Flying high: Daschle, Panetta on corporate jets
President Obama has made a big show of bashing corporations for their expensive jets and political junkets.
But you won’t see him wagging his finger over the passengers on this one:
Educap is a multibillion-dollar student loan charity run by CEO Catherine Reynolds. As CBS News Investigative Correspondent Sharyl Attkisson reported Monday night, Educap is under investigation by the IRS and Congress for alleged abuse of its tax-exempt status because it charges high interest on charitable student loans, and provides lavish perks with millions in compensation for Reynolds and her husband.
CBS News has obtained exclusive details of what may have been the biggest charity perk: use of Educap’s $31 million luxury jet, which costs thousands of dollars an hour to operate.
Investigators say for five years, Reynolds jetted friends, family and luminaries to faraway and exotic destinations that sometimes had little to do with the charity’s mission.
CBS News has learned that high-profile names on the Educap flight list include CIA Director Leon Panetta, former Sens. Tom Daschle and Ted Stevens, former FBI Director William Sessions and Chicago Mayor Richard Daley.
According to flight records, Panetta and Daschle, while not in public office, accompanied Educap’s Catherine Reynolds on flights to private business meetings not related to the charity…And records show Reynolds took Chicago’s Daley and his wife on 58 flights including ones to Turkey, Asia and Sweden.
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Nothing new here. Exempt when left of center.
Michelle, michelle, michelle, when will you learn that corruption is OKAY for Democrats??
silly girl…
One wonders when the bag that is holding all this information that you so diligently collect will ever burst to the chagrin of all these slimeballs……. I just wonder( sighs)… My cynical side tells me not to hold my breath. Keep fighting, Michelle.
Michelle, you certainly don’t expect our lords to sit on a commercial flight amongst the “tired, poor, wretched refuse”, now do you?
This outfit thought it would avoid scrutiny when Daschle dropped out. I hope the IRS and Congress kills this entity. For years, it enjoyed tax-exempt status while running a for-profit business.
Someone explain to me why a non-profit needs a corporate jet. Tax-exempt entities are not supposed to provide private inurement to their officers and directors. From what I’ve read, that’s all this entity did.
How else can our honorable democratic congress critters join the mile high club.
Those democratic congress critters aren’t going to bribe themselves you know.
‘Bloody peasant!’
‘Oh that’s a dead giveaway–did you hear that?’
‘Now we see the violence inherent in the system!’
Americans don’t care about corporate jets!
/Schumer
And these Leftist jerks wonder why we hold them in such contempt-the jerks.
—
Keep the change-I’ll keep my guns
When the proles are living on communes pulling plows with oxen and horses, assuming our masters will permit us the greenhouse gases of animal flatulence, in the golden era when the kulaks and other class enemies have been reeducated, I imagine our Dear Comrade Leaders will still be entitled to their dachas and fossil fuel powered jets and limousines, because it is such hard work taking care of the needs of the proletariat.
Don’t they all get one? I thought they came standard with every 1031 application.
Soap, did you go with the Gulfstream or the Lear?
Hey, come one, give them a break – there are a lot of bargains for corporate jets right now. Some of those guys are just taking advantage of the market.
BTW – During the fuel crisis, their jets were more expensive to operate, you know. So now they are saving us money.
I like the Citation myself.
My biggest problem is that they brought them all back home from Turkey.
They don’t want to sit on a commercial plane and smell tourists, don’t cha know?
You don’t think Educap was, you know, lobbying do you? Maybe trying to infuence future decisions? Maybe even trying to avert future legal problems…?
Interesting that anyone would let themselves get involved with Educap without first asking a few pertinent questions.
Gee, I wonder if Daley paid taxes for this little perk?…and did Obama ever ride along?
Wow – what a vacation package! I’m sure Chicago’s good mayor correctly included it among his taxable income/donations.
What’s new? Members of the ruling class can’t be expected to sacrifice like the peasants.
I bet they went to Sweden to shop at a discount IKEA factory outlet so children could have practical desks and chairs for school.
You cynical jerks think they didn’t do it for the children? Won’t you think of the children?!
So that’s how the liberals enjoy life…don’t pay taxes (only when caught), and create non-profit companies so you can profit off them.
Nice lifestyle!
CBS3.com:
What? Democrats enabling their friends who take advantage of the needy – why I’m shocked!
I think the other half of the story is that it is always the left who is bemoaning the need for giving more help to students paying back student loans after college. Could this be an insight as to why they are so eager to use our tax dollars to help pay for student loans?
Peasants!
To update that definition, add political party elite. The rest of us have laws with which we must comply. But as George Orwell taught us, some pigs are more equal than others, and Democrat pigs are more equal than all others.
Although it is consistent to take Educap to task over the plane and who they fly, are they using Federal dollars to do so?
That aside, the real issue is the apparent oxymoronic nature of their mission.
” . . . because it charges high interest on charitable student loans . . . ”
HUH?
What makes paying interest on loans charitable? I had always thought ‘charity’ did not have strings attached. I am glad that the Federal Government is investigating Educap for this reason.
But they’re still pigs.
A 31-Million Dollar jet for a tax-exempt, charitable organization? And no-one said anything until now? Yeah, those kind-hearted folks really care about the poor and needy, don’t they. Just think what 31 million could accomplish for that charity! Let me get this straight…Obama wants to start imposing increasingly impossible taxes on our exhalations, but the carbon footprint left by these corrupt jerks will get yet another pass. It is one thing for private business to have corporate jets. We have no business madating that they don’t. But WE THE PEOPLE pay for the tax-exempt jets either with our charitable giving or our taxes! Class warfare has been going on for a long time, but I suspect it is ramping up at a furious pace. If the politicians and liberals won’t “police” their own, it is up to us to take over the job.
Maybe Chicago will finally get lucky and get Daley under the microscope.
Not so nice when you consider what the payback will be!!!
What do you think?
Of course this is nothing new, just look at the good reverand jackson and his rainbow coalition.
Keep the corporate jet, I like my Jetta better! Or an even better idea-try teleconferencing and its even green friendly too!
GSP
“Don’t blame me I didn’t vote for the KBPOTUS!”
There are LOTS of non-profits that make a huge profit. Government funding (usually below the federal level) is common and, since they have no shareholders, the CEOs get to keep much of it or share it with their friends and family.
The biggest plus for them is that they get to claim the moral high ground while still making bundles of money.
It’s a nice scam that is milked almost exclusively by the left.
The scoundrels! One can get a great coporporate jet for much less than 31 million in this market. Of course, the trade-in might not be much.
Hey, maybe that’s what I need to do going forward so I won’t have to pay income taxes. Start a non-profit, buy fancy cars, etc., all under the “non-profit” umbrella.
That’s the ticket!
They obviously believe that some are more equal than others. Such do as I say and not as I do behavior is getting old.
This whole issue of private jets is such an exercise in pandering and demagoguery. Time is money and the flexability of using private jets has its appropriate place.
If Obama and company want to call out corporate executives for using private jets when their corporations are not performing, what should we expect our leaders to do since they have maanaged to put the entity they are supposed to manage $10 trillon in debt?
If we follow Obama’s standards, San Fran Nan and Dingy Harry should have to ride a bike to work each day.
you can’t really expect the politburo to travel among those smelly ignorant rubes travelling commercial. they are saving the planet from man made global warning by traveling the globe on their private jets, sucking all that ozone out of the air and turning it into co2. oh wait, that ozone was last decades crisis, so now the jets are sucking co2 out of the air and spewing oxygen, yeah that’s the ticket, oxygen.
Sounds like there could be an opportunity for another kind of protest. Maybe we could all send them something to do with bike riding, along with a strongly worded letter about their hypocricy. It would have to be outrageous enough to even get the attention of the – gasp – media! If the average citizen had any idea of the audacious hypocracy of the left, they would be stunned! Well, maybe not stunned, since that is their usual state. Maybe just a bit less apathetic.
Not only is graft and corruption perfectly acceptable when committed by the left, but the CO2 they produce is actually good for trees and flowers and little birdies and children and stuff!
Do you think Michelle Obama went on any of these when she was Daley’s personal assistant? You know, right before she lost the right to practice law in Illinois…
I have lost the right to practice in a state. There is nothing nefarious. I wasn’t living there, I wasn’t practicing there, had no intention of ever doing so, and did not want to pay all the fees. I can always get reinstated if I did.
This happens all the time. Unless MO had it revoked as a result of some sort of disciplinary proceeding this is such a non-issue.
The Educrap story is old.
The fact that it go traction tells you that Barry O disciples don’t care about the truth.
Come on now, you have to give the devil his due, Illinois politics takes unapologetic rape of the system to new heights. The stories out of that cesspool just get better and better.
How bad do you have to be to not be allowed to practice law in Illinois? You could drowned kittens in the Buckingham Fountain and not be considered unfit to be a Chicago lawyer.
Again, it in all likelihood had nothing to do with not being fit, and everything to do with the fact that MO was in a job wher she didn’t need a license to practice and did not feel like having to attend and pay for the 24 hours of continuing legal education required in Illinois, as well as the registration fee (I think $289 a year, along with whatever they make you pay toward the Client Defense Fund, so probalably at least $350 or so a year).
Gee, thanks for clearing that up Chap. It must be all that legal speak that confuses those without knowledge. It just seems strange that the wording in the article was:
You are probably correct, save $350 here and $350 there and pretty soon you’re talking real money.
Yes…that is not at all inconsistent with what I said. The Illinois Supreme Court sets the standards and rules for licensing. That would be the entity to revoke it if you are not meeting CLE requirements and/or not paying your yearly dues.
And I know the $350 may not seem like much, but it is more than that. Illinois requires 24 hours of CLE credits a year. Not only do you have to attend these, you usually have to pay for them too. That would cost a couple thousand, I’ll bet. If you don’t need your license, why go through the cost and hassle?
If there was some other reason, there would be records of a disciplinary hearing.
On March 4th, 2009 at 9:53 am, tpitman said:
Michelle, you certainly don’t expect our lords to sit on a commercial flight amongst the “tired, poor, wretched refuse, taxers that pay for this thievery”, now do you?
fixed it
I knew it. Which of those Daley flights were you on?
The $350 is shocking – that’s what she got from the Hospital…no wait, she got like $350,000, and what with the piano lessons and all, how’s a gal going to make ends meet?
Hasn’t the Illinois bar figured out how to hold those 24 CLE hours in Paris or Rio yet?