Prosecutors as a group are an odd bunch: white, male, stiff backbones, delusional, Republicans, rigid and inflexible when it comes to the failings of others. Tough Guys, that's how I think of them. They are often runners, and they'll tell you that they work till midnight, then get up every morning at 4 a.m. to run 100 miles because they're training to do back-to-back-to-back triathalons. Yeah, that'll show the bad guys: "bet I can run faster than you."
The sad truth is that most of the judges are former prosecutors, come right out of the D.A.'s office. So if you can't get hired in the first place in the D.A.'s office, your chances of becoming a judge are miniscule. And who gets hired in the D.A.'s office: Marathon Men. White Republican males. Women and non-white applicants: See Clerical And Maintenance Openings. So when the Marathon Men show up for trials, and see it's one of their own on the bench, they know they've got an easy street in front of them.
I'd like to see some of these Tough Guys, some of the Marathon Men, go after the real criminals for a change. The Wall Street Boys, the biggest criminal enterprise ever in the history of the country. And the people in Congress who have aided and abetted them in their crime spree (their Gang). I can just see the movie promos: "Bigger than the Mafia, Worse than the Medallien Cartel, More Brutal Than A Bad Cold: The Wall Street Boys." So where's our Elliot Ness? Is there one in any of the prosecutors -- D.A.'s office, attorney general -- is there a one in this country who is willing to go after the big boy criminals for a change?
We know the prosecutors are Tough Guys when it comes to doggedly pursuing the 5 year old who kicked over Timmy's trycycle. Not to mention the 8 year old they've got locked up now who allegedly killed his father and another man. Although the "confession" looked to me like story-time at school, the kid is so confused. Or maybe the kid's nuts, who knows. But there is something about seeing some really big cops with weapons hovering over an 8-year-old kid who has been denied any adult to protect his interests -- no mom, no attorney, no guardian, no adult on the kid's side -- just some big cops, armed and dangerous, and a little 8 year old kid. The good news is they got him to confess. Kind of. The bad news is you have to wonder how far we're going to sink in this system.
I can hear the conversation in the law and order crowd: send the 8 year old to prison, get him some 250 pound bunkmate to rape him for a few weeks then bring him back here, see if he's willing to confess then. How many times have we heard the "good guys," the ones on our side, joke about the fact that if they send someone to prison, they'll be raped. Rape as an official policy of the state. If you know it's going to happen, and do nothing to stop it, then you're responsible. I guess that means us.
Of course most D.A.'s offices at the local level spend their time prosecuting gang-bangers and low-level drunks and druggies. It's not a commonly known fact, but when people are brought in for the first arrest, under the Bush legal system, instead of just taking a mugshot they are also imprinted with a permanent barcode in the back of their head. That makes it easier to process them for the rest of their lives as they go up and down the conveyor belts of the criminal law system.
Most of the local prosecutions are of fairly stupid kids, occasionally violent but always poor, who are assigned state-appointed attorneys with no experience and no time, and little ability to really help the accused. The D.A. always overcharges -- a dot of cocaine is not possession, it's possession with the intent to sell. Sell to the kindergarten kids, or that's what the D.A. will claim. They always grossly exaggerate the charges, threaten the defendant that he will be railroaded into a 20 year sentence if he does not confess to lesser charges. So he confesses, they do a plea deal, he jumps on the conveyor belt and the electronic meter reads his bar code, his career begins. And the Tough Guys in the D.A.'s office open the next 100 files.
What I'm wondering is whether there's a prosecutor in this entire nation who is tired of going after children, morons and losers, and is willing to step up and go after the big boys. The Boys on Wall Street. They have just committed the biggest crime ever in the history of this country, maybe the biggest economic crime ever in the history of the world. They paid enormous amounts of bribes to Congress so Congress would look the other way and do nothing to stop them. Which is exactly what happened. And now they're going to get away with it.
What do we see from the co-conspirators in Congress, those who sold out their public office for money, those who allowed this crime to be committed on an ongoing basis, and did nothing to stop it? We see stern lectures. All the CEOs from the auto industry were forced to fly to D.C. in their private jets and sit in a chair for a few hours while the politicians gave them a "stern talking-to." On camera. Congress apparently thinks this is a Harry Potter movie, and they're all headmaster of the school. We don't need no stinkin' lectures, we need people thrown into prison, and we need someone to go get our money back. Let's see how long the Wall Street Boys hold out if they are stuck in Attica with an affectionate 250 pound bunk-mate.
Get the money back. You get me one good prosecutor, and I'll give you a laundry list of charges to be brought against the Wall Street Boys. Fraud. Bribery. SEC violations. Fraudulent transfers of assets to avoid paying creditors. But all Congress does is push their half-glasses down on their collective noses and give us a big televised Tsk-Tsk.
Congress is complicit in this criminal activity. They have an actual and apparent conflict of interest and are legally incapable of investigating these crimes. For the 2008 elections, Wall Street and their related industries (securities, investment, real estate, business, business services, finance, commercial banks, hedge funds, insurance) gave about $180 million to the candidates for the white house. http://www.opensecrets.org/pres08/indus_topall.php?cycle=2008 What are they buying other than immunity from prosecution?
Private equity and investment firms are secret front groups where rich people pool their money and go around the country and the world, in secret, doing nasty business and increasing their already obscene wealth. The reason it's private and secret is because they don't want us to know what they're doing. Congress should end the whole private equity practice which only became popular under Bush, when rich people suddenly had so much money that they didn't even know what to do with it. Private equity and investment firms, before Bush a tiny part of the economy, are now a preferred place for rich people to hide their money. Congress leaves them completely unregulated. Maybe that's because these private equity firms have paid the politicians $50 million since Bush took office. http://www.opensecrets.org/industries/indus.php?ind=F2600 Quid pro quo anyone?
And that's just one tiny part of the financial sectors which have been shoveling millions of dollars at the politicians during the Bush years. Is it any wonder the politicians in Congress gave $700 billion of my money to Wall Street. What's their cut? Congress is in this up to their eyeballs. They need to appoint a special group of both public and private attorneys to begin criminal prosecutions and civil attachment proceedings. We need something akin to a class action lawsuit and one judge appointed to oversee the whole thing.
Phase I should be investigations with subpoenas. While that's going on, the judge should issue orders of attachment to seize all the assets of the Wall Street Boys and hold them in a public fund to be administered by the court. For heaven's sake, you get some low-level drug dealer and they seize the car. Why haven't any of the Tough Guys in this country seized a few yachts, the bling, the cash. If you want to really make the Wall Street Boys squirm, take away their coke stash. Seize their apartments and homes and car.
While the investigation is pending, individuals across the country should be allowed to file claims, but those lawsuits would be stayed until criminal prosecutions are completed.
We need to start sending people to prison. Anything less is unacceptable. We need to start with the Wall Street Boys and then go on to Congress and anyone in the White House who is involved in these crimes.
I'd suggest talking to Hank and Ben, see what they did with that $350 billion of my money that they took a couple of weeks ago. As I understand it, Ben says he refuses to tell (like he thinks he's in a secret group in a tree house), and Hank says he's too embarrassed because maybe he didn't do it right, so he's not saying anything. I know a cell and a 250-lb cell-mate who's got pin-up photos of these guys scotch-taped to his wall. If it's good enough for an 8-year old child, then it's good enough for the Wall Street Boys and everyone who has aided and abetted them.
And oh yeah: Phase II will be Congress. Make them pay into a public fund every penny they took from Wall Street during the past 8 years. Make them publicly testify about every communication inside Congress and/or with any Wall Street lobbyist. Is it true that the credit card industry handed them a pre-written law saying people can no longer discharge credit card debt in bankruptcy, along with a big wad of money, and they agreed to pass that law. http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/2662/ In exchange for money.
Isn't it true that they have known for years that the credit card companies were acting as loan sharks charging poor people 30% and higher on loans, (when the usury law restricts everyone else to only charging about 10%) and the only reason they didn't do anything to change that is because the credit card companies paid them money to sit on the sidelines and do nothing while Americans got their collective knee-caps broken by these thugs and thieves. Yeah, I could think of a few questions.
So come on Tough Guys, come on Marathon Men. You've been telling us for years what tough guys you are. Now prove it.
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