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VitalSigns posted:Also, unlike financial fraud, growing marijuana doesn't directly ruin and impoverish millions of Americans and wreck the economy. Marijuana growers are the actually leading cause of poverty for children between ages 15 and 20 on the west coast.
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Jun 3, 2014 22:11
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If you ever want to be really distressed about all this, remember that SOX is actually a pretty kick rear end piece of legislation for taking down fraud and it means corporate shill Bush has a better record on private sector malfeasance than populist Obama. On that note, I need a drink
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Jun 3, 2014 22:12
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Kalman posted:It should. Let's be honest, the best way to reform the militarization of police and prison complex would be to make the rich go through the same thing the poor do. If the Bush girls got harassed, beaten, strip searched and left in a cell over the weekend because of a baggie of pot you'd see changes.
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Jun 3, 2014 22:16
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VitalSigns posted:If there's one thing we know about Matt Taibbi, it's that he's uninformed about politics and finance. Right. What I meant is that the claim that police harassment against poor people is getting worse over time is hilariously ignorant. It hasn't been very many decades since explicit vagrancy laws were constitutional, and those laws were in place after Black Codes/Jim Crow, which of course were trying to reverse loving slavery.
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Jun 3, 2014 22:17
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Fried Chicken posted:Let's be honest, the best way to reform the militarization of police and prison complex would be to make the rich go through the same thing the poor do. If the Bush girls got harassed, beaten, strip searched and left in a cell over the weekend because of a baggie of pot you'd see changes. It doesn't even take a bag of pot. It takes the suspicion of holding one which boils down to basic racial profiling because, well if you're wrong who gives a poo poo only scum decide to be poor. Kiwi Ghost Chips posted:What I meant is that the claim that police harassment against poor people is getting worse over time is hilariously ignorant. It hasn't been very many decades since explicit vagrancy laws were constitutional, and those laws were in place after Black Codes/Jim Crow, which of course were trying to reverse loving slavery. I too completely forgot that NYC existed under Guliani and Bloomberg, or any of the illegal immigration targeted legislation in numerous states.
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Jun 3, 2014 22:18
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joeburz posted:I'm glad you're suggesting that we pay exorbitant attorney fees for all the downtrodden of the country, because you don't honestly think that legitimate innocence is the reason the uber-affluent get off clean as a whistle in all these financial cases. I think a lot of them are technically innocent of criminal activities, yes. I think they get off because the laws that apply to what they do are written in a way that makes them much harder to apply to the kinda of activities that are engaged in, prosecuting those activities is much harder, and they have much better attorneys. They're innocent of illegal activity because the laws often aren't designed to cover what they did. That makes it hard to prosecute, not to mention that even where the laws do cover it, they have knowledge requirements that essentially make it impossible to prosecute people higher up the chain if those people hired competent lawyers (which they can afford, while your average criminal defendant can't.)
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Jun 3, 2014 22:19
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Fried Chicken posted:Let's be honest, the best way to reform the militarization of police and prison complex would be to make the rich go through the same thing the poor do. If the Bush girls got harassed, beaten, strip searched and left in a cell over the weekend because of a baggie of pot you'd see changes. Counterpoint: if the rich were actually willing to let the justice system be equitable, then presumably they'd also be willing to make it humane and we could just do that.
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Jun 3, 2014 22:20
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AreWeDrunkYet posted:1688: The Glorious Revolution in England overthrew King James II and established a Whig-dominated Protestant constitutional monarchy. Literally none of those fit the criteria I posed. Sorry!
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Jun 3, 2014 22:30
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joeburz posted:I too completely forgot that NYC existed under Guliani and Bloomberg, or any of the illegal immigration targeted legislation in numerous states. Yes racism is definitely a new thing http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Wetback
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Jun 3, 2014 22:32
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Cheekio posted:It's so disappointing to listen to Harvard students stand up among each other and be complete idiots. On the upside he's challenging their ideas. If any of them are ever able to think "huh, I never thought of it that way" about a lovely terrible view as a result that's a win in my book, because usually that takes years to recognize on your own if you ever recognize it.
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Jun 3, 2014 22:39
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Kalman posted:I think a lot of them are technically innocent of criminal activities, yes. I think they get off because the laws that apply to what they do are written in a way that makes them much harder to apply to the kinda of activities that are engaged in, prosecuting those activities is much harder, and they have much better attorneys. Arthur Anderson used that defense. "Technically what we did wasn't illegal, and the illegal stuff was because we are incompetent, not because of fraud". And hey, none of them went to jail and the SCOTUS overturned what was brought against them. Of course, you'll note that today it is just the "Big Four" And Arthur Anderson's "you can't prove we aren't idiots" poo poo was precisely what prompted chunks of SOX. If it was signed off on, and anything comes up later that casts the slightest hint that shenanigans were the result of intentional actions (like say those "mud people mortgages" emails) , cue the "Law & Order" theme. This is why 404 is so contested. Never mind the more interesting possibilities of the RICO act.
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Jun 3, 2014 22:40
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Elephant Ambush posted:Literally none of those fit the criteria I posed. Sorry! You don't think literally overthrowing a feudal system results in a long-term improvement for the poor and working class?
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Jun 3, 2014 22:41
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JT Jag posted:He provided examples and you're just gonna go with "nuh-uh"? Why its almost as if his criteria were chosen so he could specifically do that!
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Jun 3, 2014 22:42
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Kiwi Ghost Chips posted:Yes racism is definitely a new thing http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Wetback Noone is saying racism is new but people really love to sweep the fact that the poor/minorties are constantly given the short end of the stick in the legal system still today under the rug because racism and classism is "over". Sure thing's are better than they were but going by that logic we shouldn't do anything at all because at least we aren't living in mud huts!
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Jun 3, 2014 22:45
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Fried Chicken posted:Arthur Anderson used that defense. "Technically what we did wasn't illegal, and the illegal stuff was because we are incompetent, not because of fraud". And hey, none of them went to jail and the SCOTUS overturned what was brought against them. Yeah, that's pretty much my point. DoJ doesn't prosecute criminal violations because they lost, badly, with both AA and initial Bear Stearns cases. Its the same reason the FTC became useless for decades - they got burnt when they got aggressive and became cautious as a result. Financial crimes are hard to prosecute. It's hard to even bring a case, much less win it. So DOJ doesn't.
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Jun 3, 2014 22:45
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GOP lawmakers are quickly trying to whitewash their previous statements on Bergdahl. Two from today: Republican Congressman Deletes Statement Calling Bergdahl "A National Hero" Joni Ernst deletes tweet from the day of Bergdahl's release
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Jun 3, 2014 22:46
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Fried Chicken posted:Ok seriously, do you have any experience with how the police deal with low income people at all? Particularly black people? Because this idea that the cops don't just grab someone and toss them in the tank based off "reasonable suspicion" is complete crap. Between the vagueness if defining "reasonable suspicion", most people not knowing the specifics of the arrest process, time, and the volume of laws you passively break all the time that you are unaware of, the cops can make you suffer the kind of "petty indignity" that ends careers without needing to arrest or convict I'm reminded of the Andrew Brown story in Taibbi's book. Essentially a man was arrested, hauled off to the precinct, strip-searched and charged with "blocking pedestrian traffic" because he was standing on the sidewalk and talking to his neighbor in front of his own apartment building. At one o'clock in the morning, when there was absolutely no pedestrian traffic to block. He fought back and got the charge dismissed, but only after turning down advice from the judge and his own lawyers to just plead guilty, pay the fine, and add a groundless misdemeanor to his record. Meanwhile HSBC admittedly laundered over $7 billion in drug money and no criminal charges were filed at all. No handcuffs, no booking, no strip-search, no blot on anyone's criminal record. No "petty indignity" at all, just a civil fine that amounted to 5 weeks of revenue for the bank. Edit: Kalman posted:Yeah, that's pretty much my point. DoJ doesn't prosecute criminal violations because they lost, badly, with both AA and initial Bear Stearns cases. Its the same reason the FTC became useless for decades - they got burnt when they got aggressive and became cautious as a result. And strong-arming the poor and helpless over petty nonsense is a rubber-stamp job in the courts since everyone is strongly encouraged to plead out and take the hit rather than waste time and money they don't have to lawyer up and fight. Meanwhile banks and large corporations have all the time, money and legal power in the world to fight any charge thrown at them. Justice follows the path of least resistance nowadays, and would rather rack up easy wins than go after the big fish and risk losing a case. It's a hosed up situation all around. Rhesus Pieces fucked around with this message at 22:59 on Jun 3, 2014 |
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Jun 3, 2014 22:47
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I think it's perfectly OK for Bergdahl's ex-team members to hate him and for it still to be the right thing to exchange prisoners for him.
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Jun 3, 2014 22:49
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Alexzandvar posted:Noone is saying racism is new but people really love to sweep the fact that the poor/minorties are constantly given the short end of the stick in the legal system still today under the rug because racism and classism is "over". Sure thing's are better than they were but going by that logic we shouldn't do anything at all because at least we aren't living in mud huts! I'm not saying it's over, I'm saying that talking about how we're all going to be living on company towns in 50 years is dumb. It's imagining a past America that never actually existed.
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Jun 3, 2014 22:50
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fool_of_sound posted:"Please prove beyond a reasonable doubt that you attempted to prevent your college-aged son from having marijuana in his room, or else we'll have to charge you as an accomplice." *ahem* http://www.propublica.org/article/law-to-clean-up-nuisances-costs-innocent-people-their-homes Or just look up Asset Forfeiture e: yes, I know they didn't arrest the owner, but it'd be laughably stupid to claim having her house taken away without a conviction isn't being punished for a crime someone else committed (probably) without her knowledge. She didn't even get the chance to try to prove her property wasn't worth of forfeiture, either, so it's worse in a way. Munkeymon fucked around with this message at 23:01 on Jun 3, 2014 |
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Jun 3, 2014 22:52
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Kiwi Ghost Chips posted:I'm not saying it's over, I'm saying that talking about how we're all going to be living on company towns in 50 years is dumb. It's imagining a past America that never actually existed. Most people are extrapolating the company town thing since we are seeing more and more power growth in corporations relative to the government and company towns are the end result of a government controlled by corporations.
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Jun 3, 2014 22:53
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I mean, would it really surprise anyone at this point if, one day, you opened up your browser in the morning to see the headline "in a 5-4 decision, Supreme Court confirms constitutionality of company scrip."
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Jun 3, 2014 23:00
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Munkeymon posted:*ahem* http://www.propublica.org/article/law-to-clean-up-nuisances-costs-innocent-people-their-homes Jesus Christ. Still, it's a completely unjust practice regardless of who it targets.
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Jun 3, 2014 23:01
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Redeye Flight posted:Jesus Christ, I don't want this either! I don't want to wish death on people, I want life to get better! Our system cannibalized the middle class to slightly increase the number of 18 year olds with birthday parties that look like this:  And all peaceful avenues of change are being shut down. Things won't be bad enough to precipitate violence for decades to come, but the decisions that will make violence inevitable are being made right now by the current crop of assholes.
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Jun 3, 2014 23:04
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Elephant Ambush posted:Literally none of those fit the criteria I posed. Sorry! Nah, all of the anti-colonial and anti-royal revolutions on that list definitely fit the criteria. The long-run effects of the leftist and democratic revolutions on the list may be arguable, but good luck sustaining that every last one of them hurt the interests of the poor and working class.
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Jun 3, 2014 23:06
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Elephant Ambush posted:Literally none of those fit the criteria I posed. Sorry! You think Haitian slaves were better off toiling under a plantation system premised on working them to death? Haiti's had a rough go of it every since but the conditions beforehand were a literal death sentence.
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Jun 3, 2014 23:07
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Today in the Senate: A veritable boxing-but-not-really match between two heavyweight-spenders-on-adult-diapers! Reid throws McConnell's policy back at him then drops the mic and walks away, and Chuck Schumer implies that Ted "Better Off Ted" Cruz likes child pornography! EDIT: My favorite part is Cruz, after coming back from a Senate vote, makes a point to address the allegations of supporting child pornography. That's something you should just let sit in its own silliness... anything more seems like you protest too much. EDIT2: TE article that I link only so I can quote: The Economist posted:When the constitution was drawn up it was standard practice for people suspected of making anonymous attacks on their political opponents to be challenged to duels. Congress should ... bring back pistols at dawn. Having members of Congress shoot at each other on the banks of the Potomac might even rekindle interest in politics, boosting voter turnout and persuading smaller donors to give money to their favourite shooters. On reflection, this is clearly the way to go. Amergin fucked around with this message at 23:28 on Jun 3, 2014 |
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Jun 3, 2014 23:11
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Kalman posted:Yeah, that's pretty much my point. DoJ doesn't prosecute criminal violations because they lost, badly, with both AA and initial Bear Stearns cases. Its the same reason the FTC became useless for decades - they got burnt when they got aggressive and became cautious as a result. "So hey, last time we brought charges we just destroyed every aspect of their personal lives short of jail. Guess there is no point in bringing charges then" is seriously your argument? Yeah the fact that the jurors blew off the emails in bear sterns sucks, but those bastards still paid a poo poo ton in legal fees, got dragged through the mud, and can't find jobs in the business. That you are straight up arguing even that is too much is exactly why people are posting "gently caress it, let's just kill them"
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Jun 3, 2014 23:11
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Fried Chicken posted:"So hey, last time we brought charges we just destroyed every aspect of their personal lives short of jail. Guess there is no point in bringing charges then" is seriously your argument? I'd at least appreciate the comedic value in the existential dread leading to "gently caress it, let's just kill them" as a response of abject powerlessness. This disgusting apologism of "no one was wrong because they're not in jail" is so absurd it's somehow worse than plain stockholm syndrome.
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Jun 3, 2014 23:19
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Fried Chicken posted:"So hey, last time we brought charges we just destroyed every aspect of their personal lives short of jail. Guess there is no point in bringing charges then" is seriously your argument? I'm not arguing that's too much - those guys should have been convicted. My arguments have never been that these guys should be innocent. But I am arguing that those guys not being convicted is part of why you don't see DOJ bringing more criminal prosecutions. DOJ doesn't care that those guys paid legal fees and can't find a job - they care that their test balloon for financial crime prosecutions popped, they have an L on their record, and they're not exactly feeling confident the next round will go any better.
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Jun 3, 2014 23:20
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Kalman posted:I'm not arguing that's too much - those guys should have been convicted. My arguments have never been that these guys should be innocent. This is the same thing I have heard from lawyers in that field. The guy that prosecuted the S&L people however thinks differently but he may be out of date I don't know since both sides know much more about this than I do. So the next question is "what can be done to actually make the system work in regards to financial crimes?" if we all agree that there should be something done.
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Jun 3, 2014 23:25
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Munkeymon posted:*ahem* http://www.propublica.org/article/law-to-clean-up-nuisances-costs-innocent-people-their-homes That reminds me too much of the article posted on here a while back about all the fraud involved in house foreclosures, with the banks having laughably transparent fraudulent paperwork for them but judges just rubber stamping them, except in the rare cases the other side has a lawyer, in which case the bank is given another attempt to improve its (fake) paperwork for another go at it. Our "justice" system is so horribly broken.
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Jun 3, 2014 23:26
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Luigi Thirty posted:I don't understand why you'd want to read these books, it's like okay more proof the world is poo poo and will never improve and that you can't do anything about it because leftism is 100% dead and we'll all be corporate slaves living in company towns in 50 years. Now what? I have to avoid this crap or I'd never get out of loving bed or drive my car off a bridge. There are a few different reasons although first off I don't agree that it will never improve. One, I am fascinated by systems particularly the powerful ones that are almost invisible in my daily life. Taibbi fleshes out a lot of a system I only see in very fragmented pieces. Two, there are actually things you can do to improve individual lives. Public defenders that truly protect the poor from dragnet policing make a genuinely positive impact and help staunch the bleeding. They can't change the entire system by themselves but it does make an individual impact. Three, I don't find anger at injustice to be a negative emotion. It's a powerful motivator. Four, the more I discover about the current system the more informed my decisions become about how to deal with it. Do I leave? Do I become more politically active? Do I rabble for violent revolution? Do I run for politics? Etc. Five, things will change. Impermanence is the essence of life and it applies to all things. The politics of America is very different now than 40 years ago which is wildly different from 80 years ago. Will the system get better or worse? Who knows, but it will absolutely change. And lastly I try to look at it as the darkest of dark comedies and hope I live long enough to see the punchline.
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Jun 3, 2014 23:26
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Kalman posted:I'm not arguing that's too much - those guys should have been convicted. My arguments have never been that these guys should be innocent. Which is why since OJ got off no one has been charged with murder. Or why no one has been put away for drugs since a jury nullified the charges. You are arguing a special case that these losses mean it's just too hard, rather than an aspect of simply refusing to enforce the law
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Jun 3, 2014 23:27
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Amergin posted:Alcohol. I can't leave this unquoted, it's just so adorable.  Kiwi Ghost Chips posted:What I meant is that the claim that police harassment against poor people is getting worse over time is hilariously ignorant. It hasn't been very many decades since explicit vagrancy laws were constitutional, and those laws were in place after Black Codes/Jim Crow, which of course were trying to reverse loving slavery. Why, it's almost as if we're using a limited timeframe when talking about coppers getting worse. Why didn't you think about Rome, smart guy? Kiwi Ghost Chips posted:Yes racism is definitely a new thing http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Wetback We lynched negroes, therefore any mention of racism today can be blown off with pff, old news 
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Jun 3, 2014 23:32
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Fried Chicken posted:Which is why since OJ got off no one has been charged with murder. Or why no one has been put away for drugs since a jury nullified the charges. No, I am arguing that these people are humans and when they lose on a case they were confident of the natural reaction is to be more cautious next time and not bring more marginal cases. It happens all the time in every aspect of litigation, people get gunshy when they lose (and when they win they tend to be more willing to push as a result.) DOJ's financial crimes subunits are a pretty small unit of lawyers, all told, and losing Bear Stearns hurt their confidence. I mean, Marcia Clark basically resigned when she lost. She wasn't going to bring another high profile case any time soon. Kalman fucked around with this message at 23:37 on Jun 3, 2014 |
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Jun 3, 2014 23:34
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The DoJ's sudden refusal to prosecute corporate fraud in the Obama administration also has another piece to it. The head of the Criminal Division of the DoJ is an important position that often determines whether to prosecute or not for the large financial cases we're talking about. That position, up until this March, was filled by Lanny Breuer. Breuer was not a well known prosecutor, which is ideally what you'd look for in the position. As we've seen in this thread, being a prosecutor is a tough job and requires a certain kind of person otherwise you end up with someone unwilling to go after people with high powered lawyers for fear of failure. That's Breuer. Even better, his history is one of representing high profile guys under congressional investigation like Roger Clemens. He's the guy who got up in front of the press to crow about the HSBC decision. He's the same guy who got up in front of the press when UBS got busted for the LIBOR scandal which the British regulators had them dead to rights on, and said quote:Looking at the severity of the conduct, looking at the collateral consequences, we think we arrived at a very robust, very real, and very appropriate resolution That resolution was to fine UBS 1.5$ billion with ZERO criminal charges. It didn't even have to admit wrongdoing. So part of the issue is they're pushing this idea of collateral consequences and part of it is they got non prosecutor, corporate shills in the top prosecutor spots. Now the concern is that there isn't anyone good in the usual pipeline of federal prosecutors for the position because the Obama administration hasn't actually prosecuted much if any white collar crime in the past 6 years.
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Jun 3, 2014 23:50
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Kalman posted:DOJ's financial crimes subunits are a pretty small unit of lawyers, all told, and losing Bear Stearns hurt their confidence. I finished reading Taibbi's book today and this was one of the points he made towards the end of the book. The funding for investigation into financial crimes right after the 2008 collapse was somewhere around $9 million, while at the same time the funding for the DEA moved from ~$13 billion to ~$15 billion. Maybe if we showed the same interest in going after banks committing massive fuckoff financial crimes as we do with busting poor people for drugs there would be a more satisfactory result than letting major criminals walk while the institution they represent pays some cost-of-business fine with no admission of wrongdoing or any actual person seeing the inside of a jail cell.
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Jun 3, 2014 23:54
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Kiwi Ghost Chips posted:What I meant is that the claim that police harassment against poor people is getting worse over time is hilariously ignorant. It hasn't been very many decades since explicit vagrancy laws were constitutional, and those laws were in place after Black Codes/Jim Crow, which of course were trying to reverse loving slavery. Well, there is this:   and combined  So, things might be better but there's a hell of a lot more poor people in prison than there was during eras with more race crime and that's in spite of an overall lowering crime rate.
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Jun 4, 2014 00:06
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Since I'm rather young, I have to ask. What happened in 1980 to just loving spike that way? Was it some specific thing or a multitude of things?
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Jun 4, 2014 00:09
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