MICHIGAN MISCONDUCT.........
A blog about misconduct and corruption in Michigan impacting Michigan's legal, judicial systems and the American political system
John Rakolta Jr., a Romney family member and Romney’s financial
national co-chair for Mitt’s 2012 run for president, is in trouble and the
State of Michigan is thinking of helping to bail Rakolta Jr. out. Rakolta owner of Detroit-based Walbridge
Aldinger Co. won the bid for the Wayne County Jail project from scandal ridden
Terry Mullins. In the past questions were raised on methods Rakolta used to get
the Wayne County contract for the new jail. 100 million dollars has been
already spent on the jail and an estimates of an additional 65 million dollars
in cost overruns will be needed for completion.
Not good news for Wayne County Executive Ficano, he now has
another scandal on his hands. Alas! Could there be hope on the horizons
helping to subdue the coming jail scandal, a dark knight riding to the rescue?
Enter Dan Gilbert, the Detroit Greek Town Casino owner. With the jail build massively over budget and
behind on completion date, Gilbert, a
Romney insider, has offered to bail Wayne County out and buy Rakolta’s jail
folly for a new casino – or should it be said another casino in Detroit. All are waiting for Gov. Rick Snyder’s, another Romney
insider, decision.
Detroit is rapidly becoming a Romney Pottersville with
Detroiters finding it’s not such a”wonderful life”.
The Livingston Argus and Press published several
articles stating Mike Rogers from Brighton, Michigan is on the short list for
head of the CIA. Rogers currently serves as the Chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.
On December 13, 2012 a
letter was faxed to President Obama which read as follows:
Dear President Obama,
I am writing to draw your attention to problems with Congressman
Mike Rogers from Brighton, Michigan potential nomination as CIA director.
Mike Rogers, his family and friends have been involved in routinely
harassing my family in Livingston County. Mike Rogers’s nomination would further incite
the abuses and problems involving the county.
The Rogers family is the controlling political influence in Livingston;
it is well-known through-out the small tightly controlled county that nothing
happens without the approval of the Rogers family.
Congressman Mike Rogers is close friends with Scott and Mitt
Romney and is mentioned several times on my blog: The Real Mitt Romney the Weather-vane Candidate
http://mittromney2012potus.blogspot.com/ .
Additional information on Mike Rogers, the abuses, harassments, as well
as some of his close friends and political allies involved in the abuses can be
found on my website.
Having lived in the community since the 80’s and given my
knowledge of Mike Rogers and his family, we don’t need another scandal
Congressman Mike Rogers can bring to this nation.
I strongly discourage consideration of Congressman Mike
Rogers of Michigan as a replacement for David Petraeus as head of the CIA.
The dust from Romney’s book tour has settled and outside of Romney’s non-stop tapping of the royal Romney endorsement wand there has been little interesting going on with Mitt in the press. Of course, Nikki Haley’s alleged affair and some blurbs the past week or so about the old Detroit Romney home being slated for tear down and removal. Mitt has been remarkably uninteresting.
It must have been something for the Romney’s to own a 5,500 sq. foot home in the posh Detroit neighborhood during the forties and early fifties. George Romney had been in Washington D.C. working as a lobbyist prior to coming to Detroit. And we all know how well thought of lobbyist are. While our fathers and grandfathers were fighting a war overseas, the Romney’s were living a life of luxury in America. Returning American soldiers, many struggling to purchase one of the many bungalows which were springing up in across America, many under 1,000 sq. feet, with the princess’ of homes being around 1,500 sq. feet or so. What a great life it must have been for the Romney family during WWII.
Romney of course, blamed the down fall of Detroit on anyone but his own family, the Romney’s were among the first to flee Detroit for the then rural, but growing, elite Bloomfield Hills.
A comment in today’s Cape Cod Online caught my attention which brought up Romney’s Detroit home.
A President Romney will give us a nation of Detroit’s
May 26, 2010 2:00 AM
The 2012 presidential campaign got under way the day Obama was inaugurated. Tea partier Sarah Palin, the failed and humiliated 2008 Republican vice presidential candidate, is the odds-on favorite to clinch the nomination, though not if former presidential candidate Mitt Romney has his way.
Campaigning in his home state of Michigan, Romney commented on the estimated 90,000 foreclosed and abandoned properties in Detroit that are slated for demolition, his own 5,000-square-foot childhood home among them: "Detroit ... has been left hollow by fleeing jobs and liberal social policies."
Voters will hopefully hold Romney and all other candidates accountable to the truth. It has been anything but liberal social policies responsible for the foreclosure fiasco. First and foremost in Michigan has been abysmal management of the U.S. auto industry by feckless white-collar management, unrealistic compensation schedules awarded blue-collar unions and a steady erosion of market share by savvy foreign competition.
If the likes of Romney get elected in the coming voting cycles, the same erosion of American competitiveness will be guaranteed and the 90,000 foreclosed properties in Detroit will seem a paltry number compared with the millions that will follow.
Mike Garvan Brewster
Wonkette gave a humorous slant on Romney’s babyhood home destruction-a picture is worth a thousand words.
Of course, Romney was not mentioning, as the announcement of his babyhood home’s destruction sent Romney babbling in the press, another piece of Romney’s history is up for sale in upscale Bloomfield Hills. Price: $1,289,000 Lot Size: IRREG Area: Bloomfield Hills, MI County: Oakland MLS/Web ID: 28108645 Calculate Monthly Payment Virtual Tour Description
ONE OF THE MOST DESIRABLE LOTS IN THE CITY OF BLOOMFIELD HILLS. NEAR BLOOMFIELD HILLS COUNTRY CLUB, THIS IS 2+ ACRE LOT IS VERY PRIVATE, TREED AND OVERLOOKS ITS OWN POND. THIS PROMINENT PROPERTY, ONCE PART OF THE ROMNEY ESTATE, IS READY FOR YOUR DREAM HOME. FABULOUS PLANS BY DOMINIC TRIAGALI AVAILABLE. MOTIVATED SELLER, MAKE AN OFFER. LAND CONTRACT TERMS AVAILABLE http://www.weichert.com/20643600/. Since Romney appears to be interested in public funded memorials (Mitt must be thinking the home will be of historical value, once he buys the presidency). Mitt who spent millions and millions on his last presidential bid, the mere million dollars to restore the Detroit Romney shrine is too much for him, better the public to fork over the money – at least that is what appears to be the view.
What about Romney dropping a million or so for the two acres+ from another slice of Romney history in Bloomfield Hills? He can save it for a memorial park, or maybe build a pyramid?
Early one morning, as the Repeal and Replace Movement, moved from the birthing room into the media limelight, one of the first names I heard on the news was Mike Rogers from Michigan. Mike was making a statement supporting the movement. “No shock”, I thought. “Romney’s puppy is out nipping at ankles.”
A Livingston County Republican ‘who knows’ Mike, has posted on the blog, "Mike did not endorse any candidate during the primaries in 2008". However, members of his close knit and influential county family did support Romney. Rogers appears to possess life-long political ambitions and seemed to be playing politics, not wanting to get on the bad side of any Republican presidential hopefuls and waited to toss his hat into the ring, until after the primary dust settled.
While in Dallas on Mar 19, 2010 Mitt Romney laid out his plan to repeal the health-care bill, later citing the 10th amendment as the bases. Mitt Romney, who is the grandfather of the health-care bill, now attempts to become the darling of the conservative republicans with his repeal-and-replace plan. Mitt always creates his own drama, by being the catalyst of an issue and then rushes in to be the ‘savior,’ from the issues he assisted in creating.
David Frum wasn’t buying what he was hearing --
Frum questioned Republicans lack of in-put into the health-care bill Obama signed into law. In David Frum’s March 21 article, he outlined several points why the health-care bill might becomes republicans ‘Waterloo’. The second point, I suggest, became the reason for Frum’s own Waterloo when he wrote:
“So what? Legislative majorities come and go. This healthcare bill is forever. A win in November is very poor compensation for this debacle now”
Frum’s second point, from appearance is expanded into his March 23 article, on the “fantasy” of the repeal- and replace- movement. Frum writes:
“Mitt Romney and Sen. Bob Bennett of Utah, have both come under intense attack from the party’s activist base. Bennett faces a very serious primary challenge; Romney has run away from his own handiwork. Who wants to share their fate?”
“So the question should be pressed as Republicans speak of “replacement”: who is in charge of the process of drafting this replacement? What’s the deadline for completion? My guess is that there won’t be answers to those questions, that “replacement” will remain a more or less empty slogan through the 2010 elections”
David Frum’s words must have been a slap in the face to Romney. The movement which is to be Romney’s salvation was torpedoed by one of the Republican’s most prominent writers.
On March 26th, David Frum, during lunch with AEI President Arthur Brooks, was terminated. The generous money donators’ to AEI had decided to put their money elsewhere and not in Frum direction.
Less than two weeks from Mitt announced plan of repeal and replace, Frum was out the door of AEI.
Meanwhile back in Livingston County,Michigan Congressman Mike Rogers’s stomping ground; one Livingston County GOPer is quoted regarding David Frum:
“Man, that guy is a serious downer.” “I can totally see now why he's fired all the time.”
Does it seem unfair to point a finger in Mitt’s direction for Frum’s dismissal? Not really, others have run into steep head winds when going against an agenda of Mitts, or put Romney’ actions into question. To disagree with Romney had serious consequences -- even for people who appear to have a ‘liberal’ view.
Steve Hindi in the video below disagreed with Romney over a ‘rodeo’. O.K. it is a rodeo, many people may never have been to a rodeo, some may like them, and some may not. It is a rodeo, but it was serious business to Romney.
Guess who showed up in jackets with “Olympics" blazed across the back, while Steve Hindi was being accused of being a terrorist. You read that right, accused of being a TERRORIST! --- PLUS allegations of bomb threats! incite riots? We’re talking serious terrorist here, Romney doesn’t’ take someone disagreeing with him lightly!!
Obviously, there was influence used in the harassment of Steve Hindi. FBI agents bailing and leaving the New Mexico police looking like fools. Undue pressures and influence can come from within the agency by Mormon administrators favorable to members of their own faith, as in the case of Hispanic FBI agents which filed a law suit against the agency.
“Three hundred-eleven His¬panic FBI agents won a class action suit against the agency on September 30. A central argument in the suit was that their careers were stymied by the religious bias against non-Mormons of ranking FBI officials who are Mormon (LDS).
“Charges of a “Mormon Mafia” in the FBI’s Los Angeles office have been circulating for years, The FBI, admitting the dis¬crimination practices and pledging to end them with the recent appointment of a new director, had no plans to appeal the ruling.”
“Just after the case was filed, Richard T. Bretzing, 49, head of the Los Angeles divi¬sion of the FBI since 1982, retired to become the Manag¬ing Director of the LDS Church’s security department, according to the LDS Church News. Bretzing retired after 27 years’ service (three years short of the 30-year government retirement plan).”
Judge Vaughn R. Walker ruled in March, the government has violated a 1978 federal stature requiring court approval for domestic surveillance. “Under the program, the National Security Agency monitored Americans’ international e-mail messagesand phone calls without court approval, even though the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, required warrants.”
FISA warrants? Aren’t they the warrants Congressman Mike Rogers of Michigan voted to remove?
Rogers on his website boast about his role in the development of wiretaps, some of which are now found illegal by a U.S. Courts of Law. To quote Rogers: “In Congress, in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Mike’s expertise was sought out during development of the USA PATRIOT Act, which gives law enforcement the tools necessary for tracking terrorists with today’s technology. Mike’s expertise proved invaluable in understanding how wiretaps are obtained and used, the complex checks and balances that prevent abuse of wire taps, and why the rules based on 1970s technology were no longer applicable in the day of cell phones and the Internet.”
Mike voted:
..... YES on removing need for FISA warrant for wiretapping
“The ruling delivered a blow to the Bush administration’s claims that its surveillance program, which Mr. Bush secretly authorized shortly after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, was lawful. Under the program, the National Security Agency monitored Americans’ international e-mail messages and phone calls without court approval, even though the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, required warrants.”
Not good news for Congressman Mike Rogers’s judgment, understanding, or expertise on wiretapping.
Guess, the 1970’s federal program is applicable in today’s world.
Rogers is from Livingston County, Michigan, a county whose GOP leadership has been in an endless love affair with Mitt since the start of his last failed presidential run. Romney won the Saturday, March. 11, 2006 "straw vote in Livingston County, Mich., a fast-growing exurban county near Detroit, Romney won a straw poll of GOP activists, according to Michigan Republican Party chairman Saul Anuzis who was in Memphis.” “He estimated that about 400 people had taken part in the Michigan straw poll.”
Rogers’s involvement in the wiretapping and the March court ruling of Judge Vaughn R. Walker got me thinking about Mitt Romney’s view on enhanced tortures, which lead to the April 12th blog piece. The enhanced torture program followed on the heels of the Patriot Act of 2001.
Rogers and Romney have close associations, are touched on in the blog piece: “Mitt Romney, Mark Foley and Congressman Mike Rogers from Michigan” Can be located on the side bar in the March blogs, or http://mittromney2012potus.blogspot.com/2010/03/mitt-romney-mark-foley-and-congressman.html
