Orly Taitz of Laguna Niguel Decries 'Corrupt' Media, Senate Foe Feinstein

Editor's Note: After this article was published, the author hired Orly Taitz to represent her in court. The author is a freelance writer, not an employee of Patch, and will no longer be allowed to cover political news for Patch.

The news media are corrupt. Sen. Dianne Feinstein is profiting from insider trading and steering lucrative contracts to her husband. And America should slap tariffs on foreign energy sources.

So says Orly Taitz of Laguna Niguel, best known for her leading role in the birther movement challenging President Barack Obama’s U.S. citizenship.

But Taitz—considered by some a front-runner among Republicans as she challenges Democrat Feinstein in Tuesday’s U.S. Senate primary—has strong views on other issues as well.

Taitz, who has come under sharp attack from within and outside her party, recently sat down with Laguna Niguel Patch at a hometown to talk about everything from alleged election fraud to her cures for the economy.

Patch: You have faced a great deal of criticism for some of your political activities that greatly overshadow other political opinions that you are attempting to express, such as calling for members of the media to be fired for their criticism of you. How do you address these claims?

Orly Taitz: People misrepresent the facts. I never called for that because they were against me. I have called for members of the media who are committing fraud—who are defrauding the public and who are committing elections fraud—to be reported to the elections committee, or to be reported to an ethical communications committee.

For example, three years ago when I ran for [California] secretary of state, Chris Matthews of MSNBC went on national television and stated: “Orly Taitz is a malignancy. I want you to tie her up like a witch to the stake.”

After he made this comment, a number of crazy Obama supporters sent in emails stating that I needed to be burned like a witch at the stake and that my burned body needs to be dragged down the street. He’s a member of the media on a station that claims to be from a reputable network, and he is actively calling on violence against me. Why shouldn’t he be fired for that?

There is an enormous amount of corruption occurring here, including in the media. During Watergate, over 30 people were charged and sentenced to prison. I believe that Forgerygate [Obama birth certificate questions] will have similar results.

A number of candidates are saying: “I will fight for you.” I can legitimately say that “I have fought for you” with a number of legal actions. I have traveled the country on my own dime fighting for the people. I am probably the biggest proponent of clean elections that you will find, having come from a country where we were denied this.

Not many people know that a foreign interest, Smartmatic, purchased Sequoia Voting Systems, which controls 70 percent of our electronic voting hardware and software in the U.S.

The president of Smartmatic is Antonio Mugica, who has dual citizenship in America and Venezuela. Mugica owns yet another company called Vista. This company controls elections software and hardware in Venezuela. Vista and Smartmatic are located in the same building in Caracas, Venezuela.

Basically, it is the same company, different names. When they had the recall on Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, Vista was the company that counted the votes. Although all of the polls showed Chavez losing by 20 percent, the final election results showed him winning by the same amount. We can’t say that it’s proof, but I believe that there is a high probability that there was fraud.

Patch: So you are purporting that the same company, which you suspect has committed elections fraud in the Venezuela recall election, purchased 70 percent of our elections software?

Taitz: I cannot say that this is proof that there was fraud, but there is a high probability. The polls could have been mistaken. By the way, a large portion of Vista is owned by Hugo Chavez. Antonio Mugica supposedly sold Smartmatic in 2006. However, the person who bought the company, even though he was a U.S. citizen, was one of the directors of the company already. So he sold the company to an insider of the same company.

He also never sold the intellectual rights to the software. So if the voters suspect rigging of the software, they cannot even find out because a number of legal actions were brought where the citizens demanded to see the software, and the courts denied the citizens that right stating that the software was proprietary. You can read this any way you want.

Patch: If you believe that the system is rigged, why even run for office?

Taitz: If I am running for office, then I am meeting members of the media and bringing these issues to the forefront. We can call for decertification of these machines. We have layers of foreign corporations involved in our elections software.

How can it be that the members of Congress, which have an approval rating of 9 to 11 percent, can be re-elected on average 90 percent of the time? Something is very wrong with this system.

Patch: So against the odds, and with the media predicting Feinstein’s victory against any Republican opponent, the question still begs to be asked: How would you represent your home state if you were to be elected and specifically Orange County and Laguna Niguel?

Taitz: First of all, I would question the prediction of a victory for Feinstein. Her approval ratings have dropped drastically. A majority of Californians are unhappy with her performance. She’s [soon to be] 79 years old and she’s not expected to do anything different.

Patch: What do you think you can do for California better than her?

Taitz: With Feinstein, there is an enormous amount of corruption.  As the state of California is going down the drain, we are losing millions of jobs, the standard of living is going down and people are losing their homes.

Feinstein is pretty much in the business of enriching herself. Feinstein has diverted lucrative contracts to her husband, Richard Blum, and the companies that are controlled by him. He has a conservative estimate of $400 million of wealth and she has $100 million.

Together they are worth at least half a billion dollars.  How did she and her husband come into possession of this money?  URS Corp., which her husband has a large stake in, bought EG&G from the Carlyle Group. Feinstein was involved in steering a defense contract toward EG&G.

Blum is also on the board of CB Richard Ellis and Feinstein has proposed a special deal whereby foreclosures would be handled by one real estate company. This company happens to be Richard Ellis. Not only did she steer the contract toward this company, but the contract is higher than what the market bid would be.

This is the exact opposite of what I would do. I believe that we should have competitive bidding and that we should not have insider training. Any federal contract should be under competitive bidding so that the taxpayers get the best bargain. Yes, she has more money for her campaign, but is it clean?

Here is another example: Feinstein purchased $1 million worth of equity in a company called Amyris Biotechnologies. What we found was that she made this investment shortly before it was announced that the federal government will give a large taxpayer secured loan to Amyris.

Shortly after it was announced to the public, the company goes public and the value goes up threefold. So within a short period of time, Feinstein made $2 million. We the taxpayers do not get this kind of return on our investments. I will fight against all insider trading.

Patch: What would you do to help our economy?

Taitz: I will propose specific incentives to companies that are repatriating back into our country.  What we have been seeing is that companies are getting tax breaks regardless of whether they operate here or overseas.  They get stimuli. Then they are turning around, closing manufacturing in the U.S. in favor of Third World countries that have no regulations and slave labor. Those companies make enormous profits, while millions of Americans are going bankrupt, losing their jobs and losing their life savings. 

Your senators are elected to represent U.S. citizens, not the citizens of China, Brazil or India, and not a small group of 200 or 300 billionaires that are de facto running this country. They should be representing us.

I would encourage a one-to-one tax credit for companies who hire U.S. workers. For every tax dollar that a newly hired U.S. worker pays who was previously sitting on welfare, I would give those companies an equal tax credit. Right now, a company gets credits even if they close a factory here and open one in China. I would, instead, tie any tax credit to investment in the U.S.

We also need to seriously renegotiate [policies of] the WTO, which has resulted in the loss of millions of American jobs. I am proposing tariffs. What makes a company American? Our main goal is to bring jobs back to the U.S., so I would give credits to any company which invests in the U.S. and hires American workers.

I would address the water shortage. I will promote the production of desalinization plants. These plants are being used successfully all over the world and there is no reason we should not have these plants, for example, in the area of San Clemente. We should not charge the citizens of California exorbitant amounts of money for their water.

Also, as you know, this shortage is being largely caused by legislation which is supposed to protect an endangered species [Smelt Roe].  I recommend we place filters over the pipes that bring us water. This would prevent the fish from being sucked into the pipes and still allow us to deliver water to the state. I have spoken to a number of engineers and they say that there is no reason that this will not work.

I would also address energy production. We have rules and regulations that make production of our own energy too expensive while we import energy from other parts of the world.

I would impose tariffs on foreign energy sources while encouraging our own energy production at home. As you know, Barack Obama imposed a moratorium on offshore drilling in Louisiana. When a judge issued a decision that there was no need for the moratorium, Obama simply prevented the issuing of permits for offshore drilling.

At the same time that he denied 80,000 Americans their jobs in the gas and oil industry, he and his wife traveled to Brazil and gave a speech at a state dinner congratulating Brazil for their offshore drilling and stated that the U.S. would be their biggest customer. Keep in mind that his main benefactor, George Soros, is heavily invested in Petrobras, a company which specializes in offshore drilling.

Also in the state of California, we have enormous unemployment.  I would propose workfare instead of welfare.  People could work for their welfare. People are often left at home, unable to work. And even when people try to find work, you see signs that the unemployed need not to apply.

If we required people to work a certain number of hours for their benefits, they will be able to make certain connections. Employers might offer those people permanent positions. Let people be busy doing something. It would help.

We are paying those benefits regardless. We still have need in a number of tiers. There is a shortage of medical assistants, overcrowding in schools—these problems can be relieved by steering people toward these areas, requiring people to take classes for specific education, studying to be a medical assistant, a nurse, a teacher, for jobs that are needed.

Right now, over 100 million Americans are not in the workforce. We have huge unemployment among young people, and that is very worrisome. Those people are prone to unrest. This has led to unrest in many countries. In fact, the Arab spring was precipitated by unemployment and the huge level of corruption. We are seeing revolt now. We are seeing Occupy Wall Street, the Tea Party, GOOOH [Get Out Of Our House].

Of course, there are members of the Occupy movement that may be punk kids with nothing better to do, but one has to ask: Why don’t they have anything better to do? We need to address the grievances of the young people.