Tuesday, February 4, 2014

Bruce Rauner's crimes make him a Quintessential Republican, as the Illinois Governor's Race heats up

Republicans Dan Rutherford and Kirk Dillard have alleged that the latest revelations about GTCR Nursing Home negligence make the Billionaire Bruce Rauner unfit to be the Republican Candidate for Governor in Illinois.

Quite the contrary, Bruce Rauner's willingness to kick old people to the curb and swipe their savings are in direct accordance with established Republican Orthodoxy.

Conservatives and Republicans love criminals; especially as their Governors. Chris Christie, Bob McDonnell are just the latest caught abusing their office for personal gain or vendetta.

Now, Bruce Rauner is a special case. Here in Illinois, the Plutocracy sees a chance to install one of their henchmen in the Governor's Mansion in Springfield.

His career reads much like Mitt Romney's in that he used accounting gimmicks and vulture capitalism to make money. Rauner's firm has been managing the largest Illinois Public Pensions since the 1990's consequently we now have unfunded pension crisis as Rauner has been steadily swindling the Pensions.

When the Nursing Home Industry came within sights of Vulture Capitalists in the late 1990's and early 00's, Bruce Rauner's GTCR firm saw another spigot of taxpayer funds they could pilfer. Which, just like with public pensions, is exactly what Bruce Rauner and his Wealth Management Fund did. They stole millions of Medicaid Dollars marked for Nursing Home Care and provided worse services.
From 1999 to 2003, GTCR and THI began acquiring nursing homes with funding from GECC, Ventas and other lenders. THI became one of the nation’s largest health care operators with more than 220 facilities and more than a billion in revenue at that time. 
When Medicare money for residents’ rent flowed into the THI account, GECC and Ventas took their share before monies were available to cover payroll, supplies, utilities, etc. for the hundreds of nursing homes, according to evidence presented at trial. Insider operators and former employees began suing GTCR/THI over poor management, as did nursing home residents and their families because of what was described as abysmal care.
Rauner's firm then engaged in active negligence, in order to run their 200+ facilities into insolvency because who cares what happens to the senile old people families can't afford to look after because they were working two jobs each to try and stay afloat during the Ultra-Reactionary Piss Down Your Back Reaganomics era?

Republicans are not in Government to help people, unless you mean Romney People (i.e. Corporations) they are in Government to ensure that wealth is transferred upwards and regular Americans are shackled into Corporate Bondage.

There's nothing fresh, innovative or helpful for Illinois residents coming from Republicans. Illinois has seen their Republicans on the federal level defend taxpayer welfare going to Oil Companies while they also vote to eliminate the Clean Air and Water Act, so those self-same Companies can then dump petcoke or other toxic byproducts into Lake Michigan or where ever they please.

Now, after these latest despicable revelations about the thieving Bruce Rauner came back to the forefront of the Illinois Governor's Race, Dan Rutherford has suddenly found himself in trouble from allegations made by a former attorney who worked for Bruce Rauner.
Rutherford announced — during a hastily called news conference — that a treasurer's office employee who has made "allegations of misconduct" against him was being represented by an attorney who had been on Rauner's payroll. Rutherford said the attorney demanded $300,000 on the employee's behalf to "walk away and keep it under wraps."
Dan Rutherford has also said the issue involves "allegations of personal misconduct" which was looked into by an internal Illinois Treasury Department investigation. The general counsel for the treasurer's office Neil Olson, said outside counsel and a consultant firm had been retained for an independent probe because the treasurer is the accused.

I haven't and won't speculate about what the allegations against Dan Rutherford are because going through people's underwear drawers looking for smut and sniffing crotches is a Republican tradition.

As for Kirk Dillard, I've had personal contact with the man during a fundraising dinner for a State Representative Sandy Pihos. I suppose I could set the scene but the gist is when a person with juice,a DuPage County Judge, walked nearby Dillard pivoted his big belly away and turned a cold shoulder towards myself and someone else who had been asking him difficult questions regarding the Pension crisis.

No matter what Republican wins the nomination for Governor in Illinois we are going to be faced with the prospect of a rapacious servant of the Rich who will be an implacable foe to the Working Man and will use the Awesome Power of Government to transfer as much wealth as possible into the coffers of the Vulture Capitalist Class.

10 comments:

Jerry Critter said...

Illinois has a long history of crooks in government. I lived there for a few years in the late 60's and early 70's. We had good ol' Paul Powell, the man with shoe boxes full of money.

Grung_e_Gene said...

Hey JC! We also had John Peter Altgled who was a Progressive Hero and pardoned the living incarcerated Haymarket Square Scapegoats!

ChickenHammer said...

Conservatives and Republicans love criminals; especially as their Governors.

That is quite a statement coming from an Illinois resident Gene.

Q: What do Rod Blagojevich, George Ryan, Dan Walker, & Otto Kerner have in common?
A: They are all former Illinois Governors who have served time in prison.

Q: What do Rod Blagojevich, Dan Walker, & Otto Kerner have in common?
A: They are all Democrats.

Grung_e_Gene said...

Hey let's take a small sample size to prove Chicken Hammer's point!

Looks like I'll have to post about Dan Rutherford now. For it seems Dan got caught breaking 1 of the 2 Political Sexy Time No-Nos; don't get caught with a dead girl or a live boy...

Andrew Acista said...

31 2546443Yeah, going back 36 years is just a small sample size...

Rod Blagojevich, Democrat (2009)
George Ryan, Republican (2003)
Dan Walker, Democrat (1977)
Otto Kerner, Democrat (1968)

Both sides are dirty. Democrats are 3-to-1 dirtier than Republicans over the past 36 years.

If 36 years is a small sample size what constitutes a rational sample size?

Grung_e_Gene said...

Let's see: In the entire History of the Democratic Republic 100% of Presidents and 100% of Vice Presidents who have resigned in utter disgrace with potential criminal charges pending over their heads have been:

Republicans!

ChickenHammer said...

You were talking Governors and you say you live in Illinois. I brought Illinois Governors to the comments. That is all.

Grung_e_Gene said...

No Chickenhammer, just no. Bruce Rauner is not the Governor nor has he ever been. What I pointed out are the attributes which make him a Quintessential Republican (i.e. a criminal). Rauner made money by stealing from Public Pensions and accounting gimmicks (see: Mitt Romney) and Rauner made money by mistreating Old People and metaphorically pushing them off a cliff (see: Paul Ryan).

So, what makes Rauner a Republican are his mistreatment of the elderly and poor and thievery.

J.O.B. said...

Hey Andrew, you forgot the two other ones accused of a crime. Both Republicans. I especially love the Len Small case where he was acquitted of corruption by a jury of his peers. Eight of whom received state jobs. Please don't make it sound as if Democrats are the only corrupt ones,

Anonymous said...

Vulture Capitalist Bruce Rauner is the quintessential hypocrite. He condemns taxes that pay the bills and for the services of government (ie, pensions), but he's more than willing to own stake in companies that bill MILLIONS of dollars to Medicare and/or Medicaid. And, as some charge, even willing to take part in a cheat to get those dollars. Court records show one of his companies knowingly let elderly people suffer in the interest of maximizing profit.

His flip-flop position on a minimum wage hike is equally self-serving and almost as appalling. Depending on who he's talking to, he is either for it or against it. No one can live a self-sufficient existence on $8 and change an hour, it's preposterous. Yet here's Bruce Rauner, who in 2012 made ONE MILLION DOLLARS A WEEK ($53 million dollars in 2012), on record willing to deny a sliver of dignity to fringe-dwellers who get up in the morning, take a bus they can't afford to ride to a dead-end job they can't afford to lose, perfectly willing to throw these people on the street.

He personifies the maladies of economic inequality that plague our nation today. While other countries are working toward more equitable economic policies, greed-mongers like Rauner are looking for new ways to disadvantage others. Why? See, here's a "secret" that rich people pay a LOT of attention to: every dollar in someone else's pocket means a dollar less in their pocket. Simple ecomonics, which most of us give little thought. But to black-souled monsters like Rauner, this torments them, haunts them. That dollar should be theirs, the obsess.

In fairness, it may not be his fault. I believe in the theory that insatiable greed is a real disorder. It is an addictive, compulsive psychological dysfunction or defect from which Rauner suffers, possibly incurably. Rapacious avarice. He can no more dismiss his greed than can one will their eye color to change.

So what do the helplessly rapacious, avaricious do? They attack the weakest. They don't go after other rich people. They can defend themselves. They go after the poor first, and work their way up the economic food chain in a distributed assault designed to reap huge gains by taking a small amount (laughingly insignificant relative to his wealth) from the greatest number of people possible. How better to do this than to control the government. We see it everywhere already. It's at the core of the exploding wealth gap in the US. You can't have the foxes guarding the hen house.

So, it only makes sense that Rauner would attack the unions. This is because he knows that unions (not without their issues, to be sure) stand as a last remaining defensive force resisting the devolution of America to a third-world plutocracy/corpocracy. Something that would further profit Rauner immensely. Removing the unions from the equation would lower the economic bar for most everyone who works for a living. By that argument, unions (like them or not) serve to raise the labor standard.

For the record, I'm not a socialist, or Marxist, nor do I subscribe to any philosophy that approaches communism. It's human nature to strive to do better, to improve your economic position. I think capitalism, in the correct balance, is very healthy for an society. But what Rauner wants perverts the virtues of opportunity which 99% (or so) of us hold dear.