What have I and every other minority in America been trying to tell you all about Anglo favoritism?

[The Backlash Cometh]

We are about to see another miscarriage of justice. Just like the powder cocaine vs. crack cocaine lopsided sentencing, which gives preferential treatment to whites, than blacks. Now they're trying to give a pass to White Collar criminals.

We've been trying to tell you that our justice system is skewed to go after crimes where they single out minority groups. They call it street crime and then they rank up the police's ability to racially profile in those areas that are designated as high crime areas. People caught walking on those streets, have less rights than people anywhere else in America. Of course, the police can make any area a high crime area, by patrolling that area forcefully.

Now, here's the final straw. They're going to make it harder to prosecute white collar criminals:


"Message from Congress: Don't Touch White Collar Criminals"

U.S. businesses, with the help of civil libertarians, are on the verge of outmaneuvering federal prosecutors and persuading Congress to limit the government’s power to pursue corporate fraud.

Lawmakers are considering a measure that would, among other things, bar the government from demanding that companies reveal confidential talks with their lawyers in order to win leniency in plea deals. It would also prohibit federal agencies, including the Securities and Exchange Commission, from demanding that companies fire or cut off legal support for employees under investigation.

“Pre-Enron, U.S. attorneys never brought these cases, and after this bill is passed, they will quit bringing them again,” says Lynn Turner, a former SEC accounting chief. “This is a very clear message from Congress: Don’t touch white-collar criminals.” Read more…

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2007/10/06/message-from-congress-dont-touch-white-collar-criminals/

Original article:

http://bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601070&sid=ao7ml.ImFeHc&refer=home

Fuck those civil libertarians. Where are they at the local level when these well-connected good ole boys are destroying our communities with their cronyism.

[Lorien]

1. What you say is entirely true, and Democrats should be talking about this

I'm white and even I've seen firsthand how rampant the discrimination is. Back when I worked for a prominent feature animation studio I had an intern which I considered a true genius in the field. I had trained many interns, and this guy blew every last one of them away with his natural gift for animation and draftsmanship. Still, it was YEARS before I could talk the management into hiring him. He is a 6'3" muscle bound dark skinned African American man, and one of the nicest guys you'll ever meet in the film industry. Anyway, once he got hired he rose through the ranks quickly and soon was earning a good six figure income and partying with Halle Berry and Nicolas Cage on the weekends. He bought a nice car for himself. Well, that seemed to be a mistake, and it shouldn't have been. He gets pulled over all the time just for driving in upscale neighborhoods!

My dad also worked at a women's prison as a shrink for several years. There the black inmates far outnumbered whites, but in the area of the midwest where he was working crime is highest in low income white areas. So how is it that whites are in the minority at the prison??

Corporate crime is becoming more frequent, and the crimes themselves are getting far worse. If anything, lawmakers should be talking about more severe penalties for white collar crime. This bill will only embolden corporate criminals to cause more harm to workers, consumers and stockholders.

[The Backlash Cometh]

2. You are right about one thing Lorien,

Honest working white Americans are going to face oppression too, as the more crooked of the bunch excel at everybody's expense.

I also know about that kind of discrimination you speak of. I was taking a legal studies class and this white guy, who was already working as a paralegal, admitted to me that his law firm had discriminated against a Puerto Rican who had just moved his wife and young baby to Florida. Without training him, they gave him tests that he didn't even know he was taking. They would sabotage the paperwork, and when he couldn't fix a problem he didn't even know he had to fix, they sacked him. Couldn't have worked there longer than three weeks. This was a law firm. So, if that Puerto Rican was hired for Affirmative Action reasons, and then they go and sabotage him, I would say it's open warfare. Time to let the dirty little secrets come out.

[tom_paine]

11. Yep. We are all Filthy Little Peasants to the Royal Bushies.

And yes, it is only a matter of time until white "enemies of the BushPutinist State" start getting treatment previosuly reserved for Blacks.

Take Don Seigelman, for example. I am not condoning this, merely stating reality, but ten or twenty years ago, a rich white guy (whether or not he was an enemy of the Bushies) couldn't have been railroaded in the way they were.

The woman's (I can't remember her name, Janet something maybe) testimony, she was a Republic and had an inside view of what was essentialy a frame-job on Sigelmen. Read her testimony, and if you are African-American, I have no doubt you will recognize the machinations performed to "neutralize" Seigelman. It is quite reminiscent of a non-violent version of previous murderous KKK conspircies of the 60s, and we can all see that this is NO COINCIDENCE.

My point is: Now we are ALL in the same boat to our KKK-Bushies, we are all the same bunch of N-words, kikes, hippies, gays and other enemies of the state (isn't it funny how Bushie hatreds and Nazi hatreds so very much overlap). Those who turned a blind side to this before, myself included, sowed the seeds of our own future by doing so.

And now, may God Help us all from the dark shadows of the Bushie future that are growing ever deeper.

[The Backlash Cometh]

14. Shockingly true. Very frightening.

[flashl]

3. White collar crimes, prosecutor deference, missing data in FBI crime stat files, etc

All of the above mentioned "framing" of what IS crime distorts the overall picture of WHO is the criminal.

Every opportunity that I get, I repost and add entries to my journal about the Purdue Pharma OxyContin executives fines of $634.5 Million. Talking about fiddling while Rome is on fire.

Oxycontin burned through rural America for more than twelve years. Now, we are supposed to believe that the carnage in rural America in the wake of Oxycontin is from meth.

While America was in hysteria and distracted over Vick these snakes slid below the radar. Congress even took time out from fighting the war to enhance federal laws tailored to prosecute Vick.

The REAL drug dealers

The REAL drug dealers had support from our "Justice" Dept. and they even had Rudy Giuliani as a paid consultant.

/end of rant

[The Backlash Cometh]

4. Good rant.

Our Congressmen are proving to be well educated crooks. I see they're putting their law degrees to good use.

It's like they all woke up and realized that the shady games they were playing in the last fifteen years to enrich themselves at our expense, are now about to hit them in the ass. So, they're making sure we only get ostrich feathers to hit them with.

[Trillo]

5. "Where are they at the local level when

these well-connected good ole boys are destroying our communities with their cronyism."

Watching the good ole boys vote with dollars, watching the media dutifully report those cumulative dollars to the public, for the next series of elections? Everyone knows those candidates with the most money tend to win.

[The Backlash Cometh]

6. This runs to the rotten core of why we've lost our communities in America.

We have absolutely no one to help us against these crooks. They expect us to deal with it through the civil courts, which we're all convinced, are as corrupted as everything else in this country. So if they take the power away from the government to challenge them, we will have, in essence, lost any chance to save the soul of this country. We will be just one big mafia haven.

[Breeze54]

7. What do you mean, "Now they're trying to give a pass.."

"Now they're trying to give a pass to White Collar criminals."

Haven't they always given passes to white collar criminals?

YES THEY HAVE!!!!

-------------------------------------

U.S. Prosecutors Say New Limits May Help Future Enrons Go Free

By Robert Schmidt

http://bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601070&sid=ao7ml.ImFeHc&refer=home

snip-->

Emboldened by the victory, business groups including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Business Roundtable
and Hackett's group launched a drive in Congress to force the Justice Department to scale back its tactics.
They've been aided by the American Bar Association and the American Civil Liberties Union, which sees the
issue as one of preserving the rights of accused individuals.

Winning Over Conyers :wtf:

The alliance has helped win over such key Democrats as House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers
of Michigan, whose panel approved legislation without opposition in August. That bill is now awaiting
action by the full House; meanwhile, the sponsor of similar legislation in the Senate, Republican
Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, is pushing for a vote by year- end.

While the Bush administration's Justice Department opposes the legislation, it has been sidetracked
by the scandal over last year's firings of nine federal prosecutors and the resignation of Attorney
General Alberto Gonzales.

An exodus of top officials has left few in position to make a forceful case against the congressional proposals.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, a Vermont Democrat, has said he will ask
attorney general nominee Michael Mukasey about the issue when he testifies at confirmation
hearings later this month.

Mobilizing

In the absence of an all-out defense by the department, prosecutors on the front lines are
mobilizing to fight the legislation. ``This bill would certainly make it harder for prosecutors
to protect victims and the investing public,'' says Immergut. Pointing out that drug defendants
are routinely asked to waive their rights if they want leniency, she asks why executives deserve
special treatment.

``I frankly find it kind of baffling that people are proposing legislation that protects
corporations and corporate officers like CEOs more than other individuals,'' she says.

SEC spokesman John Nester says his agency hasn't taken a position on the legislation. At least
one commissioner, Republican Paul Atkins, supports proposed changes: He says internal company
investigations are jeopardized now ``because people are afraid to come clean'' without assurances
that attorney-client talks will remain confidential.

Meanwhile, proponents of the legislation have lined up support from former Attorneys General
Griffin Bell, a Democrat, and Richard Thornburgh, a Republican, as well as Andrew Weissmann,
former head of the department's Enron prosecution team.

more---

[The Backlash Cometh]

8. I think the problem has become so endemic, that they're afraid of the backlash

that's about to come from Middle America.

That's why Chris Matthew's book is so well-timed. You see, these people think that the kind of ethical compromises they make every day, is normal. They're going to try to indoctrinate us to leave our ethics behind in our black and white albums, and join the modern day corruption.

It is incredible chutzpah. Like saying, "I got your cheese, what are you gonna do 'bout it?"

[Bjorn Against]

9. It is not civil libertarians who should be blamed it is corporate "libertarians"

There is a very important distinction here, because the word libertarian does not mean what the Libertarian party or Republicans who call themselves libertarians want you to believe it means.

A civil libertarian is someone who believes our civil liberties need to be protected, most people on DU are actually civil libertarians. It has nothing to do with protecting corporations who commit crimes as the Libertarian Party and the Republican "libertarians" would have you believe.

We need to take our language back, we can not allow a respectable word like libertarian to be hijacked by the right-wing and turned into something it was never meant to mean.

[The Backlash Cometh]

10. Well, we need a friend of the court, civil libertarian getting involved with this

one, because protecting corporate criminals, is not helping the struggling middle class American.

[Bjorn Against]

12. Again it is corporate "libertarians" not civil libertarians...

Seriously read up on what the term civil libertarian actually means, I would not be surprised if you find out that you are actually a civil libertarian yourself. I would suggest reading some European views on what the word libertarian actually means, because they still use the term correctly over there. In America too many people have allowed the right-wing to hijack and alter the meaning of the word.

On edit: If you want to read an American who has good insight on Libertarianism read Noam Chomsky. He does a very good job separating real libertarianism from what the right-wing has tried to falsely frame it as.

[The Backlash Cometh]

13. Read that again. We need the good civil libertarians on our side.

We need a proponent (civil libertarian) on our side, filing a friend of the court brief, to protect our interest.

[Bjorn Against]

15. Alright I get where you are coming from now.

I am just so used to seeing the term used incorrectly that I misinterpreted what you were saying in that last post.

[The Backlash Cometh]

16. Well, it's obvious someone wants to tarnish your image by associating

individual rights with corporate misdeeds.

I've seen it done before.