Left-Wing Corruption in Brazil. Sounds Like The Clinton Foundation Players.

Barack Obama once called him the most popular politician on earth. Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, known as Lula, the former left-wing President of Brazil, just began his 12 year prison sentence after being found guilty, and losing his appeal, of corruption and money-laundering. I wonder what Barry says now? Netflix just came out with "The Mechanism" - a riveting tale of Brazil's massive "pay for play" corruption scheme between the nation's Government-run oil company, politicians, corporations, contractors, and money launderers.

The Mechanism is riveting must see TV. The New Yorker just wrote a review of The Mechanism and tried to tie the rampant left-wing corruption in Brazil to Republicans like Donald Trump. I kid you not. That's how desperate the media is. Read on.

Lula, 72, is the leader of the left-wing Workers’ Party. He served as president from 2003 to 2010 and former U.S. President Barack Obama once dubbed him the “most popular politician on Earth.” During the end of his second term in 2010, Lula reached an approval rate of 87 percent, “levels never before registered,” according to Brazil’s Ibope poll.

Lula was known for his economic and social reforms, mostly notably his Bolsa Familia, a conditional cash transfer program to the poor. In other words, he paid poor people to like him, with other people's money. Lula was Brazil’s first president from the leftist Workers’ party and helped his hand-picked successor, Dilma Rousseff, win two subsequent elections before she was impeached last year for breaking budget rules amid a sprawling corruption scandal at state-run oil company Petrobras. Billions of dollars were paid to middlemen, executives and politicians for fat contracts. Sounds just like the Clinton Foundation pay for play, huh?

Lula ran the powerful metal workers’ union before helping found the Workers’ party with fellow leftists, unionists and intellectuals in 1980. He fought and lost three elections before winning the first of two mandates in 2002.

Lula was charged for money laundering and accepting more than $1 million in bribes as part of a massive investigation into Brazil's business and political leaders that has become known as Operation Car Wash.

"I consider the culpability in the case extremely high," Judge João Pedro Gebran Neto said to The Associated Press. "This is about a former president and a corruption scheme that prevailed for years."

Lula was found guilty of accepting 3.7 million reais ($1.2 million) worth of bribes from engineering firm OAS SA after prosecutors argued that figure was the amount the company spent renovating Lula’s beachfront apartment in exchange for help in obtaining contracts from Brazil’s state-control oil company Petrobras.

Lula’s government was first hit by a corruption scandal called the Mensalão, in which lawmakers were allegedly paid to vote for government measures. He was still re-elected in 2006 and left office with an 87% approval rating. Then his successor Rousseff was impeached in August 2016. Brazil is a country that is polarized between its liberals and its conservatives, and the latter have shown themselves to be determined, in as many ways as possible, to roll back the reforms that Lula instituted.

Lula, on Tuesday, April 24, from prison, gave his Workers' Party (PT) the green light to find a new candidate for the October presidential election in which he remains the frontrunner.

"I want you to feel totally free to take whatever decision you need because 2018 is an important year for the PT, for the left and for democracy."

But the PT dismissed his offer, with party president Gleisi Hoffmann writing on Facebook that they would keep him as their candidate.

Lula was accused of being many things in the past, including being a Communist, a coarse proletarian and a drinker. Yet, Time Magazine named him the "world's most influential political leader," even ahead of US President Barack Obama. His left-wing base in Brazil once saw him as a candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize because he worked with President Obama, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on the Iran nuclear deal. You can't make this stuff up, folks.