Matt Taibbi with a story about Michael Winston, who blew the whistle on Countrywide Mortgages. You can guess how http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/a-whistleblowers-horror-story-20150218#ixzz3S9J9l0Dh“>this all turned out, right?
He says he’s spent over a million dollars fighting Countrywide (and the firm that acquired it, Bank of America) in court. At first, that fight proved a good gamble, as a jury granted him a multi-million-dollar award for retaliation and wrongful termination.
But after Winston won that case, an appellate judge not only wiped out that jury verdict, but allowed Bank of America to counterattack him with a vengeance.
Last summer, the bank vindictively put a lien on Winston’s house (one he’d bought, ironically, with a Countrywide mortgage). The bank eventually beat him for nearly $98,000 in court costs.
That single transaction means a good guy in the crisis drama, Winston, had by the end of 2014 paid a larger individual penalty than virtually every wrongdoer connected with the financial collapse of 2008.
When Winston protested his preposterous punishment on the grounds that a trillion-dollar company recouping legal fees from an unemployed whistleblower was unreasonable and unnecessary, a California Superior Court judge denied his argument — get this — on the grounds that Winston failed to prove a disparity in resources between himself and Bank of America!
This is from the court’s ruling:
Plaintiff argues that the disparity in the resources between the individual plaintiff and the defendant Bank of America make it unfair to place the cost of the premium on plaintiff. Plaintiff offered no evidence in support of this argument; it is rejected.
“I mean, Carlos Slim, the world’s richest individual, is nothing next to Bank of America,” says Winston today. “I just have to shake my head at all of it.”
An articulate, well-educated family man who speaks with great pride about his two grown children, who’ve stood by him throughout his troubles, Winston’s life has been turned upside down by his experience.
“I’ve never in my life not worked, but I’m unemployable now,” says Winston, a longtime high-level executive at blue-chip corporations like McDonnell-Douglas and Lockheed Martin. Although he spent most of a lifetime scrupulously saving, he says he’s “worried now that there will be a time when I won’t be able to support my family.”
Even worse, while the bank was going after his savings, Winston was diagnosed with laryngeal cancer. He has been undergoing painful treatment ever since and is literally fighting for his life now, on top of everything else.
“It’s been a very difficult year,” he says.
Yet Winston would likely bear all of this more easily were it not for bitterness over the fact that the sacrifices of whistleblowers like himself have too often resulted in dead ends or worse in recent years.
Ahh, the good old days of yesteryear when the Bush’s and Clinton ruled the world. NAFTA and our disappearing jobs, the end of Glass-Steagall and the deregulation of the banks and an economic collapse, the crushing of the unions and the consequent reduction of our wages; good times.
So why do we want to elect another Bush or another Clinton? Are we that stupid?
Look at the people Jeb intends to hire to advise him. 19 of the 21 he’s already announced worked for Reagan, his father, his brother or all of the above. War criminals like Paul Wolfowitz and John “the Butcher” Negroponte to name two.
Clinton’s list isn’t any better. She’s already got on her payroll the same collection of pro-Wall Street warmongers that worked for Bill “the Masher.”
Can’t we do any better then these two losers?
Equating the Clintons to the Bush Crime Family is totally specious.
Have these stupid white dogs ever heard of backlash?
Why pray tell?
I can relate to you 20+ reason why they are. Can you give us any reasons why they are not?
They only care about the backlash coming from their own kind. That wouldn’t be you and me Ten Bears.
Except that I have it on good authority that they should be afraid of the 99% going forward. Very afraid.
“For the times they are a changin'”
There was a time in America, when I was young (let’s say at some point before GHW Bush was elected and Reagan’s dirty work was cemented in place) when such behavior by a bank or a big company would have got them on the nightly news quite often, and a series of front page stories on the NYT and WaPo, and there probably would have been congressional hearings demanding the bank to explain its behavior, and maybe even a big stink about the courts overturning a jury award and then assisting the bank in its retribution. Maybe even some symbolic legislation would have been passed in response.
Those days are soooo long gone.
Remember how damn long we had to have stories on the Valdez spill in Alaska? It was a long long time. The Union Carbide disaster in Bhopal. That lasted for what seemed like forever and we got some legislation out of it (since repealed by the R’s and their D enablers). Chernobyl and all the fear of radiation effects all the way to Brazil.
And then the BP spill in the Gulf? As soon as the well was allegedly plugged (after months of spewing into the ocean), you almost never heard a thing about it in the media.
Fukushima? Nah, no need to try to measure the radiation in the ocean cuz the ocean is big enough to dilute it all anyway, so shaddup and stop your carping.
I can’t believe this is the same country I grew up in, it has changed so much, and people have become so complacent.