Cocktails & Popcorn: Meet Oliver Schwab - Former Chief Of Staff To David Schweikert - Another Ethics Transposable Stealin' Model

U.S. Office of Congressional Ethics has found another Chief of Staff stealin' for the purposes of personal inurement using congressional resources for campaign finance money laundering operations.

Yes, Boys & Girls, we have ourselves another transposable model.

OCE Report Regarding Rep. David Schweikert

Rep. David Schweikert may have authorized expenditures from his Members’ Representational Allowance (“MRA”), made by or on behalf of his Chief of Staff Oliver Schwab, that were not for permissible official expenses. If Rep. Schweikert authorized impermissible MRA expenditures, then he may have violated House rules, standards of conduct, and federal law. 

 TRANSLATION: LYIN' & FORGERY

 Meet Oliver Schwab.

In this video, Oliver is filming a Public Service Announcement, I guess, from the Office of his Congressional Member, without the knowledge of the Congressional Member, who is probably in District, to promote a foreign non-profit, which just so happens to engage in covert operations, like promulgating law to make it easier to implement Public Private Partnership through foreign Corporate Shape Shifters.

https://www.psaonline.org/

Then, I shall assume, looking at the Ethics supportive documents, that Oliver then used the MRA accounts to buy stuff to set up more campaign events for more money laundering, whereby he quickly skimmed his cut off the top, made political contributions into his Member's FEC campaign account to make it look like he was doing something besides partying, because he was so stressed about raising campaign funds for his Congressional Member's run for the Senate, and the rest went into his children's trusts.

https://www.psaonline.org/congressional-programs/nuclear-security/
[empowering is code for blackmail & bribery]

I want to know what role the Casey Family Foundation plays into this because I found UNICEF.

I probably already know, but I want some backup evidence before I go off because the board of directors is quite the motley crew, I must say!

Nature of the Review 

Richard Oliver Schwab, Jr., Chief of Staff to Rep. David Schweikert, may have received income beyond the House of Representatives' outside earned income limit for senior staff. If Mr. Schwab received income beyond the outside earned income limit for senior staff, then he may have violated House rules, standards of conduct, and federal law. 

Ethics asked staff about the Chief of Staff, Oliver Schwab:

• Casey Family Foundation;
• Israel;
• Africa;
• Fox Rothschild;
• CDW;
• Storage Units;
• Members Expense Accounts - MRA;
• Campaign Finance;
• Trust Funds;
• Parties;
• Air Travel;
• Computer Equipment;
• University Classes;
• Hotels;
• Office Furniture;

For a minute there, I thought I was in Detroit.

This is about some really slimy guys & girls who were running covert ops to take over the U.S. government, one elected official at a time, by stealin'.

It used to be quite a challenge reporting questionable activities of staffers to the Office of Congressional Ethics because it was backlogged, no one grasped the concept of stealin', and it was at one time a hot mess up there.

This is a textbook case to teach the basic elements of the model necessary for a foreign operation to set up shop using taxpayer funds to pilfer the national treasury and exfiltrate all the booty to their foreign operations through children's trusts.

 'I hate David and I hate this job': Ex-Schweikert staffers describe unrest in ethics report 

A newly released investigative report finds that Rep. David Schweikert had little control over his former chief of staff's spending and offered no help in trying to determine whether he had violated House ethics rules on compensation.

Rep. David Schweikert presided over a slipshod office operation with financial oversight so weak that his former chief of staff managed to take home improper, extra pay that violated House ethics rules for years, a newly released investigation found.

Oliver Schwab may have collected $60,000 in outside pay over three years above what House rules permitted, and attended the 2015 Super Bowl in Glendale — with Schweikert, R-Ariz. — as part of a taxpayer-paid trip that was reported as official business, the report said.

There were other possible sources of income Schwab had that investigators could not examine during the probe that has dogged the five-term Republican congressman and his operations for more than a year.

Neither Schwab nor Schweikert cooperated with the probe, the report by the Office of Congressional Ethics said. Beyond them, numerous congressional staffers, Schwab's wife and others also refused to participate in the probe.

Apart from the alleged wrongful spending, the 424-page report released Wednesday paints the image of a congressional office simmering with discontent as Schweikert pondered a Senate run — he publicly considered in 2015 a primary challenge to then-Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. — and as Schwab took out his frustrations with Schweikert on other staffers.

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"David was putting increasing pressure on (Schwab) to raise money because David wanted to run for the Senate," a former deputy chief of staff unnamed in the report who did cooperate, told investigators. "David was basically telling him, 'I need a million dollars if I'm going to run for the Senate.' I think that was weighing on him."

The former staffer said Schwab said: "I hate David and I hate this job," according to the report.

Schweikert is currently under investigation by the House Ethics Committee. The committee's probe is believed to overlap significantly with the matters outlined in the report on Schwab, who resigned last summer, ending the Ethics Committee's jurisdiction over him.

It is unclear when the investigation into Schweikert will conclude.

Chris Baker, a Schweikert campaign consultant, said the report confirms their view that Schwab had effectively gone rogue.

"Congressman Schweikert admittedly trusted him," Baker said. "That trust was grossly misplaced. … David trusted Oliver as the senior staffer in his congressional office to provide oversight of the staff."

Baker maintained that Schweikert never personally signed for Schwab’s reimbursements, and that delegating such duties is common on Capitol Hill.

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Schwab was not available for comment.

Beau Brunson, who was Schweikert's deputy chief of staff at the time referenced in the report, declined to discuss any involvement in the probes. "No comment. I have moved on with my life," he said Wednesday.

In the past, Schwab and Schweikert have cast the ethics investigations as bookkeeping matters, not scandal.

"It's almost wonderful because this is the process we needed so we could present," Schweikert said last year of the Ethics Committee's decision to form an investigative subcommittee to probe his case. "There's really no mechanism to say, 'Look, here's our clerical screw-up and here's how we fixed it.' You need the subcommittee because that's the way you get to present what you've taken care of."

"Most of what I have seen reported in the press on this matter is unfortunate and inaccurate speculation," Schwab told The Arizona Republic in May 2018. "While I am not in a place to speak publicly with any further specificity, what I can share with The Republic is that when the campaign became aware of an unintentional reporting mistake, we immediately set to rectify the situation. Please know that we are working with all of the appropriate parties to provide a timely solution."

Report: Schwab had 'full carte blanche' over office funds
The House's Office of Congressional Ethics report on Schwab notes that Schwab made no secret to other staffers of his desire to make more money than his congressional salary offered and he had "full carte blanche" to manage Schweikert's office expenditures.

Schweikert seemed at least passingly familiar with the system that had little oversight from him, investigators said.

A former financial administrator for Schweikert told the congressional ethics office "that Rep. Schweikert would jokingly ask her if Mr. Schwab was spending too much money on office supplies and she would jokingly ask Mr. Schwab whether he '(had) Amazon on speed dial.'"

The report is at odds with Schweikert's efforts since late 2017 to cast the issues as accounting discrepancies.

His campaign has spent heavily on legal fees during the probe, and despite saying in interviews that he welcomed a chance to explain his account to investigators, the report says he balked, along with about a dozen other Schweikert staffers tied to his congressional office or campaign committees.

That left unanswered questions about income, travel and other expenses related to Schweikert's office and campaign.

Schwab allegedly attended the 2015 Super Bowl in Glendale as part of a trip billed to Schweikert’s office.

The trip clearly included official business, such as meetings with then-House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif.

But there were other events that weekend, such as the Waste Management Open, a Phoenix Suns game, Super Bowl festivities and shopping jaunts, that seemed more recreational or campaign-related, the report found.

Schwab did not appear to adjust his official expenses to reflect unofficial activities that should have been at his expense or the expense of the Schweikert campaign, the report said.

"Mr. Schwab may have primarily engaged in campaign or personal activities during at least three of the four full days that he was on the Arizona Trip," the investigators reported.

The lax accounting and extravagant expenditures described in the report also run counter to Schweikert's efforts to cast himself as a math nerd who understands numbers better than his political opponents.

Schweikert is a member of the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee, one of the most powerful panels on Capitol Hill. At least three Democrats are vying for the right to challenge him in his Scottsdale-based 6th Congressional District next year.

The report includes interviews with unnamed former Schweikert staffers who cooperated with the probe and described a dysfunctional office.

The former deputy chief of staff told investigators that he left the office in early 2017 after Schwab had volcanic eruptions repeatedly berating him. Schwab had indicated he had planned to leave throughout 2016 as Schweikert tried to ramp up for a potential Senate run that he ultimately didn't launch.

Baker acknowledged Schweikert had considered running for the Senate, but ruled it out quickly.

"We did not give anywhere near the level of consideration for running for the Senate as that unnamed staffer claims," Baker said.

Helping donors
The report also suggested the line between the Schweikert campaign and his congressional office blurred in other ways.

Another unnamed former Schweikert staffer who cooperated, a legislative director, told investigators they routinely briefed Schweikert on issues ahead of meetings with prospective donors. The former staffer estimated it could have been about 20 percent of official work time in election years.

Investigators sought to connect Schweikert’s official actions with his donors, and the former staffer offered an example involving an organization advocating grants to Africa that seemed to come close.

"I can’t remember the organization specifically, but he, the gentleman and his organization, contributed to the campaign," the former staffer told investigators. "Following the contribution, Oliver asked me to set up a meeting with him to discuss their issues. Then following that meeting, we subsequently submitted letters in support of their initiatives."

Their interest in the organization was no accident, the former staffer told investigators.

"What I was told is that the gentleman … donated to the campaign and that we want to be as friendly as we can and as helpful as we can because of those contributions," the staffer said. "I don’t think there was a direct quid pro quo, but Oliver clearly made it certain that we wanted to be helpful because he was a donor."

A tough workplace
The former deputy chief of staff told investigators that Schwab had made work conditions unbearable.

"I felt that the office had become unstable. I had been given assurances that the chief of staff was leaving, and when he decided to stay he became somewhat abusive to me and another senior staffer," the former deputy chief of staff said, according to a transcript of the interview. "I was then given the option of staying for a dramatically reduced salary … or leaving with a six-month severance."

The former staffer said he did not receive the promised severance.

The instability stemmed from Schwab, the staffer said. "He was showing signs of severe stress and anger at the member and was lashing out at me," the staffer said.

"Basically through the entire year of 2016 he would go through these tirades against the member ... about how awful David was and how he hated it and how he was going to quit."

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Will The Lumos Foundation Push Into Global Child Welfare Include The U.S.?

The recent illumination of the Clinton Global Initiative and its child welfare programs in Haiti and

The Lumos Foundation

 Africa, along with the Foundation's move to restructure, has piqued my interest into a foreshadowing of nonprofit oversight.

The U.S. House Judiciary Committee is also demonstrating an interest in addressing the issues surrounding child welfare, but if it is willing to deal with the U.S. child welfare system, is another story which has yet to be written.

If the Lumos Foundation can take on such a daunting task as to end the orphanage system in Haiti, where there are plans to close at least 150 of such institutions, then, one can only hope that this type of action can be imported to address similar ills right here in our own backyard in how we deal with children in poverty.

The 'similar ills' of which I refer to in the U.S. child welfare system deal with revenue maximization schemes, lack of oversight, devoid of civil rights, codification of poverty as abuse and neglect, and the omission of reunification, termination and reinstatement of parental rights.

Think about it:  If foster care wouldn't be good enough for your child or a child you love, why would it be good enough for a child in the U.S.?

Stay tuned.

Ten Years Later: Lumos Foundation’s Push into Global Child Welfare

Think about it: If an orphanage wouldn’t be good enough for your child or a child you love, why would it be good enough for a child in Haiti, or anywhere else in the world?

This question is at the center of the work Lumos, the nonprofit started by J.K. Rowling in 2005, has been doing for over a decade. Named for the light-giving spell featured in the Harry Potter books, Lumos works to redirect the care of disadvantaged children away from orphanages and toward more supportive settings with their families or in the community.

Through advocacy, coalition-building and on-the-ground implementation of changes to the care provided for children without families, Lumos is helping to establish new approaches to global child welfare. These new approaches include reunifying institutionalized children with their extended families and providing more support to those families to remain together, and creating healthier community-based placements for children whose parents are truly not able to care for them.

As we reported last September, five months after Lumos officially opened its U.S. office in April 2015, the goal is to end the institutionalization of children by 2050. It’s an ambitious goal, and one the organization has already made steady progress on, moving forward with strategies on several fronts. Recently I caught up with Georgette Mulheir, CEO of Lumos, to find out how progress is going.

In Haiti this work is particularly needed; poverty is high, and Mulheir said others warned them work there would be very difficult.

“People told us not to go to Haiti,” said Mulheir, which gave Lumos all the more reason to invest its time, resources and expertise there. Over 32,000 children reside in orphanages in Haiti; so far, Lumos has begun work with two institutions to move children into families and communities.

“We’ve got lots of really well-intentioned but misguided people who are putting money into orphanages in Haiti and what we want them to do is not to stop supporting Haiti, but to look at whether they can do something different with their financial and human resources,” Mulheir said.

“Could they be helping to do economic strengthening with those families so those families can keep their children?”

Lumos has been meeting with the government of Haiti, which has now established a national action plan to get children out of institutions and to establish community-based services.

Mulheir emphasized the importance of alliances in ending the practice of putting kids into orphanages. She sits on the governing council of the Global Alliance for Children (GAC), an organization that mobilizes targeted investments in childhood as a core component of a nation’s social and economic progress. GAC has been a major player in bringing together the resources and helping to collaborate on this work, she said.

About to visit Haiti, Mulheir expects to meet with a number of individuals and groups, including staff from the Clinton Foundation, to talk about ways in which their strategic agendas may intersect.

The Clinton Foundation began work in the island nations several years ago, and is now making a bigger push with its climate and women’s empowerment agenda there by launching the Women in Island Leadership Network. The network brings together young leaders in the STEM fields in the island nations, and helps them mentor and build skills to rise in leadership roles.

Mulheir has been impressed with the warm reception Lumos has received from U.S. nonprofits and foundations. She pointed to the Annie E. Casey Foundation in particular, which Lumos has met with to discuss strategy and learn from its “groundbreaking strategies for how to help local government officials change their policies.”

Another significant piece of Lumos’ strategy in coming to the United States involves forming alliances with religious organizations that support orphanages, and helping them to fund alternatives. Much of the funding of orphanages in the Caribbean comes from the evangelical Christian church community, and so Lumos is working with faith-based organizations–including the Faith to Action Initiative and the Christian Alliance for Orphans–and is also having discussions with Catholic Relief Services. Mulheir said one of the goals is to “get very senior members of different churches around the world to highlight this issue and make sure their congregations are aware that the best of intentions in orphanages are not going to result in the best of outcomes.”

“A century ago, the U.S. was challenging the orphanage model,” Mulheir said. “Western Europe got rid of this system decades ago,” she added. “But now we’re exporting this outdated model to other countries.”

Another key strategy that Lumos is using to end orphanages involves getting the European Union to change its funding regulations. The European Union had been spending money on renovating institutions that served as orphanages when Lumos began advocacy about six years ago to get them to end that work and invest in better options for kids.

“Now it’s a very high priority for the EU,” Mulheir said. As of January 2015, the EU is prohibited from spending EU money on the renovation of institutions, and instead the EU is investing in community-based care.

Also high on the strategic agenda for Lumos are the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals, which, despite their promise of leaving no one behind, do not include children in institutional care, or children without families. Mulheir said Lumos is continuing to advocate for data collection on children without families, since without any effort to count these children, there is no way to measure their progress on health and education or other outcomes.

Within the decade since its founding, Lumos has helped guide a historic shift away from orphanages and toward healthier living situations for vulnerable children. As the organization connects more with philanthropy’s power brokers in the U.S., and expands into Latin and Caribbean regions, it continues to do systems-level advocacy and cross-sector collaborative work to change the way children without families are treated, and raise the bar for providing quality care for the most vulnerable children across the globe.

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Annie E. Casey Foundation Makes Child Welfare Accountable

As the nation awaits the final report of the DOJ Defending Childhood Initiative Task Force's final report, it can be seen that the departure from "doing business as usual" in child welfare is coming to an end.

Cutting out the bloated middle layer of child welfare administration and shifting funding to direct service providers is testament to the fact that the current system does not work.  Child Placing Agencies do not need more laws to challenge its decision making and operations, they need to be eliminated.

If it does not work, get rid of it.  This includes workers who lacked compassion and common sense.

With the growing population of foster children who are aging out with no place to go, it is finally recognized that many of these state programs have failed.  Not only that, how society has addressed the needs of older youth has proven to be ineffective as the traditional procedure is incarceration or contained environments.

The move to home-based/community-based services is what should be considered as best practices in child welfare, not the cookie-cutter methods for alternative placements.  It should only be in the most serious circumstances a child is removed from a home and the time has come to end the culture of layering on more unnecessary policies which have nothing to do with the transformation of child welfare.

Eliminating funding to child placing agencies is a cost-effective shift which eliminates fraud, waste and abuse.  Invest in children, not privatized administrations which have proven to justify sunken costs and fraudulent billing.

Another opportunity that comes from shift is the creation of jobs.  In many instances, direct service providers are community based home businesses run by people who actually care.  These are the partnerships that can successfully meet the needs of tomorrow's workforce.

I commend the Annie E. Casey Foundation for its bold initiative and can only pray our elected officials take notice.  Announcements such as this give me moments of satisfaction that I am on the right path.

Annie E. Casey Foundation to Phase Out Funding for Casey Family Services

The Baltimore-based Annie E. Casey Foundation has announced that it will stop providing direct foster care services through Casey Family Services under a new grantmaking strategy focused on helping nonprofit human services agencies improve their child welfare practices.

The move will eliminate two hundred and eighty jobs and, according to theChronicle of Philanthropy, free up some $20 million a year for other nonprofits. While CFS will transition the majority of the children and foster families it currently serves to other providers by the end of the year, the agency will remain open through June 2013 to support cases that require additional time.

Founded in 1976, New Haven-based CFS has provided therapeutic foster care services as well as family preservation, reunification, and post-adoption supports under state contracts in Maryland, Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont. AECF's new strategy is aimed at scaling and sharing with the field best practices and lessons learned in finding permanent families for children and serving older and high-needs youth through effective recruitment of stable, nurturing foster families, intensive counseling, and careful planning for their aging out of foster care.

To that end, the foundation will partner with child welfare providers to develop or scale proven models; spread effective practices by building awareness, providing education and technical assistance, and supporting efforts to secure federal and state funding for such practices; and create materials and tools that leverage the accumulated knowledge of direct service providers and the expertise of foundation staff. The foundation also plans to expand its partnerships to providers in other human service fields such as community change, juvenile justice, mental health, substance abuse, and workforce development.

"As the human services environment changes, we see an opportunity to help strengthen the work of frontline staff who often make life-and-death decisions on behalf of vulnerable children and families," said AECF president and CEO Patrick T. McCarthy. "We are proud of the contributions Casey Family Services has made in supporting families, working with foster parents, collaborating with public agencies, and providing outstanding care to children. This success is due to a skilled and dedicated staff, and we deeply regret the impact this transition will have on them. We will honor the legacy of CFS and its people by continuing to work diligently to build better futures for children and families across the country."

Voting is beautiful, be beautiful ~ vote.©

Hearing on Child Welfare Waiver Demonstration Projects: William C. Bell

Child Welfare Waiver Demonstration Testimony of William C. Bell