— Frank Herbert
"Oregon’s Governor-for-Life John Kitzhaber, 68, resigned Friday the 13th. His resignation letter was the usual lawyerly-parsed, blame-the-media/take no responsibility sham we’re used to seeing. He had been governor from 1995-2003 and again from 2011 until now. The basic allegations which forced the rest of the state’s Democratic Party elite – Senate President, House Speaker, State Treasurer and others to join the state’s largest newspaper and call for his resignation – involve influence-peddling by his ten-year girlfriend/fiancée Cylvia Hayes. Hayes, 48, – a woman with a grifter’s history – pretty much publically advertised that her clout with the governor was for sale and cashed in for over $200,000 at the same time she was his advisor on energy policy, working out of the governor’s mansion and using government employees as subordinates. The most damning allegation? She took over $118,000 from a sham non-profit that went defunct without ever filing a report with the IRS. She herself never reported her payments. The entire purpose was to shake loose tens of millions of state subsidies for “Green” Energy projects."
--from Feb. 13-15 Counterpunch article by Michael Donnelly http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/02/13/oregons-governor-and-the-grifters/
- KBOO