Category: Corruption and Scandals
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What Is Going on in Portsmouth?
by Kerry Dougherty Are there cities that are more dysfunctional than Portsmouth, Virginia? Yes, of course there are. There’s always San Francisco where you can get an app for your phone called “SnapCrap” to allow you to report piles of human feces to city sanitation workers. There’s Chicago. The Windy City was recently designated the…
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Masters of Hype and Puffery
This is the fifth in a series of articles about Terry McAuliffe and GreenTech. by James A. Bacon and Carol J. Bova On July 6, 2012, GreenTech Automotive launched the rollout of the “all-American” MyCar electric vehicle at a ceremony attended by former President Bill Clinton, the governor of Mississippi, the assistant secretary of Homeland…
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Shearing the Sheep
This is the fourth in a series of posts about Terry McAuliffe and GreenTech Automotive. by James A. Bacon and Carol J. Bova The Chinese citizens who lost $500,000 each from investing in GreenTech Automotive were not happy with their setback. While they had ponied up their money as part of a scheme to get…
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Dreams from the Opium Den
This is the third article in a series about Terry McAuliffe and GreenTech. by James A. Bacon and Carol J. Bova When partners Xiaolin “Charlie” Wang, Anthony Rodham, and Terry McAuliffe banded together in 2009 to finance and build an electric vehicle enterprise known as GreenTech Automotive, they thought big. Very big. In a 2009…
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A Handshake Deal Gone Bad
This is the second in a series of articles about Terry McAuliffe and Greentech. by James A. Bacon and Carol J. Bova Fourteen years ago, Benjamin Yeung was a Chinese entrepreneur whose companies manufactured and sold minibuses, passenger cars and business vehicles in China. In 2007 he launched a venture with the idea of building…
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Where Did $140 Million in GreenTech Money Go?
This is the first in a series of articles about Terry McAuliffe and GreenTech Automotive. by James A. Bacon and Carol J. Bova In September 2016, the Office of the State Auditor (OSA) of the state of Mississippi began undertaking a review of the contracts signed by the state’s economic development authority. The goal was…
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The Loudoun Way — School Rapes by a Member of a Progressive Protected Class
by James C. Sherlock Any time you think there is only one system of justice in America, consider these two stories I offer below, one a progressive dream and the other true. The true story will show some progressives care more about their dogma than kids. And any time you think only big city progressives…
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How Does Virginia Budget Early-Childhood-Education Money Wind Up in a Park in Detroit?
by James C. Sherlock – updated Oct 15 I’d like to report an organized crime. It’s just not illegal in Virginia. The political Left, fully in control of Virginia government, sends taxpayer money to leftist non-profits, who take their cuts and then send it on to local government entities and yet more nonprofits. It is unethical,…
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Bacon Bits: The Political Class in Action
Is Charlottesville governable? Charlottesville City Manager Chip Boyles has announced his resignation, making him the fifth interim or full-time city manager to leave the city since 2018, reports the Daily Progress. “The public disparagement shown by several community members and Mayor [Nikuyah] Walker has begun to negatively effect [sic] my personal health and well-being,” he…
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Virginia’s Self-Inflicted Nursing Home Crisis – Part 3 – McAuliffe & Herring
by James C. Sherlock In the first two parts of this series, I wrote about the shortage of state inspectors for nursing homes in the Virginia Department of Health Office of Licensure and Certification (OLC) and the continuing danger it poses to Virginia patients. The problem, unfortunately, is much wider than just nursing homes. So…
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Former Norfolk Sheriff Convicted of Fraud and Bribery
by Dick Hall-Sizemore Here is another name to add to the list of corrupt public officials — former Norfolk Sheriff Bob McCabe. Earlier this week, a federal jury convicted him of all 11 counts of fraud, conspiracy and money laundering. The charges covered actions committed over a 22-year period. They included accepting gift cards to…
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Campaign Finance Reform in Virginia – the New Governor Must Lead
by James C. Sherlock I consider campaign finance reform the foremost issue facing representative government in Virginia. We are one of only a few states with no campaign donations limits at all. We pay for that in legislation enacted and not enacted because of the preferences of huge donors. And in the stink of legal…
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Will Cuomo Pull a Northam?
by Kerry Dougherty I was on the elliptical at the gym yesterday, flipping through cable news. It was all Cuomo, Cuomo, Cuomo. Even on the networks that once treated the New York governor as if he tinkled perfume. One after another, New York politicians called for Cuomo’s head and predicted that he’d be gone soon.…
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The Accelerating Scale of the Legislate-Regulate-Spend-and-Repeat Cycle Has Broken Government
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in Corruption and Scandals, Disasters and Disaster Preparedness, Education (K-12), Efficiency in Government, General Assembly, Governance, Government Finance, Health Care, Housing, Long Term Care and Nursing Homes, Mental illness and substance abuse, Money in politics, Politics, Public safety & health, Regulations, Gov’t Oversight, Social Services and Entitlementsby James C. Sherlock Virginians – the state and individual citizens – have received over $81 billion in COVID-related federal funding. That comes to $9,507 for every man, woman and child in the Commonwealth. Big money. That was Virginia’s share of $5.3 trillion in federal spending just on the pandemic (so far). A trillion dollars…
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Stoney Off the Hook for Statue-Removal Contract
by James A. Bacon A special prosecutor has closed his investigation into Richmond Mayor Levar Stoney’s awarding of a $1.8 million statue-removal contract to NAH, LLC, set up by a former campaign contributor. Timothy Martin, Augusta County’s Commonwealth Attorney who was assigned to the case when Richmond’s chief prosecutor recused herself because of a conflict…