The whole point of free speech is not to make ideas exempt from criticism but to expose them to it.

Wednesday, April 22, 2009

How to make a judge sick

A friend of mine, we'll call him Hizhona, spent 17 years on the bench and retired after he said he began catching what he calls black robe fever. "I was getting downright mean," he told me.

So I asked Hizhona if he had heard about Sen. Diane Feinstein's husband and the sweetheart deal described in a Washington Times story which you can read in its entirety (8 pages) here.

Feinstein, it seems, sought $25 billion ($25,000,000,000.00) for the FDIC which had in November awarded her husband's firm a big fat hairy contract. Sen. Feinstein says she didn't know her hubby, Richard Blum, chairman of the board of CB Richard Ellis Group (CBRE), had recently secured the fat FDIC contract to sell foreclosed upon properties the FDIC gets when it takes over a bank.

She also didn't know that he bought 10 million shares of CBRE just before the contract with FDIC was announced, (and after the good Senator got involved) garnering the happy couple a fat 37 percent increase (as of Monday) on their $37,700,000 investment since November. Nothin' fishy about that, right? Gentle readers, if your spouse purchased nearly $38 million in stock, do you think you would know?

What's all this got to do with Hizhona? When I tried to describe the situation to him, he said: "I spent 17 years on the bench putting people in the penetentiary for stealing $500 and sometimes less. And, these people will go free. It makes me sick." (read want to vomit).

The $25,000,000,000.00 Feinstein secured for the FDIC was supposed to help FDIC in their efforts to avoid having to pursue foreclosures. But her husband will get between 6 percent and 30 percent for selling those properties after they're foreclosed upon.

This stinks like dead fish.

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