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Editorial See other Editorial Articles Title: Spitzer taken down by Mossad? Spitzer taken down by Mossad? Eliot Spitzer took on Wall Street like no other attorney general before him. As the Washington Post reported in 2004, “His targets in the past have included everyone from big Wall Street investment banks and the $7.5 trillion mutual fund industry to polluting power plants and supermarket chains that underpaid delivery workers.” Additionally, Wayne Madsen reports [subscription required] that “Defense sources have confirmed our March 11, 2008, report that Emperors Club VIP, the prostitution firm that entangled New York’s outgoing Governor Eliot Spitzer in a call girl ring, is viewed by US intelligence as a front for Israel’s intelligence agency, the Mossad. “The sources claim that Spitzer was ‘outed’ for his aggressiveness in attacking money launderers connected to Russian-Israeli organized crime syndicates and other Wall Street malfeasance.” In an earlier report, Madsen mentioned that “There is also speculation that although Spitzer was implicated in the large international investigation of the Emperor’s VIP Club’s prostitution business, GOP dirty tricks operative Roger Stone figures in the case as a collateral agent provocateur. Stone has a history of badgering Eliot Spitzer and his elderly father, New York real estate magnate Bernard Spitzer.” Madsen went on to say, “There is also intense speculation about the identities of the other clients of the Emperor’s VIP Club call girls service. A February 5, 2006, article by Ben Smith in The New York Observer describes a close relationship between Eliot Spitzer and former Bill Clinton aide Dick Morris. Spitzer told the newspaper that Dick Morris’ dad was his dad’s lawyer. In 2006, the Democratic National Convention was shocked to learn that Morris, then Clinton’s top political consultant, paid $200 an hour to a Virginia prostitute named Sherry Rowlands. The revelations about Morris came mere hours before Clinton was to deliver his acceptance speech at the convention. “Rowlands revealed that Morris once let her listen in on a phone conversation with Clinton. She said that Hillary Clinton was upset at the phone call, that she 'was not well,' and the president asked Morris not to use the White House private residence phone number in the future. “Morris’ relationship with Rowlands reportedly involved toe sucking trysts on the part of Morris. The criminal complaint filed against the Emperor’s Club referred to aberrant sexual practices, considered 'unsafe,' by Spitzer and a prostitute identified as Kristen.” Who is Kristen? The New York Times reports in Woman at the Center of Governor’s Downfall, “She left a broken home on the Jersey Shore at 17 and came to New York City to work the nightclubs as a rhythm and blues singer. Now, at 22, she is the unwitting, and as yet unseen, star of the seamy drama that is the downfall of Gov. Eliot Spitzer of New York . . . “Kristen, the prostitute described in a federal affidavit as having had a rendezvous with Mr. Spitzer on Feb. 13 at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, has spent the last few days in her ninth-floor apartment in the Flatiron district of Manhattan. On Monday, she made a brief appearance in federal court, where a lawyer was appointed to represent her. She is expected to be a witness in the case against four people charged with operating a prostitution ring called the Emperor’s Club V.I.P. “In a series of telephone interviews on Tuesday night, she said she had slept very little over the past week, with all the stress of the case. “'I just don’t want to be thought of as a monster,' the woman said as she told the tiniest tidbits of her story. “Born Ashley Youmans but now known as Ashley Alexandra Dupré, she spoke softly and with good humor as she added with significant understatement: ‘This has been a very difficult time. It is complicated.’” “She has not been charged. The lawyer appointed to represent her, Don D. Buchwald, told a magistrate judge in court on Monday that she had been subpoenaed to testify in a grand jury investigation. Asked to swear that she had accurately filled out and signed a financial affidavit, she responded affirmatively. “A person with knowledge of the Emperor’s Club operation confirmed that the woman interviewed by The New York Times was the woman identified as Kristen in the affidavit. Mr. Buchwald confirmed various details of Ms. Dupré’s background but would not discuss the contents of the affidavit. “Ms. Dupré said by telephone Tuesday night that she was worried about how she would pay her rent since the man she was living with ‘walked out on me’ after she discovered he had fathered two children. She said she was considering working at a friend’s restaurant or, once her apartment lease expires, moving back with her family in New Jersey ‘to relax.’ She did not say when she had started working for the Emperor’s Club, or how often she had liaisons arranged through the ring. Asked when she met Governor Spitzer and how many times they had seen each other, Ms. Dupré said she had no comment. “As of Wednesday morning, Ms. Dupré’s MySpace page recounted her ‘odyssey to New York from New Jersey through North Carolina, Miami, D.C., Virginia and Austin, Texas;’ public records show that she lived in Monmouth County, N.J., in 2001, and in North Carolina in 2003. She owns a company, created in 2005, called Pasche New York, which her lawyer said was an entertainment business designed to further her singing career. “Music is her first love, and on the MySpace page, Ms. Dupré mentions Patsy Cline, Frank Sinatra, Christina Aguilera and Lauryn Hill among a long list of influences, including her brother, Kyle. (She also lists Whitney Houston, Madonna, Mary J. Blige and Amy Winehouse as her top MySpace friends.) In the interview, she said she saw the Rolling Stones perform at Radio City Music Hall on their last tour after a friend gave her two tickets. ‘They were amazing,’ she said. “On MySpace, her page says: ‘I am all about my music and my music is all about me. It flows from what I’ve been through, what I’ve seen and how I feel.’ “She left ‘a broken family’ at age 17, having been abused, according to the MySpace page, and has used drugs and ‘been broke and homeless.’ “’Learned what it was like to have everything and lose it, again and again,’ she writes. “’Learned what it was like to wake up one day and have the people you care about most gone.’ “’But I made it,’ she continues. ‘I’m still here and I love who I am. If I never went through the hard times, I would not be able to appreciate the good ones. Cliché, yes, but I know it’s true.’ “Ms. Dupré’s mother, Carolyn Capalbo, 46, said that after her daughter finished sophomore year in high school, Ms. Dupré moved to North Carolina. ‘She was a young kid with typical teenage rebellion issues, but we are extremely close now,’ Ms. Capalbo said in a telephone interview Wednesday. “In 2006, Ms. Dupré changed her legal name, according to records in Monmouth County Superior Court, from Ashley R. Youmans to Ashley Rae Maika DiPietro, taking her stepfather’s surname since she regarded him as ‘the only father I have known.’ But in the interview, she referred to herself as Ashley Alexandra Dupré, which is how she is known on MySpace. “On the Web page is a recording of what she describes as her latest track, ‘What We Want,’ a hip-hop-inflected rhythm-and-blues tune that asks, ‘Can you handle me, boy?’ and uses some dated slang, calling someone her ‘boo.’ “’I know what you want, you got what I want,’ she sings in the chorus. ‘I know what you need. Can you handle me?’ “Her MySpace biography says she started singing professionally after a musician she was living with heard her singing the Aretha Franklin hit ‘Respect’ in the shower and burst into the bathroom with his lead guitarist. She says she toured and recorded with them, then moved to Manhattan in 2004 and “spent the first two years getting to know the music scene, networking in clubs and connecting with the industry. “’Now it’s all about my music, it’s all about expressing me.’ “In the affidavit, the woman the Emperor’s Club called Kristen is described as 'an American, petite, very pretty brunette, 5 feet 5 inches, and 105 pounds.' She apparently was booked at about $1,000 an hour, placing her in the middle of the seven-diamond scale by which the prostitutes were paid up to $4,300 an hour. “Ms. Capalbo said that she was ‘shell-shocked’ when her daughter called in the middle of last week and told her she had been working as an escort and was now in trouble with the law. She said she was not sure that Ms. Dupré realized who Mr. Spitzer was when he was her client. “’She is a very bright girl who can handle someone like the governor,’ Ms. Capalbo said. ‘But she also is a 22-year-old, not a 32-year-old or a 42-year-old, and she obviously got involved in something much larger than her.’” Bottom line We get the sense that what was at issue was more than a power politician’s fling with a young prostitute, but potentially explosive issues for heavy Wall Street players, the economy, the full story of 9/11, the administration, and Republican dirty tricksters. Perhaps this explains the frozen look on Spitzer’s face, seemingly scuttled in the line of duty, not just personal pleasure. Jerry Mazza is a freelance writer living in New York. Reach him at gvmaz@verizon.net.
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#7. To: robin, Horse, aristeides, Dakmar, MUDDOG, tom007 (#0)
Predatory Lenders' Partner in Crime How the Bush Administration Stopped the States From Stepping In to Help Consumers By Eliot Spitzer Thursday, February 14, 2008 Several years ago, state attorneys general and others involved in consumer protection began to notice a marked increase in a range of predatory lending practices by mortgage lenders. Some were misrepresenting the terms of loans, making loans without regard to consumers' ability to repay, making loans with deceptive "teaser" rates that later ballooned astronomically, packing loans with undisclosed charges and fees, or even paying illegal kickbacks. These and other practices, we noticed, were having a devastating effect on home buyers. In addition, the widespread nature of these practices, if left unchecked, threatened our financial markets. Even though predatory lending was becoming a national problem, the Bush administration looked the other way and did nothing to protect American homeowners. In fact, the government chose instead to align itself with the banks that were victimizing consumers. Predatory lending was widely understood to present a looming national crisis. This threat was so clear that as New York attorney general, I joined with colleagues in the other 49 states in attempting to fill the void left by the federal government. Individually, and together, state attorneys general of both parties brought litigation or entered into settlements with many subprime lenders that were engaged in predatory lending practices. Several state legislatures, including New York's, enacted laws aimed at curbing such practices. What did the Bush administration do in response? Did it reverse course and decide to take action to halt this burgeoning scourge? As Americans are now painfully aware, with hundreds of thousands of homeowners facing foreclosure and our markets reeling, the answer is a resounding no. Not only did the Bush administration do nothing to protect consumers, it embarked on an aggressive and unprecedented campaign to prevent states from protecting their residents from the very problems to which the federal government was turning a blind eye. Let me explain: The administration accomplished this feat through an obscure federal agency called the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC). The OCC has been in existence since the Civil War. Its mission is to ensure the fiscal soundness of national banks. For 140 years, the OCC examined the books of national banks to make sure they were balanced, an important but uncontroversial function. But a few years ago, for the first time in its history, the OCC was used as a tool against consumers. In 2003, during the height of the predatory lending crisis, the OCC invoked a clause from the 1863 National Bank Act to issue formal opinions preempting all state predatory lending laws, thereby rendering them inoperative. The OCC also promulgated new rules that prevented states from enforcing any of their own consumer protection laws against national banks. The federal government's actions were so egregious and so unprecedented that all 50 state attorneys general, and all 50 state banking superintendents, actively fought the new rules. But the unanimous opposition of the 50 states did not deter, or even slow, the Bush administration in its goal of protecting the banks. In fact, when my office opened an investigation of possible discrimination in mortgage lending by a number of banks, the OCC filed a federal lawsuit to stop the investigation. Throughout our battles with the OCC and the banks, the mantra of the banks and their defenders was that efforts to curb predatory lending would deny access to credit to the very consumers the states were trying to protect. But the curbs we sought on predatory and unfair lending would have in no way jeopardized access to the legitimate credit market for appropriately priced loans. Instead, they would have stopped the scourge of predatory lending practices that have resulted in countless thousands of consumers losing their homes and put our economy in a precarious position. When history tells the story of the subprime lending crisis and recounts its devastating effects on the lives of so many innocent homeowners, the Bush administration will not be judged favorably. The tale is still unfolding, but when the dust settles, it will be judged as a willing accomplice to the lenders who went to any lengths in their quest for profits. So willing, in fact, that it used the power of the federal government in an unprecedented assault on state legislatures, as well as on state attorneys general and anyone else on the side of consumers. The writer is governor of New York. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp- dyn/content/article/2008/02/13/AR2008021302783_pf.html
He lost my sympathy with the drivers licenses for illegal aliens.
Point.
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