CALIFORNIA-- A PARADISE LOST?
When States have secrets, they always involve
money. Greedy state
politicians have developed a coven of
cronies and tricks to enrich themselves billions at a time. And that is what
has bankrupt ed us, the citizens. In my state, Diane Feinstein seems to be the
queen of greed and theft, breaking laws to pass her laws, to get her projects
passed, bonds and contracts which enrich her husband. Pork barreling from state
to her bank account. Study California, you'll know what graft, theft, bribery,
good ole boys clubs exist in all the states. You’ve heard about pork barreling. It’s when you are sent
to Washington working for your state as an elected representative and you get
beaucoup MOOLA from the FEDERAL GOV for your state, for your PEOPLE. DIANE
FEINSTEIN does that but she gives the MONEY TO HER HUSBAND. She also MAKES LAWS
THAT COST CALIFORNIA FIFTY BILLION dollars AND again, she MAKES HER HUSBAND
that SUM. THIS IS ILLEGAL but she gets away with it! THIS WOMAN MUST GO! A
SINGLE WOMAN BANKRUPTING CALIFORNIA.
Thirty-seven years before writer Frank Norris created the
fictional Octopus in his 1901 novel, the U.S. Congress gave birth to its
real-life counterpart by granting the Southern-Pacific Railway company a
checkerboard pattern of right-of-way land parcels lining either side of their
tracks from Texas to California. Although the railroad would dry up
economically in the mid-20th century, and disappear entirely in 1994 when it
was swallowed by the Union-Pacific Railroad in a merger, the Octopus that
Congress created still lives on in the form of the real estate giant that it
grew into from those 1864 checkerboard easements. This company, once known as
Southern-Pacific Realty, has tentacles that span the continent. It is now known
as Catellus Development, and it is an absolute Colossus.
Catellus is the second largest private landholder in the western
United States with 817,000 acres in California alone. It develops commercial
real estate, shopping centers, and housing, and acquired a number of properties
on some defunct military bases during the Clinton administration's base closure
program. Catellus has also been very active in a number of land swaps, where it
exchanged mostly worthless rural properties for prime development land within
urban areas, or for land directly adjacent to planned freeways.
It certainly hasn't hurt Catellus' cause that the corporation and
its officers, including ex-producer Rising, have been significant contributors
to the political war chests of both Willie Brown and Dianne Feinstein. Besides
the $140,000 in legal fees that Willie Brown received from Catellus as one of
its attorneys from 1982 until 1994, Brown's two San Francisco mayoral campaigns
also received a lot of cash from Catellus. So did Feinstein's U.S. Senate
campaigns. Over the past ten years, Feinstein's campaigns have received over
$150,000 from Catellus Development. Brown's two mayoral campaigns landed a
total of close to $50,000 from Catellus and individuals associated with the
corporation.
Senator Feinstein has proven very successful in promoting a
land-swap project that involves Catellus properties in Southern California. The
Senator is very proud of this project and lists it as one of her prime
accomplishments on her Congresssional website. This is the Desert Wilderness
Protection Act of 1994 (the act was funded with additional legislation
sponsored by Senator Feinstein in the 1999, 2000 and 2001 sessions of
Congress). Now known as The Desert Wildlands Act, this bill involves the transfer
of over 400,000 acres of Catellus land in the Mojave Desert to the federal
government to create a natural preserve. Of the $56.5 million purchase price
for the Catellus desert properties, $30 million of the money is coming from the
U.S. government. while the additional $26.5 million is coming from a non-profit
environmental group called The Wildlands Conservancy.
In a press release put out by Senator Feinstein's office, Nelson
Rising gave credit to Feinstein: "The successful completion of these
transactions would not have been possible without the significant efforts of
Senator Dianne Feinstein." Rising then went on to credit David Myers and
the Wildlands Conservancy for "rais(ing) the private funds necessary to
complete these sales."
In a column titled "A Succession of Land Deals" by
Sacramento Bee columnist Dan Walters published in March of 2001, Walters wrote
that the Catellus desert swap amounted to a deal where "Catellus walked
away with cash and valuable land and gave up virtually nothing of real value.
It was a coup for the company's top executive, Nelson Rising." Walters
went on to state that the Catellus desert bill bore some similarities to the
Headwaters Forest bill in that both were used to appease envirnonmentalists who
favored the desert park and wanted to preserve the forest. Senator Feinstein
negotiated the half-billion dollar Headwaters deal right before she authored
the Desert Wildlands bill.
Jeffrey Baird, a computer programmer who works for the County of
San Bernardino, says that the whole thing stinks to high heaven. "I
believe that non-profits (e.g. The Wildlands Conservancy) masquerading under
the cloak of "environmentalism" are being used as vehicles to
initiate a series of land purchases/swaps that will ultimately benefit Catellus
Corporation and their friends at the expense of John Q. Public." Baird
says that Catellus is giving up desert lands that are undevelopable in exchange
for lands adjacent to freeways that are well traveled and worth considerably
more.
Baird pointed out that there seems to be a connection between
Catellus Development and The Wildlands Conservancy that constitutes a direct
conflict of interest, and says that he fears "that the resulting
charitable gift/sales of 'ostensibly appreciated land' are inconsistent with
the underlying land values of these properties as determined by the county
assessor." Baird says that the assessed values of the land when they are
transferred from Catellus ownership to the Wildlands Conservancy increase
sharply, as high as 300% in some cases, yielding huge tax benefits to Catellus.
Baird has been trying to get a number of investigative agencies to look into
the issue without success.
Baird also believes that some of the federal land transfers
involve public lands that have been illegally transferred to private ownership
by the federal Bureau of Land Management. Baird has shown this reporter a
series of land parcels with map overlays that seems to establish his contention
that the parcels were in fact public lands as little as ten years ago. "I
think the whole thing is a money pump," said Baird.
In a May 1997 issue of Media ByPass magazine, writer Karen Lee Bixman
explored an area of the land swap that made some of Baird's concerns look pale
by comparison. In this story titled "The Great Gold Heist: The Desert
Wilderness Protection Act," Bixman characterized Senator Dianne Feinstein
as "The Modern Jesse James." Exchanging worthless desert land for
more viable commercial land alongside interchanges is bad public policy, but
swapping worthless land for rich, gold-bearing deposits was also scheduled.
Bixman wrote: "the real motivation for the passage of (the
Feinstein) bill lies with the special interest groups that would benefit
monetarily.Through a complex series of land exchanges, Catellus will receive
land that contains some of the richest gold deposits in the world."
Part of the Catellus land exchanges in the Mojave included a swap
for a decommissioned military base called Chocolate Mountain. Bixman said
geologists told her that Chocolate Mountain has deposits worth somewhere
between $40-100 billion. Catellus owns the nearby Mesquite mine in the
Chocolate Rift zone, which, Bixman wrote, "is one of the ten most
profitable mines in the United States and has some of the most profitable gold
deposits of any mine in the world."
Catellus Development is based in San Francisco at 201 Mission
Street -- just across the street from the Transbay Terminal. Catellus has a
number of high profile, multi-billion dollar projects underway in the Bay Area,
including the $3 billion Mission Bay project in San Francisco, and the $1.5
billion military base conversion project in Alameda, at the former Fisk Naval
Air Center. Both of these projects are mixed-use developments that will include
commercial office space, retail space, and housing.
On the first project, a Transbay Terminal bill was passed in the
2000 California legislative session that was carried by Assemblyman Dion
Aroner, an East Bay legislator. This bill, AB 1409, proposed a new 900,000
square foot transit building with commercial offices above it that was
initially pegged to cost $900 million. Although Aroner was the bill's nominal
author, sources at the State Capitol told this reporter that outgoing San
Francisco Mayor Willie Brown had a large hand in drafting the legislation.
The Aroner bill also carried an exemption in it stating that the
State of California would not receive fair market value for the exchange. At
the end of that year's legislative session, then-Governor Gray Davis vetoed the
bill but said that he would try to accomplish the same goal by handling the
matter "administratively," which presumably meant that the package
could go through without the legislature having to enact a new piece of
legislation. Neither Davis nor Governor Arnold Schwarzennegger would comment
for this story. At present, the new, so-called "Great Expectations"
terminal project is still on hold.
The second potentially profit-producing process involves a
possible new bridge across the San Francisco Bay.
The Burton bill resolved a long-standing dispute between the City
of San Francisco, the State of California, and the private
developers, Catellus, doing business under the name of Western
Realty. The bill allowed the development of filled tidelands to take place in
Mission Bay and also provided for a new University of California San Francisco
campus. SB 1215 was passed as an emergency measure that took effect immediately
when it was signed by then-Governor Pete Wilson in August, 1997. The bill
didn't receive one nay vote as it went through the legislature, nor did it
generate one single news story despite its huge potential impact on the
long-stalled Mission Bay project.
What is most interesting about the hiring of John Foran on the
Burton/Catellus bill was the length of his contract with Catellus and how much
money he was paid. Foran's term of employment was 22 days -- from March 20
through April 11 of 1997, for which he was paid almost $17,000. That's an
astronomical rate of pay for a contract lobbyist to represent a client on one
piece of legislation only. During that same time, Foran's yearly pay for the
MTC was $50,000.
What was a transportation lobbyist, the man who founded the MTC,
doing on behalf of a real estate company like Catellus?
A year-and-a-half after he had chided me about "going off
that bridge," and almost directly after being reelected Mayor of San
Francisco in the fall of 1999, Willie Brown received an appointment to the $100
billion California Public Employees Retirement System (PERS) pension fund
investment board -- the investment fund that once owned 80% of Catellus
Development stock and is still its largest institutional shareholder at
somewhere close to 40%. Shortly after Mayor Brown was appointed to PERS, Dianne
Feinstein wrote a letter to Governor Gray Davis asking for an updated study of
the Mid-Bay Crossing bridge. If such a bridge design included a landfall at
either of the two Catellus properties -- at Mission Bay or the Fisk Naval Air
Center base conversion -- it would likely have a beneficial effect on Catellus
stock prices.
In near record time, MTC approved the Mid-Bay Crossing study,
which is currently underway. Then Willie Brown, Dianne Feinstein and the San
Francisco bunch took a shot at winning the trifecta: three stocks with three
bills.
The first bill was the Catellus-sponsored legislation, SB 1215,
from the 1997 session (As a matter of fact, during the passage of SB1215,
Catellus stock went from below $10 a share to $18 a share. On November 26 and
28, 1997, after Burton's SB 1215 had become law, almost 4.25 million shares of
Catellus stock were traded at over $18 a share. Insider activity was heavy,
with over 3 million shares traded.) Senator John Burton's additional bill in
the 2000 session, SB 1562, called for development of a new rail link between
San Francisco Airport and another airport on land owned by a city and county
and located in another county. There's only one likely place that this can be:
the former Fisk Naval Air Center in Alameda. By some strange quirk, part of
this airbase is within the city and county limits of San Francisco. The Fisk
Center is presently being developed as a mixed-use commercial office and retail
center with 350 dwelling units. The developer is Catellus.
Directly after Senator Burton's first bill, SB 1215, was passed in
the 1997 session, Burton's campaign received three contributions totalling
$55,000 from the Southern California District Council of Carpenter's Political
Action Fund. Richard Blum, Senator Feinstein's husband, is this union's pension
fund manager.
Then, on the day that he introduced SB 1562 in the 2000 session,
Burton's campaign received a $4,000 contribution from Nossaman, Guthner, Knox
and Elliott, the lobbyist group headed by John Foran who have been active on
every speculation-driven stock from the bullet train in 1982 until now.
When the legislature went to conference committee in June, 2000, a
new paragraph was amended into the trailer bill that was the financing scheme
for the purchase of the Cargill Salt Flats near San Francisco Airport. Cargill
Salt is another Nossaman, Guthner client. The trailer bill was Assemblywoman
Carole Migden's AB 398. Migden's original bill called for $150 million in state
funds to help acquire the Cargill salt flats. (When Governor Gray Davis signed
the bill into law, the amount of state funds had been reduced to $20 million).
Besides acquiring the Salt Flats for environmentalists, the land was also
scheduled to be used for the estimated $3 billion expansion of the San
Francisco Airport.
During the hearing for AB 398, Migden mentioned the fact that
Senator Feinstein was carrying the ball for the acquisition in Congress with a
"spot" bill. The same type of legislative vehicle that drove the Bay
Bridge and Bullet Train profit-making processes. What she didn't mention was
that URS Greiner, Richard Blum's company, was chosen as the engineering design
firm in charge of the $3 billion SFO expansion, presently on hold.
Like all the other transportation bills dating back to the bullet
train in 1982, the Burton-Migden-Feinstein package began as "spot"
bills that contain the famous California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA)
exemptions and other key elements these legislative wizards have been refining
ever since. It also involved an airport runway "competition" for SFO
that was very like that for the Bay Bridge competion. This time, the notice for
the competition was posted the very day the competition closed. But this time,
there were five finalists, not two. It wasn't much of a surprise to learn that
URS, Blum's firm, won.
All the usual players were present when the deal was going down in
conference committee during the 2000 session. Mayor Willie Brown and his people
were there. Willie called the airport expansion "a golden
opportunity" when he gave testimony on the bill's behalf. Senator John
Burton was up on the dais. The MTC's Executive Director Steve Heminger was
circling around, and so was MTC founder, John Foran. So were other lobbyists
from the Nossaman, Guthner group. Notably absent were Richard Blum and his
wife, Senator Dianne Feinstein.
In the weeks leading up to the Burton-Migden-Feinstein legislative
package, the savvy investors were furiously buying stock. Richard Blum was
purchasing URS stock in 100,000 share lots; it had fallen from 28 to 12 in the
time that Willie Brown and Dianne Feinstein made every effort to kill the new
eastern span of the Bay Bridge that the MTC had chosen in May, 1998. Then URS
turned around and began rising again, from $12 to $20 a share in six months.
Lockheed-Martin (LMT on the NYSE) would experience a significant jump in
2001-2002 when the new high-speed train legislation went through. The MTC was
studying a new southern crossing bridge.
Can you imagine the effect on Catellus stock if the bridge runs
from one of their properties to a landfall on another property they own? The
previous MTC study in 1991 alluded to such a possibility. As a matter of fact,
the late T.Y. Lin already had a bridge designed for a Mid-Bay crossing. And who
cares if it ever gets built? Just take the speculation-driven profit and move
on to the next process.
Richard Trainor is an investigative reporter living in Eugene,
Oregon. He can be reached at: richardtrainor@hotmail.com
POST NOTE: Trainor got a lawfirm to bust this wide open.
California corrupt JUDGES put honorable, 70 year old lawyer RICHARD FINE in
jail for ONE FULL YEAR. FOR NO REASON! He’s still there.
Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca
released hundreds of jail inmates last week before their terms were up, citing
county budget problems.
However, 70-year-old Richard
Fine was not among them. Instead, last week he marked the one-year anniversary
of being clapped into a small and windowless solitary confinement cell for what
a local judge declared to be contempt of court.
Fine is an antitrust attorney
who has been a persistent critic of Los Angeles County's practice of giving
judges nearly $50,000 a year in extra pay over their state-paid salaries.
He's alleged that when the county government is a party to a lawsuit, it's a
conflict of interest for judges to hear the case – and a conflict for them to
hear any cases involving him because of his criticism.
In 2008, a state appeals court
ruled – in a case brought by another party – that giving judges extra payments
violated the state constitution. A year ago, however, the Legislature attached
to its budget package a bill authorizing the extra payments, including those
already made.
A few days after the legislation
was enacted, Superior Court Judge David Yaffe, who had refused to recuse
himself from a Fine case, sentenced him to jail indefinitely for contempt,
citing a refusal to provide personal financial information in a dispute over
attorney fees.
Fine has continued to battle from
behind bars, but the State Bar has moved to strip him of his legal license,
alleging moral turpitude. The 9th U.S. District Court of Appeal has denied his
petition for release, and the Supreme Court has refused to intervene.
"Fine holds the key to his
jail cell," Kevin McCormick, an attorney for the Los Angeles court, said
in a brief filed with the federal appellate court. "By simply agreeing to
answer the questions and produce documents concerning his assets, that he has a
legal obligation to provide, his coercive confinement will end."
While judges have apparently
decided to make Fine an example, he's become a cause célèbre for groups that
contend judges at all levels have become arrogant and insular.
His supporters have conducted
demonstrations outside the jail and pelted journalists with information about
the case, portraying Fine as a victim of gulag-like punishment. They say that
his health has deteriorated markedly behind bars because he's been denied
medical attention.
Clearly, Fine has been a thorn
in the judges' side, but just as clearly, he's being punished largely because
he's been a thorn.
With hundreds of real criminals
being released because of budgetary concerns – the county's projected savings
from early prisoner releases are roughly what it costs to give judges those
extra benefits, by the way – it's ludicrous that this 70-year-old attorney
should remain locked in solitary.
If Fine was not a prisoner of
political conscience a year ago, he certainly has become one.
© Copyright The
Sacramento Bee. A
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