BookGate expands: Baltimore Mayor takes “leave of absence” after more scandals revealed

Sometimes a story begins picking up speed like a snowball turning into an avalanche. That may be what’s happening with Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh and her “Healthy Holly” book sales scandal. Only this morning we learned that the state legislature was scrambling to make much of what she was doing illegal (since apparently nobody had thought to do that before) and it was barely lunchtime when another questionable book sales deal was revealed. As the Baltimore Sun reports, health insurance provider Kaiser Permanente shoveled more than $100,000 the mayor’s way during the same period when they were competing to renew a major contract they had providing health coverage to the city government.

The fallout from this? The recently ill Mayor has taken a leave of absence from her job. (Associated Press)

Baltimore’s mayor is taking an indefinite leave of absence as a political scandal about “self-dealing” book sales intensifies.

In a Monday statement, Pugh’s office says she has been “advised by her physicians that she needs to take time to recover and focus on her health.” It says she feels as though she is unable to fulfill her obligations as mayor due to deteriorating health.

Her announcement comes shortly after Maryland’s governor called on the state prosecutor to investigate allegations against Pugh and Maryland’s comptroller called on her to resign.

The City Council president will take over Pugh’s day-to-day responsibilities.

Here are the details on the Kaiser deal that also line Pugh’s pockets very nicely.

Health provider Kaiser Permanente paid Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh more than $100,000 to buy about 20,000 copies of her “Healthy Holly” children’s books during a period when the company was seeking a lucrative contract to provide health benefits to city employees.

Kaiser confirmed Monday to The Baltimore Sun that it paid approximately $114,000 for the books in multiple orders from 2015 to 2018.

Pugh became mayor in December 2016. In September 2017, the city’s spending board, which Pugh sits on and controls, awarded the Kaiser Foundation Health Plan of the Mid-Atlantic States Inc. a $48 million contract to provide health insurance to city employees from 2018 through 2020, with options to renew.

So far, all that Kaiser is confirming is the fact that they purchased the books for distribution in a three-state region and the amount they paid for them. But what sort of documentation do they have and will they provide it for public inspection? Was this a formal sales agreement that exists on their books or was it a “handshake deal” like the one we learned the Mayor had with UMMS? And do they have records of physically receiving the books and where and when they were distributed?

Let’s just assume for the moment that Kaiser can provide all of that documentation. That would at least make this smell considerably better than the UMMS deal where we don’t even know if tens of thousands of the books were ever even printed. And if the Mayor can show that she not only received the payment through her LLC but also paid taxes on the income and provided that information on her disclosure forms, this transaction won’t look quite as bad. (That’s a lot of “ifs” to work through, however.)

But even if that’s all true… c’mon, man. Kaiser was in the middle of negotiations to land a very profitable account with the City of Baltimore. Catherine Pugh isn’t only the Mayor, but she also runs the spending board that makes decisions about such contracts. Out of the literally tens of thousands of children’s books published every single year around the country, that Healthy Holly book was the only one they needed to grab 20,000 copies of? Surely somebody at Kaiser realized that they were shoveling more than $100K straight into the pocket of the person who would decide the fate of their contract.

How has the Mayor not resigned in disgrace yet? She’s taking a “leave of absence” but still seemingly pretending that this is all some big misunderstanding. It’s amazing that anyone could stand before the cameras multiple times and keep claiming that they didn’t technically do anything wrong and walk away with that “who, me?” look on their faces.

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Illegal Alien Migrant Caravanner Who Complained About Beans In Tijuana Camp Arrested For Aggravated Assault In Texas

Click on for video: So after complaining, the report was she claimed asylum and was let go into Texas. Where she and her sister are now being detained. From Daily Mail: A Honduran mother who was dubbed ‘Lady Frijoles’ after she blasted a migrant shelter in Mexico for feeding her ‘pig food’, has been arrested […]

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Pro-Life Film ‘Unplanned’ Surpasses Planned Parenthood in Twitter Followers Despite Censorship

Efforts to censor the pro-life film ‘Unplanned’ has backfired in a huge way, as the box office hit has now surpassed Planned Parenthood in Twitter followers.

The Twitter account for the docudrama was briefly suspended on Twitter on opening weekend — which sparked a wave of backlash against the platform.

The movie is based on the real story of Abby Johnson, a former clinic director at Planned Parenthood who had a change of heart after learning more about abortion.

When the account was suspended, it had a mere 6,000 followers. It now has nearly 300,000 followers on the social media platform, while Planned Parenthood has 256,000.

“In mere seconds, that fetus’ life ended and the screen only showed a black, empty uterus. The life that was there just a couple minutes ago was gone. In that moment, I saw for myself what I was supporting for the last eight years and it broke me,” Johnson wrote in an op-ed for Fox News.

Just like with Gosnell, television networks have been refusing to air ads for the film. Lifetime, a network known for making movies about famous murders and kidnappings, said their refusal was based on “sensitive nature of the film.”

“The Travel Channel, Cooking Channel, HGTV and Food Network, each of which are owned by Discovery, also refused to sell ad time for ‘Unplanned’ due to the ‘sensitive nature’ of the movie, say those who tried buying air time,” the producers have announced. “Other networks that refused to advertise the movie include the Hallmark Channel and USA Network, the latter of which is owned by NBCUniversal.”

Despite the bias and censorship, Forbes reports that “the $6 million-budgeted flick, about a former Planned Parenthood clinic director turned anti-abortion activist, earned $2.72 million on Friday, setting the stage for a likely $7.25 million debut weekend.”

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Ocasio-Cortez’s Latest Self-Own: Expensive Airport Croissants

She’s discovered that things cost more in the restricted market of an airport. And what’s she doing flying anyway? Via Washington Examiner: In one of the finest self-owns I’ve seen in a while on the worst website on the Internet, the future of the Democratic Party dropped a galaxy brain take on Twitter today. Where […]

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