Missouri Misery 004: The Rat King
Malek Mocks MO, Miltenberger flips the bird at Springfield
The answer to our gambling problem is not a hotline number. It’s in excising the malignant tumor causing the symptoms and then filling that space with something sustainable.
The hasty adoption of vice is not a fait accompli. If Oregon can pause and rethink alpha-adopting a harmful industry with it’s current shit-show of a state government, we lemmings certainly can as well.
Malik Mocks Missouri
Gambling and vice have an ugly tendency to inspire “loop-hole culture.” Nothing says loop-hole culture like Andrew Rubenstein, Steve Miltenberger and the VLT lobbying apparatus. Nothing says brazen like Missouri Treasurer select Vivek Malik’s callous, robotic performance before the House Subcommittee on Appropriations towards the end of last month.
Malik’s dream, if you will, was to secure a backroom deal with Steve Tilley and Miltenberger in Tilley’s aircraft hangar near the Spirit of St. Louis airport in Chesterfield, allowing Miltenberger’s VLT company, “Torch” to print decals with the MO State Treasurer’s seal on their amusement machines and pay kiosks.
As an aside, Strategic Capitol Consulting (Tilley’s Firm) bought that hangar from Bayer for a cool $8.6 million a couple years ago in March.
Malik, a native of India, arrived in Missouri a month before 9/11 fresh out of college. He is sold to Missourians by both the state and various pundits as the American dream come true! Quite arguably he’s exploiting a small nightmare at the same time for name recognition or maybe something worse.
He earned his bachelors and law degree from the prestigious Maharshi Dayanand University in Rohtak, India. That’s where Malik met a professor from Southeast Missouri State University who was visiting family in India. The professor talked him into enrolling and so he flew 14 hrs to ORD, found his gate to STL and then hitched a BART (Boothill Area Regional Transport) down to Cape Girardeau.
And from there, he survived almost two months on $300 crashing at his friend’s house while his graduate assistant job kicked in. After picking up his MBA at SEMO he moved to Urbana, IL where he earned his Master of Law degree from the University of Illinois College of Law.
Resettling Cape for a brief time, he then migrated north to St Louis where he started an immigration law office called “USA-Immigration Law, LLC”, helping migrants and asylum seekers obtain bona fides in 2008, then after a couple years expanding into Fresno, California and more recently into Indianapolis, Indiana.
In 2020 Parson appointed Malik to SEMO’s distinguished Board of Regents and then State Treasurer two years later on Dec 20, replacing Scott Fitzpatrick who was elected to state Auditor in November of that year.
Moscout reported that three busloads of closely tied Indian immigrant business folks pulled up to the capitol in Jeff City for the swearing in ceremony. They were mostly from the St. Louis and Kansas City areas, although Trump Mega donor, Shalabh “Shalli” Kumar of Chicago was said to be in attendance, as well as SEMO-based restaurant mogul, Anand Patel. We will discuss both.
https://www.kfvs12.com/2022/12/20/gov-parson-announce-his-choice-new-state-treasurer/
The appointment placed a conservative former immigration lawyer with a vast network of well, and possibly parallel funded immigrant donors on the board of the Missouri Housing Development Commission, also in charge of managing funds over $16 billion at the time, now over $18 billion.
Besides having assumed the role of Missouri’s Chief Financial Officer, Malik serves on the Board of Fund Commissioners, the Missouri Cultural Trust Board, the Missouri Linked Deposits Program Review Committee and the State Historical Society.
You can’t help but notice a tone-deaf display during the oversight hearing. A state official at one of the highest levels condoning a legally questionable industry with a straight face. The third largest city in the state recently added language to their municipal code banning the amusement devices for the measurable harm they had caused the local business community, and he’s reading the entire time from talking points obviously drafted by a team of consultants and lawyers.
During the almost two-hour, bi-partisan grilling, he recited that he takes his job very seriously. That may be true, but he obviously doesn’t take Missourians very seriously. Maybe because he is not a Missourian. It’s lengthy, so I’ll timestamp the highlight. But it’s very much worth the watch in entirety as it provides context on this official’s character.
Somebody failed Vivek along his journey. Where naturalization missed, our capitol’s vetting process whiffed big!
The American dream does not entail assuming credentials and then working diligently to import a vast network of co-ethnic voters. Tapping well funded Hawalas to secure regional monopolies on franchise, so you can import more co-ethnics who then run those franchises with implicit expectations of regular campaign contributions towards political ends, allegedly. That’s more akin to a extremely brazen foreign invasion or hostile ethnic gangland takeover.
Scott Cupps was the loudest at the front blowing the shofar. Missourians are tired of politicians playing public/private/mob ball and are ready for their voices to be taken seriously in Jeff City.
Missouri’s largest cities are being flooded with ARPA funds but who will ultimately benefit? Meanwhile the citizenry choose between being the burden of the state or slaves to franchise’s “living-dead” wages, while being offered a diverse buffet of both vice and sloppa. Their heads are down, sorting through rotten produce at the grocery and crossing their fingers that small pox isn’t soon. 🤞
There is now a union of tenants in Springfield fighting the consequences of the communist policies Joe Biden is currently implementing under the American Rescue Plan Act. They are meeting with the city council begging them for a sliver of the scraps of leftover ARPA funds to build housing for the growing homeless population and enforce codes for the growing absentee landlord problem.
Had Springfieldians been allowed a voice in the distribution of these ARPA funds, they would be stakeholders of the outcome. They might even consider economic engines that create a safe work/life balance, enough that large child care facilities staffed with “mental health professionals” might not even be necessary.
This democratic disbursement could’ve been lauded as an endeavor truly for the people. Instead, they might be squeezed out of their property and herded into stack’n’pack. These are the fruits of a perverse, out of control Potemkin economy. Wild fruits! 🍇
The economy is drowning and Biden is throwing it an ice-cream cone. 😎🍦
This is only further exasperated by Biden’s decision to place a minority at the helm of the Small Business Administration, who implemented an anti-competitive policy of dolling out rescue funds with private investors through the SBIC.
It probably wouldn’t surprise you that a minority would then be prioritizing disbursements by race and then gender in the interest of equal… I mean equity. We’re doing equity now. You owe us, colonizer! Slaveholder!
Trumptards undoubtedly blame Obama for the state of public housing, when it’s wildly perverse business model was adopted under Reagan. 👉️👈️
Reagan, like Trump had a shot at ending the bloated Ed Department and creating healthy Public School policy. Some high up officials in the education department like Charlotte Iserbyt, were blowing the whistle on the dangers of unelected school boards crafting education.
She went further to describe an extra-governmental apparatus of unelected councils working in partnership with the government. That turned out to be prophetic considering our current situation.
Charter schools thrive while public schools with what few standards we have left wither away. Trump actually pushed “school choice”, which means to quality education what gambling means to economy.
What I’m trying to get at is that communism has very much become bipartisan and we need to excise that tumor and fill the space with something more sustainable long term. We cannot do that without reaching across the aisle again. But as Americans and not the communist puppets who are doing it today.
Cape Girardeau
Both Malik and Tilley are Southeast MO alumni. The Kansas City Star reported a big springtime fundraiser for Governor Parson down in Cape Girardeau during the 2020 Gubernatorial race at the home of Anand “Andy” Patel, the owner/operator of one of the largest privately owned multi-brand restaurant companies in the US, Boynton Beach, FL based “Apple Investors Group”, which brought in a hefty sum of $50k for Tilley’s old friend.
Patel said one of Tilley’s lobbying clients, OHM Concession Group, is run by some of his former employees that operate airport concession stands. They put Tilley in touch with him, and he agreed to host the event and reach out to friends and former business partners around the country to pitch in.
https://www.kansascity.com/news/politics-government/article234512532.html
If the name Patel sounds kind of familiar, then you may recall we covered a great many in Missouri Misery 002, where there was at least an effort to describe the chronology and ownership of Springfield’s recent infestation of underground VLT gambling dens. The surname Patel is very popular in the Gujarat state of Northwestern India.
There are a lot of similar names going through the franchisees of Springfield’s numerous vape and smoke shops. I found it interesting analyzing Malik’s donors, to find the contributor column to be rife with Patels also.
In fact, roughly 15% of his whopping 529 unique donors since FY2023Q2 don the popular Gujarati surname.
Anand Patel of Cape Girardeau, created a small hospitality empire in the US but he’s also not a native Missourian. He started in India and worked his way down to South Beach Miami, Florida where he somehow turned a job at Wendy’s into Apple Investors group, a whale like multi-brand restaurant business. This was most likely with the help of Jackie Bozzuto, from St Thomas/Virgin Islands who also advertises an expertise in foreign investment.
Anand moved to Cape Girardeau in 2013. He’s buying the entire town while the chamber of commerce claps like seals. He bought a chunk of the plaza as well as a minor league baseball team. Besides also adding a few franchises, he’s tapped a vast network of donors involved in a political industry changing the face of Missouri politics forever.
Was this the liberal vision for mass unvetted migration? Wealthy conservative foreigners, connecting with franchise through immigration attorneys and then buying up huge chunks of your home town.
Miltenberger Flips the Bird at SGF
Ryan Collins wrote about Callie Carroll’s recent question on VLT enforcement progress at SPD Chief Paul Williams’ annual report presented to City Council.
During Springfield Police Chief Paul Williams’ presentation of the police department’s 2023 annual report to the City Council, council member Callie Carroll asked for an update on enforcement efforts of the new ordinance (2024-019), to which Mayor Ken McClure said:
“I think, Ms. Carroll, that’s probably a question we shouldn’t ask.”
Super awkward…
The article goes on to provide some details about Torch’s recent lawsuit against Springfield for the tort of not wanting Miltenberger’s exploitative amusement devices attracting crime and vagrancy. Brazen, like a pushy salesman with his foot securely jammed in your doorway.
If you’ve been following this company you would’ve anticipated it. Rep Mazzie Christensen mentioned in passing during the first hearing the trouble at the county level prosecuting cases. This implies the real issue with VLT’s rests in the judicial.
These corrupt partnerships and councils we did not elect are shaping the world around us. And once their smelly foot is through the door, they put their guys in office. Then their lobbyists who write the terrible bills we hate, shower them with gifts and praise. The only time our voice is considered is when they’re debating amongst themselves about what they can get away with. Always looking for the loop-hole. But more consequential, never thinking about the blow back for their compromise.
Update: There was a raid in SGF a few days after this story was published. Very few details have been released, but we do know that the FBI, Homeland Security and ICE were involved. Ky3 Reports that this is a multi jurisdictional investigation. 🍿