Criminal court filings in California and Florida highlight the ways in which UBS -- and other banks -- worked with California real-estate developer Igor Olenicoff to establish shell companies used to avoid paying taxes.
For more than a decade, between 1992 and 2007, Mr. Olenicoff moved nearly $500 million between banks in London, the Bahamas, Switzerland and Liechtenstein using the names of at least six corporate entities, including ones named Sovereign Bancorp Ltd., National Depository Corp. Ltd. and Guardian Guarantee Co. Ltd. [...]
About a week later, in what appears to be one of the first transactions with UBS, Mr. Olenicoff instructed Barclays PLC to move $89 million to an account at UBS. More transfers took place in 2002, including the movement of $60 million to a Danish shell corporation with an account at a Liechtenstein bank that court documents don't identify.
Igor Olenicoff was a generous supporter of Mitt Romney and is #286 on the Forbes 400 list of rich folk, advertising the usual donations to orphanages to cover his larger crimes.
Republicans don't like paying taxes, but with Iraq they have proved they love wasting the taxes you pay.
Q Jeff Gannon. How did he get a White House pass, or what kind of credentials did he have?
MR. McCLELLAN: Just like anyone else who comes to the White House.
Q Hard pass?
MR. McCLELLAN: No, he had never applied for a hard pass. He had a daily pass. I think he's been coming for --
Q Was he coming for --
MR. McCLELLAN: Hang on. I think he's been coming for more than two years now.
Q Under what name?
MR. McCLELLAN: Sorry?
Q Under what name?
MR. McCLELLAN: Well, you have to get cleared. You have to -- just like anybody else that comes to the White House, you have to have your full name, your Social Security number and your birth date. So you have to be cleared just like anybody else.
Q So he was being cleared under James Guckert, or whatever his name is?
MR. McCLELLAN: My understanding, yes.
Q Okay, and how did he get picked to get a question asked at the last news conference?
MR. McCLELLAN: He didn't. The President didn't have a list. The President didn't -- he was in the briefing room. There are assigned seats in the briefing room. We didn't do any assigning of seats, and the President worked his way through the rows, and called on people as he came to them. He doesn't know who he is.
Q Were you aware that he had another name?
MR. McCLELLAN: Was I aware? I had heard that. I had heard that, yes, recently.
Q But did you know during all this time that he really wasn't Jeff Gannon?
MR. McCLELLAN: I heard at some point, yes -- previously.
Jeff Gannon: In your denunciations of the Abu Ghraib photos, you've used words like "sickening," "disgusting" and "reprehensible." Will you have any adjectives left to adequately describe the pictures from Saddam's rape rooms and torture chambers? And will Americans ever see those images?
Scott McClellan: I'm glad you brought that up, Jeff, because the President talks about that often.
How air-conditioned is Houston? Consider this: While highs are in the 90s outdoors, chilled workers smuggle space heaters into their offices.
"They're everywhere," says Heat Throat, my informant. A free-lance paralegal, she works with several downtown law firms. Often she brings a space heater and hides it under her desk — just like most of the office's other female workers. [...]
One time, a big firm's managing partner asked to borrow her space heater to warm his own office. "I hated to let it go," she says. "But he's a managing partner, so what can you say?"
"I'm amazed by the number of people who come in looking for heaters in summer," says Pauline Berry, who works at Southland Hardware on Westheimer.
Wait until Texans find out there have been major discoveries up north where the human brain apparently still functions. Thermostats and, when they fail, cardigans.
It's likely that the next president will face at least one Supreme Court vacancy. Obama should promise Hillary Clinton, now, that if he wins in November, the vacancy will be hers, making her first on a list of one.
Obama and Clinton have wound up agreeing on nearly every major issue during the campaign; at the end of the day, they share many orthodoxies. Unless the Supreme Court were to get mired in minuscule details of what constitutes universal health care, Obama could assume that he'd be pleased with most Clinton votes, certainly on major issues such as abortion.
Obama could also appreciate Clinton's undeniably keen mind. Even Clinton detractors have noted her remarkable mental skills; she would be equal to any legal or intellectual challenge she would face as a justice. The fact that she hasn't served on a bench before would be inconsequential, considering her experience in law and in government.
If Obama were to promise Clinton the first court vacancy, her supporters would actually have a stronger incentive to support him for president than they would if she were going to be vice president. Given the Supreme Court's delicate liberal-conservative balance, she would play a major role in charting the country's future; there is no guarantee that a Clinton vice presidency would achieve such importance.
Despite its infatuation with "activist" judges, the right's response to the Clinton years was Scalia throwing the 2000 election, followed by Roberts and Alito.
This inspired idea has the delicious aroma of karma about it. Much better than VP — Justice Hillary Clinton!
Last night at the pub someone asked me what I thought Hillary was doing. Oddly enough, I've never actually seriously considered the question - mostly just thought that the theories I keep hearing (like that she wants to be McCain's runningmate!) don't sound right to me. And sure, I do think she's hanging in there just in case something does happen to change the terrain, no matter how slim the chance is, but it occurred to me at that moment that it's more than that. "I think she's running all the bases," I said. "She's the first woman in history to win a state primary, and she's won a lot more. She's running pretty close to the front-runner. It's a major historic moment." And the more I think about it, the more I think it has to be part of what's driving her. There's a bit of climbing the mountain because it's there, and wanting to be able to stand up in the end and say something like, "Never let it be said that a woman can't go the distance." It doesn't matter if someone else breaks the tape, just as long as she finishes the race. (And think how she'd feel if something did happen before Denver to tank Obama and she hadn't.) I've been unhappy with a lot of things about Hillary, but there's a part of me that kind of admires that. Because she wouldn't just be doing that for herself - she's doing it for every little girl who was ever told she can't.
This is the tragedy of this beautiful historic moment — there is so much at stake in the eyes of all American women and all American people of color. Hillary is not tearing the party apart; what she's doing is running a close race with tenacity (and occasional bad judgment) against a formidable opponent.
What's tearing the party apart is this country's history of sexism and racism. And the irony is that Democrats, more often than not, are the good guys in the struggles against both of these blights on our nation, a claim the Republican party cannot make. This election is about much more than these two remarkable and historic individuals. It's about the restoration of American values to our people and our government and our reputation around the globe — values and a reputation that have been hijacked not by bin Laden but by Bush-Cheney.
That's why we Democrats will unify behind our nominee no matter who he or she turns out to be. Meanwhile, Hillary should press on. This is no time for her to become a shrinking violet "for the good of the party." She's thinking much bigger than that.
What a sexist and inflammatory insinuation! It turns out that her rapid rise within the ranks of lobbyists is entirely justified by the richness of her background and experience. After all, wouldn't the senior partner of any top lobbying firm have started out as a receptionist with a degree in elementary education?
Ms. Iseman graduated from Indiana University of Pennsylvania in 1990 with a degree in elementary education and ventured to Washington, where she was hired as a receptionist for Alcalde & Fay, a high-powered, high-profile lobbying firm based in Arlington, Va. She rose through the ranks to become a senior partner who, in 10-plus years, acquired a list of more than 30 clients including Carnival Cruise Lines, Paxson Communications, PriceWaterhouseCoopers, Telemundo Network, and the cities of Miami and Palm Springs, Calif. The bulk of her work involved telecommunications.
Hopefully all that training in elementary education won't go to waste as she explains the economy, foreign policy, and the gas tax to McMaverick.
Neither has volunteered for the war their party started for reasons that have yet to be explained five years on. They are a disgrace to our nation, and a slap in the face of every American man and woman in Iraq and Afghanistan — not to mention every taxpayer who has financed Daddy's private grudge match with Saddam (and Jenna's granddad).
According to the Houston Chronicle, they will be honeymooning in Europe instead of central Asia.
I'm speaking specifically of ABC, NBC, and Fox News and all the other television outlets who magically use our broadcast air (which we own as a common good) and cable bandwidth (which we pay cash for) to receive $3 billion in campaign advertising revenues while they produce such inescapable monstrosities as Stephanopoulos, Gibson, O'Reilly, Hannity, Russert, and the endless parade of sewage-spewing "guests" and "correspondents" like Pat Buchanan and Cokie Roberts.
Unlike my coming tax rebate, which is obviously going to BP and ExxonMobil by design, I refuse to allow my political contributions to go to ABC, NBC, and Fox News.
