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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?


To: TideGlider who wrote (935267)5/16/2016 2:44:35 PM
From: FJB2 Recommendations

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locogringo
TideGlider

  Respond to of 1574854
 
Financial analyst alleges Clinton Foundation fraud
Power Line by Paul Mirengoff

The Clinton Foundation finds itself under new scrutiny, this time pertaining to its financial disclosures. Wall Street analyst Charles Ortel is uploading a series of reports showing what he alleges is fraudulent activities by the Foundation.

Ortel says he has the documentation to demonstrate Clinton entities have broken state and federal law and have never undergone outside audits, as is required. Ortel’s conclusions are based on what he describes as “reams of public filings and comments made by the Clinton Foundation as well as related parties.”

Ortel finds:
The numbers that the Clinton Foundation supplies to the public in its legally mandated filings do not add up, are frequently incorrect, and appear to be materially misleading. In numerous cases, the Clinton Foundation appears to have followed inconsistent policies adding in appropriate portions of the various activities it pursued around the world to create “consolidated” financial statements. . . .

n several instances portions were added only for some of the years in which the entities remained in operation, artificially enhancing purported financial results. In other cases, important elements of activity were improperly characterized and combined.

Meanwhile the Foundation solicits donations even though its informational filings are not in compliance with applicable law. Regulators at Federal, State, Local, and international levels are not doing what they should do to protect the public.

The Justice Department reportedly is investigating the Clinton Foundation. It might therefore be interested in this passage from one of Ortel’s reports:
U.S. states and foreign countries. . .have strict laws concerning operating and soliciting for charities that wish to offer their donors the benefit of making tax-deductible contributions. In most states and foreign countries, charities including the Clinton Foundation must make truthful filings, many of which are readily accessible.

In the United States, states (and the District of Columbia) require charities to register before they solicit contributions, and to submit periodic reports–some of these filing requirements are easy to satisfy while others are demanding.

In all cases, charities are required to provide complete and truthful disclosures, particularly concerning trustees, executives, and, many cases, regarding “those who are in position to exercise significant influence,” whether or not they are named as trustees or executives.

In coming days, I will show in detail how Clinton Foundation entities submitted numerous false and materially misleading filings, or failed to submit disclosures to authorities within New York State and the State of Georgia, respectively. Infractions in both of these states (to name just two) started in 2001 and continue to the present.

Hal Moroz, a private attorney and former Georgia judge, reportedly has referred some of Ortel’s findings on the violations of the foundation to the state attorney general’s office.

There’s plenty more in Ortel’s reports, and it looks like there’s more yet to come.

Ortel will come under scrutiny as a result of his work. He’s a graduate of Harvard Business School who worked at the prominent mergers and acquisition firm Dillon Read and then at several boutique outfits. He went on to establish his own financial advisory firm.

In 2008, Ortel correctly identified problems with General Electric’s financial statements in 2008. He also blew the whistle on AIG. Based on his work detailing problems at AIG, the Sunday Times of London described Ortel as “one of the finest analysts of financial statements on the planet.”

Sunday Times reporter Tim Rayment said:

Where you or I see pages of numbers, [Ortel] sees a narrative. Sometimes the theme is a company’s potential for growth. Sometimes it is the prospect of self-destruction. And at times the story does not make sense, because the figures are hiding a fraud.

With the Clinton Foundation, the fraud narrative appears to be the operative one. Few who have been paying attention will be surprised.



To: TideGlider who wrote (935267)5/16/2016 2:54:53 PM
From: FJB1 Recommendation

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TideGlider

  Respond to of 1574854
 
Gay Pastor Apologizes After Accusing Whole Foods of Writing Slur on Chocolate Cake

Mike McPhate

nytimes.com

Jordan Brown during his news conference announcing a lawsuit against Whole Foods on April 18. Ricardo Brazziell/American-Statesman The case of the chocolate cake slur, it seems, was simply a hoax.

An openly gay Texas pastor who had accused Whole Foods of defacing his cake with an anti-gay slur dropped his lawsuit against the grocery chain on Monday, issuing an apology that said he was wrong to “perpetuate this story.”

“The company did nothing wrong,” the pastor, Jordan Brown, said in a statement. “I was wrong to pursue this matter and use the media to perpetuate this story.”

He also apologized to the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community “for diverting attention from real issues.”

Whole Foods had forcefully rejected the accusations by Mr. Brown, 31, who claimed that he had bought a frosted cake from a store in Austin, Tex., and asked that the words “Love Wins” be written in icing on top — only to discover while driving away that a slur had been added.

Mr. Brown’s apology represented a remarkable about-face from his remarks last month, delivered at a news conference alongside his lawyer, during which he choked back tears as he told the story.

“For me, it was humiliating,” he said then, “because being a pastor who is also openly gay, I’ve had to deal with this in the past and literally the feeling that I had just resurfaced a bunch of painful memories of things that have happened to me.”

But a day after Mr. Brown’s legal salvo, Whole Foods denounced the pastor as a fraud, vowing to press a countersuit that sought $100,000. At the same time, the grocery chain released surveillance footage of Mr. Brown’s purchase that it said proved that the cake had not been tampered with.

Footage of Man in Cake Dispute

After a customer accused Whole Foods of writing a gay slur on a cake, the company released surveillance footage of the man buying the cake, contending that he later tampered with it.

By WHOLE FOODS MARKET on April 20, 2016. Photo by Whole Foods. Watch in Times Video »

Whole Foods said in a statement on Monday that it would drop its lawsuit.

“We’re very pleased that the truth has come to light,” it said. “Given Mr. Brown’s apology and public admission that his story was a complete fabrication, we see no reason to move forward with our countersuit to defend the integrity of our brand and team members.”

The case of the anti-gay cake slur had captivated the Texas capital, where Whole Foods is based, as thousands of people debated the evidence on social media and in comment threads on The Austin-American Statesman.

The credibility of Mr. Brown’s story took a beating as armchair detectives, including at least one icing expert, raised doubts about his timeline and the plausibility of his claim that he had failed to notice the offending word through the cake’s clear-topped box while in the store.

Messages seeking further comment from Mr. Brown and his lawyer, Austin Kaplan, were not immediately answered on Monday.

In his statement, Mr. Brown also apologized to the bakery associate who came under scrutiny, his partner, his lawyer and the Church of Open Doors, where he is the pastor.