January 2016 – TOF TALKS

COrporate leaders attacked, government employees and legislators go free

Teh below article talks about Sen. Warren going after corporate leaders for alleged malfeasance, as well they should be if laws were broken. What isn’t talked about are the many federal employees, and legislators that invoke their “brilliance” and throw millions into enconomic or personal tragedies. Examples: The VA; Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae; the ACA; need I go on? Everyone but her is evil, us versus them, no effort to solve problems, only blame someone else. That attitude is the foundation for wars, totalitarianism, fascism. Sad.

http://blogs.rollcall.com/wgdb/warren-releases-rigged-justice-report/?pos=eam&dczone=emailalert

As Congress considers overhauling the criminal justice system, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., is working to show that law enforcement is “shockingly weak” when it comes to corporate crimes.

Warren’s office released a 13-page report on Friday, titled “Rigged Justice: 2016; How Weak Enforcement Lets Corporate Offenders Off Easy,” which argues that the justice system is rigged in favor of corporations and executives who commit crimes. The report highlights 20 cases that, in Warren’s staff’s view, demonstrate how the federal government failed to hold corporations and executives accountable for breaking the law.

“When government regulators and prosecutors fail to pursue big corporations or their executives who violate the law, or when the government lets them off with a slap on the wrist, corporate criminals have free rein to operate outside the law,” according to the report. “They can game the system, cheat families, rip off taxpayers, and even take actions that result in the death of innocent victims—all with no serious consequences.”

Prosecuting corporate crimes has become a topic of discussion as Congress looks to overhaul the criminal justice system. Such overhaul efforts have become entangled over whether to change laws relating to criminal intent, also known as mens rea. Sen. Orrin G. Hatch, R-Utah, said at a Jan. 20 Judiciary hearing, “I believe that any package of criminal justice reforms that passes Congress must include meaningful provisions to shore-up mens rea protection.”

Hatch argued that such provisions, submitted in an amendment to a bipartisan sentencing bill, would protect citizens from being prosecuted for a crime that they did not realize they were committing. But Democrats raised concern that altering such provisions would make it more difficult to prosecute corporate crimes.

The authors of Warren’s report furthered that argument, writing, “If adopted, this amendment would severely weaken the already anemic enforcement of federal white-collar criminal laws.”

As the debate continues, Warren’s report sought to demonstrate the extent to which such “anemic enforcement” exists. The cases detailed in the report grabbed headlines throughout the year, including the BP Deepwater Horizon settlement with the Justice Department and five states, where BP is required to pay nearly $21 billion, though $15 billion of that would be tax deductible.

The report also highlighted an agreement with General Motors that the company pay a $900 million fine for covering up ignition switch problems that resulted in more than 100 deaths and nearly 300 injuries. The report’s authors argued that no individual was held accountable for the cover up, or charged with a crime, and pointed out that criminal charges against GM were suspended.

In addition to these cases, the report covers settlements over violations that span such areas as the financial sector, education and student loans, automobile safety, environmental laws, trade laws and drug manufacturing. The authors noted that only one of the examples, a coal mine blast that killed 29, resulted in a trial and conviction.

Warren has worked to make corporate settlements in criminal and cases more transparent. Her “Truth in Settlements Act” won approval in the Senate in September, and has been referred to House Oversight and Government Reform. The bill would require federal agencies to release settlement agreements on their websites, and list information including payments involved in the agreements and where the payments will be collected.

“Hate” crimes faked, media buys in without fact searching

Hype: As the attorney general threatens to prosecute Americans for anti-Muslim hate crime, Muslims are faking anti-Muslim hate crimes across the country to prop up the fiction that Muslims are victimized in the U.S.

The latest fabrication involves the torching of a Houston mosque on Christmas Day. The arson was quickly seized on by the national media and Muslim-rights groups like the Council on American-Islamic Relations, which demanded that police investigate it as a hate crime.

“We urge law enforcement authorities to investigate a possible bias motive for this fire,” CAIR’s Houston chapter said in a statement.

Federal authorities did investigate, and they collared a suspect. Sorry, CAIR, he’s not a Muslim-hating Trump supporter. He’s a Muslim.

Not only that, he’s a longtime member of the damaged Islamic Society of Greater Houston mosque, where he prayed five times a day, seven days per week.

Last Christmas, a similar incident was reported at a mosque in Fresno, Calif.; and in a similar rush to judgment, the media joined Muslim groups in accusing anti-Islamic bigots for the vandalism of the Islamic Cultural Center there.

Only, it turned out that the incident was not an act of “Islamophobia” at all.

As in Houston, the damage was self-inflicted by a member of the mosque. Police arrested Asif Mohammad Khan. They said that he was an admirer of Osama bin Laden.

These are hardly isolated cases of Muslim groups and their media apologists misleading the public about anti-Muslim hate crimes.

They are part of a long series of events — including pure fabrications — that serve to portray non-Muslims as threats and deflect attention away from Muslims as the real threats. Learning from other groups, they’ve discovered that racism can be blamed for almost everything.

• October 2014: Two Muslim activists released a video showing NYPD cops harassing and “racially profiling” Muslims just for wearing Islamic garb. The video went viral; CAIR demanded an investigation for discrimination. But the whole thing was staged. The cops weren’t even real.

• June 2014: After three burned Qurans were found in front of a mosque in Dearborn, Mich., the imam there led a campaign to pass a local statute criminalizing the desecration of holy books. The media ran with it, and his crusade gained traction — until it was revealed that the Quran barbecuer was none other than a Muslim named Ali Hassan al-Assadi.

• April 2014: After murdering his wife, a Muslim man in El Cajon, Calif., made it look like an anti-Muslim bigot did the crime. He left a note with her body that read: “Go back to your country, you terrorist,” which led the media to report the murder as an “Islamophobic” hate crime.

Liberal Media quiet about sex scandel in one of its’ own

Media Bias: Fitzgibbon Media, a left-wing public relations giant, shut down suddenly Friday in a huge sex-harassment scandal. The press is strangely silent, which wouldn’t be the case if this progressive firm was on the right.

Remember the War On Women? That was the campaign pitch used in recent elections to smear conservatives as ogres.

It was a phrase used by FitzGibbon Media, a left-wing PR firm, as its operatives hounded GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney into a campaign flap over his inept turn of phrase, “binders of women,” on female hiring. Radio host Rush Limbaugh also was caught in the PR dragnet, with a hullabaloo over his description of a birth control campaigner as “a slut.” Conservatives, in short, are raked over the coals for minor verbal transgressions, with wall-to-wall media coverage for days.

But actual dirty deeds were going on inside one of the very crafters of that “narrative.” Founder Trevor FitzGibbon has been accused by his leftist employees and even his clients of soliciting naked pictures, demanding sex and harassing with impunity. Slate noted that it was “an open secret.” In other words, it was known to the press for years, which did nothing.

Instead, employees exposed the harassment. FitzGibbon called it “a distraction” before shutting his company down. Even with 30 employees laid off just before Christmas, the mainstream press has said nothing.

It’s not as if sources are unwilling to talk — they are — to the Internet press such as Huffington Post, Vox and Slate. Yet it’s a heck of a news story when the top public relations firm for activist groups that have made hay from the war-on-women meme, such as NARAL, MoveOn.org, Daily Kos and UltraViolet turn out to employ the very worst violator of it.

It’s also a pattern across the left: Democratic pols such as Bill Clinton, Anthony Weiner, Eliot Spitzer and Bob Filner pioneered these predatory acts.

Slate blames “a patriarchal society” for the barbarism. But the reality is, the left-wing philosophy itself is the root of the behavior.

Leftists, wrote P.J. O’Rourke in his 1993 “Give War a Chance” have a toddlerlike idea of freedom. They “want the freedom to put anything into their mouths, to say bad words and to expose their private parts in art museums.”

Like toddlers, they are also getting a pass in the press. But they are adults. And the media is derelict in not covering the true image behind the FitzGibbon spin.