Category: Corruption

Mozilo Skates…

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The Department of Justice, no doubt looking forward rather than backward, had dropped its criminal investigation of former Countrywide CEO Angelo Mozilo:

Federal prosecutors have shelved a criminal investigation of Angelo R. Mozilo after determining that his actions in the mortgage meltdown — which led to $67.5-million settlement against him — did not amount to criminal wrongdoing.

As the former chairman of Countrywide Financial Corp., Mozilo helped fuel the boom in risky subprime loans that led to the crippling of the banking industry and the near-collapse of the financial system.

A federal grand jury in Los Angeles began probing Mozilo in 2008, and four months ago he agreed to pay a $22.5-million fine and to repay $45 million in what the government said were ill-gotten gains to former Countrywide shareholders. The payments settled a civil action by the Securities and Exchange Commission.

As Atrios notes, what this really means is that if you want to run a criminal enterprise, make sure that everyone has a piece of it, because, “If Everybody Is Guilty Then Nobody Is.”

Matt Taibbi is right, our society is now run by people who have declared criminals to be untouchable before the law.

Judge Who Accepted Bribes to Jail Children is Convicted

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Mark Ciavarella, Jr. who took kickbacks from private prisons to sentence children to confinement, has been found guilty of racketeering, money-laundering conspiracy, fraud and filing false income tax returns, though not of bribery:

A federal jury on Friday found a former Pennsylvania judge guilty in a so-called kids-for-cash scheme, in which he took money in exchange for sending juvenile offenders to for-profit detention centers.

………

The jury found him not guilty, however, of seven counts of extortion and 10 counts of bribery.

The former judge faces a maximum sentence of 157 years in prison. The jury also ruled he must forfeit $997,600.

I think that the jury felt that they had to find proof that he would not have sent these kids away if he hadn’t been paid, i.e. what was in his head at the time, which is impossible.

Maybe I’m a bit old fashioned, but the fact that hid the money, that whole money laundering and racketeering bit, is pretty good evidence that he knew what he was doing is illegal, but I wasn’t in the court room.

Here is hoping that the judge sentences him to the max.  What Ciavarella did was truly beneath contempt.

Wisconsin Seems Even More Like Egypt Now……

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So, we are seeing huge, and growing, protests, with a teacher sickout to attend the protests growing, it has now shuttered both the Madison and Milwaukee school systems, and the Democrats in the state Senate have left the state, to prevent quorum for voting on the bill, while, in a bit of traditional religious silliness, religious leaders are offering sanctuary for them if they return to the state:

Religious leaders in Illinois and Wisconsin are offering sanctuary to Wisconsin Democrats as they boycott a vote on a Republican bill that would strip public workers of nearly all their collective bargaining rights.

Actually though the most surprising development is that Barack Obama has actually felt the need to make a declarative statement on all this, as opposed to trying to make nice, and split the difference, calling it an, “assault on unions.”

What, Obama isn’t trying to split the difference and being hopey-changey?  That’s like a f%$#ing sign of the f%$#ing apocalypse.

It would be nice if we would see some more of this, because the Republicans aren’t getting any more reasonable in response to his standard modus operandi.

Unsurprising News of the Day

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Bernie Madoff is now saying that the banks were complicit or willfully blind with regard to his Ponzi scheme:

In his first interview for publication since his arrest in December 2008, Mr. Madoff — looking noticeably thinner and rumpled in khaki prison garb — maintained that family members knew nothing about his crimes.

But during a private two-hour interview in a visitor room here on Tuesday, and in earlier e-mail exchanges, he asserted that unidentified banks and hedge funds were somehow “complicit” in his elaborate fraud, an about-face from earlier claims that he was the only person involved.

………

In many ways, however, Mr. Madoff seemed unchanged. He spoke with great intensity and fluency about his dealings with various banks and hedge funds, pointing to their “willful blindness” and their failure to examine discrepancies between his regulatory filings and other information available to them.

“They had to know,” Mr. Madoff said. “But the attitude was sort of, ‘If you’re doing something wrong, we don’t want to know.’ ”

There’s a surprise.

The banks generated big fees by sending their customers to someone that they thought might not be on the up and up, and “surprise”, they made a point of not turning over the rocks?

Why is only Bernie going to jail?

How Is Wisconsin Like Egypt?

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You know, I’m not entirely sure how they are alike, but recently elected wingnut governor Scott Walker looks like he might be joining Hosni Mubarak is some form of internal exile soon.

You see, in his new budget, he proposed completely gutting the right of public sector employees to unionize, forbidding unions from requiring that dues be paid, forbidding them from negotiating about pensions, healthcare, or even asking for a pay hike above that of inflation, and requiring an annual recertification vote.

He then followed this up with a threat to use the national guard against strikers, and there were somewhere between 10 and 30 thousand protesters in the capital, Madison.

We are already hearing calls for Walker to be recalled, but state law requires that a year follow his swearing in before petitions can be turned in, so that’s off the table for about 10½ more months.

The Only Answer is that Some People Are Above the Law

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The great Matt Taibbi Asks, “Why Isn’t Wall Street in Jail?,” and he doesn’t have an answer per se, but he does explain the consequences of the fact that the banksters are untouchable:

The mental stumbling block, for most Americans, is that financial crimes don’t feel real; you don’t see the culprits waving guns in liquor stores or dragging coeds into bushes. But these frauds are worse than common robberies. They’re crimes of intellectual choice, made by people who are already rich and who have every conceivable social advantage, acting on a simple, cynical calculation: Let’s steal whatever we can, then dare the victims to find the juice to reclaim their money through a captive bureaucracy. They’re attacking the very definition of property — which, after all, depends in part on a legal system that defends everyone’s claims of ownership equally. When that definition becomes tenuous or conditional — when the state simply gives up on the notion of justice — this whole American Dream thing recedes even further from reality.

This is the America that we live in, and Barack Obama and Timothy Geithner like it that way.

It really is a pity that the other side is so thoroughly contemptible, because there appears to be no good option.

Read the whole thing.

Not Enough Bullets

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No, but apparently we look like a bitch


This episode of Sesame Street is brought to you by the letter “B”, as in bullet, and banker …

So, Citi’s CEO, the incomparably incompetent Vikram Pandit, is saying that if if regulators reign in debit card fees, they will have to stick it to poor people:

U.S. banks may cut their services to the poorest Americans as a result of new U.S. financial regulations, including federal caps on debit card processing fees, Citigroup Chief Executive Vikram Pandit said Tuesday.

New U.S. laws, including the Dodd-Frank financial regulation act passed last year, “will change banking,” Pandit said in prepared remarks due to be delivered at an investors’ conference in New York Tuesday.

This makes me want to go all Samuel L. Jackson/Pulp Fiction on his ass …… OK, I want to go all Samuel L. Jackson/Pulp Fiction on his ass dressed in an Elmo suit, but that last bit is just me …… Or at least I think (hope) that the last bit is just me.

Let’s be clear here the debit card fees are a fee levied disproportionately on the poor, and he’s saying that if he can’t f%$# the poor like a bitch, then he won’t serve them?

This guy has a job because he f%$#ed so badly no one wants to take his job, because they would have to fix his mess, and so he, and the whole rotten bank, live off of TARP money, back door Treasury Department subsidies, and the largess of “Helicopter” Ben Bernanke’s Federal Reserve, and he has the nerve to suggest that he is anything but a leech at the public tit.

Un-dirtyword-believable.

Unsurprising News of the Day

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In the last election, the City banks, the London equivalent of Wall Street, supplied half the campaign donations for the Tories:

Financiers in the City of London provided more than 50% of the funding for the Tories last year, new research has revealed, prompting claims that the party is in thrall to the banks.

A study by the Bureau for Investigative Journalism has found that the City accounted for £11.4m of Tory funding – 50.79% of its total haul – in 2010, a general election year. This compared with £2.7m, or 25% of its funding, in 2005, when David Cameron became party leader.

The research also shows that nearly 60 donors gave more than £50,000 to the Tories last year, entitling each of them to a face-to-face meeting with leading members of the party up to and including Cameron.

The study shows the impact that Michael Spencer has had on party funding. He was appointed by Cameron as Tory treasurer in an attempt to reduce the influence of Lord Ashcroft, the party’s former deputy chairman. Spencer was asked by Cameron to increase the number of relatively small donations of £50,000 to curb the influence of large donors such as Ashcroft, and for these smaller donations the City was place to look.

Relatively small donations of fifty thousand quid? That’s like eighty thousand US Dollars!

This might explain why their proposals to reign in bankster pay are so toothless.

More Revolving Door Cronyism at the Obama Administration

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Robert Fisk of The Independent explains why Frank Wisner, Obama’s envoy to Cairo, told reporters that it was important for Mubarak to remain in power for some time, which surprised the reporters as well as the White House, which said that Mr. Wisner was speaking solely on his own behalf.

That’s not really true though. He was speaking on behalf of his employer, the law firm of Patton Boggs, which happens to represents Hosni Mubarak in the United States:

The US State Department and Mr Wisner himself have now both claimed that his remarks were made in a “personal capacity”. But there is nothing “personal” about Mr Wisner’s connections with the litigation firm Patton Boggs, which openly boasts that it advises “the Egyptian military, the Egyptian Economic Development Agency, and has handled arbitrations and litigation on the [Mubarak] government’s behalf in Europe and the US”. Oddly, not a single journalist raised this extraordinary connection with US government officials – nor the blatant conflict of interest it appears to represent.

Mr Wisner is a retired State Department 36-year career diplomat – he served as US ambassador to Egypt, Zambia, the Philippines and India under eight American presidents. In other words, he was not a political appointee. But it is inconceivable Hillary Clinton did not know of his employment by a company that works for the very dictator which Mr Wisner now defends in the face of a massive democratic opposition in Egypt.

So why on earth was he sent to talk to Mubarak, who is in effect a client of Mr Wisner’s current employers?

The only explanation I can see is that rather than “changing the culture of Washington,” it has been subsumed by it.

The Bush and His Evil Minions™ took incompetent self-dealing to new heights, but this appears to be yet ANOTHER area, like torture, illegal wiretaps, etc. where the Obama administration is determined to ape his ape-like predecessor.

Not Enough Bullets

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Here is a guy who is worth more than the GDP of something like 80% of the countries in the world, and he’s bitching because people are not as nice to him as he would like:

What’s eating Jamie Dimon?

At last week’s World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, the JPMorgan Chase chief executive once again lambasted the media and politicians for portraying all bankers as greedy evil-doers.

It was at least the 12th time since the start of the financial crisis that Dimon has complained about Wall Street critics painting all bankers as cut from the same cloth. But the timing of his latest outburst seemed odd.

In December, as part of President Barack Obama’s bid to make nice with U.S. business leaders, Dimon was invited to a private Oval Office one-on-one with the president to discuss the economy. Dimon and his wife Judy were also guests at the state dinner the White House arranged for Chinese President Hu Jintao last month. And one of Dimon’s top executives, Bill Daley, was tapped by the president as chief of staff.

BTW, the reason that the media portrays, “all bankers as greedy evil-doers,” and critics of our banking system paint, “all bankers as cut from the same cloth,” is because it’s true.

You are all a bunch of contemptible greed-heads, Mr. “We started shorting Bernie Madoff because we knew he was a fraud, but didn’t bother telling anyone.”

This is why we need to prosecute every one of these rat-bastards to the fullest extent allowed by law.

Scientists National Enquirer Reporters Discover a Mythical Creature

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The creature in question is a straight Republican, one John Boehner, who seems to spend a lot of his time f%$#ing staffers and lobbyists, as well as f%$#ing the country:

New Speaker of the House JOHN BOEHNER is embroiled in a bombshell sex scandal – involving at least two different women, The ENQUIRER has learned!

Capitol Hill insiders and political bloggers have been buzzing about an upcoming New York Times probe – detailing an alleged affair that the 61-year-old married father of two had with pretty Washington lobbyist LISBETH LYONS.

And an ENQUIRER investigation has uncovered a bedroom encounter that Boehner – second in line of succession to the presidency – allegedly had with LEIGH LaMORA, a 46-year-old former press secretary to ex-Colorado Congressman JOEL HEFLEY.

The Ohio native, a congressman for 20 years, and his wife Deborah, 62, have been married for 37 years.

It should be noted that Ms. Lyons has lobbied for industries that have shipped jobs from Boehner’s own district overseas.

So while he was f%$#ing her, he was also f%$#ing his constituents.

I know what you are saying, but the Enquirer nailed John Edwards about his nailing Rielle Hunter, so they do have some cred on this, particularly since people have alluded to Boehner’s wandering ………… Eye ………*

*I bet that you thought that I was going to use a crude term for a body part that is pronounced the way his name is spelled. While the thought did cross my mind, so the the phrase, “fish in a barrel.” It would be like Dick Cheney when he shoots a bunch of birds (or a lawyer) released right in front of him.

Bitch

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Evan Bayh, after saying that he would not run for reelection, because it’s all gotten too partisan, has joined a K-Street lobbying firm.

Just so you know, he didn’t leave because he did not like the partisan atmosphere, it’s because he wanted to be President, and realized that the whole party saw him as a smarmy corporatist opportunist.

Well, at least I’m not disappointed by this.

Big Surprise, the New Black Panther “Voter Intimidation” Was a Manufactured News Event

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Listen to GOP Lawyers Manipulating the Video at the Time

What a surprise. One of the things that had the right wing echo chamber, and George W. Bush’s corrupted Civil Rights Commission, the allegation that the New Black Panthers were somehow a part of of a Democratic voter intimidation scheme (in the blackest part of Philadelphia?).

Well it’s all a fraud, and it has been literally since day 1:

In the extended version of the footage, posted by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights this month, a police officer tells Morse to back off. That’s when the commotion begins.

The video shows someone off-screen to Morse’s left, telling the officer “I got him, I got him.” A man who appears to be Chris Hill, a Republican poll watcher who was accused of intimidating voters at the polls by another woman at the location, says “Put it down. You’ve got enough.”

Then Bartle Bull chimes in. “Don’t you threaten him with your hands. You’re threatening him. Don’t you use your hands!”

………

The video shows that the white Republican poll watchers who showed up to the majority African-American precinct knew exactly what kind of media sensation they had on their hands.

“We’re on the same team,” says another Republican poll watcher off screen.

“You’re f%$#ing up the story. Don’t f%$# up the story,” one unidentified poll watcher tells Morse.

“You guys are lawyers, I’m a videographer,” Morse says.

Morse told TPM in an e-mail that he doesn’t think it was Hill who was intimidating him, but says someone was.

“A couple of guys wearing SUITS were were actually intimidating ME at this point,” Morse told TPM in an e-mail. “It was certainly not Mr. Hill who told me to put the camera down. It was one or two GOP lawyers, whose names I never got and I never saw again.”

“I remember a crowd of maybe 10 lawyers (or seemingly lawyers, suits I should say, since Bull isn’t a lawyer) standing around — in the original (more famous) video — one lawyer makes it into one of the shots, but im pretty sure it was another guy — not the bald guy in the shot — who was being a dick to me,” Morse told TPM in an e-mail. “At least one person was being a dick, and I was quite angry at this point when they were telling me to shut the camera — hence the expletive (which i make no apologies for using!).”

(%$# mine)

They didn’t just edit the tape, they manipulated the taping on site at time.

The ‘Phant lawyers were attempting to edit the event in real time. 

It makes reality difficult to determine, but I always fall back on what work when the USSR was at its zenith: If they accuse you of some sort of skulduggery, it is safe to assume that this is what they are doing themselves.

If You Don’t Have the Law, or the Facts, and You Can’t Pound the Table, Because Someone is Slamming Your Face on It, Then

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Shred all relevant documents:

Federal bankruptcy judges in Delaware are due to hold separate hearings Monday on requests by two defunct subprime mortgage lenders to destroy thousands of boxes or original loan documents.

The requests, by trustees liquidating Mortgage Lenders Network USA and American Home Mortgage, come despite intense concerns that paperwork critical to foreclosures and securitized investments may be lost.

A series of recent court rulings have increased the importance of original loan documents, holding that they are essential for investors to prove ownership of mortgages and to have the right to foreclose.

Nope, nothing to hide here, it’s just too expensive to store boxes of documents.

What you are hearing right is not two 800 horsepower document shredders starting up.

This is More Typical of the Soviet Gulag Era, not the United States

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Alleged Wikileaks source Bradley Manning has only one civilian non-lawyer visitor, David House, and he and Jane “Firedog Lake” Hamsher, who is generally his ride to the brig in Quantico, were detained, and her car was towed.

According to House’s and Hamsher’s reports, the guards said that the orders came from the top, and they were made to stand outside for an extended period in sub-freezing weather.

Seriously, one can assume, based on his background, that Barack “The worst constitutional law professor ever” Obama should know better, but it appears that he just does not care.

If you are an American citizen, you are more at risk of indefinite non-judicial detention or assassination then you ever were under George W. Bush.

Eric Arthur Blair* is Spinning in His Grave

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Barack “The Worst Constitutional Law Professor Ever” Obama and Eric “Place” Holder have drawn up new guidelines on Miranda warnings when terrorism is involved, and they are declaring them secret:

The Obama administration has issued new guidance on use of the Miranda warning in interrogations of terrorism suspects, potentially chipping away at the rule that bars the government from using information in court if it was gathered before a suspect was informed of his right to remain silent and to an attorney.

But the Department of Justice is refusing to publicly release the guidance, with a spokesman describing it in an interview as an “internal document.” So we don’t know the administration’s exact interpretation of Miranda, even though it may have significantly reshaped the way terrorism interrogations are conducted.

You have the right to remain silent, only, we won’t tell you if and when that applies.

The Bush/Cheney constitutional Alice in Wonderland games are now made legitimate, bipartisan and routine by the Obama administration.

Alan Grayson for President in 2012.

*George Orwell.

The Vampire Squid Has Conquered Time Itself

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As if nearly destroying the world wasn’t enough, when Goldman Sachs became a bank holding company, allowing it to get billions in Federal Reserve bailouts, it moved its fiscal year from starting on December 1 to January 1, as regulations required, and then it disappeared the missing month of December, 2008, and loaded the “orphan month” with huge losses as well as huge bonuses to its employees that basically went down the memory hole”

As a result, some great information gets missed, and is that much harder for the rest of us to find. For instance, the main news in the story is this:

Nearly 36 million stock options were granted to employees in December 2008 — 10 times the amount issued the previous year — when the stock was trading at $78.78. Since those uncertain days, Goldman’s business has roared back and its share price has more than doubled, closing on Tuesday at nearly $175.

The story goes on to detail the dates at which the options can be exercised. But there’s much more to be said on this matter. For one thing, the monster option grant took place during Goldman’s notorious orphan month, meaning that it would never appear in an annual report. And for another thing, it was very expensive even at the time.

……

Remember that December 2008, when Goldman made these grants, was the worst month in the company’s history: it lost $1.3 billion, and was mired in the depths of the financial crisis. Yet many partners will have received stock and options awards that month which are worth hefty eight-figure sums today. Not bad for a month’s work.

(emphasis mine)

I cannot see this as anything but a deliberate attempt to loot the company at the expense of the share holders.

Why these ratf%$#s aren’t under criminal investigation is beyond me.

Obama is a Dick Cheney Wet Dream

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Sorry for the mental image, but Dick Cheney is now saying that he likes Obama’s policies on war, illegal wiretaps, and torture:

In the early months of Obama’s presidency, the American Right did to him what they do to every Democratic politician: they accused him of being soft on defense (specifically “soft on Terror”) and leaving the nation weak and vulnerable to attack. But that tactic quickly became untenable as everyone (other than his hardest-core followers) was forced to acknowledge that Obama was embracing and even expanding — rather than reversing — the core Bush/Cheney approach to Terrorism. As a result, leading right-wing figures began lavishing Obama with praise — and claiming vindication — based on Obama’s switch from harsh critic of those policies (as a candidate) to their leading advocate (once in power).

So the overbearing security state, in which the President or his designees, can detain you forever without trial and torture you, while tapping all of our phones, is now the new normal, and Cheney and his ilk are ecstatic, because they now know that there will be no prosecutions.

Thanks a lot, Barry.  You must have been the worst constitutional law professor ever.