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Tag: "Corruption"

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By Erich Vieth on October 11th, 2009

My recurring nightmare

What I am posting here is a gnawing, recurring and growing concern that sometimes seems like a nightmare to me. It embarrasses me that this thought keeps recurring because it makes me look like one of those crazy conspiracy theorists.

What brought this “nightmare” to a head was watching Bill Moyers’ interview with U.S. Rep. Marcy Kaptur. Here’s an excerpt:

MARCY KAPTUR: Let me give you a reality from ground zero in Toledo, Ohio. Our foreclosures have gone up 94 percent. A few months ago, I met with our realtors. And I said, ‘What should I know?’ They said, ‘Well, first of all, you should know the worst companies that are doing this to us.’ I said, ‘Well, give me the top one.’ They said, ‘J.P. Morgan Chase.’ I went back to Washington that night. And one of my colleagues said, ‘You want to come to dinner?’ I said, ‘Well, what is it?’ He said, ‘Well, it’s a meeting with Jamie Dimon, the head of J.P. Morgan Chase.’ I said, ‘Wow, yes. I really do.’ So, I go to this meeting in a fancy hotel, fancy dinner, and everyone is complimenting him. I mean, it was just like a love fest.

They finally got to me, and my point to ask a question. I said, ‘Well, I don’t want to speak out of turn here, Mr. Dimon.’ I said, ‘But your company is the largest forecloser in my district. And our Realtors just said to me this morning that your people don’t return phone calls.’ I said, ‘We can’t do work outs.’ And he looked at me, he said, ‘Do you know that I talk to your Governor all the time?’ He said, ‘Our company employs 10,000 people in Ohio.’ And I’m thinking, ‘What is that? A threat?’ And he said, ‘I speak to the Mayor of Columbus.’

As I watched this, I was thinking how amazing it was that a bank president would dare to treat a U.S. representative as though she meant nothing to him, even though she is a sitting member of Congress and a member of the political party that controls both Houses and the Presidency. How is it that all the big financial players such as Chase, AIG, Goldman Sachs, always get exactly what they want out of Congress? How can Congress allow these entities to continue to grow (since the meltdown), even though it is clear that the reason Congress felt that they needed to be propped up with tax money is that they were considered “too big to fail?” Name even one other industry that can snap its fingers and watch meaningful Congressional regulation completely dissolve. Name another industry that can demand hundreds of billions of no-questions-asked tax dollars from Congress. Consider the vast power and potential abuses of the Federal Reserve, which works arrogantly and opaquely. Consider Matt Tabbi’s recent articles regarding these financial giants and Congressional Corruption (and see here). We’re not even finished paying off the damage from the S&L scandal from the 80’s, and now, in the past year, we’ve taken on a new debt that dwarfs that S&L debt. And consider that when someone like federal Judge Rakoff has the integrity to stand up to speak truth to power, he seems to be a lone voice calling from a distant hilltop, not part of any sort of chorus. Consider, too, the monumental struggle faced by Elizabeth Warren, Chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel , who is facing immense opposition in Congress to establishing a strong Consumer Financial Protection Agency (CFPA) to make sure that consumers stop getting ripped off by banks through the use of unintelligible contract language (how can this possibly be controversial?).

Pardon my French, but what-the-fuck?

Using Occam’s Razor (the principle that the simplest explanation is usually the best), how does one explain that huge numbers of our representatives have completely tanked on The People.

Corruption • Economy • Featured • Politics
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By Erich Vieth on September 24th, 2009

More corruption exposed at the FDA

Remember Vioxx? There’s a lot more where that came from. Remember According to the NYT, more corruption has been uncovered at the FDA. According to the unanimous conclusion of FDA’s scientists, a medical device called the Menaflex was unsafe.

But after receiving what an F.D.A. report described as “extreme,” “unusual” and persistent pressure from four Democrats from New Jersey — Senators Robert Menendez and Frank R. Lautenberg and Representatives Frank Pallone Jr. and Steven R. Rothman — agency managers overruled the scientists and approved the device for sale in December.

According to the story, the members of Congress each received significant campaign contributions from the manufacturer. The FDA is now considering rescinding approval for the device.

All of this raises an interesting question: Who would be more qualified to determine whether a medical device should go to market, A) a medically trained scientist or B) members of Congress who receive campaign contributions from the manufacturer of the device? Easy call, right? Anyone with a high school education should know that politicians shouldn’t override scientists on matters of science.

If this were a just world, one or more people would be going to prison for this corruption which has endangered (and potentially, injured) many of those people purchasing the defective device.

Corruption • Health • Politics
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The ACORN hypocrisy
By Brynn Jacobs on September 23rd, 2009

The ACORN hypocrisy

Over the past few weeks, videotapes have been trickling out that purport to show ACORN employees offered tax advice to those seeking to engage in child prostitution or other salacious activities. Having viewed the tapes, it’s obvious that they have been edited extensively, and that alone should make one wonder what the original tapes may show. Further, Media Matters has a lengthy critique of the credibility of the conservative activists and the manufactured news story that they have created, including failing to report that in at least one instance police were called and the filmmakers were removed from the premises after inquiring about underage prostitution. But really, whether ACORN employees did or did not do everything they are accused of is a side issue.

The Huffington Post yesterday pointed out that the legislative zeal to cut off funding for ACORN may have created an even bigger problem: it may eliminate the entire military-industrial complex. You see, the legislation prohibits federal funding or promotion of organizations that, among other things, “has filed a fraudulent form with any Federal or State regulatory agency”. The Project on Government Oversight (POGO) maintains a database of companies holding federal contracts that also have “histories of misconduct such as fraud” that would ostensibly bar them from receiving any further governmental funding under the “Defund ACORN Act”. Top violators include Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrop Grummond, Raytheon, KBR (former Halliburton subsidiary)…. and a staggering number of other large corporations doing business with the federal government. House Republican leader John Boehner released a statement congratulating house Republicans for all they “have done to hold ACORN accountable for its abuse of taxpayer dollars and the public trust.” One wonders whether he will hold these other corporations to the same standard that they require of ACORN? After all, the scale of the violations by the weapons industry dwarfs anything ACORN is accused of. For fiscal year 2007, Lockheed Martin had federal contracts valued at $34.2 billion (with a b) dollars, and the cost of their misconduct since 1995 is valued at $577.2 million. ACORN has only received $53 million in federal funds since 1994, and none of the allegations show any actual harm was done to the government. In other words, Lockeed Martin has committed fraud to the tune of over 10 times the total amount of federal funding ACORN has received.

American Culture • Fraud • Social justice • hypocrisy
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How’s your water quality?
By Brynn Jacobs on September 16th, 2009

How’s your water quality?

The debate over tap water vs. bottled water will probably go on for quite some time. Many people believe that by purchasing bottled water, they are consuming better quality water than that which comes from the tap. Others argue that the environmental impact of bottled water is massive, and that bottled water is no safer than tap water. A report earlier this year from the Government Accounting Office claims that because public water supplies are regulated by the Safe Water Drinking Act and those regulations are enforced by the EPA, they are therefore safer than bottled water, which is regulated by the FDA– and we all know what a wonderful job the FDA has been doing. But a new investigative report by the New York Times calls this conclusion into question.

In the last five years alone, chemical factories, manufacturing plants and other workplaces have violated water pollution laws more than half a million times. The violations range from failing to report emissions to dumping toxins at concentrations regulators say might contribute to cancer, birth defects and other illnesses.

However, the vast majority of those polluters have escaped punishment. State officials have repeatedly ignored obvious illegal dumping, and the Environmental Protection Agency, which can prosecute polluters when states fail to act, has often declined to intervene.

Campaign Finance Reform • Environment • Featured • Law
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Dark days and “Green Shoots”
By Brynn Jacobs on September 15th, 2009

Dark days and “Green Shoots”

“We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both.” –Supreme Court Justice Lous D. Brandeis

For all the discussion of “green shoots” and an economy on the mend, there’s plenty of data and commentary to the contrary. What’s interesting to me, is that recent developments only highlight the extent to which Main Street economics have become irrelevant to Wall Street.

The administration is claiming that the crisis is largely over, and that it’s time to breathe a sigh of relief. President Obama yesterday argued that “we can be confident that the storms of the past two years are beginning to break.” Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner discussed last week beginning to wind down some of the programs that were implemented in the heat of the crisis late last year. The value of the Dow Jones Industrial Average has risen from its July low of 8146, and is now trading around 9600. Everything seems well and good in the world of high-finance.

But others see it differently. Nobel-prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz argued this week that nothing has been done to address the underlying banking problems that created the mess in the first place, adding that “the problems are worse than they were in 2007 before the crisis.” Simon Johnson, former chief economist of the IMF, echoes that sentiment, and points out that the real issues underlying the crisis have not been addressed at all. He lays out 4 areas of concern:

  1. The big banks need to be made to be dramatically smaller.
  2. Executives need to have a great deal of their personal wealth tied up in their banks to prevent a reckless focus on short-term results.
  3. An end to the revolving door between Wall Street and Washington, DC. “There is no way people should be able to go directly (or even overnight) from a failing bank to designing bailout packages to benefit such banks. In any other industry, in any other country, and at any other time in American history, this would have been seen as an unconscionable conflict of interest. “
  4. The financial elite is aware that they are able to exploit the Federal Reserve and use it as a “bailout machine”.
Corruption • Current Events • Economy
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Did Obama fall for Big Pharma sales hype?
By Erich Vieth on August 13th, 2009

Did Obama fall for Big Pharma sales hype?

Did you hear that Obama has been cutting some secret deals with Big Pharma after his campaign filled with promises that health care reform would be a big open book? I don’t quite know what to think of this. Maybe Obama is leading Pharma on, and he’s gonna stab them in the back at the last minute. That ploy has the advantage of freezing the Pharma advertising money in place for now. This is important because Pharma has enough advertising money to destroy what’s left of health care reform. So three cheers for the possibility that Obama is a shrewd guy who is keeping his enemies close to keep them at bay, at least for now. I’d give that about a 2% chance of being the case.

What I’m assuming is that Obama knows that the system is so utterly corrupted by legalized bribery (campaign contributions) that Congress is incapable of giving us real health care reform. That’s why Obama is unwilling to promote the single payer system that most Americans want. In this more likely scenario, Obama has already given up on any meaningful health care reform. Instead, he’s working hard to spin the illusion of health care reform, and the final plan will actually be a few trinkets and whistles. Maybe the government will subsidize dentists to give out candy to their patients. Maybe it will be nothing at all, but all of the Congressional Leaders will nonetheless pose and smile with their 3,000 page health care reform bill that no one will have actually read and for good reason.

As many progressives are arguing, with increasing volume these days, why not take the profit out of health care insurance? Why not essentially expand medicare to all Americans? The experts I trust say that single payor is the only legitimate reform. Everything else is throwing tax money at a corrupt and inefficient system. I wasn’t a big fan of single payor until I started learning how many other countries are making it work. The benefits are many (In addition to the obvious improvement that sick people won’t be thrown on the street, employed people won’t be locked into terrible jobs just for the insurance).

Really, why should we have for-profit health insurance any more than we might have for-profit fire departments and for-profit libraries? Except that we have a for-profit Congress and a for-profit military (e.g., Blackwater and all those private soldiers earning $100,000 to be in Afghanistan). It’s getting downright un-American to be duped into doing something because it’s RIGHT.

But I’m still obsessing about the deal Obama cut with Pharma. We heard how Pharma would save Americans $80 Billion over the next 10 years. Did you see what the written deal is: It’s “up to $80 Billion.”

pharma-memo

Now what is Obama thinking? When I see that a store is offering “up to” 80% off, I know (because I’m not a total idiot) that this means the store might be offering 2 items at 10% off and everything else at 0% off. That’s the meaning of “up to.” Signing an agreement with “up to” is stupid, truly idiotic. My question (which I raised in the beginning of this post) is “Who is the one being stupid?” I’ll be watching for some happy 11th hour excitement when Obama tells Pharma to fuck off, that we’re enacting single payor and that for its loyalty and naivete, Pharma will be rewarded with tax breaks of “up to” 100%, which means negative 37%. Take that, assholes. That’s what you get for trying to cut secret deals with my President.

If only.

Epilogue: For those of you who are pissed that Obama is a communist, note that Blue Cross just tried to raised its rates by 56% in Michigan.

Corruption • Health • Medicine • Politics
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By Erich Vieth on August 13th, 2009

Obama voters increasingly frustrated with Obama

Drew Weston has captured my frustration with Obama:

I happen to be one of the lucky ones. I don’t carry a balance on my credit cards, my home is still worth more than my mortgage, and I still have a job. But if Americans are starting to turn populist anger toward a White House that has doggedly refused to focus that anger where it belongs — toward the banks, the mortgage brokers, the regulators who failed to regulate, the oil companies that have blocked energy reform for decades while racking up record profits, the health insurance companies that make their profits by denying coverage and discriminating against the ill, the pharmaceutical companies whose lobbyists have negotiated away the right to negotiate, and the Republicans who bankrupted the treasury during the eight long years of the Bush Presidency and crashed the economy on their way out — I can understand why.

We are not seeing major change where we most need them. I’m increasingly thinking that Obama is way over his head. I do think Obama is a good and decent man, but it’s becoming increasingly clear that large corporations completely own and run Congress. It will remain this way unless the people get mad enough to get up from watching movies on their big screen TVs and take to the streets. But anger is not enough. First, the people have to take the time to understand how bad things are and how they are having their way of life stolen by plutocrats. This is unlikely to happen on a mass scale given that so many of us can’t or won’t take the time to self-critically study complex situations.

Corruption • Featured • Politics
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Fixing health care under the table
By Erich Vieth on July 12th, 2009

Fixing health care under the table

At Common Dreams, Bill Moyers and Michael Winslip explain that you won’t see the way the health care debate is being resolved if you only spent time on Capitol Hill. No, it’s much slimier than that:

Katharine Weymouth, the publisher of The Washington Post — one of the most powerful people in DC — invited top officials from the White House, the Cabinet and Congress to her home for an intimate, off-the-record dinner to discuss health care reform with some of her reporters and editors covering the story.

But CEO’s and lobbyists from the health care industry were invited, too, provided they forked over $25,000 a head — or up to a quarter of a million if they want to sponsor a whole series of these cozy get-togethers. And what is the inducement offered? Nothing less, the invitation read, than “an exclusive opportunity to participate in the health-care reform debate among the select few who will get it done.”

If you are not one of the highly-monied invitees or the “select few,” forget about the debate because, politically speaking, you amount to nothing at all. That’s the process. Go tell that to all the grade school students who are being taught lies in their civics classes. They are being taught that this is a democracy, and that our government is ultimately responsible to all of those people who were not invited to that fancy dinner. As the authors, explain, this particular dinner was canceled only after a copy of the invite was leaked to the web site Politico.com. It was, after all, a big misunderstanding.

This peak at how important bills are passed is not an isolated case. It reminds you that when Congress passed the Helping Families Save Their Homes Act, “the select few made sure it no longer contained the cramdown provision that would have allowed judges to readjust mortgages.”

Here’s another example:

Everyone knows the credit ratings agencies were co-conspirators with Wall Street in the shameful wilding that brought on the financial meltdown. But when the Obama administration came up with new reforms to prevent another crisis, the credit ratings agencies were given a pass. They’d been excused by “the select few who actually get it done.”

Shame on us. Shame on our leaders for following big business instead of leading.

American Culture • Corruption • Featured • Health • Medicine • Politics
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By Erich Vieth on June 25th, 2009

Bravo, NPR, for keeping an eye on the lobbyists

While others were photographing the senators at the front of the room, NPR turned its camera on all of those people sitting in the back of the room, in an attempt to identify all of the health care lobbyists in the room. What ARE the names of all of those people trying to subvert our political process?

NPR has invited an interested parties to review their photos and to help them nail these bastards figure things out.

Corruption • Health • Medicine • Politics
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Tobacco money at work at Congress
By Erich Vieth on June 11th, 2009

Tobacco money at work at Congress

When a product kills 450,000 Americans every year, don’t you think it deserves a high level of scrutiny and regulation? I mean, aren’t you a bit surprised that it’s even illegal, given that marijuana, which kills nobody (except due to insanely reactionary law enforcement), is completely outlawed?

Consider that the bodies of the people killed by tobacco every year would stretch more than 500 miles, if laid end to end. Every one of those dead people were using tobacco products exactly as anticipated by the manufacturers. Those dead bodies could stretch from New York City to Charlotte, North Carolina (or pick your own 500 mile radius). Can you imagine the tobacco executives walking along one of those 500 mile lines of dead bodies, justifying the carnage? Walking, whistling and thinking, “Just look at all of those people who were dumb enough to buy that highly addictive product that I promoted and sold . . .”

And now consider the morals of some of our politicians. Step forward, Senators who oppose the new law that subjects tobacco to FDA

regulation. Thanks to McClatchy Newspapers, we know that many of you are tobacco whores:

Among the 17 senators who voted against allowing the Food and Drug Administration to regulate tobacco are some of the top recipients of campaign contributions from the tobacco industry, which has donated millions of dollars to lawmakers in the past several campaign cycles.

If you want more details who which tobacco whore has received how much money, visit OpenSecrets.org.

Consider, too, that the corruption that exists with regard to tobacco, also exists with regard to any major industry. For instance, consider health care, defense contracting, farming (including wasteful corn ethanol subsidies), and last but not least, the financial “services” industries. Serving themselves to our tax-dollars.

Now I’m not for outlawing tobacco. But I am for unleashing a torrent of high-profile prime-time advertising that would show the death and destruction caused by tobacco up close and in nauseating detail. And I am for allowing the FDA to join in the war against smoking. Why? Consider this comment from Dick Durbin from a report by MSNBC:

“This is a bill that will protect children and will protect America,” said Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., a leading supporter. “Every day that we don’t act, 3,500 American kids — children — will light up for the first time. That is enough to fill 70 school buses.”

Corruption • Fraud • Health • Politics • ignorance
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Republican Justice: blindness to conflicts of interest
By Erich Vieth on June 08th, 2009

Republican Justice: blindness to conflicts of interest

The United States Supreme Court was barely able to hold that it’s wrong to spend $3,000,000 electing a judge and than be able to have your newly purchased judge decide a big case in your favor. Decided June 8, 2009, Caperton v. A.T. Massey Coal Company Inc. was a 5-4 decision, with dissents by John Roberts, Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito. The defendant in the West Virginia case was a coal company that had been accused of fraud, and the jury had awarded $50 M in damages against defendant. It was A.T. Massey’s Chairman and Chief Officer Don Blankenship who stepped in to buy the judgship for Brent Benjamin for $3 M after the verdict, knowing that this case would be considered by the West Virginia Supreme Court.

Chief Justice John Roberts frets that he can’t criticize this obviously wrong case of a $3,000,000 judge because there are less obvious cases that would be more difficult to decide. Think about it: Roberts is urging that the Court can’t decide the easy cases because there are also some other cases that aren’t so easy. Why not just hang up your robes and give it up? Tell me a situation where that isn’t true. Roberts goes even further, suggesting that hammering the $3,000,000 judge will undermine our fair, independent, and impartial judiciary.

Good grief.

Scalia had previously shown that he is completely obtuse to the idea of a conflict of interest when he decided a case favoring his duck-hunting buddy, Dick Cheney.

Corruption • Court Decisions • Featured • Law
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How to really reform the SEC
By Erich Vieth on May 26th, 2009

How to really reform the SEC

Dan Smolin asks a good question: Why should we assume that the SEC’s Mary Schapiro will make a U-turn in 2009, given that Schapiro has spent her entire career inviting brokerages to “self-regulate” and doing everything in her power to keep consumers at bay when they are ripped off and kept in the dark by brokerages? The easy answer is that we shouldn’t assume that Schapiro will all of a sudden go to bat for the consumers. After all, Schapiro “has been at the very center of a failed regulatory process for the past two decades.” We know where her loyalties lie, just like we know that Tim Geithner will never turn hard against Wall Street to clean up the corruption (see here for more details on Geithner–and here). Truly, years of actions speak much more loudly than months of words for both Schapiro and Geithner.

I am convinced that Obama doesn’t have the horses he needs to clean up Wall Street corruption. It’s a typical modern conundrum where you need a highly motivated powerful outsider to get the job down, but there simply aren’t enough highly motivated powerful outsiders.

If Mary Schapiro had even an iota of interest in protecting consumers, Smolin wouldn’t be needing to advocate for the following changes he is now pushing–they would have been a reality years ago:

1. Abolish the mandatory arbitration system and give investors back their constitutional rights;

2. Abolish “self regulation” by FINRA, which is a sham. The brokerage industry should be regulated by a governmental authority with the power to do so effectively. The SEC would be the likely agency to do so, with the right leadership;

3. Require brokerage statements to:

(a) Disclose the risk of every portfolio, as measured by standard deviation;
(b) Compare the returns of every portfolio to a portfolio indexed to benchmarks of comparable risk; and
(c) Disclose the “cost equity” of the portfolio, which is the amount the investor must make to break even, after payment of commissions, fees and margin interest.

Common sense, right? Why aren’t these reforms a reality? Good question. And why is a terribly motivated person like Mary Schapiro still sitting there pretending to be a reformer?

Corruption • Economy • Good and Evil • Law • Politics • law and order
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By Erich Vieth on May 16th, 2009

Frank Rich: It’s time to dig up Bush’s buried bodies

Frank Rich has just written an article pointing to a wide variety of Bush Administration scandals about to be revealed. He urges President Obama to let the information flow because there is a momentum to the process and it is, in fact, inevitable. The strangest one, in my opinion, is Donald Rumsfeld’s private bible quote laden newsletter. Strange and revealing, though not at all surprising. Rumsfeld’s newsletter, entitled Worldwide Intelligence Update, was:

[A] highly classified digest prepared for a tiny audience, including the president, and often delivered by hand to the White House by the defense secretary himself. These cover sheets greeted Bush each day with triumphal color photos of the war headlined by biblical quotations. GQ is posting 11 of them, and they are seriously creepy.

Take the one dated April 3, 2003, two weeks into the invasion, just as Shock and Awe hit its first potholes. Two days earlier, on April 1, a panicky Pentagon had begun spreading its hyped, fictional account of the rescue of Pvt. Jessica Lynch to distract from troubling news of setbacks. On April 2, Gen. Joseph Hoar, the commander in chief of the United States Central Command from 1991-94, had declared on the Times Op-Ed page that Rumsfeld had sent too few troops to Iraq. And so the Worldwide Intelligence Update for April 3 bullied Bush with Joshua 1:9: “Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be terrified; do not be discouraged, for the LORD your God will be with you wherever you go.”

Corruption • Politics • Psychology Cognition
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