Since Eric Holder seems to be lost somewhere in the Bermuda Triangle, I don’t have much hope for Spitzer’s call to action, but it is gratifying to see someone calling out the Administration’s appalling lapses.
From CNN:
Click here to watch.
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It’s an 0100 level RICO Act prosecution even for a AG with feet of clay. I dont get why it seems so improbable to do the right thing, why take the job otherwise? He sould be embarassed.
Perhaps he was inspired by Alberto Gonzalez.
The catalyst for a renewed fight over pornography is a recent, little-noticed move by Attorney General Eric Holder to shutter the Obscenity Prosecution Task Force, a special Justice Department unit set up during the Bush administration under pressure from conservatives upset about the proliferation of obscene material on the Internet.
Critics say the decision reflects a lack of interest in prosecuting such cases. The dissolution of the task force has touched off an angry reaction in Congress as well as from conservative activists pressing for a crackdown on hard-core adult pornography, and threatens to embroil Holder and the Obama administration in another culture-war confrontation.
Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0411/53314.html#ixzz1Jnrw361R
Golly, the Eric Holder is such a disappointment. What could possibly be holding the righteous prosecution of banksters? HMMMM? Try not to think too hard about the lack of middle class propriety in his choice of the top priorities of getting the pornsters or banksters or drugsters or the pot headsters… so much evil and so little tax resources to waste as a useless unproductive government drone. Decisions, decisions. How many more top priority vice squads does the DOJ harbor. Tune in next time on why the Democrats can’t reverse 45 years of reactionary right wing politics overnight, be sure to castrate yourself while forming that third party. Your squealing will match your shrill apocalyptic tones.
William Greider’s article sums it up succinctly:
http://www.thenation.com/article/159433/how-wall-street-crooks-get-out-jail-free
Yes, Greider has summed up succinctly the degradation of the corporate law enforcement. Former NJ AG, now Gov Christie, ran what became the DOJ privatized enforcement procedures by agreeing to allowing a major Pharma company to endow a chair at the University of his law school alma mater, Seton Hall. So instead of paying back the public, he scored a huge donation that had everything but his name chiseled into the bricks and mortar for his magnanimous extortion. But Greider still leaves much out.
The West Virginia AG, has been unsuccessfully trying to investigate and prosecute Capital One Bank. That’s because a Federal judge disallowed his subpoenas under the ruling that a National Bank Act incorporation places a banking business beyond the state’s reach for regulation, prosecution etc. Even though a Federal Court ruled that Capital One had been only a state chartered bank under Virgina, not West Virginia statute. But on March 1, 2008 Capital One converted just in time to collect bailout-a-pallooza payolla that it would not have been able to as non NBA bank. Up until that point, Capital One had been illegally operating outside of its home state due to repeated failure in state after state to acquire a banking license. Now, as an NBA entity it does not have to.
And like all of the other Federally Chartered banks, no state as any jurisdiction over their operations.
Capital One and Johnny Dugan went together like peanut butter n’ jelly. Still do.
Orders from the Top, obviously.
While I would love to see the CEOs of Goldman, JPM, and AIG doing the perp walk on the evening news there is a reason why I don’t think we will ever see it. There are too many politicians, democrats and republican both who have taken bribes from the financial services industry and they’ve been taking them for decades. They can’t have the too big to fail bankers on the witness stand naming names, telling amounts, times, and what the bribes bought. We need to face up to the fact that many if not most politicians voted for deregulation of the financial services industry because there was money in it for them.
Pshhhaw pshhhaw. “Bribes” is such an ugly word. I much prefer “lobbying.” It’s just a little free speech by some people who clearly have a lot to say, so obviously it’s the foundation of freedom and justice for all.
The foxes are guarding the chicken coop. Retired congressmen often become lobbiest or corporation board members because they can exploit their connections. Goldman alums and other corp exec’s receive powerful government appointments. For instance: Hank Paulson (Goldman alum) gave Goldman a sweetheart 100% pay back from AIG that the American payed for. Halliburton made obscene money during the recent wars during Dick Cheney’s (Halliburton alum) tenure as VP. Coincidence or stacked deck?
I believe the word is “lobbyist” :)
… the Spelling Patrol strikes again!
Skilling and Lay were prosecuted in 04. Skilling is in prison, Lay is no longer alive.
Really smart people (or people who think they are really smart because they are CEO’s of large things) will not be deterred because they will always say “Well of course I’m smarter than those assholes, I’m the smartest guy in the world!”
Thats why systematic prosecution and vigilance is more important, even if the actual punishment is relatively non-draconian, than a Saudi Arabian style violent justice type of deal.
call me a conspiracy theorist, but i find lay’s “death” way too “convenient” on so many levels
When the books are balanced after we throw these stinking corrupt thieves out of our house, Eliot Spitzer will be among the handful of Americans who stood his ground. I like him.
Creating the terrorists as “war criminal” meme was one of the few notable successes of the bush admin. They were able to conflate the breathtaking failure of their Stewardship of the intelligence/security apparatchik (No one could have anticipated it?!) to intervene on a band of two bit thugs into a fantastically expensive perpetual war, seemingly designed to generate generations of fresh enemies and tighten control of our domestic populations freedoms.
There is no reason for acivil trial to cost $BB. Build a holding cell in the courthouse, no transportation kubuki theater and run the trial on a 12/7 basis to completion then find an appropriate hole in a supermax prison for them to contemplate their navels
dunno…on 9-12, friend in London (Muslim) who does Heathrow security called and we discussed, prior to Bushit
scapegoating, exactly that “muslims” were to be the new American “russian threat”…
Poor Eric hasn’t followed up because he’s devastated that he will not be able to prosecute terrorists in a civilian court in NYC at a cost of billions of dollars.
He is hiding in mourning “at an undisclosed location.”
Please.
Let’s not insult prositutes by comparing them to Geithner and Bernanke.
Let’s not forget to look at Eric’s own history…
Yeah, Spitzer screws hookers. Far worse, Holder is screwing this country and betraying his duty as Attorney General.
Which hurts more more?
Obama hired prostitutes (Geithner, Bernanke, Summers & Rubin) to screw the American people and he is held up by many as a moral character. Spitzer hired a prostitute to screw himself and he immediately stepped down as Governor with attacks from all sides of immorality. Who is the more moral character in this debate of financial immunity and impunity? I would vote for Spitzer for President if he ran.
“Obama hired prostitutes (Geithner, Bernanke, Summers & Rubin) to screw the American people and he is held up by many as a moral character.”
With all due respect, I believe you’ve got the order wrong there. Think again about who “hired” whom, and who is really prostituting himself.
Very well put. Its easy to forget that the elections are selections of a filtered bought bunch. Goldman is getting exactly the prostitution service that they paid for.
If only Obama was a prostitute. He’s more like the trophy wife who divorces and takes her husband to the cleaners.
Since I didn’t win the lottery last night, I’ll wrap myself in a “new, best dream” for the rest of the day. [Dream: Eric Holder finds pressing family matters necessitate his resignation . . . and Obama–that stalwart of the working man, you know, the hopey-changey fella that inspired us–appoints Eliot Spitzer. We can then watch as he puts his money where his mouth is!}
and THEN, Obama steps aside and Russ Feingold steps in..
but I am not privileged. Why should i pay for your excesses?
There was money and still is money to be made by politicians selling out their country’s livelihood and economic stability to irresponsible capital.
Appoint Elliot Spitzer as special prosecutor of Goldman Sacs, Wells Fargo, JP Morgan and Bank of America. Watch the visuals of fear. Having taken down Spitzer, Banksters would understand the truth of “never leave your enemey standing.”
Have we entered a time warp? Have people already forgotten what Spitzer was doing before his dick was discovered to be useful for more than just urinating?
He has thrown down a gauntlet no one will pick up.
Make jokes about reality, not Jamie’s request to the FBI to get him off their back.
He was muzzled after he blew the whistle. Our priorities must be skewed, or is it screwed?
The amazing thing is that Spitzer did go after some of these scumbags but in every case I remember he let them off easy with deals rather than bringing them to true justice… and even that was enough for them to sick the FBI on him. These banking thugs don’t tolerate even a small stick waved in their direction. The only thing that will bring them down is punishment to fit the crime. They are responsible for the destruction of the economy, they committed treason. Treason is a hanging offense.
actually “reading history” (“Wall Street-A History”-Geisst)
shows the only way U.S. economics rights itself is when all share in disaster..
They can rewrite all the financial laws they want. They still can’t revoke the law of gravity. Instead of cleaning up their own mess, they are going to let the current monetary model disintegrate. When the states set up public banks and tell Goldman Sax to stuff it, New York city is going to loose a significant revenue source.
Didn’t you hear that these folks think they’ve made an upgrade to the Law of Gravity? They are pretty convinced that Gravity3.0 doesn’t apply to them.
Meanwhile, the posted link appears to have disappeared down a wormhole — I’m getting errors.
So: if any previous commenters come around, did that link work when you clicked it?
Because either the CNN servers are so overloaded with all the traffic Yves is sending their way that they’ve quibbled and gone DOS.
Or else someone who doesn’t want much traffic viewing that video clip is messing with CNN’s servers.
It’s not credible that CNN is doing any kind of normal server upgrades at 9:30 PST on a Sunday morning. Something’s weird.
Yves’s link seems to be dead, but here’s one that works:
http://inthearena.blogs.cnn.com/2011/04/15/spitzer-prosecute-goldman-sachs-or-quit/
Obama is just the figure holding the storm lantern out front of Wall St.
Skippy…I took a closer look and found that the body is permanent as where the head is interchangeable…financial fashion.
Cornel West: Obama is ‘another black mascot’ of ‘Wall Street oligarchs’
Raw Replay http://bit.ly/dTUQtF
No elected politician or beholden political appointee of either party is going to lift a finger against any of the big donors.
System breakdown.
Other than for embezzlement (Richard Whitney) how many of the malefactors of the Great Depression were convicted? I recall Insull got off as did Charles Mitchell of National City who engaged in the same tactics as Goldman, they tried to get him on tax evasion and he got off. So once again I ask the question if no big wigs got prosecuted successfully in the 1930s why expect anything different now? Its really only if the person in question unjustly enriched themselves see the ex head of Tycho or Worldcom that people are gone after. Lets see what happens to the guy on trial for insider trading right now.
Why did Spitzer have to use prostitutes??? Would he be the AG today and going after them, or would he at least be somewhere else besides CNN where he could make a real difference?