Senator Dianne Feinstein’s husband, Richard Blum, created the investment firm, Blum Capital. Blum Capital is part owner of the construction firm, Perini-Zachary-Parsons. Dots connected so far? Perini-Zachary-Parsons has won the bid to build high speed rail track that will link Madera to Fresno, California. Once built, the Reason Foundation estimates that the railway will lose between $124 million to $373 million a year.
If you’ve never heard of Madera California and have barely heard of Fresno, you are not alone. But California’s mania in pursuing this fiscally suicidal venture is not what is spotlighted, here. As Mr. Rogers might have asked, “can you say ‘Conflict of interest’?’ Or “ ‘graft’?”
How did Perini, et al, manage to snag this prize? With the “lowest” bid of five, competing groups. Blum’s company, miraculously, came up the victor. Their bid, $985,142,530, comes to $35 million per mile. To this moment, no one is asking the musical question, how did this happen? The project is state funded. And, once again, Senator Feinstein’s dynasty makes out while the state and nation she represents tunnels ever deeper into the septic tank.
Feinstein has been tied to cronyism, using taxpayer funds, several times in the past. According to Breitbart.com, in a report from June, 2012, Feinstein used her position and the information to which she was privy in order to:
1. Appropriate funds through the U.S. Senate Military Construction Subcommittee. Feinstein was serving on this committee and forced funding to companies owned by her husband. The pair netted somewhere around $5 million for their pains. Oh yes; the company prominently concerned was Perini.
2. Allocate TARP Funds to the FDIC. Feinstein proposed legislation to funnel $25 billion in taxpayer funds to the FDIC. The FDIC had just awarded Blum’s real estate organization (he served on the board), the CB Ellis Group, a contract to resell foreclosed properties at rates higher than industry norms. The problem with Feinstein’s redirection of tens of billions of taxpayer dollars? According to the Washington Times: “the California Democrat (Feinstein) isn’t a member of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs with jurisdiction over FDIC … the agency is supposed to operate from money it raises from bank-paid insurance payments – not direct federal dollars.”
