Corruption Corner – Page 34

You Can’t Touch This

Many people have been demanding that the state prosecute corrupt bankers. The prospects of that happening are almost zero if Eric Holder has anything to say about it:

Eric Holder made this rather startling confession in testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday, The Hill reports. It could be a key moment in the debate over whether to do something about the size and complexity of our biggest banks, which have only gotten bigger and more systemically important since the financial crisis.

“I am concerned that the size of some of these institutions becomes so large that it does become difficult for us to prosecute them when we are hit with indications that if you do prosecute, if you do bring a criminal charge, it will have a negative impact on the national economy, perhaps even the world economy,” Holder said, according to The Hill. “And I think that is a function of the fact that some of these institutions have become too large.”

This statement can really be taken two ways. Either the state is so powerless and ineffective that they are unable to enforce the law or the banks and the state are on the same team. I’m going with the latter but many people seem to believe the former. One thing is certain, those who were fucked by the banks aren’t going to get justice.

The Primary Purpose of the Police is to Extort Wealth from the Public

Stories like this still seem to shock people:

Drivers from Arizona and at least nine other states, including Utah, Iowa, Indiana, Delaware and Rhode Island, are going to jail, paying big fines and losing their licenses after having gotten driving-under-the-influence citations when blood tests prove they were not high.

“It makes no sense,” says attorney Michael Alarid III, who is representing a man charged in Arizona. “But this is how prosecutors and the courts are interpreting the law. And the legislature doesn’t appear to want to change it. So we’re hoping we can get the issue before the state Supreme Court.”

How could a person who is not high get busted for DUI? It happens when science meets politics.

Blood tests can detect two important chemical compounds that come from marijuana. One of them, THC, makes a person high and lasts for hours. The other inactive chemical, created as your body neutralizes THC, can linger in a person’s system for up to a month.

In Arizona, state law says if you have either of these compounds in your blood, you are guilty of a DUI.

Why would a state government make somebody pay a fine if they weren’t actually impaired? Why would police officers detain a person who wasn’t demonstrably under the influence of drugs? Because the state exists entirely off of expropriation and the police are one of the state’s primary expropriators. It’s unlikely these laws will be changed anytime soon since they stand to make the state a great deal of wealth.

The Political Game of Sequestration

Those who had been paying attention to the world of politics know that this entire sequestration drama is nothing more than political theater. We’re told that sequestration will lead to massive layoffs and furloughs even though the “cuts” will increase the federal budget by $110 billion. A recently leaked document from the Agriculture Department shows just how much of a game sequestration really is:

A leaked email from an Agriculture Department field officer adds fuel to claims President Obama’s political strategy is to make the billions in recent federal budget cuts as painful as possible to win the public opinion battle against Republicans.

The email, circulated around Capitol Hill, was sent Monday by Charles Brown, a director at the agency’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service office in Raleigh, N.C. He appears to tell his regional team about a response to his recent question on the amount of latitude he has in making cuts.

According to the partially redacted email, the response came from the Agriculture Department’s budget office and in part states: “However you manage that reduction, you need to make sure you are not contradicting what we said the impact would be.”

In other words the doomsday scenarios described by Obama are to be carried out even if departments have no need to do so. I think this leaked document does a marvelous job of demonstrating how politics is nothing more than Kabuki.

It’s a Big Club

Most people still seem to believe that there is an ideological war between the Republican Party and the Democratic Party. Every political issue seems to be starkly divided between the Republicans and Democrats. We’re told that Republican support gun rights whereas the Democrats oppose them, Republicans oppose same-sex marriage whereas the Democrats support them, Republicans hate the poor whereas the Democrats love them, and Republicans are fiscal conservatives whereas the Democrats are big spenders. None of this is true, there is no ideological divide between the two parties, both parties are in total agreement that they want to take your shit and that doing so is easier if the populace is divided. This fact becomes more prevalent when things become difficult, as with the current budget debate:

Days before the March 1 deadline, Senate Republicans are circulating a draft bill that would cancel $85 billion in across-the-board spending cuts and instead turn over authority to President Barack Obama to achieve the same level of savings under a plan to be filed by March 8.

The five- page document, which has the tacit support of Senate GOP leaders, represents a remarkable shift for the party. Having railed against Senate Democrats for not passing a budget, Republicans are now proposing that Congress surrender an important piece of its Constitutional “power of the purse” for the last seven months of this fiscal year.

The Republicans are making a dictator out of the Democratic President (who is already a dictator is everything but name). If there really was an ideological divide you would think both parties would be working hard to ensure the other party doesn’t gain more power but the opposite is happening, both parties are working hard to ensure the other party gains more power.

This is why working in the political system will never change anything of importance. All of the major players, the actual decision makers, are best friends. They pretend to hate each other to create the illusion of choice but almost come to an agreement, and that agreement always ends with the state and its cronies getting more while the general populace gets less.

Woman Being Threatened with Expulsion for Publicly Discussing Being Raped

What happens when a woman gets raped at a university, the university fails to pursue any serious action, and the woman finds herself having to appeal to public opinion to get justice? She gets threatened with expulsion:

A University of North Carolina student says she faces possible expulsion for “intimidating” her alleged rapist by speaking publicly about her assault and how the school has handled it.

Landen Gambill, a sophomore at UNC, was part of a group that filed a complaint in January with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights, alleging the university has routinely violated the rights of sexual assault survivors and failed to assist them in recovery after the reported abuse. Ten days after they filed their complaint, the graduate student attorney general sent a warning to Gambill that she may have violated the school’s Honor Code, Jezebel reports.

On Friday, Gambill got an email informing her that she was being formally charged with an Honor Code violation for “disruptive or intimidating behavior” against her alleged rapist, although she has never publicly named him. If the UNC Honor Court finds Gambill guilty, the punishment could be expulsion, suspension, community service or grade penalty, among other options.

In other words the University of North Carolina wants sexual assault victims to shut up because they’re making the university look bad. Their chosen method of dealing with this “inconvenience” is to issue threats of expulsion, suspension, coerced community service, or a reduction of grades against those who were victims of sexual assault.

Why would a university pursue such actions? Perhaps it’s because the University of North Carolina is operated by the government of North Carolina and feels its monopoly on force has been threatened by the persons who committed sexual assault. By threatening the victims the University may be trying to make a public statement that the sexual assaulters will not be allowed to encroach on the state’s monopoly on force unchallenged. Or, more likely, the University staff are morally bankrupt and more concerned about their public image than ensuring justice is served.

I’m Sure it’s a Coincidence

The New York Police Department (NYPD) release some information regarding their “stop and frisk” strategy. The data speaks volumes:

The NYPD last night released a report on its controversial stop-and-frisk procedure that breaks down by precinct — and by race — those who’ve been targeted.

The figures, all from 2011, show the precinct with the most stops by sheer numbers was Brooklyn’s 75th, which includes East New York and Cypress Hills.

More than 31,000 people were stopped, 97 percent of them either black or Hispanic.

Brooklyn’s 73rd Precinct, covering Brownsville, was the next highest, with 25,167 stops. About 98 percent involved minorities.

The 115th Precinct — which includes East Elmhurst, Corona and Jackson Heights in Queens — ranked third, with 18,156 stops. Nearly 93 percent of those involved minorities, the figures show.

The 40th Precinct in The Bronx, which covers Mott Haven and Melrose, racked up the next highest number — 17,690 — with 98.5 percent involving minorities.

And at No. 5 was the 90th Precinct in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, where there were 17,566 stops, with 88.6 percent involving minorities.

Many people who live in the Northern United States have a holier than thou attitude when it comes to racism. They believe that the South has a monopoly on racism and that those of us who live north of the Mason-Dixon Line are far more enlightened. Obviously this isn’t the case. Racism is plenty rampent in the North, in fact it’s plenty rampent throughout the United States so-called justice system.

How the United States Handles Downgrades to Its Sovereign Debt Rating

What happens when a credit rating agency downgrades the United States federal government’s sovereign debt rating? The United States sues your ass:

Standard & Poor’s says it is to be sued by the US government over the credit ratings agency’s assessment of mortgage bonds before the financial crisis.

The lawsuit will not only be brought on by the United States government but will also take place in a United States court, making for an interesting conflict of interest that will go almost entirely ignored by most people. On top of that, even if the case ends up in Standard and Poor’s favor, the damage has already been done:

Shares in S&P’s owner, the US publishing and media group McGraw Hill, fell 14% on Wall Street on Monday following the announcement…

On top of that people seem to believe that Standard and Poor’s isn’t the only target of the Department of Justice’s (DoJ) wrath:

while those in fellow ratings agency Moody’s fell 10% – indicating the market expects that they may be next in the justice department’s sights.

While Moody’s didn’t downgrade the United States debt rating they did change their outlook to “negative,” which makes them another likely target of the DoJ’s wrath. Today’s lesson is that you can’t criticize the United States government without inciting its wrath.

Another Searched, Handcuffed, and Detained Person Managed to Shoot Himself in the Head

A student in Houston, Texas managed to “shoot himself in the head” after being searched, handcuffed, and placed in the back of a squad car:

This morning at North Shore Senior High School, a student was arrested. He was searched, handcuffed, and placed in the back of a police car. While in the car, the student retrieved a hidden gun and shot himself. Paramedics were called and quickly arrived on scene. He was transported to the hospital still conscious when he left. His family accompanied him to the hospital.

Nothing about this story as reported makes sense but it isn’t the first time an individual was searched, handcuffed, and placed into a squad card only to “shoot themselves in the head.” A similar incident happened earlier this year in Arkansas. How are individuals who have been searched by police officers and handcuffed able to retrieve a weapon and shoot themselves? I can conceive of only three ways these scenarios could play out. First the individuals shoved loaded guns up their asses and managed to retrieve them and shoot themselves in the head. Second the police officers who patted down the individuals were entirely incompetent. Third somebody executed the individuals once they were placed in the back of the squad cars and the story given is an attempt to cover up the crime.

Of the three scenarios the last seems most likely. If an individual did go through all the trouble of shoving a firearm up their ass why would they merely use it to commit suicide instead of using it to take a couple cops with them? Missing a firearm during a pat down seems extremely unlikely so I give that possibility the lowest chance of being the correct story.

I wouldn’t be surprised if the Houston officers executed the student hoping the incident in Arkansas would give them a believable story.

Corporate Cronies are Rewarded

In general self-identified leftists support the state and oppose corporations while self-identified rightists support corporations and oppose the state. What both of these groups fail to see is that the state and corporations are married. When a corporation does something for the state the state rewards that corporation and when the state does something for a corporation that corporation rewards the state:

Whatever one’s views on Obamacare were and are: the bill’s mandate that everyone purchase the products of the private health insurance industry, unaccompanied by any public alternative, was a huge gift to that industry; as Wheeler wrote at the time: “to the extent that Liz Fowler is the author of this document, we might as well consider WellPoint its author as well.” Watch the five-minute Bill Moyers report from 2009, embedded below, on the key role played in all of this by Liz Fowler and the “revolving door” between the health insurance/lobbying industry and government officials at the time this bill was written and passed.

[…]

Now, as Politico’s “Influence” column briefly noted on Tuesday, Fowler is once again passing through the deeply corrupting revolving door as she leaves the Obama administration to return to the loving and lucrative arms of the private health care industry:

“Elizabeth Fowler is leaving the White House for a senior-level position leading ‘global health policy’ at Johnson & Johnson’s government affairs and policy group.”

Now that Fowler has fulfilled her duty of pushing Obamacare through she is returning to her seat in the corporate world. Not surprisingly she will be working in the government affairs and policy ground so she can leverage all the connections she made while working for the state.

It’s not turtles all the way down, it’s corruption all the way down.

How the State Buys Support for Its Expropriation

Advocates of higher taxes love to point to wealthy individuals and large corporations that also advocate higher taxes as proof that higher taxes are a good thing. What those advocates don’t bring up or remain entirely ignorant about is the motivation wealthy individuals and large corporations have for raising taxes. Take the case of AT&T, a company that recent came up in support of raising taxes. Why would AT&T want to raise taxes? The answer is simplicity itself:

[A bunch of nonsense implying that the Republican Party lowers taxes while the Democratic Party raises taxes.]

[…]

A skeptic might point out, however, that AT&T does a lot of business with the U.S. government. AT&T Government Solutions boasts that it employs “more than 4,000 scientists, engineers and analysts—many with security clearances” who “focus exclusively on the IT requirements of government.” One federal contract AT&T won last year had a potential value of $5 billion, which is real money even to a company as large as AT&T. The company, like other wireless phone providers, also earns revenue from the “Lifeline” program that provides subsidized cellphones—so-called Obama phones—to low-income customers. And AT&T has already seen what negative effects hostile government agencies can have on its business—when a Justice Department antitrust lawsuit and FCC opposition blocked AT&T’s takeover of T-Mobile, AT&T wound up paying T-Mobile a $4.2 billion “break-up fee.”

[…]

The sad reality, though, is that the thousands of dollars that my business would mean to AT&T, or the millions of dollars that the business of other like-minded Americans would mean, are dwarfed by the value of a $5 billion government contract or winning the favor of a regulator with the power to approve or deny a multi-billion-dollar deal.

When a business is in bed with the state they will often tend to support higher taxes because that means more potential revenue for the business as well. You always want to ensure your cash cow is flush with cash.