Ames: California Class War History: Meet the Oligarch Family that's been Scamming Taxpayers for 150 Years, and Counting

Henry Miller collected the largest wealth of land in US history,land largely aqcuired by scams:

"Miller scammed the federal government for land and ruthlessly used corrupt state courts to steal land from owners of Mexican land grants. One of his crowning achievements was when, with the help of the notoriously corrupt lawyer and future California governor Harry Haight (after whom Haight Street was named), Miller and Lux litigated a Mexican-American landowning family into insolvency and forced them to sell a property called Buri Buri Ranch, which stretched from the southern tip of San Francisco all the way down to Burlingame, spanning some of the best property in the Bay Area."

Today, the same bloodline uses their inheritance to accrue massive federal funds and favor with the political elite:

"Jim Nickel runs the family’s agricultural and water operations, while Jamie Nickel serves at the director of Federal Crop Insurance Corporation at USDA and manages the real estate end of the business.  Meanwhile his grandson, George W. Nickel, III, is is a budding politician in California, who unsuccessfully ran for the state senate and now works in the Obama administration. Oh, and on top of everything, the family gets a nice revenue stream from the federal government, pulling in roughly $3.6 million in farm subsidies since 1995."

Read the rest here: http://exiledonline.com/california-class-war-history-meet-the-oligarch-family-thats-been-scamming-taxpayers-for-150-years-and-counting/