Today's
Feature
Police
Report.
On Sunday March 29, 2009, at
10:34 pm, an officer attempted to stop an erratic
driver, in a white Mitsubishi, on McGregor at Oak
Streets in Carthage. The vehicle accelerated in
an attempt to get away from the officer. The
vehicle ran a red signal light at Oak and
Garrison and stop signs at 4th and Main and 4th
and Howard. An uninvolved vehicle at 4th and
Howard had to take evasive actions to keep from
being struck by the fleeing vehicle.
The vehicle stopped in the 700
block of Howard and the driver fled on foot.
After a foot chase, and a search of the area, the
driver was found hiding in the attic of a house,
700 block Lincoln. The Carthage Fire Department
assisted by bringing a ladder to the scene.
Officers entered the small crawl space and
arrested the driver.
He was identified as Gelver
Perez Hernandez, age 22, of Carthage. He is being
held for DWI, a Class D felony, Resisting Arrest,
a Class D Felony, and traffic charges.
A passenger, who remained in
the vehicle, was arrested on a city charge of
Possession of a Controlled Substance. He was
identified as Juan Figueroa Martinez, age 30, of
Carthage.
Immigration and Customs
Enforcement (ICE) was contacted and placed
detainers on both subjects. Both, reportedly, had
been previously deported.
Stimulus Czar
Enlists Local Help
with Limited
Resources
by Christopher
Weaver, www.ProPublica.org
Earl Devaney, the stimulus
accountability guru, is seeing something in
Recovery.gov’s future.
"My vision here is that
every reporter in America will wake up and click
on this site and be looking for problems,"
Devaney told 130 city and county officials at a
stimulus conference in Washington this afternoon.
"They’ve already started, by the
way."
That’s one reason Devaney
and other stimulus honchos in Washington are
warning officials to be careful about what they
ask for when it comes to stimulus cash.
"That’s going to
generate for all of us, you included, inquiries -
‘hey, why did this toilet cost
whatever’," he continued. (Side note:
We reported last week on flush federal agencies,
anxious to renovate water closets across the
country.)
Other projects we’ve
covered, like liquor warehouse skylights
don’t sound good on paper, even though they
are mere components of larger, well-regarded
projects. Just to be safe, the Deputy Secretary
of Transportation, Adm. Thomas Barrett, urged
state-wide officials, at a similar meeting last
week, to avoid "projects that are going to
look stupid or be stupid."
Devaney’s independent
Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board
doesn’t even have phones or offices yet, but
he plans to take over the official Web site in 30
to 45 days. The Web site, which is the main
medium for sharing accountability information
with the public, is currently under the charge of
the Office of Management and Budget, an executive
branch agency that ultimately reports to
President Obama. The site’s getting 3,900
hits per second, Devaney said.
Vice President Joe Biden also
asked the local officials to help the
administration avoid embarrassments, like
neighborhood opposition to infrastructure
projects: "Educate your public so
there’s not this ‘not in my backyard,
not here.’" Yesterday, the Wall Street
Journal reported on local hang-ups that would
delay a bridge project Biden had just praised for
its "shovel-readiness."
If anyone builds a swimming
pool, Biden warned, ""I’ll show up
in your city and say this is a stupid idea."
The local officials are being
asked to take on a big share of the
damage-control work, the bill won’t pay for
state or local auditors to take on those new
tasks.
This Week in
Scandals: AIG Pay and Bailout Dismay
by Alexandra Andrews, www.ProPublica.org
Every week, we take stock of
how the week unfolded for the stories we’re
tracking in Scandal Watch,
1. AIG
An interesting fact: The $165
million awarded to executives at AIG’s
financial products division two weeks ago
represents just 0.0014 percent of the $11.6
trillion that the government has committed to
combat the credit crisis so far, according to
Bloomberg News. Nevertheless, those bonuses
caused an uproar last week that ultimately
succeeded in wrangling $50 million back from the
unit’s top-paid employees. Others
aren’t so ready to give in to the
"bonus assault" : One exec’s very
public resignation in the New York Times, in
which he defends the bonuses, earned him a
standing ovation from fellow employees. And
Congress’ efforts to obliterate those
bonuses with taxes seem to have stalled.
Meanwhile, the ringleader of
the financial products division, Joseph Cassano,
may soon find himself in the crosshairs of a
congressional investigation, reports
TPMMuckraker. (Rolling Stone offers a very
unflattering portrait of his reign over AIGFP.)
And New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo has
widened his probe of the bonuses to include the
unit’s efforts to unwind its complicated
credit default swaps. (Several banks, and their
employees, are now reaping a taxpayer-funded
windfall from those deals.) Connecticut’s
attorney general has also set his sights set on
AIG, after discovering that AIGFP’s bonuses
actually totaled $50 million more than previously
thought.
Finally, the Wall Street
Journal reported that the AIG’s Credit Risk
Committee, which oversaw the company’s
credit default swap debacle, "remains
largely unchanged."
2. Market Crisis
If the bailout was supposed to
induce good behavior from banks, the bloom may be
off the rose. Following news of Citigroup’s
new $10 million executive suite was an ABC News
report that JPMorgan Chase plans to spend $138
million on new corporate jets and a luxury
hangar. And even though retention-pay rage has
been targeted mainly at AIG, the New York Times
reports that at least 19 bailed-out firms plan to
dole it out as well.
Meanwhile, some banks are
pricing their toxic assets "ridiculously
high," and Citigroup and Bank of America are
using bailout money to "aggressively"
buy even more risky mortgage-backed securities,
reports the New York Post. Banks are also
scrutinizing the Treasury’s latest plan to
sell those toxic assets to see how they can reap
the most profit, even as some experts say the
plan will probably fail.
The Treasury finally released
its contract with Bank of New York Mellon, but
meanwhile, two law firms that that also have
contracts with the Treasury to advise it on
TARP-related matters have "offered their
services to private clients interested in
capitalizing on the bailout," reports
BailoutSleuth. And lastly, Portfolio reports that
$2.5 billion in bailout money went to banks that
cater to the rich and actually "had little
or no exposure to subprime mortgages or other
toxic assets."
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