Tuesday, November 25, 2014

         FEAST and FAMINE 

                 Thanksgiving November 2014 

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Native American resistance leader Metacomet


Here's a thought: This Thanksgiving, you might want to give thanks that you weren't/aren't a victim of the white rampage through the Americas that began in the 15th century and resulted in the vast torture, death and exploitation of the indigenous peoples.

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                           By Rafael Martínez Alequín

As we approach Thanksgiving 2014,  Your Free Press takes this opportunity to wish all its readers a happy Thanksgiving. It is a cliché, but true nonetheless, that our attention is too much diverted by turkey and mythology when it should be focused on gratitude It is human to react with thanks when life goes well, just as it is natural to curse one's fate when tribulation strikes. 

Godly men and women turn into atheist, at least temporarily, after watching thousands of children starve. Lottery winners and late-inning home-run hitters attribute their good luck to the personal intervention of the "Good Lord." 

It is easy to focus on what we lack, especially in these days of lowered expectations. We don't have, and probably never will have, the prosperity that seems to be our parents' and our own birthright back in the 1950s and '60s. It takes two incomes to buy what one use to provide. Even so, we live as only a very small percentage of the human race has ever been privileged to live. Royalty has gotten by as paupers by comparison. Yet, most of humanity does not live in such plenty. Million in this country and elsewhere do not have enough to eat. Others live under daily threat of death from their governments or from the forces of a foreign government because of  the political opinions they hold or are suspected of holding.

Some here in America do not suffer these deprivations. Although we now know, all of us are under surveillance. Also, we would be naive if we didn't recognize that all too many of us are ill-nourished or  subject to racial and political harassment, and worse. Across this country, hundreds of thousands are homeless, thanks to the policies of both local and federal governments.  Surely we ought to give some  thought to the ill-housed and homeless, to the hungry and the  brutalized, even those of us who can reflect on our own good luck. What joy can there be that some few have prosperity if oneself or a neighbor down the block, or in Brooklyn or in Haiti or in Central and South America or Afghanistan, Bangladesh, West Africa with the Ebola virus killing thousands of people, or Guantanamo, is deprived of the basic necessities or tortured for her or his political beliefs?

We can turn away from all of this, just as we eventually must turn away from the television when one too many emaciated Africans or mutilated Mexicans have been put before us. Portraits of happy Pilgrims sitting down to dinner with their happy Indian brothers and sisters seem more appropriate to the season. How much guilt can we expected to bear? Is it our fault we were born into a dominant culture? Must we always be reflecting on the sins of our ancestors and elected officials?
 
Of course, the answer is no. Life would not be bearable if we had to wear mental hairshirts all the time. Life is to be lived, enjoyed, reveled in. This is a lesson we can learn from the saints, both religious and secular: Those who do the most good seem to enjoy themselves the most. Enjoy not just the virtue they practice but all the other good things of life—food, love, intellect, companionship—the entire range of possibility open to human experience. They show us that we have nothing to fear from our own compassion. It does not diminish but enlarges our life. How much greater our joy could be, then, if on Thanksgiving Day, or any other time, we can say that we have tasted the full of life, the joys of our own mind and flesh as well as the happiness and pain of others. That, surely, would be something to be thankful for.

Monday, November 24, 2014

SNL Skit Updating ‘Schoolhouse Rock’ Is Hilarious, Totally Wrong

Posted on  

"SNL Skit Updating ‘Schoolhouse Rock’ Is Hilarious, Totally Wrong"
The opening sketch of this week’s Saturday Night Live is an update of the famous ‘Schoolhouse Rock’ song explaining how a bill becomes a law. The sketch, which is a send up of Obama’s recent executive action on immigration, is very well done in many ways. It captures the ethos of the original cartoon and Jay Pharoah’s Obama impersonation keeps getting better. It features performances from two of the strongest members of this year’s cast, Bobby Moynihan and Kenan Thompson. As comedy, it works. It’s funny.

As political commentary, however, it couldn’t be more wrong about how today’s Congress works, particularly as it relates to immigration reform. Let’s review:

“BILL: Well first I go to the House, and they vote on me. But then I need from the Senate a majority.

Actually, the Senate passed a bipartisan comprehensive immigration bill in June 2013. The House has spent the last 17 months refusing to consider or vote on the Senate bill or any other substantial legislation on immigration reform.

 CREDIT: Youtube

 “BILL: And if I pass the legislative test, then I wind up on the President’s desk… BOY: President Obama what’s the big idea? That bill was trying to become a law.”

screenshot2
CREDIT: Youtube
In the sketch, once the bill reaches Obama’s desk, he pushes the bill down the steps. But this is the opposite of what actually happened. Obama was desperate to see an immigration bill — of virtually any type — cross his desk. In May 2013, he reached a tentative deal with a bipartisan group of House lawmakers, which would have been substantially more conservative than the Senate bill. It was ultimately rejected by Republican House leadership.

“BILL: Don’t you have to go through Congress at some point? EXECUTIVE ORDER: Oh that’s adorable, you still think that’s how government works.”

screenshot3
CREDIT: Youtube
The implication here is that presidents before Obama didn’t use executive action for major policy areas. In fact, George H.W. Bush and Ronald Reagan both used executive orders to protect undocumented immigrants. In 1989, Bush’s order protected about 40% of the undocumented population, roughly the same percentage as Obama’s order.

“BILL: Look at the midterm elections, people clearly don’t want this.”

screenshot4
CREDIT: Youtube
Actually, the majority of people who voted in the midterms said the opposite. According to a national election poll, “57 percent of midterm voters say most illegal immigrants working in the United States should be offered a chance to apply for legal status.” Less than 40% favored deportation, which the president’s order protects some undocumented immigrants against.
Of course, as a parody, the SNL skit isn’t required to be fully fact checked. But that’s not how it’s being treated in the media or among politicians. BuzzFeed’s article on the sketch is entitled: “This “Schoolhouse Rock” Sketch On “SNL” Shows Just How Messed Up Our Government Is.” And Ted Cruz is already citing it in television appearances.

Saturday, November 22, 2014

THE LEGEND of EL YUNQUE in PUERTO RICO





Her Family Valued

Can the public accept that a beleaguered public figure might in reality resign for her family?


On Wednesday, after the announcement and a news conference in which the mayor called the news media’s fixation “repulsive,” The Post kept at it, reminding readers that it had spent at least part of the summer fruitlessly pursuing rumors that Mr. Sharpton was the biological father of Ms. Noerdlinger’s son.

Republicans Accuse Obama of Treating Immigrants Like Humans


(photo: file)
(photo: file)

By Andy Borowitz, The New Yorker
21 November 14

The article below is satire. Andy Borowitz is an American comedian and New York Times-bestselling author who satirizes the news for his column, "The Borowitz Report."

n a sharp Republican rebuke to President Obama’s proposed actions on immigration, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell accused the President, on Thursday night, of “flagrantly treating immigrants like human beings, in clear defiance of the wishes of Congress.”
McConnell was brutal in his assessment of the President’s speech on immigration, blasting him for “eliminating the fear of deportation, which is the great engine of the American economy.”
“Fear is what keeps immigrants working so hard and so fast and so cheap,” McConnell said. “Remove the fear of deportation, and what will immigrants become? Lazy Americans.”
In a dire warning to the President, McConnell said, “If Mr. Obama thinks that, with the stroke of a pen, he can destroy the work ethic of millions of terrified immigrants, he’s in for the fight of his life.”
He added that Obama’s comments about deporting felons were “deeply offensive” to political donors.

Friday, November 21, 2014


Top News



Some Republicans Fear Alienating Hispanic Voters

Republicans say their party has the greater challenge — as the White House is betting — in framing their opposition in a way that does not antagonize Latinos and other minority groups.

In 1986, Ronald Reagan signed the so-called “amnesty” law passed by Congress that granted legal status to three million undocumented immigrants. Credit Ron Edmunds/Associated Press

Action Has Precedent, but May Also Set One

The president’s use of executive powers to confer a quasi-legal status on millions of immigrants is broader than similar initiatives by some Republican presidents.

Thursday, November 20, 2014

New York Today: Plastic Bag Talk

Thursday: Weighing in on a 10-cent plastic bag fee, a warmer day, and a silent performance group.


Wednesday, November 19, 2014

Ray Jose, 24, a Filipino whose parents brought him to this country when he was 9, and his father, Ramon Jose. Credit Jabin Botsford/The New York Times

A Reprieve That May Not Extend to Parents

Parents of youths already granted a reprieve under a deferred action program could be excluded from the executive order planned by President Obama.

For One Staten Island Campaign, a Special Prosecutor Instead of an Auditor

Criminal charges are being brought over expenditures and filings that are routinely corrected or penalized through audits by the Campaign Finance Board.


The case would be sublimely weird even without the participation of the special prosecutor, Roger Bennet Adler, a past president of the Brooklyn Bar Association. A judge found that in an earlier stint as a special prosecutor, in a different election law case, Mr. Adler had brought in slanted witnesses and permitted hearsay only when it hurt the defendant. He also, the judge ruled, tried to use a witness’s silence against him.
“The cumulative weight of the errors and improprieties cannot be ignored,” the judge, Gloria Goldstein, wrote in dismissing the charges against Porfirio Placencia, who had been accused of filing a false instrument.

Tuesday, November 18, 2014


De Blasio’s Approval Rating Wanes, but Is Still Solid, Quinnipiac Poll Finds

Mayor Bill de Blasio received the support of 49 percent of New Yorkers, with a sharp racial divide over his performance.

Monday, November 17, 2014

Latinos abandoning de Blasio over public appointments

Chanting, “One-term mayor! One-term mayor!” nearly 100 Latino leaders converged on City Hall Monday to demand that Mayor de Blasio appoint more Hispanics to his administration.
Calling itself the Campaign for Fair Latino Representation, the coalition slammed the mayor for naming Hispanics to just 11 percent of his public appointments, even though they make up 29 percent of the city’s population.
We’re not garbage … so don’t treat us like garbage.
 - Lucky Rivera
“We’re not garbage . . . so don’t treat us like garbage,” said activist Lucky Rivera, of Boricuas for a Positive Image. “If you [don’t] want to be a one-term mayor, you better do the right thing.”
The group blasted the lack of Hispanic policy makers and board members at city agencies and said just 26 of the mayor’s 229 public appointments have been Latino.
They also blasted the NYPD, saying it has only 18 Hispanics among its 166 deputy inspectors, six among its 82 chiefs and three among it 33 executive positions.
“If he doesn’t deal with this now, he’s going to have a real problem with his re-election when it comes to support from the Latino community,” said Angelo Falcon, president of the National Institute for Latino Policy, which conducted the review of appointments.
The mayor was elected last year with the support of 85 percent of Latinos in the general election.
City Hall countered that de Blasio increased the representation of Latinos among agency heads to 14 percent, from 9.3 percent in the Bloomberg administration.
The protesters said Latino representation in the administration has gone from 10.1 to 12.1 percent.
Modal Trigger
Boricuas for a Positive Image activist Lucky RiveraPhoto: David McGlynn
“We have been very clear in our intention to build an administration that is representative of all New Yorkers, and we are proud of the diverse team that we have built to date,” said City Hall spokeswoman Carmen Boon.
“There is always more we can do to increase diversity, and we won’t stop until we ensure that progress continues to be made.”
Advocates at Monday’s rally also criticized the mayor’s tardiness to last week’s Flight 587 memorial in Queens. The bulk of the 260 victims on the 2001 flight out of JFK Airport were Dominican.
“Unlike the mayor, we want to take a moment of silence. Unlike the mayor, we make it on time,” Anthony Miranda, chair of the National Latino Officers Association, said before a pause to honor them.
Group members also expressed disappointment with Latino elected officials for not joining the rally. The only elected official who showed was Councilwoman Inez Dickens (D-Harlem), who is black.


Embattled City Hall Aide Takes Leave of Absence

Rachel Noerdlinger, the chief of staff to Chirlane McCray, said that after her son’s arrest, she needed to be with her family.
Photo
Rachel Noerdlinger is chief of staff to Chirlane McCray.  
Credit Richard Drew/Associated


“We’ve seen this – we saw this in the 1950s, we’ve seen this throughout the history of this country,” Mr. de Blasio said. “If someone wants to smear people, and use that for political purposes, there’s a pretty easy playbook for doing it. It’s repulsive, but it’s become quite common.”

Sunday, November 16, 2014

Republicans Demand Return of Passive Obama

 (photo: file)
(photo: file)
By Andy Borowitz, The New Yorker
19 November 14
 
"The article below is satire. Andy Borowitz is an American comedian and New York Times-bestselling author who satirizes the news for his column, "The Borowitz Report."

ongressional Republicans on Friday expressed outrage at the new leadership style that President Obama has demonstrated in the aftermath of the midterm elections, and demanded a return of the “passive and unassertive Obama to which we have grown accustomed.”
In a joint statement, House Speaker John Boehner and his counterpart in the Senate, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, accused Obama of “engaging in a flagrant display of leadership that we find deeply offensive.”
“For the past six years, we have enjoyed a President who has been conciliatory and acquiescent to the point of emasculation,” Boehner said. “We want that President back.”
McConnell threatened that if Obama does not return to his weak and ineffectual ways at once, “he will face the prospect of being a two-term President.”
At the White House, the President did not respond to the Republicans’ remarks, telling reporters that he planned to work through the weekend raising the minimum wage, granting amnesty to immigrants, and legalizing marijuana.

Saturday, November 15, 2014

NYT Editorial: The F.C.C. Should Heed President Obama


Photo

Keeping the Internet free and open, without fast
 lanes for some and not for others, is being debated
 in Washington. 
  Credit Michael Bocchieri/Getty Images

Mr. Obama says the Federal Communications Commission should reclassify broadband Internet service as a telecommunications service, rather than the lightly regulated information service it is now. This would give the commission the authority to prevent broadband providers from slowing the delivery of some web content to favor content from companies that have paid a fee for faster delivery.

Thursday, November 13, 2014

‘Evil, abnormal beast’: FBI’s ‘suicide note’ to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. revealed 50 years later


The disturbing missive, written as if by an anonymous, disillusioned civil rights supporter, promises to reveal King as an adulterous fraud if he doesn't kill himself in 34 days. Previously released in redacted form, this unedited version shows the extent to which then-FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover would go to discredit the civil rights champion.

NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Published: Thursday, November 13, 2014, 9:35 AM
Updated: Thursday, November 13, 2014, 11:02 AM










Exported.;  
HORACE CORT/AP  
The disturbing note, later learned to have been written by the FBI, went to extreme lengths to discredit Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was called “an evil, abnormal beast” in an anonymous letter FBI agents sent the civil rights leader in 1964 in an effort to get him to commit suicide, a newly published, unredacted version of the note, shows.
The disturbing missive, which details intimate knowledge of King’s extramarital affairs, was sent in the days before he was to receive the Nobel Peace Prize and is written under the guise of a civil rights supporter angry with the movement’s leader.
A deadline of 34 days is given before King is outed as a womanizer, the missive, filled with grammatical errors, threatens.
“You are done. There is but one way out for you. You better take it before your filthy, abnormal, fraudulent self is bared to the nation,” the one-page letter, obtained by Yale professor Beverly Gage and printed in The New York Times, reads.
The full letter, kept at the National Archives in the Maryland suburbs of Washington, D.C. National Archives, College Park, Maryland The full letter, kept at the National Archives in the Maryland suburbs of Washington, D.C.
Long threatened by the rise of the powerful black minister, the efforts of former FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover to discredit King have since been revealed and shined a disturbing light on government overreach and misconduct during the Jim Crow era, Gage says of her research into a biography of the once-vaunted law enforcement head.
Though previously released in a heavily edited form, Gage found the original copy, free of redactions, among documents at the National Archives in College Park, Md.
King and Hoover had a strained and contentious relationship, evidenced by Hoover’s public claim that King was “the most notorious liar in the country.” And once the FBI, looking to discredit King and his relationship with a Communist sympathizer, began to bug his home and office, Hoover declared King “a tom cat with obsessive degenerate sexual urges” after hearing evidence of adultery.
J. Edgar Hoover had a contentious relationship with the civil rights leader and, according to the letter, hoped King would kill himself. AP Photo J. Edgar Hoover had a contentious relationship with the civil rights leader and, according to the letter, hoped King would kill himself.
“Lend your sexually psychotic ear to the enclosure,” the letter reads, referring to a tape recording of incidents of adultery.
The letter, written by FBI agent William Sullivan and eventually opened by King’s wife, Coretta Scott King, describes Kinds as a fraud participating in “immoral conduct lower than that of a beast.”
“King, look into your heart. You know you are a complete fraud and a great liability to all of us Negroes,” it reads.

Debts Canceled by Bankruptcy Haunt Credit Scores

State and federal officials suspect that some of the nation’s biggest banks ignore bankruptcy court discharges, keeping debts alive on credit reports and impairing the ability of tens of thousands of Americans to secure housing and jobs.

Wednesday, November 12, 2014

De Blasio Balancing His Promises With Reality

N.Y. / Region



Some liberal activists, who once supported 
Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York, say he 
has not gone farenough to push a progressive 
agenda. Credit Bryan Thomas for The New York Times

Mayor Bill de Blasio is championing liberal values nationally, but at home, he is being criticized by the same police critics whose cause he backed during his campaign.

Tuesday, November 11, 2014

Obama Makes a Stand for Net Neutrality


President Barack Obama. (photo: Olivier Douliery/Getty Images)
President Barack Obama. (photo: Olivier Douliery/Getty Images)


By Elise Hu, National Public Radio
10 November 14
 
n the same morning net neutrality demonstrators showed up at FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler's house to protest a plan that could let broadband providers charge for "fast lanes" to the Internet, the demonstrators found unexpected support from the White House.
President Obama released a statement and video Monday in which he makes the same demand as the demonstrators: Reclassify the Internet — and mobile broadband — as a public utility under Title II of the Telecommunications Act.
"I believe the FCC should create a new set of rules protecting net neutrality and ensuring that neither the cable company nor the phone company will be able to act as a gatekeeper, restricting what you can do or see online," Obama said in the statement.
He goes on to make the case that reclassification is the best way to achieve the objectives of an open Internet: No throttling of some content and speeding up others, no paid prioritization — customers getting stuck in a "slow lane" because the sites they are visiting didn't pay a fee — and no blocking content.
It gets pretty thorny, but here's what you need to know: Categorizing the Internet as a utility would allow the FCC to pass a simple, blanket, easy-to-enforce rule on net neutrality for all ISPs rather than going at it piecemeal.
Big ISPs — Comcast, Verizon and Time Warner — and their trade associations and lobbyists argue that the Title II option is going to lead to suffocating regulation that would give them no incentive to invest millions in developing new technologies and maintaining or improving the current network connecting Americans to the Internet.
Proponents of net neutrality say the ISPs haven't invested as much as they could have all along. The U.S. lags behind dozens of other countries in Internet speed, ranking 42nd.
Bottom line, this is a pretty big deal. The president has long supported the principle of net neutrality, but has never before come this far in backing a specific approach to protect it. The FCC just two weeks ago floated a more "hybrid" plan, reported by The Wall Street Journal. Backers of net neutrality didn't like the reported approach because it would still allow Internet service providers to make deals with content providers for special access.
The question is, of course, whether the president's stand will make any difference to rule-makers, who act independently of the White House.

Monday, November 10, 2014

Obama Urged to Work Closely With People Suing Him


By Andy Borowitz, The New Yorker
09 November 14
 
The article below is satire. Andy Borowitz is an American comedian and New York Times-bestselling author who satirizes the news for his column, "The Borowitz Report."
resident Obama is under increasing pressure to work closely and coöperatively with a group of people who are suing him in federal court, the people suing him confirmed today.
“Over the past six years, President Obama has been stubborn, arrogant, and oppositional,” John Boehner, the Republican Speaker of the House, said. “His refusal to work with people who are suing him is just the latest example.”
Republican Senator Mitch McConnell, of Kentucky, echoed the Speaker’s criticism, adding, “Time and time again, the President has refused to pick up the phone and talk to me, despite my saying that I was doing everything in my power to make him a one-term President.”
Other members of the G.O.P. caucus blasted the President for being aloof and frosty to Republicans who had questioned his American citizenship, the authenticity of his birth certificate, and the legitimacy of his Presidency. “That’s no way to get things done,” Senator James Inhofe, of Oklahoma, said. “He’s got a real attitude.”
Boehner concluded his comments, however, with an olive branch of sorts for Obama. “Mr. President, we Republicans are eager to sit across the table from you and get to work for the American people,” he said. “Otherwise, get ready to be impeached.”

Sunday, November 9, 2014

Matt Taibbi: 'Eric Holder the Corporate Defender Let the Banks Off the Hook'

Investigative Journalist Matt Taibbi. (photo: Rolling Stone)
Investigative Journalist Matt Taibbi. (photo: Rolling Stone)

By Amy Goodman and Juan González, Democracy NOW!
07 November 14



UAN GONZÁLEZ: A year ago this month, the Justice Department announced the banking giant JPMorgan Chase would avoid criminal charges by agreeing to pay $13 billion to settle claims that it had routinely overstated the quality of mortgages it was selling to investors. When the toxic mortgage securities started turning bad, investors lost faith in the banking system, and a housing crisis turned into the 2008 financial crisis that led to millions of home foreclosures. New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman unveiled the settlement last November.
ATTORNEY GENERAL ERIC SCHNEIDERMAN: Not only will Chase have to pay the largest settlement ever levied against a financial institution, but it has admitted in our statement of facts that its own employees, employees of Bear Stearns and employees of Washington Mutual made material misrepresentations to the investing public about a large number of residential mortgage-backed securities that they issued prior to the crash in 2008. This settlement is a major victory in the fight to hold accountable those who were responsible for that crash.
AMY GOODMAN: Soon after the JPMorgan Chase deal was reached, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder discussed the bank’s misdeeds during an interview with NBC News’ Pete Williams.
ATTORNEY GENERAL ERIC HOLDER: It packaged loans that it knew did not pass its own stated due diligence test. We have a whistleblower who indicated that she expressed concerns about what the strength of these mortgage-backed securities were, and they put them out there to the market and said that they were perfectly fine, when in fact they were not.

PETE WILLIAMS: So, to be clear, you’re saying that JPMorgan’s conduct here contributed to the housing collapse?

ATTORNEY GENERAL ERIC HOLDER: Not only the conduct of JPMorgan, it was the conduct of other banks doing similar kinds of things that led directly to the collapse of our economy in 2008 and in 2009.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: During that interview, Attorney General Eric Holder mentioned the role of an unnamed whistleblower from JPMorgan Chase who aided the Justice Department’s case against the bank. Well, until this week, that whistleblower, Alayne Fleischmann, a securities lawyer who worked for JPMorgan, had never spoken publicly about what she witnessed inside the bank. That changed yesterday when Rolling Stone magazine published a major new piece by Matt Taibbi headlined "The $9 Billion Witness: Meet the woman JPMorgan Chase paid one of the largest fines in American history to keep from talking."
AMY GOODMAN: In the article, Alayne Fleischmann criticizes not only JPMorgan’s banking practices, but how government regulators at the Holder Justice Department responded to the bank’s lawbreaking. Today, in her first televised interview, Alayne Fleischmann joins us here on Democracy Now!, along with Matt Taibbi, who has closely covered the financial crisis for years. His latest book, Divide: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap, has just come out in paperback.
And we welcome you both to Democracy Now! for the hour.
MATT TAIBBI: Thanks for having us on.
AMY GOODMAN: So, Alayne Fleischmann, start at the beginning. Why did you decide to come forward? And how did you end up at Chase?
ALAYNE FLEISCHMANN: Sure. For a long time, I was expecting it to come out. I’ve been talking to the government for two-and-a-half years now. And first it went through the SEC. Then it went through the Civil Division of the DOJ. And at some stage after watching all of these major banks have deals that actually the facts get wiped away, I started to feel that if I don’t come forward, there’s a real chance of that happening here, too.
In terms of JPMorgan Chase, I started there in March 2006 at sort of the height of the boom. When I started, everything seemed normal. I didn’t really realize some of the things that were happening in the background. And then things started to change in about May, a couple months after I had been there.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, what—when you went to work there, what specifically was your job? And if you could walk us through how you began to realize the huge problem that the bank was a part of?
ALAYNE FLEISCHMANN: Sure. I started as what they call a deal manager. Basically, we coordinate between all these different groups when we’re bringing in these loans, that are then going to be sold to investors. I first noticed that there was a problem when they brought in a new person to do our diligence, which is just the review of the loans themselves to make sure they’re of good quality. As soon as he came in, we suddenly—this wall sort of came down between myself and the group that was doing this review, and you couldn’t get information that you would normally get. On top of that, there was immediately a sort of a no-email policy. He wouldn’t send emails, and we weren’t allowed to send him emails. He would actually come out and yell at you if you sent him an email.
AMY GOODMAN: What was the reason?
ALAYNE FLEISCHMANN: It was never given, which was extremely worrisome, because normally the reason why you have a compliance and diligence department is to actually have written policies about what you’re doing, to be able to explain to people how you’re making your decisions. So it’s exactly the opposite of what you would normally expect.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And when you say to review the quality of the loans, if you could—
ALAYNE FLEISCHMANN: Sure, yes.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: —for people who are not aware—you were, in essence, certifying that these individual loans could be packaged into a group of securities to then be sold to investors in a huge package, right? But you had to go through every individual loan? Was that—
ALAYNE FLEISCHMANN: Yeah, that’s pretty much what happens. It’s really that you’re taking the actual loan files, that was done between the lender and the borrower, and looking at them to make sure everything looks right. Does this person have enough money to pay off their loan? Do they have the sort of history where we think that they’re going to pay this loan? And if we find that they don’t, then we’re actually not supposed to purchase the loans, and certainly shouldn’t be selling them to other investors without at least telling them there’s something wrong with them.
AMY GOODMAN: And so, what was the smoking gun for you?
ALAYNE FLEISCHMANN: Everything about—what really started happening—in particular, it became apparent in October—was that sometimes we had deals coming in where even though I wasn’t even the person looking at the loans, you could tell from where I was that something was wrong with them. The GreenPoint deal, which is what Matt talks about in his article, even when the loans came in, they were very, very old, which usually you try to actually pull these loans and sell them within two to three months—these loans were going back to close to the beginning of the year. If you work in the industry, you know immediately what that means, is either they couldn’t sell them, because the buyers were telling them they weren’t any good, or, even worse, they’d been sold and then had missed a bunch of payments, so they had actually been sold back to the originator. Any of those loans you wouldn’t normally sell to investors as regular loans.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Now, Matt, you’ve referred in your article to these loans as basically selling old, beat-up used cars—
MATT TAIBBI: Right.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: —as if they were new. Could you explain that?
MATT TAIBBI: Yeah, that’s exactly what Alayne is talking about. Essentially, what the bank was doing was they—you know, there are companies out there, these mortgage lenders, like a company that might be familiar to people is, like, Countrywide—in this case, it was an originator called GreenPoint—they would go out into neighborhoods, and during this boom period, they were giving mortgages to anybody and everybody with a pulse, essentially. They were especially low-income neighborhoods. They were offering these very advantageous loans to people, whether they could afford the houses or not. They were buying huge masses of these loans. And then they were—
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: They were called like "liar’s loans," or stated income where no one even checked whether the person had the income to actually pay it off.
MATT TAIBBI: That’s exactly right. That’s exactly right. That was the verbiage, "liar’s loans." The FBI warned that there was going to be an epidemic of these liar’s loans way back in 2004. The industry ignored these warnings. The government ignored these warnings. And there was this huge influx of these stated income loans, where people could just say that they made an enormous amount of money, and nobody would check.
So the bank buys all these loans, and then what they were doing is essentially throwing them into big pools, making hamburger out of them, and then selling that hamburger to pension funds, insurance companies, hedge funds, all kinds of investors. Typically ordinary people were the people on the other end buying this stuff. They were investing in these securities, and often they didn’t even know it.
What Alayne was involved with was making sure that these loans were of good quality, so that pension funds, when they bought these securities, weren’t buying something that was going to blow up on them a year later. And what she found was that they were buying loans that were of very dubious quality, that were extremely risky, and that should not have been made into that hamburger.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to break, and when we come back, we want to find out what happened when you went to your colleagues, your superiors, and then went outside the company to the U.S. government, right on up to Eric Holder and the Obama administration. Today, a Democracy Now! broadcast exclusive, Alayne Fleischmann is with us, the JPMorgan Chase whistleblower, speaking for the first time about her experience as deal manager at JPMorgan, where she says she witnessed "massive criminal securities fraud" in the bank’s mortgage operations during the period leading up to the financial crisis. And Matt Taibbi is with us, award-winning journalist, now back with Rolling Stone magazine, his latest piece headlined "The $9 Billion Witness." Stay with us.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re speaking to JPMorgan Chase whistleblower Alayne Fleischmann and reporter Matt Taibbi. His latest piece, "The $9 Billion Witness: Meet the woman JPMorgan Chase paid one of the largest fines in American history to keep from talking." Last November, Attorney General Eric Holder appeared on NBC News just after the JPMorgan Chase settlement was reached. He was questioned by NBC’s Pete Williams.
PETE WILLIAMS: What about those who say, "Well, the message here is, if you do wrong, you just pay for it and move along"?

ATTORNEY GENERAL ERIC HOLDER: This was not simply something that JPMorgan simply signed a check and smilingly said, "This is a good deal for us." This inflicts pain on that institution.

PETE WILLIAMS: But is this, in essence, a sort of template? We can expect to see other settlements now?

ATTORNEY GENERAL ERIC HOLDER: I certainly think that the way in which this case has been settled is a template of what we can expect, both in terms of getting maximum amounts of money and then using that money so that we get it to people who suffer the greatest amount—that is, either investors or homeowners.
AMY GOODMAN: That’s Attorney General Eric Holder. Alayne Fleischmann, let’s take it back a step. When you started to alert your colleagues and your supervisors at JPMorgan Chase, what did they say?
ALAYNE FLEISCHMANN: Well, what happened was the transaction, at one point, just stopped. It turned out that 40 percent of the loans in this deal had problems with them. When we tried raising this issue with our superiors, what actually happened is they just started yelling at the diligence managers who were clearing the loans, sort of yelling, berating them, making them do reports over and over again. And it became clear that, although they wouldn’t say it, it was going to be like that until they would clear the loans. So what actually happened is these loans started being cleared, but basically just by sort of the brute force of what was going on there.
I raised it first with a managing director and an executive director, and couldn’t get any response. After that, I decided the best possibility would be to write a letter to another managing director that actually laid out everything I was seeing. I used the GreenPoint deal as an example, which is why the letter specifically says exactly who was doing what all over this deal. But it also lays out general problems in our diligence that the salespeople were being involved, which isn’t normal, and that there seemed to be a lot of pressure on diligence managers to clear loans that shouldn’t have been purchased or sold.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And the importance of putting it down in a—
ALAYNE FLEISCHMANN: Yeah.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: —putting all the facts down in a letter, what that meant inside the company?
ALAYNE FLEISCHMANN: Yeah. Well, what it used to be is that the way that you could stop these things from happening was, if you write a memo that lays out what’s happening, the management won’t go forward, because they realize that if they do, there’s going to be this evidence of what happened.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: There’s going to be a paper trail of the—mm-hmm.
ALAYNE FLEISCHMANN: Yeah. The big worry with these settlements and the way they’re being done—and I’m not the only whistleblower in these cases—is that you have these emails and these memos, but nothing happens. A fine gets paid, and then all of the facts and who did what gets washed away. So, as a whistleblower, you’re thinking, "I did all of this, and the DOJ has all of this, but for some reason they’re not going forward on it."
AMY GOODMAN: So, what happened when you went outside the company? How did you go outside?
ALAYNE FLEISCHMANN: Well, one issue I had is that although I warned not to securitize the loans, there was no way—I was blocked off, especially after I had raised complaints, from being able to see any of the data or the diligence process, which right there shows that something was wrong. So, after I left JPMorgan, I actually had no idea, for a full four years, that the loans had been securitized. On one hand, I was worried they would, but I really thought no one would ever actually securitize those loans.
MATT TAIBBI: This is an important distinction—
ALAYNE FLEISCHMANN: Yeah.
MATT TAIBBI: —because Alayne had no idea that a crime had been committed until she had concrete knowledge that the loans had actually been resold to somebody else. They’re certainly allowed to buy as many bad loans and as many risky mortgages as they want. It’s not until they go to some investor and represent to them that these are, you know, AAA-rated securities or whatever, or highly rated securities, that they’re actually committing fraud. And so, she had no way of knowing that. Even after she was laid off from the company, she had no knowledge of what actually happened. So she couldn’t actually report the crime yet, because she only saw one half of the deal.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And you were laid off in—at the beginning of 2008, right?
ALAYNE FLEISCHMANN: Eight, yeah.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Yeah, actually before the crash. Already there was turmoil—
ALAYNE FLEISCHMANN: Yeah.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: —in the home loan market, but there was not—the crash had not happened.
ALAYNE FLEISCHMANN: Right.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And so that the bank, when Jamie Dimon and other leaders later said that they had no realization that the market was tanking as fast as it could, at least your memos were certainly indicating to them that there were major problems in their portfolios.
MATT TAIBBI: Well, what’s funny is they actually said two completely opposite things. There was an article in Fortune magazine later in 2008 in which they report that Jamie Dimon, the CEO of the company, knew as early as October of 2006 that the industry was rife with underwriting problems, all the things that Alayne is talking about. The company was aware of this, and there are quotes in which the CEO is telling his subordinates, "We’ve got to get out of these investments, because this whole thing can go up in smoke." And then, meanwhile, so Chase is selling its own investments in these kinds of mortgages, but they’re taking these same mortgages and selling them to investors and not telling them that they have these concerns. Later, when they testify in front of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission in 2010, Dimon said exactly the opposite. He said, essentially, "Well, we had no idea that these things were happening. We got caught up in the fact that housing prices were just going continually upward."
AMY GOODMAN: So, talk about the settlement. What happened next?
MATT TAIBBI: Well, so, the settlement happened in—I guess, a year ago about this month. And what’s interesting about it is, Alayne, by that point, had already talked to civil investigators in the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Sacramento, and she talked to some very talented lawyers there who seemed very anxious to press this case. And they were about to release a very detailed civil complaint against Chase in September of last year, and just hours before that press conference, when they were going to announce that, reportedly, Jamie Dimon, again, the CEO of Chase, called up the assistant attorney general, asked to renegotiate, and they canceled the press conference, and they went back into negotiations. And a few months later, they had a settlement in which they paid a lot of money, but none of the facts came out in that.
AMY GOODMAN: Just like if you were in trouble, you could make that call.
MATT TAIBBI: Yeah, I could call up—yeah, I could call up the mayor or the president and have a court case go away. I mean, that’s exactly what happened in this case, is they basically put in a phone call to the very top of the criminal justice system.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And what happened to your contacts with the Justice Department, if you could talk about that, that process? How detailed did they want to get into the information that you had?
ALAYNE FLEISCHMANN: Well, my first contact, it was actually after four years. I was working in Calgary, and I got a call from the SEC.
AMY GOODMAN: Because you come from Canada.
ALAYNE FLEISCHMANN: Yeah. He introduced himself as an investigator from the Enforcement Division. And as I sort of paused for a minute, jokingly, he then said, "You weren’t expecting to hear from me, were you?" And after that, they set up my first interview with the SEC, which was very short. It was only maybe an hour, hour and a half. They were only interested in one deal. And even though I kept bringing up GreenPoint and they had the letter that I had written, they weren’t actually interested in that. And the SEC settlement was based on that other deal.
And then, it wasn’t until later, about December 2012, that I first met with the DOJ investigators. And it was very clear that this was going to be very different. As soon as they walked in, you could tell they knew these securities up and down, and they were really anxious to go forward with it and felt very comfortable going forward with the case. So, in that meeting, it was a very detailed meeting, sort of hours of going through how the process works and what happened. And then I had an actual deposition in about May of 2013, where they nailed down a lot more of that.
And you could see at that stage—first, I got to find out for the first time ever how many of these loans had actually gone into—had been sold to investors in sort of one pool, and it was hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of them, with nothing actually disclosed about the problems with the loan. And then, second, I got to really see what their case was, and they clearly realized they had an incredible case there.
AMY GOODMAN: Testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee in 2013, Attorney General Eric Holder suggested some banks are "too big to jail."
ATTORNEY GENERAL ERIC HOLDER: I am concerned that the size of some of these institutions becomes so large that it does become difficult for us to prosecute them when we are hit with indications that if you do prosecute, if you do bring a criminal charge, it will have a negative impact on the national economy, perhaps even the world economy. And I think that is a function of the fact that some of these institutions have become too large. Again, I’m not talking about HSBC; this is just a more general comment. I think it has an inhibiting influence—impact on our ability to bring resolutions that I think would be more appropriate.
AMY GOODMAN: Matt Taibbi, respond to what Attorney General Eric Holder has testified.
MATT TAIBBI: Well, again, I mean, it’s a crazy thing when the leading law enforcement official in the nation comes out and says, "Well, some companies are just so big that we can’t prosecute them no matter what they do." In that case, he was speaking—he was testifying in the wake of a settlement the government had entered into with HSBC, which is the biggest bank in Europe and the biggest bank in Great Britain, which had admitted to laundering over $800 million for a pair of Central and South American drug cartels. And if you can’t send someone to jail for laundering $800 million of drug money, you know, because the company is too big, clearly something is very seriously wrong. But yet, this became sort of the unofficial official policy of the Justice Department. And this greatly affected the way they dealt with companies like JPMorgan Chase, like Citigroup, like Bank of America. They tried to find a way to effect some kind of resolution that didn’t involve criminal charges, didn’t involve penalties to individuals, and also didn’t put the facts of any of what they had actually done out into the public.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And in that vein, this is—you know, it’s the old Monopoly board game all over again, get out of jail free. Instead of paying $200 to get out of jail, you pay $2 billion to get out of jail. But the amounts of money that these governments are getting as a result of this—I mean, I just checked with the New York state comptroller. New York state alone, this year, is getting out of its bank settlements with Wall Street a windfall of $5 billion. That’s just New York state. Other states are getting their share, and of course the federal government is getting huge infusions. And so, they suddenly have all this cash. And then they also had this other stuff that you’ve talked about, which is consumer relief—
MATT TAIBBI: Right.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: —apportions. So, the governments actually get cash settlements, but then they supposedly negotiate additional money for the citizens, a consumer relief. Could you talk about that?
MATT TAIBBI: Well, OK, there’s a couple of things here. First of all, these settlements, they always come up with a big number, but the number is always actually—when you actually look at the accounting, it turns out to be smaller than they announce. In the case of the Chase settlement, the number they announced was $13 billion. But there’s a couple of really important factors here. One is that $7 billion of that—it’s $7 billion, right?—was tax-deductible, which means that all of us, American citizens, anybody who pays taxes, actually picked up the check for about $2.4 billion worth of the settlement. So we paid part of that settlement, which is crazy. I mean, the ordinary person, if we get a speeding ticket, we can’t deduct that when we go to pay our taxes. But these people cratered the world economy, and they get to write a tax deduction for it.
Four billion dollars of the settlement was what they call consumer relief. And what this really boils down to, I mean, there’s some loan forgiveness, where they’re allowing people to pay less principal towards their home loans, but mostly it comes down to letting people have a little extra time to pay off their payments. And it’s not always the bank that is actually doing that; it’s often the investors in those loans who are actually giving the relief. So, it’s not really the bank paying $4 billion. It’s just a number.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to turn to President Obama speaking in September, when Attorney General Eric Holder announced that he would resign.
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: He’s helped safeguard our markets from manipulation and consumers from financial fraud. Since 2009, the Justice Department has brought more than 60 cases against financial institutions and won some of the largest settlements in history for practices related to the financial crisis, recovering $85 billion, much of it returned to ordinary Americans who were badly hurt.
AMY GOODMAN: Matt Taibbi, your response?
MATT TAIBBI: Well, I mean, the first thing I would say is, OK, they brought a bunch of settlements and they collected a bunch of money, but there isn’t a single individual, in this entire tableau, who is actually individually paying any kind of penalty for any of these misdeeds. All of that money came out of the pockets of shareholders. No executives had to pay a fine. No executives had to do a single day in jail. There were not even charges filed against any individuals. And—
AMY GOODMAN: What was the actual crime you feel Jamie Dimon committed that you feel he should be in jail for?
MATT TAIBBI: Well, I can’t stand here and tell you that Jamie Dimon committed a crime. But certainly there are people in these companies, and in cases like Alayne’s case, who would be targets of criminal fraud prosecutions, and probably at a lower level than Jamie Dimon. I think it would be hard to prove, although who knows? Because they didn’t try. In a normal drug case, what you would do is you would take everybody who was guilty, and you would try to roll them up the chain and see how far you could go. And that’s exactly what they did not do in this case. They didn’t aggressively go after everybody. They didn’t follow every lead. Instead, they just sort of went into a back room, decided on a number and made the whole thing go away. And yes, that is a kind of justice, it’s a kind of resolution, but I think it’s insufficient.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: In fact, as you note in your article, after the settlement agreement with JPMorgan Chase, the stock of the company went up dramatically, the stock price of the company went up dramatically, and Jamie Dimon ended up getting a huge raise from his board of directors.
MATT TAIBBI: Yeah, yeah, in the first weeks after the settlement was announced, the market capitalization of JPMorgan Chase went up 6 percent, which translated into about $12 billion worth of value. So that’s most of your settlement right there. Actually, it’s more than almost—more than the entire settlement, if you look at it as a $9 billion settlement. And yes, Jamie Dimon, just a few weeks after being dinged for the largest regulatory fine in the history of capitalism, got a 74 percent raise by the board of—by the Chase board.
AMY GOODMAN: And we’re going to break. When we come back, we’ll hear Senator Elizabeth Warren asking questions of Jamie Dimon about that raise. Stay with us.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González. We’re talking about "The $9 Billion Witness: Meet the woman JPMorgan Chase paid one of the largest fines in American history to keep from talking." Today we’re talking with that woman. Alayne Fleischmann is with us. Alayne Fleischmann, a whistleblower who worked at JPMorgan Chase, she’s speaking today on Democracy Now! in this broadcast exclusive, featured in Matt Taibbi’s piece that came out in Rolling Stone this week, Matt Taibbi also with us. Well, earlier this year, Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren criticized the size of Jamie Dimon’s salary.
SEN. ELIZABETH WARREN: In 2013 alone, JPMorgan spent nearly $17 billion to settle claims with the federal government, claims relating to its sale of fraudulent mortgage-backed securities, its illegal foreclosure practices like robo-signing, its manipulation of energy markets in California and the Midwest, and its handling of the disastrous London Whale trade. And at the end of the year, JPMorgan gave its CEO, Jamie Dimon, a 75 percent raise, bringing his total compensation to $20 million. Now, you might think that presiding over activities that resulted in $17 billion in payouts for illegal conduct would hurt your case for a fat pay bump, but according to The New York Times, members of the JPMorgan board of directors thought that Jamie Dimon earned the raise, in part—and I’m quoting here—"by acting as chief negotiator as JPMorgan worked out a string of banner government settlements."
AMY GOODMAN: That was Senator Elizabeth Warren. I’d like Alayne Fleischmann, the whistleblower within JPMorgan Chase, to respond. I mean, do you think part of what you exposed to the government earned Jamie Dimon this increase of 75 percent?
ALAYNE FLEISCHMANN: And I suppose it—the question is whether you’re concerned about making money or whether there’s criminal activity going on at the bank. There’s actually an excellent website called JPMadoff.com with some lawyers who were involved in the Madoff case, where they’ve been tracking, actually, all of JPMorgan’s fines for fraud and illegal activity. And they’re actually at $29 billion now in the last four years alone. So, the question that needs to be asked is: How is it that you can be a CEO, over $29 billion worth of fines, and get a raise? It also clearly shows that there’s no deterrent to all of these fines. It’s just happening over and over again. And if there aren’t any individuals held accountable, there’s no reason for any of them to actually stop doing these very serious crimes.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, and not only that, if all of those fines are continually occurring—
ALAYNE FLEISCHMANN: Yeah.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: —where are the crimes that are the basis of being fined?
ALAYNE FLEISCHMANN: Well, yeah, and so that’s one of the really important points, too, is there’s very little difference between civil securities fraud and criminal securities fraud, or even how you can do this as a wire fraud case. Once you have that strong of a civil fraud case, the only real difference is that you need a little more intent level—they had to have really intentionally been doing the fraud—and you have to prove it to a higher standard. You know, you have to show beyond a reasonable doubt that this is what they were doing. But when you look at these cases, these are some of the easiest white-collar crime cases that you’re ever going to see.
And one of the things that I think has been sold to the public is, well, these are really complex and difficult, or we don’t really know who did what. First, in my case, and what I’ve seen in these other cases, there are all sorts of documents that show exactly who was making the decisions and who knew what. The idea that they’re too complex, you know, these securities themselves that are sold to investors are complex, but the fact that the investors were lied to about the quality of the loans, that’s actually really easy. And the fact that obviously if you have people who can’t afford their loans, there’s going to be no money coming out of these loans, is also something that’s not a difficult thing to understand.
AMY GOODMAN: Alayne Fleischmann, why didn’t you go to the press back then? And what made you decide to do it now?
ALAYNE FLEISCHMANN: Yeah, I, for a long time, believed that this come out, that the government would do their investigation and come forward with it. It’s actually taken a really long time for me, because for me it’s a little bit of an incredible thing to believe. But after watching all of these cases over and over again, at some stage I’m in the position where if I keep silent and the statute of limitation runs, or they do one of these agreements where they whitewash everything, then it’s too late, which is what’s happened over and over again so far. So, I’m trying to change the pattern and come out first, so that they have to either follow these properly, the way they would for any other criminal defendant, or explain why they’re not doing it.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Matt Taibbi, the reality that all—despite all the claims of the Obama administration that they’ve pursued all these civil cases, that they never really went after the people who practically wrecked the world economy, and how that relates into this election result that we just had, where obviously Americans across the board, from Democrats to Republicans to Independents, are still furious about their economic situation and the failure of holding these people accountable?
MATT TAIBBI: Yeah, I think it’s hard not to make a connection between the total lack of enthusiasm that we saw for the Democratic Party this past week and, for instance, their behavior in pushing investigations of the financial services community. And we saw it with the Occupy protests. I talk to people on Wall Street all the time. I mean, all my sources come from Wall Street. And they all say the same thing, that Barack Obama had an incredible opportunity in late 2008, just after he took office. With his communication skills, he could have gone to the American people and explained to them exactly what happened and said, "This is why the economy is bad. This is why you’re losing your job. There was massive criminal activity. It’s not just an accident." And then he could have gone and put a few people in jail and really put some teeth behind those words. Instead, they swept it all under the rug. And people, even if they don’t completely understand what happened, they sense that nothing was done. And I think it’s important to understand that.
AMY GOODMAN: I presume, Alayne Fleischmann, that you had a confidentiality agreement when you left JPMorgan Chase. Are you violating that? What made you decide to take the risk?
ALAYNE FLEISCHMANN: Yeah, and there are different arguments about whether I am or am not violating it, because of the criminal nature of what I’m bringing forward. For me, at some stage, it’s just sometimes you’re involved in something that’s bigger than you personally. Even right now, there are still all sorts of suits out there by private investors, retirement funds, pension plans, trying to get their money back. And they don’t—in a lot of cases, they don’t know that I have information. So I actually now have, in my email, contacts coming in, asking for help from me, so that they can get this money that was really stolen from their investors, these retirees, back to those people. So, for me, that’s more important than anything that’s going to happen to me.
AMY GOODMAN: Are you concerned about repercussions?
ALAYNE FLEISCHMANN: At some stage, I think I decided that this was more important. And at the end of the day, I’ll be OK. You know, I’ll figure something out, and I’ll get through this. But I think we’re at a stage where unless a lot of people start coming forward and say, "We care about this. We now know what’s happening, and we want someone to do something about it," that this is all just going to pass into history.
AMY GOODMAN: The government contacted you again this summer?
ALAYNE FLEISCHMANN: Yeah, in August they contacted me.
AMY GOODMAN: That call that they made.
ALAYNE FLEISCHMANN: Yeah.
AMY GOODMAN: And do you feel this can reopen, this information, these cases?
ALAYNE FLEISCHMANN: I did meet with them, and I was happy to see that it was an enthusiastic group. The concern I have is that what we’ve seen is that even when they’re really strong cases—you look at the JPMorgan-Madoff case, HSBC—they still, no matter how strong it is, they just get hushed away. So, yeah.
MATT TAIBBI: And this is an important distinction, too, is that it’s often not the line investigators who are the problem. The people who actually work these cases, the career prosecutors who are doing this digging, oftentimes they’re very talented and aggressive lawyers who really know what they’re doing. The problem is, the political wing of the Justice Department can take those cases and do whatever they want with them. And we saw, in Alayne’s case and in many other cases, that they take these excellent investigations, and then they just turn them into these slap-on-the-wrist settlements. And that’s what she’s worried about, I think.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, Matt, it’s great to have you back reporting, to see your piece, but it’s in Rolling Stone, it’s not at First Look. You had left Rolling Stone to be part of this new news organization. You were launching, like The Intercept at First Look, The Racket. You tweeted out that this piece was coming out in The Racket when you launched, The Racket launch, if you will.
MATT TAIBBI: Right, right.
AMY GOODMAN: But it didn’t happen.
MATT TAIBBI: No, it didn’t. You know, I think all I can really say about that is that I’m really devastated by the way everything turned out. It was a really horrible situation all around. I’m very, very sorry for the staff that is still there, the people that I hired who took a leap of faith to come work for me. And in a way, I’m—as happy as I am to be back at Rolling Stone, which I always loved, I’m sad that this piece isn’t out in Racket. I mean, I think it would have been a great piece to launch with, but it just didn’t work out that way, and that’s unfortunate.
AMY GOODMAN: Will Racket launch?
MATT TAIBBI: I don’t know. I don’t know. I’m not at the company anymore, so you’d have to direct that question to them. I think they—you know, they absolutely should. They have a very talented group over there and some great young writers, and there’s no reason that they couldn’t.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: I just wanted to close by asking you about how you would judge the tenure of Eric Holder in—now, obviously, that he’s going to be leaving—in terms of his particular role in going after these banks, and just this whole idea of bankers being able to call directly to the Justice Department to negotiate their deals and stop prosecutions at the lower levels.
MATT TAIBBI: Well, you know, it’s funny. For years now, I’ve been covering a lot of this stuff. And I’ve spoken to a lot of people in law enforcement. And there are really two types of people that I talk to who are prosecutors. One is the kind of old-school law enforcement type that want to get the bad guy at all costs, and they’re really career civil servants who just want to do their jobs and want to see justice happen. And then there’s this new kind of person who’s appearing in government now, who comes out of the corporate defense sector. These are people who grew up as corporate lawyers defending companies like Chase and Bank of America. And that’s who Eric Holder is, very pointedly. He spent a long time at a company called Covington & Burling. And this type of lawyer, this type of law enforcement official, is much more interested in coming up with a settlement that everybody feels good about when they walk out of the room, as opposed to the old-school kind of justice where the bad guy gets his or her comeuppance in the end. And I think his tenure was very representative of a big sea change in the way we do white-collar crime in this country.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, I want to thank you both for being with us. Matt Taibbi, again, we will link to your piece at Rolling Stone. It’s called "The $9 Billion Witness: Meet the woman JPMorgan Chase paid one of the largest fines in American history to keep from talking." And thank you to that woman, Alayne Fleischmann. Thank you so much for joining us. Alayne Fleischmann, the JPMorgan Chase whistleblower, former deal manager at JPMorgan, where she says she witnessed "massive criminal securities fraud" in the bank’s mortgage operations during the period leading up to the financial crisis. And congratulations on your book coming out in paperback, Matt. Thanks so much, everyone, for being with us.