Former pro basketball star and current mayor of Sacramento Kevin Johnson was fingered by former inspector general for the Corporation for National and Community Service, (the parent body of Americorps) Gerald Walpin for mis-using almost a million dollars in government funds.
When the prosecutor refused to indict him, Walpin tried to get the board to take action. Instead, the White House fired him - a violation of the law that has never been addressed by the Obama administration despite requests for documentation from Republicans in the senate.
Now, Johnson is being honored by that same organization:
Only in the Obama administration would a public official sanctioned for a form of malfeasance be honored as a speaker by the same organization that sanctioned him. It helps, of course, when he is a self-proclaimed Friend of the First Couple. It also doesn't hurt that the administration already found it politically convenient to fire the inspector general, Gerald Walpin, who blew the whistle on his misdeeds.Still, the public should consider it a brazen affront for this administration to feature Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson as a key speaker at a major conference sponsored later this month by the Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS). Common decency should disallow such a scandal.
On the grounds of image alone, Mr. Johnson sends the wrong message, considering that four different young women or teenage girls have accused Mr. Johnson of inappropriate sexual conduct. Three of the four were actually affiliated with the very institution, the St. Hope Academy, that was sponsored through CNCS grants. (CNCS is the parent body for the AmeriCorps national "volunteering" program.) In none of the cases were charges ever pressed, but one of the students said she was offered $1,000 per month in exchange for her silence, and two staff members resigned from St. Hope to protest how the academy tried (in the words of one of them) to "intimidate the student*."
Ed Lasky adds:
Have these people no shame at all? I worte about how Inspector General Walpin was skewered by the Obama team for reporting transgressions by one of his friends and how the administration is doing everything it can to eliminate the role of inspector generals (that will help him maintain his B+ average because there will be fewer revelations of malfeasance and incompetence).
Just incredible.
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