Crony Capitalism: A Serious Business (4min.)

[LargoWinch]

How to build a company [with Presidential help]:

Runtime: 4min.

[cjppjc]

Re: Crony Capitalism: A Serious Business (4min.)

More change I can believe in?

[Rajiv]

Re: Crony Capitalism: A Serious Business (4min.)

Let us not leave out - Revolving Door to Blackwater Causes Alarm at CIA

Blackwater USA, the private security contractor that has operated in places such as Iraq, Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, and New Orleans, has been booming the past few years. Founded in December of 1996, the company spent its early years “paying staff with an executive's credit card and begging for customers,” according to the Virginian-Pilot. But today, Blackwater reportedly has revenues of about $100 million annually, almost all of it from government contracts, and maintains “a compound half the size of Manhattan and 450 permanent employees,” according to the newspaper.

How did Blackwater rise so high, so fast? The “war on terrorism” got the ball rolling for the firm, but one suspects that political connections played a big part as well. Erik Prince, Blackwater's founder, is a former SEAL who is deeply involved in Republican Party politics. Since 1998, he has funneled roughly $200,000 to GOP committees and candidates, including President Bush. In 2004, Blackwater retained the Alexander Strategy Group, the PR and lobbying firm that closed down earlier this year due to its embarrassing ties to Jack Abramoff and Tom DeLay. (Paul Behrends, a former national security adviser to Congressman Dana Rohrabacher, handled the account for Alexander. After the firm shut down, Behrends moved on to a firm called C&M Capitolink, and took the Blackwater account with him.)

A number of senior CIA and Pentagon officials have taken top jobs at Blackwater, including firm vice chairman Cofer Black, who was the Bush Administration's top counterterrorism official at the time of the 9/11 attacks (and who famously said in 2002, “There was before 9/11 and after 9/11. After 9/11, the gloves came off.”) Robert Young Pelton, author of the new book, Licensed to Kill , says that an early Blackwater contract—a secret no-bid $5.4 million deal with the CIA—came in 2002 after Prince placed a call to Buzzy Krongard, who was then the CIA's executive director.
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[c1ue]

Re: Crony Capitalism: A Serious Business (4min.)

A follow-on:

It appears Zoi is involved in more than just Serious Materials, Inc. (above company). She also has hundreds of thousands of dollars in "founder's shares" in a Swiss company called Landis+Gyr:

http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/more-gl...ergy-official/

In addition, the disclosure forms reflect that Zoi holds between $250,000 and $500,000 in “founders shares” in Landis+Gyr, a Swiss “smart meter” firm. She also still owns between $15,000 and $50,000 in ordinary shares.
“Smart meters,” put simply, are electric meters that return information about customer power usage to the power company immediately and allow a power company to control the amount of power a customer can consume. These smart meters are a central component of the Obama administration’s plans to reduce electricity consumption as part of the “smart grid.”
In a rare moment of candor, Obama “Energy Czar” Carol Browner said to US News & World Report last year: “We need to make sure that …[e]ventually, we can get to a system where an electric company will be able [sic] to hold back some of the power so that maybe your air conditioner won’t operate at its peak, you’ll still be able to cool your house, but that’ll be a savings to the consumer.” (emphasis added)

Lest you think Landis+Gyr is some startup - it is not:

Since 1896 Landis+Gyr (originally known as "Electrotechnishes Institut Theiler and Co.") has been designing and manufacturing high quality, state of the art electricity meters. Based in Zug, Switzerland, the company had access to a highly skilled workforce and distribution system throughout Europe. In 1924 the company expanded globally with the establishment its first overseas office in New York.
1981 saw the advent of electronic meters and Landis+Gyr was there at the forefront, developing and launching its first range of digital meters in the industrial and commercial segments.

So how exactly did Zoi get "founder's shares"?

Oh yes, via Wiki:

Zoi has also worked for several energy-focused organizations, serving as the group executive director at the Bayard Group, recently renamed Landis+Gyr Holdings, which is a world leader in energy measurement technologies and systems;

In addition of course to the Clinton White House history:

Zoi is the founding chief executive officer of the Alliance for Climate Protection, which was established and chaired by former Vice President Al Gore. Zoi served as the Chief of Staff in the White House Office on Environmental Policy in the Clinton-Gore administration, where she managed the team working on environmental and energy issues. She has also served as a manager at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), where she pioneered the Energy Star Program.

Change We Can Believe In: A revolving door involving something besides defense and FIRE...

[chr5648]

Re: Crony Capitalism: A Serious Business (4min.)

What is really alarming is back in the day they would hide the revolving door hires, so citizens would not know. But whats changed in the past 20 years is they don't care anymore, the revolving door is blatantly out in public. They have this attitude of "Yeah, I'll just move around public to private and back again, what are you gonna do about it?"

[Ghent12]

Re: Crony Capitalism: A Serious Business (4min.)

What is really alarming is back in the day they would hide the revolving door hires, so citizens would not know. But whats changed in the past 20 years is they don't care anymore, the revolving door is blatantly out in public. They have this attitude of "Yeah, I'll just move around public to private and back again, what are you gonna do about it?"

I think they realized what the voter realized--that the voter is either too apathetic to follow such corruption or realizes that he or she will use the "lesser of two evils" when selecting their corrupt politician because "at least he's not that other guy!"

How else can anyone justify voting for people as blatantly corrupt as then-Senator Obama and Senator McCain? Bush or Kerry? Bush or Gore?

[doom&gloom]

Re: Crony Capitalism: A Serious Business (4min.)

fi, video is now GONE.