mccain goes negative. in early august? - Page 2 - Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community

reconmike · 08-07-2008, 06:29 PM

Here you go Rat, a debunking of your debunkin, so it is really not a myth, from the hallowed bible of the left NYT.

Big Spender Is Charged With Fraud On Welfare - New York Times

His life style was dazzling: a $4,000-a-month apartment on the 37th floor of Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue, a small fleet of luxury cars, membership in a health and racquet club, chief executive of his own business. Just last Monday he was negotiating to buy a $5 million English manor house on Long Island Sound.

But yesterday, as 63-year-old Herbert Steed walked out of his polished brass-and-marble lobby, past the rosewood table with a vase of lovely autumn flowers and the doormen in livery and white gloves, detectives were waiting under the canopy to burst the bubble and arrest him -- on welfare-fraud charges.

Since March, in what authorities called one of the most stunning welfare deceptions on record, Mr. Steed was said to have illegally collected $176 every two weeks in home-relief benefits, claiming that he was living at a little flat in Springfield Gardens, Queens, and had no assets and no job or income.

What Mr. Steed failed to mention, investigators and prosecutors said, was his tour-operator business and the $800,000 he was accused of taking from 225 Ghanaians for a trip to the World Cup games that he did not provide; or the $27,000 he paid in advance for a six-month lease on his tower apartment; or the Lincoln Continental, the Cadillac and the Lexus, or his prospective new home in Rye.

"The $3,000 in welfare payments he collected just about covered his health club dues," the Manhattan District Attorney, Robert M. Morgenthau, said in an interview. "We've seen some wild ones, but for sheer brass, for chutzpah, this has to be right up there at the top."

The suspect was tripped up, Mr. Morgenthau said, when authorities arrested him on charges of bilking the Ghanaian tour group -- and found a welfare identity card in his possession. The cards are used by welfare recipients to prove their identity and collect benefits at check-cashing and other authorized outlets, since welfare checks are no longer mailed out by the state.

Mr. Steed, who was described by investigators and prosecutors as a scam artist with a record of convictions for theft and fraud in state and Federal courts, was arraigned in Criminal Court yesterday on charges of grand larceny and filing false information with welfare authorities. The charges are felonies punishable by up to four years in prison on each count.

Acting Justice Herbert J. Adlerberg of State Supreme Court in Manhattan ordered Mr. Steed held without bail for a hearing on Oct. 21 after prosecutors argued that they believed he was still hiding $700,000 from the Ghanaian deal, and that he had jumped bail after a 1984 Federal mail-fraud conviction and disappeared for nine years until being found and extradicted from Europe last year.

Beyond the allegations against him and statements by investigators and prosecutors on his purported wheelings and dealings over the years, little was known yesterday about Mr. Steed, who chose not to appear at the bail hearing. Susan Lask, a lawyer who represented him, did not return a telephone message.

It was unclear, for example, why a suspect engaged in million-dollar deals and with hundreds of thousands of dollars in assets would have bothered to collect $176 in welfare every two weeks. Mr. Morgenthau said it seemed to be a matter of habit, not need. "He was willing to rip off people with money and he was willing to rip off people without money," the prosecutor said.

Richard Finkelstein, director of the bureau of fraud investigations in the city's Department of Human Resources, said there were 1.1 million welfare recipients in New York City -- 144,000 new cases last year alone -- and that 20,000 investigations in the last year had prevented 6,000 bogus claims and led to the arrest of more than 300 people on fraud charges.

Most cases of welfare fraud involve the filing of false information by the prospective recipient. Last August, a woman who collected welfare under 15 different names and for 73 fictitious children pleaded guilty to charges that she had illegally collected $450,000 from 1987 to 1994.
In many cases, computers are being used to ferret out recipients who are illegally collecting welfare payments in more than one state. Recently, New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts and Vermont have agreed to compare data to search for fraud.

And the administration of Gov. Mario M. Cuomo last summer agreed to let New York City and some suburban counties take electronic fingerprints from some welfare recipients in an effort to fight fraud in which applicants use assumed names to collect benefits in more than one place. Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani has strongly favored finger imaging and said a system would be set up next year.

Mr. Morgenthau, who also favors the fingerprinting process, said Mr. Steed filed for home-relief benefits last March, saying he lived in Queens and had no employment or income. He reaffirmed these assertions to the Human Resources Administration last month when he was routinely recertified for benefits.

"In fact," Mr. Morgenthau charged, "the defendant was the chief executive officer of Gamair Tours Operator, Ltd., and had moved into the Trump Tower on July 1, 1994." He said investigators learned Mr. Steed, working out of an office at 122 East 42d Street that was little more than a mail drop and phone answering machine, had received $800,000 from the Ghanaian tour group on June 8.

"The defendant did not declare this income in his H.R.A. recertification paperwork and he did not inform H.R.A. of his Trump Tower address, thus receiving benefits to which he was not entitled," Mr. Morgenthau declared.

Besides acquiring his luxury cars and paying $27,000 in advance on a six-month lease for his one-bedroom apartment in the tower at Fifth Avenue and 56th Street, Mr. Steed took out a membership in the New York Health and Racquet Club, and began negotiations to buy an 11,000-square foot English manor house in Rye, with two swimming pools, a wine cellar and 935 feet of frontage on Long Island Sound.

It was unclear, investigators said, whether Mr. Steed actually intended to buy the house or had something else in mind. "He was trying to enter into a business with the owner," an assistant prosecutor, Sarah Mariani said. "It involved exporting cheesecake to Africa."

Ms. Mariani, chief of the prosecutor's welfare fraud unit, said Mr. Steed's record dated to 1958, when he was convicted of attempted grand larceny in New York City. In 1976, she said, he was convicted of criminal contempt in Nassau County, and in 1984 pleaded guilty in Federal Court in Manhattan to mail fraud in a scheme to steal $273,000 from the Hoover and Hertz companies and American Airlines.

Although his passport was seized in 1984, Mr. Steed jumped bail and fled the country, Ms. Mariani said. She said he lived in Africa and Europe until being found in Amsterdam and extradicted to the United States in February 1993. He then served a six-month term in a Federal prison in Michigan, she said.

The grand larceny charge involving the Ghanaians, for which Mr. Steed was arrested on Aug. 8, is still pending in Manhattan Criminal Court, Mr. Morgenthau said, adding that the case was taking time because of difficulties in getting witnesses from Ghana.

Detectives said Mr. Steed had an early morning workout at his health club yesterday and was arrested after returning home and changing into a business suit. Afterward, residents entering and leaving the tower said they did not know him, but two doormen did.

"He's 63?" said one. "He didn't look 63."

"He stayed in shape," said the other.

Sure it's a myth. I like the set of balls on the woman in yellow.

ngdawg · 08-07-2008, 07:14 PM

One really good welfare cheat isn't a debunking, dude. In fact, what was stated in that article had nothing to do with Ratbastid's statement of 'myth', which was as a reply to the crack-smoking baby-making money grubbing welfare recipient.

ratbastid · 08-08-2008, 05:03 AM

Anecdotal fraud cases, however dramatic, don't constitute a debunking.

Of course fraud happens. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the knee-jerk rightwing response to any mention of social safety-net programs that goes, "Oh great, now I'm paying for irresponsible freeloading cheats living high on my hog!" when that's VASTLY not the case.

This proves my point:

Quote:

Originally Posted by your lovely article

Richard Finkelstein, director of the bureau of fraud investigations in the city's Department of Human Resources, said there were 1.1 million welfare recipients in New York City -- 144,000 new cases last year alone -- and that 20,000 investigations in the last year had prevented 6,000 bogus claims and led to the arrest of more than 300 people on fraud charges.

Of 1.1 million recipients, there were 6000 bogus claims. That's 0.005%, roughly.

Also, the fact that living benefits come to $176 every two weeks should be SHOCKING. You really think people are living well on that?? In New York City??

Poppinjay · 08-08-2008, 05:17 AM

reconmike provides the exception that proves the rule. Mr. Steed was not popping out babies to receive benefits so he could buy crack.

Reagan's whole point was to create a division between races in order to secure fear-based votes. He took a page from the Jesse Helms playbook. The problem is those people, the single mother drivin' her caddy to her crack dealer, right before she bets the rest her welfare check on a sure thing at the track. Them. The other people.

It's great for those who buy whole hog into anecdotes. However, anecdotes do not equal data.

Reagan himself was overheard saying, "I love simple people, they're so happy with simple answers."

roachboy · 08-08-2008, 05:22 AM

poppinjay says in a more polite way than i was going to what is happening with the conservative mythologies around crack.
it is clearest to me if you note that there is no parallel set of conservative memes about crank, which would enable a preservation of graphics (one letter difference) and a redirect of petit bourgeois resentment--but strangely it has never happened.

ratbastid · 08-08-2008, 05:44 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Poppinjay

Reagan himself was overheard saying, "I love simple people, they're so happy with simple answers."

Thus began the great stupidification of the American conservative movement.

Op-ed from yesterday's NY Times (yellowing mine):

Quote:

Know-Nothing Politics
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: August 7, 2008

So the G.O.P. has found its issue for the 2008 election. For the next three months the party plans to keep chanting: “Drill here! Drill now! Drill here! Drill now! Four legs good, two legs bad!” O.K., I added that last part.

And the debate on energy policy has helped me find the words for something I’ve been thinking about for a while. Republicans, once hailed as the “party of ideas,” have become the party of stupid.

Now, I don’t mean that G.O.P. politicians are, on average, any dumber than their Democratic counterparts. And I certainly don’t mean to question the often frightening smarts of Republican political operatives.

What I mean, instead, is that know-nothingism — the insistence that there are simple, brute-force, instant-gratification answers to every problem, and that there’s something effeminate and weak about anyone who suggests otherwise — has become the core of Republican policy and political strategy. The party’s de facto slogan has become: “Real men don’t think things through.”

In the case of oil, this takes the form of pretending that more drilling would produce fast relief at the gas pump. In fact, earlier this week Republicans in Congress actually claimed credit for the recent fall in oil prices: “The market is responding to the fact that we are here talking,” said Representative John Shadegg.

What about the experts at the Department of Energy who say that it would take years before offshore drilling would yield any oil at all, and that even then the effect on prices at the pump would be “insignificant”? Presumably they’re just a bunch of wimps, probably Democrats. And the Democrats, as Representative Michele Bachmann assures us, “want Americans to move to the urban core, live in tenements, take light rail to their government jobs.”

Is this political pitch too dumb to succeed? Don’t count on it.

Remember how the Iraq war was sold. The stuff about aluminum tubes and mushroom clouds was just window dressing. The main political argument was, “They attacked us, and we’re going to strike back” — and anyone who tried to point out that Saddam and Osama weren’t the same person was an effete snob who hated America, and probably looked French.

Let’s also not forget that for years President Bush was the center of a cult of personality that lionized him as a real-world Forrest Gump, a simple man who prevails through his gut instincts and moral superiority. “Mr. Bush is the triumph of the seemingly average American man,” declared Peggy Noonan, writing in The Wall Street Journal in 2004. “He’s not an intellectual. Intellectuals start all the trouble in the world.”

It wasn’t until Hurricane Katrina — when the heckuva job done by the man of whom Ms. Noonan said, “if there’s a fire on the block, he’ll run out and help” revealed the true costs of obliviousness — that the cult began to fade.

What’s more, the politics of stupidity didn’t just appeal to the poorly informed. Bear in mind that members of the political and media elites were more pro-war than the public at large in the fall of 2002, even though the flimsiness of the case for invading Iraq should have been even more obvious to those paying close attention to the issue than it was to the average voter.

Why were the elite so hawkish? Well, I heard a number of people express privately the argument that some influential commentators made publicly — that the war was a good idea, not because Iraq posed a real threat, but because beating up someone in the Middle East, never mind who, would show Muslims that we mean business. In other words, even alleged wise men bought into the idea of macho posturing as policy.

All this is in the past. But the state of the energy debate shows that Republicans, despite Mr. Bush’s plunge into record unpopularity and their defeat in 2006, still think that know-nothing politics works. And they may be right.

Sad to say, the current drill-and-burn campaign is getting some political traction. According to one recent poll, 69 percent of Americans now favor expanded offshore drilling — and 51 percent of them believe that removing restrictions on drilling would reduce gas prices within a year.

The headway Republicans are making on this issue won’t prevent Democrats from expanding their majority in Congress, but it might limit their gains — and could conceivably swing the presidential election, where the polls show a much closer race.

In any case, remember this the next time someone calls for an end to partisanship, for working together to solve the country’s problems. It’s not going to happen — not as long as one of America’s two great parties believes that when it comes to politics, stupidity is the best policy.

reconmike · 08-08-2008, 06:32 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ratbastid

Anecdotal fraud cases, however dramatic, don't constitute a debunking.

Of course fraud happens. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the knee-jerk rightwing response to any mention of social safety-net programs that goes, "Oh great, now I'm paying for irresponsible freeloading cheats living high on my hog!" when that's VASTLY not the case.

This proves my point:

Of 1.1 million recipients, there were 6000 bogus claims. That's 0.005%, roughly.

Also, the fact that living benefits come to $176 every two weeks should be SHOCKING. You really think people are living well on that?? In New York City??

1.1 million? What does NYC's welfare population and 1 million lesbians have in common? 2 million people who don't do dick!

So in a city with 8+ million people 13% of them are on the governments tit?

I will find a crack whore baby poppin welfare collecting conviction for the nay-saying myth believers.

Poppinjay · 08-08-2008, 06:34 AM

Find some DATA.

ngdawg · 08-08-2008, 07:16 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by reconmike

1.1 million? What does NYC's welfare population and 1 million lesbians have in common? 2 million people who don't do dick!

So in a city with 8+ million people 13% of them are on the governments tit?

I will find a crack whore baby poppin welfare collecting conviction for the nay-saying myth believers.

If you want to make your case valid, I would strongly suggest you find more than one.

After a lawsuit against the town of Bordentown, NJ (which had required its local welfare recipients to work for the town in exchange for their checks) was shot down, the federal government sought to enforce its own version of "Workfare"(c.1995).
Cities such as New York jumped on the bandwagon immediately. Unfortunately, advocacy groups denounced the notion of "working for cheap", stating it would flood the job market with "droves of hungry people, making it easier for employers to depress wages."Source
Lawsuits abounded and the Workfare program is, for all intents and purposes, dead.
Some of the rules do still apply, though. There is a limit on how many children a woman can have and still receive any increase in benefits. They have to report to social services (although those departments are so woefully understaffed and underskilled that fraud continues to be an issue).
The stereotype of some crack smoking, baby popping woman just sitting around waiting for her check is just that-a stereotype.
We anxiously await the data to confirm it.

ratbastid · 08-08-2008, 11:12 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by reconmike

1.1 million? What does NYC's welfare population and 1 million lesbians have in common? 2 million people who don't do dick!

See, this is what I'm talking about. Poverty is a joke to the right-wing.

Evidently the solution to high unemployment is to yell at the lazy bums to get jobs.

ottopilot · 08-08-2008, 11:42 AM

...so how about that ol' McCain going negative in August. Can you believe that?

"Doggies", as Uncle Jed used to say to Jethro.

roachboy · 08-08-2008, 02:05 PM

there's a way to link up the recurrence of the old conservative myths about poverty and the content of mccain's adverts--they speak to a desire for simplified images of a simplified world at the center of how conservative ideology operates. the desire for simplicity apparently overwhelms the need to data---it's about a kind of intuitive resonance, the appeal, and not about an actual description of the world--and this resonance seems to me to be about producing an illusion of controllability (on social questions) and its reverse in victimization (on matters like taxation). if you put these together and think about the image that is produced, it is of the impotent authoritarian martyr----this is of a piece with market ideology to the extent that "free markets" are understood to be guided by some invisible hand, which is apparently a moral agent, such that the economically dominant are possessed of more inward virtue than are the less dominant---which loops back into the stereotypes concerning poverty.

all fine tuned through demographic research on radio and television audiences.

there's an assumption of spectatorship in all this as well, so that the impotent authoritarian/martyr is explicitly a projection that enables the other projections, with the projector sitting in a chair somewhere, listening to the radio like the old days of the 40s, making up faces for the shadow, or watching shit blow up on television while the voice over informs of the "real meaning"....

flstf · 08-08-2008, 02:33 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by reconmike

So in a city with 8+ million people 13% of them are on the governments tit?

The audacity of these people, trying to follow the example of their local, state and federal leaders.

reconmike · 08-08-2008, 04:54 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ratbastid

See, this is what I'm talking about. Poverty is a joke to the right-wing.

Evidently the solution to high unemployment is to yell at the lazy bums to get jobs.

When did I ever say I was right-wing? I can not recall ever saying so, I do recall saying I was a Libertarian. Oh I see, by my stance on people leeching off of others, with no intention of ever getting off the government's tit, makes me right-wing.

Evidently if your able-bodied you should be out looking for work instead of drinking a 40 on your section 8 stoop at 11 am.

I did find plenty of numbers also here are just a few though,

It's Drugs, Alcohol and Tobacco, Stupid!

Quote:

The more than 500,000 newborns exposed each year to drugs and/or alcohol during pregnancy is a slaughter of innocents of biblical proportions. Crack babies, a rarity a decade ago, crowd $2,000aomgday neonatal wards. Many die. Each survivor can cost one million dollars to bring to adulthood. Fetal alcohol syndrome is a top cause of birth defects.

http://www.fordschool.umich.edu/rese...df/appam98.pdf

Quote:

Because substance use is a covert behavior, its true prevalence within the welfare
population is unknown. Due to differing definitions and data sources, published prevalence
estimates vary widely, from 6.6 to 37 percent of those receiving public aid (Olson and Pavetti
1996). The 1992 National Household Survey of Drug Abuse (NHSDA) indicated that 15.5
percent of AFDC recipients were impaired by drugs or alcohol, a rate twice that observed among
non-AFDC recipients (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services 1994).

Now from the second quote, if 15% of NYC welfare recipients are addicted to something that make 150,000 people on welfare and on some kind of drug/alcohol. If half are women that gives us 75,000. How many of those women would you say have children?

ratbastid · 08-08-2008, 05:52 PM

EDIT: Never mind. I gotta remember not to talk religion with the religious.

Please resume your "McCain goes NEGATIVE!?!? Dum-dum-dummmmm" talk.

reconmike · 08-08-2008, 06:41 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ratbastid

EDIT: Never mind. I gotta remember not to talk religion with the religious.

Please resume your "McCain goes NEGATIVE!?!? Dum-dum-dummmmm" talk.

True this is a McCain bashing thread let me start a Crack whores sucking dick for rock while pregnant thread.

Sun Tzu · 08-09-2008, 02:42 AM

ottopilot · 08-13-2008, 04:54 AM

Was Obama not going negative when he introduced race in his Berlin speech on July 24, then followed by his dollar bill comment in a later speech?

“I know that I don’t look like the Americans who’ve previously spoken in this great city.”

Rekna · 08-13-2008, 07:35 AM

Looking at the front page of factcheck.org is telling when it comes to who is honest and has integrity. Counting up the number of incorrect facts or flat in some cases flat out lies the score board is the following:

Obama: 2
Mc'Cain: 7

In addition if you look at the magnitude of the distortions Mc'Cain's ads seem to be much bigger distortions and in many cases they are flat out lies. Mc'Cain is dishonest and willing to sell his morals in order to win. This is exactly the type of person we don't want in the white house, 8 years of this is already put the country at the breaking point. 4 more years and this nation will self destruct.

Willravel · 08-13-2008, 07:43 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ottopilot

Was Obama not going negative when he introduced race in his Berlin speech on July 24, then followed by his dollar bill comment in a later speech?

“I know that I don’t look like the Americans who’ve previously spoken in this great city.”

That strikes me as being a lot less direct than what we're seeing from McCain. "That's not change I believe in" (btw, I do a great mccain impression) is direct enough so that everyone understands he's mocking Obama. Obama is mentioning that he's the first black man who's had a shot at the oval office. He's right, too.

ratbastid · 08-13-2008, 08:05 AM

By the way, we've recently started watching Battlestar Galactica from the beginning around here, and the girls have nicknamed Colonel Tigh "John McCain". I think that's awesome. He's an awfully negative dude.

Willravel · 08-13-2008, 08:19 AM

Oh, just you wait, rat. The McCain comparisons will continue to multiply.

guyy · 08-13-2008, 08:30 AM

I saw the McCain celebrity spot on TV last night. I thought i was seeing an Obama ad before the raise taxes on the middle class bit came on. Then there was McCain looking like a mummy at the end.

I think the subtext of the ad is Obama is It.

Shitty ad.

jorgelito · 08-13-2008, 09:09 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ratbastid

By the way, we've recently started watching Battlestar Galactica from the beginning around here, and the girls have nicknamed Colonel Tigh "John McCain". I think that's awesome. He's an awfully negative dude.

I also thought he resembled John McCain. Colonel Tigh is AWESOME!! He has one of the best character arcs. I don't think John McCain is negative. For more on Colonel Tigh read on:

*Spoiler tag*
He is the best friend of Adama and one of my favorite characters on the show. Yeah he made some mistakes but he always faces up to them and accepts responsibility and accountability. Plus he was the key leader in the resistance movement on New Caprica. It's eerie how the parallels between him and McCain are. How he was tortured in Cylon prison. Colonel Tigh is awesome. *End Spoiler Tag*

Willravel · 08-13-2008, 09:17 AM

JORG! He said "recently started watching"! How about some spoiler tags?!

ottopilot · 08-13-2008, 11:38 AM

I firmly believe that John McCain is one of the five.

ratbastid · 08-13-2008, 11:43 AM

Don't worry about it--I'm frequently too dense to be spoiled.

I do seem to have an agenda to take this thread off-topic, though...

jorgelito · 08-13-2008, 11:57 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ratbastid

Don't worry about it--I'm frequently too dense to be spoiled.

I do seem to have an agenda to take this thread off-topic, though...

So say us all! Sorry about that, I did try to put in some sort of spoiler alert. The thing is, if you're gonna compare the two beyond a superficial level, you need to have all the info to do so. BSG kicks ass by the way.

Willravel · 08-13-2008, 12:20 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jorgelito

So say us all!

So say we all.

/threadjack, BSG nerd

08-07-2008, 06:29 PM	#41 (permalink)
reconmike Thank You Jesus Location: Twilight Zone	Here you go Rat, a debunking of your debunkin, so it is really not a myth, from the hallowed bible of the left NYT. Big Spender Is Charged With Fraud On Welfare - New York Times His life style was dazzling: a $4,000-a-month apartment on the 37th floor of Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue, a small fleet of luxury cars, membership in a health and racquet club, chief executive of his own business. Just last Monday he was negotiating to buy a $5 million English manor house on Long Island Sound. But yesterday, as 63-year-old Herbert Steed walked out of his polished brass-and-marble lobby, past the rosewood table with a vase of lovely autumn flowers and the doormen in livery and white gloves, detectives were waiting under the canopy to burst the bubble and arrest him -- on welfare-fraud charges. Since March, in what authorities called one of the most stunning welfare deceptions on record, Mr. Steed was said to have illegally collected $176 every two weeks in home-relief benefits, claiming that he was living at a little flat in Springfield Gardens, Queens, and had no assets and no job or income. What Mr. Steed failed to mention, investigators and prosecutors said, was his tour-operator business and the $800,000 he was accused of taking from 225 Ghanaians for a trip to the World Cup games that he did not provide; or the $27,000 he paid in advance for a six-month lease on his tower apartment; or the Lincoln Continental, the Cadillac and the Lexus, or his prospective new home in Rye. "The $3,000 in welfare payments he collected just about covered his health club dues," the Manhattan District Attorney, Robert M. Morgenthau, said in an interview. "We've seen some wild ones, but for sheer brass, for chutzpah, this has to be right up there at the top." The suspect was tripped up, Mr. Morgenthau said, when authorities arrested him on charges of bilking the Ghanaian tour group -- and found a welfare identity card in his possession. The cards are used by welfare recipients to prove their identity and collect benefits at check-cashing and other authorized outlets, since welfare checks are no longer mailed out by the state. Mr. Steed, who was described by investigators and prosecutors as a scam artist with a record of convictions for theft and fraud in state and Federal courts, was arraigned in Criminal Court yesterday on charges of grand larceny and filing false information with welfare authorities. The charges are felonies punishable by up to four years in prison on each count. Acting Justice Herbert J. Adlerberg of State Supreme Court in Manhattan ordered Mr. Steed held without bail for a hearing on Oct. 21 after prosecutors argued that they believed he was still hiding $700,000 from the Ghanaian deal, and that he had jumped bail after a 1984 Federal mail-fraud conviction and disappeared for nine years until being found and extradicted from Europe last year. Beyond the allegations against him and statements by investigators and prosecutors on his purported wheelings and dealings over the years, little was known yesterday about Mr. Steed, who chose not to appear at the bail hearing. Susan Lask, a lawyer who represented him, did not return a telephone message. It was unclear, for example, why a suspect engaged in million-dollar deals and with hundreds of thousands of dollars in assets would have bothered to collect $176 in welfare every two weeks. Mr. Morgenthau said it seemed to be a matter of habit, not need. "He was willing to rip off people with money and he was willing to rip off people without money," the prosecutor said. Richard Finkelstein, director of the bureau of fraud investigations in the city's Department of Human Resources, said there were 1.1 million welfare recipients in New York City -- 144,000 new cases last year alone -- and that 20,000 investigations in the last year had prevented 6,000 bogus claims and led to the arrest of more than 300 people on fraud charges. Most cases of welfare fraud involve the filing of false information by the prospective recipient. Last August, a woman who collected welfare under 15 different names and for 73 fictitious children pleaded guilty to charges that she had illegally collected $450,000 from 1987 to 1994. In many cases, computers are being used to ferret out recipients who are illegally collecting welfare payments in more than one state. Recently, New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts and Vermont have agreed to compare data to search for fraud. And the administration of Gov. Mario M. Cuomo last summer agreed to let New York City and some suburban counties take electronic fingerprints from some welfare recipients in an effort to fight fraud in which applicants use assumed names to collect benefits in more than one place. Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani has strongly favored finger imaging and said a system would be set up next year. Mr. Morgenthau, who also favors the fingerprinting process, said Mr. Steed filed for home-relief benefits last March, saying he lived in Queens and had no employment or income. He reaffirmed these assertions to the Human Resources Administration last month when he was routinely recertified for benefits. "In fact," Mr. Morgenthau charged, "the defendant was the chief executive officer of Gamair Tours Operator, Ltd., and had moved into the Trump Tower on July 1, 1994." He said investigators learned Mr. Steed, working out of an office at 122 East 42d Street that was little more than a mail drop and phone answering machine, had received $800,000 from the Ghanaian tour group on June 8. "The defendant did not declare this income in his H.R.A. recertification paperwork and he did not inform H.R.A. of his Trump Tower address, thus receiving benefits to which he was not entitled," Mr. Morgenthau declared. Besides acquiring his luxury cars and paying $27,000 in advance on a six-month lease for his one-bedroom apartment in the tower at Fifth Avenue and 56th Street, Mr. Steed took out a membership in the New York Health and Racquet Club, and began negotiations to buy an 11,000-square foot English manor house in Rye, with two swimming pools, a wine cellar and 935 feet of frontage on Long Island Sound. It was unclear, investigators said, whether Mr. Steed actually intended to buy the house or had something else in mind. "He was trying to enter into a business with the owner," an assistant prosecutor, Sarah Mariani said. "It involved exporting cheesecake to Africa." Ms. Mariani, chief of the prosecutor's welfare fraud unit, said Mr. Steed's record dated to 1958, when he was convicted of attempted grand larceny in New York City. In 1976, she said, he was convicted of criminal contempt in Nassau County, and in 1984 pleaded guilty in Federal Court in Manhattan to mail fraud in a scheme to steal $273,000 from the Hoover and Hertz companies and American Airlines. Although his passport was seized in 1984, Mr. Steed jumped bail and fled the country, Ms. Mariani said. She said he lived in Africa and Europe until being found in Amsterdam and extradicted to the United States in February 1993. He then served a six-month term in a Federal prison in Michigan, she said. The grand larceny charge involving the Ghanaians, for which Mr. Steed was arrested on Aug. 8, is still pending in Manhattan Criminal Court, Mr. Morgenthau said, adding that the case was taking time because of difficulties in getting witnesses from Ghana. Detectives said Mr. Steed had an early morning workout at his health club yesterday and was arrested after returning home and changing into a business suit. Afterward, residents entering and leaving the tower said they did not know him, but two doormen did. "He's 63?" said one. "He didn't look 63." "He stayed in shape," said the other. Sure it's a myth. I like the set of balls on the woman in yellow. __________________ Where is Darwin when ya need him? Last edited by reconmike; 08-07-2008 at 06:32 PM..

08-08-2008, 05:17 AM	#44 (permalink)
Poppinjay You had me at hello Location: DC/Coastal VA	reconmike provides the exception that proves the rule. Mr. Steed was not popping out babies to receive benefits so he could buy crack. Reagan's whole point was to create a division between races in order to secure fear-based votes. He took a page from the Jesse Helms playbook. The problem is those people, the single mother drivin' her caddy to her crack dealer, right before she bets the rest her welfare check on a sure thing at the track. Them. The other people. It's great for those who buy whole hog into anecdotes. However, anecdotes do not equal data. Reagan himself was overheard saying, "I love simple people, they're so happy with simple answers." __________________ I think the Apocalypse is happening all around us. We go on eating desserts and watching TV. I know I do. I wish we were more capable of sustained passion and sustained resistance. We should be screaming and what we do is gossip. -Lydia Millet

08-08-2008, 05:22 AM	#45 (permalink)
roachboy Super Moderator Location: essex ma	poppinjay says in a more polite way than i was going to what is happening with the conservative mythologies around crack. it is clearest to me if you note that there is no parallel set of conservative memes about crank, which would enable a preservation of graphics (one letter difference) and a redirect of petit bourgeois resentment--but strangely it has never happened. __________________ a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite

08-08-2008, 06:34 AM	#48 (permalink)
Poppinjay You had me at hello Location: DC/Coastal VA	Find some DATA. __________________ I think the Apocalypse is happening all around us. We go on eating desserts and watching TV. I know I do. I wish we were more capable of sustained passion and sustained resistance. We should be screaming and what we do is gossip. -Lydia Millet

08-08-2008, 11:42 AM	#51 (permalink)
ottopilot let me be clear Location: Waddy Peytona	...so how about that ol' McCain going negative in August. Can you believe that? "Doggies", as Uncle Jed used to say to Jethro. __________________ "It rubs the lotion on Buffy, Jodi and Mr. French's skin" - Uncle Bill from Buffalo

08-07-2008, 07:14 PM	#42 (permalink)
ngdawg peekaboo Location: on the back, bitch	One really good welfare cheat isn't a debunking, dude. In fact, what was stated in that article had nothing to do with Ratbastid's statement of 'myth', which was as a reply to the crack-smoking baby-making money grubbing welfare recipient.

08-08-2008, 02:05 PM	#52 (permalink)
roachboy Super Moderator Location: essex ma	there's a way to link up the recurrence of the old conservative myths about poverty and the content of mccain's adverts--they speak to a desire for simplified images of a simplified world at the center of how conservative ideology operates. the desire for simplicity apparently overwhelms the need to data---it's about a kind of intuitive resonance, the appeal, and not about an actual description of the world--and this resonance seems to me to be about producing an illusion of controllability (on social questions) and its reverse in victimization (on matters like taxation). if you put these together and think about the image that is produced, it is of the impotent authoritarian martyr----this is of a piece with market ideology to the extent that "free markets" are understood to be guided by some invisible hand, which is apparently a moral agent, such that the economically dominant are possessed of more inward virtue than are the less dominant---which loops back into the stereotypes concerning poverty. all fine tuned through demographic research on radio and television audiences. there's an assumption of spectatorship in all this as well, so that the impotent authoritarian/martyr is explicitly a projection that enables the other projections, with the projector sitting in a chair somewhere, listening to the radio like the old days of the 40s, making up faces for the shadow, or watching shit blow up on television while the voice over informs of the "real meaning".... __________________ a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite

08-08-2008, 05:52 PM	#55 (permalink)
ratbastid Darth Papa Location: Yonder	EDIT: Never mind. I gotta remember not to talk religion with the religious. Please resume your "McCain goes NEGATIVE!?!? Dum-dum-dummmmm" talk. Last edited by ratbastid; 08-08-2008 at 06:11 PM..

08-09-2008, 02:42 AM	#57 (permalink)
Sun Tzu Conspiracy Realist Location: The Event Horizon	__________________ *To confine our attention to terrestrial matters would be to limit the human spirit.- Stephen Hawking*

08-13-2008, 04:54 AM	#58 (permalink)
ottopilot let me be clear Location: Waddy Peytona	Was Obama not going negative when he introduced race in his Berlin speech on July 24, then followed by his dollar bill comment in a later speech? “I know that I don’t look like the Americans who’ve previously spoken in this great city.” __________________ "It rubs the lotion on Buffy, Jodi and Mr. French's skin" - Uncle Bill from Buffalo Last edited by ottopilot; 08-13-2008 at 04:57 AM..

08-13-2008, 07:35 AM	#59 (permalink)
Rekna Junkie	Looking at the front page of factcheck.org is telling when it comes to who is honest and has integrity. Counting up the number of incorrect facts or flat in some cases flat out lies the score board is the following: Obama: 2 Mc'Cain: 7 In addition if you look at the magnitude of the distortions Mc'Cain's ads seem to be much bigger distortions and in many cases they are flat out lies. Mc'Cain is dishonest and willing to sell his morals in order to win. This is exactly the type of person we don't want in the white house, 8 years of this is already put the country at the breaking point. 4 more years and this nation will self destruct.

08-13-2008, 08:05 AM	#61 (permalink)
ratbastid Darth Papa Location: Yonder	By the way, we've recently started watching Battlestar Galactica from the beginning around here, and the girls have nicknamed Colonel Tigh "John McCain". I think that's awesome. He's an awfully negative dude.

08-13-2008, 08:19 AM	#62 (permalink)
Willravel ... a sort of licensed troubleshooter.	Oh, just you wait, rat. The McCain comparisons will continue to multiply.

08-13-2008, 08:30 AM	#63 (permalink)
guyy Addict Location: Cottage Grove, Wisconsin	I saw the McCain celebrity spot on TV last night. I thought i was seeing an Obama ad before the raise taxes on the middle class bit came on. Then there was McCain looking like a mummy at the end. I think the subtext of the ad is Obama is It. Shitty ad.

08-13-2008, 09:17 AM	#65 (permalink)
Willravel ... a sort of licensed troubleshooter.	JORG! He said "recently started watching"! How about some spoiler tags?!

08-13-2008, 11:38 AM	#66 (permalink)
ottopilot let me be clear Location: Waddy Peytona	I firmly believe that John McCain is one of the five. __________________ "It rubs the lotion on Buffy, Jodi and Mr. French's skin" - Uncle Bill from Buffalo

08-13-2008, 11:43 AM	#67 (permalink)
ratbastid Darth Papa Location: Yonder	Don't worry about it--I'm frequently too dense to be spoiled. I do seem to have an agenda to take this thread off-topic, though...