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Politics : Liberalism: Do You Agree We've Had Enough of It? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Kenneth E. Phillipps who wrote (127569)	3/26/2012 12:26:33 PM
From: TideGlider	2 Recommendations Respond to of 224749

Great Legal opinion! Just ask the MOB!!

To: Kenneth E. Phillipps who wrote (127569)	3/26/2012 12:30:16 PM
From: TideGlider	3 Recommendations Respond to of 224749

MF Global: A New Hope In The Effort To Send A Wall Street Big Shot To Jail By Henry Blodget finance.yahoo.com There was a major development last week in the nation's collective desire to send at least one Wall Street big shot to jail after the financial crisis. Normally, after a financial collapse and crash like the one we had, Wall Streeters are rounded up in packs, vilified, and incarcerated. This time, however, no big shot has been so much as charged with anything, let alone sent to jail. (The reason for this, which no regulator or Congress-person will admit, is because the vast majority of what happened in the years leading up to the financial crisis was legal, courtesy of silly laws championed by the industry and enacted by Congress. But Congress can't admit that, so Congress instead blames prosecutors and regulators for being too wimpy.) But now it has become clear that at least one crime was committed at a major Wall Street bank. MF Global used customer funds to pay off non-customer debts while frantically trying to save itself. That's illegal. So the question is whether the government will be able to prove that MF Global knew it was misusing customer funds when it did it (I'm not an attorney, but as with other financial crimes, I believe that, to be considered a crime, this action has to be intentional--the "perp" has to know what he or she is doing and know that it's wrong. If you know more, please add your thoughts below.) New evidence turned up by government investigators suggests that MF Global did know what it was doing. It also suggests that, more importantly, MF Global's CEO, Jon Corzine, personally ordered MF Global to transfer client funds. In a memo, Congressional investigators describe the chain of events and evidence in these findings. In reading the memo, it seems clear that at least some executives at MF Global knew that what they were doing might be wrong: The assistant Treasurer, Edith O'Brien, was apparently reluctant to sign a letter attesting that the transfer did not involve client funds. And she plans to take the fifth at a Congressional hearing this week. The letter also makes clear what Mr. Corzine's defense will probably be: Either that he was told the funds were wired from MF Global's account, an assertion that a later email supports. Or that he was told the firm had enough "excess" cash in the customer account that it could transfer the money without breaching its regulatory requirements. Financial firms are allowed to transfer money from customer accounts as long as there is enough "excess" cash in those accounts. So, Mr. Corzine's defense could be that he thought there was enough "excess" cash in the customer account that $175 million could be transferred out of it without breaching the level required by regulators. If that is, in fact, what Mr. Corzine thought, that's a perfectly reasonable defense. Anyway, this new evidence will make next week's Congressional hearing into the MF Global collapse much more exciting.

To: Kenneth E. Phillipps who wrote (127569)	3/26/2012 12:30:45 PM
From: longnshort	5 Recommendations Respond to of 224749

95% of people think Lawyers sukk. what to you call 300 lawyers drown in the Ocean....a start. 99% of the people found this joke to be funny

To: Kenneth E. Phillipps who wrote (127569)	3/26/2012 12:33:15 PM
From: TideGlider	1 Recommendation Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 224749

Study: 75 percent of Americans will be overweight by 2020 Associated Press Posted on September 23, 2010 at 12:41 PM PARIS – Citizens of the world's richest countries are getting fatter and fatter and the United States is leading the charge, an organization of leading economies said Thursday in its first ever obesity forecast. Three out of four Americans will be overweight or obese by 2020, and disease rates and health care spending will balloon, unless governments, individuals and industry cooperate on a comprehensive strategy to combat the epidemic, the study by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development said. The Paris-based organization, which brings together 33 of the world's leading economies, is better known for forecasting deficit and employment levels than for measuring waistlines. But the economic cost of excess weight — in health care, and in lives cut short and resources wasted — is a growing concern for many governments. Franco Sassi, the OECD senior health economist who authored the report, blamed the usual suspects for the increase. "Food is much cheaper than in the past, in particular food that is not particularly healthy, and people are changing their lifestyles, they have less time to prepare meals and are eating out more in restaurants," said Sassi, a former London School of Economics lecturer who worked on the report for three years. That plus the fact that people are much less physically active than in the past means that the ranks of the overweight have swelled to nearly 70 percent in the U.S. this year from well under 50 percent in 1980, according to the OECD.

To: Kenneth E. Phillipps who wrote (127569)	3/26/2012 12:35:34 PM
From: TideGlider	4 Recommendations Respond to of 224749

75 Percent of American Voters Support Voter ID Law 75 Percent of American Voters Support Voter ID Law Alana Goodman \| @alanagoodman 06.09.2011 - 2:27 PM A new Rasmussen poll out today found that 75 percent of respondents support a law requiring voters to show ID at the polls. Or, as DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz recently put it, a law that would “drag us all the way back to the Jim Crow” era. A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 75% of Likely U.S. Voters believe voters should be required to show photo identification such as a driver’s license before being allowed to vote. Just 18% disagree and oppose such a requirement. Eighty-five percent (85%) of Republicans support a photo ID requirement at the polls, as do 77% of voters not affiliated with either major party and 63% of Democrats. But then support for such a law is high across virtually all demographic groups. Wasserman Schultz walked back her hyperbole slightly earlier this week, conceding that “Jim Crow was the wrong analogy to use.” But she still claims that requirements to show ID at the polls – which are designed to cut down on election fraud – are racially discriminatory. “I don’t regret calling attention to the efforts in a number of states with Republican dominated legislatures, including Florida, to restrict access to the ballot box for all kinds of voters, but particularly young voters, African Americans and Hispanic Americans,” she told CNN on Monday. But Wasserman Schultz’s allegations seem to be out of sync with the rest of the country. According to the same Rasmussen poll, voters think that the possibility of illegal voting is a much bigger problem than preventing legitimate voters from casting a ballot, by a 48% to 29% margin. And after the rampant ACORN-initiated voter fraud during recent elections, who can blame them?

To: Kenneth E. Phillipps who wrote (127569)	3/26/2012 1:06:21 PM
From: locogringo	2 Recommendations Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 224749

96% of Washington Post poll want ObamaCare wiped off the face of the earth. washingtonpost.com