Monday, September 16, 2013

The Fifth Anniversary of the Petters/Vennes Raid

A week from tomorrow,  September 24, 2013 will mark the fifth anniversary of biggest raid by Federal law enforcement officials in Minnesota history. The raid was part of the investigation into the $3.6 billion Ponzi scheme orchestrated by Tom Petters. Tom Petters was arrested, tried and convicted and is now serving a long prison sentence in Leavenworth Prison (release date: April 25, 2052).

But another man was the target of that raid five years ago.  Tom Petters' self-described financier Frank Vennes. Unlike his cohort, Frank Vennes has managed to stay out of prison all these years.

How did he do it? It certainly has been a long, mysterious tale....




Saturday, September 14, 2013

The Fraudster and the Demagogue

Yesterday, Eva Young and I donated the late Karl Bremer's Edwatch CD of the infamous 2004 speech by then MN Senator Michele Bachmann titled "The Effect of Gay Marriage on Education" to the Tretter Collection in Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Studies at the University of Minnesota. This is the speech in which Bachmann said:

 "It’s a very sad life. It’s part of Satan, I think, to say this is gay..."

The Edwatch speech was much quoted by the national blogs and news media during Bachmann's short-lived campaign for President of the United States. We can thank Karl for obtaining this recording of Bachmann's bigotry and extremism. Here is a You Tube version of this speech:



It should be noted while listening to this warped, bigoted speech that the person who gave the essential financial boost to Michele Bachmann's campaign for Congress that made her a frontrunner was Frank Vennes. Without Frank Vennes's purloined largesse Michele Bachmann likely would not have become a national embarrassment and a stain on the history of Minnesota politics.

I do not know whether Frank Vennes shared Michele Bachmann's bigoted views of  gay people. Perhaps Mr. Vennes and his cohorts donated thousands of dollars to Michele Bachmann only to obtain a letter addressed to the Pardon Attorney recommending a pardon for Mr. Vennes see Karl Bremer's three-part series on the effort to win a pardon for Frank Vennes including a timeline of donations and events relating to the Vennes request for a pardon Parts OneTwo & Three]. It really doesn't matter what his motives were - the facts speak for themselves.

If anything good comes from this sordid saga of dirty money for political favors is that it serves an object lesson about our broken electoral system. If the saying "Bad money drives out good" is true, there can be no worse money than money derived from criminal activity. Unless elections are publicly financed, we will likely see more unethical demagogues like Bachmann elevated to high public office by fraudsters like Vennes.