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Mercedes Marquez: The latest corrupt Barack Obama Appointee

Barack Obama not only embraces the Culture of Corruption, he fills up his cabinet with it, fondles it, and cops a good feel of it every few hours just so the corruption knows how much he loves it.

By: Erick Erickson (Diary)  |  April 21st, 2009 at 09:50 AM  | 

RESIZE: AAA

Barack Obama has nominated Mercedes Marquez to be Assistant Secretary for Community Planning and Development, Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Will Republican Senators ask her about the following:

The Los Angeles Housing Department has paid thousands of dollars to a Zen Buddhist priest from Hawaii for management training that includes teaching breathing with sphincter control, learning “how to stand” and playing with wooden sticks.

Who hired the Zen Buddhist priest? Mercedes Marquez. Marquez was willing to pay Norma Wong, a former legislator from Hawaii, $18,819.00 for the sessions.

Another attendee described how executives were asked to encircle Marquez with their backs to her while holding their sticks, saying they were instructed to imagine that they were shielding their boss from opposing forces such as City Council members or other departments.

According to a letter written by a Los Angeles County Housing Department employee obtained by RedState, “Mercedes hired Norma and after the training was paid for Mercedes became a Priestess. After the next training, Mercedes was elevanted to High Priestess. The whole purpose of the Zen training was to elevate Mercedes’ stature in the Buddhist Temple. After a half hour, the building management sent security guards out to the parking lot to stop the spectacle.”

But more so than the Zen training, there are some serious concerned raised by a former employee that need addressing.

Marquez is alleged to have purchased a condominium for herself and her partner in a building Marquez’s department financed.

She is alleged to have promoted her partner several times outside Los Angeles’ civil service rules.

Under her administration, Los Angeles allegedly had a net housing loss of affordable housing units of 13,500.

Marquez is alleged to have spent $5 million on the Housing Department’s LIMS computer program, only to throw it out and start over.

She is alleged to have used city funding to cover over mistakes her partner, Mirta, made relating to the Hotel Cecil project in LA. Allegedly, the City Attorney told the Housing Department that Mirta’s action were illegal, but Marquez still used tax dollars to pay legal fees, etc.

Oh, and someone needs to ask if it is true she likes to be called “T-Mex.”

Hopefully the Senate Republicans will ask some very pointed questions to Ms. Marquez. We don’t need a female Barney Frank causing more problems for tax payers.

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COMMENTS

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  • Achance

    Only God knows how many millions of dollars go every year for “training” for government employees. Most of it is totally useless and rarely is the attendance even kept. Usually the “training” is schedule to coincide with significant cultural or sporting events in the host city. The employee who is supposed to be learing about “Sphincter Control in Crisis Situations” is just as lkely to be working on controlling his/her tee shot or taking in the ballgame. It really stinks when you’re the host of the training; you have to go and put up with it and you don’t get to stay in the nice hotels, eat at the good restaurants, and take in the social life.

    Many maybe most of the companies that does government employee training are nothing more than fronts for the Democrat Party, a union, or some other Democrat interest. If a government gives a contract to them to “train” its employees, the company knows full well that it is expected to put a good bit of that money back into the Party. Sadly, Republican governments send their employees to all the widgetmaking conferences too, but they do it because they are the stupid party and don’t know they’re feeding the hand that bites them.

  • $peciallist

    agreed

  • Common_Cents

    Someone thought he used to be in banking and Geithner corrected him.

    “I have never been in banking or investment banking. I’ve been in public service my entire career.”

    Uh oh, no wonder.

  • Finrod

    .

  • olsmithie
  • olsmithie
  • Michael Dugas

    …who the heck do they have doing their vetting over there? Moe, Larry or maybe Curly?
    Or is this actually the best they could do thus making the point that
    Marquez was who they felt had the least amount of confirm able “baggage” , tax problems…etc.
    Truly sad and just more proof of the breakneck pace at which Obama
    is moving to transform our country into a third world victim.

  • papalee

    used to hire homosexual department heads from a variety of other Democrat venues. In every case it also had to find a very nice and well paid job for their significant other as well. It never mattered if the partner could actually ‘do’ the job, only that such a job be found or created and filled with the partner. I am sure that this is equally true of all local governments dominated by Democrats as well as a number of departments in states nominally ruled by Republicans. Homosexuals in civil government equals corruption as much as it does in the military, something which those who think it simply a matter of civil rights fail to understand.