What If Trump Loses And Refuses To Leave? Would America Want A Satwant Singh and Beant Singh To Step Up To The Plate?

I've been a Biden watcher since the 1970s and, although my disdain for him has ebbed and flowed, my opinion of him has never gotten as high as "tolerable"-- and most of the time it was far lower. He has never been someone I would have ever considered voting for-- and still isn't. The lesser of two evils is still evil... and Joe Biden is not some minor evil, not by a long shot. I don't need any excuses to sit out a Trump-Biden contest (God forbid) but one would be my absolute certainty-- as a 4 decades Biden follower-- is that he would quickly pardon Trump and his family to, you know, unite the country. Did you hear Eric Holder getting people ready for it yesterday on CNN? He agreed with Ford's decision to pardon Nixon and told David Axelrod that the costs to the nation of putting Trump on trial might be too great. "I think there is a potential cost to the nation by putting on trial a former president, and that ought to at least be a part of the calculus that goes into the determination that has to be made by the next attorney general. I think we all should understand what a trial of a former president would do to the nation."

In a discussion with national security expert Josh Geltzer, Dahlia Lithwick tacked an even more disturbing question: What Happens if Trump Won’t Step Down? Trump is, in all likelihood, going to be defeated a year from now. He'll be squealing like a stuck pig and accusing everyone and everything on cheating him out of his second term. Geltzer, former senior director for counterterrorism at the National Security Council wrote that Trump "has repeatedly shown a willingness to overstep his constitutional authority" and wouldn't be surprised if he just flat out refuses to step down. Recall Michael Cohen testifying that "given my experience working for Mr. Trump, I fear that if he loses the election in 2020 there will never be a peaceful transition of power?"

Lithwick: When did you actually start thinking about the possibility that Trump might simply reject the 2020 election results?

Geltzer: July 24, 2018. Let me tell you why it’s that exact date. By then, I’d pretty much forgotten Trump’s comment from the October 2016 debate amidst everything else. But his answer snapped back in my mind on July 24, 2018. The midterm elections were approaching, and President Trump tweeted that he was “very concerned that Russia will be fighting very hard to have an impact on the upcoming Election,” adding that the Russians “will be pushing very hard for the Democrats.”

That tweet just didn’t make sense. It was, of course, the assessment of the U.S. intelligence community that Russia had intervened in the 2016 election specifically to help Trump against the Democratic candidate, among other goals. And there had been nothing-- no intelligence community public statements, no scholarly analysis, no media reporting-- suggesting that the Russians were poised to push for the Democrats in the 2018 elections. So what was Trump talking about?

That’s when I began to wonder if he was using the tweet as he seems to use many tweets: to test out new lines and see if he can get away with them. And this notion that there might be foreign election interference in favor of the Democrats seemed to test Trump’s ability to call into question election results he didn’t like. So, if the Dems won big in a way that embarrassed Trump, he might say the results were inflated-- and, at least conceivably, even contest them.

And that’s when I remembered his earlier refusal to commit to honoring the 2016 election results. It made me worry a bit about 2018, but after all, Trump himself wasn’t on the ballot then. The real thing to worry about seemed to be 2020, which would once again be, for Trump, personal. And let me be very clear what the worry is: It’s about Trump not honoring valid election results if he in fact loses. If he wins, he wins! But if he loses, he needs, well, to lose.

...[T]here’s been another development: change in intelligence community leadership. Think about the departure of Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats. Coats more or less stood up for the intelligence community-- publicly-- at some key moments, such as when Trump rejected its views in favor of Putin’s at Helsinki. I think it’s important to inspect whoever Trump nominates as DNI (there’s currently an acting) to make sure he or she will tell Congress and the American people whether there’s really been foreign election interference that casts doubt on the accuracy of election results in 2020, or whether Trump’s just claiming as much...

Lithwick: When you wrote about this last winter you suggested that there were four powerful checks on this possibility: the Electoral College, Congress, state governors, and the Defense Department. I wonder if you are more or less sanguine about each of them, seven months later?

Geltzer: I’m an optimistic guy, but I have to be less sanguine-- because, seven months later, I haven’t seen any of these checks taking seriously this concern. In fairness, some need prompting to do so. For example, it’s the political parties that should require their electors for the Electoral College to pledge that they won’t withhold, delay, or alter their votes based on the claims or protestations of any candidate, including Trump himself. But I don’t see the parties requiring that, or even discussing whether to require it. And others-- such as Congress or state governors-- don’t need prompting at all to make the sort of commitments I urged back in February. Yet they don’t seem to be making those commitments. And remember: This is about ensuring that valid election results are respected, whichever way that cuts. That shouldn’t be controversial.

...The four checks I listed are all actors that, either without prompting or with it, could make commitments right now that, to my mind, would at least mitigate the risk we’re discussing. That’s not true of the courts: They wait until cases or controversies are brought to them and only then get involved, though of course their role at that point can sometimes be the most important of all. So I think there are probably other checks, like the courts, that would, I hope, play their own important roles if this nightmare scenario really played out. But my goal in writing the piece in February wasn’t just to flag a possible problem, but specifically to encourage those who might be able to get ahead of that problem to do so. And that’s why I focused on actors suited to that...

Lithwick: What’s your best advice on what we should be doing to at least prepare for the possibility that at minimum, Trump will dispute the election results and that should he do so, many of his followers will similarly reject them?

Geltzer: We need political leaders-- especially Republicans-- to make clear, both publicly and privately, that for Trump to contest the valid results of an election would be a redline, and that he’d have zero support from them-- indeed, impassioned opposition from them-- should he cross it. We need it sooner rather than later, too.

By the way, after Satwant Singh and Beant Singh assassinated Indira Gandhi in 1984, thousands of their co-religionists were slaughtered in retaliation. Satwant and Beant themselves were tried, found guilty and executed in 1989. This movie of their lives-- and deaths-- was never released:

"Everyone Would Be Tied for Last"

Nina Turner, Ro Khanna and Rick Santorum debating Sen. Kamala Harris' potential presidential candidacy

by Gaius Publius

Much is being written these days about newly minted Sen. Kamala Harris, former Attorney General of California and in the eyes of many, one of the more likely candidates for president in 2020, at least so far. (See here, here and the video above.)

The questions being asked include, "How progressive is she?" and "Can she be moved more to the left than other prospective candidates"? Also, "If she gave Steve Mnuchin's OneWest Bank a pass for fraud as a prosecutor, can she be trusted at all?" The go-to piece about Harris, Mnuchin and his bank was written by David Dayen, also author of the excellent Chain of Title, a look at the mortgage fraud story in its broadest context.

Dayen has written a follow-up to his first Kamala Harris story that, in effect, says that there's nothing special about Harris in her treatment of mortgage fraud, since no one in that era, or even today, treats mortgage fraud with anything like what it deserves. His bottom line:

In other words, if you were to rank the performance of law enforcement officials during this period, everyone would be tied for last.

One of the most striking aspects of his latest piece is not his seeming defense of Kamala Harris — in fact, he's not defending her at all — but his indictment of a system of fraud-protection that's as wide and deep in scope as it is damaging in effect.

The Crime of the Century

Dayen rightly calls the 2008 mortgage crisis "the crime of the century." He writes:

Let’s recognize that no public official in this country, from Barack Obama on down, covered themselves in glory during the foreclosure crisis; to say that Harris failed to prosecute bankers is simply to say that she was a public official with authority over financial services fraud in the Obama era.

From the late Bush years through most of Obama’s presidency, at least 9.3 million American families lost their properties, whether to foreclosure or forced sale. The original sin of faulty loan originations, inflated appraisals, doctored underwriting, and improper placement into subprime loans led to fraudulent misconduct in securitization, loan servicing, loan modifications, and foreclosures, with millions of faked and forged documents used as evidence for the final indignity of eviction. There’s not a single step of the mortgage process that wasn’t suffused with illegal fraud during the housing bubble and its collapse.

The crisis resulted in a punishing recession and countless destroyed lives, not to mention what has been credibly described as an “extinction event” for the black and Latino middle class. Yet from New York to California, Arizona to Florida, Washington state to Washington, D.C., the political class and law enforcement elite responded largely with indifference. Powerful bankers with armies of lawyers were allowed to get away with the crime of the century (thus far).

The individual actors in this drama — U.S. AG Eric Holder, NY state AG Eric Schneiderman, and so many others — are none of them covered glory, but smeared with its opposite:

Though he was OneWest’s chairman, Mnuchin was never at risk of indictment or conviction. At best, California would have extracted a decent-sized fine from the company—paid for by shareholders—and guarantees meant to deter further law-breaking; it’s possible that Mnuchin, his reputation sullied, would not have ended up in charge of federal banking policy. This watered-down version of public accountability was seen as the best possible outcome, and Harris didn’t even go for that.

This doesn’t make her particularly special. Eric Holder and Lanny Breuer took hiatuses from their careers as corporate lawyers to join Obama’s Justice Department and ensure light punishment for financial abuses. Tom Miller, the attorney general of Iowa, ran the 50-state investigation of foreclosure fraud, which investigated nothing and moved directly to a weak settlement that delivered 90 percent less relief for homeowners than promised. Eric Schneiderman, New York’s attorney general, sold out supporters by agreeing to that settlement, saving it from the brink of collapse. He co-chaired a so-called “task force” on bank crimes that did nothing but ink more toothless settlements and proudly proclaim fake headline numbers about fines from behind a podium.

In other words, if you were to rank the performance of law enforcement officials during this period, everyone would be tied for last.

Read Dayen's piece to see how this heartbreaking tale is still going on. It's horrifying in its destruction of lives, and Dayen is right to highlight it.

"Not Particularly Special"

But back to Kamala Harris. It's true, as Dayen says, that within this group — where everyone is tied for last — Kamala Harris is not particularly special. But if "not particularly special" and "tied for last" is leading the field in the early race for the 2020 nomination, Democrats may be in bigger trouble than any of them realizes.

GP
 

Can Chuck Schumer Lead the Democrats to "Unity" on Economic Issues?

Is it impertinent to say this? Not constructive enough? Or necessary to make the change the country needs? I've heard all three asserted lately.

by Gaius Publius

I'd like to put three thoughts together for consideration as a set.

1. Chuck Schumer recently told George Stephanopolis that "we [Democrats] are united on economic issues." See 33:36 in this video.

Not sure what you think, but that seems the most absurd statement of the month. It's precisely economic issues — trade deals, service to corporate needs, bailouts of Wall Street instead of Main Street, forgiveness of crushing debts like student loans — that divide Democrats most deeply.

And worse, I think Schumer knows that he's lying as he says that.

2. The polling memo that lead to the Democratic Party's "Better Deal" plan contains these two contradictory statements. First, from the middle of the piece:

[A] large majority of battleground state voters respond favorably to [this] statement of the premise and direction that define the Better Deal Economic Agenda...:

"Too many families in America today feel that the rules of the economy are rigged against them. Special interests have a strangle-hold on Washington — from the super-rich spending unlimited amounts of secret money to influence our elections, to the huge loopholes in our tax code that help corporations avoid paying taxes...."

Note the attack on the wealthy that voters agree with. Now, from the first paragraph, in which Democrats who commissioned the polling were told their "themes" were consistent with this message:

As Senate and House Democrats begin to roll out their new Better Deal Economic Agenda, a review of recent public opinion polling shows that the central themes and frames that are at the heart of this agenda match closely with the experiences, values, and priorities of American voters today.

Do you think the Democratic Party, as currently captained by Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi, embraces the themes "the rules of the economy are rigged" and "special interests [the very rich] have a strangle-hold on Washington"?

3. Consider this interesting piece from a David Sirota podcast about when the U.S. government stopped prosecuting "white collar" (i.e., Wall Street) crime. From a partial transcript, this is the introduction:

In 2008 Wall Street banks created a financial crisis that incinerated the economy. It was only a few years after the Justice Department had aggressively prosecuted Enron and Arthur Anderson, and so many folks expected similar prosecutions of financial executives, especially because Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama promised to “bring a new era of responsibility and accountability to Wall Street.” But as recounted in a new podcast with Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Jesse Eisinger, it never happened.

Eisinger has just released a new book called “The Chickenshit Club: Why the Justice Department Fails to Prosecute Executives.” It tracks how a furious pressure campaign by corporate America fundamentally changed the culture of the Justice Department. Instead of going after executives who commit white collar crime, the agency now often offers settlements with corporations, forcing shareholders to pick up the tab for fines while leaving executives untouched.

The result, says Eisinger, is a criminal justice system that no longer seriously deters corporate crime, but instead makes it just a mundane cost of doing business. Shareholders may pay some fines, but executives often get a nice get-out-of-jail-free card, avoiding prison or any kind of punishment.

From near the end of the interview (emphasis mine):

Sirota: So a successful prosecution of Arthur Andersen becomes the justification for, "We shouldn't prosecute Arthur Andersens in the future because the prosecutors in theory were too strong, were too harsh, went after them too vigorously." Meanwhile, your book tracks the concurrent rise of the so-called “too big to jail” idea. How did that evolve?

Eisinger: What happens is, there's a 1909 Supreme Court ruling [that says] if there is an employee who in the course of his or her job commits a crime, the entire company can be prosecuted. That is the power that the government has. It's essentially neglected. They don't really prosecute companies for a very long time.

Note that last paragraph; it's important. Eisinger continues:

In the 1990s, starting out, they're unsatisfied with this. They don't really want to prosecute companies all the time. They used to be focused on individuals, but they started shifting the focus on trying to root out the rotten cultures at companies. They hit on this haphazardly. Mary Jo White, as the U.S. Attorney in the Southern District, comes up with this settlement. Then, she sends her lieutenant and writes a memo that Eric Holder signs saying, "Here are the principles for how we're going to prosecute a company." One of the principles is, "We'll take into account collateral consequences." Eric Holder gets a lot of blame for this in retrospect, but he didn't really write it…

Then, [the] Arthur Anderson [investigation] happens, and they ignored these principles, quite rightly in my view, and prosecute the company. Larry Thompson updates them, and that becomes the locus for the lobbying, where they hit on one aspect of these principles to try to tear them all down. The aspect of the principles is that they attack the fact that the government can ask for companies to waive attorney-client privilege when they're doing investigations, so that the government can get access to all that's going on in their own internal investigation. If companies want to cooperate and they want to get leniency from the government, they have to waive attorney-client privilege.

Companies scream bloody murder, and so does the white-collar bar. Over the course of the next decade, those powers are completely rolled back, which really strip the ability for prosecutors to get inside companies to investigate. That has a whole cascading series of effects.

Sirota: Okay. Now let's move up to the Obama era. What could the Obama administration have done based on all of the trends you've just charted, and what did it do instead?

Eisinger: The first thing they could have done is created a task force, a big, giant task force to address a variety of financial crisis-era cases. People should remember, the financial crisis hits in the end of the Bush administration. The height is September. The election is in November. All the firms that collapse, the criminal investigations are going on, and the late Bush administration folks who are on their way out don't take a series of serious decisions and let the investigations start to percolate. That's the first mistake.

The Obama administration inherits that mistake, but they compound it by not doing anything about it. One thing they needed to do was create a task force where you figuratively lock 50 prosecutors in a room together to look at — five needed to look at Lehman Brothers, and 10 needed to look at the CDO business, and five needed to look at Citi, and six needed to look at JP Morgan, etc., etc. If you had, they would have found crimes.

In fact, what happens is they don't really look in a serious way. Whenever you hear Eric Holder or Preet Bharara or Lanny Breuer saying, "We looked seriously and nobody ever presented us a criminal case without a doubt prosecuting a high-level individual," the secret is that they didn't look. That was mistake number one.

Sirota: What are the continuing effects of the Justice Department culture that the Obama administration basically helped cement?

Eisinger: The day-to-day legacy now is that the Department of Justice has lost the will and ability to prosecute top corporate executives. This is the flip side. [We] know about mass incarceration and the scandal of that, and that we disproportionately punish mostly poor, mostly people of color, in this country. This is the flip side of that, which is that we allow the rich and powerful to commit crimes with impunity if they are in executive positions at major corporations. That is a scandal, and it undermines the fairness and justice of our system and the rule of law.

The Obama administration has contributed to it. What they do now is they settle with corporations rather than focusing on prosecuting individuals. They have lost the skill set to do with it, because settling with corporations is so easy and because of the way settlements come about, which is that we have outsourced and privatized investigations to the corporations themselves. It's basically like allowing Pablo Escobar to hire the major law firm of Medellin to investigate whether Escobar is dealing drugs or not. That surprisingly is an investigation that might yield a few street-level drug users but is not going to actually implicate Pablo himself.

And note the Obama administration-confirmed process for handling major white-collar crime:

[Eisinger:] We have corporations who have a scandal. They hire a law firm. The law firm does the investigation. The investigation is studiously incurious about going to the top levels, and worse than that, they negotiate, then they hand the results to the Department of Justice. The Department of Justice looks over it, and then comes up with some kind of fine that the shareholders pay. The executives don't pay it. The company, the piece of paper has to pay it, but that comes out of shareholder pockets. Then those prosecutors, many of them, go to work for those law firms themselves after a few years. That is a deeply corrupt process.

"That is a deeply corrupt process." Not only that, but everyone in America knows it. These are the voters who think "the rules of the economy are rigged" and "[the very rich] have a strangle-hold on Washington." Do Americans expect the Democratic Party, as currently led, to change any of this? Will a slogan — "A Better Deal" do it?

No, Mr. Schumer, Democrats are deeply divided on "economic policy" — dead-opposite divided in fact. And in other fact, Chuck Schumer is Wall Street's Democrat. Will he change his spots?

It will be interesting to see how all this plays out. Seems to me though, you have to change the singers, not just music, to get a different sound from the choir. On the other hand, you go to war with the singers you have, my more hopeful friends tell me. Let's see how this plays out.

GP
 

Is Trumpy-The-Clown Going To Drain The Wall Street Swamp? You're Joking, Right?

Perhaps you were angry that Obama's Justice Department never went after Wall Street elites. I sure was. Last year David Sirota did a powerful piece for International Business Times about how prosecution for white collar crimes was at a 20-year low-- although not because there was less of that kind of crime. While Bernie was getting standing ovations for demanding more Wall Street prosecutions-- with Hillary and even Trump pretending to go along with the sentiment-- prosecutions were down 12% for 2015 from 2014 and down 29% in five years. Underscoring the assertion that it wasn't that crime was going down but that enforcement policies had shifted "a recent study by researchers at George Mason University tracking the increased use of special Justice Department agreements that allow corporations-- and often their executives-- to avoid being prosecuted. Before 2003, researchers found, the Justice Department offered 'almost no' such deals. The researchers report that from 2007 to 2011, 44 percent of cases were resolved through the deals-- known as deferred prosecution agreements and non-prosecution agreements."

In 2012, President Obama pledged to “hold Wall Street accountable” for financial misdeeds related to the financial crisis. But as financial industry donations flooded into Obama’s reelection campaign, his Justice Department officials promoted policies that critics say embodied a “too big to jail” doctrine for financial crime.

In a 2012 speech, for example, the head of the Justice Department’s criminal division, Lanny Breuer, said “collateral consequences of an indictment” such as layoffs, losses for corporate shareholders and the health of an industry factor into Obama administration decisions about whether to prosecute white-collar crime.

“In reaching every charging decision, we must take into account the effect of an indictment on innocent employees and shareholders,” said Breuer, who served as a white-collar defense attorney before and after being appointed by Obama to the Justice Department position.

Similarly, in 2013, Obama’s Attorney General, Eric Holder, told congressional lawmakers that when it comes to banks, “I am concerned that the size of some of these institutions becomes so large that it does become difficult to prosecute them.” He said there is an “inhibiting impact” on the Obama Justice Department’s willingness to prosecute a bank when bringing a criminal charge "[would] have a negative impact on the national economy.”

Holder’s 2013 comments were foreshadowed by a 1999 memo he wrote as Deputy Attorney General during the Clinton Administration. In it, Holder recommended that prosecutors consider “[c]ollateral consequences, including disproportionate harm to shareholders and employees not proven personally culpable” before attempting to convict corporations for wrongdoing. Holder’s recommendations to career prosecutors were rewritten in 2003 by the Bush Justice Department, which viewed Holder’s memo as too friendly towards corporate cultures of misconduct.

...Prior to serving in the Obama Justice Department, both Breuer and Holder worked at white-collar defense firm Covington & Burling. Both of them went back to work for the firm again immediately after leaving their government posts. Holder has defended the administration’s record of not prosecuting any individual financial executive involved in the financial crisis, saying the Obama administration’s prosecution decisions have changed the culture of banking.

That said, raise you hand if you think prosecutions of banksters will go up under Attorney General Sessions. Expect the further effective decriminalization of felonious and illegitimate financial behavior on a bank level once Sessions is installed. I bet an awful lot of Trump voters, not to mention Bernie voters, have other expectations. In June Michael Brenner reported that "despite the revelations of massive misconduct by banks and other financial services businesses, criminal investigations are rare, indictments exceptional and guilty judgments extraordinary. Most potentially culpable actions are overlooked by authorities, slighted, reduced from criminal to civil status when pursued, individuals evade penalties much less punishment, and the appeals courts take extreme liberties in exonerating culprits when and if the odd conviction reaches them."

Our elected officials, our regulators, our politicos and the media have come to accept this as the natural order of things. Business Sections of newspapers, like the New York Times, read like the gazette for the world of organized crime in its heyday when the five Mafia families were on top of their game. (substitute Goldman Sachs, Chase Morgan, Bank of America, CITI, Wells Fargo). As for the Wall Street Journal and the legion of business magazines, they blend features of VARIETY and Osservatore Romano.

The reasons for this phenomenon are multiple: the rule of money in our politics; the neutering of regulatory bodies by the appointment of business friendly officers in symbiotic relationships with former or prospective employers; a wider culture in which the cult of wealth pervades all; and the timidity of a political class that defers to the power centers who enjoy rank, status and respect.

The administration Trump and Pence are putting together is not one that will be draining the swamp but building glittering-- if stinking-- palaces in it. The good news this week on this front came not from the Justice Department but from London, where 3 crooked Barclays traders who were actually sent to prison for Libor manipulation were just denied appeals by a U.K. judge, making it very unlikely that their guilty verdicts will be overturned. The 3 scummy little banksters-- Jonathan Mathew, Alex Pabon and Jay Merchant-- were found guilty of rigging the London interbank offered rate between 2005 and 2007. Their sentences ranged from 2 years, 9 months to six and a half years.

Trump's two top contenders for Treasury Secretary, Steven Mnuchin and Jeb Hensarling, are both outspoken advocates not of throwing criminal banksters in jail but of throwing out financial services regulations that protect the public from predators. Yesterday's Christian Science Monitor speculated that if nominated, "Mnuchin could face questions over his ownership of a failed sub-prime mortgage lender that he bought in 2009. The bank, now called OneWest, was taken over in 2008 and sold for $1.55 billion by the government, which covered much of its outstanding losses. Mnuchin and co-investors sold the bank for twice its original price in 2015. CNN reports that before it was sold again, federal regulators charged OneWest with falsifying documents during property foreclosures."

Mnuchin is also a former executive at Goldman Sachs. That puts him in good company: Robert Rubin, a Treasury secretary under President Clinton, and Henry Paulson, who served under George W. Bush, both came from Goldman. Mr. Paulson, a Republican who has been critical of Trump’s economic views and experience, was the firm’s chairman.

Goldman was a populist punching bag for Trump, both in the primaries-- Sen. Ted Cruz’s wife, Heidi, works there-- and in defeating Hillary Clinton, who gave paid speeches to the bank after serving as secretary of State.

"I know the guys at Goldman Sachs. They have total, total control over him. Just like they have total control over Hillary Clinton," Trump said of Cruz in a February debate.

Whoever becomes Treasury secretary will have broad oversight of Wall Street, along with the power to set policy on currency and banking rules. This includes the supervisory powers created under the Dodd-Frank Act passed after the financial crisis, which Trump has said he wants to dismantle. The Treasury is also a major voice in global bodies such as the International Monetary Fund, which would matter in the event of an international financial crisis.

Hensarling is the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee. Only one man currently serving in Congress has taken a bigger share of bribes from the Financial Sector he's supposed to be overseeing than Hensarling. Hensarling's legalistic bribes from Big Finance comes to $7,419,890. Who took more? Paul Ryan, of course: $9,045,683.

In mid-July, Trump's then-campaign manager Paul Manafort claimed that the Republican platform would advocate bringing back Glass-Steagall, which will, he said, "create barriers between what the big banks can do and try and avoid some of the crisis that led to 2008." Although corrupt corporate Democrats-- primarily Bill Clinton and the New Dems-- have been complicit in repealing Glass-Steagall and preventing it from being re-introduced, killing it has always been and remains much more a Republican Party priority, a scheme first put forward by reactionary Texas Senator Phil Gramm (currently Washington's sleaziest and most corrupt bank lobbyist). If Trump really attempts to act on this-- few thing he will-- he'll be going up against another Republican policy long supported by the party leadership including both Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan.

Trying, at the time, to sound like a Berniecrat, Manafort told the media that the Trumpists "believe that the Obama-Clinton years have passed legislation that has been favorable to big banks, which is why you see all of the Wall Street money going to her. They know she’s their champion, and they’re supporting her fully. We are supporting small banks and Main Street."

I suspect most voters couldn't tell you what "Glass-Steagall" means but reinstating it has been one of the principles on which Bernie's campaign was based and on which the Elizabeth Warren wing of the Democratic Party is based. The law was repealed with a big bipartisan majority of Wall Street whores in 1999 to help pave the way for the formation of Citigroup Inc. by the $46 billion merger of Citicorp and Travelers Group. It tore down the wall that separated investment and consumer banking functions. In 1999 when progressives began demanding it be reinstated, even Steny Hoyer realized a colossal error has been made. The corrupt Maryland conservaDem told his colleagues that "as someone who voted to repeal Glass-Steagall, maybe that was a mistake." Among those voting against repeal back in 1999 were unwavering progressives in the House like Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Barbara Lee (D-CA), Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), Dennis Kucinich (D-OH), John Conyers (D-MI), Sherrod Brown (D-OH), Jerry Nadler (D-NY), Maxine Waters (D-CA). Among today's luminaries who backed repeal are Paul Ryan (R-WI), Fred Upton (R-MI), John Kasich (R-OH), Joe Crowley (New Dem-NY), Harold Ford, Jr. (Blue Dog-TN), and Ted Strickland (D-OH... and the DSCC still doesn't understand why he was defeated so resoundingly for a Senate seat 2 weeks ago).

Hensarling wasn't a member of Congress in 1999 but he has been an unwavering supporter of the bankster agenda since getting elected in 2002. His overarching goal is to repeal Dodd-Frank and he is a top foe of reinstating Glass-Steagall. Wall Street has rewarded him with $7,419,890 in bribes/contributes since 2002. Aside from Hensarling the top 10 crooks on his committee in terms of bribes accepted from Wall Street are all opponents of reinstating Glass Steagall:

• Ed Royce (R-CA)- $6,806,697
• Carolyn Maloney (D-NY)- $5,456,385
• Jim Himes (New Dem-CT)- $5,424,062
• Scott Garrett (R-NJ)- $4,975,549 [defeated, but by another Wall Street whore]
• Steve Stivers (R-OH)- $4,187,437
• Patrick McHenry (R-NC)- $3,974,361
• Patrick Murphy (New Dem-FL)- $3,658,336 [defeated]
• Randy Neugebauer (R-TX)- $3,463,970
• Gregory Meeks (New Dem-NY)- $3,122,288
• Peter King (R-NY)- $2,741,074

And Jeff Sessions hasn't been a big favorite of the Wall Street bankster set. Since first being elected to the Senate in 1996, all he's gotten in bank loot has been a paltry $2,497,115. Let's hope he wants some revenge.

A Devil’s Advocate Rings in a Bad Night for Bankers

-by Skip Kaltenheuser

It was a long hard slog to publish Lucifer's Banker. Had Brad Birkenfeld managed to get his book out say, a year or so earlier, we might not be staring at the political train wreck we are now. It might have changed the political landscape, perhaps the standard bearers. Maybe even elevated different issues for the last lap beyond the cursory checklist now fed us. But I’m glad it’s arrived. This book underscores every lament Bernie Sanders uttered about the gravity of the finance sector's black hole. There's ample material to make Washington insiders lose sleep, plenty to bring out loosely-defined authorities saying move along, nothing to see here. Above it all the central question floats like a banshee-- when a whistleblower revealed the largest systematic American tax fraud to surface, why was the only person to go to prison the whistleblower?

Birkenfeld is that whistleblower, logging long house arrest and thirty-one months of a forty-month sentence to a Federal penitentiary, with the added insult of a thirty-grand fine, never mind his legal expenses. His tale of DOJ's whistleblower smack-down, of its shooting the messenger, makes an entertaining read. But it ought to frighten the hell out of everyone. With dollops of irony, fright is likely the reason behind this whistleblower whacking, a warning to those who might raise curtains on the very rich and very powerful and very, very connected.

Birkenfeld worked for UBS in Switzerland as a private banker serving wealthy American clients. He went to jail on what seems a DOJ engineered Catch-22 that made him vulnerable to a charge of covering for a client, a Russian immigrant in California who hit it big in real estate. After Birkenfeld voluntarily approached the US government in 2007, DOJ sought to replace his whistle with a supersonic one no one could hear. It refused to give him the subpoena he requested that would protect him from prosecution under Swiss bank secrecy laws. Those laws once protected Germans from execution under the Third Reich for slipping money out of Germany. Now they serve darker purpose. Try to imagine the incredible weight of the money and power pushing out of Swiss vaults against DOJ's door.

Birkenfeld went to every other agency he could think of. He got the necessary subpoenas he needed and divulged accordingly, including on that client DOJ claimed he covered for. And he cued in the US Senate in a private hearing. But someone in DOJ couldn't take a joke, and they nabbed him as if what he'd already divulged was done in an alternate universe. Given the profile of the case, Birkenfeld has no doubts the hammer came down from on high.

If you'd like to hear the jaw-droppers from that Senate hearing-- most of which were his answers to Senators’ questions, join the club. The government sealed it and refuses to provide Birkenfeld with a transcript of his testimony.

Plenty of black eyes for plenty of politicians, and in particular for the Department of Justice-- let's just lump DOJ with the politicians. This book shreds that agency's credibility, laying bare once again Eric Holder's real legacy-- smooches to banks. Sadly, it's a legacy he's spreading around, including to his former boss.

I interviewed Birkenfeld awhile back as a component for an essay on the revolving door, (my apologies to the editor for my slow pace). The first thing that rides in on Birkenfeld's earnest, down-home Boston accent is that he isn't someone easily intimidated. He knows the territory, remembers who did what and won't quit shoving his boulders up the hill until credit is given where it's due. Gold stars are not in the offing.

That was underscored at Birkenfeld's book party Tuesday night at the National Press Club. He does have an advantage few of the royally screwed enjoy. After he was released a new law brought him an IRS whistleblower award, $104 million before the tax man's knock. Why not? His revelations enabled the US Treasury to recover $15 billion in back taxes, fines and penalties. They also put in motion international investigations of offshore banking's many misdeeds, and juiced up reformers seeking tougher oversight. Impacts on Swiss private banks-- there are scads of such banks, all shapes and sizes-- include a 2013 tax treaty facilitating the exchange of tax data between countries. This put a hitch in Switzerland's offshore tax haven status that vacuumed money. And plenty of dirt. Alas, though trickier, Birkenfeld says the multitude of nefarious practices requiring secret accounts still have plenty of global options.

Thing is, what the US reaped was a fraction of what could have been garnered had the massive tax evasion been fully brought to heel. That failure only increases the debt load every American carries. Why the lack of DOJ prosecutorial enthusiasm against tax cheats and their enabler bankers?

I don't want to step on too many nuggets, but Secretary of State Clinton stepped in to do the negotiations with UBS. She required UBS to disclose only 4,700 out of 19,000 illegal account holders. Birkenfeld's curious, as we all might be, as to who made the selection and how, and why the names were never made public. Why was the fine so inadequate compared to long-term profits, and why did DOJ so carelessly offer undeclared account holders anonymity and repeated amnesties?

Who are these titans of favoritism? Will the real masters of the universe please stand up?

It brings to mind proposals for excessively reduced corporate taxes for repatriating money sloshing around abroad, but I digress.

In Washington's small world of startling coincidence, before the negotiated deal UBS only contributed sixty grand to the Clinton Foundation. Afterwards, notes Birkenfeld, it went up by a factor of ten. UBS also partnered with the Foundation providing a low-interest thirty-two million dollar loan for a Foundation program. And President Clinton, the First, earned over a million and a half dollars "for a series of fireside chats with the bank's Wealth Management Chief Executive, Bob McCann...Bill Clinton's biggest payday since leaving the office of the Presidency."

I’m not a finance guy, but I’m getting better at the smell test. Ah,well, what's to worry? A legion of editorialists, commentators and spinners assures us there's no quid pro quo. The Trump gun at our temple is a curiosity killer.

In Washington, “pay it forward” is a concept not fully embraced.

Birkenfeld reckons Americans are on the hook for a trillion dollars escaping off-shore, so they ought be making demands.

The book balances entertaining asides and stark realities. One notable is how big players like UBS distribute business and retainers to put major law firms on the shelf as they avoid conflicts of interest. And the inescapable revolving door-- lubricated by so-called public servants sugaring up those they're supposed to ride herd on, while anticipating wildly better compensated employment elsewhere. Birkenfeld expresses particular fondness for DOJ prosecutors who shepherded him through his adventure in criminal prosecution. The lead prosecutor negotiated Birkenfeld’s plea and signed off on his motion for a sentence reduction. Then he sat quietly while a judge nailed Birkenfeld with a much longer sentence than Birkenfeld was led to expect.

Later, Birkenfeld discovered his lead prosecutor signed a secret non-prosecution agreement for the UBS kingpin who oversaw the 19,000 US accounts (including all of the North and South American offshore business), the show-runner for approximately $20 billion in assets. That banker was quietly allowed to go back to Switzerland two weeks later while the US Senate committee was on summer recess.

Birkenfeld's lead prosecutor then left DOJ to partner with a law firm that's now defending a Credit Suisse private banker who also handled US accounts (which Birkenfeld told the DOJ prosecutor about in 2007). The Credit Suisse banker is being prosecuted by another prosecutor, still at DOJ, that also dealt with Birkenfeld. Before leaving DOJ, Birkenfeld's lead prosecutor supervised the indictment of the Credit Suisse banker, which was signed by both prosecutors. The former prosecutor now with the law firm isn’t listed as attorney of record on the case. He’s merely a partner in the firm.

In any case, here’s a September 6th letter Birkenfeld sent to the Federal judge hearing the case regarding the Credit Suisse banker.

No word on the future plans of the prosecutor still lingering at DOJ.

Speaking generally, the revolving door is powered by contacts left behind in government.

His book might not be on the White House wish list, but on Oct. 1st Birkenfeld dispatched Lucifer to President Obama, Attorney General Loretta Lynch and Secretary of State John Kerry. It went with this letter urging action and answers. All members of Congress can look forward to Lucifer coming their way.

Among the questions posed, why was a key UBS official allowed to return to Switzerland after he agreed to cooperate but instead pleaded the Fifth at a Congressional hearing? Why was what Birkenfeld characterizes as a sham prosecution conducted against another top UBS official, who was acquitted and returned home after DOJ refused to call Birkenfeld to testify?

That’s high contrast with the French, Greeks, Canadians and others now eager for Birkenfeld’s assistance, which he’s giving, in government actions against the bank.

Note that UBS US employees have long poured money throughout America’s political system, including considerable largess to President Obama since he was a US Senator.

There's been press on Birkenfeld before, much of it sympathetic, when he blew the whistle, when he went to the hoosegow in 2010 and on his record IRS whistleblower award. He's since had plenty of time to ponder life. His book weaves together new threads connecting what happened and why. The resulting fabric is a brilliant lesson on how the fix is in. Read more at Birkenfeld's site. Can a movie be far behind?

Back to Washington's small world of coincidence. The first Sunday after Birkenfeld was sentenced, President Obama went golfing at Martha's Vineyard. His golfing partner was Robert Wolf, Chairman of UBS Americas.

Cue the Church Lady.

---------

A quick aside and a disclosure. Not all the levers of power, the finance villains and their aiders and abettors, are on Wall Street or in mega-banks. This writer has regrettable first-hand knowledge of the impacts on individual families from government indifference to, if not complicity with, people who in my view were financial predators on my mom, at the so-called community bank level. In my view, there was even a well-wired US Attorney-- with a conflicted background - running interference against my efforts to get government to focus on what in my view was glaring bad faith and deception. Confronted, that US Attorney refused multiple opportunities to comment.

In my opinion, we were also treated to a self-serving "trustee" in the DOJ administered bankruptcy system. When I spoke with the top supervisor in the region she asked if I was going to the FBI or planned to try and have him disbarred, warned about liability if I went public with what happened, and was basically told resistance is futile. But she refuses to put in writing that everything the trustee did was hunky-dory.

The saga ultimately cost my 99 year old mom her Iowa family farm and much more, most of it avoidable if, in my view, the trustee had not primarily been self-serving his interests at our expense, in my view to keep his gravy train rolling even if it meant destroying asset value. No matter how high I push it, the FBI won't even acknowledge my complaint. Nor will DOJ’s Office of Professional Responsibility, famed as a burnout system. I have a legal background and once served as an asst. AG for the state of Kansas. I can't begin to describe my disillusionment with what has happened to justice, and about what I believe to be happening to people across the country who are theoretically less armored.

After reading Birkenfeld's book, and speaking with an FBI whistleblower at the launch party, I have to laugh at my quaint notion that government waits eager to ride to the rescue of the little guy, to champion even those dwelling far beneath potential headlines with political mileage. Nothing to do now but to try and tell the story. No payouts in cases like mine. But if Birkenfeld's book inspires the aggrieved to find voice, to tell their own stories of injustice at the ground level, they may awake others to the peril slack government places us in. That alone would make the book worth its ink.

SK

Why No Wells Fargo Executive Will Be Prosecuted

Cartoon by Steve Sack ©2016, The Minneapolis Star Tribune (source)

by Gaius Publius

A follow-up to this recent piece — "A Clinton Speech to Millennials That Will Work" — in which my hoped-for Hillary Clinton says, among other things, that she will start a criminal investigation of Well Fargo executives for criminal fraud. In that (sadly, fictional) speech she cites several recent Justice Department investigations of banking heavyweights that found criminal behavior, yet produced no indictments.

That information came from this piece by Jesse Singal in New York Magazine, and in particular an interview with Notre Dame law professor Jimmy Gurulé.

The relevant section (my emphasis):

If you took a cursory glance at the agreement that has been struck between the CFPB and Wells Fargo, you might find reason to be optimistic about the possibility of a full-blown criminal investigation by the feds. While the document does grant immunity to the bank itself for any of the crimes that have been uncovered up to this point, it specifically mentions that other than that, nothing in the agreement prevents other government agencies from continuing the investigation — meaning the DoJ is still free to go after individuals. (A CPFB spokesperson said the agency doesn’t comment on possible referrals to the DoJ, and the DoJ declined to comment. I have an email out to the DoJ itself, and will update this post if the agency responds.)

But Jimmy Gurulé, a law professor at Notre Dame who specializes in money laundering and terrorist financing, and who has closely followed federal responses to malfeasance on the part of big banks, said he’s quite skeptical. In a phone call, he rattled off many recent instances of banks engaging in massive criminal activity, and coming away only with monetary punishments.

To take just a handful of them: In 2012, Standard Chartered was found to have violated the U.S.’s economics sanctions by moving hundreds of billions of dollars for Iran, and settled for $330 million. In 2012, federal investigators found that HSBC had, as the Times put it, “transferred billions of dollars for nations under United States sanctions, enabled Mexican drug cartels to launder tainted money through the American financial system, and worked closely with Saudi Arabian banks linked to terrorist organizations.” HSBC paid $1.92 billion. Then there was Barclays in 2010 — a fine of $298 million for illegal dealings with Cuba, Iran, Libya, Sudan, and Myanmar (before reluctantly approving the settlement, the judge in that case called it a “sweetheart deal”). Also, Credit Suisse in 2009: it settled for $536 million in connection with similar charges.

In many of these cases, the banks entered into what are called deferred prosecution agreements, with the DoJ effectively saying, “We have what we need to issue indictments right now, but if you make certain reforms, and pay a fine, we’ll table and eventually drop the charges.” Each scandal is different, but they share one commonality, other than the massive sums of money involved: “In all those cases I’ve listed, not one single individual spent a single day in jail for the criminal activity that justified those monetary penalties,” said Gurulé. And as he pointed out, full-blown investigations have benefits beyond simple punishment and deterrence: Authorities with subpoena powers can uncover important details about exactly who played the biggest roles in orchestrating and perpetuating a pattern of illegal activity, helping regulators and others prevent repeat acts in the future.

This explains in detail that bankers are never held accountable. As to why they're not held accountable:

The question of why the feds basically never target individuals in these cases is complicated. It would seem like an easy political, moral, and social-norm win: Punish the individuals who committed huge financial crimes, making it clear that such conduct is unacceptable and can’t be paid for with cash alone. But as one former government official who had been involved in money-laundering cases told me in 2012, sometimes building a strong case against individuals can be difficult given how big and complicated banks are, and sometimes, even when there is evidence, that evidence points not to the C-suite suits, but middle-manager types. It may be, he explained, that at the start of an investigation, there’s an appetite among investigators for convictions, but that a few months or a year in, the government realizes that its most favorable bang-for-the-buck outcome is the announcement of a rich-seeming deferred prosecution deal.

The explanation above is certainly reasonable-sounding, but it misses two points.

First, putting even middle managers in jail (or at least, before the court) sends a message that "next time, you may be next." The threat of actual jail, even in Club Fed facilities, is greater by several orders of magnitude than the threat of an executive having to pay a fine in the institution's name, not his own, with stockholder money. At this point, any banker in jail is a major step up from no banker in jail. You have to start somewhere, assuming you intend to start at all.

Second, it misses the cultural corruption of the Department of Justice, in which its top people often came from "white shoes law firms" that regularly represent clients the Justice Department may contemplate jailing. Then, when those top officials are finished working for the DOJ, they often return to those firms. Why would they want to jail their past and future clients?

Eric Holder's Revolving Door

A prime example is Eric Holder, our most recent ex-Attorney General. Lee Fang at The Intercept:

Eric Holder Returns as Hero to Law Firm That Lobbies for Big Banks

After failing to criminally prosecute any of the financial firms responsible for the market collapse in 2008, former Attorney General Eric Holder is returning to Covington & Burling, a corporate law firm known for serving Wall Street clients.

The move completes one of the more troubling trips through the revolving door for a cabinet secretary. Holder worked at Covington from 2001 right up to being sworn in as attorney general in Feburary 2009. And Covington literally kept an office empty for him, awaiting his return.

The Covington & Burling client list has included four of the largest banks, including Bank of America, Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo. Lobbying records show that Wells Fargo is still a client of Covington. Covington recently represented Citigroup over a civil lawsuit relating to the bank’s role in Libor manipulation.

Covington was also deeply involved with a company known as MERS, which was later responsible for falsifying mortgage documents on an industrial scale. “Court records show that Covington, in the late 1990s, provided legal opinion letters needed to create MERS on behalf of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase and several other large banks,” according to an investigation by Reuters.

The Department of Justice under Holder not only failed to pursue criminal prosecutions of the banks responsible for the mortage meltdown, but in fact de-prioritized investigations of mortgage fraud, making it the “lowest-ranked criminal threat,” according to an inspector general report.

It has to be asked at this point — who was Eric Holder's client while he was at the Justice Department? Perhaps the Occam's Razor answer is ... Eric Holder.

Could Lack of Wall Street Prosecutions Put Trump in the White House?

This leads both me and Professor Gurulé to be both certain there will be no Wells Fargo criminal prosecutions, and certain that this is a dangerous pattern for the country to be following.

“It’s very troubling for me,” said Gurulé. “I’ve been harping on this issue for at least the last four or five years — that at the end of the day, no one individual is held accountable.” At this point, he said, the country seems to be mired in a “double standard of justice” when it comes to crimes committed by banks. ... “That strikes me as wrong, and it really undermines the public’s confidence in the criminal justice system.”

Which takes us back to my earlier piece on Clinton and the way to win the support of millennials. This is the danger — that this kind of insider self-dealing might well help cost Clinton the presidency, might well help put Donald Trump, a man being used, among many things, as a "human Molotov cocktail" thrown at the entire corrupt system, into the White House.

At that point, the country could really come apart, and not just electorally. How might the country come apart under a President Trump? I'll leave you to think that through, but once down that speculative road, you may find the ways become pretty clear.

GP
  

Reflections on an Election Year When It Finally Hit the Fan

Part of Last Conversation Piece by Juan Munoz, by the Hirshhorn Museum. Its conspiratorial feel, with panicked outsiders, seems apt for Washington.

- by Skip Kaltenheuser

Frustrations on the coverage of the Democratic primaries have been slow-cooking quite awhile. Not just with the networks, I’m also looking at you, National Public Radio. Does NPR have a clue as to how badly it's damaged its brand from reporters and commentators chirping regurgitations of Hillary talking points from the outset? For that matter do the NY Times and the Washington Post? They’ve sounded so long like self-appointed gatekeepers, queen-makers, charges of media malpractice now abound. Now brace for articles, already appearing, on how Bernie blew it, too little too late. Never mind media putting him in a box and for so long paying scant attention beyond socialist snowball in hell status.

We can take solace that the public’s collective tin ear to media fixes is well on its way to repair, but that doesn’t cure the frustration. I listened to NPR’s Scott Simon Saturday, interviewing (lecturing) RoseAnn DeMoro, executive director of National Nurses United, over her group’s support of Bernie Sanders.

Ms. DeMoro acquitted herself well, plowing past Simon’s condescending entreaties to party unity, to getting the inevitability of math, to what’s really practical for health care in the political system, and to every other point he could squeeze in to call the game before the clock runs out. In his mindset there's only one game in town. Never mind pushing the party where it needs to go, never mind concern over game-changers that might wait in the wings. But I assure you in Washington there’s ample trepidation over what might next waltz out of the wings, and on its impact on voter turnout for down-ballot races.

Simon’s comments typify the drumbeat to make Bernie the fall guy for Hilary’s troubles. Apparently it’s now against the law to point out that occasionally the empress strolls buck-naked. And the commentariat now infuses Bernie with mystical powers to demand his supporters rise up for Hillary. If not, Bernie’s fault Hillary loses.

I don’t recall that loud a media pile-on when Ted Kennedy challenged Jimmy Carter, didn’t hear it as a major mutter when walking about the convention floor of the ’80 Democratic convention in NYC. Sure, it didn’t turn out so well, perhaps someone might have had a Dutch uncle talk with Ted early on. But Jimmy was a real incumbent, not the illusion of one.

Democrats are trying hard to find the soul of their party, and many may drift if they don’t. Independents are already the largest identification out there. More people get that with the skyrocketing wealth gap, Hillary’s specialty-- incremental change-- only locks in a status quo that speeds that gap.

Here’s a thought. If you want Bernie’s supporters to come around for Hillary, quit trying to stifle their voice at every opportunity, quit telling them from the outset their aspirations are hopeless, their efforts pointless, that they’re naive as to what’s possible, that if we end up in Trumpville it’s their fault for not folding early.

By the way, who told Chuck Todd of Meet the Press to play that corny triumph music when he breathlessly shows the latest transient polls? I keep waiting for Rocky to come out punching, demanding Todd change the tune. Todd landed the perfect theme music to go with Calvin Trillin’s description of Sunday talk shows, the Sabbath Gasbags.

So, plenty of resentment leftover from the death of a thousand slice-and-dice talking points directed at Bernie by Hillary’s minions. They’re well-placed in the media echo-chamber, including pundits financially tied to Hillary’s campaign and to super-pacs supporting her.

Most critiques boiled down to “single issue candidate,” “how does he pay for it?,” and “the Republican Congress will pour molasses on him.”

They’ll pour molasses on Hillary, too, as they do on President Obama. But if Bernie actually won, a number of seats would likely change in Congress, despite the gerrymandered districts that give the Republicans the House despite their losing the collective popular vote. We dream of a corrective algorithm that fairly redraws districts based on the census, letting the chips fall where they may. But that dream requires courageous state legislators. In any case, if Bernie triumphs, a sea-change cometh. Regardless, odds of Republicans losing the US Senate are decent, at least until the following midterm elections. Voter turnout takes the prize.

How does Bernie pay for it? C’mon. We’re way beyond flirting with the Roaring Twenties wealth gap. Adjustments are in order. That’s how to pay for needed infrastructure projcts, public college tuition, further improving health care and other investments in our future. According to the Institute for Policy Studies, the twenty (!!!) richest Americans own more wealth than the bottom half of all Americans-- the bottom 152 million in 57 million households. The wealthiest tenth of one percent owns more than a fifth of US household wealth, triple the percentage that rarified crowd owned in the 1970’s. Put differently, that top one-thousandth of Americans owns about what the bottom 90 percent of Americans own together.

An article in Scientific American notes that contrary to what most Americans think, America is the most unequal of Western nations, with far less social mobility than Canada and Europe. The Walton family is richer than 42% of American families combined. The bottom 40% of Americans have three tenths of one percent of US wealth. Not a misprint. Three tenths. Of one percent.

Many believe this disparity is greatly understated, that a tremendous amount of top tier wealth is not accounted for, that it’s hidden in off-shore holdings or shell companies, undervalued, etc…

Peel off some of this distortion, and reorient priorities, shucking waste like the F-35 fighter. We can find some money for Bernie. He might have to modify some plans as he goes along, everyone must, but there’s money.

Meanwhile, in the last fifty years the CEO/worker pay ratio has gone from 20-to-1 to 354-to-1. Maybe some CEO’s could take a haircut and put that money into apprenticeship programs.

Bernie’s a single issue candidate? Bull. The rigging of our country by our campaign finance system, flaming democracy long before the Citizens United accelerant was poured on, is far and away the biggest issue. Because it affects every other issue. It distorts every market, every decision on priorities. And it fertilizes a mindset attracting public servant “temps” aiming to flee Congress and government for big money in lobbying and legal jobs as soon as they’ve staked claim on an influence niche.

Here’s a column from the last election considering what the well-heeled want as they practice the low art of the thinly-disguised bribe. Nothing’s changed.

Side effects of this rigging even extend into state courts, where the lion’s share of court decisions affecting our lives take place, in states that have some aspect of judicial elections-- a majority of states. The result of the election money grab is that decisions are increasingly tilting against individuals in favor of corporations and their lawyers. You don’t think that widens the wealth gap? Also impacted are issues ranging from environmental regulation enforcement to drawing legislative districts. Here’s a column on equal justice slipping away.

Fundraising is big business in Washington, a vested interest in many quarters including media advertising. It takes on a life of its own as much as the military-industrial complex. Indeed, there’s ample crossover to that complex.

In 2016, the cost of the presidential election alone is expected to exceed $5 billion, doubling that of 2012. The cost of Federal campaigns together may reach $9 billion. That $27 dollar average contribution for Sanders is remarkable for the dent it’s made. But the big money and the dark money aren’t going away, any more than are the politicians raffling off their favors with a quiet wink.

If you believe, as I do, that the biggest threat to this country’s stability is the rapidly growing political clout of the finance sector, then steps must be taken to fracture that political power. Here’s a bit on finance sector influence, also written the last presidential campaign cycle. Again, nothing’s changed except it’s worse.

If you’d permit another digression, I interviewed Ralph Nader in 1999, for Bank Director magazine. Consider how prescient Nader was as to where the unshackled finance sector was taking us. Here’s the text.

When Hillary was First Lady, I wrote admiringly of her after watching her in the basement of a row house in the Adams-Morgan neighborhood of Washington, DC. She gave awards and a thoughtful talk to excited microfinance entrepreneurs. They’d been brought in for an international microcredit conference, and Hillary’s support was touching. Someone who gets it, I thought, who knows what reasonable access to capital means to the underprivileged.

But Hillary also gets what access to policy levers means to the finance sector, and what that means to candidates. The Clintons have always gotten that.

In one 16 month period ending last May, the Clintons earned 25 million dollars for 100 speeches, half of them by Hillary, according to FEC filings.

Why would Goldman Sachs or anyone pay Hillary five thousand or more beans per minute for speaking to them? Nothing new or insightful a politician can say is worth that amount of money, nothing riveting and novel in subsequent speeches. That kind of money is paid for only a few reasons, primarily thanking someone for past actions and influencing someone’s future actions. Maybe greasing revolving doors between the finance sector and key government positions. There’s limited value to bragging rights on hearing what everyone knows is a kowtow speech run once more through a speechwriter’s grinder, other than showing off the implicit influence and largess of paymasters that others might covet.

Never mind the political tone-deafness of giving speeches for such largess to an industry Bill Clinton gave the country’s car keys to, and which ran into a tree.

I wish Hillary would share those emerald-embedded platinum words. I doubt there’s a Romney-esque 47% sinker there, but I’ll bet there’s plenty to make Hillary’s recent Wall Street comments sound like lip service is all that’s moved toward Bernie. According to Politico, Hillary’s comments in one speech to Goldman Sachs included calling “banker-bashing” “foolish” as she defused Wall Streets role in the economic meltdown, saying “we all got into this mess together.”

Come to think of it, they did all get into this mess together. Rubinomics. Bill Clinton’s Secretary of the Treasury, Robert Rubin was kindly donated by Goldman Sachs. After deregulating the finance industry, Rubin returned to Wall Street, earning $126 million from Citigroup in the decade that included the financial meltdown and the taxpayer bailout of Citigroup. Thank you. Thank you very much.

We’ll always be indebted to Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone for knifing through public relations gauze with his graphic imagery of Goldman Sachs as a vampire squid.

Taibbi is among those who’ve written on how Goldman Sachs successfully uses the revolving door to salt the upper tiers of government(s). And if you want to drill deep, Money and Power… by William Cohan reveals in detail Goldman’s style and influence, and the scandal of what’s legal.

Goldman Sachs did get dinged recently for five billion dollars to resolve serious questions from Federal and state authorities over its sale of mortgage-backed securities. Sound like a real comeuppance? In 2010 alone, Goldman gave out over three times that much in bonuses. After all, they had to retain the talent that destroyed many trillions in assets of the little guy. Any jail time for those deceptions that garnered the ding? Nope. But the large-sounding number is a big PR splash for DOJ.

That’s a holdover from Eric Holder’s real legacy, kid gloves for banks. Hands-off Holder is now back making millions as a partner at Covington & Burling, a law firm servicing the biggest cheeses in the finance industry. Basically, Holder is part of a DOJ firm within a firm, as a half dozen other top officials at DOJ have also landed there.

Ever wonder what happened with the deadline Holder announced a year ago at the National Press Club as he packed up to migrate to a corner office in the the law firm he always knew he’d return to? Responding in part to a question I’d submitted on the lack of prosecutions, including of small banks, he announced a deadline for US Attorneys to submit potential cases against banks responsible for the economic crisis. That deadline came and went in mid-April of 2015. Forget specific cases, DOJ won’t even say if a significant number was submitted, or if any significant number will go forward. Any bets on how many are in the pipeline as the statutes of limitation roll on?

It’s not just banks. DOJ prosecutions of all white-collar crimes are the lowest in two decades. Who else tasked with financial enforcement is looking ahead to their post-public servant riches?

The Breadline by sculptor Georg Segal, part of the expansive FDR Memorial.
One of FDR’s quotes there, “THEY WHO SEEK TO ESTABLISH SYSTEMS OF GOVERNMENT BASED ON THE REGIMENTATION OF ALL HUMAN BEINGS BY A HANDFUL OF INDIVIDUAL RULERS… CALL THIS A NEW ORDER. IT IS NOT NEW AND IT IS NOT ORDER.”

Catch an insightful NY Times essay by Senator Elizabeth Warren explaining how enforcement of all kinds can be gutted by putting the insincere and self-serving in key roles in federal agencies.

Here’s Senator Warren’s new report, Rigged Justice, backing her essay with the twenty worst enforcement failures last year.

Remember, a hands-off tone is set entirely within the executive branch. No Congressional molasses need be poured. Consider the revolving door payback for fundraising, for speaking fees, for foundation contributions. The favor machine.

By the way, a year ago a Washington Post analysis showed the largest chunk of corporate donors to the Clinton Foundation was the financial services industry. Single issue, indeed.

Dwelling on payback, if you want to grasp the number of favors awaiting Bill and Hillary’s thank-you notes, read Inside the Clinton Donor Network, a Washington Post investigative piece last fall. It details the billions fundraised by the Clintons over four decades, for elections and for their foundation.

The range leaves one in awe. Foreign interests and those who advocate for them are thick in the donor mix.

Consider Haim Saban, Israeli and American billionaire who rose from the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers to owner of Univision and loads more. He’s been the Clintons' largest contributor over the years, donating and raising many millions for Bill and Hillary, and millions more for the Clinton Foundation.

Some months ago, Saban called for the US government to racially profile Muslims. He did all he could to oppose President Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran. Saban founded the Center of Middle East Policy, which should say something about its honest broker credibility. As it should about the Saban Center for Middle East Policy he founded at the Brookings Institute. Saban served on President Clinton’s Export Council, advising on trade issues. He and his wife had several sleepovers in the White House. Read up on Saban’s past efforts to derail investigations of pro-Israel lobbyists for espionage and to get a preferred congresswoman to head the House Intelligence Committee.

Donors at Saban’s level know how to play Washington like a violin. How does one escape worry that this highly lucrative pro-Likud bird chirping for decades in Bill’s and Hillary’s ears impedes cutting square deals in the Middle East peace process? That it might dampen efforts in a Hillary presidency? There are many elements to past failures of the Middle East peace process, I’m not accusing Bill Clinton of throwing the fight because of Saban or others.

But the will to succeed is everything in really tough challenges. It isn’t hard to undermine pushing boulders up a hill. Think what damage a perpetually failing peace process has done to Middle East stability and to this country’s image, and what that has cost.

Perhaps Diogenes was really seeking an honest broker.

Here’s a couple digressions in the foreign policy realm, on the future of US influence abroad and on corruption in Afghanistan, both sadly with evergreen shelf life.

At least we know Hillary would never turn to the likes of Kissinger for advice. Wait, what’s that?…

If you’d like an excellent summery of why Hillary’s embrace of Kissinger should give pause, here’s a piece by Greg Grandin, detailing a long relationship and what it wrought. NAFTA’s included, a side effect of which was the fracture of union bargaining power.

But what the hey, the White House recently gave Kissinger the Distinguished Public Service Award. Can the rest of us do less? Here’s my tribute.

Hillary’s African-American firewall confuses me. Plenty have written on the Clintons’ roll in ham-handed welfare reform and overkill legislation on crime. And thanks to a clever young protester, Ashley Williams, attention’s been paid to the ultimate dog whistle, bringing young “super-predators” “to heel.” Political personas seeking to look tough on crime and tough on welfare have played havoc with lives in a host of ways. Kind of like looking tough on foreign policy.

But what creeped me out early was was the execution of Ricky Ray Rector just before the 1992 New Hampshire Primary. To signal how tough he’d be on crime, then Governor Clinton returned to Arkansas to preside over the execution. Rector’s murder of a white policeman was horrific, but after the mentally-ill Rector tried and failed to completely blow his brains out, he was so mentally feeble that he put aside the pecan pie in his last meal so he could finish it later.

Now read up on Marc Rich, and consider a different quality of Bill Clinton’s mercy. And a bellwether of Holder’s legacy.

Meanwhile Bernie, who in the early sixties was a Chicago organizer for the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), gets snide comments from Hillary surrogates that they never met him in the South. Yeah, there was no segregation up North. Getting arrested in Chicago is always a ticket to fun and games.

Or that his non-southern African-American backers are “a remove” from the South. Dissing Harry Belafonte? Spike Lee?

Mo’ money and prisons. Until last fall, and waves of criticism, Hillary was taking money from bundlers from the private prison industry, an industry that recently got notice for shoddy treatment of warehoused undocumented immigrants. Here’s a column tangential to those with vested interests in expanding prison populations.

A couple memories of different views on fundraising.

When I started scribbling, one of the first politicians I interviewed was Bill Proxmire of Wisconsin, then chair of the Senate banking committee. Few positions have more potential for fundraising. I asked him how he dealt with money in politics. He said in his last election he spent two hundred bucks, mostly on stamps mailing back contributions. His constituents knew he was like The Untouchables. Proxmire couldn’t be bought. And he always won by big margins.

I once asked the chief of staff of Senator Alan Cranston how his boss dealt with fundraising. He deadpanned, People think if they give you a lot of money, they’re buying influence, but all they really buy is access. Cranston was later damaged in an influence scandal involving a bank.

I think Bernie’s running a little closer in spirit to the Proxy model. Hillary, not so much.

Here’s a fine read from the New York Review of Books on how the Clintons prime the pump for the Clinton Foundation, and in turn how the foundation primes the pump for the campaign.

Bernie’s been more than a tilt at the windmill. Polls seem to indicate that Bernie will garner more independents than Trump. And more than Hillary would pick up against Trump. After Trump exhausts calling Bernie a socialist, Trump’s low on ammo.

Modern elections usually usher a different party into the White House when a two-term lessee departs. That’s not a vulnerability for Bernie. However you view him, he’s not more of the same. He’d be heading a new and improved party.

Think back to the two-for-one Clinton presidential offering in 1992. People forget that the Clintons ought to call third-party candidate Ross Perot “Uncle Ross.” It was Perot’s distaste for George Herbert Walker Bush, a former CIA Director who claimed to be “out of the loop” on Iran-Contra, that determined where Perot trained his sizable firepower. In 1996, Bill’s opponent was Bob Dole, who has a great class smart-ass sense of humor but at his core was Nixon’s hatchet man. After moving to DC I kept my Kansas voter registration for years so I could vote against him. Hillary is skilled and smart, but there is not a proven legacy of Clinton campaign juggernauts. 2008, not so great. At times her campaign seemed a Tower of Babel of advisors, consultants and contributors.

For those nostalgic for the Clinton administration’s golden era, Thomas Frank has a few words that bring that era up to date, connecting past glories to ongoing impacts.

Apologies to Gloria Steinem, but most folk, millennial women in particular, instinctively know voting for someone primarily because of gender, race, creed, ethnicity or sexual preference is the flip-side of voting against someone primarily for the same reasons. When I voted for President Obama twice, his being mixed-race was a non-factor. Despite disappointments like Holder, despite the unfulfilled promises of transparency and of journalistic access, despite the disgraceful treatment of whistleblowers, I thought and still think Obama was the best choice. I believe that’s how a growing majority of Americans ultimately choose who gets the top job.

As Bernie channels Teddy Roosevelt in the bully pulpit, his voice rings true against The Big Money.

It’s a precarious leap of faith to envision the Clintons biting the hands that lifted them into the oligarchy.
Torrents will pour forth on Trump realities. Some of those realities are plenty ugly. But people will also learn more of those pulling levers behind Hillary’s curtain. And of their resemblance to the heavies in The Big Short and 99 Homes.

If Hillary takes the nomination, her slogan might be Lie back, close your eyes, and think of the Supreme Court.

Critically important, but I’m not sure that’s the stuff of revolution. Or of voter turnout if cynicism flies off the charts.

My comments neglected the 800 pound orangutan in the room. I don’t want to hurt his feelers so one brief drive-by: Trump’s speech patterns will sound familiar to anyone ever hit hard by a con artist. His jumble of slip and slide phrases allow his marks to hear whatever they want. Until Trump’s responses to the crowd fervor of his base pull him past the point of no return once too often, he’s a better contender than Trump Plaza. Charlie Sheen, you could have been a contender. Winning!



Here’s a thought. If you want Bernie’s supporters to come around for Hillary, quit trying to stifle their voice at every opportunity, quit telling them from the outset their aspirations are hopeless, their efforts pointless, that they’re naive as to what’s possible, that if we end up in Trumpville it’s their fault for not folding early. Cynics might be forgiven for detecting a whiff of efforts to suppress Bernie supporter turnout. Earlier, when his supporters raised a legit question as to why southern primaries, in a region no Democrat will sweep in the general election, should be such an early determinant as to brand the primaries a done deal, some of the commentariat even tried to raise the specter of prejudice. That’s not a path to capture Bernie supporters' hearts and minds.

Now I’ll wait for my musings to implode as the race progresses, with the sudden twist of an economic cool-off.

Thanks for your indulgence and best luck to the country.