White Collar Crime is Not Really Crime

It amazes me constantly, the judgment that our government, and other westernized governments, apply to countries that aid and abet corruption.  We demonize them, we publicly eviscerate them for their behavior, we have applied sanctions on the occasional country that has been an accomplice to crime.

It amazes me, because our government, and many like us, are the most hypocritical on the planet when it comes to policing our own house.  Just last week, HSBC Bank was found to have laundered money for terrorists, banks with connections to terrorists (Saudi Arabia's Al Rajhi Bank), and drug cartels.  So prolific and long standing were the laundering habits, that the Mexican cartels had long ago created specially designed boxes, whose dimensions were EXACTLY the measurement needed to pass the boxes through the teller windows without having to open them, allowing the cartel to pass hundreds of thousands of dollars a day quickly, and without inspection.  The heads of HSBC are now known to have been complicit in these corrupt functions, sometimes facilitating the functions themselves.

If I had laundered so much as $100 for a friend, I would have the book thrown at me in our justice system.  But HSBC criminals - and let's say it way out loud, leaving no doubt - THEY ARE CRIMINALS, in every sense of the word, are being slapped with a $1.9 billion fine, and no prosecution, in any capacity.  They have been deemed "too important" to be disrupted in their management of the bank with criminal prosecution.  I did not just make that up - the word "disrupted" was particularly galling to me.  They claimed that criminal prosecution would have dire repercussions on the stability of the bank:

"Had the US authorities decided to press criminal charges, HSBC would almost certainly have lost its banking license in the US, the future of the institution would have been under threat and the entire banking system would have been destabilized."

Uh... what?  Better put the hip-boots on, it's getting deep up in here.  No one ever prosecutes the BANK when someone launders money, because it's not the bank that launders it.  It's the people.  Let's be clear about that.  PEOPLE launder money.  Banks are simply the mechanism.  A bank has no way of knowing when money is illegal, it's simply an institution.  We've never prosecuted a bank for laundering, we go after the guy who did the laundering.  So when we say we are not prosecuting the bank, what we really mean is we're not prosecuting the people.  No bank would destabilize because of a prosecution of criminals within the bank.  Banks change CEOs, CFOs, CIOs, and upper management people all the time, without the banks crashing.  That's all that would happen here.  Prosecute the people involved, they lose their job, new people are brought in to replace them.  Really not that complicated.  But not for us - we make decisions in legalese that make it sound like we put a great deal of thought into this, when the simple reality is that these bankers are rich and connected.  And our government doesn't put it's friends in prison, no matter what they do.  We already know this to be true, with the obvious looking of the other way with the Wall Street bank brokers and managers who willfully broke the law in deceiving their own customers about the stability of funds they sold, while secretly executing credit default swaps, hedging their bets against the failure of those same funds.  What did we do?  Nothing.  Spewed a lot of rhetoric, but ultimately, we bailed them all out with billions of dollars - that they kept and invested on their own, bolstering nice profits - and the subsequent bonuses that come with them -  but not repaying any losses to the customers they swindled.  Just the cost of doing business...

Our government has become one of the largest accomplices to white collar criminal conduct, yet no one holds anyone accountable for it.  This is largely due to the fact that many of the people connected with these institutions transition into high level government positions.  It's no coincidence that Goldman Sachs got away with a paltry fine for some of it's fraud - their former CEO, Henry Paulson, was Bush's Treasury Secretary.  If you prosecute anyone, Paulson would have to be at the top of the list, since he was running things when all this began and, for what it's worth, Paulson's Goldman Sachs stock was valued at over $600 million when he became the Secretary.  There's no way a Treasury Secretary is being prosecuted, if for no other reason than it indicts the federal government for their hiring of criminals for top tier positions - that will NEVER happen.

HSBC is just the latest in a long string of corruption that our government pats on the back and allows to operate unscathed.  The $1.9 billion fine is about one month's revenue.  The bank barely blinked at it, nor did their stock price.  Just the cost of doing business.  And so it continues...

Lessons from Sandy Hook

So unless you've been living under a rock, you have heard about the Sandy Hook school massacre.  I was no where near a television or radio when it happened, so I didn't hear about it until mid-late afternoon that day.  Of course, once I found out, I couldn't get away from it.  Even now, I struggle with a multitude of feelings.  First, I shook my head in disappointment, thinking "What the hell is wrong with people...?"  Later, I was passing by the television in the living room where my wife was just finding out about it, watching in shock.  The anchor was pontificating about what would cause someone to do such a thing.  I thought, "Well of course he took to mass murder!  He was unhappy, so everyone must share in his misery.  That's how it is!  No one has the guts to just deal with their own shit, they have to drag innocent people into it..."  Obviously, I was getting angry and cynical.  I made sure to NOT watch any coverage of the event, no longer having the stomach for it.  The next morning, I went online, and saw a headline on one of my news sights, saying that almost all the children had been shot multiple times, leaving some of them almost unrecognizable.  Right then, for the first time in my life, I knew what a truly broken heart felt like.  Killing them wasn't enough, he had to mutilate them with bullets - as if he was getting off on it.  I almost cried as I read the article: Victoria Soto, the teacher who was killed shielding the children from the bullets with her body as she funneled them into a closet.  And that's how they found her - dead on top of the children she was protecting;  Dawn Hochsprung, the principal who went after the gunman, and gave her life in the attempt to overtake him;  Twenty children, who knew nothing about life except enjoying it - the ultimate perk of youth.

Then I was flipping through channels and passed by the group of news networks.  I stopped on FOX News for a moment, to see Mike Huckabee offering commentary, in the vein that the shooting happened because we've taken God out of the schools.  And I just wanted to throw something through the TV.  Whether you believe in Jesus Christ or not, YES - believing in something bigger than yourself, that instills a respect for the world you live in, would make the world a better place.  But to blame the removal of school prayer and the refusal to teach religion as science as reasons for... what, God's punishment, in the form of a massacre?  That's wholly irresponsible, and it underlines a major contributor to these types of coverage:  the sensationalism of tragedy.

These networks are beyond the pale.  Something horrible happens, and within an hour, they have gripping headlines, a tragedy moniker, a theme song, and the anchors look as if they're masturbating while covering it, just enraptured at the sound of their own voice.  They have psychologists lined up for "official" opinions, reporters on the scene eagerly asking every person they can get there greedy little paws on how they are feeling right now, as if they are expecting different answers five people in.  They have photographers snapping photos of everyone, just itching for that one shot that wins them a Pulitzer - cause if you can't capitalize on a tragedy, why are you in the job, yes?  And if there's one thing people in that situation want more than anything, it's having the entire planet seeing a gut-wrenching photo of them in the most vulnerable and heart-broken state they've ever been in their entire life on the cover of TIME, Life, or NewsWeek for eternity.  There is truly nothing more heartless in this country than the media, and they are proud of it, wearing the label like a badge of honor.

The argument has been made that the media is one of the ones to blame for tragedies like this, because they encourage the downtrodden and depressed to one-up the guy who did it two weeks ago - you too can be famous!  There's some merit to that, although it's a bit broad for my taste.  And for the ever-popular claim that a gunman had a mental illness, this argument assumes a great deal of clarity being capable of the mentally ill.

I think there's more merit to the argument that gaming and social media do a great deal more to contribute to someone's thinking than the media.  Games, especially the exceptionally violent and graphic ones, desensitize kids to violence and bloody, gruesome images.  Do they make people violent? No, not if they are of sound mind.  But if they are mentally unbalanced?  Yes, I can see a contribution to the state of mind occurring.  And people spend so much time on social media now, they barely interact with other actual people.  Gamers are more likely to feel connected to their avatar than real people these days.  And if you're already an introvert, or "socially awkward," as they like to call it, you already lack the connection to people that would have you feeling something for them, so imagine how detached social media and gaming can increase that widening gap between them and reality.  Many people call this a cop-out argument, but it's actually much stronger than you think - especially if we're so ready and willing to blame the media for the same thing.

Gun control.  Let's face it, we need it.  It won't stop events like this, where the guns were legally owned by his mother.  But we have to get tested and licensed for a variety of things - in some cases, like driver's licenses, you have to do it every so many years - something as dangerous as guns should definitely be on the list.  The goal of regulation is to make it more difficult for criminals to have access to black market weapons, but it should also be to make sure that weapon ownership is legal and safe.  Everyone wanting to purchase a gun, should have to disclose the number of children and mentally challenged in their home, so they can be advised of the strongest measures to take in securing the weapon and ammunition in the home.  In cases like this (although, sadly, the mother was a victim here), the owner should not be allowed to own a firearm anymore if a child, or mentally unbalanced person, gains access to it and hurts themselves or someone else - clearly responsibility is not being exercised.  And doing nothing, or worse, brushing it off because it's too political of an issue, is simply not acceptable anymore.

There are many factors that contributed to this tragedy, and we will hear about some of them in the weeks to come.  But we, as a nation, need to take mental health and gun/ammunition regulation more seriously.  And the media seriously needs to stop glorifying every tragedy that occurs.  A mass murder isn't your giddy answer to Sweeps week.

Benghazi Matters

I have been a bit disappointed in both parties lately, in regards to the embassy attacks in Benghazi, Libya.  The Republicans are looking for every bogeyman in every nook and cranny, in a desperate attempt to paint Barack Obama as a traitorous heathen.  Democrats have made every attempt to blow over the attack, and the resulting post mortem that was destined to follow, dismissing any questions of mishandling or impropriety as a partisan witch hunt.   

Now, whether you care about the attack or not - don't be surprised that people wouldn't, the decade-long wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have made Benghazi "just one of many" attacks that have cost Americans their lives, in many people's eyes - there is a serious problem with the attack and the response to it.  For starters, security measures had been dialed back at the embassy, despite smaller attacks in previous weeks, including a mortar round blowing a hole in one of the outer walls.  Requests for increased security measures were denied, including one by Lt. Colonel Andrew Wood to maintain a special security team in Libya.  There was enough danger in the area that other countries, including Britain, closed their embassies, deeming them unsafe - a claim highlighted by the Red Cross finally pulling out for the same reason.  So why were we even still there?  The embassy attack lasted almost seven hours.  Many people don't realize that.  They think it was just a hit-and-run, and people were killed.  Not so.  And in the process of a seven-hour attack, the Americans pleaded for help several times, with no help given.  This included soldiers in nearby camps begging to be allowed to go in and assist them, to be told to "Stand down" by their commanders.  Even worse, the Navy Seal who was killed thought he WAS getting help, in the form of an air assault.  So he went out to the perimeter of the building to point a laser at mortar rounds that the air support could hit.  Doing this exposed him - using the laser gave up his position.  When the help never came, he was doomed.  "Dying in vain" doesn't even do it justice.

After the attack, Washington D.C. was in an uproar.  Over the next couple of weeks, the Obama administration spent a great deal of time blaming the attack on a anti-Islam video, called "Innocence of Muslims," produced and directed by a former porn director in California, which did indeed spur some protests in Cairo, Egypt at the same time as the Benghazi attack.  Many people will mostly remember Obama, during the presidential debates, say he called it a terrorist attack the very next day, in a speech given in the Rose Garden.  In the transcript, he clearly uses the phrase "acts of terror," and two sentences later, says "... our commitment to see that justice is done for this terrible act."  Many have argued that it was a general reference to acts of terror, not specified to Benghazi.  It's a very loose, but not entirely wrong argument, although the second phrase does hint at the first.  But Obama insists he knew it was a terrorist attack from the beginning, and his Rose Garden comments reflected that fact.  So I'm willing to give Obama the benefit of the doubt, but if he's telling the truth, insisting on that has painted him into an awfully ugly corner, for a number of problems exist:

• If the president knew it was terrorism, why would he send White House Press Secretary Jay Carney out the next day to blame the attack on a video protest that got out of hand?  Carney is the President's and White House's face and voice to the nation on a daily basis.  And nothing comes out of Carney's mouth that hasn't already been vetted by the WH Director of Communications, especially on such a sensitive subject.  So are we really to believe Carney did this on his own?
• Why was U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice chosen to go on talk shows and give interviews over the next couple of weeks to discuss Benghazi when, according to herself, the CIA, the FBI and the White House, she knew nothing about it?  They all say she was simply using intelligence info given to her, that she had no knowledge of her own about it.  And since her intelligence info was compiled by the State Department, and they say they never concluded that the attack was the result of a demonstration about the video, then how did she have that info in her talking points?
• Furthermore, why were the words "al Qaeda" and "terrorist" removed from the talking points before she gave her first interview?  They've given several different answers to this, none of which has a consensus.  Hell, they can't even come to a consensus on WHO actually edited them out...
• And if we accept Obama's claim that he knew all along it was terrorism, how does he reconcile giving a speech to the UN and a visit on tv's The View, where he himself blamed the video?  Was he lying about what he knew, to avoid looking incompetent?  Or was he telling the truth, and decided to just run with the cover up story anyway, hoping to get through the election before having to answer for any of it?  This is the issue I actually care the least about, the other issues are far more important.  But this is one part that will haunt him for a while, if the witch hunters have any say...

Obviously, everyone involved in this is full of it, and that includes the president.  He had an election to win, and the Benghazi attack could not have come at a worse time, especially when his campaign was declaring al Qaeda "decimated," despite well known growth of the terrorist organization in Syria and Yemen, and knowledge that al Qaeda had been making inroads in Libya after Moammar Gadhafi's expulsion and death.  Clearly, this all was an attempt to defer dealing with another al Qaeda terrorist attack until after the election.  Susan Rice was chosen because she's as far away from Obama's White House as possible, while still being an "official" of the administration.  And handing intelligence to a person with no knowledge of anything offers a plausible deniability buffer.  This is serious enough to have derailed Obama's re-election, if Mitt Romney hadn't bungled it all up with that ridiculous "Gotcha!" attempt at catching Obama in a lie during the 2nd debate.  Romney's people were so ignorant, they didn't even realize that believing Obama's story makes what happened even worse - instead they wanted to trip him up, and ended up looking like fools in the process - and worse, made Obama look sympathetic.  They couldn't have gift wrapped it any better.  And Obama, to his credit, said nothing - he just encouraged Romney to continue, allowing Mitt to hang himself.  Never let it be said that Obama isn't very slick and bright.

Where this leaves us is with Susan Rice, who Obama wants to replace Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State.  As America's top diplomat, she would have to exhibit a measure of independence and political savvy, that this incident shines a sour image of.  And it has many people, some Democrats included, doubting her ability to to the job - especially if she's willing to walk in blind and just push the White House agenda - something she's made abundantly clear she's willing to do.  For us citizens, we may never get closure on this event, because Democrats in Congress have been stalling the process as much as possible, to get to the end of the session.  By the time the next session starts, they're hoping we'll have let it wade out of our minds, in favor of other things.  Let's hope that's not the case.  Regardless what anyone believes, this situation has become twisted enough that we at least are owed closure on it, so everyone can move on.  I'm tired of watching the president tap dance.  He has a job to do, and we need him to do it well, which means this needs to be finished - sooner rather than later.

No Ground to Stand On

Many years back, I lived in Tampa, Florida, one of the few white guys in a predominantly black neighborhood, not far from the USF campus.  I started playing pickup basketball games in that neighborhood's local park, the only white guy that played there regularly.  I never minded this - I'm a Miami boy.  Thanks to public schools and sports, I had been friends with most of the black kids I knew.  I made friends pretty quickly at this park in Tampa, aided by the fact that I'm a pretty good basketball player.  I acquired the nickname "Bird" - the white boy who doesn't miss, as my friends teased.  Being THE white guy, meant a lot of "white boy" and "cracker" jokes.  I didn't mind much because, despite the teasing, they included me in everything.  And it did become a running joke to rag on the team that gets beat by the slow white boy.  So my first six months in Tampa were thoroughly enjoyable, if uneventful.

One day, we were playing a full court game, where my team was about to lose, down a couple of points.  One of my teammates had his pass intercepted by this guy - not a particularly good player, but he was 6'-6", good for rebounding - who turned and ran down the court.  As we would lose if he made a basket, I tore down the court after him as fast as I could run.  As he went up in the air for a layup, I jumped and smacked the ball as hard as I could, smashing his hand against the backboard in the process.  I fell to the ground as I landed, laughing - let's just say I was impressed with myself for jumping so high - at the fact that I even caught up to him, let alone made such a great play.  I don't think he appreciated my laughing, because when I got up off the ground, he punched me square in the chest - hard.  So hard, I went right back down.  He looks down at me and says, "You fouled me, motherf---er!"  I jumped up and shoved him.  "Just call the foul then!  Quit acting like a b--ch, just cause your hand got hurt!"  I didn't foul him, but I wasn't about to argue about it either.  Everybody starts laughing, presumably at my willingness to go toe to toe with a guy that had 6 inches and at least 50 pounds on me.  Hindsight being 20/20, it wasn't exactly the brightest of ideas.  

My buddy Jermaine runs over laughing, playfully head locks me, calls time out, and we all go to the bench for a minute.  I grab a Gatorade, pull a wet towel from the cooler to wrap around my neck and try to relax.  As my head is resting in my hands, I feel something hard pushed against the left side of my head.  "Say something funny now, motherf---er..."  I look up and turn my head, to see this guy pointing a gun at me.. Everyone around me froze.  I gasped for a breath and, God save me, I started laughing.  I could not stop.  The guy looked pissed, saying "You think you're funny, b--ch?"  And that made me laugh even harder.  "No dude, you're funny.  You're going to shoot me head and go to prison for the rest of your life - cause you got fouled.  That's the dumbest sh-t I ever heard of!"  Behind the laughter, I felt like I was about to have a heart attack, but I think the logic started to sink in with him.  The guy started to lower the gun, upon which 3 or 4 others jumped him and got the gun away from him.  One of the guys in the bleachers said he called the cops, so pretty much everyone cleared out of the courts and went home.  To this day, I still don't know who took the gun home.  The police showed up, the few remaining stragglers gave them the guy's name, I told them what happened, and the rest of us then filed out of the park for the night.  I later found out that the guy had a criminal record for armed robbery and had been in prison all of a few months earlier.  And he knew where I lived, right near the entrance to the park.  And this was just the first of two times in my life I've had a gun pointed at me...

That summer, I went back to Miami.  I had decided to buy a handgun to keep at my apartment in Tampa.  My best friend Josh went with me to look around, and I left the shop with a Makarov .380, a hyper-accurate Russian gun made primarily for the KGB.  We would go to an outdoor range on Tamiami Trail so I could learn to shoot.  And I was really good at it, really accurate to about fifty yards.  I took a class to get my concealed weapons permit.  It was here that I learned some odd rules about guns.  The one that jumped out at me the most was the rights of criminals in your home:

• You have to announce that you are armed, to allow the intruder a moment to leave your house peacefully and quickly.
• If you decide to shoot, you must announce that you are in fear for your life.
• If the intruder tries to run, you MUST shoot him from the front.
• If he has his back to you, you can not legally shoot him.
• If he is exiting a window or door, he is no longer legally a threat, you can not shoot him.
• If he is in your yard, and not advancing in your direction, you can not legally shoot him.
• If at any point you determine he is not armed, you can not legally shoot him unless you can demonstrate imminent threat.

To say these rules dismayed me a bit would be an understatement.  How can someone invading your home be afforded such protections?  If you violate any of these rules, YOU could go to jail.  I never thought I could be more flabbergasted  at a nonsensical set of rules, that seemed to be against the ones being threatened and protecting the criminals, to an extent.  And then I read the Stand Your Ground law.  It seems that, only in America, would we go from one extreme to the other, ignoring moderation entirely.

I've never been a fan of the NRA.  Don't get me wrong, I support people's rights.  But the NRA has taken their argument to extremes over the years, and has absolutely no credibility.  There's no argument you can make that will convince me that a hunter requires an arsenal of various weaponry to shoot a duck.  Or a deer.  Or a moose.  Or a quail.  And making that argument in vain, with a straight look on your face, makes me no longer want to hear anything you have to say.

So we went from not being able to engage a criminal in your home unless certain parameters are met, to being able to shoot anyone, anywhere, at any time, for any reason - so long as the official "reason" is that you were in fear for  your life.  How could we allow such a blanket rule to ever become law?  How could politicians that proposed the law really make a sound argument that would convince enough people to pass such a law?  Obviously, the NRA was behind it, but how did anyone wanting to be taken seriously allow it to even reach committee, let alone the floor for debate?  Once again I point to US.  We allow these idiot politicians, with absolutely no scruples or values, to take over our legislatures.  As bad as it is in Washington D.C., it is often worse in the state legislatures.  These are our states, and we need to wrest back control of the people who politic in it.  This recent case about Michael Dunn shooting a black teenager in an SUV is just the latest example of a law that has run amok.  Everyone needs to start leaning on their representatives to overturn this ridiculous law.  It needs to be loud, so that political hopefuls in the future will include it in their campaign platforms.  We need enough people in place to overturn such laws.  And for Heaven's sake, we have GOT to get lobbyists out of our capital buildings, and their money out of campaign coffers.  Because this will not be the last killing like this, and it will take a James Brady - type incident for any eyes to be opened otherwise.