Culture of Corruption: Obama and His Team of Tax Cheats, Crooks, and Cronies (21 page)

Here’s what fellow Seattle liberal Ted Van Dyk, a veteran Democratic strategist who supported Obama, said when Sims’s nomination was announced:

It is hard to imagine someone less qualified as Deputy Housing and Urban Development Secretary than Ron Sims. Sims’ weak suit, as King County Executive, was his administrative competence. His troubles with the county jail, elections office, sewage-treatment facility and transportation planning are well known. Like [former Washington state governor-turned-Obama-Commerce-Secretary Gary] Locke, he is personable; a nice guy. But the HUD Deputy’s job is to administer and run day-to-day a department notorious for its scandals, corruption, and screw-ups while the Secretary serves as outside man. Unless he is careful, HUD will eat Sims alive.
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The folks who have fought the real Ron Sims in his own backyard know he is the very antithesis of an open, accountable public servant. Ask Armen Yousoufian. In 1997, the former Boeing engineer embarked on what would be a twelve-year legal battle to force Sims to obey public disclosure rules. Instead of making the “tough choices necessary to ensure that American tax dollars are spent wisely,” Sims did everything in his power to ensure that King County, Washington, taxpayers were deprived of vital information on how their money was being spent.

Yousoufian wanted access to government documents related to a sports stadium subsidy plan up for a vote in Washington in the summer of 1997. The records he requested at the end of May 1997 pertained to the fiscal impact of a massive tax-hike proposal to build a new football palace for the Seattle Seahawks. Time was of the essence: county residents were preparing to vote on a ballot initiative package worth $300 million on June 17, 1997. Boosters of similar “public-private stadium partnerships” had made dubious claims of economic windfalls that never transpired. Yousoufian—serving as the watchdog that Sims failed to be for his constituents—was absolutely right to question the numbers.

But Sims, a leading stadium subsidy booster and corporate water-carrier for Microsoft billionaire and Seahawks owner Paul Allen, didn’t put an informed citizenry first. His office deliberately stonewalled Yousoufian’s request—at first, failing to deliver the documents, then claiming they didn’t exist, and then admonishing him to bug off because he had been given everything he requested. All lies. While Sims’s deputies gave Yousoufian the grand runaround, Referendum 48 passed by a margin of 51-49.

Yousoufian launched a one-man crusade to hold Sims accountable to taxpayers. He sued under Washington’s open-records law in 2000. He spent $330,000 of his own money in legal fees and 4,000 hours of his own time. A lower court ruled in his favor, dinging the county’s obstructionism as “egregious,” but skimped in awarding him the minimum $5 a day for each of the 8,252 days that Sims’s office withheld the documents. The courts found “hundreds” of instances where Sims’s office deceived Yousoufian or refused to tell the truth. To deter future abuse, Yousoufian appealed for higher fines. A lower court came back and awarded him $15 a day—for a total of $124,000 in penalties and attorney fees of $171,100.

The largest fine of its kind ever assessed under the law, it was still not enough for public officials to treat it as anything other than a minor cost of doing business. Yousoufian pointed out after that ruling that he still did not receive all the documents he requested, and that the outcome meant “most people will never get a lawyer to take such a case without being paid hourly, as there just isn’t enough potential for penalties to make a contingent fee arrangement worthwhile.”
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Yousoufian appealed again to the state Supreme Court. In January 2009, just weeks before President Obama tapped Sims for the number two HUD post, the high court issued an historic ruling in Yousoufian’s favor, damning Sims’s “blatant violations of the state Public Records Act.” From the majority opinion in
Yousoufian
v.
Office of Ron Sims:

To summarize, the unchallenged findings of fact demonstrate King County repeatedly deceived and misinformed Yousoufian for years. King County told Yousoufian it produced all the requested documents, when in fact it had not. King County told Yousoufian archives were being searched and records compiled, when in fact they were not. King County told Yousoufian the information was located elsewhere, when in fact it was not. After years of delay, misrepresentation, and ineptitude on the part of King County, Yousoufian filed suit; nevertheless, it would still take another year for King County to completely and accurately respond to Yousoufian’s original request, well past the purpose of his request, the referendum on public financing of a sports stadium.

. . . King County failed to reply to Yousoufian’s clear request promptly or accurately. King County failed to train its responding personnel or supervise its response. King County did not comply strictly to the procedures set forth in RCW 42.56.520, failing to seek clarification from Yousoufian when necessary, failing to give any reason for its delay, failing to set forth an exception for its refusal, failing to provide any estimate of its delayed response time, and making Yousoufian contact King County more than 11 times over the course of two years to obtain the requested information when under the statute only one request should suffice.... King County either made no explanation of its noncompliance or misrepresented the truth. As the trial judge found, with proper diligence and attention, King County could have responded accurately to Yousoufian within five days. The potential for public harm was high; the requested records tested the veracity of King County’s assertions regarding a pending referendum on a $300 million public financing scheme. The request was time-sensitive, seeking documents relevant to the upcoming referendum, whereas the disclosure of these documents was delayed years beyond the election day without justification.
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This travesty is the singular responsibility of Ron Sims. It dragged on through his entire tenure as King County executive—and beyond. The state Supreme Court remanded the case back to the lower courts to determine a final fine that may exceed some $1 million in taxpayer funds.

Sims’s pattern of evasion was no anomaly. In 2005, another citizen filed suit against Sims for violating public disclosure rules. Seattle resident and blogger Stefan Sharkansky had requested documents related to the November 2004 election, which at the gubernatorial level was marked by fraud allegations across Washington state. The election records revealed that Sims’s office unlawfully counted hundreds of ineligible ballots in the governor’s race. As Sharkansky alleged in his complaint, which was scheduled to go to trial in April 2009:

[1] On December 27, 2004 I submitted a public records request to the County for “a list of all King County voters who submitted ballots in the Nov. 2 election.” The County did not satisfy this request in full until September 12, 2005.

It took me at least four more letters and the presentation of irrefutable evidence from other documents to override King County’s insistence that they didn’t have the documents I was asking for, and which revealed the existence of dozens of unlawfully counted ballots, among other things.

[2] On April 7, 2005 I submitted through my attorney a public records request... [for] copies of “both the absentee ballot outer envelope and the provisional ballot envelope” for [91] known voters who submitted both types of ballots.... As of July 5, 2005 the County had not produced any of the absentee and provisional ballot envelopes I had requested, so I renewed my request and asked to examine all the original absentee ballot envelopes.... The County finally responded July 14, 2005 stating that only 27 (out of 91) of the provisional ballots were found and estimating that other documents would be produced July 22, 2005....I appeared at the elections office July 25, 2005, and received only 27 provisional ballots out of 91 identified. . . . On September 2, 2005 the County informed me that only 1 additional provisional ballot envelope responsive to my request had been located.... On September 16, 2005 I obtained permission to examine the contents of a box marked “provisional ballot envelopes November 2004”. . . . Inside were approximately 59 more envelopes responsive to my request of April 7, 2005.

If King County had released the documents that other folks and I requested 6-10 months ago in a complete and timely fashion, [losing GOP gubernatorial candidate Dino] Rossi’s legal team would have been able to present a much stronger argument that official misconduct occurred. What we’ve seen is not just a lazy agency dragging its heels to respond to document requests, but an organized effort to cover-up official misconduct and to obstruct justice.
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On April 24, 2009, King County settled out of court with Sharkansky for $225,000, one of the largest settlements for public records violations in state history.
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Less than a week after the January 2009 ruling against the man he would elevate to manage day-to-day operations at HUD, President Obama signed with great fanfare a Freedom of Information Act memorandum declaring his commitment to open government:

The Freedom of Information Act should be administered with a clear presumption: In the face of doubt, openness prevails. The Government should not keep information confidential merely because public officials might be embarrassed by disclosure, because errors and failures might be revealed, or because of speculative or abstract fears. Nondisclosure should never be based on an effort to protect the personal interests of Government officials at the expense of those they are supposed to serve. In responding to requests under the FOIA, executive branch agencies (agencies) should act promptly and in a spirit of cooperation, recognizing that such agencies are servants of the public.

All agencies should adopt a presumption in favor of disclosure, in order to renew their commitment to the principles embodied in FOIA, and to usher in a new era of open Government.
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As veteran open-records attorney Greg Overstreet, another Washington state citizen’s advocate who knows Sims best, jibed: “Let’s hope President Obama is not relying on Ron Sims to carry out the president’s transparency agenda.”
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Irony doesn’t just abound. It reeks.

ATTORNEY GENERAL ERIC HOLDER: CRIME-CODDLING CORPORATE LAWYER

“Don’t go into corporate America,” First Lady Michelle Obama admonished supporters on the campaign trail. Remember? She extolled the rewards of public service over the material perks of life at a high-powered law firm.
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She certainly didn’t take her own advice—and neither did her husband’s own Attorney General. If he hadn’t pulled out all the stops campaigning for the president, raising money at lavish celebrity events, and offering his strategic and legal advice—and if Eric Holder had an “R” by his name instead of a “D”—he might have served as the perfect poster boy for Mrs. O.’s caustic campaign against white-shoe corporate law.

After a quarter-century as a government lawyer, Holder joined the prestigious Covington & Burling business and corporate law firm. He represented a gallery of the Left’s fattest targets in Big Pharma and Big Business, defending them in fraud and discrimination cases that drove progressives mad. Holder has served both his corporate and government masters well—and he has the bank account and stock portfolio to prove it. His salary jumped from under $200,000 as deputy U.S. Attorney General for the Clinton administration, to more than $2 million a year as a Covington & Burling senior partner. During 2008, Holder spent countless hours away from his corporate office working for the Obama campaign—raising money, fielding calls, making speeches. “I hope the management committee is going to be real understanding when they see my billable hours this year,” Holder joked to
The American Lawyer
. It’s an investment, of course, and the law firm will get its political dividends later.

Holder returns to a more modest $186,000 salary as Obama’s Attorney General. But parting has its perks, too. The Washington revolving door pays. Covington & Burling will make a separation payment valued at between $1 million and $5 million, plus a repayment of up to $1 million from the firm’s capital account, plus a retirement plan of up to $500,000.
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His net worth: $5.7 million.
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Reflecting on his past eight years raking in the dough and watching him schmooze friends and clients from his “elegant new Manhattan offices,” an
American Lawyer
profile observed: “Life is good for private citizen Eric Holder, Jr.”
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President Obama and the missus, such outspoken detractors of climbing the corporate ladder and influence-peddling, were unavailable for comment.

One wonders what the Obamas would say about Holder’s lucrative work for Chiquita Brands International if it had been performed by, say, John McCain’s top lawyer? As chief counsel for the global company, Holder won a “slap-on-the-wrist plea deal to charges that it had paid off” Colombian paramilitary death squads .
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Liberal critics of Holder point out that he used his influence as a former Clinton Justice Department official to negotiate a sweetheart deal for Chiquita. The company pleaded guilty to illegally doing business with the “Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia” or AUC (designated as an international terrorist organization by the State Department in 2001). Chiquita admitted negotiating with and forking over $1.7 million in protection racket money to the guerillas beginning in 1997. AUC terrorists slaughtered thousands of civilians to gain control of Colombia’s banana fields. The company ignored the advice of outside counsel (not Holder or anyone else at Covington & Burling) to stop the illegal payments in 2003: