I thought this was really interesting. A lot of big-name legal types got together to talk about reform and corporate crime, but the press wasn’t allowed to be there.
Category: Dirty Rotten Scoundrels
Deja vu all over again
And yet, no one in power seems to have learned anything at all — because insiders never criticize other insiders!
WASHINGTON — The violent ambitions of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria have been condemned across the world: in Europe and the Middle East, by Sunni nations and Shiite ones, and by sworn enemies like Israel and Iran. Pope Francis joined the call for ISIS to be stopped.
But as President Obama prepares to send the United States on what could be a yearslong military campaign against the militant group, American intelligence agencies have concluded that it poses no immediate threat to the United States. Some officials and terrorism experts believe that the actual danger posed by ISIS has been distorted in hours of television punditry and alarmist statements by politicians, and that there has been little substantive public debate about the unintended consequences of expanding American military action in the Middle East.
Daniel Benjamin, who served as the State Department’s top counterterrorism adviser during Mr. Obama’s first term, said the public discussion about the ISIS threat has been a “farce,” with “members of the cabinet and top military officers all over the place describing the threat in lurid terms that are not justified.”
Continue reading “Deja vu all over again”
Class war
So here we have biblical values in practice:
Daphne Richards was a full-time manager at a Colorado Chick-fil-A when she received a breast cancer diagnosis in May. She took leave for a double mastectomy and when she had been cleared to return to work, she was shocked when management told her she was being demoted:
Richards’ documents show that not only was she being demoted, she was going from a 40-plus hour work week to a 10-to-15-hour week and her hourly wage was dropping from $14 to $10 per hour.
After the story began gaining attention, management eventually offered to increase her hours, but maintain she was demoted for poor performance and out of concern she wouldn’t be able to handle the work load….
So much for operating the company based on “biblical values.”
I was getting my hair cut the other day, and the woman sitting next to me started tsk-tsking over fast food workers asking for $15 an hour.
“Did you know they already pay McDonald’s workers that much in Europe?” I said. “They can afford it, they’d just rather pay it out in dividends to their stockholders.”
She looked shocked. “Go ahead, look it up,” I urged her. “I think it’s a real shame that people in this country have gotten so used to settling for crumbs that asking for a living wage seems ridiculous to them. If you work hard, you should make enough to pay your bills. Time to get out and vote, boot out these politicians who only want to help rich people.”
My hairdresser nodded. “I’m voting, everyone I know is voting.”
Good. Yes, the Dems aren’t that much better. But they’re still better, and when the economy is bleeding, you have to think in terms of triage.
Local judge stands up to lying cops
And takes much criticism as a result, of course. Pretty shocking story, even to me. I can’t stand Lynne Abraham, she was a stain on the city’s reputation and I’m glad she’s gone:
“There’s an enormous inequity in a system that permits a police officer’s testimony to be unassailed and have absolutely no repercussions,” he warned. “No one man’s testimony should be elevated by any status in his life. It’s a charge we give regularly to our juries.”
Betts was not the first officer to have his testimony called into question by Rau. After taking the bench in 2001, she quickly became, the Inquirer reported, “one of Philadelphia’s most controversial judges — developing a reputation for refusing to believe sworn testimony from police officers and for throwing out key evidence.” It’s a reputation that’s rare among city judges.
District Attorney Lynne Abraham’s office, according to media reports, began to collect a “dossier” on her objectionable rulings. In 2002, she criticized Rau’s conduct as “horrible” and “grotesque,” accusing her of having an “institutional bias against police officers” and for handing out lenient sentences.
In one case, Abraham contended that Rau had not sufficiently explained her decision to suppress evidence of a handgun allegedly seized from a 23-year-old West Oak Lane man. But the two officers’ accounts of the incident differed, and Rau questioned their credibility.
“Judge Rau and others, they show no safe haven for any citizen in the city,” Abraham told the Daily News. “Sometimes the only thing to do to get them to do the right thing is to embarrass them.”
Critics say that Abraham wanted to instill fear in judges like Rau who dared to cross her and question police.
Erskine Bowles, pay to play?
Yes, that Erskine Bowles. Of “Fix The Debt” and the Simpson-Bowles team that was trying to make a deal to cut our Social Security? Uh huh.
Free speech for corporations, not for you
Man, this stuff pisses me off:
What started as a short YouTube video and a couple of local news interviews about a Texas landowner being able to light his water on fire has ballooned into a free speech fight that’s being closely watched by anti-fracking activists across the country.
Steve Lipsky has complained for years that fracking company Range Resources polluted his drinking water and streams that run through his property. The company sued him in 2011 for defaming its reputation for environmental stewardship.
Now Lipsky will have a chance to argue his case in front of the Texas Supreme Court, The Texas Tribune reported this week. The court will decide whether his right to free speech renders Range’s defamation case moot. If the court rules in his favor, the company’s lawsuit will be thrown out. If that doesn’t happen, he may be on the hook for $3 million.
The case won’t be heard until December, but environmentalists are already drawing parallels between it and other incidents across the U.S. in which hydraulic fracturing companies and anti-fracking activists have butted heads. Lipsky’s supporters say his case adds to a growing list of instances that show governments and courts are too quick to kowtow to industry demands. But if he wins, they say, it could embolden the anti-fracking movement across the country by letting activists know they’re free to badmouth fracking companies without fear of retribution.
“Range has a right to protect its reputation, but the speech they’re complaining about is protected speech,” Lipsky’s lawyer Joe Sibley said. “If we’re going to allow companies to sue people for defamation every time they don’t like what’s being said, then that basically allows corporations to silence public participation.”
Absolute horse manure
Once again, the special interests are sharpening their knives to go after Social Security and Medicare. I mean, Council for Foreign Relations’ “Renewing America” project? The name alone makes me want to puke:
While other large wealthy countries have been cutting their entitlement programs, the United States has left Medicare and Social Security mostly untouched. Recent U.S. budget cuts have instead focused on discretionary spending, which goes toward areas such as education, infrastructure, and research and development—all of which constitute investments in future economic growth.
“By 2040, public debt is projected to top 110 percent, equal to the highest levels reached during the Second World War,” Renewing America Associate Director Rebecca Strauss writes. “And absent any policy changes it will likely keep climbing afterward into uncharted territory for the United States.”
Americans will have to make difficult choices to get the public debt load under control. Sequestration, which took effect in 2013, only affected government spending projected to decline as a share of GDP. Meanwhile, U.S. policymakers left cutting entitlements or increasing tax revenues largely off the table, despite the fact that entitlements will account for nearly all new federal spending in the future.
“Just to slow debt growth to the rate of GDP growth (or a steady debt-to-GDP ratio) from today through 2040, changes to current policy would have to be dramatic: cut entitlements by 10 percent, cut discretionary spending by 23 percent, increase tax revenue by 6 percent, or some combination of the three,” Strauss notes. “Adjustments to actually lower the debt-to-GDP ratio would be even more painful.”
You already know why this is crap, right? I don’t have to explain why all over again?
H/t Price Benowitz LLP.
Riding the health care bus
I spent much of my day in the hospital yesterday, getting my sinuses evaluated. (I have to admit, I was thrilled when getting a CAT scan was as simple as walking over to the next office.) The verdict? They’re perfectly clear! I thought I had another sinus tumor, because I had the same symptoms as the last time.
“Then why does my ear vibrate when I talk or sing?” I asked the specialist. “And why did the CPAP machine give me an earache on that side?” Off to another office for a hearing test.
Turns out my hearing is borderline — not quite hearing aid territory, but close, they said. (Hah! And here, all those years, I was such a good little girl, wearing earplugs to concerts.) The thing is, there’s nothing actually wrong with my ear drums, yet my hearing on one side is erratic — so now they want an MRI of my brain.
Continue reading “Riding the health care bus”
Too big to punish
I’m beginning to think that they really do want a revolution, or they wouldn’t keep doing shit like this, right?
The U.S. Department of Labor is proposing to waive sanctions against Credit Suisse Group AG (NYSE:AG) that would prevent it from managing pension money in the wake of the bank pleading guilty to criminal charges. The little-noticed waiver was outlined in an announcement published in the Federal Register. The government will accept public comment on the proposal until mid-October, and then make a final decision.
The proposed waiver from federal sanctions comes amid criticism that the Obama administration has gone too easy on major financial institutions that break the law. The proposed waiver for Credit Suisse, whose employees weremajor financial backers of Obama’s election campaigns, also comes a few months after a study showed a linkage between campaign contributions and lighter enforcement actions by federal agencies.
In its announcement outlining the waiver, the Department of Labor notes that Credit Suisse “operated an illegal cross-border banking business that knowingly and willfully aided and assisted thousands of U.S. clients in opening and maintaining undeclared accounts” and in “using sham entities” to hide money. The bank pled guilty to felony charges in May.
Under existing Department of Labor rules, the conviction would prevent Credit Suisse from being designated a “Qualified Professional Asset Manager” (QPAM). That designation exempts firms from other federal laws, giving them the special status required to do business with many pension funds. The Obama administration’s proposed waiver would exempt Credit Suisse from existing anti-criminal sanctions, and allow Credit Suisse to get the QPAM designation.
Credit Suisse declined International Business Times request for comment.
What about the real bankers?
It’s always the lower-level traders and not the systemic fraud that crashed the economy. This is peanuts compared to what the big Wall Street banks pulled in on mortgage fraud and the related derivatives. So why aren’t the Jamie Dimons of the world on trial? I think we all know why:
NEW YORK (AP) — An Ivy League-educated ex-portfolio manager convicted of enabling his firm to earn more than a quarter-billion dollars through insider trading on a promising Alzheimer’s drug trial was sentenced Monday to nine years in prison by a judge who said the “staggering” fraud deserved lengthy incarceration.
Mathew Martoma, his face drawn, left Manhattan federal court holding his wife’s hand after Judge Paul Gardephe ordered him to report to prison in November following his February conviction for conspiracy and securities fraud.
A jury found Martoma, of Boca Raton, Florida, had flattered and enriched two medical doctors to elicit the secret results of an Alzheimer’s drug trial so he could trade ahead of public announcements, enabling his Stamford, Connecticut-based employer, SAC Capital Advisors, to earn more than $275 million illegally. His firm, headed by billionaire Steven A. Cohen, then rewarded him with more than $9 million in bonuses.
The judge ordered Martoma, 40, to forfeit $9.3 million, including his home and banks accounts holding millions of dollars.
Peanuts. Nothing. Now, here’s an interesting approach I like much better:
The case started as a routine mortgage-fraud prosecution, brought by none other than the aforementioned U.S. Attorney Benjamin Wagner. A group of eastern European immigrants had bought houses in California in 2006, in a real-estate market that was in the early stages of collapse. According to the indictment, filed in 2012, these people’s mortgage applications contained blank spots and wrong information; they were accused of getting the mortgages in order to sell the houses to one another at pumped-up prices in what is called a “straw buyer” scheme. Also, they defaulted on the loans.
However, members of the immigrants’ legal defense team—several of them appointed by the state—had read the newspapers over the years and were aware of the kinds of things that had gone on in real estate during the bubble. They knew, for example, that in the go-go days of the last decade, the mortgage origination industry routinely cranked out “stated income” loans—also known as “liar’s loans”—to people who were obviously unable to make the payments. The bankers back then almost never checked on whether the borrower was telling the truth about their income; they just wanted to make the loan. So the defense team in Sacramento came up with a novel strategy: How can the borrower have committed fraud on a mortgage application if the lender didn’t care whether their answers were truthful?