Why Do Dangerous Financial Criminals Roam Free?

 Prosecutors like Eric Schneiderman need cops on the beat to put financial crooks behind bars. But thanks to Bush, these cops are missing in action.

February 4, 2012

American Public Media's "Marketplace" had a recent segment focused on why it has taken so long to bring criminal prosecutions related to the financial crisis. Reporters observed that at the beginning of the crisis, the Obama administration wanted to calm the financial industry rather than impose accountability. They speculated, along with Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street participants, many of whom have been calling for prosecutions, that Obama’s creation of a new group to prosecute mortgage fraud led by New York Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman was likely to be politically motivated. And they indicated that financial crimes are complex and prosecutors need time to develop their cases.

But here's what they didn't say: A major reason the prosecutions don’t exist is that President George W. Bush took the cops off the beat.

Think about street crime. Imagine, for example, a protection racket in which gangs extort payment from fearful shopkeepers. Prosecutors rarely initiate criminal prosecutions; indeed, they may not even know that the crime is occurring. The police pound the beats that keep them aware of the increase in crime, respond to complaints, investigate, determine that a crime may have occurred that warrants attention, create a file and send it to the prosecutor’s office. In routine cases, the prosecution proceeds on the basis of the police report alone. In more complex cases, the prosecutor may supplement the police investigation. But prosecutors rarely initiate cases. Even when a task force is appointed to target crime in a particular sector, it typically involves prosecutors working with the police. The prosecutors simply don’t have the skills or the manpower to detect crime, conduct investigations and make the record necessary to prosecute.   READ MORE

Why Don't We Pay People Enough? 8 Facts About America's Struggling Working People

 

Millions of people in the U.S. work and are still poor.

January 23, 2012

“Our nation, so richly endowed with natural resources and with a capable and industrious population, should be able to devise ways and means of insuring to all our able-bodied men and women, a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work.”  Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 1937

Millions of people in the US work and are still poor.  Here are eight points that show why the US needs to dedicate itself to making work pay.

  

• One.  How many people work and are still poor?  
• Two.  What kinds of jobs do the working poor have?
• Three.  Which workers are most likely to be working and still poor?
• Four.  What about benefits for low wage workers?
• Five.  What rights do the working poor have?
• Six.  What about wage theft from the working poor?
• Seven.  What is a living wage in the US? 
• Eight.  What about jobs for the unemployed and underemployed?

 READ MORE

        

Kansas GOP House Speaker "Prays" That Obama's "Children Be Fatherless and His Wife a Widow"

Kansas House Speaker Mike O’Neal

ThinkProgress reported last week that Kansas House Speaker Mike O’Neal (R) was forced to apologize to First Lady Michelle Obama after forwarding an email to fellow lawmakers that called her “Mrs. YoMama” and compared her to the Grinch.

Earlier that same week, the Lawrence Journal-World was sent another email that O’Neal had forwarded to House Republicans that referred to President Obama and a Bible verse that says “Let his days be few” and calls for his children to be without a father and his wife to be widowed.

Nick Sementelli at Faith in Public Life notes that Psalm 109, which is a prayer for the death of a leader, became a popular conservative meme after Obama’s election. The “tongue-in-cheek” prayer for the president was seen on bumper stickers. The relevant part of the psalm reads: READ MORE

Swedish Companies Take Advantage of Cheap Labor in US

Swedish furniture giant IKEA located a plant in
union-averse Virginia, 08/10/10. (photo: AP)

By Noel Brinkerhoff, AllGov

14 January 12

s far as some companies in Sweden are concerned, America is the land of corporate opportunity - and worker exploitation. So why not take advantage of a business culture that seeks every chance to increase profits at the expense of U.S. employees.

In Virginia, furniture giant Ikea set up a manufacturing plant after it convinced the town of Danville to provide $12 million in tax breaks. It then brought in a "union-busting outfit to keep the IAM (International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers) from making a run at the employees," writes David Macaray at Huffington Post.

Ikea also cut employee wages and changed work and overtime rules.

"Needless to say, these measures not only would have been frowned upon by Swedish society, they would've been illegal," adds Macaray. "They would have been in violation of Sweden's federal labor laws."

 READ MORE

Election 2012: 'Swift-boat on Steroids'

Activists rally in Washington, D.C. on January 21,
2011 for an amendment overturning Citizens United.
(photo: Public Citizen/Flickr)

By Ruth Conniff, The Progressive

14 January 12

he Presidential primary season has never seemed less relevant to ordinary Americans.

As the Mitt Romney juggernaut moves through New Hampshire and South Carolina, the sense that voters, even in early primary states, have anything at all to say about the eventual outcome of the elections is rapidly diminishing.

"This will be the most spending, in 2012, that we've ever seen in the history of the country - and even the world," Lisa Graves of the Center for Media and Democracy said in a telephone conference with reporters today. Thanks to the Supreme Court's two-year-old Citizens United decision, most of that spending, she added, is "dark money" - money spent by shadowy groups in order to influence the outcome of elections.

"It's swift-boat on steroids," Graves quipped.

No wonder Americans have trouble mustering much enthusiasm for the process.

But even as the presidential primary carnival devolves into more of a sideshow than ever this year, citizens' groups are mobilizing unprecedented political energy to combat the hijacking of our democracy by corporate cash.  READ MORE

The Foreclosure Crisis: A Government in Denial

Foreclosed homes behind a padlock in North
Las Vegas, 11/17/11. (photo: Jewel S
amad/AFP/Getty Images)

By Bruce Judson, New Deal 2.0

14 January 12

s we start the New Year, the executive branch and Congress continue to pretend the gravest risk to our economy and social stability does not exist: the ongoing foreclosure crisis. The financial crisis began with the housing crisis and it will not end until we resolve housing. Government policymakers who seemingly ignore this basic fact are leading the nation to another potential catastrophe.

This past week, a number of important events occurred in Washington, including important recess appointments by President Obama. However, the most noteworthy event did not make front page news: the Federal Reserve's (apparently) unsolicited memo to the committees of Congress that oversee financial services warning of the dangers the current housing market poses for the economy.

This represents an extraordinary action and underscores both the seriousness of the continuing crisis and the absence of meaningful discussion of the problem in Washington. Bernanke's memo reviewed federal actions to date and effectively concluded that they were unlikely to solve this national tragedy. The memo concluded, in part: READ MORE

We're All Guilty of Dehumanizing the Enemy

Author and 'Restrepo' film director Sebastian Junger
at the Restrepo outpost in the Korengal Valley,
Afghanistan in 2008. (photo: sebastianjunger.com)

By Sebastian Junger, The Washington Post

14 January 12

he video that emerged in recent days appearing to show four U.S. Marines urinating on several dead Taliban fighters has outraged many people in this country. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta have condemned the act, the military has promised an inquiry, and some experts are even suggesting that the act could qualify as a war crime.

Mainly, however, people seem simply to not understand it. Why would America's warriors - for that matter, why would anyone - urinate on a dead body?

I spent a year, off and on, with a platoon of U.S. soldiers in the Korengal Valley of eastern Afghanistan. There was a lot of fighting, a lot of casualties and an enormous amount of stress on the men I was with. I never saw anyone do anything like this, but then again, I never saw any dead Taliban fighters - the enemy always recovered their casualties before we could get there.

Nevertheless, the things the soldiers shouted during combat were very revealing of the state of mind that war produces. (For the record, I'm sure the Taliban was screaming pretty much the same things about us.)

READ MORE