Paul Ryan Address: Convention Speech Built On Demonstrably Misleading Assertions

Huff Post

Ryan Grim

Posted: 08/30/2012 12:29 am Updated: 08/30/2012 11:52 am

TAMPA, Fla. — Paul Ryan pledged Wednesday that if he and his running mate Mitt Romney were elected president, they would usher in an ethic of responsibility. The Wisconsin congressman and GOP vice presidential candidate repeatedly chided President Barack Obama for blaming the jobs and housing crises on his predecessor, saying that his habit of “forever shifting blame to the last administration, is getting old. The man assumed office almost four years ago -– isn’t it about time he assumed responsibility?”

Ryan then noted that Obama, while campaigning for president, promised that a GM plant in Wisconsin would not shut down. “That plant didn’t last another year. It is locked up and empty to this day. And that’s how it is in so many towns today, where the recovery that was promised is nowhere in sight,” Ryan said.

Except Obama didn’t promise that. And the plant closed in December 2008 — while George W. Bush was president.

It was just one of several striking and demonstrably misleading elements of Ryan’s much-anticipated acceptance speech. And it comes just days after Romney pollster Neil Newhouse warned, defending the campaign’s demonstrably false ads claiming Obama removed work requirements from welfare, “We’re not going to let our campaign be dictated by fact-checkers.”

Ryan, for his part, slammed the president for not supporting a deficit commission report without mentioning that he himself had voted against it, helping to kill it.

He also made a cornerstone of his argument the claim that Obama “funneled” $716 billion out of Medicare to pay for Obamacare. But he didn’t mention that his own budget plan relies on those very same savings.

Ryan also put responsibility for Standard & Poor’s downgrade of U.S. government debt at Obama’s doorstep. But he didn’t mention that S&P itself, in explaining its downgrade, referred to the debt ceiling standoff. That process of raising the debt ceiling was only politicized in the last Congress, driven by House Republicans, led in the charge by Paul Ryan.

The credit rater also said it worried that Republicans would never agree to tax increases. “We have changed our assumption on [revenue] because the majority of Republicans in Congress continue to resist any measure that would raise revenues,” S&P wrote.

Jodie Layton, a convention goer from Utah watching the Ryan speech, said she was blown away by the vice presidential candidate. But she said she was surprised to hear that after his speech about taking responsibility, he’d pinned a Bush-era plant closing on Obama.

“It closed in December 2008?” she asked, making sure she heard a HuffPost reporter’s question right. After a long pause, she said, “It’s happening a lot on both sides. It’s to be expected.”

Ryan has referenced the GM plant before, and his attack was debunked by the Detroit News, which called it inaccurate. “In fact, Obama made no such promise and the plant halted production in December 2008, when President George W. Bush was in office,” Detroit News reporter David Sherpardson wrote earlier this month. “Obama did speak at the plant in February 2008, and suggested that a government partnership with automakers could keep the plant open, but made no promises as Ryan suggested.”

After the speech, CNN’s political commentators focused mostly on Ryan’s misstatements, demonstrating the degree to which they were evident.

MORE HERE

Read Full Post »

Paul Ryan Fails — The Truth

The Washington Post

By Jonathan Bernstein

Posted at 11:56 PM ET, 08/29/2012

It was, by any reasonable standards, a staggering, staggering lie. Here’s Paul Ryan about Barack Obama:

He created a bipartisan debt commission. They came back with an urgent report.  He thanked them, sent them on their way, and then did exactly nothing.

“They.” “Them.” “Them.” Those words are lies. Because Paul Ryan was on that commission. “Came back with an urgent report.” That is a lie. The commission never made any recommendations for Barack Obama to support or oppose. Why not? Because the commission voted down its own recommendations. Why? Because Paul Ryan, a member of the commission, voted it down and successfully convinced the other House Republicans on the commission to vote it down.

That wasn’t the only bit of mendacity – lazy mendacity, incredibly lazy mendacity – in Ryan’s speech. Twitter lit up as soon as he started telling the story of the Janesville auto plant that Barack Obama didn’t save – a plant that, it turns out, closed before Obama was president. And of course there’s the infamous cuts to Medicare that Ryan lambasted Obama for without happening to mention that those very same cuts were in Paul Ryan’s own budget. Yes: absolutely everything in Obamacare is an abomination, says Paul Ryan, except for (as he forgets to mention) the cuts to Medicare that he supports – and yet he still singles that part out to use as an attack.

It isn’t even true in some symbolic or abstract way. The real truth is that Paul Ryan completely rejects the approach of that commission – because it includes tax increases along with spending cuts – while Barack Obama has, while not endorsing the exact plan that Ryan shot down, basically endorsed the commission’s approach. Nor was this a side point; Ryan’s complaint about Obama on the deficit was absolutely central to his case against the president.

And then there’s the logic of the whole thing. As Seth Masket said, it all comes down to arguing “we must cut entitlements! Obama cutting entitlements is un-American.”  There’s also, as many were pointing out, the plain fact that until January 2009 Paul Ryan faithfully supported all the tax cuts and spending increases which created the deficit problem he’s been so concerned about since January 2009.

But really, the proper response to a speech like this isn’t to carefully analyze the logic, or to find instances of hypocracy; it’s to call the speaker out for telling flat-out lies to the American people. Paul Ryan has had what I’ve long thought was an undeserved good reputation among many in the press and in Washington. It shouldn’t survive tonight’s speech.

Follow Jonathan Bernstein on Twitter and at his blog.

SOURCE

Read Full Post »

Why It’s So Important For Rape To Be ‘Legitimate’

Todd Akin (R-MO): Legitimately creepy

Daily Kos

by Dante Atkins

Sun Aug 26, 2012 at 06:00 AM PDT

Unless you’ve been spending the past week or so living under a rock—and given the political climate these days, it would be hard to blame you for doing so—you can’t have missed the fact that Republican Congressman and newly minted Senate nominee from Missouri, Todd Akin, went on a St. Louis television station and proceeded to stick his foot so far down his mouth that his toes tingled his duodenum.

Akin’s comments, which have led panicked Republicans to call for him to drop out of the race lest his misogynist toxicity metastasize to infect the Romney/Ryan ticket and Republicans across the nation, centered around two atrocities: first, the absurd idea that female reproductive anatomy can shut down in response to rape and somehow prevent conception; and second, the use of the term “legitimate rape” to describe the circumstances under which a woman’s magic ovaries would somehow initiate the aforementioned shutdown of reproductive capacity. Taken together, the comments as a whole were designed to justify Akin’s opposition to any exemptions for abortion, even in cases of rape or incest: After all, per Akin’s logic, if a woman gets raped, she won’t get pregnant; so if she’s pregnant, well, no exemption is required.

The biological aspect of Akin’s comments seems to have drawn more scorn and outright mockery: After all, how can someone pretend to take a leading role in legislating women’s bodies without even knowing the basics of how they work? The comments about “legitimate rape,” however, were a different story, as seemingly every Democratic candidate and committee in existence sent an email to their lists seeking to raise money and respond to Akin’s outrageous implication that some rapes are okay.

MORE HERE

Read Full Post »

Crossroads GPS And Americans For Prosperity Outspend All Super PACs Combined

Think Progress Justice

By Rebecca Leber  on Aug 14, 2012 at 3:50 pm

Karl Rove’s Crossroads GPS (an affiliate of the super PAC American Crossroads) and the Koch brothers’ Americans For Prosperity have spent more on TV ads than every super PAC combined, according to a ProPublica analysis of CMAG data. Unlike super PACs, these groups do not have to disclose donors. That has allowed a handful of unknown billionaires  — like Sheldon Adelson and the Kochs — to funnel millions into attack ads through outside groups.

SOURCE

Read Full Post »

Scrutiny for Casino Mogul’s Frontman in China

The New York Times

By MICHAEL LUO, NEIL GOUGH and EDWARD WONG

Published: August 13, 2012

When Sheldon Adelson, the casino magnate, needed something done in China, he often turned to his company’s “chief Beijing representative,” a mysterious businessman named Yang Saixin.

Mr. Yang arranged meetings for Mr. Adelson with senior Chinese officials; acted as a frontman on several ambitious projects for Mr. Adelson’s company, the Las Vegas Sands Corporation; and intervened on the Sands’s behalf with Chinese regulators. Mr. Yang even had his daughter take Mr. Adelson’s wife, Miriam, shopping when she was in Beijing.

“Adelson and I had a good relationship,” Mr. Yang said in a recent interview in Hong Kong. “He should thank me.”

Mr. Yang joined the Sands in 2007 as the company worked to protect its interests in Macau, where its gambling revenues were mushrooming, and pressed ahead with plans for a resort in mainland China. Boasting of ties to the People’s Liberation Army and China’s security apparatus, Mr. Yang was hired for his guanxi, that mixture of relationships and favors that is critical to opening doors in China, according to former executives.

But today, Mr. Yang, along with tens of millions of dollars in payments the Sands made through him in China, is a focus of a wide-ranging federal investigation into potential bribery of foreign officials and other matters in China and Macau, according to people with direct knowledge of the inquiries.

The investigations are unfolding as Mr. Adelson has become an increasing presence in this year’s presidential election, contributing at least $35 million to Republican groups. On Tuesday, Mitt Romney’s running mate, Representative Paul D. Ryan, is to appear at a fund-raiser at the Sands’s Venetian casino in Las Vegas; Mr. Adelson is likely to attend, a person close to him said.

In the political arena, Mr. Adelson is perhaps best known as a hawkish defender of Israel. But whatever the outcome of the inquiries involving his businesses in China, an examination of those activities suggests a keen interest in Washington’s China policy and highlights the degree to which politics and profits are often intertwined for Mr. Adelson.

The Sands has faced a conundrum in China as a casino company whose fortunes are heavily dependent on its operations in a country where gambling is illegal, except in Macau. The company relies on the good will of Chinese officials, who mete out approvals and have the power to curtail the flow of mainland visitors. As a result, Mr. Adelson has sought to use financial clout and connections to exert political influence at the highest levels of government.

On the front lines of those efforts was Mr. Yang, who was paid $30,000 a month by the company before he was fired in 2009, he said. At times, he acted as Mr. Adelson’s personal guide to the Chinese establishment. Among the dignitaries he took Mr. Adelson to see was Wan Jifei, a leading international trade official whose father had been vice premier. That led to a lunch with other trade officials at the Great Hall of the People on Tiananmen Square.

The Sands later hired Mr. Wan’s daughter, Bao Bao, a socialite and jewelry designer, to do public relations. And the trade agency Mr. Wan ran became a partner in the Sands’s biggest venture, the Adelson Center for U.S.-China Enterprise.

Mr. Yang denies resorting to bribery and says he actually lost money on his dealings with the Sands.

“I’m really being bullied because I helped Venetian and Adelson do so many things,” he said. “I’m in the middle, and on both sides everybody’s pointing at me.”

The broad outlines of the mainland China investigation were reported last week by The Wall Street Journal. But a review of more than a thousand pages of corporate records in China, as well as interviews with former Sands executives and others, provides a more detailed picture.

The documents show that the Sands paid out more than $70 million to companies tied to Mr. Yang for the trade center and for a Chinese basketball team the Sands sponsored. But several million dollars appear to be unaccounted for after the projects were suddenly shut down by the company, The New York Times found.

What became of any missing money and whether any of it wound up in the hands of Chinese officials are among the questions being examined by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission.

MORE HERE

Read Full Post »

Paul Ryan’s Jack Abramoff And Tom DeLay Connections Likely To Draw New Scrutiny

Huff Post

By- Jason Cherkis

Posted: 08/11/2012  5:58 pm Updated: 08/11/2012  6:02 pm

WASHINGTON — As Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) has served more than a decade in Congress, President Barack Obama and his allies will surely be scouring his extensive voting record, if they haven’t done so already. But along with key votes, the Democrats have begun to highlight some of the questionable relationships that Ryan has acquired during his time in Washington. Among them, expect to see a re-examination of Ryan’s ties to former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay and disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

The pro-Obama super PAC American Bridge has already unveiled an opposition research book about Ryan that documents the Republican’s ties to those symbols of Washington excess. Information pulled from the book and elsewhere shows that Ryan was an ardent defender of DeLay.

One year before DeLay was indicted on conspiracy and money laundering charges, Ryan called the attacks “gutter politics at its worst,” according to the Washington Post. And added: “You’re going to see a big rallying around Tom.”

For that remark, a columnist for the Wisconsin State Journal wrote that Ryan had “put his head in the sand.” But Ryan only stepped up his defense of DeLay.

Six months before the indictment, Ryan called the investigation and ensuing public outcry over DeLay “an effort to ‘lynch him politically,'” according to Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

Even after a Texas grand jury indicted DeLay on October 3, 2005, Ryan still refused to return $25,000 in donations from the then-former House Majority Leader. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported that Ryan said he would only return the cash if DeLay was convicted.

Soon thereafter, Ryan, like others in Congress, had to deal with fallout over his ties to Abramoff. In January 2006, the lobbyist pleaded guilty to charges that he committed fraud, tax evasion and engaged in a conspiracy to bribe public officials. Ryan donated close to $2,000 to charity — the amount he received from a PAC for which Abramoff worked and from the lobbyist personally. Ryan said he wanted “to remove any shred of concern,” the Journal Sentinel reported.

A few months later, Ryan began to cut his ties to DeLay. The Capital Times reported in April that Ryan took a $27,500 donation from DeLay’s PAC and donated it to charity. Ryan said that he did so because one of DeLay’s former top aides pleaded guilty to conspiracy charges. “I believe it is appropriate to donate these contributions to charity, even though these contributions were perfectly legal and appropriate,” Ryan said in a statement at the time. “I simply want to remove any doubt in this matter.”

A jury convicted DeLay on money laundering charges in November 2010. He was sentenced to three years in prison. He is free pending his appeal.

VIDEO & MORE HERE

Read Full Post »

Romney-Ryan 2012: The Herman & Eddie Munster Ticket

Crooks & Liars

By karoli

August 11, 2012 06:00 AM

As I write, the only thing lacking is official confirmation by the Romney campaign that Mittens will adopt young Paul Ryan as his running mate. It would appear as though Mittens’ disaster-laden campaign of the past few weeks has prompted his billionaires to lay down the law and require Ryan as the Very Serious Running Mate.

Ah, yes. Paul Ryan, “zombie-eyed granny starver” extraordinaire. The guy who loved Ayn Rand until he didn’t.

Here’s a nice video of Paul Ryan. I’ll bet it would make a great commercial, this lovefest with Glenn Beck.

AUDIO

.
Paul Ryan is a disaster, but that doesn’t mean the Villagers won’t treat him as a Very Serious VP Candidate Who Will Give Mittens A Much-Needed Bump. They will treat him that way. Meanwhile, the Very Serious conservatives will rejoice and forget Mitt is their candidate, substituting Paul Ryan in their minds for the first name on the ballot, and the Kochs will open their wallets wider for Their Black-Haired Boy. See, for example, the fawning by Chuck Todd and David Gregory over Ryan As Visionary.

I suppose that’s enough bashing for one post. (Can Ryan ever be bashed enough?) Let’s review some of the facts on Paul Ryan and whether he’s a good fit with Mitt:

• He wants to raise taxes on ordinary people so billionaires and millionaires can get a break. Check.
• He wants to give Granny and Grampy a little voucher instead of the Medicare they’ve come to know and love. Check.
• Repeal Obamacare! Because…Romneycare. Check.
• He was once a beneficiary of the social safety net he seeks to destroy. Hypocrisy. Check.
• He speaks spreadsheet. Check.

Also? President Obama turns him into a whining, sniveling wimp.

I have a theory about why Ryan is the Boy Wonder, and no, it’s not the one that says Mitt is really Herman Munster and Ryan is his sixth son, Eddie. I think Mitt’s billionaires were tired of his very terrible, awful campaign and decided they’d better get the base fired up before they gave up entirely. And so word was passed to Mitt: It’s Ryan or we’re done with you.

After that, all that was left was tapping Tagg to fire TPaw and Rob Portman. Mitt seems to be quite good at delegating tasks, even firing people.

Over on the left, there is much rejoicing about Mitt’s the billionaires’ choice for the veep slot, and for good reason. After all, for eighteen months we’ve been trying to get the general electorate to see the do-nothing Congress in all its glory, from the debt ceiling debacle to the Ryan budget monstrosity to the zillionth meaningless vote to climb into women’s reproductive systems. Now it will be on display for all to see, naked, fat and ugly.

A few other random thoughts. Does anyone giggle at the thought that Bill Kristol picked Sarah Palin and Paul Ryan?  How will Newt Gingrich cover his tracks? Has anyone asked Paul Ryan about Ponzi schemes, particularly those he benefits from?

Who does Eddie Munster’s hair? Quick, hire them for Pretty Paul’s campaign appearances.

SOURCE

Read Full Post »

Obama Super PAC Waiting To Unload On Mitt Romney’s Embrace Of Paul Ryan Budget

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney speaks in Milwaukee, Wis., on March 30, 2012, with House Budget Committee Chairman, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) looking on. (Steven Senne / AP)

Huff Post

Jon Ward

Posted: 08/07/2012 10:21 am Updated: 08/07/2012 10:54 am

Bill Kristol and Stephen Hayes caused a stir this week when they encouraged Mitt Romney to pick Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) or Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) as his running mate.

The conservative Weekly Standard authors based their argument for Ryan on the premise that Romney, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, has endorsed the House Budget Committee chairman’s budget anyway, and is going to be attacked for it by President Barack Obama’s campaign no matter what.

“If Ryan’s budget is going to be a central part of the debate over the next three months, who better to explain and defend it than Paul Ryan?” Kristol and Hayes wrote.

Yuval Levin, a former White House policy adviser for President George W. Bush who has been one of the most authoritative conservative voices arguing in favor of fundamental reform of entitlement programs like Medicare, told The Huffington Post that he agrees with Kristol and Hayes.

“The fact is that you can’t choose whether to run on this or not anymore,” Levin said of the Ryan budget and of his Medicare reforms. “Obama will make [Romney] run on this because Democrats continue to think that they have a huge advantage by pushing the issue. And I think there’s going to be a kind of Medicare chapter of the Obama campaign that is going to be coming soon.”

A phone conversation with Paul Begala, a veteran Democratic strategist who is now raising funds and consulting for Priorities USA Action, the main super PAC supporting Obama, confirmed that Levin’s conjecture was correct.

Asked whether Romney will have to campaign on the Ryan budget reforms or whether he should stick to his current jobs and the economy script, Begala told HuffPost, “they will because we’re going to require them to.”

“I promise you the Ryan-Romney budget is going to be central to this discussion,” Begala said. “This is not like some crackpot theory from some long dead Russian immigrant. It is now the official budget of the Republican party of the House of Representatives. This is not like just some kind of fringe deal.”

Begala declined to comment on when Priorities USA plans to unleash their criticisms of the Ryan budget. They are most likely waiting to see if Romney picks Ryan as his running mate, in which case those attacks could be coming sooner than later.

Super PACs like Priorities USA are forbidden by law from coordinating their activities with the Obama campaign. So far this year, the group has worked to reinforce the Obama campaign’s attacks on Romney’s private equity career at Bain Capital.

Obama campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt declined to preview strategic planning for the rest of the campaign, but said as far as they are concerned, Romney already is running on the Ryan budget.

“Governor Romney has not only fully embraced the Ryan budget, but he has introduced a budget plan that is a carbon copy — it makes seniors pay thousands of dollars more each year for their health care and severe cuts to programs essential to the middle class in order to pay for tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires,” LaBolt said. “Mitt Romney is campaigning on the flawed assumption that we can just cut our way to prosperity.”

HERE

Read Full Post »

Obama Camp Slams Romney’s Claim About Ohio Early-Voting Lawsuit

A woman in Ohio fills out a provisional ballot during the 2008 election. President Obama and Mitt Romney are trading charges over a lawsuit Democrats filed after the state’s early voting law was changed. (Chris Hondros, Getty Images / November 4, 2008)

Charges that the president aims to undermine service members’ rights are called ‘shameful.’

By Seema Mehta, Los Angeles Times
August 6, 2012, 6:02 a.m.

CHICAGO — A top advisor to President Obama‘s campaign lashed out at Mitt Romney on Sunday, arguing that the presumptive GOP nominee is misrepresenting a lawsuit Democrats filed in Ohio to equalize voting rights for all Ohioans.

The suit, which Romney has seized upon to argue that Obama is trying to undermine service members’ voting rights, calls for all Ohioans to be able to cast early votes up until the Monday before election day.

“What that lawsuit calls for is not to deprive the military of the right to vote in the final weekend of the campaign. Of course they should have that right. What that suit is about is whether the rest of Ohio should have the same right, and I think it’s shameful that Gov. Romney would hide behind our servicemen and women,” Obama campaign strategist David Axelrod said on “Fox News Sunday.”

Until 2011, all Ohioans could cast early ballots as late as the Monday before election day. Last year, the Legislature instituted a Friday cutoff for all voters except members of the military and their families.

In mid-July, the Obama campaign and state and national Democratic groups filed suit, arguing that a two-tier voting system was unconstitutional and calling for all voters to be allowed to cast ballots until the day before election day. The suit does not call for reducing early voting access for service members.

On Saturday, Romney accused Obama of trying to undermine service members’ voting rights, and he argued that Ohio was within its rights to give service members special privileges.

“President Obama’s lawsuit claiming it is unconstitutional for Ohio to allow servicemen and women extended early voting privileges during the state’s early voting period is an outrage,” Romney said in a statement Saturday. ” …. If I’m entrusted to be the commander in chief, I’ll work to protect the voting rights of our military, not undermine them.”

The disagreement between the two camps hinges on the Constitution: Obama argues that all citizens must be afforded equal voting access, while Romney maintains that it is legal for active members of the military and their families to receive extra privileges.

“Making it easier for service men and women and their families to vote early is not only constitutional but commendable,” said Katie Biber, general counsel for the Romney campaign. “It is not a violation of the equal protection clause to give military voters special flexibility in early voting.”

A spokesman for the Obama campaign said Romney was trying to restrict access to the polls and was fabricating the notion that Democrats sought to restrict voting rights.

MORE HERE

Read Full Post »

Las Vegas Sands Target Of U.S. Money-Laundering Probe, WSJ Says

Chairman and CEO of Las Vegas Sands Corporation Sheldon Adelson. AFP PHOTO / AARON TAM

Reuters | Posted: 08/04/2012  1:25 pm Updated: 08/04/2012  2:55 pm

CHICAGO, Aug 4 (Reuters) – Las Vegas Sands Corp,  controlled by billionaire Republican donor Sheldon Adelson, is  the target of a federal investigation into possible violations  of U.S. money-laundering laws, the Wall Street Journal reported  on Saturday.

The Los Angeles U.S. attorney’s office is looking into the  casino company’s handling of the receipt of millions of dollars  from a Mexican businessman, later indicted in the United States  for drug trafficking, and a former California businessman, later  convicted of taking illegal kickbacks, the Journal said, citing  lawyers and others involved in the matter.

The transactions date from the mid-2000s.

The Journal said there are no indications that actions by  Adelson, who is the company’s chief executive officer and  largest shareholder, are being investigated.

The Los Angeles U.S. attorney could not be reached for  comment by Reuters on Saturday. A Sands spokesman was not  immediately available to comment to Reuters, but spokesman Ron  Reese told the Journal, “The company believes it has acted  properly and has not committed any wrongdoing.”

Reese said the company was cooperating with federal  investigators.

The timing of the investigation could open the Justice  Department to criticism that it is politically motivated, the  Journal said. Adelson is a major donor to the super PAC  supporting presumed Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney  against President Barack Obama and plans to spend $100 million  on Republican candidates in November’s elections.

Adelson, who owns casinos in Las Vegas, Macau and Singapore,  began this campaign season as a major donor to Newt Gingrich  before Gingrich dropped out of the Republican presidential race.  He has since switched his support to Romney and last month was  in Jerusalem with the candidate when Romney met Israeli Prime  Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who Adelson also strongly supports.

The Journal said the Las Vegas money-laundering  investigation focused on two “whales” – as big-money gamblers  are known – and whether Sands officials ignored warning signs  and did not alert federal authorities about millions of dollars  the gamblers had deposited.

The Journal identified one of the “whales” as Zhenli Ye Gon,  a Chinese-born Mexican national who was indicted in 2007 in the  United States on charges of dealing in materials used to make  methamphetamine.

The drug case was dismissed in 2009 but Ye Gon is still in  U.S. custody awaiting extradition to Mexico, where authorities  want to try him on drug trafficking and money laundering  charges, the Journal said, citing court records.

The Journal said Ausaf Umar Siddiqui, a former executive  with the Fry’s Electronics retail chain, also was under  scrutiny. Court filings in another case showed Siddiqui sent  more than $100 million to the Sands. Siddiqui was charged with  taking kickbacks from Fry’s vendors, pleaded guilty and is now  in prison.

U.S. authorities also are investigating the Sands to see if  there were breaches of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA),  which prohibits bribes to foreign officials by U.S. companies,  in its Macau operation.

HERE

Read Full Post »