The Corruption Continues
As we have seen in Part One and Part Two, every part of her success was thanks to Affirmative Action, her gender, her color and her close relationship with Willie Brown and his hold of the Democratic Machine. In 2009, Kamala, again helped by Willie Brown and the democratic machine, decided to run for the California Attorney General office. Even with all of the cash and strength of the Democrats and Brown, she barely defeated LA County District Attorney Steve Cooley by only one-half of one percent of the vote. In addition to continue to shield child abusive priests and the Catholic Church, she widened her selective prosecution to include even larger friends, family and, most important, campaign contributors.
Taking Care of Her Family
One of the areas that was a major target of investigation and prosecution was with false claims by the makers of nutritional supplements and dietary supplements. Fourteen state Attorney Generals from around the country, with whom Kamala had joined on other issues, were asking the FTC to investigate some of these companies based on false advertising and not showing ingredients on their labels properly. Kamala did not join them in this investigation.
Obama’s DOJ targeted some of these companies claiming that they made exaggurated claims that were unsupported by scientific evidence. Some of these companies included GNC, Herbalife, AdvoCare International, Vitamin Shoppe, Walgreens and others. The question is, why didn’t Kamala join in going after these companies, since she is so much for protecting people?
Perhaps a glimpse into her personal life will give us the answer. In August of 2014, Kamala married Douglas Emhoff, a corporate attorney defending corporations from charges such as unfair business practices and intellectual property law matters. Originally having a small law firm, he eventually became partner-in-charge of the Los Angeles office of Venable, LLP, which was an international law firm with offices throughout the country. They represented many large corporations, many of which had matters sitting on the desk of the Kamala Harris’ AG office.
Herbalife was one of those big clients, paying for thousands of hours of fees for work done by Venable, LLP. There was a standing court order against Herbalife dating back to 1986 regarding its false claims and practices. Kamala declined to enforce those orders and even refused to provide additional funding to the San Diego office of the Attorney General. While deciding how to handle Herbalife, their lobbyists held many fundraisers for Kamala, including a luncheon fundraiser held by the Podesta Group in Washington DC in February, 2015.
The end result of that was that in August, 2015 her husband, Douglas Emhoff, was promoted to managing director of West Coast operations for Venable, PCC. It’s good to have an attorney general in the family.
The Methane Leak That Was Never Prosecuted
Kamala’s history of “selective prosecution” did not end with just family. As we saw in Part 2, she gave preferential treatment to friends of Willie Brown. That continued when she became California Attorney General.
In late 2015 and early 2016, Sempra Energy suffered one of the worst methane leaks in United States history. A metal lining that had been exposed to ground water for years had corroded and ruptured. The result was that methane gas leaked into the atmosphere for more than100 days. We have all heard about Kamala’s crusade against fossil fuels (even though that rhetoric has subsided in order to win favor with voters in some battleground states), so this appeared to be a natural issue she would take up. She failed to take any action.
The reason she did nothing was because in June of 2013 Kathleen Brown was named to the Board of Directors of Sempra Energy. Kathleen happened to be the sister of then governor Jerry Brown, who was also a close political ally of Kamala’s and endorsed her as a candidate for the Senate. Kamala did nothing regarding Sempra and, as we all know, was rewarded with a seat in the Senate of the United States.
“Stood Up to the Big Banks” Failure
One of Kamala’s big brags on her ads is how she “Stood up to the Big Banks” and made them pay more to help people keep their homes after the financial crisis caused by easy credit for home loans. She says she wanted more than what a group of AGs from around the country had obtained as a group from the banks. What she got them to agree to was $20 billion, which was supposed to help people keep their homes through modifications of loans.
The reality is quite different from the intent, based on failure to ensure that the funds would be used as intended. Of the funds paid by the “Big Banks”, 75% was used to approve short sales, either through reduction in the mortgage balance or cancellation of second mortgages. The money went right back to the banks that had paid it. These were losses that they were going to sustain anyway through foreclosure, so it was a wash for them.
On top of that, they would issue a 1099-C (Cancellation of Debt) to the home seller for the reduction in the amount of the loan. This resulted in a tax deduction for the banks and, in many cases, a tax owed for the homeowner. Tax law views a cancellation of debt as income received by the one who’s debt was forgiven, even though there was no money changing hands between the parties.
Kamala’s grandstanding provided absolutely no help to most of the people who suffered losses from the burst of the housing bubble caused by Democrats wanting to make loans easier for those who really did not qualify for the mortgages they received. Now, she wants to repeat the process with her $25,000 loan assistance for first time buyers. Get ready for another bubble and more disaster.
Trading Women’s Health Services for Campaign Contributions
One of the powers of the Attorney General in California is to approve certain transactions, such as the sale of a hospital system. A non-profit group known as the Daughters of Charity operated a group of 4 hospitals within California. In 2014, they were having difficulty keeping the system operating, having lost $148 million the year before. They didn’t want to close the hospitals, which served mostly rural communities, so the sought buyers.
The bidding lasted 13 months, and ultimately a bid from Prime Healthcare Services was selected. Their bid was accepted because they were the only bidder who committed to honor the $250 million unfunded pension plan for 17,000 current and former employees, honor their union contracts, commit $250 million in capital expenditures, and maintain all the facilities for at least 5 years so that these rural communities would not be suddenly abandoned. Prime had purchased and saved 35 troubled hospitals in the past.
All that was necessary for the transaction to go forward was the approval of Kamala Harris, then the Attorney General for California.
Although the transaction had much support from the public and the media, one group was opposed to it. That was the United Healthcare Workers (UHW), and it’s parent union, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU). Prime had a healthy relationship with most unions, but not so much with SEIU, which wanted to fully unionize all Prime hospitals only under SEIU, which Prime rejected.
SEIU is a powerful union, and they knew how the system worked in California. They basically threatened Kamala by giving her an ultimatum. Sink the deal with Prime and they will support her in the race for the Senate with $125,000 in donations, which would go somewhere else if she refused. Between UHW and SEIU, they had already donated more than $200,000 to her AG campaigns. She accommodated their demands by “approving” the sale to Prime, provided they met over 300 conditions. The deal fell apart.
The end result was that Kamala approved a sale to Blue Mountain Capital, firm that had no hospital or medical experience whatsoever, to manage the hospitals through one of its subsidiaries. Blue Mountain was a big financial firm that had been deeply involved in credit swaps during the housing fiasco in 2008. Coincidentally, the man who headed up Blue Capital, Andrew Feldstein, along with his wife had donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to democrats.
Unlike what Prime Healthcare had agreed to do, Blue Mountain was under no obligation to maintain the services of the hospitals, such as women’s health services, many of which were terminated.
The Corruption Will Continue
A Zebra cannot cover up its stripes and suddenly become a race horse. As shown in Part 1, Kamala has always depended on her gender and race to get an advantage, as well as some personal relationships that brought her additional dollars and notoriety.
In Part 2, she showed that her first loyalty was not to victims, but to campaign contributors or the friends of powerful people, like Willie Brown. In this Part 3, we showed that again, her alegience is to campaign contributors and doing what she is told.
