“A Nation Divided, With Liberty And Justice For Some”: White-Collar Crimes Are Not Considered “Appropriate For Jail”
It swallowed people up.
That’s what it really did, if you want to know the truth. It swallowed them up whole, swallowed them up by the millions.
In the process, it hollowed out communities, broke families, stranded hope. Politicians brayed that they were being “tough on crime” — as if anyone is really in favor of crime — as they imposed ever longer and more inflexible sentences for nonviolent drug offenses. But the “War on Drugs” didn’t hurt drugs at all: Usage rose by 2,800 percent — that’s not a typo — in the 40 years after it began in 1971. The “War” also made America the biggest jailer on Earth and drained a trillion dollars — still not a typo — from the Treasury.
Faced with that stunning record of costly failure, a growing coalition of observers has been demanding the obvious remedy. End the War. The Obama administration has been unwilling to go quite that far, but apparently, it is about to do the next best thing: Declare a ceasefire and send the prisoners home.
Attorney General Eric Holder announced last week that the government is embarking upon an aggressive campaign to extend clemency to drug offenders. Those whose crimes were nonviolent, who have no ties to gangs or large drug rings and who have behaved themselves while incarcerated will be invited to apply for executive lenience to cut their sentences short.
Nobody knows yet how many men and women that will be. Easily thousands.
Combined with last year’s announcement that the government would no longer seek harsh mandatory minimum sentences for nonviolent drug offenders, this may prove the most transformative legacy of Barack Obama’s presidency, excluding the Affordable Care Act. It is a long overdue reform.
But it is not enough.
As journalist Matt Taibbi observes in his new book The Divide: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap, Holder’s Justice Department has declined, essentially as a matter of policy, to prosecute the bankers who committed fraud, laundered money for drug cartels and terrorists, stole billions from their own banks, left taxpayers holding the bag, and also — not incidentally — nearly wrecked the U.S. economy. But let some nobody get caught with a joint in his pocket during a stop-and-frisk and the full weight of American justice falls on him like a safe from a 10th-story window.
For instance, a man named Scott Walker is 15 years into a sentence of life without parole on his first felony conviction for selling drugs. Meantime, thug bankers in gangs with names like Lehman Brothers and HSBC commit greater crimes, yet do zero time.
We have, Taibbi argues, evolved a two-track system under which crimes committed while wearing suit and tie — or pumps — are no longer considered jailable offenses. Taibbi said recently on The Daily Show that prosecutors have actually told him they no longer go after white-collar criminals because such people are not considered “appropriate for jail.”
Who is “appropriate”? Do you even have to ask?
Black people. Brown people. Poor people of whatever hue.
Thousands of whom are apparently coming home now. One hopes there will be a mobilization — government agencies, families, churches, civic groups — to help them assimilate into life on the outside. But one also hopes we the people demand reform of the hypocritical system that put them inside to begin with.
These men and women are being freed from insane sentences that should never have been imposed, much less served. Contrary to the pledge we learned in school, it turns out we are actually one nation divided, with liberty and justice for some.
So yes, it is good to see the attorney general dismantle the War on Drugs. But while he’s at it, let him dismantle the War on Fairness, too.
By: Leonard Pitts, Jr., Columnist for The Miami Herald; Published in The National Memo, April 28, 2014
“It’s Not About Content Of Character”: Hey, Fox Pundits! How Blatant Must The Anti-Obama Racism Be?
I have a question for George Will.
If he can’t answer it, maybe Brit Hume can. Both men were recently part of a panel on Fox News Sunday to which moderator Chris Wallace posed this question: Has race played a role in the often-harsh treatment of President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder? Wallace was reacting to a clip of Holder strongly hinting that a testy encounter with House Republicans was part of a pattern of race-based abuse of himself and the president.
Some of the panelists framed their answers in political dimensions, i.e., what does this mean for the midterms? But Hume and Will responded directly.
Has race played a part? Heck no.
Said Hume: “This strikes me as kind of crybaby stuff from Holder. My sense about this is that both Eric Holder and Barack Obama have benefited politically enormously from the fact that they are African-American and the first to hold the jobs that they hold.”
“Look,” added Will, “liberalism has a kind of Tourette’s Syndrome these days. It’s just constantly saying the word ‘racism’ and ‘racist.’ It’s an old saying in the law: If you have the law on your side, argue the law, if you have the facts on your side, argue the facts. If you have neither, pound the table. This is pounding the table.”
And here, let us remove Holder from the equation because, frankly, the question I’m here to ask is more pertinent to his boss than him. I just wish Messrs. Will and Hume would explain one thing:
You say race has played no role in the treatment of President Obama? Fine. What would it look like if it did?
I mean, we’re talking about a president who was called “uppity” by one GOP lawmaker, “boy” by another and “subhuman” by a GOP activist; who was depicted as a bone-through-the-nose witch doctor by opponents of his health care reform bill; as a pair of cartoon spook eyes against a black backdrop by an aide to a GOP lawmaker, and as an ape by various opponents; who has been dogged by a “Tea Party” movement whose earliest and most enthusiastic supporters included the Council of Conservative Citizens, infamous for declaring the children of interracial unions “a slimy brown glop”; who was called a liar by an obscure GOP lawmaker during a speech before a joint session of Congress; who has had to contend with a years-long campaign of people pretending there is some mystery about where he was born.
There’s much more, but you get the drift. So I wish those men would explain how, exactly, the treatment of the president would differ if race were indeed part of the mix. What misbehavior would make them say: “OK, this is definitely about color of skin, not content of character”? Because from where I sit, much of the behavior toward Obama would need white hoods to be more blatantly racial than it already is.
Hume, by the way, says some critics have called his comments themselves “racist.” They’ve also scored the fact that this discussion was undertaken by an all-white panel. While the optics were odd, there was nothing in what he or Will said that would seem to merit that label. Those who slap him with it are likely motivated by the same knee-jerk reflex by which my critics — depend on it — will claim that I consider any disagreement with the president to be — sigh — “racist.”
That’s silly. But then, discussion of this seminal American fault line often reveals in some of us an unfortunate fondness for clownish superficiality. And yet that silliness does not detract from the criticality of the fault line itself. Nor can I share Will’s conviction that manly taciturnity is the best way to seal that fissure.
So what I ask is not rhetorical, not abstract, not a joke. It is a serious question.
And I’d appreciate the same sort of answer.
By: Leonard Pitts, Jr., Columnist, The Miami Herald; The National Memo, April 21, 2014
“Boldly Ahead Of His Time”: South Carolina Republicans Snub Desegregation Judge
Of all the names of American heroes you probably don’t know, Julius Waties Waring has to rank near the top of the list. Waring was a judge in South Carolina in the mid-20th century. He’s famous to those who know for many courageous stands, but he’s probably best known for writing in one opinion that “separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.” That was in 1951, three years before Brown v. Board of Education. In Charleston, South Carolina. Now that’s a set of stones, no?
Charleston these days is a gorgeous and ever more cosmopolitan city where, if you pick your spots carefully—the art galleries, certain restaurants—you can run into more Democrats than Republicans, maybe. But Chucktown has been molasses-slow to acknowledge the brave legacy of Waring. Finally this month, he got his due. A statue was dedicated outside the same federal courthouse building where he heard his cases.
Everyone of course came. Oh, wait. Everyone didn’t come. Some Democrats showed up, led by Eric Holder. But no local Republican of any note came.
According to the Charleston Post and Courier, Sen. Lindsey Graham had another event he’d planned “months before.” Rep. Mark Sanford, the Appalachian trail-hopping ex-governor who now represents the city in Congress, spent the day in Washington. (It was a Friday.) And the best excuse of all goes to Tim Scott, the junior senator after Graham, who is African-American. Scott had some meetings, and then “some personal things that needed attending.” He at least did send an aide.
If this seems like a small, so-what kind of thing to you, I submit two thoughts. First, you’re maybe not familiar enough with Waring’s career. He made it to the federal bench in 1942. He made, for a few years, no unusual rulings, although being on the bench did bring him face to face with his city and state’s official segregation in a way that simply being a prosperous attorney had not. He began by ending segregation in his courtroom. Somewhere in there he divorced his first wife, a Charleston girl, and took up with and married a Connecticut woman, who may have influenced his views. He issued an opinion holding that the state had to pay black teachers the same as it paid whites, and another ordering that the University of South Carolina law school admit black students, or that the state open a truly equal law school for African-Americans.
In 1948, Waring ended the state Democratic Party’s “white primary” and ruled that Charleston’s “Negroes” were entitled to “full participation in [Democratic] Party affairs.” The party had to let them enroll and vote, which they did, 35,000 strong, in that year’s primary elections. (Yes, as conservatives will gleefully note as if they’re scoring a point by mentioning 80-year-old and no longer relevant history, the Democratic Party was the racist party at the time.)
Then in 1951 came his famous dissent in Briggs v. Elliott, in which he wrote the sentence I quote above. Waring’s famous sentence came from his dissent—that is to say, by 2-1, the three-judge federal panel upheld South Carolina’s segregation. But the Supreme Court agreed to hear Briggs, which it then combined into Brown. When the high court ruled in Brown, the Charleston circuit court, of course, reversed itself. So Waring was boldly ahead of his time, and he provided the jurisprudential basis for Brown by being the first-ever federal judge to say, plainly and straightforwardly, that segregated schools were wrong and that “separate but unequal” was a practical impossibility and a pernicious lie.
So he was a huge figure. Charleston had rejected him in part because he rejected it. He retired shortly after his Briggs ruling and moved with his wife to New York City, of all lamentable places, obviously wanting to have nothing to do with Charleston, the South, or any of it. But now the city has finally decided to honor its own, so let’s not pretend no one down there understands the importance of what he did.
The second thought I submit is that while politicians do indeed have scheduling commitments that arise months in advance, they also cancel them regularly to go do something else. I’ve been on the business end of some of those cancellations myself. So Graham, Scott, and Sanford could have found a way to make it to Charleston if it really mattered to them.
I am not saying that the fact that they didn’t go makes them racists. That would be unfair in Graham’s and Sanford’s case, and kind of preposterous in Scott’s case. I am saying, however, that it seems as if they didn’t go because, well, no one they knew and cared about wanted them to go. For Graham, certainly, locked in a primary fight against Tea Partiers, but really for any South Carolina Republican no good could possibly come of attending a celebration of one of the state’s most important liberals.
The presence of Holder, Mr. Fast and Furious himself, only made things worse. Why, imagine. What with everyone having cameras on them these days, someone might have snapped a picture of one of the Republicans shaking Holder’s hand! So it’s not a reflection on the men—although it is that—so much as it is on the modern GOP, Palmetto State Branch. And it’s shameful.
Meanwhile, across our United States, schools are resegregating at a record clip, thanks to the Republican appointees who constitute a Supreme Court majority that believes trying to desegregate schools by edict is nearly as malevolent as the old practice of segregating them. The resegregation is happening faster, surprise surprise, down South than anywhere else. What they seem to need are more tributes to figures like Waring, and Republicans in particular are the people who need to attend them.
By: Michael Tomasky, The Daily Beast, April 21, 2014
“Where Is The Republican Voter Expansion Project?”: Republicans Used To Support Voting Rights—What Happened?
During a speech on Friday at the National Action Network, President Obama made his strongest and most extensive comments yet on the topic of voting rights. “The right to vote is threatened today in a way that it has not been since the Voting Rights Act became law nearly five decades ago,” Obama said. “Across the country, Republicans have led efforts to pass laws making it harder, not easier, for people to vote.”
The election of the first black president and the resurrection of voter suppression efforts was hardly a coincidence. New voting restrictions took effect in nineteen states from 2011–12. Nine states under GOP control have adopted measures to make it more difficult to vote since 2013. Since the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act in June 2013, half of the states (eight in total) previously covered under Section 5 have passed or implemented new voting restrictions.
These laws, from voter ID to cutting early voting to restricting voter registration, have been passed under the guise of stopping voter fraud, although there’s scant evidence that such fraud exists. Obama cited a comprehensive study by News21 that found only ten cases of in-person voter impersonation since 2000. “The real voter fraud,” the president said, “is people who try to deny our rights by making bogus arguments about voter fraud.”
Obama’s speech highlighted how Democratic leaders are embracing the cause of voting rights. (Attorney General Eric Holder has made it a signature issue, with the DOJ filing lawsuits against new voting restrictions in Texas and North Carolina last year.)
A day before arriving in New York, Obama spoke about civil rights at the Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library’s commemoration of the fiftieth anniversary of the Civil Rights Act—where the subject of contemporary attacks on voting rights came up often. “Is this what Martin Luther King gave his life for?” asked Bill Clinton. “Is this what Lyndon Johnson employed his legendary skills for? Is this what America has become a great thriving democracy for? To restrict the franchise?”
Democratic presidential hopefuls like Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden have recently championed voting rights. The Democratic National Committee has launched a new Voter Expansion Project and veterans of the Obama campaign started iVote to elect Democratic secretaries of state in Colorado, Iowa, Ohio and Nevada. Democrats hope that an appeal to voting rights will help mobilize key constituencies, like in 2012, when a backlash against GOP voter suppression efforts increased African-American turnout. “The single most important thing we can do to protect our right to vote is to vote,” Obama said on Friday.
It’s great that Democratic leaders are finally recognizing the severity of the attack on voting rights. But it’s sad that Republicans are almost unanimously supporting the restriction of voting rights rather than the expansion of the franchise.
Things weren’t always this way. In his new book about the Civil Rights Act, An Idea Whose Time Has Come, Todd Purdum tells the story of Bill McCulloch, a conservative Republican from Ohio who championed civil rights as the ranking Republican on the House Judiciary Committee. The Politico excerpt from the book was titled “The Republican Who Saved Civil Rights.”
There would have been no Civil Rights Act of 1964 or Voting Rights Act of 1965 without the support of Republicans like McCulloch and Senate minority leader Everett Dirksen of Illinois. For decades after the 1960s, voting rights legislation had strong bipartisan support in Congress. Every reauthorization of the VRA—in 1970, 1975, 1982 and 2006—was signed by a Republican president and supported by an overwhelming number of Republicans in Congress.
Republicans like Jim Sensenbrenner of Wisconsin, an heir to McCulloch who as the former chairman of the House Judiciary Committee oversaw the 2006 reauthorization of the VRA and is co-sponsoring a new fix for the VRA, used to be the norm within the GOP. Now he’s the rare Republican who still believes the GOP should remain the party of Lincoln. Where is the Republican Voter Expansion Project?
It’s also unfortunate that many in the media continue to report on voting rights like it’s a left-versus-right issue, as if supporting a fundamental democratic right suddenly makes one a flaming liberal. Jamie Fuller of The Washington Post called voting rights “the Democrats’ most important project in 2014.” Michael Shear of The New York Times dubbed Obama’s speech an effort “to rally his political base.”
The right to vote used to be regarded as a moral issue, not a partisan one. As President Johnson said when he introduced the VRA before Congress: “It is wrong—deadly wrong—to deny any of your fellow Americans the right to vote in this country.”
As long as Democrats are the party of voting rights and Republicans are the party of voter suppression, the right to vote will continue to be under siege.
By: Ari Berman, The Nation, April 14, 2014
“Fannie Mae Made Me Do It”: JPMorgan Chase Is Too Big To Whine
A new injustice plagues the land, at least according to people who take the side of JPMorgan Chase & Co. and its chief executive officer, Jamie Dimon, after the bank’s tentative agreement to pay a record $13 billion to end civil claims related to its sales of mortgage bonds. The bank and its leader are now — it is claimed — subject to Politically Motivated Prosecution.
This is pointless whining, for three reasons.
First, when pressed, advocates for big banks readily concede that “no one is above the law.” What else can they say in a democracy? When Attorney General Eric Holder and his criminal division chief at the time, Lanny Breuer, suggested last year that very large companies were too big to prosecute, there was even some feeling of embarrassment in the big bank camp -– as well as a great deal of pressure on Holder to walk back his congressional testimony on this point.
Now that charges have been brought and a settlement is almost signed, Dimon’s allies can’t stop complaining.
So no one is above the law, but no charges should be brought? Dimon’s camp wants regulation and law enforcement by lip service, which would just be an invitation to further lawless behavior.
Second, JPMorgan is the largest U.S. bank, and one of the most powerful politically. Dimon met with the attorney general to discuss the charges in September. (He spoke again with Holder at the end of last week.) Most people don’t get such an opportunity — in fact, the Justice Department can’t remember the last time a CEO had this kind of access.
The Supreme Court isn’t known to be anti-business. If there is anything unreasonable or unjustified in the charges, JPMorgan should fight them all the way up.
To suggest that JPMorgan has no legal recourse is to completely misrepresent the way the legal and political systems work. JPMorgan makes big political donations and has powerful protectors in Congress. The bank employs some of the best lawyers, too.
Third, JPMorgan bears responsibility in two ways: the actions by companies it bought (Washington Mutual Inc. and Bear Stearns Cos.) and the actions by JPMorgan itself.
If buying a company could absolve that entity and its employees of all sins, imagine the merger wave we would have.
As Peter Eavis wrote in the New York Times, JPMorgan’s executives knew what they were buying, and expected the kind of legal problems that materialized. After the Washington Mutual deal closed, Dimon said, “There are always uncertainties in deals,” and “our eyes are not closed on this one.”
Assets at both Bear Stearns and Washington Mutual were — justifiably — sharply marked down upon acquisition, presumably to reflect mortgage-related issues.
Blaming the government is a way of saying crisis management by merger isn’t a good idea; creating the largest U.S. bank in this fashion wasn’t such a smart idea for anyone. But at the time, Dimon was keen to make a deal, including one with Federal Reserve financing, in the case of Bear Stearns.
Banking is a regulated industry. But we all observe rules and regulations in our lives. If someone breaks the law, does that mean it is solely the fault of the legislator or the regulator? This is very strange logic.
And “Fannie Mae made me do it,” sounds like a line from Monty Python. But that’s exactly what some of Dimon’s supporters are saying.
More broadly, the list of JPMorgan’s own wrongdoings grows longer and includes illegal foreclosure practices. Nina Strochlic at the Daily Beast calculates that since 2011 the bank has been fined $8 billion (before the latest settlement) in almost a dozen separate instances of illegal and improper behavior. For more background, I recommend Josh Rosner’s recent analysis.
Did Dimon and his colleagues break the law on purpose? Presumably not; otherwise, the board of directors surely would have made a change by now.
Are the allegations of a pattern of illegal behavior by JPMorgan just a politically motivated prosecution, a vast left-wing conspiracy? Anyone making such a claim is just being silly and lacks credibility.
The most plausible explanation is that JPMorgan has become so large and so sprawling that management has lost control. Dimon’s attention to detail and risk management were once legendary. It is impossible to look at him now without also remembering that he carries the London Whale derivatives fiasco on his shoulders. This impression was reinforced last week when JPMorgan admitted to a form of market manipulation in connection with the London Whale (this was a separate settlement with the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission).
At a debate in New York last week, a proponent of big banks argued that the resolution of the London Whale episode showed that the system works.
Was he referring to the system in which our largest bank repeatedly breaks the law, is slapped on the wrist and whines about it?
JPMorgan has lost control of its legal risks. What other risks will it mismanage next?
By: Simon Johnson, Featured Post, The National Memo, October 21, 2013
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