More precisely one thought on the information contained in Anita Lee’s story on same.
Shumate allegedly approached the Land Trust for the Mississippi Coastal Plain about buying the property. The Land Trust and Scott Walker signed a sales contract in April 2011.
Shumate’s attorney, Tim Holleman of Gulfport, who attended the plea hearing, said afterward that Shumate maintains her innocence. He noted that the government alleges Bill Walker “directed” her to approach the Land Trust, not that she conspired with the Walkers. But she is included in the conspiracy charge with the Walkers.
I seem to remember that a conspiracy could involve other acts. Shumate’s purchase of her parent’s property with Coastal Impact funds could be one such possible act the prosecutors would use. The Good Book appears to back this understanding.
It will be interesting to see if Shumate and Ziegler cave or take this into a courtroom. Both have top notch legal representation.
It will certainly be interesting to see what transpires in the upcoming episodes of the Shumate Soap Opera Series.
As I mentioned before in another comment, it will also be interesting to see how the Bill and Scott Walker factor will effect the overall equation.
Doug made a good point about the Shumate property and to this day, I still find it odd how she was not charged with it when the deal was sealed and she was working in state government in that capacity. The argument that she was directed to do so also seems rather weak. Especially since her own parents property was purchased under the “F&F Program” and so far the public has not seen any evidence that Shumate turned in Walker or reported the insident. Surely, one would assume with her tight political connections she had enough ass behind her to keep Walker off her back.
I am sure we will see more information surface in the future.
The potential for more good info to bubble up is with Shumate and Zeigler fighting the charges. I like that thought.
And speaking of good information. We may get lucky enough to see conflicting information, testimonies and stories from the same person. There is one in the pack that I heard could be considered a genuine mental case that readily creates and dreams up multiple versions of occuring incidents.
I believe there was a trade off between Bill Walker and Tina Shumate. He needed to get the bank note paid because the balloon payment was coming due. He approached Shumate about the possible sale to the Land Trust of his lot and she bargained for the sale of her parents lot in the same way or visa versa. I to hope that she does not accept a plea deal but believe she will very soon.
The Miss Press story had another interesting detail on William Walker’s plea deal.
It was also announced that Walker had been offered a plea deal in December, which was rejected, but the only difference in the original plea and the one to which he pleaded Monday was a $200 change in the amount of restitution to be paid. Rushing did not indicate if the plea accepted included $200 more or less than the original offer. Former DMR director Bill Walker pleads guilty to federal charge of conspiracy (updated)
Among the things which changed between December and the recent announced decision to take the plea deal include Scott Walker pleading guilty. Scott was apparently not as luck as his father to get two bites at essentially the same deal. The Sun Herald reported:
Scott Walker turned down a federal plea deal in October, but after he saw the case being built against him and learned his co-defendant had cut a deal, the 34-year-old realized he would have to accept a less generous plea agreement prosecutors extended this week, his attorneys told a judge Thursday. Plea accepted: Scott Walker pleads guilty to conspiracy, fraud
Has the amount of restitution Scott Walker owes been announced?
My prediction is that both Shumate and Ziegler will take a plea. It could be that Shumate’s defense will be that she personally did not benefit from the transaction with her parents; I suppose an astute defense attorney would be concerned that Shumate’s involvement in these transactions wasn’t her first unauthorized trip to the state or federal bank.
I wonder when Bill Walker pays the money back for the purchase of the lot owned in name by his son, does this lot revert back to them or does the Land Trust get to keep the lot? Seems to me they would reverse the sale since this was done improperly to begin with. Tina Shumate will be the last to accept a plea deal in my current opinion because she, as said above, did not benefit from the lot sale directly. Her parents were able to sell a low lot in a flood plain that has very little market value due to it’s location. Somebody will be paying this money back soon. Maybe they just reverse the sale and give the money back. She also has state charges to resolve. All will be financially ruined before this is over.
I find it very interesting that the purchase of Shumate’s parents’ property seems to have gone off the radar when there was so much media coverage of that purchase and the Scott Walker land. I’ve heard some speculation that her parents property met the requirements of the CIAP program and the purchase price was close to the assessed value, but in a Sun Herald article on Jan 24, 2013, they reference the federal CIAP audit findings, reporting that the “transaction was based on an appraisal unsupported by verifiable data and thorough research.” And why wasn’t the Land Trust board or its director indicted for conspiracy on the Scott Walker property purchase.? Why were some people presented with civil demands for restitution but were not indicted? What kind of a job have these investigators done? What was actually presented to the grand juries and how was it presented? Was someone directing the investigators to forget certain details, ignore evidence and find frivolous accusations on others? Just because someone carries a badge and a gun doesn’t mean they can be trusted. It just means that you make your own rules and everything rolls off you like water on a duck. I think this oversight of the purchase of the Hebert property should raise some eyebrows and perhaps call for some scrutiny of how these investigations were handled on both the federal and state levels. Our local media doesn’t seem to have the balls to ask these questions, so maybe the national media needs to be alerted.
Since we are commenting on DMR related activities, here is the latest from the SH:
http://www.sunherald.com/2014/03/11/5408078/baria-has-personnel-board-exemption.html
First off, I would like to publicly thank David Baria for getting the personnel board exception stripped from the bill. That was an act of a true American.
Keep in mind that I have commented many times that I believe the elimination of protection under the personnel board is really the main, hidden agenda that these creeps are pushing. Perhaps a plan cooked up by Miller and local Radical Republicans while dining at the Great Southern Club or Chimney’s.
As we can see in the article, Miller spoke and was disappointed. In my mind, if he was really concerned about accountability and oversight, this would have not been such a big deal. More especially if he had the ability to manage and put together a solid management team to complete the mission. Hell, he has even brought in an Ivy-League graduate and still has to have Horne conduct accounting work through contracts that keep escalating. With credentials like that, along with the former business office director “voluntarily staying” in place, it seems the work should have been complete.
Take note about the Guice comment regarding how he doesn’t “believe” the purpose of the bill was about firing people but rather reassigning people. He is either solidifying ignorance due to uncertainty or he may have actual insight of the grand, master plan. The plan to move buddies, pals and “special gals” into positions that fit their “skills.”
Jamie–you can fool the completely ignorant, and that’s about it.
I can not believe our Investigators!!!! These charges are nothing compared to what has been going under the name of that agency. How are all of the rest of the clan getting out of this???? What about Harris, Maxwell, Cloyd, McKay – just to name a few? What about the ones involved that are STILL being paid by the Taxpayers??? What about the boat trips and ones who were wined and dined and ate “Birthday Cake” and giant shrimp?
This is so depressing. What has this world come to? These people, The Walkers (all three), Shumate, Zeigler, and the rest of the clan have stepped all over people and workers at the DMR. They have treated them lower than dirt. And they themselves are nothing but common grifters. Can’t get much lower than that. How can the investigators look at themselves in the mirror? What about the rest of the bunch higher up the food chain??? I will NEVER vote for a Republican again! Anyone who does what a party tells them to do rather than serve the public that they are hired to serve, does not have a mind of their own. The old Republican party is dead. It is now filled with contagious diseased idiots who can’t think for themselves. So sad.
Some people and their acts do seem to be totally ignored for some reason. Anybody who has worked their way up in the business world knows how difficult it is to get ahead much less accumulate cash. As we have watched the Walker scandal unravel we have witnessed and been made aware of folks who with very little effort live in million dollar mansions, drive expensive cars, invest in restaurants and bars, buy condos, go on expensive vacations and more. How do these people still in their thirties, only a few years removed from jobs like Habitat for Humanity or as a groupie for the State of Ms. do it? We are starting to see people like Scott Walker exposed for what he really is. Others are just as guilty and still are waiting to see if their turn is next. We,as the people who have financed their lifestyles and business deals, have a right to demand they all be investigated and prosecuted for any illegal activities like the fake invoices, CIAP inflated land scams, CDBG funded bogus real estate developments, pay-back PR contracts and other ways they have come up with to take the peoples money and use it for their own benefit. Charlene, we can only hope that all of those that you have mentioned will have their day soon under the FBI microscope and be made to answer for the misuse, theft, skimming and plundering they have been involvled in. We need to keep talking about them because we are all read by many on Slabbed or any other place you can shout it out. So keep it up folks.
Someone in state government please correct me if I’m wrong, but my understanding is that each state job has a job description approved by the State Personnel Board outlining minimum qualifications to perform the job successfully and setting the salary range, and then internally, each employee has a job description. If a director wanted to reassign duties to someone, it seems like he could modify the internal job description to reflect those new duties without having to lift protection to do it unless of course he wanted to demote those who didn’t fall in line with his vision and wanted to change salaries, assign a biologist to accounting, or something crazy like that. And not all DMR positions are biologists. Some are generic state titles that can be tailored to the agency’s needs. You don’t even have to read between the lines to see what Miller’s plan was. And I don’t understand why he keeps mentioning the CSO, the CFO and the Marine Patrol Chief. He’s already hired those positions with the exception of the Marine Patrol Chief, and for that position he already has a seasoned, law enforcement officer running operations effectively. It’s quite possible that the puppet master will veto the bill when it comes across his desk anyway, if Pinnochio’s nose gets too tangled up in the strings.
Charlene, you raise some good questions about the investigation and why David Harris and others were overlooked. Politics. Politics. Politics. I guess sometimes it pays to have your entire family campaigning hard for the governor’s election and investigators in the pockets of the politicians. I’m sure they will get their convictions and jail time out of someone, and it will probably be those who are not connected, who cooperated fully from day one of the investigation, giving leads along the way, and who were completely railroaded by the regime. As Eye-Spy likes to say, soon we will all be enlightened.
Two comments:
It really seems corrupt that Harris has documented gains of at least 2 million over his loans plus free revenue for 18 months from that place, plus the profit he made on those boats when he was, er, “leasing” them from his charity, and the charity doesn’t even get investigated? All the gains made due to those inflated CIAP real estate purchases should be recovered by the auditors, instead of going after the easy, tiny money from the little people. It’s waaay more money than the $500,000 from Walker and what did Jamie sell those boats for??….$100,000? Nothing close to the tax deductions Harris gave out on them, I bet. Why hasn’t the difference in the value and the money given out under those bogus “selections”, including the Shumate property, been recovered? Because Palazzo’s daddy got some of it, that’s why.
As for Jeff Guice, everyone is happy he was the Republican plant for the seat instead of Scott Walker, but he needs to borrow some brains from his cousin. Jeff was a supporter of that crooked “land-swap” that was engineered with the City of Ocean Springs so that Harbor Landing would never close (either he or Zuber actually had some draft of a bill for the state legislature to authorize it) and the truth about the money would never come out. He also needs to go if he’s too stupid to understand he was used. There’s no doubt that by removing some employee protections from the DMR would allow Jamie to hire people like were hired in the past; wives and daughters of FOB to say the least. I thought he promised an end to the good-ole-boy system of patronage there that had friends and neighbors getting paid $35 an hour for nothing and given vehicles to boot. I bet you anything Trinity Walker has already applied for a job there and Jamie is disappointed that he can’t help out Hayley by placing another unsuitable woman at his direction inside the DMR.
Jeff Guice is all about the friends and family network. His step daughter used to work for Tina Shumate.
Yes, as a matter of fact, I have older intelligence from other inside operators that allude to this thought. According to what I have heard, Guice had a sibling who was a business partner with Scott Walker in an Ocean Springs bar. This sibling had a sister who used to work for Shumate (who used to work for Bill Walker). If this is true, it seems as if the web of connections never end within the radical regime. As some people have told me before, Shumate’s old office was one of the dumping grounds for the politically connected looking for employment.
Thick as thieves–tight as the come.
Remember folks, there are two types of socialism in this world. The first type is where government programs and other benefits are “socialized” for everyone which radical republicans will blast to the day the die. The other pertains to inherent benefits passed within a regime or a “socialized” clique in which radical republicans are quite fond of.
So the next time you hear one blasting away at socialism, mention the names: Bryant, Hebert, Miller, and Walker. The connections are deep.
Eye – thanks for the information. It helps shed some light on several areas of concern. It appears to me that people are continuing to be hired in the upper “crust” of that Agency and there are no many of them are jobs that do not have State ID numbers with the State Personnel Board. That means that these positions are “made up”. Where is the money coming from to pay them? Anyone’s guess.
All of the influx of new hires need to be sent right back where they came from because the are just more of the same regime. The General is a relative of Billy Boy Hewes I am told. The man over accounting is a neighbor of Mr. Miller. There is a woman up there that was one of the felons that Haley Barbour pardoned. She was convicted of sleeping with an under-age child and his father. Then there is Tina Shumate’s running buddy that is being made a special position…Rhonda Price. She was with Tina throughout all of her shopping sprees, hair salon and nail visits, etc. Then there’s the $10,000 painted door that Tina Shumate purchased. It was painted by some artist and the Taxpayers purchased it. Wonder where it is now?
There are several more of the Rabid Repub Posse that has been hired to do ???? And they are being paid more money that the workerbees at that Agency that have been there for years. Do a comparison of salaries and you will see.
I understand that two new positions have been opened. One is in the $30K and the other is in the $55K area. Just watch and see who will apply for those and who will get them! I will be very surprised if anyone gets them that is qualified or that has EARNED them. Unless you call earning kissing ass and politicking for the current asshole regime.
I dare another Republican to say one word to me about one of the Democrats. I have not seen a democrat stoop any lower than any of them. I have not seen one….I repeat, NOT ONE of the “real Republicans” stand up and denounce the Rabid Repub Posse. The old Statesmen would have never stood for the crap this trash is carrying on. There is not an ounce of character among the entire bunch of them. No honor, no conscience, no remorse – just empty suits (with red ties). They should all be ashamed. It’s not about Public Service with them. It’s all about “The Party”. They need to get a life. It is so sad.
Yes, the “upper crust” of the agency. Maybe if we are lucky, “The General” may have some left over collar devices he can donate to his fellow management team so they can pin them on the new UNIFORMS I have heard may go into effect. I have stated before, that I have heard his responsibility level is quite low so maybe he will be in charge of issuing the new UNIFORMS and performing daily UNIFORM inspections:
****************************************
Scene 1, Act 1
The General–“Atten-Hut!! YOU BETTER CLIP THOSE IRISH PENDENTS AND TIGHTEN UP THE CREASES IN THOSE PANTS YOU PUKE!!! NOW, DROP AND GIVE ME 50 YOU FRIGGIN’ DIRTBAG!!!!
Narrator–Dictator Miller, “The Holy Christian” steps in
Dictator Miller–“After you complete your set of push-ups I am afraid that we will have to let you go because you cannot comply, your fired!!!”
Narrator–Another one bites the dust.
*************************END SCENE*************************************
I agree with what you are saying about the hiring practices. At this point, nothing would surprise me based on what has happened since Miller assumed the dictatorship.
Inside plans and scams brought to you by the Mississippi RepubliKLAN Party.
It appears no one is listening to our complaints and comments since NOTHING has changed at DMR. Do you people think Senator Wiggins is doing anything for the state out of the goodness of his heart? I do not know about his heart but he knows what has transpired at DMR and nothing has been done. WHY? As far as Guice and Zuber, write them off your list to help the ‘Average Joe’. Do either of them have enough up stairs to understand what is going on on the Gulf Coast, much rather the entire state? Their inactions tells it all.
After reading and watching the Mike Byrd deal, it makes me wonder if anything will be done to those involved at DMR that have stolen millions?