{"id":182178,"date":"2015-11-29T20:05:00","date_gmt":"2015-11-30T01:05:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2015\/11\/29\/cui-bono\/"},"modified":"2015-11-29T20:05:00","modified_gmt":"2015-11-30T01:05:00","slug":"cui-bono","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2015\/11\/29\/cui-bono\/","title":{"rendered":"Cui Bono?"},"content":{"rendered":"

As Bear who Swims observes<\/a>, it turns out that the latest “bipartisan” efforts to reform criminal justice have been hijacked by a Koch brothers attempt to make it next to impossible to prosecute white colar crimes<\/a>:<\/p>\n

For more than a year, a rare coalition of liberal groups and libertarian-minded conservatives has joined the Obama administration in pushing for the most significant liberalization of America\u2019s criminal justice laws since the beginning of the drug war. That effort has had perhaps no ally more important than Koch Industries, the conglomerate owned by a pair of brothers who are well-known conservative billionaires. Now, as Congress works to turn those goals into legislation, that joint effort is facing its most significant test \u2014 over a House bill that Koch Industries says would make the criminal justice system fairer, but that the Justice Department says would make it significantly harder to prosecute corporate polluters, producers of tainted food and other white-collar criminals. The tension among the unlikely allies emerged over the last week as the House Judiciary Committee, with bipartisan support, approved a package of bills intended to simplify the criminal code and reduce unnecessarily severe sentences. <\/span>

<\/span>\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/span>

<\/span>One of those bills<\/a> \u2014 which has been supported by Koch Industries, libertarians and business groups \u2014 would make wholesale changes to certain federal criminal laws, requiring prosecutors to prove that suspects \u201cknew, or had reason to believe, the conduct was unlawful,\u201d and did not simply unknowingly violate the law.<\/span>

<\/span>Many laws already carry such a requirement \u2014 known as \u201cmens rea\u201d \u2014 but Congress left it out of many others, and libertarian groups<\/a> say that has made it too easy to unknowingly violate obscure laws. Some environmentalists argue, however, that the real motive of Charles Koch<\/a>, the philanthropist and the company chairman, in supporting the legislation is to block federal regulators from pursuing potential criminal actions against his family\u2019s network of industrial and energy companies, a charge the company denies.<\/span>

<\/span>\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/span>

<\/span>
<\/span>The proposed standard, Justice Department officials said, might have prevented guilty pleas in a variety of cases, such as the charges filed in 2013 against Jensen Farms<\/a> of Colorado for failing to adequately clean cantaloupe, resulting in an outbreak of food-borne illness that was cited as a factor in at least 33 deaths. It also might have prevented the plea in the 2012 charges against the owner of a pharmacy who sold mislabeled, super-potent painkillers blamed in three deaths.<\/span>

<\/span>The same powers, officials said, have allowed the government to pursue charges against major corporations, like the 2011 conviction of Guidant<\/a>, the giant medical device company, for failing to report safety problems with defibrillators<\/a>, used to restart heartbeats.<\/span>

<\/span>\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/span>

<\/span>Mark V. Holden, general counsel and senior vice president at Koch Industries, acknowledged in an interview this week that the company\u2019s efforts to pursue revisions in federal criminal law were inspired in part by a criminal case filed 15 years ago<\/a> against Koch Industries claiming that it covered up releases of hazardous air pollution at a Texas oil refinery. Those charges resulted in a guilty plea by the company<\/a> and a $20 million penalty.<\/span>

<\/span>That case, Mr. Holden said, demonstrated that the Justice Department too often pursues criminal cases even when the accused had no criminal intent. The company itself discovered the problems and notified the authorities, he said, meaning the company did not knowingly violate the law.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Yeah, right.<\/p>\n

Koch industries did nothing wrong.<\/p>\n

If you believe that, I have some swampland in Florida for you.<\/p>\n

I was wondering when the other shoe would drop.<\/p>\n

I kind of figured that there would be a Republican turd in the punch bowl.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As Bear who Swims observes, it turns out that the latest “bipartisan” efforts to reform criminal justice have been hijacked by a Koch brothers attempt to make it next to impossible to prosecute white colar crimes: For more than a year, a rare coalition of liberal groups and libertarian-minded conservatives has joined the Obama administration …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[998,969,972,1020,978],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-182178","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-congress","category-evil","category-justice","category-legislation","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182178"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=182178"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182178\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=182178"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=182178"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=182178"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}