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Husband's investments entangle FeinsteinLATEST FLAP OVER MEDICARE PAYMENT DENIALS By David Whitney McClatchy Newspapers Article Launched: 05/19/2007 01:36:54 AM PDT WASHINGTON - California lawmakers are questioning whether an auditing company in which San Francisco investor Richard Blum, the husband of Sen. Dianne Feinstein, has a major financial stake is rejecting Medicare claims at California rehabilitation hospitals in order to reap millions of dollars in profits at the expense of patient care. The company, PRG-Schultz International, has a contract with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the overseer of the Medicare program, to check payments in California for mistakes. Its...

WASHINGTON -- California lawmakers are questioning whether an auditing company in which San Francisco investor Richard Blum, the husband of Sen. Dianne Feinstein, has a major financial stake is rejecting Medicare claims at California rehabilitation hospitals to reap millions of dollars in profits at the expense of patient care. The company, PRG-Schultz International, has a contract with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the overseer of the Medicare program, to check payments in California for mistakes. Its only pay is a bounty of up to 30 percent on the overcharges it identifies. The California Hospital Association first raised concerns...

Feinstein Conflict Allegations 'Aren't Going Away,' Watchdogs Say By Fred Lucas May 08, 2007 (CNSNews.com) - Sen. Dianne Feinstein may have had as much of a financial interest in two defense contractors as her husband who controlled them, according to California law. The state's "community property law" could be relevant at a time when the senior Democratic senator from California is facing allegations of a conflict of interest and growing calls for an inquiry. Feinstein stepped down late last year from the Senate Appropriations Committee's subcommittee on military construction (MILCON) after five years on the panel. The subcommittee was charged...

Feinstein's Office Denies Conflict of Interest Charges By Fred Lucas April 04, 2007 (CNSNews.com) - Breaking nearly a week of silence, Sen. Dianne Feinstein's office Tuesday called allegations of a conflict of interest "nonsense" and said the California Democrat played no role in awarding military contracts that benefited companies owned by her husband. It was reported last week that Feinstein no longer serves on a Senate subcommittee that oversaw military construction. Earlier this year, Metro Newspapers accused Feinstein of a conflict of interest because the subcommittee had oversight of military contracts that often went to defense contractors owned by her...

Feinstein quits committee under war-profiteer cloud Report documents military contracts for firms owned by senator's husband -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Posted: March 28, 2007 10:05 p.m. Eastern -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- © 2007 WorldNetDaily.com Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., has abruptly walked away from her responsibilities with the Senate Military Construction Appropriations subcommittee after a report linked her votes to the financial well-being of her husband's companies, which received billions of dollars worth of military construction contracts she approved. As reported in Metroactive, an online report from the Silicon Valley, Feinstein's resignation followed six years of subcommittee work during which time her conflict...

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,...

They are one of California's most influential political couples: four-term Democratic U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein and Richard Blum, a wealthy businessman, philanthropist and behind-the-scenes political advisor. For decades, first as San Francisco mayor and then as senator, Feinstein has had the public persona while Blum has operated in the background. Now, at 71, Blum has stepped into the limelight to take over as chairman of the University of California Board of Regents. --snip-- Blum was appointed to a 12-year term on the 26-member board in 2002 by then-Gov. Gray Davis, to whom Blum and his companies had given more than...

IN THE November 2006 election, the voters demanded congressional ethics reform. And so, the newly appointed chairman of the Senate Rules Committee, Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., is now duly in charge of regulating the ethical behavior of her colleagues. But for many years, Feinstein has been beset by her own ethical conflict of interest, say congressional ethics experts. As chairperson and ranking member of the Military Construction Appropriations subcommittee (MILCON) from 2001 through the end of 2005, Feinstein supervised the appropriation of billions of dollars a year for specific military construction projects. Two defense contractors whose interests were largely controlled by...

It must be tough keeping track of all the workmen doing your chores when you have as many multi-million dollar mansions as Senator Dianne Feinstein and her fabulously wealthy husband Richard Blum. The latest addition to the property collection is a 16 million dollar house in San Francisco, located adjacent to a public right-of-way along steps run up a hill. The workmen doing the gardening and renovation on the njew digs ripped up an entire formal garden located on public land. If it sounds like her crew went too far in digging up a public space, we should point out...

Sen. Dianne Feinstein and her mega-millionaire husband, Dick Blum, have a bit of fence mending to do with their soon-to-be neighbors in San Francisco's Gold Coast. It seems that workers remodeling the Pacific Heights mansion that the couple just bought leveled all the green in the adjoining public garden -- without the city's approval. And not just any green -- we're talking about a Tivoli-style garden just off the front entrance of the couple's $16.5 million abode, which sits at the foot of Vallejo Street, between the Presidio and some of the city's most posh residences. The garden is actually...

In remarks certain to please visiting Chinese President Hu Jintao, U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein on Thursday told a gathering of Chinese-American business and cultural leaders in San Francisco that the United States has no obligation to defend Taiwan if it provokes China into a military confrontation. Feinstein's comments came on a day when Hu and President Bush sat down together in Washington to discuss a range of issues -- including Taiwan, which China regards as the No. 1 issue in U.S.-China relations. Before his first U.S. visit this week, Hu urged Taiwanese leaders to resume talks with China and called...

If this were a Republican senator's spouse scoring bundles off the spoils of war and passing it along to fellow Republicans, the liberals would be up in arms. But since Senator Dianne Feinstein is a leading Democrat -- mums the word. Partisanship trumps ethics.

Washington -- Sen. Dianne Feinstein's office acknowledged today that a former staff member had removed references to the California Democrat's net worth on the Internet encyclopedia Wikipedia, as well as altered entries about her husband Richard Blum's Chinese investments in 1997. A former staff member "independently went on to Wikipedia to correct some material he felt was not appropriate," said Feinstein spokesman Howard Gantman. "The senator was not even aware of it." The changes to the biographies of members of Congress, allegedly by their staffs, have again raised questions about the credibility of the online encyclopedia that has become an...

Clinton linked to 'international trafficking in women' Documents show presidential mission invited organized crime members Posted: October 26, 19991:00 a.m. Eastern By Charles Smith © 1999 WorldNetDaily.com Despite White House denials, the Clinton administration has had major contacts with Asian organized crime syndicates such as the Triads, and has befriended kingpins of international prostitution operations. Unraveling the tangled web involving Bill Clinton, Beijing and Asian organized crime starts with the president's close, and self-described "old," friendship with Arkansas restaurant owner Charlie Yah Lin Trie. Trie, who managed to donate hundreds of thousands of dollars to Bill Clinton and the Democratic party, is...

Like a furniture store's endless "grand opening sale", or a tourist shop's perpetual "going out of business" sign, The Bill Press Show has had a nonstop series of "debuts". Each time, however, this production moves a bit further off-Broadway. The Radio Equalizer has written quite a lot about his syndicated radio program's failure to pick up affiliates and its questionable financial backers. From at least two industry trade publications, Press is getting a free pass. Inside Radio left out the controversy involving his sleazy investors, while Radio & Records actually pretended it was a new show:

Have some extra money? Air America scandal apologist Bill Press seems to be having trouble raising $2 million needed for his stalled syndicated talk show. Perhaps you can help. Is the former CNN "Crossfire" host and California Democratic Party chairman willing to take it from just about anybody? So far, he's raised just a quarter of the necessary amount, with funding from dubious sources. No wonder he was so quick to defend Air America in the midst of its sleazy scandal, it must have seemed a minor issue to the longtime Democrat operative....

Washington -- Sen. Dianne Feinstein goes into her 2006 re-election campaign as one of the richest members of the U.S. Senate, an elite club where roughly half the members are millionaires, her annual financial disclosure statement showed Friday. Feinstein is a millionaire in her own right, but her wealth is multiplied many times over by that of her husband, San Francisco-based international investor Richard C. Blum. He is among the richest Senate spouses, along with Teresa Heinz Kerry, wife of the Democratic 2004 presidential nominee, Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts. It's impossible to paint an exact financial picture for Feinstein...

Last week, a well-respected online business publication provided yet another possible link between Neil Goldschmidt and the Texans who recruited him to take over Portland General Electric. On Oct. 28, Bloomberg News published an account of Texas Pacific Group's struggle to buy Oregon's largest utility. The story quoted Richard Blum, a San Francisco investor who has been a business partner and hiking companion of Texas Pacific CEO David Bonderman for the past decade. Blum is no stranger to acquiring heavily regulated businesses in Oregon--nor is he a stranger to Goldschmidt. Correspondence obtained by WW from the state archives shows that...

<p>Perini Corp., a Massachusetts construction company partially owned by the investment firm of California Sen. Dianne Feinstein's husband, landed a $500 million contract Friday to repair southern Iraq's electricity grid.</p> <p>Perini is one of several American firms mobilized to restore Iraq's electricity under a series of contracts issued by the Pentagon this week. On Friday, Washington Group International won a $500 million contract to restore power in northern Iraq.</p>

<p>Washington -- As California embarks upon the most politically tumultuous week in memory, the state's most popular politician is cloistered a thousand miles away taking in a seminar on U.S. security policy.</p> <p>Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who first eyed the governorship more than a decade ago, has remained remarkably detached from the raw electoral maneuverings in her home state, even as a growing number of elected officials call on her to place her name on the recall ballot.</p>