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Chicago public school bureaucrats skirted public competitive bidding rules to buy 30 cappuccino/espresso machines for $67,000, with most of the machines going unused because the schools they were ordered for had not asked for them, according to a report by the CPS Office of Inspector General. That was just one example of questionable CPS actions detailed in the inspector general's 2008 annual report. Others included high school staffers changing grades to pump up transcripts of student athletes and workers at a restricted-enrollment grade school falsifying addresses to get relatives admitted. In the case of the cappuccino machines, central office administrators...

New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson on Sunday announced that he was withdrawing his nomination to be President-elect Barack Obama's commerce secretary amid a grand jury investigation into how some of his political donors won a lucrative state contract.

Nobel Committees investigated for bribery Published: 18 Dec 08 06:52 CET Online: http://www.thelocal.se/16418/20081218/ New feature Double click on a word to get a translation Swedish prosecutors have launched a preliminary investigation into possible bribery after revelations that members of three Swedish Nobel Committees received free trips to China from the Chinese government. Earlier in December, Sveriges Radio reported that members of the three Nobel Committees for natural science – medicine, physics, and chemistry – traveled to China at the invitation of the country’s government to speak about what it takes to receive a Nobel Prize. Now public prosecutor Nils-Erik Schultz...

CHICAGO – Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich says he is not guilty of any criminal wrongdoing and plans to stay on the job. In his first official statement since his arrest on corruption charges last week, Blagojevich (blah-GOY'-Uh-vich) says he will fight until he takes his "last breath." ... The Democratic governor says he intends to "answer every allegation in a court of law."

TALLAHASSEE — The top Democrat in the Florida House considered the amount of money lawmakers gave to the state Democratic Party and their willingness to contribute in the future before he recommended who should sit on some of the state's most powerful legislative panels. "There may be three or four people that raised money that had (top) ranking positions, but that was not really a major consideration," Minority Leader Franklin Sands said Monday. Ben Wilcox, director of Florida Common Cause, said the possibility of a "quid pro quo" raises ethical and legal questions. "We all know that some committees are...

FRANKFURT, Germany – Siemens AG — rocked by a series of corruption cases that has cost the company both prestige and money — agreed Monday to pay more than $1 billion in fines in Germany and the U.S. as it moved a step forward in closing a dark chapter in its history. Munich-based Siemens agreed to pay more than $800 million in fines to settle long-standing corruption charges in the United States and another 395 million euros ($533.6 million) to European authorities. The announcements of the amounts of both fines came Monday. Siemens, which makes products ranging from wind turbines...

A very serious developing story is being heavily covered by German media, but Sweden's two major daily newspapers remain conspicuously and Swedishly silent: The Nobel Prize Committee is coming under scrutiny for possible criminal charges of bribery and corruption in connection with this year's award in medicine. On Monday, December 8th, two days before the award ceremony, it came to light that two Nobel affiliated corporations—Nobel Media and Nobel Webb—have in the past six months received an undisclosed amount said to be "many millions" from Swedish/American pharmaceutical giant Astra Zeneca, which benefits financially from the award given to German Harald...

Barack Obama's choice to be his White House chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, is coming under mounting pressure to make a full disclosure about his contacts with the disgraced governor of Illinois over the billowing Senate "seat for sale" scandal. Federal investigators are looking into communication between Emanuel and Rod Blagojevich, the governor who was last week charged with trying to sell the Senate seat vacated by Obama to the highest bidder. -snip- Blagojevich is expected today to respond to calls for him to quit. According to the Illinois attorney general, Lisa Madigan, he will either resign or agree temporarily...

Blagojevich refuses to budge NBC Nightly News VIDEO: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3032619/vp/28200681#28200681&gt1=43001

The Other American Auto Industry Plenty of car makers make a go of it in this country--they're just non-union and not headquartered in Detroit. West Point, Georgia Drew Ferguson IV is a 42-year-old dentist whose family has lived in this town, population 3,300, "since God put us here." To be precise, the family arrived eight generations ago. Ferguson went off to the University of Georgia, then on to dental school, after which he came back to West Point. He and his wife, whom he met in college, have four kids. A year ago, Ferguson was elected mayor. "There's a reason...

Extorting Children's Hospital is a new political low. Chicagoans and Illinoisans love political scandal the way that Milanese love opera. We trade recollections, like baseball cards, about the secretary of state (Paul Powell) who stashed money in shoeboxes, and the Chicago mayor (Harold Washington) whose birthday was April 15 but never filed his income tax return. Rod Blagojevich stands a chance to be the fourth Illinois governor in recent history, and the second in a row, to wind up in prison. This run suggests that Illinoisans are indifferent to political corruption, and it's hard to argue with such an impressive...

WXYZ) Sources tell Action News that the White House and U.S. automakers have reached a deal that could prevent a collapse of the industry. IN THE VIDEO PLAYER ON THE RIGHT, ACTION NEWS REPORTER TOM WAIT SAYS THAT A DEAL HAS BEEN REACHED BUT THAT AN ANNOUNCEMENT WILL NOT COME FRIDAY NIGHT Our source says the agreement with the Bush administration will mirror the bill that passed the House. We do know the White House and officials from GM have been in talks for several hours. The negotiations may also involve the Federal Reserve. President Bush is back in Washington...

America wanted change and we sure got it. We elected a politician who looked and sounded fresh and new and different (and don't forget "clean" as Senator Biden once remarked), and promised that magic word "change." Aren't we lucky? It appears that the change we got is that we've moved Chicago machine-style politics into the White House. We found out on Tuesday what that business model consists of- the good Governor of Illinois was arrested for allegedly trying to sell Barack Obama's United States Senate seat. Yes, I said sell Obama's seat to the highest bidder. It's nice to know...

<p>President-elect Barack Obama’s chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, refused to take questions from reporters this morning about whether he was the Obama “advisor” named in the criminal complaint against Gov. Rod Blagojevich.</p> <p>The complaint states Blagojevich wanted a promise of a high-level appointment or some other reward for Blagojevich in exchange for Blagojevich naming Obama’s friend Valerie Jarrett to replace him in the U.S. Senate.</p>

Sweet catch by Tapper, showing why he got that promotion. Obama today…“I had no contact with the governor or his office and so I was not aware of what was happening, ” Obama told reporters today in Chicago. “It’s a sad day for Illinois. Beyond that, I don’t think it’s appropriate to comment.” …versus Axelrod on November 23, as seen below. Be sure to read Tapper’s post, as he has plenty more on The One’s long history as a friend of — and advisor to — Blago. Axelrod himself begged off Blagojevich’s first gubernatorial campaign because “I was concerned about...

<p>A source said today that Gov. Rod Blagojevich was taken into federal custody at his North Side home this morning. The U.S. attorney's office would not confirm the information, and a spokesman for the governor did not immediately return a phone call for comment.</p>

An Atlantic City Councilman involved in a sex-tape bribery scandal has filed a lawsuit against the men who filmed his encounter with a prostitute.In the lawsuit, Councilman Gene Robinson claims he was humiliated and suffered severe mental anguish after a November 2006 videotape of his encounter with a prostitute was released to the public in an attempt to force him to resign his council seat.Prosecutors allege former City Council President Craig Callaway helped plan the luring and videotaping of Robinson in an oral sex encounter with a woman at a roadside motel. Robinson then was allegedly threatened with the video...

State Senator Dianne Wilkerson, facing open scorn from her colleagues and the possibility of a humiliating vote to strip her of her seat, resigned yesterday from the office she held for nearly 16 years, leaving behind a career punctuated by last month's arrest on federal bribery charges. Wilkerson submitted a two-sentence letter of resignation to the Senate president, handwritten in cursive on a blank sheet of paper, at 9:45 a.m.

WASHINGTON – Barack Obama's campaign has approached Illinois Rep. Rahm Emanuel about possibly serving as White House chief of staff, officials said Thursday as the marathon presidential race entered its final, frenzied stretch with a Democratic tilt. The disclosure came as Republican John McCain, in need of a comeback, focused on pocketbook issues amid fresh signs of a recession. "Ohio is hurting now, people in Ohio are having trouble staying in their homes, keeping their jobs," he said as he set out on a two-day bus tour of the state.

I don't have time right now to check to see if any of those newspaper editors and columnists who are calling for Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens to resign are also endorsing Sen. Barack Obama. If any are doing both they are hypocrites and probably partisan or even racist. Sen. Ted Stevens was recently convicted of not reporting various gifts and home remodeling work from a powerful oil services industry company. Sen. Barack Obama received money from the University of Chicago hospital in the form of a doubling of his wife's salary after he was elected to the Senate and then...

“I first began to fathom the extent of Nadhmi Auchi's reach and corrupting influence when I was given responsibility for monitoring illegal transfers of technology and munitions to Iraq as well as overseeing all coalition transportation and communications reconstruction in Iraq." ### Barack Obama has been appropriately strident in his condemnation of the mortgage-based financial corruption which nearly led to the collapse of the investment banking system in the United States. But there are some strong smelling financial skeletons in his own closet. Obama has his own personal housing crisis that is tied not into Fanny Mae, but into a...

The financial panic has opened a new front in Barack Obama's supposed war on lobbyists. "We're here," Mr. Obama said this week by way of explaining the cause of our financial problems, "because for too long, the doors of Washington have been thrown open to an army of lobbyists and special interests." Talk like this is political elevator music: fuzzy and more or less constant. Yet there's a reason promises to transform the ways of Washington keep coming. To wit, would-be saviors like Mr. Obama are never willing to discipline themselves and their allies, only some other guy who...

REST ASSURED, Philadelphia. Come Election Day, there will be street money. According to U.S. Rep. Bob Brady, the local Democratic Party chairman, Sen. Barack Obama's general-election presidential campaign in Philadelphia will be run different from his primary operation, which relied more on volunteers than on Democratic ward leaders and did not provide street money on Election Day. "We're not going to pay for votes or pay for turnout," Obama said before the Pennsylvania primary.

Talk about taking a bite out of crime! For two years, a Brooklyn thug sat in an Oregon jail awaiting trial for a coldblooded murder, and all the fat felon could think about was food - a bucket of greasy chicken, a mouthful of lasagna, a slice of pizza. So when prosecutors offered to buy Tremayne Durham, 36, a fast-food buffet in exchange for a guilty plea that would land him behind bars, likely for the rest of his life, he bit right in. The 275-pound convicted rapist admitted he had shot a man to death over a failed business...

Has James Hansen, head of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, been taking bribes from George Soros and others? I'm not an attorney so I don't know if Hansen has actually done anything illegal. However, as a political scientist the situation definitely has an odor to it. There is no legitimate reason for any private body to spend $750,000 to "package" a government official the way George Soros allegedly did for James Hansen. There is no legitimate reason for a government official to receive a grant from a private research organization for supporting one of its causes as James...

Capping the highest-profile case to come out of City Hall "pay-to-play" corruption investigations in the administration of former Mayor James Hahn, former commissioner Leland Wong was convicted Thursday of more than a dozen felony charges, including bribery, in connection with taking $100,000 from a company doing business with the city. Wong, 51, was found guilty of 14 felony charges, including one count of bribery, two counts of conflict of interest, one count of perjury, seven counts of theft by embezzlement and three counts of filing false tax returns. But the jury also acquitted Wong on six other counts of theft...

Imagine yourself to be the PM of the PC kingdom of Sweden, Northern Europe. You'd face a situation of non-european mass immigration gone out of hand, while you simultaneously dispose of government vaults bulging with money donated by/stolen from humane and well educated/obedient and brainwashed Swedish tax payers. What would your decision be? Bribery is immoral, but sometimes it's just too tempting. The article (the source is SR/SVT, Sweden's equivalent to BBC): "Few refugees here are taking advantage of money from the Swedish government to subsidize returns home. Individual asylum-seekers from Iraq, Afghanistan or Somalia can get more than 3000...

It starts in his home state of Illinois, as Alec MacGillis reports for the Washington Post: Obama’s advisers have pointed to his success in winning over “downstate” Illinoisans as a sign of his electability, but political analysts question the claim. Obama lost most of downstate Illinois in his Democratic primary race for U.S. Senate in 2004, and his big win in the general election that year came against Alan Keyes, a black conservative with a Maryland address. In this year’s presidential primary, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) beat Obama in southern Illinois’ struggling coal counties, highlighting the same weakness he...

A federal judge has refused to dismiss bribery charges against Rep. William Jefferson (D-La.). Jefferson is accused of orchestrating a complicated, and multi-layered scheme to receive bribes from companies seeking business in Western Africa. Proving bribery against a lawmaker is difficult because prosecutors must show that the defendant provided an “official act” such as a voting a certain way or sponsoring legislation in return for money or items he received. His lawyers argued that Jefferson didn’t do anything in his capacity as a congressman that could be considered a bribe. U.S. District Court Judge T.S. Ellis III turned that legal...

A federal court jury this afternoon acquitted former Memphis City Council member Edmund Ford Jr. on charges of taking bribes in 2006 in return for his vote and influence on a development and billboard project. The jury of seven women and five men returned its verdict at about 4 p.m. after deliberating the better portion of two days. As a smiling Ford walked out of the federal court room, he said in a loud voice, “My Lord, the Savior is awesome. He is awesome. I just love my Lord.” Ford, 52, a mortician, was indicted on three counts of extortion...

The National Fraud Unit now believes Prime Minister Ehud Olmert made "personal use" of the funds he received from New York financier Morris Talansky, a senior law enforcement official confirmed, as a media-ban on the criminal investigation was lifted Wednesday evening. "Talansky transferred money to Olmert for personal use, and not just for campaign expenses," the official said. Olmert has claimed that the stream of cash envelopes he received from Talansky over a period of years was used to fund election campaigns, and to cover campaign deficits - but his assertion is now openly being challenged by police. The charge...

A New York financier was sentenced Friday to more than eight years in federal prison for laundering bribes to former U.S. Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham. A tearful Thomas Kontogiannis apologized and pleaded for leniency, but District Judge Larry Burns ordered him to serve eight years and one month in prison. Prosecutors wanted the maximum 10-year sentence. "You caused people to think ... this (system) doesn't work," Burns told Kontogiannis. "I just hope the opportunity is given to me to make good to the people that I let down," Kontogiannis said. Kontogiannis, 59, pleaded guilty one count of money laundering in...

DNC Superdelegate Puts His Vote Up For Sale Steven Ybarra Wants $20 Million For His Vote SACRAMENTO, Calif. (CBS13) ― In this tight battle for the Democratic nomination we've heard a lot about the candidates courting superdelegates. But, one superdelegate is courting the candidates. He says he'll sell his vote for a price. A very high price: $20 million. Steven Ybarra of Sacramento says that eight-figure price is peanuts for the presidency.

TOP 14,500 RICHEST FAMILY The Clintons left the White House burdened by debt but have earned $109m (£55m) in the past eight years, putting them among the 14,500 richest families in the country and presenting a stark contrast to the impoverished families championed by her campaign. AIRFORCE 2 The former president reeled in at least $12.6m - and a possible further $2.7m last year - from a business partnership with his friend Ron Burkle, the supermarket magnate and financier. Bill Clinton has his own room in Burkle’s mansion in Los Angeles and travels so frequently on Burkle’s private jet that...

In 2006, former premier Lucien Bouchard and several business leaders blamed the not-in-my-backyard syndrome - NIMBY - for much of the Montreal metropolitan area's "immobilisme." The criticism followed the cancellation of two projects that had stirred public protests - a casino near Pointe St. Charles and the Suroît power plant. Despite the scolding, citizens remain unrepentant and as pesky as ever. Protests against noisy aircraft over the West Island, for example, are giving headaches to airport officials trying to accommodate increasing numbers of flights. Protests on the North Shore are also causing problems for the expansion of a smelly regional...

Presidential hopeful Barack Obama has released a list of $740 million in earmark requests he made in the past three years, and it includes $1 million for the hospital where his wife Michelle is a vice president. The request for $1 million for the University of Chicago Medical Center was to help pay for construction of a new pavilion. “I can tell you with 100 percent certainty that Michelle Obama was not part of our lobbying over the request, not in any way,” Kelly Sullivan, another vice president at the medical center, told the New York Times. In any case,...

Mark Twain once remarked that “America has no native criminal class, except perhaps the Congress.” He was exaggerating, but not by too much. I’ve spend long years in Washington, and worked with many people in the government, both elected and appointed. I’ve observed two central problems: it is so easy, once you’re in a position of power, to casually reach out and line your pockets with the flood of cash that is always flowing by your door, The other problem is that Washington is inhabited by a large number of people who pulled out all the stops, and skated close...

La. Rep. Jefferson appeals judge's ruling; trial to be delayedAssociated Press - February 20, 2008 6:24 PM ET McLEAN, Va. (AP) - The trial of Louisiana Congressman William Jefferson, who's charged with bribery, will be delayed so an appellate court can hear arguments on whether his status as a congressman protects him from prosecution. Jefferson's trial was scheduled to start Monday. Defense lawyers filed their appeal today in federal court in Alexandria. The appeal had been expected since earlier this month, when U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis the Third rejected the argument that the 16-count indictment should be tossed because...

SAN DIEGO A defense contractor has been sentenced to 12 years in federal prison for bribing former U.S. Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham with cash, meals, trips and other gifts in exchange for nearly $90 million in Pentagon work. Brent Wilkes showed no emotion as U.S. District Judge Larry Burns delivered the sentence Tuesday in San Diego.

Jefferson strategies may be incompatible One defense Rep. William Jefferson has mounted to contest federal bribery charges against him might be undermining another defense he has raised. Jefferson contends he shouldn't be charged with public bribery because he never performed "official acts," such as voting or introducing legislation, to promote business ventures in Africa. He also has tried to get the bribery charges thrown out by saying the grand jury that indicted him in June heard details of his legislative activities in violation of the Constitution's "speech or debate" clause. But in a written ruling last week, U.S. District Judge...

February 10, 2008 Saudi royal Prince Bandar Bin Sultan's assets frozen Grant Ringshaw PRINCE Bandar Bin Sultan, the former Saudi Arabian ambassador to America, has been hit by a court order in effect freezing some of his US assets, as part of a class-action lawsuit over bribery allegations at British defence giant BAE Systems. A Michigan pension scheme ? the City of Harper Woods Employees’ Retirement System ? has been granted a restraining order, according to documents filed in the US district of Columbia and seen by The Sunday Times. The order, granted last Tuesday, blocks Bandar from transferring out...

SAN DIEGO – Federal probation officials are recommending that Brent Wilkes, the Poway defense contractor who was convicted of bribing former Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham, should be sentenced to 60 years in prison, according to court records. Wilkes was scheduled to be sentenced next Monday, but that has been postponed until Feb. 19 at the request of his lawyer, Mark Geragos. In court papers, Geragos said he needed more time to analyze and challenge the report from the federal probation office, which he received Jan. 15 – later than required under court rules. Such a lengthy sentence recommendation, even in...

A STUDY that claimed 650,000 people were killed as a result of the invasion of Iraq was partly funded by the antiwar billionaire George Soros. Soros, 77, provided almost half the £50,000 cost of the research, which appeared in The Lancet, the medical journal. Its claim was 10 times higher than consensus estimates of the number of war dead. The study, published in 2006, was hailed by antiwar campaigners as evidence of the scale of the disaster caused by the invasion, but Downing Street and President George Bush challenged its methodology. New research published by The New England Journal of...

Jefferson's help had a price, feds sayPair expected to testify on incinerator firm Monday, December 24, 2007 By Bruce Alpert WASHINGTON -- He is a former aide to the late Sen. Russell Long, D-La., who became an energy lobbyist. She is a Florida businesswoman who has invested in a number of struggling businesses with potential for big profits. What James Creaghan and Noreen Wilson have in common, according to the Justice Department, is a reliance on U.S. Rep. William Jefferson, D-New Orleans, to help win contracts in western Africa. The government says that in return for that help, the congressman...

A remix of hillary's 'Presents' television ad being shown non stop in Iowa and New Hampshire.

BILOXI, Miss. -- Court records showed through ties to attorney Richard "Dickie" Scruggs, P.L. Blake will earn $50 million. The Sun Herald reported Blake is earning that money for clipping newspaper articles and alerting Scruggs to maneuvering in political "cloakrooms," as Scruggs put it, from Mississippi to Washington. Scruggs has said that Blake will earn $50 million in fees over 20 years from Scruggs' share of tobacco settlements. Mike Moore, who as Mississippi's attorney general guided the tobacco litigation, has said he was unaware Scruggs is paying Blake such a large sum. Accounts of how Blake earned the money are...

He is a former minister from Hope, Arkansas (yes of course we know who else came from Hope and it is not a fun coincidence). He makes jokes that he knows nothing about foreign policy. It is not funny. He just proved how little he does know. If he ever wants to be taken seriously by anyone, he should not delegate his articles on the topic to neophyte and left-leaning ghost writers. An article supposedly under his byline in the new issue of Foreign Affairs says: "American foreign policy needs to change its tone and attitude, open up, and reach...

Delay sought in feds' bribery trialJefferson team cites mounds of evidence Wednesday, By Bruce Alpert December 05, 2007 WASHINGTON -- Attorneys for Rep. William Jefferson, D-New Orleans, asked a federal judge Tuesday to delay the congressman's scheduled Jan. 16 public corruption trial, arguing that the volume of material produced by prosecutors -- including hours of secretly recorded conversations -- doesn't provide sufficient time for an adequate defense. "The defendant's Sixth Amendment right to a jury trial and his right to counsel will be nothing but hollow promises if his lawyers are not accorded a fair opportunity to digest the vast...

63-year-old Hanford man on Thursday pleaded not guilty to federal charges that he solicited bribes from contractors doing work at Fresno's Veterans Affairs Medical Center. Federal officials allege that on numerous occasions between 2001 and 2004, Rodolfo Mallari Pagsanjan accepted cash payments from two contractors to certify construction work at the Fresno VA, promised future work to them and allowed them to inflate the value of change orders for construction contracts. One of the contractors accused of involvement with Pagsanjan also was in federal court Thursday. Clovis resident Masoud Mirhadi, 65, pleaded not guilty to charges that he bribed Pagsanjan....

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- An electronic privacy group challenging President Bush's domestic spying program scored a minor victory after a judge ordered the federal government to release information about lobbying efforts by telecommunications companies to protect them from prosecution. The Electronic Frontier Foundation in January 2006 filed a class-action suit against AT&T Inc., accusing the company of illegally making communications on its networks available to the National Security Agency without warrants. Congress is now considering changing the law to grant retroactive immunity to telecommunications companies that would protect them from such court challenges. "Any attempt for immunity is aimed at...