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
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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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Irving Krystol ONLY cosseted and cajoled the two most clueless, inward-looking and in Dimwits' case at least, vapidly-incurio us -plus Reagan's accelerating Alzheimer's, was the ideal breeding ground for the coven of brain-damaged patsies listed in the article and their spawn, still pushing endless war!
What an achievement!
As long as people continue to believe that 9/11 was perpetrated by Osama Bin Laden and al Qaida, the world will continue on its path to its own self-destruction.
(Continued)
I first noticed Viggo Mortensen when he was interviewed by Charlie Rose in 2002 on his upcoming debut of "Lord of the Ring - The Two Towers." Reference the following URL:
http://www.brego.net/viggo/viggo-politics.php
I don't remember how I caught this program since I generally don't watch Charlie Rose, but I did. It's one of the things that sticks out in my mind, almost like September 11th, 2001. He wore a T-shirt on which he wrote using a sharpie, "No More Blood for Oil." This was a year before Bush illegally invaded Iraq. Viggo already knew at the time of this interview that Bush was planning on invading Iraq in 2003. If you watch Democracy Now, Amy plays a portion of the video from that interview.
I especially liked the ending of his movie entitled "Hidalgo" because of his support for the wild mustangs which are being systematically destroyed by the U.S. government via the BLM.
In any case, Radscal, I would suggest that you watch his interview with Amy Goodman on Democracy Now today.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3vbTuo47VQ&list=PLFCF256772039511C&index=33
He was under constant attack by Charlie Rose for his wearing of the T-shirt. I wonder how Charlie Rose feels today about what he did in 2002 when he interviewed Viggo Mortensen?
You're right. That was an incredible interview with Mortensen. I haven't seen any of the Rings/Hobbit flicks, and so was unaware of this actor, but I'm really impressed with him as a human being.
Thanks.
The title of the movie, "Hidalgo," is actually the name of his horse which is a wild mustang which together run many cross-country races.
The main plot of the movie which is supposed to be a true story was that he signed up to run a cross-country race in Arabia across the ocean in which the prize money was $100,000, a lot of money at that time. Until the very end of the movie, no one viewing the film really knows why he did this. I like to protect the wild animals that roam the open areas of our nation, and one of them is the wild mustang who are quickly becoming an endangered species if the BLM can get its way.
The race was long and hard, but, in the end he won the money. The scene then turns to his return to the U.S. at a remote location where the U.S. calvary is about to slaughter thousands upon thousands of wild mustangs that they had corralled. Mortensen rides up to the officer in charge and hands him a note in which he paid the U.S. government to allow these horses to run free. He and two Indians open all the gates and let all the mustangs run free including his own horse, Hildago.
Could you give a specific example of such "libel", Mr. Weismann?
If any other country but Israel has profited from 9/11 and the resulting War on Terror, could you please name that country, Mr. Weismann?
Please write/educate US more.
https://books.google.com/books?id=DD8oNl63gBEC&dq=Perle+Reagan&source=gbs_navlinks_s
This book which will come as a surprise to many educated observers and historians suggests that Jews and Jewish intellectuals have played a considerable role in the development and shaping of modern American conservatism. The focus is on the rise of a group of Jewish intellectuals and activists known as neoconservative s who began to impact on American public policy during the Cold War with the Soviet Union and most recently in the lead up to and invasion of Iraq. It presents a portrait of the life and work of the original and small group of neocons including Irving Kristol, Norman Podhoretz, and Sidney Hook. This group has grown into a new generation who operate as columnists in conservative think tanks like The Heritage and The American Enterprise Institute, at colleges and universities, and in government in the second Bush Administration including such lightning rod figures as Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle and Elliot Abrams. The book suggests the neo cons have been so significant in reshaping modern American conservatism and public policy that they constitute a Neoconservative Revolution."
I agree with you and Weissman - putting ANY label on Jews (blacks, Muslims) nationalism is simplistic/xeno phobic. Not all Germans were Nazis, not all Russians were/are communists etc.
The liberal imperialists, as they are better classified, also come from the Cold War Truman/CIA crowd -- that is their common root. Brzezinski, his spawn Albright, and the lying twins, Susan Rice and Power, are just as obsessively bent on achieving the goals of PNAC as the neo-cons, and are fully allied with them, e.g., with the Libyan intervention, Ukraine, and the anti-Assad mantra.
Sadly, other than a tease, Weissman gave them a pass in his article. Perhaps he will pick this up in a future article.
"Big Money and the Corporate State: How Global Banks, Corporations, and Speculators Rule and How to Nonviolently Break Their Hold."
Gotta read that one. First time I couldn't find anything to disagree with!