Elizabeth Warren gave a rousing speech about the two legal systems are ruining our nation. One for you and me and the other for corporate lawbreakers.
Tom Sullivan writes a great piece over on Hullabaloo about exactly what Warren is talking about:
In an interview with The Nation, Warren spoke again about the "rigged game" in Washington. In particular, the bipartisan effort to reform sentencing laws that some Republicans are using the bill as a means of protecting corporate criminals from even the nearly nonexistent prosecutions to which they are now exposed. On the floor of the Senate, Warren said,
[F]or these Republicans, the price of helping out people unjustly locked up in jail for years will be to make it even harder to lock up a white-collar criminal for even a single day. That is shameful, shameful. It’s shameful because we’re already way too easy on corporate lawbreakers.
Warren tells The Nation,
“The Republicans think no one is looking right now, that all of the public attention is somewhere else, and that this is a chance to try to slip through an amendment to make it harder to prosecute white-collar criminals,” she said. “It’s like you can’t make this stuff up, right? The idea that the Republicans are trying to gut one of the main laws to prevent bank fraud—that’s their response to the 2008 financial crisis.”
Warren said she also believes the Republicans have overreached, and are inviting a serious public blowback during a crucial political year. “If the Republicans succeed in further undercutting the laws to hold big banks accountable, I think it will become a major issue by next November.”
Warren released a report last week detailing 20 cases where federal prosecutors caught big companies violating the law, but imposed only modest fines and did not require the offending corporations to admit guilt.
Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein was feeling the heat enough to say Bernie Sanders represents a “dangerous moment” in American history. Sanders has called out Blankfein by name, and his company "a poster child for the greed and recklessness he says is endemic in finance," according to The Hill. Both Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders called out the Koch brothers repeatedly in the Democratic debate last night. Blankfein apparently doesn't have the same stomach for the public heat that the Kochs do.
