Excerpt: "Here's another thing that boggles my mind: You get busted for drugs in this country, and it turns out you can make yourself ineligible to receive food stamps. But you can be a serial fraud offender like Citigroup, which has repeatedly been dragged into court for the same offenses and has repeatedly ignored court injunctions to abstain from fraud, and this does not make you ineligible to receive $45 billion in bailouts and other forms of federal assistance."
Matt Taibbi talks about US politics. (photo: Neilson Barnard/Getty Images)
Woman Gets Jail for Food-Stamp Fraud;
Wall Street Fraudsters Get Bailouts
18 November 11
ad a quick piece of news I wanted to call attention to, in light of the recent developments at Zuccotti Park. For all of those who say the protesters have it wrong, and don't really have a cause worth causing public unrest over, consider this story, sent to me by a friend on the Hill.
Last week, a federal judge in Mississippi sentenced a mother of two named Anita McLemore to three years in federal prison for lying on a government application in order to obtain food stamps.
Apparently in this country you become ineligible to eat if you have a record of criminal drug offenses. States have the option of opting out of that federal ban, but Mississippi is not one of those states. Since McLemore had four drug convictions in her past, she was ineligible to receive food stamps, so she lied about her past in order to feed her two children.
The total "cost" of her fraud was $4,367. She has paid the money back. But paying the money back was not enough for federal Judge Henry Wingate.
Wingate had the option of sentencing McLemore according to federal guidelines, which would have left her with a term of two months to eight months, followed by probation. Not good enough! Wingate was so outraged by McLemore's fraud that he decided to serve her up the deluxe vacation, using another federal statute that permitted him to give her up to five years.
He ultimately gave her three years, saying, "The defendant's criminal record is simply abominable.... She has been the beneficiary of government generosity in state court."
Compare this court decision to the fraud settlements on Wall Street. Like McLemore, fraud defendants like Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, and Deutsche Bank have "been the beneficiary of government generosity." Goldman got $12.9 billion just through the AIG bailout. Citigroup got $45 billion, plus hundreds of billions in government guarantees.
All of these companies have been repeatedly dragged into court for fraud, and not one individual defendant has ever been forced to give back anything like a significant portion of his ill-gotten gains. The closest we've come is in a fraud case involving Citi, in which a pair of executives, Gary Crittenden and Arthur Tildesley, were fined the token amounts of $100,000 and $80,000, respectively, for lying to shareholders about the extent of Citi's debt.
Neither man was forced to admit to intentional fraud. Both got to keep their jobs.
Anita McLemore, meanwhile, lied to feed her children, gave back every penny of her "fraud" when she got caught, and is now going to do three years in prison. Explain that, Eric Holder!
Here's another thing that boggles my mind: You get busted for drugs in this country, and it turns out you can make yourself ineligible to receive food stamps.
But you can be a serial fraud offender like Citigroup, which has repeatedly been dragged into court for the same offenses and has repeatedly ignored court injunctions to abstain from fraud, and this does not make you ineligible to receive $45 billion in bailouts and other forms of federal assistance.
This is the reason why all of these settlements allowing banks to walk away without "admissions of wrongdoing" are particularly insidious. A normal person, once he gets a felony conviction, immediately begins to lose his rights as a citizen.
But white-collar criminals of the type we've seen in recent years on Wall Street - both the individuals and the corporate "citizens" - do not suffer these ramifications. They commit crimes without real consequence, allowing them to retain access to the full smorgasbord of subsidies and financial welfare programs that, let's face it, are the source of most of their profits.
Why, I wonder, does a bank that has committed fraud multiple times get to retain access to the Federal Reserve discount window? Why should Citigroup and Goldman Sachs get to keep their status as Primary Dealers of US government debt? Are there not enough banks without extensive histories of fraud and malfeasance that can be awarded these de facto subsidies?
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Think of the 50 million Americans in poverty, and then think of how every
one of those would be out of poverty
for the amount of money it costs to
keep people in jail...
What this brings to mind is what for some time I've considered a major flaw in our non-functional govt. - governmental immunity, inherited via common law's sovereign immunity in England.
A retired former top administrator in the food stamp office told me that while she worked there, the percentage of errors made by the office, causing food stamps to be withdrawn/withe ld, was less than 1%. Today, that percentage of errors is 18%, hardly accidental and surely causing grief beyond belief from resulting hunger.
But, is the govt. office and its 18% errorites held accountable/fin ed/jailed? No way, Jose. They are under the protective umbrella of govt. immunity. Kinda like the bought out, Kochsucking pols. and their coherts are also under that same umbrella.
WHAT DO WE WANT? ACCOUNTABILITY! WHEN DO WE WANT IT? NOW!!!
Go, OWSers, Go!
Please keep reporting. This systematic corruption is one of the main reasons the public is angry. Banksters will eventually be punished (with jail time) if enough people realize the immensity of this ongoing fraud.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TkcuNX4vrS8
Well, as Romney said "Corporations are people." So by that logic Citibank should go to jail for a lot longer than Anita McLamore!
Sure, one should forgive and forget, and make room for a reconstructed Mississippi--bu t still Mississippi itself seems all-too-dedicat ed to some twisted sense of things. One can question too though if the other forty-nine states are any better.
Doctors, manufacturers and even 'Joe the plumber', that is, anyone who knowingly commits fraud is liable for criminal prosecution plus damages to the injured party..
Hang on, the banks are making a 'deal' with the Country's D.A.'s to absolve them from the FRAUD they KNOWINGLY committed!
The crimes they are directly responsible for and the suffering they caused are too politically sensitive to be addressed?
What politician can explain why the banks are above the law and can't be punished to the FULL extent of the law?...
What politician can explain why it is in the best interest of this economy to have foreclosures on such a massive scale?
How many politicians supporting the banks can stand up and say they never received campaign funding from the banks?
The truth is, the people are too big to fail... The banks can be replaced, after all, whose money is it anyway...the banks?
Ignoring the principals of sound banking practices is breaking the law. A banking system above the law,is the end of fair commerce and justice for all.
Unemployment is the great leveler. Imagine being a single parent with two children and getting an unemployment check which is half your normal income and meets poverty guidelines and having to live on it. You use most of it to pay your rent and utilities, and you therefore can't afford COBRA to continue health benefits, and you don't have enough for food, clothing, gas, etc., and you don't qualify for the safety net programs which you should qualify for based on your income, because your unemployment check is considered "unearned" income. No one qualifies under that scenario, so the so called safety net for those who have just lost their jobs and meet poverty guidelines doesn't exist. So even when you play by the rules and don't lie on your application you don't have access to government programs to help put food on your children's table, or get you medical help.
I am guessing more than a few people manning the front lines of the "anarchistic" OWS movement have found out that obeying the rules isn't doing them much good now that they are not part of the "haves," and that makes them more interested in fighting for the "have nots."
100+ years later and the old gal is still correct.
The rich are above the law, but the poor are not...its a double standard which should not be!
GOP stands for Greedy One Percent!
And people wonder why poverty is such a destabilizing force in a society, while blaming the victims for "causing" the instability?
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