ExxonMobil, American Company or Independent Entity?
Global Ethics Forum: Private Empire: ExxonMobil and American Power – YouTube
(WordPress ate every word I wrote on this post – let me see what I can resuscitate.)
Steve Coll, speaking before the Global Ethics Forum, explains that ExxonMobil while based in the United States often behaves as a foreign entity.
James Pilant
A Challenge for My Students (and other faculty should they so desire!)
My students are well aware by this time that I am a mystery buff. I love solving television mysteries and real life ones as well. The video below is from You Tube and it features a Miss Marple mystery. These are my favorite mysteries because you have all the clues you need to solve it by the time she arrives at the explanation. I haven’t solved all of the Miss Marple stories but certainly more than 2/3rds. This one beat me.
So, my challenge is, “Can you solve the mystery before our heroine explains the outcome?” You are, of course, on your honor not to cheat. So, don’t be going to one of those spoiler web sites or reading the novel before watching the program. You can do what I like to do in these cases which is to pause the film and think about the evidence at hand. Television watching appeals to the unconscious more than the conscious and if you just let it flow, the “little grey cells” (another Agatha Christie character) never get to operate at full power.
This exercise builds your power of reasoning and deduction known by the classic word, ratiocination.
If you solve it, make a comment and I will post the winners later.
James Pilant
P.S. I am going to give you a clue that I did not have. I did not figure out the murder because I could not conceive that the murderer(s) could be so evil. And I was revolted when I found out what had been done. jp
Agatha Christie’s Marple: S1E1 – The Body In The Library – YouTube
Pennsylvania’s Revolving Door
Fracking and the Revolving Door in Pennsylvania | Public Accountability Initiative
Numerous top government officers and environmental regulators in Pennsylvania have either left their public jobs for careers in the oil and gas industry or come to government from the industry.
The revolving door trend in Pennsylvania raises questions about whether regulators are serving the public interest or private industry interests in their oversight of fracking.
The following are major findings from the report:
- Pennsylvania’s previous three governors have strong ties to the natural gas industry. Tom Ridge’s firms benefited from a $900,000 contract to lobby for the Marcellus Shale Coalition, Mark Schweiker joined a lobbying firm with a Marcellus Shale practice, and Ed Rendell is a partner in a private equity firm invested in fracking services companies and recently lobbied on behalf of driller Range Resources. Current governor Tom Corbett also has strong ties to the industry – he received more than $1 million in campaign contributions from the oil and gas industry and previously worked as a lawyer for Waste Management, which is active in the Marcellus Shale.
- Every Secretary of Environmental Protection since the DEP was created has had ties to the natural gas industry. Jim Seif is now a principal and energy consultant at Ridge Global LLC, one of former governor Ridge’s firms that lobbied for the Marcellus Shale Coalition; David Hess is now a lobbyist at Crisci Associates and has gas industry clients; Kathleen McGinty has served on the boards of two energy companies, is managing director of a consulting firm that is part of the Marcellus Shale Coalition, and is a partner in former Governor Rendell’s private equity firm; John Hanger is now special counsel to a law firm that represents every segment of the natural resources industry; and Michael Krancer is former general counsel at a utility that relies on natural gas and a former partner at a law firm member of the Marcellus Shale Coalition.
Fracking and the Revolving Door in Pennsylvania | Public Accountability Initiative
You should read the whole report – here. (pdf. file)
There are many people who find this practice of moving from the government to private industry and back again to not be a problem. I don’t get it. How is it moral to develop expertise in industry wrong doing to use it against the government later? How is it moral to work for companies that are heavily dependent on the government for profits, and then switch to government service with every prospect of returning to an extremely lucrative salary with that same industry?
Why don’t we just call it, “slow bribery?” You don’t get the money up front, you get in exchange for services provided over time.
This is how regulatory capture works. This is how public servants can cash in. This is how influence is sold for hard cash.
James Pilant
Crooks and Liars Tells a Fable
Bob The Businessman: An American Success Story | Crooks and Liars
This is the story of Bob the businessman.
Suppose a local businessman, let’s call him Bob, went around town raising money from the townspeople to open a car dealership. Dozens and dozens of people in town invested, putting in $1,000, $5,000, and a few putting in as much as $50,000 and $100,000. Bob raised a lot of money for his business.
After a while the investors found out Bob the Businessman was using some of their money to help his brother run for Mayor and several cousins to run for city council, and …
Bob The Businessman: An American Success Story | Crooks and Liars#sthash.S2qUc6Sm.dpbs
This is a fairy tale from the web site, Crooks and Liars. It is, of course, a parable about American business. It’s pretty funny although if you think about it, it’s very sad. Please go to the web site, and read the whole thing.
James Pilant
The Aaron Swartz Legacy?
White House Grants Aaron Swartz’s Wish: Taxpayer-Funded Research Will Be Free
Aaron Swartz, a well-known Internet activist who killed himself last month, believed that information should free, not digitized and put behind pay walls.
“The world’s entire scientific and cultural heritage, published over centuries in books and journals, is increasingly being digitized and locked up by a handful of private corporations,” he once wrote.
The Obama administration just granted his wish — at least as it pertains to research funded by taxpayers.
The White House directed federal agencies on Friday to make the results of federally-funded research freely available to the public within one year of publication. The new policy came “>after more than 65,000 people signed a petition asking for expanded public access to the results of studies paid for by taxpayers.
“Americans should have easy access to the results of research they help support,” John P. Holdren, the president’s senior advisor on science and technology, said in a memo announcing the new open-access policy.
White House Grants Aaron Swartz’s Wish: Taxpayer-Funded Research Will Be Free
Well, it’s something but it can become so much more. Swartz wanted to free up information for the use of all mankind. This is a step in the right direction. We can build a world of free information free of corporate or government control. We owe it to Aaron to fight hard for a better Internet, a better world.
James Pilant
Individual Responsibility Except for Banks
Justice Department’s New Get-Tough Policy Is, Well, Not | Matt Taibbi | Rolling Stone
I get that regulators are worried about job losses. They should be. But the long-term job losses are going to be much greater when investors around the world lose confidence in the U.S. financial system because they recognize that individuals do not face punishment for criminal activity. The individual incentive not to commit crime on Wall Street now is almost zero. Even the worst of the worst – like, say, a certain unindicted co-conspirator in an evolving insider trading case – is only threatened with individual prosecution after years of monstrous and obvious market manipulation, resulting in massive profits that he’ll almost certainly get to keep most of, by the way, if previous settlements are any guide.
It continually amazes, the way all of these law-and-order types are so willing to pontificate about the importance of taking individual responsibility for one’s actions, until the guy in their crosshairs is someone he/she went to college with, or a former client of his or her law firm. Then, suddenly, their idea of drastic justice becomes maybe yanking the license of a foreign subsidiary.
Justice Department’s New Get-Tough Policy Is, Well, Not | Matt Taibbi | Rolling Stone
Two standard of justice exist in this country. One for those in the government and the higher circles of income and influence and another for the “common” people. If you have been following my blog for the last few years, you will encounter wrong doing among the banking fraternity and the government going unpunished on a regular basis. When there is some justice, it is almost pathetic how little penalty the investment banks and their enablers face.
But study crime in the United States, and you will note vast penalties handed out for very small crimes indeed particularly drug crimes. My personal favorite is the woman doing fifteen years for a third possession of marijuana. This is what passes for justice.
This poem is from the 17th Century.
The law locks up the man or woman
Who steals the goose off the common
But leaves the greater villain loose
Who steals the common from the goose.
The law demands that we atone
When we take things we do not own
But leaves the lords and ladies fine
Who takes things that are yours and mine.
The poor and wretched don’t escape
If they conspire the law to break;
This must be so but they endure
Those who conspire to make the law.
The law locks up the man or woman
Who steals the goose from off the common
And geese will still a common lack
Till they go and steal it back.
Have things changed all that much?
James Pilant
Banks Manage their own Penalty
Mortgage Settlement Report Finds Banks Reluctant To Reduce Principal, Despite Promises
The largest mortgage settlement in U.S. history was pitched by its creators as a deal that would offer quick aid to 1 million people in danger of losing their homes to foreclosure. But according to a report released Thursday by the court-appointed monitor of the settlement, in the first nine months after the $25 billion deal was struck, fewer than 50,000 people received the most coveted form of relief: reduction of principal owed on a first mortgage.
Meanwhile, more than three times as many borrowers — 169,000 — agreed to a short sale, which requires they leave the property, according to the report.
Banks still have time to meet their obligations under the settlement, which requires that 30 percent of total relief come in the form of first mortgage principal reduction. But housing advocates say the limited progress so far — just 14 percent of aid has gone to write down loan balances — suggests that banks are avoiding, or at least delaying, their obligation to provide meaningful relief as they promised under the deal.
Mortgage Settlement Report Finds Banks Reluctant To Reduce Principal, Despite Promises
What did the federal government think would happen when their vaunted, over-hyped 25 billion dollar settlement wound up in the hands of the banks themselves? A child could have made an accurate prediction. You reward criminality by avoiding any real penalties. You chock it up as an enormous victory for the government while the banks and people like me hold you in contempt for your incompetence and servile stance to corporate crime. The banks have to pay back some money to the people they stole from. Great. Except that they decide who gets the money and they have decided that most of the money will go to short sales. Isn’t that special. They’re maximizing their profit. Who would’ve thought?
James Pilant
The Banks Evade Responsibility Again
Banks thrive, while homeowners still suffer | The Great Debate
A year ago the federal government and 49 states completed a $25 billion agreement with the nation’s largest mortgage servicers to settle claims of “robo-signing” and unlawful foreclosure practices. President Barack Obama announced the creation of the federal-state mortgage securities working group in his 2012 State of the Union address. The nation seemed on the verge of transforming the way banks treat struggling homeowners ‑ particularly those with “underwater” mortgages, in which a homeowner owes more than the house is worth.
These promises, however, have yet to be fulfilled. The latest interim report on the national mortgage settlement is due out this week, and banks will likely again declare that it offers proof that they are fulfilling their obligations. But the communities hit hardest by the foreclosure crisis have yet to see any meaningful relief.
Time is running out to ensure that these communities receive their fair share under the settlement. But it is not too late to provide meaningful assistance. The settlement monitors need to demand greater transparency from banks, and they need to see that banks comply with the fair-lending requirements set out in the agreement. They also need to aggressively police the servicing reforms to ensure that all homeowners get a fair opportunity to save their homes.
Banks thrive, while homeowners still suffer | The Great Debate
And from further down in the article:
Unfortunately, there is little transparency about how the banks are using this money. They have not provided any loan-level data to show which borrowers are receiving assistance.
Moreover, mortgage servicers have complete discretion over who receives help. Advocates fear the banks have been cherry-picking expensive loans that are deeply underwater to meet their settlement obligations quickly. This provides an important service for the borrowers in that category but little systematic relief for low- and moderate-income communities suffering the most from the foreclosure crisis.
The mortgage holders committed fraud for years making billions of dollars taking homes they had little or no claim to. They used the HAMP program as a weapon against homeowners, telling them to skip three payments so as to be able to qualify, then rejecting their applications or not bothering to even process them (not that we’ll ever know in most cases, the HAMP program kept no records for the first two years) and then quickly foreclosing on their homes. I’ve had students in my classes who were victims of that scam.
Instead of holding the perpetrators of these crimes accountable they were “sort of” fined 25 billion dollars through a program they administer and report on without effective oversight. Let me repeat that – they, the banks, administer the program to give back some of the money and homes they stole. Oh, forgive me, they are not giving the homes back just some money should they feel in some way that they want to because if they don’t want to, they don’t have to.
That is what passes for justice in the current administration and the 49 states that the bankers negotiated this sweetheart deal with. Crime pays in the United States if you are a banker dealing mortgages.
They stole billions of dollars worth of homes. They in an epic display of arrogance created a parallel system of recording deeds without any legal justification purely to expedite trading of mortgages and to evade filing fees. They lied to judges all over the United States in countless jurisdictions filing tens of thousands of false affidavits saying that their paperwork, their proof of ownership was in order.
These are crimes, not mistakes, crimes.
If I stole through fraud the least home in the land, I would and should do prison time. No one has been sentenced for these crimes. Without prison time, fines, that are a fraction of the money made, are the only deterrent. Is that enough? Does that make sense?
Two systems of justice – one for the bankers and one for regular citizens, the “common” folk, the ones without political friends; the ones that don’t have the right memberships, the right bank accounts, the right lives lived in the adoration of business television and magazines.
We discussed in my class on business law and business ethics what it takes to build a good society. One of the thoughts was to reward virtue and penalize wrong doing. What kind of society does this build?
I think you know the answer.
James Pilant
From around the web –
From the web site, Diane’s Blog:
Kamala Harris is right: we need a Homeowners Bill of Rights, and the banks, like it or not and they don’t, need good, strong regulations to control them. These two items are bare minimums. As for giving the money to individual homeowners, if it does happen, the amounts will be small because the numbers involved are so large. Better to allocate some money to homeowners’ advocacy and education groups.
From the web site, On the Frontlines of Americans with Debt:
The five mortgage companies who are part of the settlement are Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Chase, GMAC/Ally Financial, and Citibank.
While HUD estimates that 2 million homeowners could see their mortgage balances reduced, it will be up to the five banks to determine which homeowners will be included in the program.
In addition, payments of between $1500 and $2000 will be paid to people who lost a home to foreclosure between 2008 and 2011, so long as certain criteria are met. The factsheet does not explain the criteria necessary for those people to qualify.
And finally from the web site, Defend My Florida Home:
A major impediment to mortgage modifications is the bank practice of “dual tracking” mortgages. When a mortgage is dual tracked the bank pursues foreclosure while at the same time allowing the home owner to pursue a modification. The problem with this is that in spite of an eminent, or completed modification the bank will still sell a home at sale leaving the owner homeless.
What are we frightened of? Fear and Dread in the U.S.
Michael Brenner: The (Very) Few Proud and Brave
Fear and dread, deep and pervasive, are the abiding feature of these times.Existential threats from mysterious forces with no fixed address are most scary because they are not resoluble by focused action taken against a clear target. They gnaw at you as well as frighten you. That produces dread. Dread is free floating fear — it fixes on what might be, thereby magnifying anxieties of experiencing one more horrific events of the past.American actions in the ‘war on terror’ have been driven by dread. Dread that it may happen again, dread of the unknown, dread of the alien. It explains not only the radical thrust of Washington’s conduct in the Greater Middle East but also the dulling of critical faculties. That pertains to torture, kill lists and illegal surveillance as well as the ready resort to military power.
Michael Brenner: The (Very) Few Proud and Brave
I thought this was one of the most well written and provocative single paragraphs I have run across in some years. It’s not just beautiful, it captures the mood of our current era. I have often thought the same thing although minus the eloquence.
James Pilant
From around the web –
From the web site, Sec Semper Tyrannis:
The Obama administration faces two fundamental decisions. First, should it rededicate American foreign policy to shoring up the shaky structure of alliances and understandings among the five that has been central to its vision of the region’s strategic future? Second, should it redefine American interests and expectations in ways that favor the emergence of a more durable structure build to accommodate a more realistic set of expectations? To say ‘no’ to the former, and to say ‘yes’ to the latter is to choose a challenging course – diplomatically and politically. For it means forming a highly differentiated view of Islamist elements in the Middle East, a loosening of the servile ties that bind Washington to Tel Aviv, beginning an intricate, multi-party project in the intricate project in the Gulf, and – perhaps most challenging – coping with uncertainty as a constant.
Prosecutorial Failure?
Ken Anderson’s Testimony Caps Dramatic Inquiry | The Texas Tribune
Defiant, angry and frustrated, former prosecutor Ken Anderson took the stand on Friday to defend himself, ending a week of dramatic testimony in an unusual court of inquiry that is examining whether the former district attorney committed criminal misconduct during the trial that led to the wrongful murder conviction of Michael Morton.
Morton was sentenced to life in prison in 1987 for his wife’s murder, and he spent nearly 25 years behind bars before DNA evidence led to his exoneration in 2011. Lawyers for the exoneree contend that Anderson deliberately withheld critical evidence that could have prevented Morton’s wrongful conviction. Anderson adamantly denied any wrongdoing, and in his often impassioned testimony criticized the court of inquiry.
Ken Anderson’s Testimony Caps Dramatic Inquiry | The Texas Tribune
Ken Anderson is answering some tough questions in a Texas court. He needs tough questioning. He prosecuted an innocent man while allowing the guilty party to continue his crimes.
Overzealous prosecution is not justice. It’s collecting prosecutorial kills for career purposes and is particularly villanous because many defendants have only limited resources to defend themselves from charges. A prosecutor’s discretion is one of the defenses the innocent have.
James Pilant
From around the web –
From the web site, Ethics Alarms:
I don’t know whether Anderson intentionally withheld evidence in the process of prosecuting Michael Morton, because he thought Morton was guilty, whether he just made a series of mistakes, or whether, as he says, the system failed. I do know that he is ethically obligated to step down as a judge. His credibility, fairness, competence, commitment to justice, integrity and trustworthiness have all been called into question by the inquiry, as well as the unavoidable fact that he prosecuted an innocent man who went to prison for a quarter of a century, and while he was there, the real murderer may have killed again. The justice system cannot have a judge ruling on people’s lives who has something like that on his record and conscience. I wouldn’t want my fate to rest with such a judge, and as a lawyer, I wouldn’t want my client’s fate to be determined by such a judge either.
From the web site, The Irreverent Lawyer:
As though more corroboration was necessary, there’s the case of Michael Morton, the former grocery store clerk who served almost a quarter century’s worth of a life sentence. The truth will yet out but as of now, it appears Morton should have never been convicted had a prominent prosecutor and now county judge, Ken Anderson, and then prosecutor Mike Davis, now a private practice lawyer, and current District Attorney John Bradley shared potentially exculpatory evidence with the defense – – – as required under Brady v. Maryland 373 U. S. 83.
And finally, from the web site, Lawdiva’s Blog:
We know that in the last ten years, 45 Texas inmates have been exonerated on the basis of DNA evidence and that is something to be grateful for. The notion of innocent men and women being held in confinement for crimes they did not commit is excruciating.
Another inmate joined the ranks of those freed from a Texas jail last week. Michael Morton was convicted of murdering his wife Christine in 1986. He was a grocery store manager who had no criminal record, nonetheless, he was found guilty of beating his wife to death and sentenced to life in prison.
In 2005 Mr. Morton attempted to have evidence tested to determine if DNA was present, namely a blue bandanna found near his home after the murder. For six years the district attorney fought Morton’s attempts based on the advice of the original prosecutor, Ken Anderson, who was now Judge Anderson.
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