Checkbook
Justice: Eric Holder’s True Legacy
You probably missed the big announcement amidst all the fear-mongering
concerning ISIL and Ebola…
Attorney General Eric Holder is on the way out the door!
Yes, the first African-American top prosecutor announced
his resignation this past September.
He’ll stay on until his replacement can be selected, which will probably
be soon seeing
how the Democrats are panicking before the November elections. I’m sure his boss doesn’t want to have that “ideal”
successor be shot down by the black-shirt GOP.
Oops! I’m sorry, I meant Holder’s
other boss. His “official” boss,
otherwise known as the President of the United States, probably doesn’t give a care
right now because he’s only got two years left in his tenure. Yeah, it would be nice for Barack Obama if he
didn’t have to worry about the Senate screwing over his choices, but I get the
feeling that he’s not really caring too much at this point about it.
But I’ll get back to that “other boss” thing in a minute.
I’m supposed to be “overjoyed” by the news of Holder’s departure. After all, I’ve been calling
for his resignation since March of last year! I’ve repeatedly mentioned that Holder needs
to go. That he’s
the albatross around Obama’s neck.
So now he’s actually leaving, and I’m supposed to be “happy” about it.
But I’m not happy about it. Not
in the least.
Because Eric Holder is leaving on his own terms. He’s not being forced to resign. He’s not leaving under a cloud of scandal and
shame. And because of that, the
Washington script has already been cobbled together to paint him as being this
great “civil rights” saint. A modern-day
Thurgood Marshall, minus the judicial robes.
But the script-writers also see that as being next on Holder’s schedule.
Yes, the cons and neo-cons are even getting ready to start screaming
bloody murder and to throw their usual “Screaming Brat in Wal-Mart” hysterics
over the possibility that Saint Holder could become the next Supreme Court Justice. Even though they already held him in Contempt
of Congress… which in and of itself is hypocrisy at its worst because
Congress has shown contempt for the rest of the nation for quite some time now…
they never really did anything more than that about him. Nobody there called for him to resign like
this commentator has been doing. Nobody
there called for an independent prosecutor to go after Holder for the various
things they accused him of doing. It’s
all been staged and orchestrated. It’s
like Gene Wilder’s title character in “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory” when
he says in a deadpan voice “Help, police, murder”.
So if the script follows through to that conclusion and Holder is being
groomed to become a future Supreme Court Justice, the GOP in Congress really
have nobody but themselves to blame for it.
And they damn well know it!
There’s a lot that should have been done about Holder. He’s far from being the “civil rights
champion” that the goddamned script paints him to be. Sure he refused to defend “Don’t Ask Don’t
Tell”, but that didn’t stop the freedom-hating bible-thumpers from continuing
on their own to defend their especially-crafted policy. Sure he didn’t go after some of the states
that are in the process of legalizing marijuana, but that didn’t mean he ended
some of the other raids in states like California that allowed medicinal use. And it doesn’t stop his successor from resuming
those raids.
Let’s not forget Holder’s continued expansion of the police-state in
the name of “national
security”. Edward Snowden did
America a monumental favor by opening up this can of unconstitutional worms,
and what did we do to thank him? Fox News
brands him a traitor and Holder chases Snowden all the way into the loving arms
of Russia. Here we have a whole District
of Columbia full of career politicians who took an oath – proudly sworn on
their own bibles – to “protect and defend the Constitution of the United States”,
which they hold up on their own political pulpits as being almost as sacred as
the Ten Commandments, and yet they desecrate that very document while Holder
violates the Fourth Amendment right in front of them and they have done nothing
to stop it.
Oh, yes, we tortured people.
Holder admitted to it, and then refused to hold the criminals to account
for it. “Sovereign Immunity”, of
course! He jailed reporters by
invoking a 100-year-old law and earned the ire of the very liberal bastions
that previously supported Holder’s boss.
And yet the script still canonizes him as he prepares to leave the
Department of (In)-Justice.
But the worst and most destructive part of Eric Holder’s true legacy is
his allegiance to his “other” boss. The
very boss that he worked for before he became the top prosecutor.
I’m talking, of course, about “Too Big To Fail”.
Yes, Eric Holder used to defend “Too Big To Fail” before he became the
top prosecutor, and he never really stopped defending them afterward. Not one banking executive was ever held to
account for their criminal activities.
Not one.
We took down Charles Keating and exposed the corruption of the U.S.
Senators in the 1980’s with the Savings and Loan failures. We went after the executives of Enron and
WorldCom and even jailed Martha Stewart in the 2000’s. But, to this day, Eric Holder refuses to hold
one single bank executive to task for their out-and-out criminal actions which
led to the illegal theft of millions of homes during the Great Recession!
Instead of criminal charges, Holder let the banks get away with their
criminal actions by simply paying a fine as part of a “civil action”. Millions of Americans forced out of their
homes. Trillions – yes, trillions – of retirement
monies vanish. Taxpayers forced to subsidize
“Too Big To Fail” with bailouts, which they then use to screw over Americans
even more while giving themselves huge bonuses.
And Holder lets them get away with paying a modest fine and a
mealy-mouthed promise of “doing better”.
Let’s get brutally honest here… this corrupt idea of checkbook justice
is Eric Holder’s true legacy! The idea
that the rich, the one-percent of the world, can get away with out-and-out criminal
activity by simply paying a pittance of a fine is the very definition of a kleptocratic government.
This is no different than if you were charged with a causing a serious
accident that clogs up a major highway for hours and causes injuries and you
tell the judge “Tell you what, I really don’t have time for jail, so, how about
I just give you a few bucks that I was going to spend at Starbucks and promise
that I’ll try not to do it again. That
work for y’all?” And the judge and the
prosecutor actually agreeing to it!
Because that is precisely what Eric Holder has allowed the banking executives
– his “other” boss – to do!
And he’s been allowed to get away with this checkbook justice because
of the size of the “pocket change” involved.
$13 billion may seem a lot of money to you and I, but JPMorgan Chase –
the ones paying that amount to get away with their criminal activities - budgeted
$23 billion long before the deal was even struck. And they got paid $30
billion from the taxpayers through the 2008 bailout. You do the math. Either way, it’s all just pocket change to
them.
In addition to aiding and abetting the criminal activities behind the
Great Recession, A.G. Holder has, through his actions, reversed
his own department’s policies concerning going after corporations. The very policies which justified going after
the executives at Enron and WorldCom and for throwing Martha Stewart in prison
are now meaningless because of Holder’s actions. The next Bear Sterns or the next JPMorgan Chase
or the next Bank of America know that all they have to do is flash some money and
make some meaningless promises to “do better” and they can literally buy their
way out of trouble.
This is your real legacy, Eric Holder.
You have demonstrated that the Department of Justice is for sale, albeit
with a price tag that only the 1% can pay.
You should be very proud of yourself for that.
This is why I am not happy that Holder is leaving. Because it is on his own terms. He’s not leaving under a cloud of shame. He’s not being hounded out in fear of his
freedom for his actions. He gets a cushy
retirement plan thanks to the taxpayers while he decides what he wants to do
next; knowing full well that he can literally write his next job.
Worse, because he is leaving on his own terms, he knows that the next
group of people that fills his chair will make sure that none
of his precedence-setting trends are reversed. Because the one thing that you do not do in
Washington is reverse the policies of your predecessor if they left in good
standing.
William Black, the man that exposed the Keating Five and the abuses of
the worst of the Savings and Loan failures in the 1980’s, recently
told Bill Moyers that Washington has created the incentives for an even
larger disaster in the future. This
commentator firmly believes that it is just a matter of time before this
becomes reality. And when it does, we
can thank Eric Holder’s system of checkbook justice for making it happen.
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