Democrats: The Party Of Fraud

The FTC recently cited several cancer charities for fraudulent practices.  The charities gave false promises and misused funds for personal use.

The managers of the Cancer Fund of America used the proceeds to take vacations, give themselves high salaries, new cars and directed very little to the actual treatment of cancer.

This comes just two weeks after it was revealed that the Clinton Foundation has been doing exactly the same thing, but an FTC case has yet to be opened. This sounds very much like the way Bill and Hillary Clinton use the money from their Clinton Foundation.  Only ten percent of the $252 million raised from 2011 to 2013 went to charitable grants.  Instead they give their employees elaborate salaries, pay for their travel on private jets, expensive hotel rooms and so on. 

The dollar amounts are there for everyone to see.  It is interesting to note that while private cancer charities are being pursued by the FTC, so far the Clintons have not been investigated.  Voters may wish to think about the different treatment Beltway Democrats receive from these Federal agencies.  It may be useful to keep in mind that Federal agency employees support Democrats in elections and that JFK started Federal unions with an executive order #10988.   Lawyers for the IRS gave money to Barack Obama’s presidential campaign.   Inquiring minds may begin to see a connection here
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The Clintons are not alone in their practice of misrepresenting their intentions to spend money.  Last August Lisa Madigan, the Democrat Attorney General of Illinois, announced that she won a lawsuit against Bank of America and Countrywide for bilking Illinois residents during the mortgage crisis.  This bank, she asserted, was misleading innocent mortgage applicants, who ended up losing a lot of money and often lost their homes.  She specifically stated that the monetary judgment of $300 million was intended for Illinois residents who were the victims of mortgage application fraud.

Via: American Thinker

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Tennessee family accused of spending $187M raised for cancer charities on themselves

Federal regulatory officials Tuesday accused a Tennessee family of spending more than $187 million collected for cancer charities on cars, gym memberships, cruise vacations, and college tuition. 

The Federal Trade Commission, in a federal lawsuit joined by all 50 states and the District of Columbia, said that James T. Reynolds Sr., his ex-wife and son raised the money through their various charities: The Cancer Fund of America in Knoxville, Tennessee, and its affiliated Cancer Support Services; The Breast Cancer Society in Mesa, Arizona; and the Children's Cancer Fund of America in Powell, Tennessee.

The charities hired telemarketers to collect $20 donations from people across the country, telling consumers that they provided financial aid and other support to cancer patients, including pain medication, transportation to chemotherapy visits and hospice care.

But little money made it to cancer patients, as the groups "operated as personal fiefdoms characterized by rampant nepotism, flagrant conflicts of interest, and excessive insider compensation" with none of the controls used by bona fide charities, the FTC said Tuesday.

Jessica Rich, director of the FTC's Bureau of Consumer Protection, declined to say whether authorities were pursuing a separate criminal investigation against the Reynolds family, saying only that the agency did not have the authority to do so. 

Via: Fox News

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Menendez: Make stores responsible

Following the Target hacking, he said firms must be accountable for stolen information.

JERSEY CITY, N.J. Sen. Robert Menendez wants the federal government to hold companies accountable when their customers' financial information is stolen.

The New Jersey Democrat is taking on the topic after last week's revelation that information about 40 million Target customer accounts had been stolen.

At a news conference Thursday outside a Target store in Jersey City, Menendez said he wanted to make sure retailers are "putting their customers ahead of profits." He announced that he had requested details from the Federal Trade Commission on whether it can fine firms for security breaches and whether laws should be changed to protect consumer data.

"We need to know if the FTC has the teeth to hold retailers who failed to protect consumers' information accountable," Menendez said.

The senator said he "has a feeling" that the agency will not be able to levy fines or penalties against companies. When a data breach occurred at Marshalls and T.J. Maxx in 2006, the FTC wasn't able to fine the stores' parent company as part of a settlement agreement.

"Our country's consumers depend upon safe and secure transactions, and especially at this crucial time of year, our country's retailers must commit to fulfilling that expectation," Menendez wrote to FTC Chairwoman Edith Ramirez.

Menendez said he wanted the FTC to recommend if further legislative action is needed to help protect consumers against having their financial information stolen.

Via: Philly.com

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@BarackObama’s (and the Democrats’) war on the scourge of piano teacher nonprofit associations.

Background: the Federal Trade Commission got a bug up ah, decided that some boilerplate, non-binding, non-enforceable language in the Music Teachers National Association (a small nonprofit out of Ohio) represented an attempt to jack up prices in the high-stakes, ruthlessly competitive world of piano lessons (average lesson, according to the WSJ: $30). Not having any friends in court – and no, I don’t think that I’ll strike that out, given that it’s brutally truthful – the MTNA simply surrendered to the tender mercies of the FTC. The result?

This October, MTNA signed a consent decree—its contents as ludicrous as the investigation. The association did not have to admit or deny guilt. It must, however, read a statement out loud at every future national MTNA event warning members against talking about prices or recruitment. It must send this statement to all 22,000 members and post it on its website. It must contact all of its 500-plus affiliates and get them to sign a compliance statement.

The association must also develop a sweeping antitrust compliance program that will require annual training of its state presidents on the potential crimes of robber-baron piano teachers. It must submit regular reports to the FTC and appoint an antitrust compliance officer. (The FTC wanted the officer to be an attorney, but Mr. Ingle explained that this would “break the bank,” so the agency—how gracious—is allowing him to fill the post.) And it must comply with most of this for the next 20 years.

The MTNA is not yet free of fear; the FTC has still to approve the consent decree. An FTC spokesman told me the agency does not confirm or deny the existence of investigations. The organization to this day has no idea how it became a target, nor will it ever because the FTC doesn’t have to provide it.

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you: our federal bureaucracy. If you were to ask one hundred Democrats, picked at random, whether or not they intended their support for big government to result in a world where a bunch of unelected bureaucrats could go wilding on a Cincinnati music teachers’ nonprofit, probably about ninety or so would say “No.” The problem is, if you asked them if they ever did anything to make sure that said bureaucrats would not have an opportunity to go wilding on said nonprofit, even more of them would say “No.” Despite the fact that we’ve known for decades that bureaucracies creep, and government expands, and government officials like to exercise their power. Apparently, once the government bureau is set up, Heroic Civic Space Newts are supposed to pop out of the aether and make sure that only the BAD people get drowned in paperwork*. That this does not happen is never adequately addressed by liberals; or, indeed, ever addressed at all. Which is a shame; we might trust big government more if its most devoted adherents showed any sign of wanting to ensure that big government functioned properly.

Assuming that either they, or it, even could.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

*This is a remarkably obscure literary reference, even for me.

Via: Red State

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