Friday, February 21, 2020

VISUALIZE REVOLUTION! - TRUMP IS SO FUCKING CORRUPT HE LET RULING CLASS CRIMINALS GO FREE!

Wall Street celebrates Milken pardon


The decision by US President Donald Trump to pardon the financial criminal Michael Milken is being celebrated on Wall Street and for good reason.
Milken
Milken was a pioneer of the methods and financial mechanisms that have led to the greatest accumulation of wealth by the financial oligarchy ever seen in history, at the expense of the jobs and social conditions of broad sections of the working class.
The tone on Wall Street following the news was encapsulated by Rich Handler, chief executive officer at the investment bank Jeffries, who told the Financial Times the decision was “spectacular for our industry.”
David Rubenstein of the private equity firm Carlyle Group, which specialises in leveraged buyout operations, said the pardon was “well deserved,” and he was “proud” to be among the 33 people listed as supporting it.
Previously, in 2017, David Solomon, the chief executive of Goldman Sachs, had praised the “inspiring entrepreneurial culture” associated with Milken and that working with him from 1986 to 1990 had made him “much more compelling and effective.”
The tone of the Wall Street celebrations was set in the statement issued by the White House, now occupied by a man with a history of financial scamming operations in New York. It described Milken as “one of America’s greatest financiers” and noted that the charges filed against him were “truly novel,” meaning that today they are regarded as normal practice.
The Wall Street Journal, owned by another of those signing the petition for his pardon, Rupert Murdoch, said, “Mr. Milken was one of the great financial innovators of the 20th century. In the 1980s he invented the high-yield bond market that is now a financial staple.”
In order to make clear that the editorial was not simply a product of Murdoch’s support for the pardon but part of a more general view, it noted that the Journal had advocated Milken’s pardoning as far back as 2000, before Murdoch assumed ownership.
The effusive praise for Milken, both from the titans of Wall Street and their representative in the White House, is because he devised a method for extracting wealth from the real economy and transferring it into the hands of finance capital.
This was the centre of his use of so-called junk bonds–that is, debt with lower than investment grade status–used to finance leveraged buyouts of corporations.
The targets were companies which had a low stock price compared to the value of their underlying assets. The problem was to raise the finances for the takeover. Some of it was provided through banks and wealthy investors. But this was not sufficient, and low grade bonds, with a higher yield, were issued to make up the difference.
The company could then be taken over and its assets and cash flow used to pay off the interest and principal. In essence, the company’s assets were used to finance its takeover.
The centrepiece of this operation involved the slashing of jobs and the driving down of the wages and conditions of the workers. Companies were broken up, workers were sacked, and pension funds eviscerated.
As Jeff Madrick noted in his book The Age of Greed, “almost always the takeovers resulted in large layoffs, reduced wages and overhead, and the sales of subsidiaries,” while the financiers and executives who managed the downsizing “made fortunes.”
Milken’s firm Drexel enjoyed a spectacular rise as a result of these operations. In 1977 its revenues were $150 million. By 1985 they had risen to $2.5 billion and the following year leapt to $4 billion.
Milken was sentenced to 10 years jail in 1990 as a result of information against him provided by the convicted insider trader Ivan Boesky. His sentence was reduced to two years, of which he served 22 months, after he agreed to cooperate in the investigations of financial authorities–investigations that did not bring any new convictions.
But the jailing of Milken did not signify the end of the financial practices he had initiated. Rather, it was the start of their rapid expansion into new and ever more complex forms, including the use of financial derivatives, as Wall Street devised new mechanisms for siphoning up wealth.
As Madrick observed, “Rather than tightening financial regulations, Washington loosened them in the next two decades, even when new crises arose. In Alan Greenspan [chairman of the US Federal Reserve], nominated by the Republican Reagan, but strongly supported later by [Democrat] Bill Clinton, the vested interests of the financial community were well served in the name of narrow free market ideology.”
The financial mechanisms initiated by Milken in the 1980s, now extended and developed to new heights and which form a “staple” of the operations of Wall Street, were responsible for the conditions that led to the 2008 financial crash.
But the titans of Wall Street have suffered no consequences. Rather, they have been rewarded with the provision of trillions of dollars by the Fed in order that they can continue their speculative activities while the working class has been made to pay over the past decade and more through the destruction of jobs, the repossession of their homes, the destruction of social services and the endless reduction of real wages.
Now there are clear indications of a new financial crisis in the making as Wall Street, fuelled by the provision of ultra-cheap money, and the pledge that more will be provided, rises to record highs while the underlying global economy turns down.
One indication is the rise of the junk bonds that Milken pioneered. Earlier this month Moody’s warned that speculative-grade bonds maturing over the next five years would total $1.2 trillion, up 14 percent from a year ago, and the risk of default was rising.
The celebrations by the Wall Street financial oligarchs over the pardoning of Milken are a warning. Their support for this corporate criminal is the surest indication that in the next phase of the ongoing and deepening crisis of the system over which they preside they will stop at nothing to ensure their interests at the expense of the working class.

Trump pardons ruling class criminals

President Donald Trump issued 11 pardons or commutations of sentence on Tuesday, choosing to expunge the lawbreaking records of billionaire financier Michael Milken, the one-time “junk bond king,” and billionaire real estate magnate Edward J. DeBartolo Jr., former owner of the San Francisco 49ers professional football team.
He also pardoned former New York Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik, convicted of tax fraud and perjury, and commuted the 14-year jail term of former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich, impeached and then convicted on multiple corruption counts, including attempting to sell the Senate seat of Barack Obama after Obama’s election to the presidency in 2008. Blagojevich, a Democratic congressman before his election as governor, was released from prison immediately on Trump’s orders, and declared himself a “Trumpocrat” in the 2020 election.
Former Illinois Governer Rod Blagojevich arrives home in Chicago on February 19, 2020, after his release from prison [Credit: AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast]
Trump’s actions in relation to Milken and De Bartolo are a clear demonstration of class justice, in which billionaires are effectively above the law. As one news report noted, there are only 600 billionaires in the United States, very few of them face trial and conviction, let alone jail time, and Trump has now pardoned three of them, including last year’s clemency for media mogul Conrad Black—author of a fawning pro-Trump volume—who served nearly two years in prison for fraud and embezzlement.
Milken was one of the most important actors in the financialization of the US economy, devising “junk bonds”—high-risk, high-return corporate securities that became a spearhead in the employer offensive against the working class throughout the 1980s and beyond. Hedge funds and private equity firms used junk bonds to finance leveraged buyouts of companies and proceed to loot pension funds, slash wages and benefits, and squeeze every penny of profit out of what frequently became empty shells.
In the process, Milken himself amassed a huge fortune, including a then unprecedented income of $550 million in 1987, while running a unit of Drexel Burnham Lambert, a second-tier Wall Street firm that rocketed to prominence in that decade. These operations were portrayed in such books as Den of Thieves and films like Wall Street, whose lead character, Gordon Gekko, was modeled after Milken’s partner-in-crime Ivan Boesky.
After pleading guilty to 10 counts of financial fraud in 1990, Milken served less than two years at a “Club Fed” luxury prison for the rich. He paid fines and restitution of $600 million, which barely made a dent in his multi-billion-dollar fortune. Trump’s pardon message paid tribute to Milken’s endowment of various medical charities and cancer research and hailed him as “one of America’s greatest financiers.”
De Bartolo was charged with paying a $400,000 bribe in $100 bills to Louisiana Governor Edwin Edwards, a Democrat, in return for state government approval of a riverboat gambling project in which he had invested. Edwards went to prison, while De Bartolo served no time but had to transfer ownership of the 49ers to his sister. His nephew now runs the franchise. The National Football League inducted De Bartolo into its Hall of Fame despite the criminal conviction.
Blagojevich and Kerik are lesser figures in terms of wealth, but gained national prominence in capitalist politics. Blagojevich was recorded in a wiretap soliciting bribes and campaign contributions from the Service Employees union and various wealthy individuals interested in his selection of a successor to Obama in the US Senate.
Kerik is a longtime crony of Rudy Giuliani, now Trump’s personal lawyer and political fixer. He was the driver and bodyguard for Giuliani during his campaign for mayor of New York City, and Giuliani eventually elevated him to police commissioner, where he was widely rumored to be receiving bribes from organized crime families.
Despite this atrocious reputation, Kerik was actually chosen by President George W. Bush to head the Department of Homeland Security, but had to withdraw after corruption allegations surfaced. In 2009 he pled guilty to charges of tax fraud and lying to investigators and spent three-and-a-half years in federal prison.
All four men had high-level sponsors lobbying Trump personally for clemency, including billionaires Sheldon Adelson, Tom Barrack, Ron Burkle, Nelson Peltz, Richard LeFrak and Rupert Murdoch for Milken, Giuliani and convicted war criminal Eddie Gallagher for Kerik, and Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner for Blagojevich. The De Bartolo empire is based in northeast Ohio, giving Trump an electoral incentive for that pardon.
The remaining seven pardons and commutations include a Republican political operative, David Safavian, convicted in the Jack Abramoff corruption scandal, a Cuban-American businesswoman from south Florida convicted in a massive Medicare fraud scheme, and two other corporate executives convicted on fraud and tax charges (one a significant Trump campaign donor).
Trump also pardoned three minority women convicted of nonviolent or white collar crimes, to serve as window dressing, but no minority men. As one account of the pardons and commutations noted, Trump has pardoned only one African American man in more than three years in office, and the beneficiary of that pardon had been dead for 72 years when it was issued: the late boxer Jack Johnson, whose conviction by an all-white jury took place more than a century ago.
The timing of the pardon and commutation decisions was significant from a number of standpoints. They had clearly been delayed until after Trump himself was acquitted in the Senate trial on impeachment charges brought by the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives, in order to avoid giving his political enemies additional ammunition.
And they come as part of a broader political offensive launched by Trump in the wake of impeachment, including firing or removing officials who testified in the impeachment inquiry or opposed his actions in delaying US military aid to Ukraine, the action that sparked his impeachment, and demanding that charges be quashed against his own associates arising from the investigation by Special Counsel Robert Mueller.
The pardons were issued only two days before Judge Amy Berman Jackson is to impose a sentence on Roger Stone, a longtime Trump crony, for lying to Congress and the FBI and witness intimidation in a case that stems from the investigation by Mueller into alleged Russian interference in the 2016 US presidential election.
After federal prosecutors last week recommended a jail sentence of seven to nine years for Stone, Attorney General William Barr intervened and overturned the recommendation, proposing instead that the judge take a far more lenient approach.
All four prosecutors resigned from the case in protest of Barr’s action, and a petition calling for Barr’s resignation and opposing White House interference in the handling of federal criminal cases has been signed by more than 2,500 former federal prosecutors and other former officials of the Department of Justice.
Trump has attacked Judge Jackson on twitter several times in the past two weeks, leading the chief judge of the District of Columbia District Court, Beryl Howell, to issue a statement declaring that “Public criticism or pressure is not a factor” in judges’ rulings or sentencing decisions. The Federal Judges Association, an informal lobby of more than 1,000 jurists, scheduled an emergency meeting for Wednesday, although the meeting was called off at the last minute without explanation.
Judge Jackson is to sentence Stone today, but she seemed to bow to White House pressure by declaring in advance that she would not give effect to any sentence until the motion by Stone’s attorneys for a new trial had been adjudicated. In other words, Stone will not go to prison soon, if at all.
In the meantime, Trump’s pardons have sent a clear message that he is prepared to dole out similar treatment to Stone, former campaign manager Paul Manafort, retired Gen. Michael Flynn, and other Trump allies who have pled guilty to crimes like fraud and perjury.
In response to media attacks and even a mild critical remark from Attorney General Barr, who said Trump’s tweets were making his job more difficult, Trump has renewed his declarations that he is “the chief law enforcement officer of the country,” with unlimited power to intervene in the criminal justice system as he pleases.
In the wake of the impeachment debacle for the Democrats, Trump is asserting quasi-dictatorial powers, defying any effort to set limits on the power of the executive branch.

Obama judge gives Roger Stone 40 month sentence – and rants against Trump

Judge Amy Berman Jackson, an Obama appointee, handed down Roger Stone’s sentence today: 40 months. That's 40 months longer than anything done to James Comey, Andrew McCabe, Hillary Clinton, James Clapper, or the other Deep State actors, but it’s significantly less than the 7-9 years that Mueller’s rabid crew sought for him. To offset the more lenient sentence, Jackson went on an anti-Trump rant.
Roger Stone is not an appealing character, but even unappealing characters can get railroaded. The broad outlines of what happened are that James Comey inveigled Trump into pointing Robert Mueller as an “independent prosecutor” charged with investigating whether Trump conspired with Russia to win the election; that Mueller and his attack dogs knew within days of beginning the investigation that the foundational accusations were lies; that the Mueller team nevertheless dragged the investigation out for 2 years and $35 million, all the while trying to find something against Trump; and that, along the way, the Mueller team set out to ruin anyone close to Trump, tangling them up with process crimes and threats of personal destruction.
Roger Stone was one of those caught in the tainted Mueller net. He told lies that are the normal currency in Washington, D.C. People such as Comey, Clinton (both Clintons, actually), McCabe, Brennan, Clapper, and others told similar lies but nevertheless were able to walk away with TV gigs and book deals. He also fulminated at another witness, issuing threats and asking him to lie, demands and threats so impotent that the witness considered them laughable.
When the FBI arrested Stone, instead of talking to Stone’s lawyer to arrange for him to turn himself in, the FBI did a pre-dawn SWAT raid, with the CNN camera conveniently located nearby. Then, Mueller’s attorneys put Stone in front of Judge Amy Berman Jackson, an Obama appointee.
Interestingly enough, before Trump’s presidency, Berman was a slightly left-leaning, but otherwise reasonably even-handed judge. Sure, she ruled that the Roman Catholic Diocese of Washington had to provide contraceptives under Obamacare, but she also ruled against the National Labor Relations Board, the Obama-era EPA, and U.S. Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr., who got a 30-month sentence, in his case for misusing campaign funds.
When Trump came into office, though, Jackson became a resistance judge. She dismissed a wrongful death complaint against Hillary brought by parents of two of the men who died in Benghazi. She placed Paul Manafort in solitary confinement, muzzled Manafort’s and Rick Gates’ attorneys, and allowed special counsel to walk away from a plea deal. She’s been equally draconian with Roger Stone, placing gag orders on him and his attorneys and insisting on sentencing him before conducting a hearing about the jury foreperson who lied about the fact that she was a rabid Trump and Stone hater.
It should be no surprise, then, that Jackson used the sentencing hearing to go off on a rant about Trump:
[S]he turned his sentencing hearing into a stunning rebuke not just of Stone but of the president himself, saying the prosecution was not brought by 'political enemies,' and that there was no 'anti-Trump cabal' at the hear of the case.
'He was not prosecuted, as some have complained, for standing up for the president, he was prosecuted for covering up for the president,' she said.
'There was nothing unfair, phony or disgraceful about the investigation or the prosecution.'
Democrats, of course, pointed to Trump’s earlier tweets against Jackson to justify her partisan attack:


What both Jackson and the Democrats fail to understand is that Trump is a political figure who does not need to appear impartial. Jackson, however, is a judge, and the entire basis of trust in the judicial system is the belief that judges are impartial. Jackson exploded that myth.
Trump-the-politician, meanwhile, gets the final word as to this political witch hunt:

“They say Roger Stone lied to Congress.” @CNN OH, I see, but so did Comey (and he also leaked classified information, for which almost everyone, other than Crooked Hillary Clinton, goes to jail for a long time), and so did Andy McCabe, who also lied to the FBI! FAIRNESS?






A VERY STABLE GENIUS


“This taut and terrifying book is among the most closely observed accounts of Donald J. Trump’s shambolic tenure in office to date.” - Dwight Garner, The New York Times

THE BOOK

Washington Post national investigative reporter Carol Leonnig and White House bureau chief Philip Rucker, both Pulitzer Prize winners, provide the definitive insider narrative of Donald Trump’s unique presidency with shocking new reporting and insight into its implications.
“I alone can fix it.” So went Donald J. Trump’s march to the presidency on July 21, 2016, when he accepted the Republican presidential nomination in Cleveland, promising to restore what he described as a fallen nation. Yet over the subsequent years, as he has undertaken the actual work of the commander in chief, it has been hard to see beyond the daily chaos of scandal, investigation, and constant bluster. It would be all too easy to mistake Trump’s first term for one of pure and uninhibited chaos, but there were patterns to his behavior and that of his associates. The universal value of the Trump administration is loyalty - not to the country, but to the president himself - and Trump’s North Star has been the perpetuation of his own power, even when it meant imperiling our shaky and mistrustful democracy.
Leonnig and Rucker, with deep and unmatched sources throughout Washington, D.C., tell of rages and frenzies but also moments of courage and perseverance. Relying on scores of exclusive new interviews with some of the most senior members of the Trump administration and other firsthand witnesses, the authors reveal the forty-fifth president up close, taking readers inside Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation as well as the president’s own haphazard but ultimately successful legal defense. Here for the first time certain officials who have felt honor-bound not to publicly criticize a sitting president or to divulge what they witnessed in a position of trust tell the truth for the benefit of history.


This peerless and gripping narrative reveals President Trump at his most unvarnished and exposes how decision making in his administration has been driven by a reflexive logic of self-preservation and self-aggrandizement - but a logic nonetheless. This is the story of how an unparalleled president has scrambled to survive and tested the strength of America’s democracy and its common heart as a nation.

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