The Wall-Streeters are pathological

From The Business Insider
Janet Tavakoli

(Click on the link to read more)



[Pathological - Involving, caused by, or of the nature of a physical or mental disease.]

"I'm going to put if very bluntly. I regard the moral environment as pathological...these people are out to make billions of dollars and nothing should stop them from that. They have no responsibility to pay taxes. They have no responsibility to their clients...to counter-parties in transactions.

They are tough greedy aggressive and feel absolutely out of control...and they have gamed the system to a remarkable extent. And they have a docile President, a docile White House, and a docile regulatory system that can't find its voice. Its terrified of these banks. If you look at the campaign contributions the financial markets are the #1 campaign contributors in the US now.

We have a corrupt politics to the core...and both parties are up to their necks in this. The corruption is as far as I can see everywhere. But what it's led to is this sense of impunity that is really stunning...and it is very unhealthy. I have waited four, five years now to see one figure on Wall St. speak in a moral language and I've not seen it once.

The U.S. becomes more and more corrupt each day.

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Watching the Government

It long ago became apparent to me that we need watchdogs to keep track of what our governments (plural intended) are doing with out money. I had envisioned teams of accountants, hired to work outside of government, to watch over the money that is spent. The lost money in Iraq alone is evidence of the need.

So I liked it when I saw this on the ABC website...

Obama to Name 'Gumshoe' to Keep Stimulus Honest

February 22, 2009 5:45 PM

An Obama administration official tells ABC News that during his remarks at the governors event Monday morning, President Obama will announce that he's appointing respected Interior Department Inspector General Earl Devaney to serve as Chair of the Recovery Act Transparency and Accountability Board. Devaney has built a solid reputation for ferretting out corruption in the beleaguered Interior Department, which was part of the Abramoff scandal..

More Lies and Corruption

I'm not sure there's much difference between any of the politicians other than their personalities. A week or so ago I posted a link to Judicial Watch. a site that highlighted ten of the most corrupt politicians in Washington. I focused on Hillary Clinton but if you didn't go to the site to follow up, it's important to know, now that he's the new hot-topic in the race, that Barrack Obama was also listed. Here's what Judicial Watch had to say...

Senator Barack Obama (D-IL): A “Dishonorable Mention” last year, Senator Obama moves onto the “ten most wanted” list in 2007. In 2006, it was discovered that Obama was involved in a suspicious real estate deal with an indicted political fundraiser, Antoin “Tony” Rezko. In 2007, more reports surfaced of deeper and suspicious business and political connections It was reported that just two months after he joined the Senate, Obama purchased $50,000 worth of stock in speculative companies whose major investors were his biggest campaign contributors. One of the companies was a biotech concern that benefited from legislation Obama pushed just two weeks after the senator purchased $5,000 of the company’s shares. Obama was also nabbed conducting campaign business in his Senate office, a violation of federal law.

Well, John McCain (on the Republican side now) is also out there lying up a storm. It's hard to tell - was he just forgetful (too old to be President) or is he really telling bold-faced lies? The following is from the American Progress Progress Report of January 7, 2008.

In last night's Fox News GOP presidential forum, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) declared that, as president, he would eliminate "wasteful spending," citing his track record fighting against earmarks as evidence. "I'm proud to tell you," McCain said at the forum, "in 24 years as a member of Congress, I have never asked for nor received a single earmark or pork barrel project for my state and I guarantee you I'll veto those bills." McCain's claims are patently false. In 2006, he and Sen. John Kyl (R-AZ) teamed up to funnel $10 million toward the University of Arizona for an academic center named after the late Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist. Three years earlier, McCain slipped $14.3 million into a defense appropriations bill to create a buffer zone around Luke Air Force Base in Arizona. As Roll Call reported, the project "was not requested by President Bush or fully authorized by the Senate Armed Services Committee -- two of McCain's criteria for identifying so-called 'pork .'" The move heartened notorious porker Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK), who noted, "One man's pork is another man's alternate white meat ."

Bad Boys and Girls In Congress

Judicial Watch has posted their annual list of the "Ten Most Wanted Corrupt Politicians for 2007." A non-partisan group, Judicial Watch lists 5 Democrats and 5 Republicans - two from each party running for President. Here's the post on Hillary Clinton...

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY): In addition to her long and sordid ethics record, Senator Hillary Clinton took a lot of heat in 2007 – and rightly so – for blocking the release her official White House records. Many suspect these records contain a treasure trove of information related to her role in a number of serious Clinton-era scandals. Moreover, in March 2007, Judicial Watch filed an ethics complaint against Senator Clinton for filing false financial disclosure forms with the U.S. Senate (again). And Hillary’s top campaign contributor, Norman Hsu, was exposed as a felon and a fugitive from justice in 2007. Hsu pleaded guilt to one count of grand theft for defrauding investors as part of a multi-million dollar Ponzi scheme.

Tall Drink Of Water

Another Bush Administration Crook?

Corruption, lying, torture, and whoring - just some of the fun crimes Bush appointees have involved themselves in. The following is from ABC News - click on the link to read more...

A Bush administration cabinet secretary is facing multiple federal investigations about whether he lied to Congress when he vowed he never intervened in contracting awards at his department, according to a new report.

Did You Know - Mayor Kelty

Many Republicans believe that their importance is so paramount to the success of the world, that a little lying, cheating and stealing to stay in power is okay - as long as it's them what's doing it.

This morning, the President of the Executive Committee of the Republican Party of Allen County, Kenneth Neumeister, turned in his resignation to Republican Party Chairman, Steve Shine, because of the campaign fiance scandal surrounding Republican Mayoral candidate Matt Kelty.

From WANE-TV

Did You Know - Corrupt Republicans

Many elected Republicans seem to see their role in government as one of ownership rather than as one of stewardship. Once in power, they want to claim rewards rather than serve those that elected them. Greed is the only word that seems to cover the vast majority of them.

Alaska may be the second youngest state in the country, but it's also one of the most corrupt. The state's entire congressional delegation -- Sens. Ted Stevens (R) and Lisa Murkowski (R) and Rep. Don Young (R) -- is now embroiled in a series of scandals and criminal investigations that threaten to topple Alaska's oil industry-friendly political leadership. Much of the corruption involves Alaska's "largest oil-field engineering firm," Veco Corp., which is "entwined in a broad federal investigation that has led to the indictment of four current and former Alaska politicians and ensnared former Alaska Senate President Ben Stevens, son of Ted Stevens."

From Progress Report 7/26/2007

Did You Know - International Corruption

The biggest crooks in the world are often the richest to begin with. And they all run in the same circles. And they all share the same moral code: screw the little guy.

From the Washington Post....

Prince Bandar bin Sultan, a member of Saudi Arabia's royal family and the kingdom's former ambassador to the United States, pocketed about $2 billion in secret payments as part of an $80 billion arms deal between Britain and Saudi Arabia that was first signed in 1985, British media reported Thursday.

The reports revived questions about the British government's decision in December to drop a fraud investigation into the deal, which has been plagued by allegations of bribes and secret slush funds for almost two decades.

In remarks Thursday, Prime Minister Tony Blair did not comment
directly on the reports made on the BBC and in the Guardian newspaper. But he repeated his frequent defense of the decision to drop the investigation on national security grounds.

"This investigation, if it had gone ahead, would have involved the most serious allegations in investigations being made into the Saudi royal family," Blair said at a meeting of the Group of Eight nations in Germany.

Did You Know - Ted Stevens

You can't be as stupid as Senator Ted Stevens (R - Alaska) without coming into contact with some illegalities somewhere...

From Fairbanks Daily News-Miner...

Attorneys for U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens have advised the senator to preserve records in connection with the ongoing federal investigation into political corruption in Alaska.

In comments Wednesday to a reporter from The Washington Post, Stevens said for the first time that his lawyers had spoken with the FBI about the federal criminal probe.

“They put me on notice to preserve some records,” Stevens said in the Post report. Stevens declined to specify what kind of records were involved. He did, however, confirm that he hired lawyers to represent him and that his son, former Alaska Senate President Ben Stevens, was under investigation, according to the Washington Post.

Did You Know - There's Corruption in Iraq

From Editor and Publisher...

Two years ago this week, shortly after noon, Iraq time, Col. Ted Westhusing took out a Barretta and put a bullet in his brain in his trailer at an Army camp near Baghdad airport. When he died, he was the highest-ranking American officer to lose his life in the Iraq war.

In a suicide note addressed to his commanders, Maj. Gen. Joseph Fil and Lt. Gen. David Petraeus (and also sharply critical of them) Westhusing wrote: “I cannot support a msn [mission] that leads to corruption, human right abuses and liars. I am sullied — no more.”

Now documents from the investigation of Westhusing’s death, and the charges in his suicide note, are available online.

E&P Editor Greg Mitchell has covered the Westhusing case since the autumn of 2005, when a portrait of Westhusing by T. Christian Miller appeared in the Los Angeles Times. Miller revealed that Westhusing, 44, had been deeply troubled by abuses carried out by American contractors in Iraq, including allegations that they had witnessed or even participated in the murder of Iraqis.

Political Fun Photos

Ah, yes. Just a reminder of the significant number of pious, Republican lawbreakers. A good time was had by all.
Please note the post (below) on the Bush administration removing Federal prosecutors so they can place their own cronies. The current administration adds whole new meaning to the word "corruption."
News item - I forgot to mark where I copped it. Probably Wonkette. It looks like their style.

Betcha Didn't Know This

From The Center for American Progress - The Progress Report

ETHICS -- POLITICAL CONTRIBUTIONS BY JUDICIAL NOMINEES RAISE ETHICAL CONCERNS: "At least two dozen federal judges appointed by President Bush since 2001 made political contributions to key Republicans or to the president himself while under consideration for their judgeships, " a report by the Center for Investigative Reporting reveals. Twenty-three percent of Bush-appointed appellate judges and more than 16 percent of district judges gave contributions to Bush, national campaign committees, and legislators influential in the judicial nomination process while they were being considered for the bench. There are currently no laws that prohibit campaign contributions by judicial nominees, but critics fear that "creating even the appearance of impropriety ...can shake the public's confidence in the impartiality and independence of the judiciary." The President considers judicial nominees with input from senators of the same party, a process that is often controlled by state party politics . "If you don't have the blessing of the county and state party chairs you can stop right there," says Professor Tom Hagel, a professor at the University of Dayton School of Law and a part-time trial judge and brother to Senator Chuck Hagel (R-NE). Political contributions, he explains, "play into that process, as a demonstration of 'how loyal and appreciative' a judicial candidate is. "