🚀 go-pugleaf

In article 
<95f9d415-c397-42db-9de5-67a6510c1c9d@r19g2000prm.googlegroups.com>,
 brad herschel <bradherschel@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Feb 25, 6:39�pm, "Leroy N. Soetoro" <leroysoet...@usurper.org>
> wrote:
> > http://www.ny1.com/content/top_stories/134099/tsa-agents-charged-with-
> > stealing-cash-from-passenger-s-bag
> >
> > Two Transportation Security Administration screeners at John F. Kennedy
> > Airport have been charged with stealing $40,000 from a checked bag.
> >

Not good, but chump change compared to fossil fuel extractors, the 
military-industrial complex, and investment bankers.


<http://www.democracynow.org/2011/2/22/matt_taibbi_why_isnt_wall_street>
Dean Baker, who concludes, "Most of the pension shortfall using the 
current methodology is attributable to the plunge in the stock market in 
the years 2007-2009. If pension funds had earned returns just equal to 
the interest rate on 30-year Treasury bonds in the three years since 
2007, their assets would be more than $850 billion greater than they are 
today."


<http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/why-isnt-wall-street-in-jail-2
0110216>

Why Isn't Wall Street in Jail?
Financial crooks brought down the world's economy � but the feds are 
doing more to protect them than to prosecute them
By Matt Taibbi
FEBRUARY 16, 2011 9:00 AM ET

Over drinks at a bar on a dreary, snowy night in Washington this past 
month, a former Senate investigator laughed as he polished off his beer.
"Everything's fucked up, and nobody goes to jail," he said. "That's your 
whole story right there. Hell, you don't even have to write the rest of 
it. Just write that."
I put down my notebook. "Just that?"
"That's right," he said, signaling to the waitress for the check. 
"Everything's fucked up, and nobody goes to jail. You can end the piece 
right there."
Nobody goes to jail. This is the mantra of the financial-crisis era, one 
that saw virtually every major bank and financial company on Wall Street 
embroiled in obscene criminal scandals that impoverished millions and 
collectively destroyed hundreds of billions, in fact, trillions of 
dollars of the world's wealth � and nobody went to jail. Nobody, that 
is, except Bernie Madoff, a flamboyant and pathological celebrity con 
artist, whose victims happened to be other rich and famous people.

<snip>

. . . As for President Obama, what is there to be said? Goldman Sachs 
was his number-one private campaign contributor. He put a Citigroup 
executive in charge of his economic transition team, and he just named 
an executive of JP Morgan Chase, the proud owner of $7.7 million in 
Chase stock, his new chief of staff. "The betrayal that this represents 
by Obama to everybody is just � we're not ready to believe it," says 
Budde, a classmate of the president from their Columbia days. "He's 
really fucking us over like that? Really? That's really a JP Morgan guy, 
really?"

Which is not to say that the Obama era has meant an end to law 
enforcement. On the contrary: In the past few years, the administration 
has allocated massive amounts of federal resources to catching 
wrongdoers � of a certain type. Last year, the government deported 
393,000 people, at a cost of $5 billion. Since 2007, felony immigration 
prosecutions along the Mexican border have surged 77 percent; nonfelony 
prosecutions by 259 percent. In Ohio last month, a single mother was 
caught lying about where she lived to put her kids into a better school 
district; the judge in the case tried to sentence her to 10 days in jail 
for fraud, declaring that letting her go free would "demean the 
seriousness" of the offenses.

So there you have it. Illegal immigrants: 393,000. Lying moms: one. 
Bankers: zero. The math makes sense only because the politics are so 
obvious. You want to win elections, you bang on the jailable class. You 
build prisons and fill them with people for selling dime bags and 
stealing CD players. But for stealing a billion dollars? For fraud that 
puts a million people into foreclosure? Pass. It's not a crime. Prison 
is too harsh. Get them to say they're sorry, and move on. Oh, wait � 
let's not even make them say they're sorry. That's too mean; let's just 
give them a piece of paper with a government stamp on it, officially 
clearing them of the need to apologize, and make them pay a fine 
instead. But don't make them pay it out of their own pockets, and don't 
ask them to give back the money they stole. In fact, let them profit 
from their collective crimes, to the tune of a record $135 billion in 
pay and benefits last year. What's next? Taxpayer-funded massages for 
every Wall Street executive guilty of fraud?

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.
----

Less than one week after the federal government forked over $85 billion 
to bail out AIG, executives of AIG headed for a week-long retreat at a 
luxury resort and spa, the St. Regis Resort in Monarch Beach, 
California, which cost $444,000 and featured spa treatments, banquets, 
and golf outings.[57][58]

It was reported that the trip was a reward for top-performing 
life-insurance agents planned before the bailout.[59] 

Less than 24 hours after the news of the party was first reported by the 
media, it was reported that the Federal Reserve had agreed to give AIG 
an additional loan of up to $37.8 billion.[60] 

AP reported on October 17 that AIG executives spent $86,000 on a 
previously scheduled English hunting trip. 

News of the lavish spending came just days after AIG received an 
additional $37.8 billion loan from the Federal Reserve, on top of a 
previous $85 billion emergency loan granted the month before. Regarding 
the hunting trip, the company responded, "We regret that this event was 
not canceled."[61] An October 30, 2008 article from CNBC reported that 
AIG had already drawn upon $90 billion of the $123 billion allocated for 
loans.

[62] On November 10, 2008, just a few days before renegotiating another 
bailout with the US Government for $40 billion, ABC News reported that 
AIG spent $343,000 on a trip to a lavish resort in Phoenix, Arizona. [63]
-----

If these bozos have money for bonuses and junkets, they have money to 
repay the American tax-payer.
-----

�Contrary to what those in power would like you to believe, so that 
you�ll give up your pension, cut your wages, and settle for the life 
your great-grandparents had, America is not broke. Not by a long shot,� 
said Michael Moore at Saturday�s labor rally in Madison opposing 
Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker�s attempt to end the collective bargaining 
rights for the majority of public sector workers. �The country is awash 
in wealth and cash. It�s just that it�s not in your hands. It has been 
transferred, in the greatest heist in history, from the workers and 
consumers to the banks and the portfolios of the uber-rich.� 
- Michael Moore
<http://www.democracynow.org/2011/3/7/michael_moore_joins_wisconsin_labor
_protests>


<http://voices.washingtonpost.com/livecoverage/2008/10/after_bailout_aig_
executives_h.html>

<http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/05/business/05immigration.html?ex=1270353
600&en=78c87ac4641dc383&ei=5090&partner=kmarx>

<http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2009/03/year-without-mexican>

<http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/29/business/29tax.html>

<http://www.democracynow.org2008/10/17ex_asst_treasury_sec_paul_craig>

You're a pile of crap (name).
-- 
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hYIC0eZYEtI>
<http://www.democracynow.org/blog/2011/3/7/michael_moore>
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZkDikRLQrw>
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MyE5wjc4XOw>