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AMERICA REVEALED AS TOP SPOT FOR CHINA'S 'NAKED OFFICIALS'(link): Let’s say you are a corrupt Chinese official and you want to flee to a safe haven. Where do you go?
One place is the United States.
China Daily, a state run newspaper, reported that more than 150 of what it calls “economic fugitives” – allegedly corrupt officials or those suspected of graft – remain at large in the United States. Liao Jinrong, an official with the Chinese Ministry of Public Security, told the publication that “the U.S. has become the top destination for Chinese fugitives fleeing the law.”
One big attraction for these allegedly corrupt officials is that China has no extradition treaty with the U.S. Even more, foreign governments are also reluctant to hand suspects back to China where they could face the death penalty. So far, according to the publication, only two fugitives have been brought back to China to stand trial in the last decade.
“We face practical difficulties in getting fugitives who fled to the US back to face trial due to the lack of an extradition treaty and the complex and lengthy legal procedures,” Mr. Liao was quoted as saying. Another Chinese official with International Cooperation Bureau, Wang Gang, said that one problem stems from that fact that other countries suspect that Chinese courts are guilty of human rights violations. Mr. Wang added that China is trying to set up a meeting with U.S. judicial authorities, including the Department of Homeland Security, in order to apprehend more of these fugitives.
In China, these fleeing expats are called “Naked Officials,’’ a term used to describe government workers under investigation who have moved their families or their assets overseas. Just recently, China announced a six-month campaign called “Fox Hunt 2014” to identify fugitives by getting local police and citizens to blow the whistle on suspected fugitives and to pursue more international cooperation.
Besides the U.S., Asia and Africa are popular destination for economic fugitives. China has 37 extradition treaties, but not with the U.S., Canada and most European countries.
For the fleeing Chinese, it gives the phrase – “We going to Disney World’’ – a whole new meaning.
(Mod: I personally would never want to mess with a Chinese government official named Wang Gang. It just doesn't seem wise ... Next: We did give you the answer to the question, "Is it possible to bag on Arcadia enough?" Of course it is not. At least until they give us that stolen water back. To assist us in our quest to achieve a state of ecstatic peace with our larcenous neighbor down the hill, we now turn to the website VDARE.com. They have something important to add to this conversation.)
Arcadia Vice: Chinese Oligarchs Laundering Money in My Late Aunt’s Suburb (link): I’ve been to Arcadia, California, a non-descript but pleasant suburb of Los Angeles a few miles east of Pasadena.
The picture above was taken in my relatives’ c. 1800 sq. ft. house in Arcadia during one of the recurrent Davey Crockett manias. I’m guessing it’s my birthday in 1965 but I could be off by a couple of years. The picture at the right from a real estate website is of somebody else’s house, but it gives you a good sense of what Arcadia’s housing stock looked like before Chinese Money started pouring in about a quarter of a century ago.
Arcadia is currently in the news because the amount of Chinese dubious money cascading in to tear down small houses like my late aunt’s and put up feng shui mansions has reached a crescendo.
The Chinese government isn’t going to go Maoist again and take away all the capitalists’ property. Periodically, however, there are anti-corruption campaigns in China, so owning a huge house on a small lot in Arcadia is a way to launder money.
Why Arcadia, though, which always struck me down through the decades as a generic suburb? My aunt’s house, for example, was about 1600 square feet, but then they added on to get it up to maybe 2000 or a little more for their family of five. But the lot is tiny, maybe 6,000 square feet.
One reason that doesn’t get mentioned much is that it’s right next to the Santa Anita racetrack and the Chinese tend to be fanatical gamblers. Back in the 1990s, a sportscaster friend used to host a small TV show about horse racing at Santa Anita, which completely failed to make him a local celebrity in his own neighborhood. But when he’d go to Las Vegas, Chinese tourists would ask to have their picture taken with him because his talk show was Huge in Hong Kong.
Another reason is that Arcadia is on flat ground, whereas affluent white people in Southern California prefer hillier suburbs like nearby Sierra Madre where my uncle lived back in the 1960s.
Also, the San Gabriel Valley used to be smoggy, but Chinese immigrants didn’t exercise outside, so they didn’t care.
Finally, like I’ve mentioned before, the San Gabriel Valley has its own small school districts, while most of the San Fernando Valley, where I grew up, is under the thumb of the vast LAUSD. The Chinese believe in concentrating and taking over small school districts, which hasn’t yet been possible in Los Angeles.
(Mod: There is much more to the VDARE.com piece. Especially the pictures the author mentions but I did not include here. You really should click on the link above and read the rest.)
Today is Election Day. Can't you just feel the excitement?
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| My guess is it's the bald one. |
40% of voters unaware Jerry Brown is seeking another term: Here’s an eye-opener: With the election Tuesday, a whopping 4 out of 10 voters don’t even know Gov. Jerry Brown is running for another term.
“Isn’t that astonishing?” said David Metz of the polling firm Fairbank, Maslin, Maullin, Metz and Associates. Metz included the question, “As far as you know, is Gov. Jerry Brown up for re-election this year?” on a statewide survey of 457 likely voters last week.
Metz said the question was prompted by several casual conversations he’d had with people not involved in politics. “I was struck by how many of them were totally unaware that Brown was up for re-election, so I decided to test it out,” he said.
The findings: Forty-two percent of likely voters didn’t know Brown was running — and only about 1 in 5 could name Republican Neel Kashkari as his opponent. The lack of awareness cut across all voter groups and party lines. More Republicans knew about Kashkari, but not many more: Fewer than 30 percent of Republicans could name him as Brown’s opponent.
“It’s difficult to imagine a similar lack of awareness at the end of the 2010 contest between Gov. Brown and Meg Whitman,” Metz said. “Or even in the 2006 election between Arnold Schwarzenegger and Phil Angelides, where Schwarzenegger led by a wide margin comparable to Brown’s lead today.”
“I believe it,” said Brown campaign consultant Sean Clegg, who noted that the governor has spent only about $6 million so far — almost all of it on TV ads promoting his pet initiatives, the $7.5 billion water-infrastructure bond Proposition 1 and a measure to beef up the state’s rainy-day reserve, Proposition 2. “He’s not even asking for your vote in the ad,” Clegg said.
Kashkari will probably wind up spending about $7 million, mostly for television commercials — but nowhere near the $150 million spent by Republican Whitman when she ran against Brown in 2010.
(Mod: We're not as upset about this as you might think. Our research shows that fewer than 40% of all Sierra Madre residents could supply you with the name of the Mayor here even if you dangled a delicious Mother Moo ice cream cone in front of them. It's just the way things are ... Oh, and Vote NO on Props 1 and 2, and Prop P. All three stink on ice. Don't feed the animals.)
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