On 24 April 2014, Jake Bernstein at ProPublica
headlined, "Judge Tosses Retaliation Lawsuit by Fired N.Y. Fed
Examiner," and reported that when Carmen Segarra, "a
lawyer, was hired [on 31 October 2011] along with other examiners for
her expertise in compliance," as part of the N.Y. Fed's new initiative to
"ramp up its supervision of nine so-called 'Too-Big-To-Fail' financial
institutions" and she found that "Goldman Sachs lacked a
firm-wide conflict-of-interest policy," her three bosses ordered her to
eliminate her finding, she refused to do so, and she was
fired on 23 May 2012. She then filed charges against them and the N.Y.
Fed; she "argued that numerous laws and regulations underpinned" her
findings in the case; and the judge, whose husband was an
attorney "representing Goldman Sachs in an advisory capacity" in the
case, wrote in her ruling, that "Plaintiff [Segarra] has failed to
state a cause of action." This judge "had also previously worked at a law
firm with the Fed's lead counsel in the case." In other words: Don't
whistle-blow if you're hired as a regulator and you find that a firm
you're regulating isn't doing what the laws and regulations say they
should. The judge ordered "to terminate the motions ... and to close the
case." This was "regulation," in today's United States: Don't do your job
-- or else! (Or else you'll be fired for doing it.)
Also on 24 April 2014, the Center for Public
Integrity headlined "Meet the Banking Caucus, Wall Street's secret
weapon in Washington: Lawmakers help industry donors beat back
tougher rules," and a team reported that: "Members of this Banking
Caucus receive massive financial support from the industry and collaborate
with industry lobbyists to block or roll back efforts to tighten oversight
of financial firms. Lobbyists help draft legislation and
write questions for lawmakers to ask at hearings. Lawmakers help drum up
support for lobbyists' pet issues."
The next day, yet another team at the Center for
Public Integrity bannered, "What Happens When a Dark Money Group Blows Off IRS
Rules? Nothing. The Government Integrity Fund spent most of its
money on election ads, despite IRS rules prohibiting a social welfare
nonprofit from doing so." The Government Integrity Fund was an Ohio
nonprofit set up by aristocrats to oust the most progressive U.S. Senator,
Ohio's Senator Sherrod Brown, and to install in his place a
very conservative Republican, Josh Mandel. You can see the top 20 known
contributors to each of these two contenders at opensecrets.org where the biggest two for Brown were Ohio State
University ($113,980), and JStreet PAC ($110,990), and the biggest two for
Mandel were Senate Conservatives Fund (former Republican U.S. Senator Jim
DeMint's bundling operation) ($360,319), and Club For Growth (a Wall
Street front) ($301,553). However, the Government Integrity Fund reported
too late to make that list, and when they finally did report at opensecrets.org, they reported spending $1.3 million for Mandel, who nonetheless
ended up with only 45% of the vote. Somehow, the most progressive U.S.
Senator, Sherrod Brown, just kept on winning, even in his
middle-of-the-road state of Ohio, despite everything
that conservative aristocrats have been able to throw at him. Barack
Obama's IRS refused to enforce the law against the clear legal violation
by Mandel's largest donor-group: Government Integrity Fund.
On 26 April 2014, William K. Black at New Economic
Perspectives bannered "Corporate CEOs Demand that They Be Tipped Off When
a Whistleblower Reports Their Crimes," and he noted that,
"The degree of hostility against regulators and whistleblowers, and
intense sympathy for the CEOs leading the control frauds [i.e., heading the
frauds against investors and consumers], is palpable among large numbers
of Reagan and Bush judicial appointees," as a consequence of which there
was now a raging war against whistleblowers. A reader-comment observed:
"Enlisting the government to help whack rats is brazen even for the money
industry." President Obama stood aside silently, while the "rats"
who wanted clean and honest corporate governance, got "whacked" by
judges, with his Administration's quiet complicity.
On 28 April 2014, yet a different team at the Center
for Public Integrity bannered "Law-Breaking Judges Took Cases That Could Make Them Even
Richer: Federal judges aren't supposed to hear cases in which
they have a financial stake" but some "do it anyway," because "Judges
face no formal punishment for breaking these rules." Consequently,
for example: "When Linda Wolicki-Gables and her husband appealed a lawsuit
all the way to the second-highest court in the nation against Johnson
& Johnson over a malfunctioning medication pump that had been
implanted in her body, the couple had no idea that one of the judges who
decided their case had a financial stake in the giant multinational
company. Eleventh U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Judge James Hill owned as
much as $100,000 in Johnson & Johnson stock when he and two other
judges ruled against the Gables' appeal in the precedent-setting
case."
Also on April 28th, the American Constitution Society
headlined, "Federal Judge Says Big Donors' Money Drowning Out
'We the People'," and Jeremy Leaming reported an April
24th decision by U.S. District Court Judge Paul A. Crotty: "'In
effect' Crotty wrote, 'it is only direct bribery -- not influence -- that
the [U.S. Supreme] Court views as crossing the line into quid pro quo
corruption'"; and, so, Crotty was compelled to rule in a case that
there was no corruption, even though he thought that there actually was.
These are 6 news reports during 24-28 April 2014, about
federal corruption, that did not appear at the New York Times, Washington Post,
CNN, Fox "News," NBC, etc., but that seem to indicate the U.S. is a
very corrupt country, perhaps including in its corruption major news-media
themselves (if, that is, you and others find this to be a type of
news-reporting that's more interesting than much of what those major news-media
actually are reporting on -- because they virtually ignore it). If you would
want to see more coverage of this type of news, you may indicate that in a
reader-comment here, and I shall be happy to pass it along to major news-media,
as a suggestion to them, that they should be covering this.
----------
Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most
recently, of They're Not Even
Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of CHRIST'S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created
Christianity.
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