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Peter Schweizer is a widely-known researcher and author who chronicles political corruption at the national level. He is an equal opportunity revealer and thorn in the side of the shady dealings of both Democrats and Republicans alike.
This is the second installment of our review of his book Profiles in Corruption, and our review is based on only one chapter which is typical of the deep research and thorough documentation found in this work published in 2020.
In Harris’ climb to have now been named—note that, named and selected, not elected—as the Democrat Party candidate for President in 2024, she was assisted most of the way by her relationship with one of the most powerful men in California politics in the past several decades, Mr. Willie Brown.
One of the most troubling failures during Harris’ tenure as district attorney was concerning abuse of children by Catholic priests.
For a decade-and-a-half, while Harris was the chief prosecutor, first in San Francisco, and later for the whole state of California, “Harris would fail to prosecute a single case of priest abuse and her office would strangely hide vital records on abuses that had occurred despite the protests of victims groups.” (Emphasis in the original.)
In eight pages of shocking details Schweizer lays out the record of how money from the church hierarchy lubricated the sliders on the filing cabinets to keep the sordid files locked in the cabinets and never coming before a judge for justice for the victims.
While those failures and cover-ups were tragic and criminal enough, Harris acted similarly in dealing with strip clubs and prostitution; i.e., very soft on crime.
Another area of Harris failing to prosecute allegations of corruption involved—you guessed it—another “friend of Willie” Brown. (All emphases and comments in [brackets] are mine unless otherwise note.—JWB)
QUOTE: Consider the case of Ricardo Ramirez. Ramirez ran a cement and concrete company called Pacific Cement. As of 2003, a full one-third of the public works projects in San Francisco used Pacific.101
Ramirez was a colorful but ruthless player in the construction business. He liked to wear $500 cowboy boots and roamed around the city in a $100,000 Mercedes-Benz. He threw lavish parties with Mariachi bands and tossed around a lot of campaign cash. Having given almost $100,000 to politicians over the previous eight years made him a “well-connected political player” in San Francisco.
Those contributions often went to the Willie Brown machine and were not always legal. In 1997, state officials found that Ramirez had illegally contributed $2,000 to Brown’s 1995 mayoral campaign.102
His ties to Brown went beyond financial contributions. Ramirez was reportedly friends with Brown, but he also hired connected officials like Jim Gonzalez, who worked as a lobbyist for Ramirez. Longtime Willie Brown buddy Charlie Walker was also a close friend.
Ramirez might have gone down in the annals of San Francisco political history only as a contractor greasing palms to get city contracts, but he also cut dangerous corners threatening San Francisco public safety. Ramirez was using inferior and cheaper recycled concrete on major projects like the Golden Gate Bridge, parking garages, and light-rail projects.
These were massive projects where structural integrity was key: the half-mile stretch of the Bay Bridge’s western approach; the parking garage at Golden Gate Park; a wastewater treatment plant in nearby Burlingame; and the Municipal Railway’s Third Street light-rail project.
The projects required solid concrete, but Ramirez was actually using inferior recycled concrete, which contains recycled debris rather than hard rock. Prone to water penetration, recycled concrete is more likely to crack and to wear quickly. Recycled concrete is acceptable for decorative work, but for major load-bearing projects like roads or bridges, it is considered unsafe!”
Ramirez’s company was able to keep up the scam for a while, but it eventually caught up with him. Public works agency officials went public with the fact that Ramirez’s company had defrauded them.
Strangely, Ramirez never faced charges for delivering substandard concrete. Instead, Harris’s office settled for a plea deal involving a single environmental count, illegally storing waste oil at one of his production facilities. To avoid jail time, he agreed to a year in home detention and payment of $427,000 in fines and restitution.104
City officials were mystified. Tony Anziano, an official with the state agency Caltrans who was in charge of the Bay Bridge approach project, said the agency had been defrauded by Ramirez and his company.
According to the San Francisco Chronicle, Anziano “said that Caltrans had always cooperated with prosecutors and that he couldn’t explain why they hadn’t pursued charges.” 1°5
Harris and her office refused to offer an explanation as to why they were going so light on Willie Brown’s friend and donor. “Harris’ office had no explanation for why it dropped the concrete case,” noted the Chronicle.106 END QUOTE
We pray that the Golden Gate bridge gets fixed before some great tragedy occurs!
Since her elevation to the top of the Democrat ticket a few weeks ago, much has been publicized on national news regarding Kamala’s “signature” program called “Back on Track.”
Oh, you didn’t hear about that? It might have something to do with which news channels you watch/read. Most of them are loyal propagandists for the Harris-Walz ticket, and chances are that if you see anything, it is in the “spin cycle” of laundering Kamala’s image.
As usual, the truth is almost 180 degrees from what she claims. She sent hundreds of black men to California prisons for smoking pot. Later, on a TV interview, Kamala “kacklingly” admitted that she herself had smoked marijuana.
Peter Schweizer also delves into the history of the “second gentleman,” Harris’ husband, Los Angeles attorney, Douglas Emhoff. There, too, are enough cracked eggs to make an omelet. We shall spare you the details.
The final pages in Schweizer’s chapter on “Kum-by-ya Kamala” are devoted to her actions involving large hospital chains in California. Without taking space to give all the back story, it involved the powerful socialist-Democrat-oriented labor union, called the SEIU (Service Employees International Union).
QUOTE: SEIU leaders bragged to hospital executives about their power. On July 24, 2014, union boss Dave Regan told Dr. Prem Reddy, head of Prime Healthcare, that as long as the nonprofit resisted his efforts to unionize the hospitals, there would be no Prime Healthcare deals in California. He allegedly told Reddy that Harris was “his politician” and she “would do what [he] told her to.” 148
For the Daughters of Charity deal, SEIU favored a strange alternative, which, as alleged by Prime Healthcare, demonstrates where their interest actually stood. They did not push for a nonprofit chain like Prime Healthcare to take over the Charity hospitals; instead, they pushed for a New York City-based investment fund called Blue Wolf Capital Partners.
The private equity firm had zero experience in operating hospitals. What they did have was close ties to organized labor and the Democratic Party.149
The Blue Wolf deal never materialized, but Harris had other ideas.
Having squelched the purchase of a nonprofit hospital chain by another nonprofit chain, Harris then jumped and offered conditional approval for Blue Mountain Capital to manage the hospital through one of its subsidiaries.150
The deal was quite extraordinary and frankly bizarre, even though, unlike what Prime Healthcare had proposed, it would maintain the hospitals as nonprofit entities. Blue Mountain Capital had a hard-charging reputation in financial circles and had been neck-deep in the credit swap debacle back in 2008.151
And in this particular case, Harris was approving a deal that was far worse for patients, according to Prime Healthcare’s complaint. She allowed Blue Mountain to cut services that Prime Healthcare had promised to keep open.
For Prime Healthcare, she had said that women’s health services were required to remain open, for example, something that Prime Healthcare said it would do. Harris was allegedly allowing Blue Mountain Capital to close such services.152
Harris’s approval of the purchase was remarkable. “I cannot recall a hedge fund incursion of any scale, let alone on this scale,” said Richard B. Spohn, a partner in the law firm Nossaman LLP’s health care practice. “It’s anomalous and it’s portentous in sort of an ominous way. The monetization of nonprofit assets in this fashion is worrisome.” 153
Blue Mountain Capital is headed by Andrew Feldstein, who has donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to the Democratic Party. His wife, Jane Veron, is also a major donor to the party, contributing tens of thousands of dollars.154
Harris has used her powers as a prosecutor to leverage her rise to power, and protect corrupt allies and friends. But sometimes leverage is exercised through the proxy of family. END QUOTE
With this exposé, Peter Schweizer is right on target—again. Profiles in Corruption can serve any concerned citizen well as a handbook of documented information about the featured players in this volume. That the first player scrutinized in this book is now running for the top job in the Oval Office is more than alarming.
Let us citizens not be fooled by her seeming ignorance and incompetence. She may be incompetent, but ignorant of what she is doing? We don’t buy it for one second. To appear that way are tools-in-the-trade of high politics, tools which have been used by “the basest of men” (or women) since time immemorial.
Daniel 4:17 This matter is by the decree of the watchers, and the demand by the word of the holy ones: to the intent that the living may know that the most High ruleth in the kingdom of men, and giveth it to whomsoever he will, and setteth up over it the basest of men.
Kamala qualifies to be among the basest!
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