From [HERE] Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos will be downsizing the number of investigations it conducts into possible civil rights violations throughout the public school system, the New York Times reported on Saturday.
According to an internal memo issued by acting DOE office of civil rights director Candice E. Jackson, the Times wrote, investigators at the agency will no longer be required to "broaden their inquiries to identify systemic issues and whole classes of victims." They have also been instructed it is no longer mandatory to alert D.C. officials of "all highly sensitive complaints" like allegations of racial discrimination or failure to properly investigate campus sexual assaults.
As the Times noted, DOE investigations soared after Barack Obama's administration put an emphasis on systemic reviews and major reforms at school districts and colleges. Donald Trump's budget proposes cutting more than 40 jobs at the DOE civil rights division, while department spokeswoman Liz Hill emphasized the agency's new focus on efficiency in investigations in a statement.
The decision to roll back investigations comes not long after DeVos suspended Obama-era rules designed to make it easier for students to discharge loans for deceptive or fraudulent for-profit colleges. Jackson also recently defended new policies on the rights of trans students after one employee told the Huffington Post "officials should investigate issues of discrimination just as they would have before the Obama-era rules were implemented."
From [HERE] Almost three months after President Trump tried to mend fences with African American members of Congress at the White House, Mr. Trump is once again trying to restart talks with the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC).
Mr. Trump's adviser and shenanigger Omarosa Manigault sent a letter to the CBC on June 9, inviting all members of the CBC back to the White House for a follow up meeting to "discuss issues pertinent to your members."
A copy of the invitation was provided to CBS News by a Capitol Hill source.
It's unclear what specifically Mr. Trump wants to discuss, but, according to the letter, the meeting was requested directly by the president. A meeting has not yet been scheduled.
From [HERE] Racist Richard Spencer, the leader of the "alt-right," responded Wednesday to the Southern Baptist Convention's vote to condemn the political movement at an annual convention in Phoenix, Arizona. In his response, he referenced Jesus, Pauland questioned whether or not the convention had read the Bible.
Spencer and others have said that he created the term "alt-right", which he considers a movement about white identity.Breitbart News described Spencer's website AlternativeRight.com as "a center of alt-right thought." [MORE]
The convention voted formally to "decry every form of racism, including alt-right white supremacy as antithetical to the Gospel of Jesus Christ" and to "denounce and repudiate white supremacy and every form of racial and ethnic hatred as a scheme of the devil," according to the Associated Press Wednesday.
Spencer had tweeted his support for the denomination's decision not to condemn the alt-right when it was announced Tuesday. He subsequently mocked reports that the convention was getting back together to draw up a new resolution.
Spencer has been the most outspoken leader of the white nationalist political movement after the election of President Donald Trump. At Trump's inauguration on Jan. 20, Spencer was punched in the head by an anti-fascist protester during a video interview. He is a controversial figure who was kicked out of the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in February and lead a white nationalist torch rally opposing the removal of a Confederate statue in May, according to the Washington Post at the time. [MORE]
In recent months federal immigration agents have been positioning themselves in and around state, local, and juvenile courthouses in Massachusetts to arrest unauthorized immigrants who face even minor criminal charges, defense lawyers and prosecutors say.
In April alone, more than 40 people were arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents who approached them on courthouse steps, as they got out of their cars, and inside courtrooms, according to the Committee for Public Counsel Services, which oversees the state’s 500 public defenders. There has been such an increase that state court officials recently reached out to ICE to talk about the arrests.
The unusually aggressive tactics are part of a sweeping crackdown on undocumented immigrants by the Trump administration, which has expanded who can be targeted for deportation. In the first two months of Donald Trump’s presidency, the number of federal arrests in Boston of unauthorized immigrants more than doubled to 444 compared with the same time period last year under President Barack Obama. [MORE]
From [HERE] A Black man from Detroit who spent four decades in prison was freed on Thursday after prosecutors agreed that his 1976 murder conviction hinged on the flimsiest of evidence: a single hair.
Ledura Watkins, 61, walked out of the Wayne County Jail in downtown Detroit after a court hearing in which his conviction was overturned.
“It’s really surreal ... kind of unbelievable,” he told reporters. “But I’m feeling great. I expected this to happen. I didn’t think it would take 41 years.”
Watkins was 20 years old when he was convicted of first-degree murder in the 1975 shooting death of 25-year-old Yvette Ingram during a robbery at her home. Police lab analysts tied Watkins to the crime based on a single hair found at the scene, according to the Innocence Project at the Western Michigan University-Cooley Law School, which took up Watkins’ case and asked a court in January to set aside the conviction.
The Wayne County prosecutor’s office agreed that the evidence was flawed under the new FBI standard for hair comparison, Maria Miller, a spokeswoman for the office, said in a statement.
Marla Mitchell-Cichon, the law school’s Innocence Project director, said hair comparison is not based on science.
“It is simply a lab analyst’s subjective opinion and has no place in our criminal justice system. This is why a state-wide review of hair comparison cases is critical,” she said.
Watkins, who worked for years to clear his name, said he was looking forward to having dinner with his family, probably at a Chinese restaurant.
The Mostly White Jury Failed Us. [Look to the left. Racist suspects always keep a Black probot close by. They are everywhere in high places these days. They are part of the show, included to decieve you. Never trust a Black probot]. In racist system, "justice" is only coincidental or random.
From [HERE] A white judge declared a mistrial Saturday in Bill Cosby‘s sex assault trial after jurors failed to reach a verdict on the sixth day of deliberations. Cosby is a failed Showcase Black who fell out of favor with elite whites despite all the good work he did for them.
The mostly white jury of seven men and five women [10 of 12 were white] deadlocked after about 52 hours of deliberations that began June 12. It first announced they were deadlocked Thursday.
“This jury is hopelessly deadlocked,” Montgomery County Judge Steven O’Neill said after questioning each juror in turn about the impasse, adding, “This is not a victory for anyone.
This is the justice system, it does not matter what the justice is.” [blah blah].
Attorney Gloria Allred, who is also white and represents many Cosby accusers, said, "We can never overestimate the blinding power of celebrity. But justice will come."
She added, "It's too early to celebrate, Mr. Cosby." [MORE]
Cosby, 79, faced up to 30 years in prison on three charges of aggravated indecent assault. He was accused of drugging and molesting former Temple University basketball manager Andrea Constand at his home in 2004.
Despite a lack of evidence, faded memories and inconsistent statements and inaccurate statements made by the victim to police, white prosecutors said immediately they would retry the case, and Judge O’Neill, who is also white, said he would try to schedule a new trial within 120 days; prompting gasps from the courtroom. [MORE]
During the trial the elite white media, such as the NY Times, glanced over problematic inconsistencies in the Government's case.
What kind of inconsistencies?
* The victim, Andrea Constand, first went to the police a year after the incident, which allegedly occurred in 2004 - 13 years ago.
* She forgot when the assault happened. Not sure about what date - day of the month this life changing event occured. [MORE]
* Constand called Cosby 53 times after the alleged assault and then lied to the police about it. Telling cops that she had not tried to contact him at all since the incident occurred. 53 times? That is like 53 lies. If she lied once can you believe anything else she says? If you found a fly in your soup and you removed it, would you still eat the rest?
*I called him on Valentines Day to discuss basketball business. Cosby atty Ms. Agrusa suggested there was more than Ms. Constand let on to in her relationship with Mr. Cosby, 36 years her senior, who bought her gifts and introduced her to some of his entertainment industry contacts.
“Mr. Cosby had already made clear that he had affection for you,” Ms. Agrusa said.
“He had never disclosed to me that he had affection for me,” Ms. Constand replied levelly.
She has said that before the alleged assault, he twice made sexual advances that she rebuffed, but she continued to see him.
“You came back to Mr. Cosby’s home,” Ms. Agrusa said, and drove to Foxwoods resort in eastern Connecticut, where he was performing, and spent time in his hotel room there.
Ms. Constand said she sat on the bed in that hotel room, but after he lay down on the bed, she thought, “What am I doing here?” and left.
When asked why she did not tell police certain details of their meetings, she replied, “I was never asked.” [And of course a decade later police have no memory of what they asked her]
The defense pointed to extensive contacts Ms. Constand had with Mr. Cosby after the alleged assault, which contradict what she told police in 2005, and which the lawyers have suggested is not the behavior of a victim toward her abuser. They paid particular attention to phone records showing that Ms. Constand called Mr. Cosby repeatedly around the time of the alleged incident, including on Valentine’s Day, and dozens of times in the months after.
Ms. Constand claimed those calls were for her work “regarding Temple women’s basketball,” and many of them, she said, were her calling him back after he had left her a message; Kristen M. Feden, an assistant district attorney, cited a pattern in the phone records of Ms. Constand calling her own voice mail to check messages, and then calling Mr. Cosby. [MORE]
The Media Made a Man So Angry @ Trump That He Shot up Random Republican Representatives on a Baseball Field in Front of Cops in Broad Daylight. Familiar Narrative We Are Conditioned to Believe? As with other suspected false flag/uncle sham hoax events 1) the alleged perpetrator is conveniently shot dead by police or conveniently leaves an ID behind or easily surrenders. 2) Dead terrorists can't talk but these cold killers also conveniently leave behind an unauthenticated web page, manifesto or diary complete with a complete confession to crimes or where other inculpatory, unverifiable statements from social media are attributed to him; or if the terrorist is still alive they issue a press release or provide a full recorded confession to police (which also provide motive and point to other tangible evidence); 3) the alleged perpetrator pre-meditated and carefully planned the entire episode - except, of course, his getaway and like wearing a mask - b/c they want to get caught & then be killed - but still have their story told.
Case closed before its opened. No need for any formal police investigation or investigative reporting: all evidence is conveniently turned over to the media in a little box. These stories become truth without questioning. [MORE] Naturally, 4) there is no need for an actual adversarial trial with discovery, rigorous cross examination, scrutiny of witnesses, evidence and statements in a forum where the rules of evidence would be applied to so-called evidence. 5) Then, the media employs a 'let's focus on the victims approach' instead of a presentation of actual facts about what occurred -9/11 style.
Propaganda - a psychological technique and means by which the lawless confound the lawful (dwellers upon the land). 2) any message intended to influence whether true or false. 3) disinformation used as programming that in its absence wouldn't stand up itself nor stand up for itself by itself. The Jesuits were the ones who invented the word and the first to systematize its practice. Propaganda is memes distributed with an external anchor and an embedded carrier. Propaganda is to be used as subversion, which is the undermining or detachment of the loyalties of significant social groups and their transference to the symbols and institutions of the aggressor-oppressor. "It is a political necessity to destroy the African consciousness of colonialized Africans or African people." -Dr. Amos N. Wilson. As for the minds of the general public, the most sinister part of The Matrix in which we now live is that you have been cajoled and convinced to suppress your own free will and surrender to the manipulators who control not just your mind, but your entire reality. Edward Bernays, the father of modem propaganda, explained: "If we understand the mechanisms and motives of the group mind, it is now possible to control and regiment the masses according to our will without their knowing it... We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of... In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons— who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind." "Most people prefer to believe their leaders are just and fair even in the face of evidence to the contrary, because once a citizen acknowledges that the government under which they live is lying and corrupt, the citizen has to choose what he or she will do about it. To take action in the face of a corrupt government entails risks of harm to life and loved ones. To choose to do nothing is to surrender one's self-image of standing for principles. Most people do not have the courage to face that choice. Hence, most propaganda is not designed to fool the critical thinker but only to give moral cowards an excuse not to think at all," -Michael Rivero. (See: Public Relations, Memes, Mind Viruses, Dance of Truth, Absolute Truth, Human Language, Memetics, Good & Evil, Confusion, False Flag Operation, Nine-Eleven, MEDIA, Propagenda, The Truth, Subvertilizers, Evolution, Religion, State, Symbolaeography, Voting, Elections, Orderlies, Corporate State, "Government," "Rolebot" & Reification)
Full of Shit.From [Media Matters] and [HERE] James T. Hodgkinson, a man with a record of domestic violence, a legally purchased assault rifle, and a valid concealed carry permit, on June 14 opened fire on Republican congressmen and staffers practicing for the congressional baseball game.
The FBI is still investigating the incident, but one thing is already clear about this latest example of unhinged gun violence. The overwhelming evidence of conservative media's influence on a significant number of deadly incidents makes their attempt to deflect attention from their role in creating a toxic political culture both cynical and exploitative.
According to reports, the gunman had shared anti-Republican sentiments publicly online and had been critical of the president. Reports of the shooter’s political background immediately prompted unscrupulous right-wing hacks to pounce on the tragedy, looking to exploit the terrifying gun violence incident as a way to score cheap political points by blaming the left. In a new display of audacious defiance of reality, conservative voices have put the blame of the shooting not only on the left, but also on the press and various celebrities as well. But, blaming the left or the media for Hodgkinson’s actions is equivalent to blaming Jodie Foster for the attempted assassination of former President Ronald Reagan.
The gimmick, however, is deplorable not just for its cynical exploitation of fear, pain and human tragedy; it’s also a hollow attempt to distract from the conservative right’s own responsibility in creating a political culture that inspires violence by fanning the flames of hatred.
The Body Slam Was Not a False Flag Operation. From [HERE] Greg Gianforte, a Montana Republican, was sentenced on Monday to 40 hours of community service and 20 hours of anger management classes for assaulting a reporter the night before he won a seat in the House of Representatives last month.
Appearing in Gallatin County Justice Court in Bozeman, Mont., Mr. Gianforte told Judge Rick West that it was not his intention to hurt the reporter, Ben Jacobs of The Guardian, on May 24, The Bozeman Daily Chronicle reported.
“I grabbed his wrist,” said Mr. Gianforte, who pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor assault charge. “A scuffle ensued, and he was injured, as I understand it.”
The judge called his actions “totally unacceptable” but spared him jail time. He gave Mr. Gianforte a six-month deferred sentence and ordered that he pay $385 in court fees and fines.
“This was not a proud moment, but I’m ready to move on, and we have a lot of work to do in Washington,” Mr. Gianforte said outside court, Reuters reported.
The sentence was a “very typical result” in a simple assault case, Barry J. Pollack, president of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, said on Tuesday. He said the deferred sentence serves as a “sword over the defendant’s head” to ensure that he complies with the conditions set out by the judge and gets the services he needs.
If Mr. Gianforte does not violate the terms of his deferred sentence, he can seek to have the charge dismissed and the file sealed after six months. He must complete his community service by Nov. 28. Marty Lambert, the Gallatin County attorney, said Mr. Gianforte could choose which organization to serve from a preapproved list of nonprofits, including the Lions Club, an animal shelter and the local fairgrounds.
Page Pate, who teaches law at the University of Georgia in Athens, Ga., wrote in an email that the sentence was “reasonable and consistent for someone in a case like this if the person has no prior criminal history, has accepted responsibility for what he did, and is otherwise a law-abiding citizen.”
[No consideration was given to the fact that he is a public official sworn to uphold the law and an example should be made out of him blah blah- like when Black or Latino elected officials commit a crime.]
From [HERE] The mostly white jury ended a fourth day of deliberations in the Bill Cosby sexual assault trial without a verdict, working into the night after reporting to the judge that they were deadlocked.
Judge Steven T. O’Neill, who is also white, asked the jurors to try to come back tomorrow deliberate some and see if there is still progress that can be made. Mr. Cosby is charged with three counts of aggravated indecent assault. The three counts are penetration without consent; penetration while unconscious; and penetration after administering an intoxicant without the subject’s knowledge. Cosby faces a maximum of fifteen to thirty years in prison if found guilty on all 3 counts and a fine up to $25,000.
The jury is composed of 10 white people (seven men and three women) and just 2 black people. Two of the six alternate jurors are Black. [MORE]
A white reporter for the NY Times notes "It’s unclear [DOUBT] what is the central point of disagreement among the jurors [LACK OF FACTS]. Andrea Constand, the white woman who has accused Mr. Cosby of sexual assault, was composed and calm on the stand during her testimony last week, but the defense spent most of its time during cross-examination working to establish the inconsistencies and mistakes in her account."
What kind of inconsistencies?
* She first went to the police a year after the incident
* She forgot when the assault happened. Not sure about what date - day of the month this life changing event occured. [MORE]
* Constand called Cosby 53 times after the alleged assault and then lied to the police about it. Telling cops that she had not tried to contact him. If she lied once can you believe anything else she says? If you found a fly in your soup and you removed it, would you still eat the rest?
*I called him on Valentines Day to discuss basketball business. Cosby atty Ms. Agrusa suggested there was more than Ms. Constand let on to in her relationship with Mr. Cosby, 36 years her senior, who bought her gifts and introduced her to some of his entertainment industry contacts.
“Mr. Cosby had already made clear that he had affection for you,” Ms. Agrusa said.
“He had never disclosed to me that he had affection for me,” Ms. Constand replied levelly.
She has said that before the alleged assault, he twice made sexual advances that she rebuffed, but she continued to see him.
“You came back to Mr. Cosby’s home,” Ms. Agrusa said, and drove to Foxwoods resort in eastern Connecticut, where he was performing, and spent time in his hotel room there.
Ms. Constand said she sat on the bed in that hotel room, but after he lay down on the bed, she thought, “What am I doing here?” and left.
When asked why she did not tell police certain details of their meetings, she replied, “I was never asked.” [And of course a decade later police have no memory of what they asked her]
The defense pointed to extensive contacts Ms. Constand had with Mr. Cosby after the alleged assault, which contradict what she told police in 2005, and which the lawyers have suggested is not the behavior of a victim toward her abuser. They paid particular attention to phone records showing that Ms. Constand called Mr. Cosby repeatedly around the time of the alleged incident, including on Valentine’s Day, and dozens of times in the months after.
But Ms. Constand said those calls were for her work “regarding Temple women’s basketball,” and many of them, she said, were her calling him back after he had left her a message; Kristen M. Feden, an assistant district attorney, cited a pattern in the phone records of Ms. Constand calling her own voice mail to check messages, and then calling Mr. Cosby. [MORE]
Today, alleged victim Andrea Constand trolled Cosby with this tweet of her shooting a basket with the Harlem Globetrotters theme in the background. To many white folks, justice means revenge.
The trial in the Montgomery County Courthouse in Norristown, Pa., marks a long-awaited test of the kind of accusations dozens of women have leveled in recent years against Mr. Cosby, a Black man, now 79, severely undermining the image he built over more than half a century in show business. A white reporter at NY Times said, "rarely has a person so well known faced such a sharp reversal in reputation, or such serious criminal charges —– three counts of aggravated indecent assault, each punishable by up to 10 years in prison. [lol. This happens to Showcase Blacks on a regular. After falling out of grace with their masters somehow, Tiger Woods, Michael Steele, Michael Jordan, Michael Jackson, OJ Simpson, Jesse Jackson etc, get destroyed by elite whites who launched their stardom. Sounding like Sean Hannity Jr. 12 years ago, Cos was their boy.]
Judge Steven T. O’Neill allowed the prosecution to present only one of his other accusers, Ms. Kelly Johnson, as a witness who prosecutors contend show that the encounter with Ms. Constand fit a larger pattern. There are no criminal cases pending based on the other allegations, some dating to the 1960’s or 1970’s, often because too much time had passed.
In opening statement Cosby's atty Mr. McMonagle told the mostly white jury that a previous district attorney had decided against charging Mr. Cosby in Ms. Constand’s case. “They saw there was no evidence to bring a prosecution then,” he said. “So why are we here?” [MORE]
From [NPR] The director of Michigan's Department of Health and Human Services, Nick Lyon, has been charged with involuntary manslaughter and misconduct in office over the Flint water crisis. Both are felonies in Michigan.
The state's chief medical executive, Dr. Eden Wells, will be charged with obstruction of justice. Four other officials, including the former Flint emergency manager and former director of public works, were also charged with involuntary manslaughter.
Lyon and Wells are the highest-ranking state officials to be charged in the crisis. The charges stem from an investigation led by Michigan's attorney general.
"Mr. Lyon failed in his responsibilities to protect the health and safety of the citizens of Flint," Michigan's Attorney General Bill Schuette said at a press conference Wednesday.
"The families of Flint have experienced a tragic, tragic health and safety crisis for the past three years," he said.
The involuntary manslaughter charge stems from an outbreak of Legionnaires' disease, a type of pneumonia, that spread in the city following its switch in water source. According to the indictment, Lyon knew about the outbreak but failed to alert the public. The disease killed 12 people and sickened more than 70 in 2014 and 2015, according to MLive.
From [NYTimes] Hoping to step into the breach left by the end of the Obama administration’s aggressive approach to civil rights abuses by the police, a coalition of civil rights groups filed a federal lawsuit against the City of Chicago on Wednesday.
The lawsuit, which seeks sweeping changes to a police force with a well-documented pattern of excessive force and other misconduct, comes five months after Mayor Rahm Emanuel pledged to cooperate with the Justice Department to implement a police reform plan supervised by the federal courts.
But the change at the White House cooled the federal appetite to intervene in police departments, and critics say Mr. Emanuel has been all too happy to negotiate a less stringent deal.
The lawsuit, filed Wednesday, is the latest chapter in the city’s long-running saga over how its Police Department treats the blacks and Hispanics that each comprise about a third of its population. It catalogs episodes of controversial police use of force dating back to the 1960s.
Without federal court oversight, the plaintiffs contend, little will change in a city that has perennially faced racially tinged police-abuse scandals.
“It is clear that federal court intervention is essential to end the historical and ongoing pattern and practice of excessive force by police officers in Chicago,” the lawsuit states. “Absent federal court supervision, nothing will improve.”
But Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson said the city was already pursuing meaningful reforms. “We will not waver from this path,” he said.
For most of last year it had seemed all but certain that the Justice Department would seek extensive court-ordered reforms through a federal “consent decree,” and that Chicago might have little room to object.
In January, the Justice Department issued a blistering report that documented abuses and racial disparities.
The city “promotes a culture of rampant brutality, especially against people of color,” the lawsuit said, adding that the police are 14 times more likely to use force against black men between the ages of 20 and 34 than against their white counterparts.
The most recent crisis was spurred by the release, a year and a half ago, of a video showing a white officer shooting a black teenager 16 times.
The video contradicted the police accounts of the death, which claimed the teenager had been moving menacingly toward them with a knife.
From [HERE] Police in Chicago and its surrounding suburbs seized $150 million over the past five years. Those seizures were heaviest in low-income neighborhoods, according to public records.
Law enforcement in Cook County, which includes Chicago, seized items from residents ranging from a cashier's check for 34 cents to a 2010 Rolls Royce Ghost with an estimated value of more than $200,000. They also seized Xbox controllers, televisions, nunchucks, 12 cans of peas, a pair of rhinestone cufflinks, and a bayonet.
Altogether, police in Cook County performed 23,065 seizures between 2012 and 2017 using asset forfeiture, including 5,939 vehicles. Chevrolet Impalas, among the most popular rental cars in the U.S., were the model most often seized. About three-quarters of all seizures occurred in Chicago. The average estimated value of a seizure was $4,553, while the median value was $1,049. About three-quarters of all seizures were cash, not property.
Lucy Parsons Labs, a police accountability nonprofit in Chicago, obtained the data from the Cook County State's Attorney's Office (CCSAO) through a public records request and provided them to Reason. The data are unique because they include not just when and what police seized, but addresses of where those seizures occurred.
Civil liberties groups have often claimed asset forfeiture disproportionately impacts poor and minority communities. When these police seizure locations are mapped, it shows that, although seizures happened nearly everywhere in Chicago and the surrounding area, low-income neighborhoods like the South Side and West Side were more frequently the targets of asset forfeiture. [MORE]
From [HERE] and [HERE] The U.S. Supreme Court handed down a 9-0 ruling on Monday siding with Santander Consumer USA Holdings (SC) in a class action lawsuit over allegations it violated a law called the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act.
The court declined to expand the reach of federal legislation targeting abusive debt-collection practices such as harassment and threats, ruling it does not cover companies that buy debt, sometimes for pennies on the dollar, and then collect it.
The case was brought against the Banco Santander (SAN) subsidiary by four Maryland residents who defaulted on car loans.
The Supreme Court explained that the law applies only to companies that collect money on behalf of others, not businesses like Santander that collect debt bought from other companies after it fell into default.
Shares Santander Consumer USA Holdings were climbing higher during late-morning trading on Monday.
In just the last couple of years, Santander has been fined more than $1 billion for deceptive practices ranging from illegal overdrafts and overcharging black and Latino customers to illegally repossessing cars owned by members of the U.S. armed services who took out Santander loans and then were deployed overseas.
"Crime is so-called "government's" biggest industry, followed closely by propaganda" - Dr. Blynd. From [HERE] and [HERE] Crimes committed by corporations are often overlooked or undercovered by the news media. Though the dollar amounts and number of victims can be astronomical, corporate crimes — including areas such as securities fraud, money laundering and bribery — can be complicated, drawn-out matters which get lost in the daily blur of street crime and terrorism. But the need to hold large companies accountable remains, and a new way to understand and contextualize those crimes launches today — a vast database of corporate prosecutions dating back to 1992, showing how the government did, or didn’t, resolve criminal cases with fines, prison terms or, sometimes, nothing.
The Corporate Prosecution Registry was created at the University of Virginia Law School by Professor Brandon L. Garrett and librarian Jon Ashley. It is searchable, sortable and downloadable. It features categories from antitrust violations to wildlife and workplace law violations. You can see that in 2007, a company called Great Cats of the World pleaded guiltyin Oregon to selling endangered ocelots, with a link to the actual plea agreement. You can also see a 2006 agreement not to prosecute Hitachi for antitrust violations in the computer memory business in exchange for their cooperation with a federal investigation into that business.
There are more than 3,000 convictions of corporations and out-of-court prosecution deals with corporations, and it’s an immense, highly useful database all in one place. There are also a number of fascinating Justice Department internal documents, including memos from various attorneys general providing guidance on prosecuting businesses, and the U.S. attorneys’ manual on Principles of Federal Prosecution of Business Organizations. All of these are public documents, but never before gathered in one place as a resource for academics, lawyers, journalists and the public. Documents and dockets mined from the federal court database PACER as well as news releases and other records are available for immediate review.
Garrett is the author of the book “Too Big to Jail: How Prosecutors Compromise With Corporations,” which came in the wake of the federal government’s seeming lack of interest in pursuing institutions involved in the financial collapse of the late 2000s. While banks were bailed out with the claim that they were “too big to fail,” citizens lost homes, investments and life savings. But prosecutions did occur, as well as deferred prosecution agreements, and new Attorney General Jeff Sessions recently declared at a meeting of corporate compliance officers that “this Department of Justice will continue to investigate and prosecute corporate fraud and misconduct.”
Garrett said he and Ashley created the database because “we want people to know what types of corporations get prosecuted, how much they pay, and what the crimes are.” The Justice Department often issues statements that it has collected, for example, a billion dollars in fines in a year, Garrett said, without breaking down where those came from, or how that compared to previous years.
Saturday, June 17, 2017 at 10:33PM 
