Eideard

In Democratic circles, the 58-year-old bookkeeper with at least 398 bank accounts for political campaigns and nonprofit groups had a reputation for being prompt and responsive.

Neighbors and associates say there’s nothing in Kinde Durkee’s background, demeanor or lifestyle to suggest that she “masterminded a multimillion dollar fraudulent scheme,” as U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein charged in a Sept. 23 lawsuit. While Feinstein reported $5 million in cash to the Federal Election Commission as of June 30, the bank found only $662,100 on Sept. 21, according to court documents…

The scope of the alleged embezzlements from Durkee- controlled funds for federal politicians is the largest at least since the Federal Election Campaign Act became law in 1972, said Kent Cooper, a former Federal Election Commission official.

“There’s been no one else who even comes close,” Cooper, who now runs the money-in-politics database Capitol Hill Access…

Feinstein’s campaign also sued First California Bank, the operating unit of Westlake Village, California-based First California Financial Group Inc. (FCAL), where Durkee had 398 accounts. Chief Executive Officer Chong Guk Kum didn’t respond to voice mail messages requesting comment. Gary Horgan, a company lawyer, said in an e-mail that the bank would not comment.

Things started to unravel for Durkee in 2010, when the California Fair Political Practices Commission found irregularities while auditing the political finances of Jerome Horton, the chairman of the Board of Equalization, the state’s tax administrator. Horton said Durkee “acknowledged her mistakes” during the audit and agreed to pay the commission’s $13,000 fine and his legal bills.

“I had no knowledge of the magnitude of her fraud or the extent to which others were involved until I read it in the paper,” Horton wrote in an e-mail message to Bloomberg News.

After auditing another Durkee-managed account, the commission in November 2010 called the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Public Corruption Squad in Sacramento, according to court documents. In an affidavit, FBI Special Agent Reginald Coleman said it appeared that Durkee moved money from campaign accounts to her company’s bank accounts and then transferred other candidates’ funds to cover shortfalls. She covered up her actions by filing false disclosure forms, according to the affidavit…

Several lawyers for Durkee-managed campaign accounts said they’re mystified about where any misappropriated money might have gone, noting that Durkee [and her hubbie, her staff] gave no signs of flaunting wealth.

“I find the whole thing remarkable,” said Stephen Kaufman, the lawyer for the Los Angeles County Democratic Party and several other Durkee clients, in an interview. “We have no idea where all the money went.”

Surely does sound like Madoff all over again – especially everyone being astounded at the revelations. Apparently California bureaucrats are as diligent as the SEC at oversight.

RTFA. Example after example of folks thinking they had millions in the bank when they really had a tenth of what Kinde Durkee’s paperwork told them. Personally, I can never understand how people can become divorced from their funds. Even my little checking account gets checked online every month when my social security check is due to arrive.

Flying Spaghetti Rapture

Twice a year, American evangelicals show up at a winery in this Jewish settlement in the hills of ancient Samaria to play a direct role in biblical prophecy, picking grapes and pruning vines.

Believing that Christian help for Jewish winemakers here in the occupied West Bank foretells Christ’s second coming, they are recruited by a Tennessee-based charity called HaYovel that invites volunteers “to labor side by side with the people of Israel” and “to share with them a passion for the soon coming jubilee in Yeshua, messiah…”

“These people are filled with ideas that this is the Promised Land and their duty is to help the Jews,” said Izdat Said Qadoos of the neighboring Palestinian village. “It is not the Promised Land. It is our land.”

HaYovel is one of many groups in the United States using tax-exempt donations to help Jews establish permanence in the Israeli-occupied territories — effectively obstructing the creation of a Palestinian state, widely seen as a necessary condition for Middle East peace.

The result is a surprising juxtaposition: As the American government seeks to end the four-decade Jewish settlement enterprise and foster a Palestinian state in the West Bank, the American Treasury helps sustain the settlements through tax breaks on donations to support them.

A New York Times examination of public records in the United States and Israel identified at least 40 American groups that have collected more than $200 million in tax-deductible gifts for Jewish settlement in the West Bank and East Jerusalem over the last decade. The money goes mostly to schools, synagogues, recreation centers and the like, legitimate expenditures under the tax law. But it has also paid for more legally questionable commodities: housing as well as guard dogs, bulletproof vests, rifle scopes and vehicles to secure outposts deep in occupied areas…

The use of charities to promote a foreign policy goal is neither new nor unique — Americans also take tax breaks in giving to pro-Palestinian groups. But the donations to the settler movement stand out because of the centrality of the settlement issue in the current talks and the fact that Washington has consistently refused to allow Israel to spend American government aid in the settlements. Tax breaks for the donations remain largely unchallenged, and unexamined by the American government. The Internal Revenue Service declined to discuss donations for West Bank settlements. State Department officials would comment only generally, and on condition of anonymity.

And if you donate to Pro-Palestinian charities you can rest assured the Department of Homeland Insecurity will put your name on a couple dozen watch lists.

The history of unquestioning American political support for Israel stretches from a half-century of guilt + a half-century of turning that guilty feeling into complicity = the cabal headed by Israel on behalf of the United States through the Cold War. It stretched from central Russia to apartheid South Africa. Leaving it by the side of the road is overdue.

Children peering through hospital walls smashed in the last Israeli putsch
Daylife/Reuters Pictures used by permission

Aid agencies have strongly criticised the international community for failing to help bring an end to Israel’s blockade of Gaza.

The charities made the accusation in a report published just ahead of the anniversary of Israel’s offensive in the Gaza Strip. They…condemn not just Israel, but the world community.

In the words of Oxfam’s director, Jeremy Hobbs, “world powers have failed and betrayed Gaza’s ordinary citizens“.

The charities call for more pressure to be exerted on Israel to end what they describe as its illegal collective punishment of Gazans.

A spokesman for the Israeli prime minister told the BBC that Israel remains committed to humanitarian supplies of food, medicine and power.

Just not committed to an adequate quantity – of those supplies. They starve the Gaza ghetto as the Nazis did to Warsaw.

But he said that sanctions will remain in place as long as Hamas is, as he put it, committed to destroying Israel and killing Israelis.

A “logic” that is equally offensive to anyone examining those sections of Zionist politics calling for the extermination of Arabs.