TOF TALKS – Page 17 – Start Talking.

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.

ACA signups below expectations

Signups for ACA half of what was expected.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/12/us/almost-a-million-more-sign-up-for-health-coverage-in-february.html?_r=0

This article and others like it report that the signups for “Obamacare”, or the ACA are up over last year but far short, by 50% of what was expected.

Well, another expectation not met by the law that Nancy Pelosi famously said, “Let’s pass it before we read it”, and Johnathon Gruber also said afterwards, “You can’t do it political, you just literally cannot do it. Transparent financing and also transparent spending. I mean, this bill was written in a tortured way to make sure CBO did not score the mandate as taxes. If CBO scored the mandate as taxes the bill dies. Okay? So it’s written to do that.”

Rates are up, not down as “expected”. We don’t get to keep our current insurance if want to, another missed expectation. We don’t get to go to our doctors as expected. We don’t get the prescriptions we had in the past, another missed expectation………….

How about taking responsibility for messing up President Obama, Nancy and Harry! We are a rich country; all should have access to decent health care. We need to figure out a better way!

School choice, primary and secondary

School Choice, primary and secondary systems

In the late-19^th century, “public” education was established in all the states. It was not consistent throughout the country but gained strength and became an institution, and a positive one for our democracy. Our founders saw that an educated voter was the best foundation for the freedoms we hold dear.

Like any large organization, 150 years brings in lots of inefficiencies and waste that needs cleaning out. The economist, Schumpeter, introduced a term, “creative destruction” in the mid-20^th century that describes the process organizations must, I repeat, must undergo to produce the results needed to be successful. Although it was developed to talk about companies producing products or services, it certainly applies to any other organization. We see the lack of results from large, non-market organizations that are due to the lack of a regular cleaning out that the market brings. Congress, churches, non for profits, etc. are examples. Our education establishment is long overdue.

Education resists measuring outputs, it likes measuring inputs. Any attempt to evaluate teachers, provide for competitors that can tap into public funding, test students, etc. is met with furious resistance. The U.S. has continually slid down the scale when our kids are tested and measured against other “competitor” countries. http://www.oecd.org/pisa/keyfindings/PISA-2012-results-US.pdf.

The article below talks about the Washington DC program to grant funds for kids to attend schools outside of the DC public system. The parents love the program, the teachers and Democrat Congresswoman, Eleanor Homes Norton, hate it. They fear competition. We will lose this republic if we don’t reform education. http://www.oecd.org/pisa/keyfindings/PISA-2012-results-US.pdf.

When Ben Franklin was asked after the new constitution passed, barely by the way, what type of government did the U.S. have, he replied;
The deliberations of the Constitutional Convention of 1787 were held in strict secrecy. Consequently, anxious citizens gathered outside Independence Hall when the proceedings ended in order to learn what had been produced behind closed doors. The answer was provided immediately. A Mrs. Powel of Philadelphia asked Benjamin Franklin, “Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?” With no hesitation whatsoever, Franklin responded, “A republic, if you can keep it.”

Ideas are harder to kill than terrorists

Ideas are harder to kill than terrorists

“We took the liberty to make some enquiries concerning the ground of their pretensions to make war upon nations who had done them no injury, and observed that we considered all mankind as our friends who had done us no wrong, nor had given us any provocation.

The Ambassador answered us that it was founded on the laws of their Prophet; that it was written in their Koran; all nations who should not have acknowledged their authority were sinners; that it was their right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as prisoners; and the every Muslim who was slain in battle was sure to go the paradise.

From a March 28, 1786, letter written by John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, who were American diplomats at the time, to U.S. Secretary of State, John Jay reporting on their conversation in London with the ambassador from Tripoli regarding piracy by the Barbary States.

“From the halls of Montezuma, to the shores of Tripoli,…” In this case we decided as a country that diplomacy had run its’ course, our, and the world’s, interests had to be defended. The story has not changed, the idea is the same. Certain people will not be convinced by hope and change. Do we have the will to prevent them from terrorizing all of us? The French seem to have figured it out! Good for them!

PPI supports drug companies

“The folly of targeting big pharma”

http://www.progressivepolicy.org/issues/economy/wsj-the-folly-of-targeting-big-pharma/

The article, reprinted in the WSJ on 12/10/15, above talks about Hillary Clinton attacking big pharma for high drug prices, and others of course, and states the case that drugs can reduce overall health care costs over time. The author is with the Progressive Policy Institute, and advocates for its’ namesake type of policies for the U.S. The PPI was started in 1989 as part of the Democrat Leadership Conference, a driver of Bill Clinton’s policies.

A progressive organization defending drug companies, now that is interesting! The ACA was supported by these same companies, also by large hospital and insurance organizations. And the result is….All of us are paying more, do not have the plan we had, can’t go to many of the doctors we want, many are not subject to the law because they are friends of B.O.(unions, etc.) while the rest of us suffer.

The ACA did address some necessary issues like total caps, pre-existing conditions, a path for all to obtain a plan. Its’ failure is more government control, less freedom for states to experiment, no competition across state lines, etc.

I believe drugs can reduce the cost of health care over time. I wish I knew why the PPI agrees with me, maybe I should open my mind a bit.

UN Human Rights Council

United Nations Human Rights Council, what a farce!

The UN has never elected Israel to participate on the HRC, a democratic, pluralistic, free market oriented country in the midst of most that aren’t. According to an ad in the WSJ, “..the HRC has issued more condemnations of Israel than of all other states combined. It has an agenda item dedicated solely to Israel, the only state treated this way.” North Korea? Many others?

Shouldn’t membership on the HRC depend on the fact that your country actually respects human rights?

Membership of the Human Rights Council

The Council is made of 47 Member States, which are elected by the majority of members of the General Assembly of the United Nations through direct and secret ballot. The General Assembly takes into account the candidate States’ contribution to the promotion and protection of human rights, as well as their voluntary pledges and commitments in this regard.

The Council’s Membership is based on equitable geographical distribution. Seats are distributed as follows:

African States: 13 seats
Asia-Pacific States: 13 seats
Latin American and Caribbean States: 8 seats
Western European and other States: 7 seats
Eastern European States: 6 seats http://www.ohchr.org/EN/HRBodies/HRC/Pages/Membership.aspx

The 47 current members are noted in this link. http://www.ohchr.org/EN/HRBodies/HRC/Pages/CurrentMembers.aspx. Current members in include Cuba-certainly a respecter of human rights as long you agree with Raul and Fidel, otherwise you are in jail; China-another one, disagree and you are in jail; Saudi Arabia-my goodness, is a woman driving a car a human right?

Just this week the below happened.

China, Russia, Venezuela and Angola tried to stop the HRC from talking about human rights abuses, but failed, good. “UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – China, Russia, Venezuela and Angola failed on Thursday to stop the United Nations Security Council from holding its second meeting on human rights in North Korea, which has been accused by a U.N. inquiry of abuses comparable to Nazi-era atrocities.China called a vote to stop the meeting, but lost nine to four. Nigeria and Chad abstained. Nine votes are needed to win a procedural vote and the five permanent members – China, Russia, the United States, Britain and France – cannot use their vetoes.” http://www.thestar.com.my/news/world/2015/12/11/china-russia-fail-to-stop-un-meeting-on-rights-in-north-korea/

China, Russia and its’ friends tried to block the UN talking about human rights abuses in a number one abuser.

We live in a weird world where relativism and parochial desires pushes out inalienable rights in the organization formed to:

The United Nations is an international organization founded in 1945. It is currently made up of 193 Member States. The mission and work of the United Nations are guided by the purposes and principles contained in its founding Charter. http://www.un.org/en/charter-united-nations/index.html.