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The $200,000 in cumulative donations to McAuliffe this cycle is not the first time that Burkle, a major Democrat donor, has given to the former governor. Between 2013 and 2021, McAuliffe has received over $450,000 from Burkle for his campaigns and his political action committee, Common Good VA. The billionaire supporting McAuliffe’s campaign is also a reported associate of both Epstein and former President Clinton, having been named in the convicted sex criminal’s infamous "black book" as well as Epstein’s private jet travel log. Additionally, it has also been reported that his custom-outfitted Boeing 757 with a bed chamber is...

Bill Clinton took two trips with Ghislaine Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein - including one on the pedophile's private jet - that have not been previously disclosed. A new podcast reveals that the former President flew on Epstein's jet, which was dubbed the 'Lolita Express', in February 2005 while visiting Japan, Taiwan and China. Clinton also flew on a private jet owned by billionaire Ron Burkle with Maxwell as a passenger during a trip to India in November 2003.

Strangely, the media have suddenly taken an intense interest in the case of pedophile and major Democratic donor Jeffrey Epstein. In 2005, the Palm Beach police were told by the mother of a young girl in West Palm Beach that her daughter had been brought to the Democratic donor's mansion and asked to have sex with him for money. This kicked off an intensive, one-year undercover investigation. The police sifted through Epstein's garbage and interviewed 17 witnesses, including the housemen, who told of sex toys and dildos left behind after the underage girls left. One of Epstein's procurers, a 20-year-old...

A source on President Bill Clinton‘s legal team has denied reports that they are in the middle of negotiations with four woman accusing him of sexual assault after he left office. An article in The Daily Mail said that four women allege that Clinton assaulted them in the early 2000s when he was working with investor Ron Burkle. The women were reportedly Burkle employees at the time. The report said that the four women are each threatening to bring lawsuits against Clinton and hold a press conference if they don’t get paid. The article said that negotiations with Clinton’s legal...

We don't know what Bill Clinton did or didn't do in company with Jeffrey Epstein. But we certainly know what Epstein did and, almost as outrageously, what he got away with doing. Some of the most shocking allegations against Epstein surfaced only after the conclusion of an FBI probe, in civil suits brought by his victims: for example, the claim that three 12-year-old French girls were delivered to him as a birthday present. ... Sex crimes of the kind Roberts alleges took place typically carry a term of 10 to 20 years in federal prison. Yet when all was said...

As Hillary Clinton and her surrogates scour the country for mega-donors, the one left-leaning billionaire they are not approaching is the one who knows the first couple more intimately than any of the others. Ron Burkle figures that over the years, he's raised about $10 million for the Clintons at his sprawling Beverly Hills estate. After Bill Clinton left the White House, he and Burkle jetted around the world in an unconventional partnership that netted the former president about $15 million and Burkle entree into the palaces and offices of world dignitaries. For years, when Clinton dropped into Los Angeles,...

She hasn’t even announced, but the question has already resurfaced: Will Bill Clinton’s baggage derail Hillary Clinton’s presidential hopes? Just a few weeks ago, reports broke that Bill Clinton had flown at least 11 times on “The Lolita Express” — a private plane owned by the mysterious financier and convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein. According to Virginia Roberts, who claims to have been one of Epstein’s many teenaged sex slaves, Clinton also visited Epstein’s private Caribbean retreat, known as “Orgy Island.”

After getting stiffed by the city of San Bernardino for millions in payments, CalPERS is objecting to the city's right to file for bankruptcy protection. In a lengthy court filing late Wednesday, the California Public Employees' Retirement System suggested San Bernardino is using bankruptcy protection to avoid paying its debts. The city owes CalPERS about $5.2 million. The city's action "raises a serious question of whether its underlying purpose has been merely to 'buy time' and 'evade creditors,'" CalPERS wrote in a filing in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Riverside.

Federal regulators are investigating whether California violated securities laws and failed to provide adequate disclosure about its giant public pension fund, according to a person with knowledge of the investigation. The Securities and Exchange Commission normally polices companies, but last year it brought its first enforcement action ever against a state, accusing New Jersey of securities fraud for misleading bond investors about the condition of its pension fund. The commission signaled, in its settlement with New Jersey, that it was going to look more broadly at the pension disclosures of states and cities. The fund, the California Public Employees’ Retirement...

Ok, Ron, now what? Investor Ron Burkle on Tuesday suffered a double loss in his fight against Barnes & Noble. Shareholders beat back his proposals to elect him and two other director nominees, and his suggestion to raise the threshold for the company’s poison pill that has been the source of tension between Burkle and the bookseller. Burkle is the second-largest holder of Barnes & Noble shares, and so far he isn’t going quietly. In a statement, his Yucaipa Cos. blamed the loss of the shareholder vote on an “insurmountable insider voting advantage” for Barnes & Noble founder Len Riggio...

Speaker Mop & Glo made headlines for her call to investigate opponents of the Ground Zero mosque, but there was something else about her remarks that should have raised your hackles: “There is no question there is a concerted effort to make this a political issue by some. And I join those who have called for looking into how is this opposition to the mosque being funded,” she said. “How is this being ginned up that here we are talking about Treasure Island, something we’ve been working on for decades, something of great interest to our community as we...

Two Cal Poly Pomona professors emeriti have called on the Legislature and Attorney General Jerry Brown to probe flawed investment choices by CalPERS in recent years. Professors Walter Coombs of Claremont and Ralph Shaffer of Covina called for the investigations in an opinion piece published in The Riverside Press Enterprise. To read their full commentary, click here. Here are their ending remarks: It's time for a thorough examination of CalPERS by the state attorney general and the Legislature. Recent investments smack of cronyism and outright conflict of interest. Were investment transactions based on proper research or did certain favored real...

CalPERS has sustained steep declines in the value of its real estate holdings on top of even larger stock market losses. CalPERS made aggressive investments in real estate at the worst possible time, when inflated property values had peaked and were already beginning to decline. The magnitude of the losses almost ensures that CalPERS will raise employer contribution rates. Pension fund officials have warned state and local governments that they may be hit with fee increases of between 2 percent and 5 percent of payroll beginning as early as 2010. If the recession deepens and sales and property taxes continue...

Forbes.com has a lengthy piece that tries to devine whether another catastrophe will deliver a final blow to the economy before recovery starts. CalPERS is mentioned in the piece. John Osbon, one of the experts on Forbes' "Investor Team," says, "I can imagine CalPERS or TIAA-CREF making some announcement that they are cutting benefits and payouts by 30% due to investment losses, non-functioning markets and so on. That would be a real hit with real money." This strikes us as a bit ignorant, since CalPERS pension benefits are guaranteed. The fund can't simply "announce" a cut . . .

Melissa Etheridge sang "Wedding Bell Blues" and Mary J. Blige covered a moving rendition of U2's "One" at Ron Burkle's Greenacres estate at a lavish fund-raiser for the No on 8 campaign, which is a fighting a ban on same-sex marriage. On a stage set up on a portion of Burkle's sprawling back lawn, Etheridge told the crowd that "I believe we are at the very end of this cycle of fear that has been going on and on." About $3.9 million was raised at the Tuesday evening event, and campaign officials say they are closing the fund-raising gap with...

Excerpt - Federal prosecutors charged Raffaello Follieri, an Italian entrepreneur and former business partner of California billionaire Ron Burkle, with funding a lavish lifestyle by using money from a real-estate venture that was supposed to capitalize on his alleged Vatican ties to redevelop surplus Catholic Church properties. ~ snip ~ A criminal complaint filed by the U.S. attorney in Manhattan Tuesday alleged that Mr. Follieri stole hundreds of thousands of dollars of investor money to pay for a $37,000-a-month New York apartment where he lived for a time with Ms. Hathaway; private jet travel; expensive restaurants and clothes; medical expenses,...

Facing an $11.6 million budget shortfall, organizers of the Democratic National Convention are cutting events ... The convention's Denver host committee reported it has deposited $29 million of the $40.6 million it promised to the Democratic National Committee by a Monday deadline. The overall convention budget is about $70 million. A planned media walkthrough of the Pepsi Center was abruptly canceled last week, alerting political reporters across the country that something was amiss. People close to the party's convention committee said the event was scrapped in part to embarrass the host committee into stepping up its fundraising efforts. Denver was...

Can't link or post any excerpts. Google "The Comeback Id"....somebody's sandbagging the Toons! From what I've read so far, it's only appropriate this comes out at the same time as "Sex and the City"!

At Ron Burkle's mansion... ON A BALMY evening this week, the crowd at billionaire Ron Burkle's Beverly Hills estate was a mixture of high-level academia and high-level Hollywood, none higher than Robert Redford, actor, director, Sundance guru and the industry's über-environmental activist. Serious gatherings like this at Burkle's begin with a Champagne reception in the foyer, an intimately lavish space where presidents, generals, senators and Los Angeles' moneyed elite mingle and discuss the pressing issues of the day. (Half the town has portraits of themselves with former President Bill Clinton there.) When Redford entered the foyer from the inner sanctum...

The California Public Employees Retirement System Chief Executive Officer may leave by the end of the year amid tensions with the board, marking the third top level executive at the $244 billion retirement fund to depart in 2008... Calpers is in the middle of an internal debate over whether to require infrastructure projects that receive Calpers investments to use union employees... In February, Christianna Wood, senior investment officer, stepped down ...