Deidre Fulton at Common Dreams writes—Elizabeth Warren: Corporate Crime Runs Rampant Thanks to 'Rigged' System:
"Justice cannot mean a prison sentence for a teenager who steals a car, but nothing more than a sideways glance at a C.E.O. who quietly engineers the theft of billions of dollars." —Sen. Elizabeth Warren
"Corporate criminals routinely escape meaningful prosecution for their misconduct."
This is the damning verdict of Sen. Elizabeth Warren's (D-Mass.) report released Friday, Rigged Justice: How Weak Enforcement Lets Corporate Offenders Off Easy.
Described as "the first in an annual series on enforcement," the 12-page booklet "highlights 20 of the most egregious civil and criminal cases during the past year in which federal settlements failed to require meaningful accountability to deter future wrongdoing and to protect taxpayers and families," according to a press statement from Warren's office.
Take the Education Management Corporation, the nation's second-largest for-profit college, for example.
That institution "signed up tens of thousands of students by lying about its programs, it saddled them with fraudulent degrees and huge debts," Warren wrote in an accompanying New York Times op-ed published Friday. "Those debts wrecked lives. Under the law, the government can bar such institutions from receiving more federal student loans. But EDMC just paid a fine and kept right on raking in federal loan money."
Other cases outlined in the report include: Standard and Poor's delivering inflated credit ratings to defraud investors during the financial crisis; "The Cartel"—Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase & Co, Barclays, UBS AG, and Royal Bank of Scotland—manipulating exchange and interest rates at the expense of clients and investors; the Upper Big Branch Mine Disaster that resulted in 29 deaths; and the Novartis Pharmaceuticals kickback scheme that cost taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars and undermined patient health.
"The examples raise the disturbing possibility that some giant corporations—and their executives—have decided that following the law is merely optional," Warren argues. "For these companies, punishment for breaking the law is little more than a cost of doing business."
Meanwhile, as Fulton also writes—Bernie Sanders Vows to Crack Down on Greedy Corporate Tax Dodgers:
Singling out what he dubs the "top 10 corporate tax dodgers," Bernie Sanders on Friday pledged to close loopholes that let huge corporations avoid paying their fair share in taxes.
The list (pdf) includes General Electric, Boeing, Bank of America, Citigroup, and Merck, and notes that several of the companies' CEOs, even as they sit on massive retirement savings, want to raise the eligibility age for—and make significant cuts to—social safety net programs like Medicare and Social Security.
"In America today we are losing $100 billion in revenue every single year because large corporations are stashing their profits in the Cayman Islands and other offshore tax havens," Sanders said during a swing through eastern Iowa three days before the state holds its first-in-the-nation caucuses.
For example, according to the Sanders campaign:
From 2008 to 2013, while GE made over $33.9 billion in United States profits, it received a total tax refund of more than $2.9 billion from the Internal Revenue Service.
G.E.’s effective U.S. corporate income tax rate over this six-year period was -9 percent.
In 2012, GE stashed $108 billion in offshore tax havens to avoid paying income taxes. If this practice were outlawed, GE would have paid $37.8 billion in federal income taxes that year. [...]
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At Daily Kos on this date in 2006— Shifting Focus On Domestic Spying:
In just about a week, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales will appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee to discuss the legality of President Bush's domestic spying program. While we've (rightfully) been focused on the Supreme Court debate, the media has already begun to sweep this scandal as well under the rug. Bust this excerpt from an ABC News poll article:
NSA -- A better result for Bush, noted above, is the apparent lack of traction for critics of the warrantless NSA wiretaps. A clear majority now says such wiretaps are acceptable, 56 percent, compared with 43 percent who call them unacceptable. That compares with a closer 51 to 47 percent split earlier this month. |
Most polls have approval of the program hovering around 50%-55%. FISA and FISA courts and warrants and probable cause are complicated subjects, so it's understandable that many Americans view this issue as a simple false dichotomy between civil liberties and security. Karl Rove and the Republicans have already planted the seed in the media and the talking points have taken firm root: this may or may not be outside the law, but don't we want to spy on terrorists?
On today’s Kagro in the Morning show, Greg Dworkin set the agenda for the day, rounding up the news from Iowa’s closing hours, last night’s debate(s), and kicking off an hour-long dive into “constitutional” dog whistles, the III%-ers, and the varying strains of gobbledygook they cling to.
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