EditorBlog (958)
Lanny Breuer Cashes in After Not Prosecuting Wall Street Execs, Will Receive Approximate Salary of 4 Million Dollars
MARK KARLIN, EDITOR OF BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT
It's official, and former Department of Justice (DOJ) Criminal Division Chef Lanny Breuer is bragging about it. He'll return for the third to time the white collar (now expanding its clients internationally) legal defense firm of Covington & Burling, but this time at a whopping salary.
According to the New York Times: "Mr. Breuer is expected to earn about $4 million in his first year at Covington. In addition to representing clients, he will serve as an ambassador of sorts for the firm as it seeks to grow overseas."
As BuzzFlash at Truthout has speculated before, one can argue (and the same holds true for Eric Holder, also a Covington & Burling alumni appointee), Breuer was building his value in the marketplace at the DOJ, while Wall Street executives who nearly destroyed the American economy went unprosecuted. And his future value to his old white collar defense firm was dependent, in large part, on him not angering the people who would be the clients of Covington & Burling when he left the Department of Justice. The result, one can contend: no prosecutions of banks "too big to fail" execs as publicly stated as a policy by both Breuer and Holder.
This isn't just a revolving door; one can argue it's a dereliction of legal responsibility by an employee of the people of the United States. One can proffer that it's a cash-in career move by a resume climber who was careful not to bite the hands that will write the checks that will feed him on a lavish scale.
BuzzFlash at Truthout has written more than fifteen commentaries on the failure to prosecute Wall Street execs in recent months. These include: "Consigliere Lanny Breuer, Head of the DOJ Criminal Division, Leaves Without Prosecuting One Made Man on Wall Street" ; and "The Covington & Burling Trio Overseeing the Department of Justice Criminal Division: An Injustice."
Breuer isn't the least bit sheepish about grabbing the brass ring after failing to hold those responsible for nearly sinking the economy criminally accountable. According to the website Main Justice,
(Photo: Wikipedia)
Pricey Law Firms That Inflate Their Bills Are Part of a Corrupt Culture of the One Percent
MARK KARLIN, EDITOR OF BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT
Anyone who knows anyone who has worked at a high-end law firm knows that there is a two-word key to becoming a partner: billable hours.
The most prestigious big sticker law firms are now global in nature, just like the corporations and the elite whom they represent – and to keep pace with the wealth of their clients an unknown number of these firms likely pad their bills.
“Lawyers sometimes conflate their own financial interests with the interests of the client who pays the bills,” William G. Ross, a law professor, observed in the New York Times (NYT).
Ross was speaking about revelations of "churning" client bills in a law suit against the legal giant DLA Piper that is causing a stir in what might be called the legal business, although it's hardly the first time a major law firm has been accused of charging sky-high partner billable hours for everything from junior attorney work to basic office tasks (or maybe even getting one's shoes shined before a meeting with a client).
In essence, Ross is politely saying that at least some Gucci-shoed lawyers consider themselves of the same moneyed-elite that thrives on greed: "If it makes you more money and doesn't get you prosecuted, do it."
(Photo: limaoscarjuliet)
Because Big Pharma Pays Off Generic Drug Companies, Americans Spend Billions of Dollars More for Prescriptions
MARK KARLIN, EDITOR OF BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT
National Public Radio (NPR) reports it succinctly:
The U.S. Supreme Court hears arguments Monday in a case worth billions of dollars to pharmaceutical companies and American consumers. The issue is whether brand-name drug manufacturers may pay generic drug manufacturers to keep generics off the market. These payments — a form of settlement in patent litigation — began to blossom about a decade ago when the courts, for the first time, appeared to bless them.
The White House is siding with consumers on this one. According to the Associated Press (AP):
The Obama administration, backed by consumer groups and the American Medical Association, says these so-called “pay for delay” deals profit the drug companies but harm consumers by adding 3.5 billion annually to their drug bills….
The Obama administration argues the agreements are illegal if they’re based solely on keeping the generic drug off the market. Solicitor General Donald Verrilli, speaking at Georgetown Law School recently, noted that once a generic drug gets on the market and competes with a brand-name drug, “the price drops 85 percent.” That quickly decimates sales of the brand-name medicine.
The specific case before the Supreme Court is illustrative of how consumers get the bill for pay-offs to generic drug companies, as stated in a Washington Post editorial:
In 2006 Solvay Pharmaceuticals, the maker of the testosterone-therapy drug AndroGel, settled a dispute with a group of generic pharmaceutical companies, agreeing to allow would-be competitors into the market in 2015, five years before the AndroGel patent expires. So how is this bad for consumers in search of cheaper drugs?
In fact, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) will argue Monday before the Supreme Court that this settlement and all others like it are so obviously anti-competitive that they should be presumed illegal. And the FTC has a very good case.
The reason lies in the fact that the generic pharmaceutical companies also agreed to take millions in cash from Solvay as part of the settlement. That arrangement, the FTC argues, stinks of illegal collusion — without which generic versions of the drug might have entered the market even earlier…..
If companies can effectively maintain monopoly pricing for a while longer and split up the profits by way of legal settlements, generics firms are less likely to push for competition to begin at the earliest possible date. Both sides make money in the interim, but consumers pay the price. It’s hard to think of a circumstance in which that sort of dealmaking wouldn’t indicate a violation of the spirit of the nation’s antitrust laws.
The logical question, of course, is why would Big Pharma pay off generic drug makers to drop a patent challenge in court if there wasn't a concern that the big name pharmaceutical firm might lose the case, resulting in far, far less costly generics becoming available in pharmacies?
What is the impact of the "pay for delay" scheme? As the Associated Press reports, when the Pfizer Lipitor cholesterol drug expired, "The price then plummeted from Pfizer’s $375 to $530 for a three-month supply, depending on dosage, to $20 to $40 for generic versions."
(Photo: Erix!)
Man Shoots Horse Dead in Video to Defy Animal Activists: Company He Works for Likely to Become First US Horse Slaughterhouse Since 2007
MARK KARLIN, EDITOR OF BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT
Impatient with a virtual US ban on slaughtering horses for meat, a worker for Valley Meat Company in Roswell, New Mexico, shot a horse in the head and posted it on You Tube to express his contempt for animal advocates. In fact, he swore at humane society members as he pulled the trigger the other day.
(If you have the stomach for it, you can watch the unedited video here, but be prepared for barbaric graphic cruelty.)
The stunning act of defiant brutality is the entryway into a far bigger and ominous story about slaughtering horses. According to a local television news station in New Mexico:
In the video, an employee at the Valley Meat Company out of Roswell, NM - which is working with the USDA to get a horse slaughter plant in the area - brings a horse out of its pen, swears at activists and then kills the horse with a single gunshot.
“To all you animal activists, f**k you,” Tim Sappington, a maintenance contractor with Valley Meat Company, said in the video.
He then shoots the horse point blank in the head. The horse falls to the ground and dies.
The owner of Valley Meat Company condones the execution of the horse, but told NBC News, he wouldn't have posted it on the Internet.
"De Los Santos [the owner of Valley Meat Company] said the contract worker, Tim Sappington, shot the video on his own time and at his own home.
"He shot a horse. That's what he eats. It's not against the law to slaughter your own horse," De Los Santos said. "Now, putting it on YouTube, I would not have done that."
And this is where the story breaks wide open. According to a February 28 New York Times article, De Los Santos and his Valley Meat Company have sued the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) to open a fully operational horse slaughterhouse in Roswell. If the USDA approves Valley Meat Company's request – which has already invested in equipping the abattoir plant – it would become the first US horse slaughterhouse since 2007:
(Photo: stophorseslaughter.com)
A Pepsi Nutrition Fellowship at Yale, You Got it!
MARK KARLIN, EDITOR OF BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT
In an interview by Kathrin Lassila for the Yale Alumni Magazine a short time back, outgoing Yale President Richard Levin sat for a Q and A justifying corporate and pharmaceutical funding of research at the university.
Levin admits that the university is, in essence, engaging in a corporate partnership with one research investor, Gilead Sciences, in which Yale would license back to Gilead any patented findings that would be profitable. The Gilead investment (which is what it is, despite the euphemisms from New Haven) brings the total of corporate research funding to $20 million at Yale, but that appears to be just the beginning of a growing direct relationship between corporations and the prestigious Ivy League institution.
Indeed, the magazine interview is entitled, "Corporate funding for medical science." Granted, the rapidly developing relationships between corporations seeking profitable research outcomes and universities is complex, including how the grants can often piggyback on government funding that is providing, indirectly, subsidies for the private sector backed academic research.
Levin, however, unapologetically endorses such creeping for-profit intrusions into the Ivory Tower. In his interview with Lasilla, who is the editor of the Yale publication for alumni, Levin, a PhD economist, rebuffs a pointed question with some academic administrator jabberwocky:
[Lasilla]: A Yale medical school professor, Cary Gross, has found that drug studies are 3.6 times more likely to be favorable when they’re company funded. Yale, like many universities, does some of these studies.
[Levin]: Yes, but you’re talking now about clinical trials, as opposed to research and discovery partnerships like the Gilead and Pfizer arrangements. Clinical testing of drugs for safety and efficacy is essential, and Yale has processes to ensure that conflicts of interest are eliminated or managed. It’s important for the public interest that we learn which drugs work and which don’t, and which have unacceptably toxic side effects. Besides, these tests can provide useful scientific information that will help scientists advance towards the next set of discoveries. As long as there is appropriate oversight, clinical trials are a good thing.
Going back to research and discovery activities, I don’t see much problem there.
But when asked by Lasilla, "What’s a recent proposal that was turned down?", Levin responds:
Very few get turned down today, because we have well-established ground rules on corporate funding. Nonetheless, we did have a recent case where we turned down corporate support because the faculty investigator proposing to do the work had a substantial consulting contract with the sponsoring company.
Heavens to Betsy! At least the line is drawn somewhere!
(Photo: CanWeBowlPlease)
Animal Slaughter Industry Making It Illegal to Show You Cruelty, Including Veal Calves Skinned Alive
MARK KARLIN, EDITOR OF BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT
Thom Hartmann points the finger squarely at the infamous ALEC for new laws being proposed – and some already enacted – that would make it a criminal act to document animals cruelly treated and slaughtered by the meat and poultry processing industries.
As Hartmann wrote on Truthout the other day,
ALEC is now parading around bills in six states that would make it a crime to film animal abuse at factory farms, or lie on job applications in order to get a job in a factory farm with the goal of taking pictures. All of this is to stop animal rights activists who infiltrate slaughterhouses to expose their deplorable conditions.
The bill proposals pushed by ALEC require all evidence of animal abuse at factory farms be turned over to law enforcement authorities within 48 hours, or those who took the pictures face a financial penalty.
The proposals also make it a crime to lie on slaughterhouse job applications, which activists commonly do in order to get documentation of animal abuse.
Right now, according to the Associated Press, the bills to block animal rights activists are under consideration in California, Nebraska, Tennessee, Indiana, Arkansas and Pennsylvania.
Three other states – New Mexico, Wyoming and New Hampshire – have already rejected similar bills this year.
And several states already have laws similar to what ALEC is currently pushing. Utah has a law that bans unauthorized photography in farms, and Iowa has a law that makes it a crime to lie to gain access to a farm's staff.
ABC News gets down to the grisly details of what goes down at some factory animal farms,
An undercover video that showed California cows struggling to stand as they were prodded to slaughter by forklifts led to the largest meat recall in U.S. history. In Vermont, a video of veal calves skinned alive and tossed like sacks of potatoes ended with the plant's closure and criminal convictions.
Now in a pushback led by the meat and poultry industries, state legislators across the country are introducing laws making it harder for animal welfare advocates to investigate cruelty and food safety cases….
ALEC has labeled those who interfere with animal operations "terrorists," though a spokesman said he wishes now that the organization had called its legislation the "Freedom to Farm Act" rather than the "Animal and Ecological Terrorism Act."
"At the end of the day it's about personal property rights or the individual right to privacy," said [ALEC] spokesman Bill Meierling. "You wouldn't want me coming into your home with a hidden camera."
But Meierling is using a logical fallacy here that is breathtaking in its deceit.
(Photo: Wikipedia)
Shame! NYC Cops Spent One Million Hours on Marijuana Arrests Over 11 Years: Majority Arrested, Black and Latino Youth
MARK KARLIN, EDITOR OF BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT
The Drug Policy Alliance just released a study that provides further evidence that big city police resources are being used on victimless marijuana crime arrests, when that time could be allocated to violent offenses. In its press release, the Drug Policy Alliance reveals:
A new report released today documents the astonishing number of hours the New York Police Department has spent arresting and processing hundreds of thousands of people for low-level misdemeanor marijuana possession arrests during Mayor Bloomberg’s tenure. The report finds that NYPD used approximately 1,000,000 hours of police officer time to make 440,000 marijuana possession arrests over 11 years….
The report was prepared by Dr. Harry Levine, Professor of Sociology at Queens College and recognized expert on marijuana possession arrests, at the request of members of the New York City Council and the New York State Legislature.
Additionally, the report estimates that the people arrested by NYPD for marijuana possession have spent 5,000,000 hours in police custody over the last decade.
The full report indicates both a public safety misallocation of resources and racial bias:
- New York City has made more marijuana possession arrests under Mayor Michael Bloomberg than under mayors Koch, Dinkins and Giuliani combined.
(Photo: Wikipedia)
In Bank Tax Cut for Job Scheme, Another Bank Gets Immunity by DOJ
MARK KARLIN, EDITOR OF BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT
Jonathan Weil, a Bloomberg columnist, understands the multiple-dangers (to the financial system, to the rule of law, and to creating an elite bubble of impunity) that is posed by Eric Holder's -- as attorney general for President Obama -- granting a right to commit corporate and financial crimes card.
In what has become a multi-year unprosecuted crime spree by banks too big to fail, Weil recently reported on one of the most bollixing failure of the DOJ to prosecute an almost certainly culpable bank – and undetermined senior staffers. What makes it so flummoxing is the transparent statement of the US prosecutor in charge of the case, who comes off sounding like a state investigator in China or some other dictatorship.
Here's the background to the case, as Weil reported it on Bloomberg.com:
Dennis Lerner, a former tax director at Commerzbank AG (CBK) in New York, isn’t too big to jail. But the bank he once worked for may well be, along with the other executives there who made his crimes possible.
Lerner, 60, pleaded guilty this week to public-corruption charges. Commerzbank hired him from the Internal Revenue Service in 2011 while he was an examiner responsible for negotiating a tax-fraud settlement with the bank, according to the criminal complaint that prosecutors filed in September. Commerzbank paid the IRS $210 million one day before offering Lerner the job, which he accepted immediately. The figure was 62 percent of the potential taxes due. Bank employees later told federal investigators it had been willing to pay much more money to settle the audit.
“We will not tolerate corrupt government employees and will prosecute and punish them to the full extent of the law,” Preet Bharara, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, said in a March 12 news release. Notably, Bharara said nothing about prosecuting the people and companies that participate in corrupting them.
Why hasn’t the Justice Department charged Commerzbank or anyone else who worked there? That is a mystery, but perhaps only partly. U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder last week told the Senate Judiciary Committee, in essence, that some financial institutions are indeed too big to prosecute, because of the damage to the U.S. and world economy that might ensue.
So Big
Commerzbank is certainly big. The company had 636 billion euros ($839 billion) of assets on its Dec. 31 balance sheet, making it Germany’s second-largest bank.
BuzzFlash at Truthout believes that the statement by the DOJ US attorney prosecuting the former IRS agent merits repetition: "'We will not tolerate corrupt government employees and will prosecute and punish them to the full extent of the law,'" Preet Bharara, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, said in a March 12 news release." (Italics inserted by BuzzFlash at Truthout.)
(Photo: Wikipedia)
Eric Holder Enables Dishonesty, Fraud and Likely Criminal Activity on Wall Street
MARK KARLIN, EDITOR OF BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT
Why has BuzzFlash at Truthout been writing a steady stream of commentaries documenting how the Department of Justice (DOJ) has been enabling fraudulent and likely criminal activity on Wall Street?
Well, you need look no further than the abundance of stories on how the multi-billion dollar JP Morgan Chase "whale" loss has just been exposed as the product of a systemic corporate culture at JP Morgan, all the way up to the White House "hero" of Wall Street, Jamie Dimon.
When the reckless, dishonest so-called JP Morgan Chase "whale" loss was first exposed, the business writers and politicians accepted Jamie Dimon's flippant dismissal of the financial fraud as a bump in the road, the irresponsible action of one trader. Dimon has the luminescent protective coating of being Obama's alleged model of Wall Street propriety, so the media did not doubt Dimon's reassurances for a moment.
But on March 14, the New York Times portrayed another side of the story, courtesy of a blistering United States Senate report, on the "whale" trading irregularities and cover-up. The report revealed evidence of the same kind of behavior that led to the collapse of the US economy. The NYT article is entitled, "JPMorgan Faulted on Controls and Disclosure in Trading Loss,"
JPMorgan Chase, the nation’s biggest bank, ignored internal controls and manipulated documents as it racked up trading losses last year, while its influential chief executive, Jamie Dimon, briefly withheld some information from regulators, a new Senate report says.
The findings by the Congressional investigators shed new light on the multibillion-dollar trading blunder, which has claimed the jobs of several top executives and prompted an inquiry by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The 300-page report, released a day before a Senate subcommittee plans to question bank executives and regulators at a hearing, will escalate the debate over how to police complex risk-taking on Wall Street. It may also foreshadow a criminal case against employees at the heart of the troubled wager.
A spokeswoman for the bank said on Thursday, “While we have repeatedly acknowledged significant mistakes, our senior management acted in good faith and never had any intent to mislead anyone.”
Mr. Dimon, whose reputation as an astute manager of risk has been undercut by the trading losses, comes under the harshest criticism yet from the Senate investigators. The chief executive signed off on changes to an internal alarm system that underestimated losses, seemingly contradicting his earlier statements to lawmakers, according to the report.
He is also accused of withholding from regulators details about the investment bank’s daily losses — and then raising “his voice in anger” at a deputy who later turned over the information.
(Photo: Wikipedia)
GOP and Obama Ready to Make Needy Seniors Pay for Bush Wars
MARK KARLIN, EDITOR OF BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT
Remember that Bush inherited a balanced budget from Bill Clinton? Dick Cheney's dummy, George W., then went on to rack up a multi-trillion dollar US debt by declaring wars of empire – based on lying to the US public – and cutting taxes on the rich at the same time. It was a combo deal guaranteed to sink the economy – and with a big dollop of help from Wall Street, it did.
As the tenth anniversary of the Iraq War nears on March 19, the Associated Press reports on a new study by the Costs of War Project by the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University.
It provides the stark financial impact of the Bush/Cheney wars on the United States taxpayer,
The U.S. war in Iraq has cost $1.7 trillion with an additional $490 billion in benefits owed to war veterans, expenses that could grow to more than $6 trillion over the next four decades counting interest, a study released on Thursday said….
The report, the work of about 30 academics and experts, was published in advance of the 10th anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq on March 19, 2003.
It was also an update of a 2011 report the Watson Institute produced ahead of the 10th anniversary of the September 11 attacks that assessed the cost in dollars and lives from the resulting wars in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq.
The 2011 study said the combined cost of the [Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan] wars was at least $3.7 trillion, based on actual expenditures from the U.S. Treasury and future commitments, such as the medical and disability claims of U.S. war veterans.
Now, even President Obama has accepted the GOP "frame" of a nation mired in debt, when it was the Republican Party under Bush – many of them still in Congress – who wrapped themselves in the flag and cheered on the shock and awe of multi-trillion dollar debt and death. And any subsequent growth in the debt is in large part due to the unemployment and loss of productivity resulting from the financial crash.
(Photo: Tim & Selena Middleton)
More...
