As a result of its investigation into former-UCAS Congressman James Grey’s recent activities and breach of congressional ethics, the Ethics Committee has opened a new investigation into Seattle real estate agency Sunset Vacations. The investigation was prompted when subpoenas of Congressman Grey’s campaign records revealed multiple bank transactions from the congressman’s campaign funds to an unknown ad agency using Sunset Vacation’s physical address. The transfers included amounts between 50,000 and 750,000 nuyen and were flagged in internal accounting records as 2074 election campaign ad-buys for the Seattle region.
A search of public records indicates that the congressman resigned the day before the subpoena was served to Maxwell Lockland, Grey’s close friend and campaign manager. Mr. Lockland promised to comment on the story after speaking to his lawyer but has since refused to accept any interview requests. Mr. Grey, who resigned his congressional seat in September and retired to an unknown location in the Caribbean League, is unavailable for comment. The Ethics Committee has temporarily suspended its hearing on Mr. Grey due to his unavailability and is focusing on the new investigation.
A source inside the committee, who is not authorized to comment on the matter, indicated that the Sunset Vacations issue “goes far beyond Mr. Grey. Mounting evidence points to a number of senators and congresspeople who may have inadvertently purchased ‘ad-buys’ from this non-existent political advertising agency. We are continuing to review the evidence as it comes in and will release the results of the investigation if it leads to evidence of deliberate wrongdoing.” The source declined to name the ad agency in question, insisting on retaining the secrecy of the committee’s deliberations.
Jeanette Talva, spokesperson for Sunset Vacations, refused to comment on the allegations, mentioning on that “the nearest ad agency is three blocks down the street. Perhaps a campaign worker transposed the street numbers.”
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Sounds like the committee is scared of its own shadow. Who are they afraid of offending?>
Mr. Bonds.>
Someone with enough political clout to ruin their careers. Or their names are on that list and they don’t want anyone to know until they’ve had time to sanitize it.>
Kay St. Irregular were playing his music. It was a beautiful call-and-response kind ofmeeting that had the cabinet eating out of his hand.
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There’s no way Corrigan was in charge of that meeting. Brackhaven’s got the whole alpha-male complex going. He’d never surrender that kind of control to anyone.>
Arete>
Brackhaven looked a little peaked, actually. He spent the entire meeting washing his hands and biting his lips. Reminded me of a certain Scottish queen who could never get her hands clean.>
Netcat>
Girl, do not tell me you hacked the governor’s mansion and did not invite me along. Seriously?>
Pistons>
I didn’t mean to leave you out, Pistons. I was helping some runners decipher some bizarre financial-transactions-on-tempo accounting and ended up in the governor’s mansion node by accident. And if anyone’s interested in the DA nominees, I’ve dumped the list into this [link] along with what background and credentials I had time to pull up. Even though they’re irrelevant now, I’m sure we’ll be hearing from some of these people again.>
NetcatThe discussion to remove Oaks from her position was cut short when an FBI task force composed of two humans, two dwarves, one elf, and a troll who looked as large as Mount Hood arrived at the governor’s front door. They escorted themselves past the Metroplex Guards and the support staff like they owned the place. Brackhaven jumped out of his chair like it had been electrified. Corrigan just leaned back in his chair and pressed the tips of his fingers together, as calm and quiet as ice. The rest of the cabinet looked like they were about to have collective heart attacks.
The troll stepped forward and introduced himself as team lead Agent Mully and asked if they were interrupting anything impor- tant. Brackhaven turned red, then purple, then red again as he roared at them to get out of his house. Corrigan, waiting until Brackhaven’s rant finished, gave them this plastic smile and asked Mully if he and his team wanted a drink. I don’t know who Brackhaven wanted to kill more at that moment, Mully or Corrigan.
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Tell me you have video, Netcat. I want to see this for myself.>
Sunshine>
Me too!>
SounderJust as Mully announced that he had a warrant, the FBI’s hacker logged in right beside me. That’s when I decided my business took me elsewhere and logged out. The next day Oaks received an official communication from the governor’s mansion affirming her permanent appointment as DA until the next elec- tion cycle, signed by Brackhaven himself.
The FBI didn’t chase after me. I’d like to think it’s because I managed to muddle my trail. But it’s more likely they were a lot
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Congressman Grey has known Brackhaven a long time. The congressman stumped for Brackhaven back in 2057 when Brackhaven ran for president, and again in 2070. The pair have never made any secret of their friendship, though Grey concen- trated on Brackhaven’s economic and business strengths instead of straying into the racial politics that have occasionally compli- cated Brackhaven’s life. In return, Brackhaven lavishly donated to Grey’s own campaign fund, both personally and through Brackhaven Investments. The FBI is investigating the possibility that Brackhaven even violated campaign finance law by using feeder funds to donate six times the legal contribution limit. A feeder fund is a tool used by corporations to avoid taxation. They (the corps) send money to a common master fund account, which then invests that money as if the fund owns it. In this case, a few of Brackhaven Investment’s subsidiaries are headquartered in CAS and PCC. Brackhaven moves the money into BI, which takes the money out of the country, and the subsidiaries then donate the funds to Grey’s accounts. That way, Brackhaven can make dona- tions from his personal account, BI can donate from its corporate account, and the out-of-country companies each get to donate from their own accounts as individual entities.
Grey sat on several House committees and chaired the Committee for Corporate Reform. He’s known for his loyalty to his backers, killing bills that might hurt them, promoting bills that will help them, and putting his rubber stamp to good use. He’s even convinced Congress to increase Seattle’s yearly budget and has earmarked extra money to clean up Seattle’s Barrens.
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The CCR, aka the Rubber Stamp Committee, is one ofWashington’s dirty little secrets. Most congresspeople would give an arm or a leg to get on the committee because of the extra corporate gifts that come with the job. In return for the vacations, bonus incentives, and racy sports cars, the committee members go through the list of bills, table the ones their corporate backers want to disappear, and recommend the ones their backers would like to see made into law. CCR works maybe two or three hours a week, and half of that time is spent playing poker.
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Snopes>
You’re exaggerating the issue. The CCR may be the most ineffectual committee in the whole of Congress, but it does real work on occasion. Besides, Congressman Grey prefers chess to poker.>
Kay St. IrregularThe FBI’s manhunt started with a rally that occurred several months after Proposition 23 was added to the ballot. Congressman Grey showed up at a Humanis-run anti-Prop 23 rally. The rally turned into a riot when someone supposedly took a shot at the congressman. Seattle was rocked by the scandal, with plenty of people wondering what Grey was doing at a Humanis rally.
The public still doesn’t know exactly what happened, but there are plenty of theories. The first rumors were that it was a staged assassination attempt on Grey to garner sympathy for the anti-Prop 23 movement. Some people even thought Grey funded the rally. People were shook up to find such a high- ranking political figure publicly allying himself with such an infamous hate group. Seattle was scandalized that their darling congressman would do such a thing. The FBI is still investigating
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Isn’t Sunset Vacations one of those companies that sells high-endlots in the Renton district?
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Beaker>
No. You’re thinking of that defunct real estate firm Brackhaven Investments picked up and gutted after Crash 2.0. Sunset Realty, I think the name was. Sunset Vacations is owned by Centralia, Inc.>
Kia>
Which is owned by Kyber Publishing, which is a partially owned- subsidiary of Western Natural Gas and several private investors whose names are untraceable. The SINS exist, the bank accounts exist, but the only transactions are money in and out for business purposes. So far as I can tell, these people have never made a single utility payment, luxury purchase, or dined out even once. Either they spend their lives paying for everything in cash—ha ha! Remember cash?—or they don’t exist.>
Slamm-0!Incoming Message ...
Who’s Who in sEattlE, 2075 Edition—
PRofilE: bRacKhavEn invEstmEnts
brackhaven investmentsheadquarters: 3rd Ave. and Union St., Downtown Seattle President/cEo: Kenneth Brackhaven
vP: Harold Muller
Brackhaven Investments is one of the largest and wealthiest local companies in Seattle. While VP Harold Muller reportedly sees to most of the day-to-day busi- ness, Governor Brackhaven’s name is still on all the contracts, legal agreements, stock holdings, and bills. Despite the possible conflict of interest, his activities do not seem to bother anyone else in the metroplex, and the governor receives a yearly salary and perfor- mance bonuses as if he were still sitting in his Third Avenue office.
Analysts expect BI to top projected earnings by fifteen percent at the end of the 2074 fiscal year. BI’s latest mutual fund RedBush International—a packaged investment that includes real estate, business loans, utilities indexes—is currently selling at five hundred nuyen a share and rising steadily. If BI does as well as analysts think it will, this year’s dividend pay outs will easily be twenty-five nuyen per held share at the time of the announcement.
Brackhaven Industries is a privately held company and owns a number of subsidiaries and shell companies in addition to its real estate holdings.
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Brackhaven Investments survived the Crash by absorbing its weakened competition, using the new influx of capital to buy real estate at rock-bottom prices, then saddling the companies with all the bad debt before selling them off to other corporations. Many new housing developments in Renton (the heart of the governor’s political support, it soSea
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are both overseeing that team. My job is to collect the informa- tion, his job is to correlate the data with the legal and financial implications of the current economic situation. I never knew that financial math was an exercise in fiction.
Forgive me for starting with the basics, but it’s the only way I can wrap my head around what is actually going on. The way it works (and if I’m mistaken, I trust Mr. Bonds to correct me) is that the Seattle Metroplex gets a majority of its revenue from property taxes, corporate income tax, personal income tax, local sales tax, specialty item VAT taxes, and tourist income. This money goes into local development, maintenance of metroplex roads, public parks, public schools, public housing, city administration, and all those types of things. In addition, the UCAS budget allocates a specific percentage of federal funds to maintain all federal instal- lations, the governor’s administration, the Metroplex Guard, and Joint Task Force: Seattle. For every UCAS dollar spent from Seattle’s city revenue to maintain the port, the ferries, the train stations, and the airports, the federal funds match fifty cents to the dollar. It doesn’t sound like much, but when the federal budget for Seattle is between twenty-three and fifty billion dollars per year, it can add up quickly.
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Other way around, Netcat. Seattle spends fifty cents for every one federal dollar. But an accurate enough layman’s summary otherwise.>
Mr. Bonds>
Shit. That’s a lot of money.>
Rigger XAttracting new business to a region is a like a bizarre animal mating dance. First, a business expresses interest in a couple of different cities, and those cities are given the opportunity to bid for the corporation’s presence and attention. A city may offer the corp lower taxes, tax exemptions, free utilities, or even free construction to build a site to the corp’s specific needs and taste. In exchange, the corp promises a bring a specific number of jobs to the city, to stay in the city for a certain amount of time, or to give the city prestige status by claiming the city as its business headquarters. The kicker is that the city is the one who pays for the utilities, taxes, or construc- tion out of its own income while the company rakes in the profits and either imports workers with the promised jobs, vacates the city before the allotted time limit is up with the excuse that the city became toxic to their bottom line, or never shows up at all because they got a better offer. Usually the latter happens after a city wastes millions in construction costs for a custom-built site that doesn’t lend itself to rental or sale to other companies.
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Note that this is the pattern for A-rated corps or smaller. The larger corps, especially the AAAs, have the power to do what they want, where they want, without having to go through to rigamarole of seeing which municipal governments will dance to their tune.>
CosmoWhen Brackhaven promised to make Seattle more business- friendly, he engaged in all of the above practices (all perfectly legal), and then some. He declared a fifteen-year corporate income the entire incident amid allegations of congressional ethics viola-
tions and abuse of power.
The Grey Scandal put Brackhaven squarely on the defensive, forcing him to disavow knowledge of the congressman’s activities even as Congressman Grey publicly proclaimed his innocence, insisting he’d been forced to the rally at gunpoint. Bull’s hired runners, the ones that “escorted” Grey to the rally and smeared his reputation, did their job so well that no one believes Grey’s story. I’d feel sorry for him if I hadn’t seen the FBI’s case file. When the FBI questioned Grey’s financial connections to Sunset Vacations, a little known Seattle real estate agency, the congressman retired from politics and disappeared into the Carib League. If he ever comes back to UCAS territory, James Grey is in for a hell of a reception. An unofficial reward has been offered by the FBI for information leading to Grey’s apprehension.