

Terrorism/War — No Comments
31
Jul 12

Troops allegedly kill boy, 6, fleeing Syria

Source:

The family crept across farmland under night’s cover, heading for the border, when Syrian troops opened fire. Bullets whizzed around them as they broke into a mad dash, survivors say. The 6-year-old boy, holding his mother’s hand, broke away and ran ahead. He nearly made it into Jordan when he fell dead, a bullet in his neck.

The boy, killed in the early hours Friday, was the first Syrian shot to death by border guards while trying to escape into neighboring Jordan from the bloodshed of their homeland’s 17-month-old uprising against President Bashar Assad. The slaying underlined not only the dangers of the passage, but the fine line Syria’s neighbors have to tread in trying to help Syrians while avoiding being dragged into the conflict.

Bilal el-Lababidi and his parents were in a group of around a dozen Syrians trying to sneak into Jordan just after midnight, the latest of more than 140,000 Syrians who have taken refuge in the kingdom.

“He is a martyr who is now in a better place. I’m sure he is in heaven,” said el-Lababidi’s mother before the boy’s burial later Friday at a cemetery in the northern Jordanian city of Ramtha. She made it across with her two younger sons – but her husband fled back amid the shooting.