Blum, Richard feinstn

<div class="heading">=</div><div class="heading">dara l muzzling a movement hubby ellis corp big in phama thus aeta=</div><div class="heading"></div><div class="heading">http://zcomm.org/zmagazine/the-power-couple-of-california-by-laurence-h-shoup/</div><div class="heading">
</div><div class="heading"><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; font-family: Arimo, arial, sans-serif; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 20px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">On January 20, 1980, in <st1:city w:st="on" xmlns:st1="st1" xmlns:w="w">San Francisco</st1:city>, <st1:state w:st="on" xmlns:st1="st1" xmlns:w="w">California</st1:state>, finance capitalist Richard C. Blum (born in 1936) and the ambitious Democratic Party politician Dianne Feinstein (born 1933) were married in a ceremony at <st1:place w:st="on" xmlns:st1="st1" xmlns:w="w"><st1:placename w:st="on" xmlns:st1="st1" xmlns:w="w">San Francisco</st1:placename> <st1:placetype w:st="on" xmlns:st1="st1" xmlns:w="w">City Hall</st1:placetype></st1:place>. This marriage created an economic and political alliance that in little over a decade would allow them to become the top power couple in the state of <st1:state w:st="on" xmlns:st1="st1" xmlns:w="w"><st1:place w:st="on" xmlns:st1="st1" xmlns:w="w">California</st1:place></st1:state> with a place on the national and world stages. They remain at the pinnacle of power today—he as a billionaire financier, speculator, real estate executive, and deal maker; she as the senior Senator (<st1:state w:st="on" xmlns:st1="st1" xmlns:w="w">California</st1:state>’s highest federal official) from the largest and most powerful state in the <st1:place w:st="on" xmlns:st1="st1" xmlns:w="w"><st1:country-region w:st="on" xmlns:st1="st1" xmlns:w="w">U.S.</st1:country-region></st1:place> They exemplify power as it is now wielded in the higher circles of the class system of the <st1:place w:st="on" xmlns:st1="st1" xmlns:w="w"><st1:country-region w:st="on" xmlns:st1="st1" xmlns:w="w">U.S.</st1:country-region></st1:place> and illustrate the dismal results of a system best characterized as a plutocratic kleptocracy, completely lacking in authentic democracy, operated by and for corporate racketeers.<o:p xmlns:o="o" /><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; font-family: Arimo, arial, sans-serif; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 20px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><o:p xmlns:o="o"> </o:p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; font-family: Arimo, arial, sans-serif; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 20px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">With his boundless greed after profitable deals, Blum is finance capital personified, while Feinstein illustrates the corrupt, war-mongering, pro-corporate politicians who inhabit the upper reaches of the<st1:place w:st="on" xmlns:st1="st1" xmlns:w="w"><st1:country-region w:st="on" xmlns:st1="st1" xmlns:w="w">U.S.</st1:country-region></st1:place> ruling class. But to fully comprehend their rise to power, vast wealth and socio-political stance, one needs to understand the key developmental trends in the <st1:country-region w:st="on" xmlns:st1="st1" xmlns:w="w"><st1:place w:st="on" xmlns:st1="st1" xmlns:w="w">U.S.</st1:place></st1:country-region> and world political economy during Blum-Feinstein’s rise during the last few decades. Five interrelated waves of our age will be discussed here:<o:p xmlns:o="o" /><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; font-family: Arimo, arial, sans-serif; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 20px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><o:p xmlns:o="o"> </o:p><ul type="disc" style="margin: 0in 0px 12px 120px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 18px; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: OpenSansRegular, Tahoma, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 20px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><li class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arimo, arial, sans-serif; line-height: 18px; margin: 0in 0in 0pt; color: black;">The financialization of capital accumulation<o:p xmlns:o="o" /></li><li class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arimo, arial, sans-serif; line-height: 18px; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">Neoliberal corporate ideology</li><li class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arimo, arial, sans-serif; line-height: 18px; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">Imperialism, militarism, and war</li><li class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arimo, arial, sans-serif; line-height: 18px; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">Increased corporate domination of politics</li><li class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arimo, arial, sans-serif; line-height: 18px; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">The deepening global ecological crisis</li><li class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arimo, arial, sans-serif; line-height: 18px; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">Financialization of Capital Accumulation</li></ul><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; font-family: Arimo, arial, sans-serif; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 20px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><o:p xmlns:o="o"> </o:p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; font-family: Arimo, arial, sans-serif; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 20px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">One of the key aspects of any capitalist system is how capital is accumulated. Historically, the usual way is to combine human labor with raw materials and machinery to produce commodities, then sell the commodities at a profit (accumulating capital), then repeat this process of production to accumulate more. In mature capitalist economies like the <st1:country-region w:st="on" xmlns:st1="st1" xmlns:w="w"><st1:place w:st="on" xmlns:st1="st1" xmlns:w="w">United States</st1:place></st1:country-region>, however, there is so much capital already accumulated and so much productive property already existing that sectors of the economy where commodities can profitably be produced and sold are limited. For many decades, capitalists have been trying to keep the system going by adding technologies and speeding up the pace of work to increase production while cutting wages and the number of workers needed to produce a given amount of a commodity. The result is excess capacity, increased debt, overproduction, a falling rate of profit, and stagnation, reflecting the key fundamental contradictions of capitalism. This increases the tendency of people with capital to accumulate capital by buying and selling (speculating in) stocks, precious metals, and other commodities, as well as entire companies—anything, in fact, that can be sold at a higher price after holding the asset for some length of time (a few minutes to months or years).<o:p xmlns:o="o" /><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; font-family: Arimo, arial, sans-serif; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 20px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><o:p xmlns:o="o"> </o:p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; font-family: Arimo, arial, sans-serif; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 20px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">This tendency or trend is best labeled the financialization of accumulation. No production is involved, simply speculation, usually called “investments,” in the mainstream media. Finance capital creates nothing, rather it takes into its own hands the surplus value created by others at home and abroad. The speculation involved in taking this value from its human creators can be very complex and difficult to understand (credit default swaps, private equity deals, derivatives, hedge funds, commodity trading, leveraged buyouts, arbitrage etc.) or be straightforward purchases of assets or entire companies to merge them into a bigger entity. Following such purchases, the new owners typically increase the exploitation and alienation of workers in order to raise profits. Such speculative activity can lead to stagnation, economic crisis, and the danger of economic collapse when the people doing the speculating guess wrong about price increases or decreases. When such a crisis occurs, as happened in 2008, governments typically bail out the wealthy speculators, leaving the bill to be paid by rank and file workers/taxpayers.<o:p xmlns:o="o" /><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; font-family: Arimo, arial, sans-serif; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 20px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><o:p xmlns:o="o"> </o:p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; font-family: Arimo, arial, sans-serif; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 20px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">One measure of how pervasive the “casino economy” of speculation has become in recent decades is illustrated by statistics from the Bureau of Economic Analysis of the U.S. Department of Commerce. This Bureau has statistical breakdowns on total <st1:country-region w:st="on" xmlns:st1="st1" xmlns:w="w"><st1:place w:st="on" xmlns:st1="st1" xmlns:w="w">U.S.</st1:place></st1:country-region> domestic corporate profits (including corporations in utilities, manufacturing, financial, transportation, wholesale and retail trade). In 1946 financial profits as a percent of total domestic corporate profits was only 1.2 percent. By the first quarter of 1955 this figure had jumped to 11 percent. It remained roughly in this range until the 1980s, when financial corporate profits as a percent of total corporate profits began to rise sharply. By the first quarter of 1985 it was up to 14.1 percent, jumping to 23.5 percent by the first quarter of 1995. It reached a peak of 40.9 percent in the first quarter of 2003. It has retreated from that <st1:city w:st="on" xmlns:st1="st1" xmlns:w="w"><st1:place w:st="on" xmlns:st1="st1" xmlns:w="w">high point</st1:place></st1:city> since then, with financial profits as a percentage of total domestic corporate profits standing at 27.4 percent in the first quarter of 2009, for example. In contrast, manufacturing profits as a percent of total corporate profits has dropped from a higher level to 28.2 percent in the first quarter of 1995, then to only 7.8 percent in the first quarter of 2003, rising to 14.0 percent in the first quarter of 2009, still only about half of the financial profits for that quarter.<o:p xmlns:o="o" /><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; font-family: Arimo, arial, sans-serif; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 20px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><o:p xmlns:o="o"> </o:p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; font-family: Arimo, arial, sans-serif; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 20px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">In the <st1:place w:st="on" xmlns:st1="st1" xmlns:w="w"><st1:country-region w:st="on" xmlns:st1="st1" xmlns:w="w">U.S.</st1:country-region></st1:place> the wealth and income statistics are truly shocking, illustrating both the gross injustice of the situation and that the entire social and political order is declining. The top 1 percent of U.S. wealthholders, Blum and Feinstein among them, currently hold about 35 percent of the total wealth of the nation (43 percent of the financial wealth), and the top 20 percent have 85 percent of the total wealth.<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; font-family: Arimo, arial, sans-serif; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 20px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; font-family: Arimo, arial, sans-serif; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 20px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">...For Blum-Feinstein, we can see what being in the top 1 percent means. They currently own a private jet, a Gulfstream G650, “the gold standard in business aviation.” Blum-Feinstein also own an entire 161-room San Francisco hotel (The Carlton) and at least 6 other homes, including a Pacific Heights (San Francisco) mansion purchased a few years ago for a reported $16.5 million, another a ski retreat on a 30-acre parcel of land in Aspen, Colorado, built in 1999 for $7.4 million. Their house in<st1:city w:st="on" style="font-weight: normal;" xmlns:st1="st1" xmlns:w="w">Washington</st1:city>, <st1:state w:st="on" style="font-weight: normal;" xmlns:st1="st1" xmlns:w="w">DC</st1:state> is a French Renaissance-style dwelling located near <st1:place w:st="on" style="font-weight: normal;" xmlns:st1="st1" xmlns:w="w"><st1:placename w:st="on" xmlns:st1="st1" xmlns:w="w">American</st1:placename> <st1:placetype w:st="on" xmlns:st1="st1" xmlns:w="w">University</st1:placetype></st1:place> bought a few years ago for “nearly $6 million.” They also own a beachside house in an exclusive gated community (94.9 percent white) at <st1:placename w:st="on" style="font-weight: normal;" xmlns:st1="st1" xmlns:w="w">Stinson</st1:placename> <st1:placetype w:st="on" style="font-weight: normal;" xmlns:st1="st1" xmlns:w="w">Beach</st1:placetype> north of <st1:city w:st="on" style="font-weight: normal;" xmlns:st1="st1" xmlns:w="w"><st1:place w:st="on" xmlns:st1="st1" xmlns:w="w">San Francisco</st1:place></st1:city>. Their other two properties are condos at Lake Tahoe in <st1:state w:st="on" style="font-weight: normal;" xmlns:st1="st1" xmlns:w="w">California</st1:state>’s <st1:placename w:st="on" style="font-weight: normal;" xmlns:st1="st1" xmlns:w="w">Sierra Nevada</st1:placename> <st1:placetype w:st="on" style="font-weight: normal;" xmlns:st1="st1" xmlns:w="w">Mountains</st1:placetype>, and <st1:place w:st="on" style="font-weight: normal;" xmlns:st1="st1" xmlns:w="w"><st1:city w:st="on" xmlns:st1="st1" xmlns:w="w">Kauai</st1:city>, <st1:state w:st="on" xmlns:st1="st1" xmlns:w="w">Hawaii</st1:state></st1:place>. At a low estimate, including their hotel, their personal real estate holdings, together with their private jet, are likely worth well over $100 million.<o:p xmlns:o="o" /><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; font-family: Arimo, arial, sans-serif; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 20px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><o:p xmlns:o="o"> </o:p>Feinstein-Blum’s real estate and private jet holdings are just the beginning. Blum’s empire began with his ownership of Blum Capital Partners, a firm he founded in 1975. In its 2005 edition, one standard industry source, Pratt’s Guide to Private Equity Sources, lists Blum Capital Partners as having $1.5 billion under management. Two other more recent sources list the assets of Blum Capital at the higher levels of $2.8 billion and $4.5 billion. Blum’s firm’s clients reportedly include some of <st1:country-region w:st="on" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-weight: normal;" xmlns:st1="st1" xmlns:w="w"><st1:place w:st="on" xmlns:st1="st1" xmlns:w="w">America</st1:place></st1:country-region>’s wealthiest people and largest corporations, like oil heir Gordon Getty and Bank of America. Blum Capital Partners also has a joint venture with a much larger firm, the Texas Pacific Group (TPG), which had a total of $53.4 billion under management as of 2010. Blum Capital established Newbridge Capital to conduct this joint venture, which has had as much as $3.2 billion under management. Blum has been a co-chair of both Newbridge and TPG.<o:p xmlns:o="o" /><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; font-family: Arimo, arial, sans-serif; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 20px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><o:p xmlns:o="o"> </o:p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; font-family: Arimo, arial, sans-serif; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 20px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Some of Blum’s notable investments have included the real estate firm of CB Richard Ellis, Career Educational Corporation, ITT Educational Services, Lenovo, Fair Isaac, Northwest Airlines, URS, Perini and DHL Airways. Blum has been the chair of the Board of CB Richard Ellis since 2001. He reportedly owns a 15 percent controlling interest of this giant firm, widely considered to be the largest real estate firm in the world with about 28,000 employees working in over 300 offices in 50 nations and annual revenues in the billions. A Los Angeles Times article (November 1, 2006), stated that CB Richard Ellis was worth $6.7 billion, making Blum’s 15 percent worth about $1 billion at that time. Varied sources report that Blum’s investment in CB Richard Ellis amounts to less than one-third of his total portfolio, making his likely wealth level over $3 billion. Another investment is in China-based Lenovo, which was reportedly the fourth largest vendor of personal computers in the world in 2009 with assets of almost $9 billion and revenue of $16.6 billion. It has operations in <st1:state w:st="on" xmlns:st1="st1" xmlns:w="w">North Carolina</st1:state> (a largely non-union state), as well as in <st1:country-region w:st="on" xmlns:st1="st1" xmlns:w="w">China</st1:country-region>, <st1:country-region w:st="on" xmlns:st1="st1" xmlns:w="w">Japan</st1:country-region> and <st1:country-region w:st="on" xmlns:st1="st1" xmlns:w="w"><st1:place w:st="on" xmlns:st1="st1" xmlns:w="w">Singapore</st1:place></st1:country-region>. Blum sold his holdings in URS and Perini after negative publicity having to do with his wife’s votes in the U.S. Senate, a topic discussed below.<o:p xmlns:o="o" /><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; font-family: Arimo, arial, sans-serif; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 20px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><o:p xmlns:o="o"> </o:p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; font-family: Arimo, arial, sans-serif; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 20px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Neoliberal Corporate Ideology<o:p xmlns:o="o" /><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; font-family: Arimo, arial, sans-serif; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 20px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><o:p xmlns:o="o"> </o:p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; font-family: Arimo, arial, sans-serif; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 20px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Gross class inequality has been made worse by a second wave of anti-government neo-liberal ideological hegemony. Neo-liberalism is a version of extreme free market thinking, putting forth the pure logic of capital. This ideology’s aim is to cripple government’s power to serve the people’s interest, leaving the road open to total corporate domination. Neo-liberalism’s critique and actions aim not only at ending the regulatory and welfare states, it wants to shrink government’s role in economic and political life down to the point where the wealthy corporate ruling class will totally control economy, society, and political life with no interference.<o:p xmlns:o="o" /><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; font-family: Arimo, arial, sans-serif; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 20px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><o:p xmlns:o="o"> </o:p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; font-family: Arimo, arial, sans-serif; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 20px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Long theorized by right-wing thinkers, neo-liberalism came into vogue during the 1980s as a way to open up new markets to accumulate in order to overcome the economic stagnation characteristic of that time, similar to what has been happening again in recent years. The partial privatization of government-run programs such as education (undermining public education through budget cuts, private schools, charter schools, and voucher programs for example); outsourcing of traditional government run sectors such as prisons; “health care” laws that legally force people to buy high cost health care from monopoly corporations (insurance and drug companies as well as hospitals) or pay a fine are all examples of corporate controlled government opening up new markets for the capitalists to conquer.<o:p xmlns:o="o" /><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; font-family: Arimo, arial, sans-serif; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 20px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><o:p xmlns:o="o"> </o:p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; font-family: Arimo, arial, sans-serif; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 20px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Neo-liberalism as an ideology is completely hypocritical, however, because virtually all of the government welfare, sweetheart contracts, tax cuts, subsidies, and bailouts given to major corporations continue under neo-liberal governance, only the Keynesian-type benefits to rank and file workers are cut. In actual practice, therefore, it is a philosophy meant to make workers and their unions pay for the crisis tendencies of capitalism, making the capitalist crisis actually a working class crisis. Workers and their families are forced to take cuts and sacrifice to make the corporate capitalists whole. Under corporate neo-liberal thinking over the past 30 years, all aspects of the New Deal reforms of the 1930s have been under attack, with even the most popular of these reforms, Social Security, now being undermined and put on the table for eventual destruction as an “entitlement” which must be cut. This, in spite of the fact that recipients of Social Security have steadily paid into the fund through their taxes, usually for many decades.<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; font-family: Arimo, arial, sans-serif; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 20px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; font-family: Arimo, arial, sans-serif; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 20px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Blum and Feinstein’s policies and actions promote this aspect of neoliberialism. Blum’s field of operation is worldwide, exporting jobs overseas to capture surplus value in areas of the world that are expanding rapidly at a time when there is stagnation in mature capitalist economies. As mentioned above, Blum’s foreign investments have focused on Asia, including <st1:country-region w:st="on" xmlns:st1="st1" xmlns:w="w">China</st1:country-region>, <st1:country-region w:st="on" xmlns:st1="st1" xmlns:w="w">Australia</st1:country-region>, and <st1:place w:st="on" xmlns:st1="st1" xmlns:w="w"><st1:country-region w:st="on" xmlns:st1="st1" xmlns:w="w">Korea</st1:country-region></st1:place>, often through TPG and Newbridge Capital.<o:p xmlns:o="o" /><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; font-family: Arimo, arial, sans-serif; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 20px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><o:p xmlns:o="o"> </o:p>Feinstein and Blum are also major investors in two private educational corporations, the Career Educational Corporation and ITT Educational Services. At the same time, Blum donated heavily to the political campaigns of California Governor Gray Davis, amounting to at least $75,000 in a two-year period beginning in about 2000. As a result, <st1:city w:st="on" style="font-weight: normal;" xmlns:st1="st1" xmlns:w="w"><st1:place w:st="on" xmlns:st1="st1" xmlns:w="w">Davis</st1:place></st1:city>, following his “pay to play” politics, appointed Blum to be a member of the University of California Board of Regents. Within a few years, Blum became the chair of this Board and the “alpha dog” of the group according to one newspaper report (San Francisco Chronicle April 14, 2008).<o:p xmlns:o="o" /><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; font-family: Arimo, arial, sans-serif; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 20px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><o:p xmlns:o="o"> </o:p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; font-family: Arimo, arial, sans-serif; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 20px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Blum led the Board while it raised tuition for university students again and again, increases that amounted to 32 percent in one year. Students have had to take out massive loans to attend school. One source indicates that the amount of debt loaded on all <st1:country-region w:st="on" xmlns:st1="st1" xmlns:w="w"><st1:place w:st="on" xmlns:st1="st1" xmlns:w="w">U.S.</st1:place></st1:country-region> students has jumped from $90 billion in 1999 to $550 billion in 2011. Peter McLaren, a <st1:place w:st="on" xmlns:st1="st1" xmlns:w="w"><st1:placetype w:st="on" xmlns:st1="st1" xmlns:w="w">University</st1:placetype> of <st1:placename w:st="on" xmlns:st1="st1" xmlns:w="w">California Los Angeles</st1:placename></st1:place> professor of education has stated that “The UC system is on the rocks” due to no longer being affordable. As students were priced out of an expensive public university system, the inferior, privately operated correspondence type diploma mills where Blum had major investments became increasingly attractive. Not to be left out of the drive to weaken public education and teachers’ unions in order to open space for private capital accumulation, Feinstein had become a supporter of school vouchers by 2003, undermining public schools by allowing parents to use public money to pay for tuition at private or parochial schools in Washington, DC (San Francisco Chronicle July 23, 2003).<o:p xmlns:o="o" /><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; font-family: Arimo, arial, sans-serif; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 20px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><o:p xmlns:o="o"> </o:p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; font-family: Arimo, arial, sans-serif; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 20px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">A final aspect is cutting taxes on the wealthy and, of course, Feinstein consistently favors such cuts. One example is Feinstein’s support for phasing out inheritance taxes on large estates. In July 2000, she was one of a small group of Democratic Senators defending and voting for a Republican-sponsored bill to repeal an estate tax law first passed in 1916, a law that applied to only the top 2 percent of taxable estates. In short, it was another benefit promoted by Feinstein that exclusively helped her own and other super-rich ruling class families.<o:p xmlns:o="o" /><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; font-family: Arimo, arial, sans-serif; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 20px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><o:p xmlns:o="o"> </o:p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; font-family: Arimo, arial, sans-serif; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 20px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Imperialism, Militarism, and War<o:p xmlns:o="o" /><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; font-family: Arimo, arial, sans-serif; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 20px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><o:p xmlns:o="o"> </o:p>A third wave of our age is the interrelated issue of imperialism, militarism, and war. The stagnation tendencies of highly capitalized nations like the <st1:country-region w:st="on" style="font-weight: normal;" xmlns:st1="st1" xmlns:w="w"><st1:place w:st="on" xmlns:st1="st1" xmlns:w="w">U.S.</st1:place></st1:country-region> are partly overcome by military spending and economic expansion abroad. Much of <st1:country-region w:st="on" style="font-weight: normal;" xmlns:st1="st1" xmlns:w="w"><st1:place w:st="on" xmlns:st1="st1" xmlns:w="w">U.S.</st1:place></st1:country-region> foreign policy, in all of its aspects, is focused on fostering this expansion. The imperialist policies to be followed by the U.S. and NATO are discussed and developed by the leading U.S. private—but closely connected to official circles—think tanks and policy forming organizations, such as the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) and the Brookings Institute. A similar organization, international in membership, is the Trilateral Commission, which draws its members from many countries in Europe, North America, and <st1:place w:st="on" style="font-weight: normal;" xmlns:st1="st1" xmlns:w="w">Asia</st1:place>. Blum-Feinstein are closely connected with all three of these private foreign planning organizations and their imperialist policies as both Blum and Feinstein have been members of the CFR for a number of years (membership is by invitation only). Blum has also been a trustee and part of the power structure of the Brookings Institute for years (Brookings regularly hosts the “Brookings-Blum Roundtable” discussion series) and Feinstein currently serves on the North American branch of the Trilateral Commission, after having first become involved with this organization in 1988. One result of these close connections is the fact that Feinstein is an enthusiastic war hawk and strongly supports all the current wars and occupations of <st1:country-region w:st="on" style="font-weight: normal;" xmlns:st1="st1" xmlns:w="w">U.S.</st1:country-region> imperialism, from <st1:country-region w:st="on" style="font-weight: normal;" xmlns:st1="st1" xmlns:w="w">Iraq</st1:country-region> and <st1:country-region w:st="on" style="font-weight: normal;" xmlns:st1="st1" xmlns:w="w">Afghanistan</st1:country-region> to <st1:place w:st="on" style="font-weight: normal;" xmlns:st1="st1" xmlns:w="w"><st1:country-region w:st="on" xmlns:st1="st1" xmlns:w="w">Libya</st1:country-region></st1:place>.<o:p xmlns:o="o" /><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; font-family: Arimo, arial, sans-serif; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 20px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><o:p xmlns:o="o"> </o:p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; font-family: Arimo, arial, sans-serif; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 20px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Feinstein also chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee. She approved of the appointment of General David Petraeus to head the CIA, saying that she had “enormous respect” for him, and that the <st1:country-region w:st="on" xmlns:st1="st1" xmlns:w="w"><st1:place w:st="on" xmlns:st1="st1" xmlns:w="w">U.S.</st1:place></st1:country-region>should “…put all of our eggs in the Petraeus basket….” This illustrates that Feinstein has embraced the dangerous and illegal new method of warfare now being waged by the CIA under Petraeus. This new way of war is to send drones over borders to kill thousands of people—even <st1:country-region w:st="on" xmlns:st1="st1" xmlns:w="w">U.S.</st1:country-region> citizens who are viewed as enemies, but whose guilt has not been legally proven—as was recently the case with the drone assassinations of Anwar al-Awlaki and Samir Khan in <st1:place w:st="on" xmlns:st1="st1" xmlns:w="w"><st1:country-region w:st="on" xmlns:st1="st1" xmlns:w="w">Yemen</st1:country-region></st1:place>.<o:p xmlns:o="o" /><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; font-family: Arimo, arial, sans-serif; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 20px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><o:p xmlns:o="o"> </o:p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; font-family: Arimo, arial, sans-serif; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 20px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The setting of the precedents that national sovereignty, due process for suspects of a crime, Congressional responsibility to declare war, and the traditional distinction between civilians and military actors (the CIA is a “civilian” agency, yet it is openly conducting war operations, drone bombings which frequently kill civilians in other nations, making the CIA operators “unlawful combatants,” operating outside the laws of war) do not matter—could well turn out to be a disaster.<o:p xmlns:o="o" /><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; font-family: Arimo, arial, sans-serif; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 20px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><o:p xmlns:o="o"> </o:p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; font-family: Arimo, arial, sans-serif; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 20px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Increased Corporate Domination of Politics<o:p xmlns:o="o" /><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; font-family: Arimo, arial, sans-serif; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 20px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><o:p xmlns:o="o"> </o:p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; font-family: Arimo, arial, sans-serif; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 20px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">A fourth wave is the ongoing corporate takeover of the <st1:place w:st="on" xmlns:st1="st1" xmlns:w="w"><st1:country-region w:st="on" xmlns:st1="st1" xmlns:w="w">U.S.</st1:country-region></st1:place> political system and the consequent serious decline of a functioning democracy. American democracy has now been completely conquered by American capitalism and, whatever the issue, the rich win. To be sure, corporations and the capitalists that own and control them have long amounted to a ruling class running most aspects of the <st1:country-region w:st="on" xmlns:st1="st1" xmlns:w="w"><st1:place w:st="on" xmlns:st1="st1" xmlns:w="w">U.S.</st1:place></st1:country-region> political economy. There were, however, often some countervailing powers, such as unions willing to strike and struggle, along with other organized movements, such as civil rights, anti-war, women’s rights, etc., that sometimes had significant political successes through direct action. The federal government would also sometimes side with the people to stop the worst corporate abuses and promote the general welfare. There were also some limits—often violated in practice but nevertheless had some effect—in the amounts of money that the corporate ruling class could put into political campaigns.<o:p xmlns:o="o" /><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; font-family: Arimo, arial, sans-serif; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 20px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><o:p xmlns:o="o"> </o:p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; font-family: Arimo, arial, sans-serif; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 20px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">In recent decades, however, the level of corporate domination of American politics has clearly increased. The pathways to intensified corporate control have been through the candidate selection process, campaign finance, massive lobbying, favorable media coverage to corporate ruling class linked candidates, expert advisers from ruling class think tanks and vote rigging through exclusion of people and through computers. Corporations claiming to be human beings can now purchase unlimited “free speech,” while real citizens are often denied such rights by their relative poverty, lack of access to media, or by police repression. Collectively, this has resulted in making the <st1:place w:st="on" xmlns:st1="st1" xmlns:w="w"><st1:country-region w:st="on" xmlns:st1="st1" xmlns:w="w">U.S.</st1:country-region></st1:place> political system mostly a managed “democracy,” in other words, a show conducted to make the rank and file believe that there is a real measure of democracy in the system.<o:p xmlns:o="o" /><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; font-family: Arimo, arial, sans-serif; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 20px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><o:p xmlns:o="o"> </o:p>The Democratic Party plays a key role in this legitimization of the system, especially this party’s more liberal wing, a main headquarter of this wing being the San Francisco Bay Area of California, the home area of Blum and Feinstein. They are key players in what can best be called the San Francisco Democratic Party political machine, a machine that has spawned corporate-connected political misleaders who hold or have held important state and federal offices, like Nancy Pelosi, Jerry Brown, Barbara Boxer, John Burton, Willie Brown, Gavin Newsom, and Kamala Harris. Capitalists like Blum and wealthy heirs like Gordon Getty are among the primary fundraisers for these politicians. Feinstein and Blum are the godmother and godfather of this group, standing at the center of this circle of power connecting these and other key crony capitalist Democratic Party officeholders. To cite just two examples, Feinstein conducted Brown’s wedding (to a former Vice President of the Gap) where the entire Bay Area political machine was present, and hosted a wedding shower for Newsom at her Pacific Heights mansion, illustrating her close personal, economic and political ties to key members of this group. The group obviously also has important national level connections, to cite but one example, former Vice President Al Gore is a long-time friend and business partner of Blum.<o:p xmlns:o="o" /><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; font-family: Arimo, arial, sans-serif; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 20px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><o:p xmlns:o="o"> </o:p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; font-family: Arimo, arial, sans-serif; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 20px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">While pretending to represent the interests of the rank and file, once in office, Feinstein and other politicians pay off their partners with policies favorable to their interests, including government contracts. Senator Feinstein, who was already in October 1994 called “…the most prolific fund-raiser among all federal candidates” by the Los Angeles Times (October 28, 1994), has received large campaign donations (in the thousands) from a truly amazing list of top <st1:place w:st="on" xmlns:st1="st1" xmlns:w="w"><st1:state w:st="on" xmlns:st1="st1" xmlns:w="w">California</st1:state></st1:place> and national level corporations, including:

<o:p xmlns:o="o" /><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; font-family: Arimo, arial, sans-serif; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 20px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><o:p xmlns:o="o"> </o:p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; font-family: Arimo, arial, sans-serif; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 20px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">A.G. Spanos Companies, ATT, Atlantic Richfield, Bank of America, Bankers Trust, Bayer, Bechtel, Bellsouth, Blue Diamond Growers, Blue Shield, BNSF Railroad, Boeing, British Petroleum, Calpine, Cargil, Charles Schwab, Chevron, Cisco Systems, Citigroup, Clear Channel, Clorox, Coca-Cola, Comcast, Edison International, Eli Lilly, Gap, Genentech, General Atomics, General Dynamics, General Electric, Goodrich, Hewlett Packard, Honeywell, Intel, ITT, JP Morgan Chase, Johnson and Johnson, Lockheed Martin, Matson Navigation, Met Life, Microsoft, National Association of Realtors, National Venture Capital Association, News America Holdings (Fox Political Action Committee), Northrop Grumman, Occidental Petroleum, Oracle, Pacific Life, Insurance, Parsons Brinckerhoff, Pfizer, PG&E, Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw, Pricewaterhouse Coopers, Qualcomm, Raytheon, Safeway, Sempra Energy, Sony Pictures, Tenet Healthcare, Time Warner, Travelers, Union Pacific, Unionbancal, United Airlines, UPS, Verizon, Viacom, Visa, Walmart, Walt Disney, Wells Fargo.

<o:p xmlns:o="o" /><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; font-family: Arimo, arial, sans-serif; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 20px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><o:p xmlns:o="o"> </o:p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; font-family: Arimo, arial, sans-serif; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 20px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">This list of donors has led to the assertion by close observers that Feinstein is the “best Senator that money can buy” and that her life and career has “always been about money” (Larry Bensky, East Bay Express, November 18, 1994). She was the daughter of a wealthy doctor, educated at elite private schools, including <st1:place w:st="on" xmlns:st1="st1" xmlns:w="w"><st1:placename w:st="on" xmlns:st1="st1" xmlns:w="w">Stanford</st1:placename> <st1:placetype w:st="on" xmlns:st1="st1" xmlns:w="w">University</st1:placetype></st1:place>, and spent her way to political power, breaking records for campaign fundraising and spending beginning with her early campaigns for the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. Born to wealth, she married even more of it. Serving the wealthy, first and foremost herself and her husband, has marked her career. As the Los Angeles Times (October 28, 1994) expressed after observing only her actions for only a short time in office: “A review of the senator’s first two years in office found that Feinstein supported several positions that benefited Blum, his wealthy clients and their investments. She was a vocal proponent of increased trade with<st1:country-region w:st="on" xmlns:st1="st1" xmlns:w="w"><st1:place w:st="on" xmlns:st1="st1" xmlns:w="w">China</st1:place></st1:country-region> while Blum’s firm was planning a major investment there. She also voted for appropriations bills that provided more than $100 million a year in federal funds to three companies in which her husband is a substantial investor.”<o:p xmlns:o="o" /><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; font-family: Arimo, arial, sans-serif; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 20px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><o:p xmlns:o="o"> </o:p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; font-family: Arimo, arial, sans-serif; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 20px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">In 2007 investigative reporter Peter Byrne published a series of reports that showed that her actions in the early 1990s were only the beginning of Feinstein’s aiding her husband’s firms. As chairperson of the Senate’s Military Construction appropriations subcommittee from 2001-2007, Feinstein supervised and supported the appropriation of over $1.5 billion for two military contractors, URS Corporation and Perini Corporation, both companies that Blum had a controlling interest in. Blum later sold URS for a reported personal profit of $57 million. When Feinstein’s actions were exposed in early 2007, she abruptly quit her post on this subcommittee, apparently recognizing that the ethical and legal issues involved could damage her politically. Unfortunately, the existing laws, combined with Feinstein-Blum’s political power, made a serious investigation and possible prosecution of such corruption impossible.<o:p xmlns:o="o" /><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; font-family: Arimo, arial, sans-serif; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 20px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><o:p xmlns:o="o"> </o:p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; font-family: Arimo, arial, sans-serif; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 20px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Blum returns the favor, raising more money for his politician wife than any other individual. He arranges contributions and loans to her campaigns in the millions, and in the 1994 campaign he stated that he was spending “26 of every 24 hours” to get his wife re-elected (Los Angeles Times, October 24, 1994). Sometimes this got the power couple into trouble, even with the weak campaign finance laws that exist. In Feinstein’s 1990 campaign for Governor for example, she failed to disclose a series of bank loans arranged by Blum that amounted to at least $2.9 million. Her campaign was fined a total of $190,000 by <st1:state w:st="on" xmlns:st1="st1" xmlns:w="w">California</st1:state>’s state watchdog agency, the largest such cash settlement in state history, for an “outrageous case of gross negligence” (<st1:place w:st="on" xmlns:st1="st1" xmlns:w="w"><st1:city w:st="on" xmlns:st1="st1" xmlns:w="w">Los Angeles</st1:city></st1:place> Times, December 22, 1992).<o:p xmlns:o="o" /><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; font-family: Arimo, arial, sans-serif; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 20px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><o:p xmlns:o="o"> </o:p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; font-family: Arimo, arial, sans-serif; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 20px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">As is the case on every other key question involving our collective future, Feinstein has been, and is, on the wrong side. In a 2011 editorial, the San Francisco Chronicle (May 26, 2011) called her “one of the biggest cheerleaders for renewing…” Bush’s PATRIOT Act. The Chronicle said that Feinstein and other supporters of renewal were going “too far” and were “erasing bedrock guarantees” of the Constitution. In 2007, she voted for immunity for telecommunications companies who illegally spied on their customers. Some of these companies, such as ATT, were also heavy donors to her political campaigns. As chairperson of the Senate Intelligence Committee, she also recently criticized the CIA for not spying enough on the Egyptian people, stating that, “the CIA should have monitored Facebook more closely.”<o:p xmlns:o="o" /><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; font-family: Arimo, arial, sans-serif; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 20px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><o:p xmlns:o="o"> </o:p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; font-family: Arimo, arial, sans-serif; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 20px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">A Deepening Global Ecological Crisis<o:p xmlns:o="o" /><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; font-family: Arimo, arial, sans-serif; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 20px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><o:p xmlns:o="o"> </o:p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; font-family: Arimo, arial, sans-serif; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 20px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">A final wave of our age is the ongoing and accelerating global ecological crisis. This crisis is deeply rooted in the anti-ecological imperatives of capitalist production and exchange for profit and accumulation. This is largely because the fundamental problem is the capitalist system itself and no corporate-funded politician or appointed official will risk his or her career to raise questions about and deal with fundamental causes. So, in order to assure everyone that the crisis is being handled in an appropriate way, a public relations show is put on by corporations and governments, pretending to face up to the moral and practical challenge of humans living in a sustainable way.<o:p xmlns:o="o" /><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; font-family: Arimo, arial, sans-serif; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 20px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><o:p xmlns:o="o"> </o:p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; font-family: Arimo, arial, sans-serif; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 20px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The political and economic activities of Blum and Feinstein routinely undercut ecological needs in favor of the accumulation of wealth and power. One example is Feinstein’s relationship to wealthy corporate farmer Stewart Resnick, the owner of over 100,000 acres of prime farmland in the <st1:place w:st="on" xmlns:st1="st1" xmlns:w="w"><st1:placename w:st="on" xmlns:st1="st1" xmlns:w="w">San Joaquin</st1:placename> <st1:placetype w:st="on" xmlns:st1="st1" xmlns:w="w">Valley</st1:placetype></st1:place>. He has written big check after big check to her political campaigns. Over the past few decades, he has also given several million dollars to the Democratic and Republican Parties and their candidates. Then, when Resnick called Feinstein in 2009 to weigh in on the side of corporate agribusiness in a drought-fueled ecological dispute over water to big landowners or water for the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta’s ecological needs, Feinstein jumped in, pushing the agribusiness viewpoint onto two Cabinet-level secretaries and calling for a sweeping review of the science to allow more water to go to Resnick and other big operators. Due largely to excessive water diversions, the Delta’s ecology is in serious trouble, with fish populations in catastrophic decline. Jim Metropulos, a Sierra Club leader representing an organization that always endorses Feinstein and almost always backs Democrats in every election, stated that “it is very disappointing that one person can make this kind of request, and all of a sudden he has a senator on the phone, calling up (Interior Secretary) Salazar.” Would it be too much to hope that the Sierra Club would learn from this and other examples and draw appropriate conclusions about Feinstein and the Democratic Party?<o:p xmlns:o="o" /><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; font-family: Arimo, arial, sans-serif; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 20px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><o:p xmlns:o="o"> </o:p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; font-family: Arimo, arial, sans-serif; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 20px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Blum and Feinstein also favor and work for “wilderness,” she in the Senate sponsoring legislation to set aside public lands as preserves, and he as a member of the Governing Council of the Wilderness Society. The nature and politics of Blum’s Wilderness Society can be seen by looking at its Governing Council and one of its “corporate partners.” The Governing Council is filled with the super-rich like Blum and includes a member of the Getty oil family, a member of the <st1:place w:st="on" xmlns:st1="st1" xmlns:w="w">Roosevelt</st1:place>family, a Rockefeller family in-law, a Texas Pacific Group private equity billionaire, an adviser to Clinton-Gore White House and a past chairman of Recreational Equipment Company, which sells products for outdoor activities. Its leading corporate partner is Bank of America, which for years financed mountain top removal to mine coal by Massey Energy and International Coal Group. A leader of the Rainforest Action Network correctly called this a “barbaric form of resource extraction,” an activity that, through the Bank of America, was profiting the Wilderness Society.<o:p xmlns:o="o" /><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; font-family: Arimo, arial, sans-serif; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 20px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><o:p xmlns:o="o"> </o:p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; font-family: Arimo, arial, sans-serif; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 20px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Recently, under the pressure of direct action against it, the Bank of America cut back on—but did not end—such financing. The Blum- Feinstein-Wilderness Society approach of creating a few islands of non-development in a sea of life-destroying capitalist ecocide is clearly inadequate as a strategy of ecological and human survival. What is required is for us to envision what a rational, egalitarian, life-affirming economy and society would look like and struggle to bring that system into reality. <o:p xmlns:o="o" /><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; font-family: Arimo, arial, sans-serif; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 20px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><o:p xmlns:o="o"> </o:p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; font-family: Arimo, arial, sans-serif; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 20px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The five interrelated waves of our age, and Blum-Feinstein’s role, illustrate that the Democratic Party and its leaders are every bit against the people’s interest as the Republican Party. Both favor the corporate state and capitalist austerity, imperialism, war and capitalist ecoside. Blum-Feinstein stand solidly for the financialization of accumulation and the private use of this wealth to benefit a small group of wealthy owners (the 1 percent); they stand for neoliberal ideology; for imperialism, militarism and war; for undemocratic corporate political rule; and for weak and inadequate measures to confront the ecological crisis. Only the mass mobilization and direct action of the people can save the vast majority of us from the insatiable greed of a capitalist class and capitalist system as exemplified by the likes of Richard C. Blum and Dianne Feinstein.<o:p xmlns:o="o" /><p align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; font-family: Arimo, arial, sans-serif; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 20px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-align: right;">Z<hr style="border: none; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: OpenSansRegular, Tahoma, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 20px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" /><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; font-family: Arimo, arial, sans-serif; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 20px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Historian, author, and activist Laurence H. Shoup lives in <st1:place w:st="on" xmlns:st1="st1" xmlns:w="w"><st1:city w:st="on" xmlns:st1="st1" xmlns:w="w">Oakland</st1:city>, <st1:state w:st="on" xmlns:st1="st1" xmlns:w="w">California</st1:state></st1:place>. His most recent book is Rulers and Rebels: A People’s History of Early <st1:state w:st="on" xmlns:st1="st1" xmlns:w="w"><st1:place w:st="on" xmlns:st1="st1" xmlns:w="w">California</st1:place></st1:state>, 1769-1901.<o:p xmlns:o="o"> </o:p></div><div class="heading"></div><div class="heading"><div id="StoryLayout" class="SpanningFeature ContentDefault " style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-style: solid; border-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); border-width: 1px 0px 0px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', Geneva, Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12.800000190734863px; font-weight: normal; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div id="storyBody" class="page1" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-style: solid; border-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); border-width: 1px 0px 0px;">The following is an edited version of the introductory chapter of a new e-book, Going Postal, by investigative journalist Peter Byrne.On July 27, two hundred people sang and chanted on the steps of the historic main post office in downtown Berkeley to protest its upcoming closure and sale. City Councilman Jesse Arreguin took the microphone to angrily decry the closure. In fact, the Berkeley City Council had voted unanimously to oppose the sale. Why the day of rage?When a post office closes, it is obviously that much harder to buy a stamp, pick up a package, send a registered letter, or purchase a money order. But inconvenience alone did not account for the existential angst being expressed by the mostly over-fifty members of the throng as they questioned the motives of the United States Postal Service for selling post offices all over the country to developers. "Which of our public assets will be privatized next?" speakers asked. "Streets? Schools? The Lincoln Bedroom?"The Berkeley crowd is not acting alone: From the beaches of Santa Monica to the avenues of the Bronx to the orange farms of Nalcrest, Florida, people wholike the US Mail are getting mad. "Hey, wait a minute, Mr. Postman! That isour community post office — "To which the federal flak-catchers reply: "The Internet is killing us. The Postal Service is broke. We have to sell. Get used to it."But email is not the problem and the budget deficit is easy enough to fix, so there must be other reasons for the forced sales, say save-the-post-office activists. The post office is being killed for political reasons, they assert, pointing out that the corporation with the exclusive contract to negotiate sales for the Postal Service's $85 billion real estate portfolio is C.B. Richard Ellis (CBRE). And that the company is chaired by Richard C. Blum, who is the husband of US Senator Dianne Feinstein and a member of the University of California Board of Regents. CBRE's connection to a politically powerful family with a history of accessing public pension funds to make private investments has caused more than a few activists to suspect wrongdoing — even though no evidence of any conflicts of interest tied to the CBRE contract have been revealed.Until now.My yearlong investigation has uncovered evidence of multiple conflicts of interest and problems with post office sales supervised by Blum's company, including:• CBRE appears to have repeatedly violated its contractual duty to sell postal properties at or above fair market values.• CBRE has sold valuable postal properties to developers at prices that appear to have been steeply discounted from fair market values, resulting in the loss of tens of millions of dollars in public revenue.• In a series of apparently non-arm's-length transactions, CBRE negotiated the sale of postal properties all around the country to its own clients and business partners, including to one of its corporate owners, Goldman Sachs Group.• CBRE has been paid commissions as high as 6 percent by the Postal Service for representing both the seller and the buyer in many of the negotiations, thereby raising serious questions as to whether CBRE was doing its best to obtain the highest price possible for the Postal Service.• Senator Feinstein has lobbied the Postmaster General on behalf of a redevelopment project in which her husband's company was involved.The BackstoryBecause the Postal Service is running an artificially created budget deficit, tens of thousands of jobs are being liquidated as post offices and mail processing facilities in towns and cities across the country are short-listed to be sold for ready cash. CBRE has already sold 52 of these properties, and hundreds more are on the chopping block.And 80 percent of the Postal Service's multibillion-dollar deficit is caused by a law passed by Congress in 2006 that requires it to prepay retiree health benefits 75 years into the future. This unprecedented, budget-killing command does not apply to any other government agency. If this burden were to be rescinded — and business mail were to be charged the cost of its delivery — the Postal Service would be in the black, according to Congressional reports.The ugly truth of the matter, say informed critics such as New York University professor Steve Hutkins, is that the Postal Service is being privatized in the interests of scores of corporations that not only compete with it, but are also its largest contractors, including FedEx and United Parcel Service (package routing); Parsons Corporation (management services); Accenture (financial consulting); and Pitney Bowes (direct mail).And then there is CBRE, the world's largest commercial real estate firm. In June 2013, Postal Service Inspector General David C. Williams published a scathing audit of CBRE's exclusive contract to manage all the sales and leasing of postal real estate. Williams noted that outsourcing these activities to a single firm is "a fundamental change from how the Postal Service previously managed its real estate portfolio [and] Facilities officials should improve oversight to mitigate inherent risks associated with the CBRE contract .... Specifically, there are conflict of interest concerns."Williams warned of the potential for contract fraud, but he stopped short of referring the matter to a prosecutor, and advised the postal executives in charge of the CBRE contract to clean up their act.Over the past year, my investigation has explored the kinds of conflicts of interest that concerned Williams by diving deep into the public record. CBRE's contract, its postal facility sales data, as well as expense reports for Postal Service executives were obtained under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). The deeds of sale and assessment data for most of the postal properties sold by CBRE were found at the county level.The county records allow for comparing the assessed value of the postal properties before they were sold to the final sales prices negotiated by CBRE on behalf of the Postal Service: And the comparisons reveal that CBRE has sold the bulk of this public real estate at prices under their assessed values — and apparently at far below fair market values.When these findings were shared with Chuck Zlatkin, Legislative and Political Director of the New York Metro Area Postal Union, he said, "Shocking as this information is, it is not surprising because we have seen a pattern of corruption at the Post Office ever since the manufacture of the health care benefit prepayment crisis. It is certainly not permissible for CBRE to sell property paid for by the public to its own business partners, or to anyone else, at a discount. In my opinion, CBRE's conflicts of interest contain an element of fraud."CBRE Group Inc. was given a list of the key facts and analysis reported in this investigation. Through its spokesman Philip Russo, the company declined to comment.Conflicts of InterestIn June 2011, the Postal Service hired CBRE as its exclusive agent to sell post offices, warehouses, parking lots, and vacant land worth hundreds of millions of dollars. The contract instructs CBRE to propose properties to sell with final approval reserved to the head of the Postal Service's Facilities Division, Tom Samra. And it requires CBRE to sell them at or above appraised (fair market) values, or not at all.CBRE is also charged with appraising the fair market value of these properties and listing a reasonable sales price. It is important to point out that real estate appraisals are not customarily performed by the agent marketing the property. To avoid conflicts of interest, property appraisals are normally performed by professionals not involved in negotiating the sale.Responding to a FOIA request through a staff attorney, Postmaster Patrick Donahoe categorically refused to disclose CBRE's appraisals. Attorney Jeff Meadows said that CBRE's appraisals do not need to be disclosed to the public because such information is "commercially sensitive" and it is comparable to a "national security" secret (even though the appraisals are not classified). The Postal Service eventually released the final sales price for each property sold by CBRE and CBRE's sales invoices, which recorded the amount of its commissions (2 to 6 percent). The appraisal figures, however, remain secret.By way of explanation, an assessed value is normally based upon the most recent sales price of a parcel, which is likely to be less than its current fair market value. In many counties, the assessed value is calculated as a percentage of the fair market value. And during economic downturns, assessed values are often lowered to keep pace with a falling market.During the first two years of its contract, CBRE sold the 52 properties it had picked to market for millions of dollars less than their assessed values. For example, in Seattle, CBRE sold a post office building in 2011 for $8 million that was assessed at $16 million. And earlier this year, it sold a seventeen-story office building in St. Paul, Minnesota for $20 million under the 2009 value assessed for it shortly before it was put on the market by CBRE.Details presented in the chapter "Following the Money" of this e-book show that from June 2011 through May 2013, CBRE sold 52 postal properties for $166 million. The total assessed value of this portfolio at the time of sale was $232 million. Subtracting out the nine properties that sold at a value higher than their assessed value, CBRE has arguably undersold its postal real estate portfolio by at least $79 million. And it undersold these properties even as the price of commercial real estate, especially for central downtown parcels, was approaching the pre-crash highs of 2007.Interviews about standard real estate practices with two experts provided by the National Association of Realtors indicate that the sale of a property at or below assessed values most often occurs when it is located in a distressed or impoverished area. When there is shortage of commercial real estate in developable areas — which has been the general situation, nationwide, for several years — demand tends to push prices far higher than assessed values.But the vast majority of the CBRE-negotiated sales did not involve distressed properties: They were mostly located in economically healthy neighborhoods. The sales were mostly of central downtown buildings, with parking, in wealthy or revitalizing neighborhoods that attracted restaurant, boutique, and residential developers, or modern, suburban office buildings and warehouses, also with ample parking that attracted high-tech industrial firms.In other words, the most saleable postal properties were the ones most likely to command prices that exceeded their assessed values.Not at Arm's LengthReal estate transactions are normally negotiated by agents who stay at "arm's length" from each other's interests. That makes sense because sellers try to obtain the highest price possible, while buyers angle for the lowest price. Each agent is bound to get the best possible price for his or her client in a competitive marketplace.But in a series of non-arm's-length transactions, CBRE has sold 20 percent of its postal portfolio to its own clients and/or business partners. In Boston, it sold a parcel at a large discount of its assessed value to a developer with whom it was partnered. And it sold another Boston parcel to one of its largest shareholders, Goldman Sachs Group. Real estate industry ethics require agents to get the best deal for their clients (in this case, the US Postal Service), not for their business partners and owners.CBRE kept the entire seller/buyer commission of up to 6 percent in 34 of 52 transactions. In the majority of these deals, CBRE appears to have represented the interests of the buyer as well as those of the seller, even though CBRE was originally contracted to represent only the interests of the Postal Service.Astonishingly, CBRE's contract was amended in 2012, at the request of CBRE, to allow it to negotiate on behalf of both the Postal Service and prospective buyers.No OversightTo be fair, CBRE need not shoulder all of the blame for the $79 million in lost revenue. In his June 2013 audit, the post office's inspector general reported that executives running the Postal Service Facilities Division were not properly monitoring the CBRE contract.Williams found that:• the dollar amount of the contract was improperly open-ended and posed a risk of runaway costs. The original $2 million budget had unaccountably tripled.• Facilities Division officials improperly paid CBRE invoices without checking for fraud. At least 227 invoices worth $1.7 million were paid without proper oversight — "present[ing] an increased risk of fraud [and] pos[ing] an increased risk to the Postal Service's finances, brand, and reputation."In short, the normal checks-and-balances mechanisms for preventing conflicts of interest and contract fraud have been missing in the monitoring of CBRE's performance by Facilities Division officials. Given the ethical norms at play on the top floors of the Postal Service's headquarters at L'Enfant Plaza in Washington, DC, this is not surprising. The inspector general has also reported that high-ranking Postal Service executives have charged home mortgages and European vacations to their government credit cards.And Facilities Division expense reports reveal that staffers have purchased hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of expensive dinners, online gift cards, books, and even toys with their government-issued credit cards. The division's chief, Samra, has billed the deficit-ridden Postal Service for flying first class to Europe, even though he personally is worth as much as $98 million.The Postal Service was given a list of the key facts and analysis reported in this investigation. Through his spokesman, David Partenheimer, Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe declined to comment.The Boston Seaport DealsCBRE is a major player in the development of a brand-new neighborhood in downtown Boston called the Seaport District. The mixed-use district is slated to revitalize 1,000 acres of abandoned railways and crumbling docks that surround the Boston Convention Center. The linchpin of the giant redevelopment project's design is the upscale Channel Center, which will sport expensive residences, office buildings, and grassy parks. A portion of the project is sited on Postal Service land that has been sold by CBRE to the developers.In Boston, during 2012, while acting as the Postal Service's agent, CBRE sold real estate at less than its assessed value to a group of developers called Commonwealth Ventures LLC, with whom it was partnered in a redevelopment project. CBRE also sold a valuable parcel in the same development project to one of its largest stockholders, Goldman Sachs Group. These and a host of similar transactions around the country raise questions as to whether CBRE improperly benefited from selling postal properties to its clients and business partners.According to the Channel Center developer, Commonwealth Ventures LLC, CBRE is a member of its development team, which provides real estate services to the project. Commonwealth Ventures is also partnered with AREA Property Partners, which has collaborated with CBRE on other real estate ventures. Another CBRE client, the real estate arm of General Electric Corporation, is also a member of Commonwealth Ventures' Channel Center team. In what appears to have been a conflict of interest, CBRE has acted as the broker for both the Postal Service and the Channel Center development partnership, which is composed of its clients.In September 2012, AREA Property Partners paid the Postal Service $10.3 million for a parking lot on which the company planned to construct the Channel Center parking garage. The Postal Service was represented by CBRE in the sale, even though CBRE is also the agent for the Channel Center developers, Commonwealth Ventures, and AREA.According to the Boston Assessor's property database, the parking lot was valued at $12.4 million in 1991. This key piece of real estate in the Channel Center project was sold by CBRE for 20 percent less than it had been valued more than two decades before. In addition, because CBRE is also a member of the development team, the sale raises questions as to whether the company stands to reap additional profits from the Channel Center project.Remarkably, the invoice that CBRE submitted to the Postal Service's Facilities Division for the sale of the Channel Center parking lot to Commonwealth Ventures did not contain an address for the property sold, only the notation "0 Square Feet." Under "value," someone wrote, "?" Nowhere on the undated invoice does the purchase price appear. Nor does the invoice reference a contract number, nor any form of payment authorization. It demands a "flat fee" of $377,500 for negotiating the sale, even though the CBRE contract does not allow for flat fees. Nonetheless, the incomplete invoice was paid by Postal Service facilities executives.The Goldman Sachs ConnectionA real estate partnership created by the Goldman Sachs Group called W2005 BWH Realty LLC purchased a parcel of Postal Service land for a residential development alongside the Channel Center in September 2011. The parcel was subdivided from a larger parcel, so it had no previously assessed value as a unit. CBRE sold the postal parcel for $1 million to the entity controlled by the Goldman Sachs Group, which owns 6.6 percent of CBRE, a stake that rivals Blum Capital Partners' stake of 6.9 percent. Goldman Sachs is also a longstanding CBRE client and its co-investor in numerous ventures. Since CBRE took the entire commission of 6 percent, it appears to have represented both seller and buyer in a transaction that poses an apparent conflict of interest.The CBRE invoice for the sale to the Goldman Sachs partnership does not list a dollar amount for the sale, nor the name of the buyer (which was obtained from deeds on file with the Boston Assessor's office).In an email, James Allen of the Postal Service Facilities Division wrote that after paying CBRE for both of the Boston Seaport deals, facilities managers requested that CBRE change the format of its invoices to include more information.Richard C. Blum did not respond to repeated requests for comment.To read about Senator Feinstein's efforts in a California redevelopment project in which Blum's company was involved, see the chapter "DiFi and the Blumpire" of the e-book.Proceeds from the sale of the e-book, Going Postal, which may be downloaded it its entirety at <a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00F3JTO9G" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0) !important;">http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00F3JTO9G</a>, go solely to the author of this report.</div></div><div id="StoryContactLinks" class="SpanningFeature ContentDefault " style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-style: solid; border-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); border-width: 1px 0px 0px; font-style: italic; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', Geneva, Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12.800000190734863px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><hr width="20%" align="center" noshade="" /><a href="http://www.eastbayexpress.com/ebx/ContactUs/Page" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0) !important;">Contact</a> the author of this piece, <a href="mailto:letters@eastbayexpress.com" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0) !important;">send</a> a letter to the editor, <a href="http://www.facebook.com/eastbayexpress" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0) !important;">like</a> us on Facebook, or <a href="https://twitter.com/#!/EastBayExpress" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0) !important;">follow</a> us on Twitter.</div></div><div class="heading">
</div><div class="heading">=</div><div class="heading">Dianne Feinstein's Husband Richard C Blum.. On board of Vivisecting Organizations</div>

<div class="author">by Wikipedia Except For Summary

Monday Nov 21st, 2011 2:08 PM</div>

</div>

<blockquote class="summary">Richard C Blum, husband of insider trader war profiteer Dianne

Feinstein, who funneled over 1 billion in contracts to him

is not only on the board of the vivisecting American Cancer Society

but in addition the man who as chair of UC's Board of Overseers

helped the FBI criminalize the 1st amendment in AETA.</blockquote>

<div class="article">Career

Blum founded Blum Capital in 1975 and pioneered the firm’s hybrid Strategic Block/Private Equity investment strategy. Mr. Blum currently serves as Chairman of the board of directors of CB Richard Ellis and is a director on the boards of directors of three other portfolio companies: Fairmont Raffles Holdings International Ltd., Current Media, L.L.C. and Myer Pty Ltd. in Australia. Mr. Blum co-founded Newbridge Capital in the early 1990s and is Co-Chairman of TPG Asia V, L.P. (the successor fund to the Newbridge franchise that has been incorporated into Texas Pacific Group). In the past, Mr. Blum has served on the boards of many prominent companies, including Northwest Airlines Corporation, Glenborough Realty Trust, Inc., Korea First Bank, URS Corporation and National Education Corporation. In addition, Mr. Blum is active in numerous non-profit organizations. He is the founder and Chairman of the American Himalayan Foundation and is Honorary Consul to Mongolia and Nepal. Mr. Blum also serves as a member of the Advisory Board of the Haas School of Business at the University of California at Berkeley.

Prior to founding Blum Capital, Blum was with Sutro & Co. for seventeen years, holding various positions including director, major stockholder and member of the executive committee.

On April 25, 2009 Blum was honored with the Berkeley Medal by UC Berkeley Chancellor Robert Birgenau in front of His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama. The talk was sponsored by his American Himalayan Foundation and the Blum Center for Developing Economies at UC Berkeley.[2]

[edit] Background and personal life

Coming from San Francisco's public schools,[1] Blum graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, where he received his B.S. in business administration in 1958, and an MBA in 1959, both degrees coming from the Haas School of Business. Blum also studied abroad in 1957 at the University of Vienna in Vienna, Austria through IES Abroad.

In the 1970s, Blum supported then Mayor of San Francisco George Moscone. After Moscone's assassination, Blum supported the new mayor Dianne Feinstein; they married in 1980.[1]

[edit] Career

Blum joined investment brokerage Sutro & Co. at the age of 23, becoming a partner before age 30.[1] At Sutro Blum led a partnership that acquired Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus for $8m, selling it to Mattel four years later for $40m.[1] On the back of this deal Blum started in business for himself in 1975, founding what is now Blum Capital Partners;[1] a stake in URS Corp. was one of its first investments.[1]

[edit] Controversy

Blum's wife, Senator Dianne Feinstein, has received scrutiny due to her husband's government contracts and extensive business dealings with China and her past votes on trade issues with the country. Blum has denied any wrongdoing, however.[3] Critics have argued that business contracts with the US government awarded to a company (Perini) controlled by Blum may raise a potential conflict-of-interest issue with the voting and policy activities of his wife.[4] URS Corp, which Blum had a substantial stake in, bought EG&G, a leading provider of technical services and management to the U.S. military, from The Carlyle Group in 2002; EG&G subsequently won a $600m defense contract.[1]

In 2009 it was reported that Blum's wife Sen. Dianne Feinstein introduced legislation to provide $25 billion in taxpayer money to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp, a government agency that had recently awarded her husband's real estate firm, CB Richard Ellis, what the Washington Times called "a lucrative contract to sell foreclosed properties at compensation rates higher than the industry norms."[5]

[edit] Boards

On March 12, 2002, Blum was appointed by California Governor Gray Davis to a 12-year term as one of the Regents of the University of California. Blum also serves on the boards of the following companies:

CB Richard Ellis (Chairman)

Newbridge Capital (co-Chairman)

CurrentTV

Blum Capital

Blum is also the primary owner of Career Education Corporation.[6]

Blum has a strong interest in Tibet and Tibetan Buddhism. In 1981 he attempted to climb Mount Everest from the Tibetan side with Sir Edmund Hillary. He is the Chairman and founder of the apolitical American Himalayan Foundation, or AHF, which has given millions of dollars to build hospitals and schools in Tibet and Nepal but has refrained from political involvement with the Chinese control of Tibet.

In addition to the AHF, Blum’s not-for-profit endeavors include service as Trustee of The Carter Center; former Co-Chairman of the The World Conference of Religions for Peace; Member of Governing Council of The Wilderness Society;[7] member of the Board of Trustees of The Brookings Institution; Member of the Board of Trustees of the American Cancer Society Foundation; and the founder and a Member of the Board of Trustees of the Blum Center for Developing Economies at UC Berkeley. The Center is focused on finding solutions to address the crisis of extreme poverty and disease in the developing world.[8]

[edit] References

^ a b c d e f g h San Francisco Chronicle, 11 May 2003, Profile: Richard Blum (Archived by WebCite at <a href="http://www.webcitation.org/5nuLszglw">http://www.webcitation.org/5nuLszglw</a>)

^ <a href="http://www.dailycal.org/article/105438/berkeley_welcomes_dalai_lama">http://www.dailycal.org/article/105438/berkeley_welcomes_dalai_lama</a>

^ <a href="http://www.mercurynews.com/news/ci_5529371?nclick_check=1">http://www.mercurynews.com/news/ci_5529371?nclick_check=1</a>

^ "Senator Feinstein's Iraq Conflict". Retrieved April 2, 2006.

^ Washington Times, April 21, 2009, EXCLUSIVE: Senator's husband's firm cashes in on crisis.

^ CounterPunch, 26 February 2010, DiFi and Blum: a Marriage Marinated in Money

^ Blum Biography at the University of California

^ <a href="http://berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2006/04/19_blum.shtml">http://berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2006/04/19_blum.shtml</a>

[edit] External links

Blum Capital Partners, L.P.

Senator Feinstein's Iraq Conflict: Feinstein voted for appropriations worth billions to her husband's firms Peter Byrne, North Bay Bohemian, Jan. 24, 2007.

Blum's Plums: Conflicts of interest benefitted Blum's firms during his term as a UC Regent Peter Byrne, North Bay Bohemian, Feb. 21, 2007.

</div>

=

Career Education Corporation (CEC), founded in <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1994" title="1994">1994</a>, is a postsecondary education provider with campus-based and online curricula. On July 1, 2003, Career Education Corporation merged with competitor Whitman Education Group, Inc., gaining control over the latter's <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanford-Brown_College" title="Sanford-Brown College" class="mw-redirect">Sanford-Brown Colleges</a>, Ultrasound Diagnostic Schools (now known as the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanford-Brown_Institute" title="Sanford-Brown Institute" class="mw-redirect">Sanford-Brown Institute</a>), and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colorado_Technical_University" title="Colorado Technical University">Colorado Technical Universities</a>. And also the former Western School of Health and Business.

The organization operates over eighty <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/For-profit_college" title="For-profit college" class="mw-redirect">for-profit college</a> campuses with approximately 116,000 students enrolled. Schools owned by CEC are located throughout the US, Canada, France, and the United Kingdom and offer doctoral, master's, bachelor's, and associate's degrees, as well as diploma and certificate programs.

CEC schools include <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Culinary_Academy" title="California Culinary Academy">California Culinary Academy</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_College%28Minnesota%29" title="Brown College (Minnesota)">Brown College (Minnesota)</a>, the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrington_College_of_Design" title="Harrington College of Design">Harrington College of Design</a>, the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brooks_Institute_of_Photography" title="Brooks Institute of Photography" class="mw-redirect">Brooks Institute of Photography</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brooks_College" title="Brooks College">Brooks College</a>, the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katharine_Gibbs_School" title="Katharine Gibbs School" class="mw-redirect">Katharine Gibbs Schools</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_InterContinental_University" title="American InterContinental University">American InterContinental University</a> (AIU), <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colorado_Technical_University" title="Colorado Technical University">Colorado Technical University</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanford-Brown_Institute" title="Sanford-Brown Institute" class="mw-redirect">Sanford-Brown Institutes</a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanford-Brown_College" title="Sanford-Brown College" class="mw-redirect">Sanford-Brown Colleges</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collins_College%28Phoenix%29" title="Collins College (Phoenix)">Collins College</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lehigh_Valley_College" title="Lehigh Valley College">Lehigh Valley College</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Briarcliffe_College" title="Briarcliffe College">Briarcliffe College</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Academy_of_Design_and_Technology" title="International Academy of Design and Technology">International Academy of Design and Technology</a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_School_of_Health_and_Business_Careers" title="Western School of Health and Business Careers" class="mw-redirect">Western School of Health and Business Careers</a>.

<h2>Contents</h2>

[<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Career_Education_Corporation#" class="internal" id="togglelink">hide</a>] </div>

<ul>

<li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-1"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Career_Education_Corporation#Controversies_and_federal_scrutiny">1 Controversies and federal scrutiny</a></li>

<li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-2"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Career_Education_Corporation#Downsizing">2 Downsizing</a></li>

<li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-3"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Career_Education_Corporation#References">3 References</a></li>

<li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-4"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Career_Education_Corporation#External_links">4 External links</a></li>

</ul>

</td></tr></tbody></table>

<h2>[<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Career_Education_Corporation&action=edit&section=1" title="Edit section: Controversies and federal scrutiny">edit</a>] Controversies and federal scrutiny</h2>

CEC was investigated by the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Securities_and_Exchange_Commission" title="United States Securities and Exchange Commission" class="mw-redirect">United States Securities and Exchange Commission</a><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Career_Education_Corporation#cite_note-1">[2]</a> for various issues of non-compliance in 2005. In January 2008, CEC reported that the SEC has closed its investigation and will take no action against the company.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Career_Education_Corporation#cite_note-2">[3]</a><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Career_Education_Corporation#cite_note-3">[4]</a><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Career_Education_Corporation#cite_note-4">[5]</a> A <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Department_of_Justice" title="United States Department of Justice">Department of Justice</a> investigation began in 1994<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Career_Education_Corporation#cite_note-5">[6]</a> and was terminated in April 2007, with the DOJ declining prosecution. Another investigation on a different matter was begun by the Civil Division of the DOJ in June 2006 and is currently ongoing. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Career_Education_Corporation#cite_note-6">[7]</a>

In June 2005, the U.S. Department of Education prohibited CEC from expanding until it had resolved issues with financial statements and program reviews connected with <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collins_College_%28Phoenix%29" title="Collins College (Phoenix)">Collins College</a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brooks_College" title="Brooks College">Brooks College</a> two CEC schools.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Career_Education_Corporation#cite_note-7">[8]</a> In January 2007, the U.S. Department of Education lifted its restrictions on the company opening new schools or acquiring existing ones.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Career_Education_Corporation#cite_note-8">[9]</a>

CEC's most profitable division, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_InterContinental_University" title="American InterContinental University">American InterContinental University</a>, was placed on probation in December 2005 with its accrediting agency, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_Association_of_Colleges_and_Schools" title="Southern Association of Colleges and Schools">SACS</a>.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Career_Education_Corporation#cite_note-9">[10]</a> The probation status was reviewed after one year, in December 2006, and extended an additional 12 months. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Career_Education_Corporation#cite_note-10">[11]</a> On December 11, 2007, CEC announced that SACS has removed AIU's probation and that the university's accreditation remains in good standing. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Career_Education_Corporation#cite_note-11">[12]</a>

<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brooks_College" title="Brooks College">Brooks College</a>, a CEC owned school, was the subject of an unfavorable examination of for-profit trade schools in the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CBS_news" title="CBS news" class="mw-redirect">CBS news</a> magazine <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/60_Minutes" title="60 Minutes">60 Minutes</a> which focused on alleged misrepresentations by admission representatives to prospective students. A CBS producer with a hidden camera visited several CEC schools in the New York area, including the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katharine_Gibbs_School" title="Katharine Gibbs School" class="mw-redirect">Katharine Gibbs School</a>, and uncovered alleged instances of misrepresentations by admissions representatives.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Career_Education_Corporation#cite_note-12">[13]</a> In June 2007, Career Education Corporation announced that it will close both campuses of Brooks College. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Career_Education_Corporation#cite_note-close-13">[14]</a>

In January 2007, the New York State Education Department reported deficiencies at the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katharine_Gibbs_School" title="Katharine Gibbs School" class="mw-redirect">Katharine Gibbs School</a>'s New York campus. The problems related to faculty qualifications and remedial course offerings. New enrollment has been limited and the Education Department has stated it will close the college if improvements are not made.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Career_Education_Corporation#cite_note-14">[15]</a>

California Culinary Academy, which was purchased by CEC in 1999, was the subject of an unfavorable article in the San Francisco Weekly focusing on misrepresentations and omissions made to prospective students to enroll them in the school.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Career_Education_Corporation#cite_note-15">[16]</a> According to the Chronicle of Higher Education, a lawsuit was filed over the matter.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Career_Education_Corporation#cite_note-16">[17]</a>

On November 1, 2011 CEC's Chief Executive Officer resigned as corporate profits significantly fell and allegations were made involving inflated student placement statistics. Over the year the stock value dropped about 75%. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Career_Education_Corporation#cite_note-17">[18]</a>

<h2>[<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Career_Education_Corporation&action=edit&section=2" title="Edit section: Downsizing">edit</a>] Downsizing</h2>

After seeking unsuccessfully to sell several of its campuses, in June 2007 Career Education announced that it would close the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brooks_College" title="Brooks College">Brooks College</a> campuses in <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunnyvale,California" title="Sunnyvale, California">Sunnyvale</a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Beach,California" title="Long Beach, California">Long Beach, California</a>, and the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pittsburgh" title="Pittsburgh">Pittsburgh</a> branch of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Academy_of_Design_and_Technology" title="International Academy of Design and Technology">International Academy of Design and Technology</a>. No new enrollments would be accepted, and the final graduation dates would be September 2008 at the Sunnyvale campus, December 2008 in Pittsburgh, and March 2009 in Long Beach.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Career_Education_Corporation#cite_note-18">[19]</a>

On February 2008 Career Education Corporation announced that it would also phase out operations of nine money-losing colleges, including several <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gibbs_College" title="Gibbs College">Gibbs College</a> campuses, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lehigh_Valley_College" title="Lehigh Valley College">Lehigh Valley College</a>, and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McIntosh_College" title="McIntosh College">McIntosh College</a> in <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Hampshire" title="New Hampshire">New Hampshire</a> and to seek permission to convert two Gibbs college locations to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanford-Brown_College" title="Sanford-Brown College" class="mw-redirect">Sanford-Brown College</a> campuses.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Career_Education_Corporation#cite_note-close-13">[14]</a>

On February 18, 2008 CEC's <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_InterContinental_University" title="American InterContinental University">American InterContinental University</a> announced plans to gradually close down its Los Angeles campus. Current students would have the opportunity to complete their programs, but no new students would be enrolled. Dr. George Miller, CEO of American InterContinental University, said “the impact of a two-year probation, coupled with the current market for AIU’s programs in Los Angeles, is such that the student population at the campus has decreased significantly, and likely will not reach the sustainable level necessary to support the addition of new programs and necessary resources.”<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Career_Education_Corporation#cite_note-19">[20]</a>

<h2>[<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Career_Education_Corporation&action=edit&section=3" title="Edit section: References">edit</a>] References</h2>

<li id="cite_note-zenobank-0"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Career_Education_Corporation#cite_ref-zenobank_0-0">^</a> <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.zenobank.com/index.php?symbol=CECO&page=quotesearch">"Company Profile for Career Education Corp (CECO)"</a>. Retrieved 2008-10-22.</li>

<li id="cite_note-1"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Career_Education_Corporation#cite_ref-1">^</a> <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.chicagobusiness.com/cgi-bin/news.pl?post_date=2005-12-01&id=18648">By The Book At Career Education, Chicago Business News, Dec. 05, 2005, By Gregory Meyer</a>,</li>

<li id="cite_note-2"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Career_Education_Corporation#cite_ref-2">^</a> <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.reuters.com/article/governmentFilingsNews/idUSWNAS740220080123">Career Education says SEC ends investigation without action, Reuters January 23, 2008</a></li>

<li id="cite_note-3"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Career_Education_Corporation#cite_ref-3">^</a> <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://chronicle.com/news/article/3796/securities-and-exchange-commission-ends-probe-of-career-education-corp">SEC Ends Probe of Career Education Corporation, Chronicle of Higher Education, January 23, 2008</a></li>

<li id="cite_note-4"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Career_Education_Corporation#cite_ref-4">^</a> <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://money.cnn.com/news/newsfeeds/articles/apwire/f50ccca8a19d03d81fc788cb754b4ff5.htm">SEC Ends Inquiry Into Career Education, Recommends No Action Be Taken CNN Money, January 23, 2008</a></li>

<li id="cite_note-5"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Career_Education_Corporation#cite_ref-5">^</a> <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=950DE1DF1031F930A3575AC0A9629C8B63">Company News; Justice Department Is Investigation Career Education, New York Times, September 3, 2004</a></li>

<li id="cite_note-6"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Career_Education_Corporation#cite_ref-6">^</a> <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://digital50.com/news/items/BW/2001/07/14/20070420005152/career-education-corporation-provides-update-on-department-of-justice-investigations.html">Career Education Corporation Provides Update on Department of Justice Investigations, American Digital Networks, April 20, 2007</a></li>

<li id="cite_note-7"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Career_Education_Corporation#cite_ref-7">^</a> <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.secinfo.com/d11MXs.v13Vg.htm">Career Education Corp · 8-K · For 5/23/06</a></li>

<li id="cite_note-8"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Career_Education_Corporation#cite_ref-8">^</a> <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.reuters.com/article/inPlayBriefing/idUSIN20070122070908CECO20070122">Career Education announces the U.S. Department of Education lifts growth restrictions, Reuters, January 22, 2007</a></li>

<li id="cite_note-9"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Career_Education_Corporation#cite_ref-9">^</a> <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.sacscoc.org/dtails.asp?instid=12550">SACS website, institutional details on AIU</a></li>

<li id="cite_note-10"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Career_Education_Corporation#cite_ref-10">^</a> <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.sacscoc.org/disclosure/dec2006/American%20InterContinental%20U.pdf">Disclosure Statement Regarding the Status of American Intercontinental University, Commission on Colleges Southern Association of Colleges and Schools, January 2, 2007</a></li>

<li id="cite_note-11"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Career_Education_Corporation#cite_ref-11">^</a> <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.businesswire.com/portal/site/google/index.jsp?ndmViewId=news_view&newsId=20071211005990&newsLang=en">American InterContinental University Announces Positive Result in Accreditation Review</a></li>

<li id="cite_note-12"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Career_Education_Corporation#cite_ref-12">^</a> <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/01/31/60minutes/main670479.shtml">For-Profit College: Costly Lesson Career Education Corporation</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CBS_News" title="CBS News">CBS News</a>, January 30, 2005</li>

<li id="cite_note-close-13">^ <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Career_Education_Corporation#cite_ref-close_13-0">a</a> <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Career_Education_Corporation#cite_ref-close_13-1">b</a> <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://chronicle.com/news/article/2593/career-education-corp-will-close-3-colleges-it-has-tried-to-sell">Career Education Corp Will Close 3 Colleges It Has Tried to Sell Chronicle of Higher Education, June 29, 2007</a></li>

<li id="cite_note-14"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Career_Education_Corporation#cite_ref-14">^</a> <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/31/nyregion/31forprofit.html">State Finds Serious Problems at Gibbs School in Manhattan, January 31, 2007, New York Times</a></li>

<li id="cite_note-15"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Career_Education_Corporation#cite_ref-15">^</a> <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.sfweekly.com/2007-06-06/news/burnt-chefs/">San Francisco Weekly Burnt Chefs Former admissions representatives at CCA say they preyed on students’ dreams of becoming celebrity chefs and glossed over the painful economic realities of the industry, Eliza Strickland, June 6, 2007</a></li>

<li id="cite_note-16"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Career_Education_Corporation#cite_ref-16">^</a> "Lawsuit Accuses Career Education Corp. of Deceiving Students on Program's Quality" <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://chronicle.com/news/index.php?id=3153?=atnb">October 1, 2007</a></li>

<li id="cite_note-17"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Career_Education_Corporation#cite_ref-17">^</a> <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://news.businessweek.com/article.asp?documentKey=1376-LU1AS60D9L3501-0PJ0NVMKVOMPSAFTROIO7U1Q34">Career Education Tumbles After Resignation of CEO McCullough</a></li>

<li id="cite_note-18"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Career_Education_Corporation#cite_ref-18">^</a> <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://chronicle.com/news/article/?id=2593">Career Education Corp. Will Close 3 Colleges It Has Tried to Sell</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Chronicle_of_Higher_Education" title="The Chronicle of Higher Education">The Chronicle of Higher Education</a>, June 29, 2007</li>

<li id="cite_note-19"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Career_Education_Corporation#cite_ref-19">^</a> <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/american-intercontinental-university-announces-plan-to-teach-out-programs-at-los,284345.shtml">American InterContinental University Announces Plan to Teach-Out Programs at Los Angeles Campus</a>, The Earth Times, 19 Feb 2008</li>

</ol>

</div>

<h2>[<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Career_Education_Corporation&action=edit&section=4" title="Edit section: External links">edit</a>] External links</h2>

<ul>

<li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.careered.com">CEC corporate website</a></li>

<li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F30B17FB3F5B0C778EDDAE0894DD404482">"The School That Skipped Ethics Class."</a> New York Times, July 24, 2005.</li>

<li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://atlanta.creativeloafing.com/gyrobase/Content?oid=oid%3A266315">The student trap: As American InterContinental University fights to keep its accreditation, students on the Buckhead campus wonder if they've received the education they paid for</a></li>

</ul>

lied about grad #

A for-profit education company with five locations in California has admitted that some of its health education campuses <a href="http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1046568/000119312511208261/dex991.htm" target="_blank">reported inflated job placement rates</a> for its graduates.

The announcement comes as the Illinois-based Career Education Corporation has tentatively <a href="https://www.ccaclassactionsettlement.com/Documents/Settlement_Agreement_and_Release.pdf" target="_blank">agreed [PDF]</a> to pay $40 million to settle a class-action lawsuit involving another of its subsidiaries, the California Culinary Academy in San Francisco. In that case, former students claimed they had been duped by the college's claim that 97 percent of graduates got jobs in the field.

Career Education Corporation reported in an Aug. 3 filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission that the company discovered inaccuracies in its job placement rate calculations while gathering information to respond to a New York attorney general's <a href="http://californiawatch.org/dailyreport/new-york-ag-investigates-calif-profit-college-companies-10381" target="_blank">subpoena</a> filed in May.

In addition to Career Education Corporation, the New York attorney general also is investigating two California-based operations, Bridgepoint Education of San Diego and Corinthian Colleges of Santa Ana, as well as Lincoln Educational Services and Trump Entrepreneur Services.

Career Education Corporation enrolls more than 100,000 students at 90 campuses in the United States and abroad. Its domestic brands include American InterContinental University, Brooks Institute, Colorado Technical University, Harrington College of Design, Sanford-Brown Colleges and Institutes, International Academy of Design & Technology, and Le Cordon Bleu North America, which includes San Francisco's California Culinary Academy.