The FTC recently cited several cancer charities for fraudulent practices.  The charities gave false promises and misused funds for personal use.

The managers of the Cancer Fund of America used the proceeds to take vacations, give themselves high salaries, new cars and directed very little to the actual treatment of cancer.

This comes just two weeks after it was revealed that the Clinton Foundation has been doing exactly the same thing, but an FTC case has yet to be opened. This sounds very much like the way Bill and Hillary Clinton use the money from their Clinton Foundation.  Only ten percent of the $252 million raised from 2011 to 2013 went to charitable grants.  Instead they give their employees elaborate salaries, pay for their travel on private jets, expensive hotel rooms and so on. 

The dollar amounts are there for everyone to see.  It is interesting to note that while private cancer charities are being pursued by the FTC, so far the Clintons have not been investigated.  Voters may wish to think about the different treatment Beltway Democrats receive from these Federal agencies.  It may be useful to keep in mind that Federal agency employees support Democrats in elections and that JFK started Federal unions with an executive order #10988.   Lawyers for the IRS gave money to Barack Obama’s presidential campaign.   Inquiring minds may begin to see a connection here. 

The Clintons are not alone in their practice of misrepresenting their intentions to spend money.  Last August Lisa Madigan, the Democrat Attorney General of Illinois, announced that she won a lawsuit against Bank of America and Countrywide for bilking Illinois residents during the mortgage crisis.  This bank, she asserted, was misleading innocent mortgage applicants, who ended up losing a lot of money and often lost their homes.  She specifically stated that the monetary judgment of $300 million was intended for Illinois residents who were the victims of mortgage application fraud.

But the bank wasn’t the only person misleading innocent Illinois residents.  AG Lisa Madigan had the chutzpah to announce that this money, which was clearly earmarked to be used for Illinois residents to recover from their mortgage fraud losses, would mostly go to pay the pensions of, as you may have already guessed, persons who work for the state of Illinois, including Ms. Madigan herself.  And the amount is not trivial   Of the $300 million collected for mortgage fraud Lisa Madigan “gave” $200 million to the funds of several public pensions.  She misrepresented the use of the money as for Illinois families, and then kept it herself and her colleagues.  In the private sector she might be imprisoned for this sort of thing, but since she’s a Democrat and her father helped get President Obama elected and reelected, nothing will be done.

The fraud of Illinois Democrats doesn’t stop there.  Several years ago the then-governor, Democrat Pat Quinn, begged the voters of Illinois for an increase in the Illinois income tax.  At the time it was at 3% and he said Illinois needed to increase its relatively low income tax in order to help, as you may have guessed, school children and those on Medicaid.  

The Illinois Policy Institute found that Governor Quinn not only lied, but also misappropriated of funds.  Today ninety percent of that 2% income tax increase goes to pay for public pensions in Illinois, including the pension of Governor Quinn, who is scheduled to receive 3 ½ million dollars in his luxurious retirement, paid for by Illinois taxpayers.  The new Republican Governor, Bruce Rauner, refuses a salary and will not accept a pension. 

And here comes another layer of fraud.  Last fall, Democrats said Illinois needed a minimum wage hike to help those who are at the bottom of the wage scale.  They needed more money, the Governor pleaded, since they lived in poverty and already suffer under a low minimum wage.

Illinois now has 8,000 retired government workers who earn more than $100,000 a year in their pension, and this number will increase to 20,000 retirees by 2020. Someone needs to pay for it.  Including those who earn minimum wage.   So the minimum wage earners who believed that Pat Quinn wanted to help them not only were hustled out of their vote but are being hustled, with every paycheck, out of 1.8% of their minimum wage pay and are being forced to contribute to the pensions of those getting $100,000 a year.  Democrats talk of redistributing income but in reality all they do is redistribute debt. 

Finally, the third layer of fraud is that Democrats in Illinois had the governorship and supermajorities in the House and Senate. They could have raised the minimum wage at any time, yet chose to use the minimum wage issue to get reelected so they could force minimum wage earners to support their pensions.

The FTC is now teaching us that they won’t go after public officials, only those who commit fraud in the private sector.   At first sight this may appear to be a violation of equal protection of the law, but maybe the FTC only sees it as prosecutorial discretion.

Of course the promises politicians make are often very vague. Take Barack Obama’s use of the phrases “yes we can!” and “hope and change.”  But these phrases did not involve dollar amounts, and did not refer to very specific amounts of money such as the 300 million dollars earmarked for those cheated out of fair mortgage practices.  But it doesn’t matter.  Democrats are only about making promises, not keeping them.  The only thing they keep is the money. 

Anyone who believes this sort of fraud is perpetrated by both political parties should name the former Republican president who runs a foundation that collects as much as the Clintons do.   Or a Republican Governor who begs for a 2% state income tax hike and then keeps 90% of it for public pensions.  This sort of outrageous behavior is only engaged in by states run by Democrats.  And it’s difficult for Republicans to get away with this sort of thing with a Democrat president in the White House who practices prosecutorial discretion as a political policy.

Then again, promising to cure society’s ills is how Democrats get elected, and it would be interesting to compare the percentage of people who survive cancer to the percentage who are cured of poverty.  While the five-year survival rate for people with late stage lung cancer is four percent, the government doesn’t keep track of people who permanently leave poverty after five years of living off of Democrat entitlement programs.  In fact under President Obama poverty has increased.

While the FTC go after a charity that spends money on personal perks, it hasn’t investigated President Obama for fraud for going golfing while he increased the national debt and escalated the number of persons in poverty.