Sorry I missed a few days---please come back as I will return!
'Jamie Raskin, a Senior Fellow at People for the American Way Foundation, is a professor of constitutional law at American University and a member of the State Senate in Maryland. He was an original sponsor and floor leader of the state’s marriage equality legislation upheld by the voters at the polls in November'.
I want to use this last post as a segue into talk about the importance of the public sector. As I pointed out, The People for the American Way led by a Clinton Wall Street global corporate tribunal rule group of people IS RIDICULOUS. There is no American Way under Trans Pacific Trade Pact and Global Corporate Tribunals. The FED and Wall Street are the face of this global corporate tribunal policy and the face of systemic fraud and corruption and total disregard of the US Constitution. So, Jamie Raskin as a Maryland Assembly pol posing as a progressive Democrat from Montgomery County-----IS A GREAT BIG PHONY! Think about the people and organizations that pretend he is a progressive and don't listen to them.
Clinton neo-liberals like Raskin have been busy for a few decades privatizing all that is public allowing massive corporate fraud which is why the Washington Beltway counties like Montgomery are the wealthiest in the nation.
NONE OF THIS IS IN THE DEMOCRATIC PLATFORM FOR GOODNESS SAKE.
Below you see the institutions coming out for the Raskins-----The Maryland Consumer Rights Coalition for example are people all connected to making sure all of this Clinton neo-liberalism-----THE NEW AMERICA UNDER TRANS PACIFIC TRADE PACT-----is protected all while sounding progressive.
Everyone living in Maryland knows Maryland has not had consumer protection or public justice EVER. Maryland is completely corporate, has systemic corporate fraud and government corruption taking tens of billions of dollars from Maryland and Baltimore City coffers every year all because----the Maryland Assembly and Baltimore City have dismantled all oversight and accountability in the public sector----it has defunded and dismantled all avenues of public justice by dismantling the Maryland State Attorney and City State's Attorney office.
MARYLAND IS THE OPPOSITE OF CONSUMER PROTECTION, RULE OF LAW, AND PUBLIC JUSTICE SO NO ONE IN GOVERNMENT LEADERSHIP IS PROGRESSIVE ESPECIALLY A FEDERAL RESERVE APPOINTMENT.
All of the institutions praising Sarah Raskin as progressive are led by Clinton Wall Street global corporate neo-liberals.
If REAL progressive liberals controlled the Maryland Democratic Party-----these leaders WOULD NOT BE ENDORSING THESE PEOPLE! Just because Sarah is a woman does not make her a progressive or a civil rights feminist----she is a Hillary corporate rule and wealth.
Maryland was ground zero for the subprime mortgage frauds and is worst in the nation for fraud and corruption which means THERE IS NO OFFICE OF THE COMMISSIONER OF FINANCIAL REGULATION
'The Office of the Commissioner of Financial Regulation is the primary regulator for financial institutions chartered in Maryland, including State-chartered banks, credit unions, and trust companies; and State-licensed financial entities including, consumer finance companies, mortgage lenders, mortgage brokers, mortgage servicers, mortgage loan originators, credit reporting agencies, consumer debt collection agencies, debt management companies, check cashers, credit services businesses, and money transmitters. The Commissioner is represented in legal matters by the Office of the Attorney General'.
Sarah Bloom Raskin
Sarah Bloom Raskin is married to Jamin B. Raskin and is the daughter-in-law of Institute for Policy Studies founder Marcus Raskin.
Education Sarah Bloom Raskin is a 1986 graduate of Harvard Law School. She graduated from Amherst College in 1983, magna cum laude in Economics, and Phi Beta Kappa. She is a recipient of the James R. Nelson Award in Economics.[1]
Family Congressman Chris Van Hollen with Jamie and Sarah Raskin on the campaign trail in 2006 Sarah's husband Jamie Raskin is a Professor of Law at American Unversity and a Maryland State Senator. With Jamie she has had three children, Hannah Grace Raskin (born July 13, 1992), Thomas Bloom Raskin (born January 30, 1995), and Tabitha Claire Raskin, (born January 31, 1997).[2]
Career Sarah Bloom Raskin was appointed on August 28, 2007 as Maryland's Commissioner of Financial Regulation. Prior to her appointment, Ms. Raskin accumulated extensive experience in the financial industry from a range of perspectives in policy, regulatory and legal roles. Immediately prior to joining the Office of Financial Regulation, Mrs. Raskin served as Managing Director at Promontory Financial Group. Mrs. Raskin was also Banking Counsel to the Senate Banking Committee (the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs) and has worked at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and the Joint Economic Committee of Congress.[1]
Raskin was an associate, Mayer Brown, 1986-88 and also associate, of Washington DC law firm Arnold & Porter, 1988-93[3]
Service Commissioner
Raskin is on the board of directors of the Conference of State Bank Supervisors, and serves as the Chair of the Federal Legislation Committee. She also was named as Chair of the Regulatory Restructuring Task Force, a group of state banking commissioners who are developing principles for evaluating regulatory restructuring proposals and Chair of the Consumer Financial Products Agency Task Force. She has recently testified before the United States Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Development on the topic of financial literacy; before the House Financial Services Committee on the topic of mortgage fraud; before the Congressional Oversight Panel on the topic of regulatory restructuring and before the Joint Economic Committee of Congress on the topic of predatory lending. She was also appointed to the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council. Sarah Bloom Raskin is the recipient of the 2009 Maryland Consumer Rights Coalition Consumer Advocate of the Year Award.[1]
New America Foundation (from left) Sarah Bloom Raskin, Jonathan Mintz and Ellen Seidman On Feb. 16, 2010, Raskin spoke alongside Commissioner of the New York City Department of Consumer Affairs, Jonathan Mintz; Legislative Director of the Consumer Federation of America, Travis Plunkett; Senior Policy Counsel for Center for Responsible Lending, Julia Gordon; Ellen Seidman, Senior Research Fellow at the New America Foundation; Staff Writer for the The American Prospect, Tim Fernholz; Director, Asset Building Program at the New America Foundation, Reid Cramer at an event in Washington, D.C., hosted by the New America Foundation on Consumer Financial Protection, entitled Is the Debate on the Right Track?[4]
Federal Reserve spot On Thursday April 29, 2010, Maryland’s top financial regulator was nominated by President Barack Obama, with Janet Yellen and Peter Diamond to serve on the Federal Reserve Board of Governors.
Sarah Bloom Raskin, Maryland’s commissioner of financial regulation, was tapped by Obama to fill one of three vacancies on the seven-member board that sets federal monetary policy.
The nomination is subject to Senate approval.[5]
Tough regulator? According to Jay Hancock of the Baltimore Sun;[6]
Her record suggests that Sarah Bloom Raskin, whom President Obama nominated to sit on the Federal Reserve's Board of Governors, will not be a passive regulator... here are Raskin's words from her acceptance speech last fall of an award from the Maryland Consumer Rights Coalition... "The chickens have come home to roost; these are our problems and they are not disappearing on their own... And in this it is necessary to move forward, in the midst of the devastation brought upon us through a combination of greed, weak regulation, and weak enforcement. We need courage..." Relative "progressive" According to socialist Robert Kuttner of The American Prospect;[7]
Obama has also just appointed three relative progressives to the Federal Reserve, including Sarah Bloom Raskin of Maryland, widely considered the best of the state financial regulators. There is not a single businessman or banker in the lot. Socialist economist, Lawrence Mishel of the Economic Policy Institute was also pleased with the appointments;[8]
"I think these are all great choices, and ones that will move Fed policy in the needed direction -- responsive to the needs of middle-class and working families." Raskin is committed to a vision for education which strengthens the education system as a force for a progressive society. In early June 2008, the alumni of Amherst College (from which she graduated in 1983), elected her to a six-year term on the college’s Board of Trustees, effective from July 1, 2008. At the time she made the following statement:
"To me, Amherst is fundamentally and surpassingly important, and I want to help make it an ever stronger force for social progress and enlightenment. I am honored beyond words to serve my fellow alumni in this capacity."[9] Awards
The current federal False Claims Act has been hugely successful in fighting fraud against the federal government. One key to its success is that it allows private individuals, known as qui tam relators, and their lawyers to file a lawsuit on behalf of the federal government against alleged fraudsters. These qui tam relators are often industry insiders who witness fraud first hand. In most cases, the government would likely never discover the fraud without the help of these brave individuals.
The proposed Maryland law, like the federal False Claims Act, allows qui tam relators to file suit, but unlike the federal law, it does not allow the qui tam relator to prosecute the case on her own if the government does not choose to intervene.
By way of background, the federal False Claims Act requires a qui tam relator to file her lawsuit under seal, and that suit remains under seal for 60 days or longer while the government investigates and determines whether it wants to intervene. If the government intervenes, it assumes primary responsibility for prosecuting the case, although the qui tam relator remains an important part of that investigation.
In the federal system, when prosecutors decline to intervene in a False Claims Act case, they allow private qui tam relators to pursue the fraudsters on their own. When this happens, the federal prosecutors continue to monitor the progress of the investigation and trial preparation and may intervene in the case at a later time in order to settle or try it. Regardless of whether the government eventually intervenes or allows the private qui tam relator to take the case to trial, if the qui tam relator is successful, the government gets the lion's share of the money recovered (between 70 percent and 85 percent). What this means is that the federal False Claims Act allows the federal government to harness the power of the private qui tam relator and her lawyers to fight fraud in cases where the government lacks the time and/or resources to do so.
Maryland's proposed law lacks this provision and would not allow private qui tam relators to go forward in cases where the government did not intervene, thus forgoing the resources of the private qui tam relators and their attorneys in recovering money stolen from the state and forgoing the recovery of perhaps millions of dollars stolen from its treasury.
So why does Maryland's proposed law lack this important provision? No doubt, fears of trial lawyers run amok may be one reason. Those fears, however, are unfounded. Like the federal False Claims Act, the Maryland False Claims Act could include provisions to prevent qui tam relators from going forward when the government, for example, shows that certain actions by the relator will interfere with an ongoing civil or criminal investigation or where important national security issues are implicated. Additionally, Maryland, like the federal government, could ensure that regardless of the stage of the pending litigation, the government is always free to step in and dismiss, settle or pursue the case. Likewise, as in the federal system, the cost of litigation and the heightened scrutiny placed on fraud cases by judges will also help to deter frivolous or vexatious suits in Maryland.
By allowing private qui tam relators to go forward under the watchful eye of Maryland state prosecutors, the state would be able to expand its prosecutorial resources and recover more money stolen from its taxpayers. It will also encourage more individuals who witness fraud to come forward with their evidence, and it will bring Maryland in line with the federal government and the governments of a number of other states who have qui tam provisions that mirror the federal law. Without such an expansion of the current proposed law, Maryland risks leaving millions of hard earned taxpayer dollars in the pockets of thieves.
Julie Grohovsky is a former federal prosecutor and a partner in the law firm of Wu, Grohovsky & Whipple, where her clients include qui tam relators. Her email is jgrohovsky@dcwhitecollar.com.
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Baltimore City pols have passed laws that keep Baltimore City citizens completely unable to access public justice and even the Constitutional right to legal aid is circumvented by sending government funding for legal aid to private lawyers---pro-bono rather than having a public justice office handle this. There is no arm or funding of the Baltimore City State's Attorney for white collar crime and civil rights justice.....and the Maryland Attorney General's Office only PROTECTS government officials taken to court for corruption---it does not protect the Maryland citizens seeking justice from government employees committing this corruption. This is why all of Maryland's lawyers are tied to the fraud and not seeking justice.
If you are rebuilding Rule of Law and Equal Protection------THESE JUSTICE AGENCIES MUST BE FUNDED AND FULLY STAFFED WITH PUBLIC EMPOYEES THAT SUPPORT THESE INVESTIGATIONS AND PROSECUTIONS------THIS MUST BE WHAT ANY CANDIDATE RUNNING FOR OFFICE SHOUTS-----NOT JUST AT ELECTION TIME----BUT OVER TIME!
Look at Barbara Mikulski-----Senate Appropriations Committee from Baltimore City----Appropriations and a district known nationally as the most corrupt and criminal do not go together unless you are Nancy Pelosi from Baltimore. Mikulski is the pol that allows such a level of injustice and allows all avenues of justice be dismantled and defunded----and then pretends to fight for all of this when the news hits the national media.
IT IS ALL PROGRESSIVE POSING AND MIKULSKI WORKS FOR A VERY NEO-CONSERVATIVE JOHNS HOPKINS----SHE IS NOT PROGRESSIVE AND NOT A DEMOCRAT
Democrats do not allow systemic corporate fraud and corruption suck the wealth out of labor and justice.
Mikulski Stresses Criminal Justice, Law Enforcement Reforms and Resources at Hearing on DOJ Budget
Release Date: Thursday, May 07, 2015 WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, U.S. Senator Barbara A. Mikulski (D-Md.), Vice Chairwoman of the Senate Appropriations Committee and of the Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies (CJS) Subcommittee, attended a CJS hearing to review the fiscal year 2016 budget request for the Department of Justice (DOJ).
The following are Vice Chairwoman Mikulski’s remarks, as prepared for delivery: “I’m glad to be here with Chairman Shelby and happy Loretta Lynch was finally confirmed as the United States Attorney General. “Attorney General Lynch, you’ve had an eventful two weeks in office. This is your first hearing since being confirmed and I look forward to your testimony on the 2016 budget. I am eager to hear from you about ongoing efforts at the many Justice Department agencies. “First off, I want to thank you Attorney General Lynch for your professional and intensive interaction with the Maryland delegation and with the leadership of Baltimore – our mayor, our law enforcement officers, our community leaders and our faith leaders. “You and your team have been on the ground, including Vanita Gupta who leads the Civil Rights Division, Ron Davis who is the Director of the COPS Office and your Community Relations Service staff. On Tuesday, we were in Baltimore together listening to the faith community, meeting with local officials and getting the facts. “Today I will not ask questions about the Freddie Gray investigation. Charges have been filed against the six officers and the legal process is unfolding. We should let justice be served with due process for Freddie Gray and his family, and due process for the officers and their families. “However, Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake has requested you conduct a pattern and practices investigation, examining the entire Baltimore Police Department’s procedures and their impact on the civil rights of Baltimore’s citizens. Today, Senator Cardin and I will be sending a letter supporting the request for a pattern and practices investigation. I look forward to your response. “In many cities throughout the country, including my own city of Baltimore, the trust between community and police is broken. We must do all we can to restore that trust. We need criminal justice reform undertaken with the fierce urgency of now. “I intend to ask: what resources you need? And, what does need to be reformed? We need targeted reforms that protect the rights of communities, while also protecting the rights of officers who do difficult jobs and deserve our respect. “As appropriators, we put money in the federal checkbook to fund the Justice Department. Last year, this Committee put $2.3 billion into the federal checkbook for grant programs and targeted resources that help police and local governments make their communities safer and more secure. These programs range from tackling the rape kit backlog to training judges handling child abuse cases. Let’s look at a few examples of what Justice Department grant funds buy: “Mayors have told us they need help getting enough cops on the beat, so we put $180 million in funding to hire 1,000 new officers. “Police departments told us they need better equipment and training, so we put $375 million into Byrne-JAG grants, which helped 1,500 local police departments buy officer radios, computers for squad cars, police car dash cameras and other equipment and training, including body cameras. In fact, this Committee provided $20 million to purchase body cameras in 2015, and the request includes another $30 million for 2016. “Communities and non-profits want help keeping our young people on the straight and narrow. The Omnibus included $252 million for juvenile justice programs, such as delinquency prevention and youth mentoring. Are we getting our money’s worth? Are we doing enough prevention and intervention? “Those are just some of the resources we provide to help communities. But resources aren’t enough. We’ve also heard calls for criminal justice reform from faith based organizations, community leaders and national civil rights organizations. “There are three to consider here today, and I’d like to hear your reaction during this hearing or following it in writing. “First, tie grant funding to training. I just discussed some of the important grants for state and local law enforcement. In order to get those grant funds, should DOJ require training on racial and ethnic bias and use of force? What national standards should we require departments to meet? Are those standards developed and in use? “Second, examine extensive use of body-worn cameras. Some see recording encounters between police and the community as deterrence against improper use of force, others see it as protection. But I have questions: what policies need to be in place to meet privacy concerns, technology concerns and fiscal concerns? Should we be funding body cameras? What will we learn from pilot programs funded in 2015? We put in $20 million for body camera demonstrations, but in Baltimore alone it would take $9 million to put a camera on every officer. Are body cameras a needed reform, or just a quick fix solution? “Third, the examination of broken windows policy, which now appears to have resulted in a broken trust with the community. Initially, it appeared to be a success – crime rates were lower and even community leaders seemed satisfied with it. The idea was to stop youth from doing minor crimes to prevent them from escalating to major crimes. But what happened was an obsession with statistics. Performance became measured on how many people you stopped, not how many problems were solved. “According to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), in 2012, there were more than 120,000 police stops in Baltimore. People were stopped for broken windows offenses, but we never fixed the broken windows. We never addressed the vacant houses, lack of jobs or truancy issue. What are your plans and strategies to examine broken windows policy to make sure police strategies don’t contribute to lack of trust within communities? “Last week, on that horrible night – it’s true a couple hundred kids caused a significant disturbance, but it’s also true that more than 85,000 of Baltimore’s kids went home and did what they were supposed to. “Baltimore is a great city of over 610,000 law abiding people who respect the law and want the law to respect them. They are ready to help do their part. They don’t want quick fixes or money thrown at them or see the effort gone as soon as the TV cameras are gone. They want relentless follow through on what needs to be done long term to fix the broken windows and bring about systemic change. I look forward to hearing your ideas.”
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While Barbara Mikulski and the rest of these Clinton neo-liberals and Bush neo-cons allow tens of trillions of dollars in corporate fraud and spend several years installing policies that build global corporate power and wealth----and global corporate tribunal and court rule----AND MARYLAND LEADS IN THIS----ALL WITH A GOAL OF THIRD WORLD POVERTY AND NO RIGHTS AS CITIZENS-----we do not believe these pols------this money is simply being used to build a military policing and spying/surveillance state.
The article below is long and this is just a piece of it----but it shows how after the Reagan/Clinton neo-liberal economic policies growing global corporations and deregulation and dismantling of Federal agencies and oversight----ALL WITH THE GOAL OF ALLOWING WIDESPREAD CORPORATE FRAUD TO MAXIMIZE PROFITS----Congress and statehouses started to move funding for public justice from white collar crime and government corruption to street crime ----THIS IS WHY TODAY BOTH US JUSTICE AGENCIES AND STATE JUSTICE AGENCIES ARE COMPLETELY FOCUSED ON STREET CRIME.
What happens when you end Welfare at the same time you expand US corporations overseas knowing unemployment and poverty will soar? YOU GROW STREET CRIME AND DISMANTLE WHITE COLLAR CORPORATE FRAUD AND GOVERNMENT CORRUPTION AGENCIES.
This is the first step to rebuilding Rule of Law and Equal Protection and we cannot move forward with pols that ignore fraud and corruption and make everyone afraid of street crime using this as an excuse for a militarized policing and surveillance society.
PEOPLE IN UNDERSERVED COMMUNITIES HAVE VIOLENCE BECAUSE THEY HAVE NO JOBS.....THEY HAVE NO JOBS BECAUSE GLOBAL MARKETS AND GLOBAL CORPORATIONS TOOK THEM AWAY AND GIVE CORPORATIONS POWER TO STAGNATE THE US ECONOMY WITH THE HELP OF THE FEDERAL RESERVE!
If WE THE PEOPLE keep allowing these global corporate pols to drive impoverishment and crashing economies while using street crime as a reason to install a police state-----
AN INJUSTICE FOR ONE BECOMES INJUSTICE FOR ALL! WHETHER DEMOCRAT OR REPUBLICAN RICH/MIDDLE/WORKING CLASS!
As you see below all justice funding is being sent out in block grants and as with Bush and Obama these block grants are now being sent to private non-profit groups and not government coffers and all of the public justice funding is paying for public defenders for zero tolerance and stop and frisk arrests-----for drug enforcement-----for militarized police training and swat teams. Baltimore City has a growth industry in corporate non-profits now focused on street crime and juveniles and none working to end massive corporate fraud and government corruption.
We have billions of dollars stolen in Baltimore City by Baltimore Development and those development corporations-----while Baltimore media tells us the poor is the problem.
Show Me the Money”: The Connection Between Federal Funding and Support for Law Enforcement in Illinois
Christine Martin, Assistant Professor, Department of Criminology, Law, and Justice, University of Illinois at ChicagoThe current adverse financial climate in the United States has reached crisis proportions. As with all other institutions across the nation, this financial crisis has had an effect on the criminal justice system. One indication of this impact was President Bush’s 2008 decisions concerning the portion of federal funding allocated to fight crime nationwide. In January 2008, Congress cut funding for the Byrne Justice Assistance Grant (hereafter, the ADAA grant), which funded local and state drug enforcement efforts. In 2008, this fund was cut by two-thirds, from $520 million to $170 million. The Bush Administration argued that the program should end because crime was down and that the money was needed elsewhere (Martin, 2008).A local law enforcement agent’s comments show the immediate impact of this decision. A statewide drug enforcement coordinator for the Illinois State Police said, “[The cut in funds] couldn’t have come at a worse time. . . . After all the success we’ve started to have, this could set the Midwest back a good 20 years in our fight against this drug [Methamphetamine]” (Martin, 2008). An even more recent example of how the current economic crisis affects local criminal justice efforts can be found in President Obama’s American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA). This act was signed into law on February 17, 2009. The act was heralded as “an extraordinary response to a crisis unlike any since the Great Depression” (see U.S. Department of Justice, 2011). The component of this act that is germane to this investigation is the $2.7 billion provided to the Office of Justice Programs (OJP) from which much of the federal funding comes that support local and statewide law enforcement efforts in the criminal justice community.In this article, I look at how much funding Illinois received from the federal government in support of its criminal justice efforts. I specifically focus on law enforcement efforts in police and sheriffs’ departments, which is where the system begins. I analyze federal funding trends with the goal of determining how the nation’s economic situation has impacted support for law enforcement efforts. Local and state criminal justice agencies throughout the nation rely on these funds to help fight and manage crime. I track federal funds awarded to the Illinois Criminal Justice Information Authority (the Authority), which the governor of Illinois has designated as a State Administering Agency. I track federal funds awarded to the Authority to support law enforcement efforts over an 18-year period between federal fiscal years (FFYs) 1992 and 2009.
160 Law Enforcement Executive Forum • 2011 • 11(3)
Federally Funded Programs and SAAs
One way that federal funds are distributed at local and state levels to fight crime is through federal grant funds. Federal grants are transfers of money from the federal government to specific state agencies, referred to as SAAs (State Administering Agencies). SAAs are responsible for dispersing federal funds to support specific criminal justice activities and programs. Each state’s SAA is responsible for applying for, receiving, establishing priorities for, allocating, and disbursing grant funds to eligible local and state agencies (Olson, 1991; see also the overview of the state and federal grants unit on the Authority’s website: www.icjia.state.il.us/public). SAAs are also responsible for assuring that agencies that receive funds comply with state and federal regulations. For this article, I collected data from the Authority, Illinois’s SAA. As an SAA, the Authority is responsible for disbursing federal grant funds in Illinois. This article tracks funding received from the OJP and managed by the Authority. The Authority began operating in 1983 and functions under statutory mandate (see the Illinois Criminal Justice Information Act, Public Act 82-1039, eff. January 1, 1983). One of the Authority’s mandated duties is the administration of federal funds to fight crime and to assist victims (Illinois Criminal Justice Information Authority [ICJIA], 1986). The Authority started dispersing federal funds in 1985 after Governor Thompson selected it to administer funds from two new federal programs: (1) the Justice Assistance Act (JAA) and (2) the Victims of Crime Act (VOCA) programs—both of which were created under the Comprehensive Crime Control Act of 1984. The JAA provided money for fighting crime and improving the administration of justice, and the VOCA provided money for programs to assist and compensate victims of crime (ICJIA, 1986, p. 26). The Authority formed and staffed a special unit called the Office of Federal Assistance Programs, which later became known as the Federal and State Grants Unit (FSGU), to perform the duties associated with managing federal funds. Amounts of federal funding dispersed through the Authority to fight crime and assist victims in Illinois have waxed and waned over time. However, analyzing trends in the amounts of the awards distributed from federal funds over time should show how current financial conditions have impacted this support. I begin my analysis with a brief description of federal funds awarded to and disbursed by the Authority for law enforcement efforts between FFYs 1992 and 2009.
“Show Me the Money”: A Historical Account of the Flow of Federal Funds for Law Enforcement in Illinois
Federal funding has been awarded to the State of Illinois and other states across the nation for a variety of criminal justice efforts. In addition to supporting law enforcement efforts, money has been spent to fund programs to fight drug abuse and juvenile delinquency, to manage and defend the public from offenders, to provide help to addicted offenders, to improve technology, and to assist crime victims.
Table 1 lists all federally funded grant programs managed by the Authority between 1992 and 2009.
Law Enforcement Executive Forum • 2011 • 11(3) 161
Table 1. Federal Grant Programs Administered by the Authority, FFYs 1992-2009
Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1996 (Byrne Formula Grant Program
)Congressionally Mandated AwardsJuvenile Accountability Block Grant
Justice Assistance Grants Program Justice Information Technology Integration Implementation Subgrant
Local Law Enforcement Block Grant
National Criminal History Improvement Program
National Forensic Sciences Improvement Act
National Sex Offender Registry Program
President Elect Security Assistance Reimbursement
Project Safe Neighborhoods Residential Substance Abuse Treatment for State Prisoners Program
State Justice Statistics Grant
State Identification Systems
Violence Against Women Formula Grants
Victims of Crime Act
Violent Offender Incarceration and Truth-in-Sentencing Incentive Grant
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The reason Maryland's Jamie and Sarah Raskin and Brian Frosh------why Maryland's Mikulsi and other Congressional pols are ignoring all of the US Constitutional rights of citizens and not saying a word about THE VISIGOTH LOOTING OF OUR TREASURIES AT ALL LEVELS OF GOVERNMENT-----is because Clinton neo-liberals and Bush neo-cons are working under what they think is a NEW AMERICA-------under Trans Pacific Trade Pact-----the 21st Century Economy under global corporate tribunal and court rule!
Today I speak of the need to rebuild and have a strong public sector as regards Rule of Law and Equal Protection of all citizens to the legal system in America-----THE PUBLIC SECTOR IS A MUST!
Who supports the privatization of all that is public every election by supporting Clinton neo-liberals? Labor union leaders, justice organization leaders, church leaders----ALL THE DEMOCRATIC BASE OF LABOR AND JUSTICE----WHICH IS 80% OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY FOLKS----STOP ALLOWING CLINTON NEO-LIBERALS TO CONTROL THE PEOPLE'S DEMOCRATIC PARTY---ENGAGE AND BE THE CANDIDATES IN ALL PRIMARIES AGAINST CLINTON NEO-LIBERALS!
Keep in mind that these little snippets written on TPP do not reveal what will be the worst of conditions----and TPP is the mission for all of Clinton neo-liberal and Bush neo-con policy these few decades----Obama's terms were completely about TPP installation. A dismantled public justice system was needed to allow for the installation of TPP----and rebuilding Rule of Law will get rid of it. ANTI-TRUST LAWS WILL KILL GLOBAL CORPORATIONS COMING TO AMERICA!
The Trans-Pacific Partnership treaty is the complete opposite of 'free trade'
Mark Weisbrot Tuesday 19 November 2013 10.49 EST The Guardian
The TPP would strip our constitutional rights, while offering no gains for the majority of Americans. It's a win for corporations
The proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement among 12 governments, touted as one of the largest "free trade" agreements in US history, is running into difficulties as the public learns more about it. Last week 151 Democrats and 23 Republicans (pdf) in the House of Representatives signed letters to the US chief negotiators expressing opposition to a "fast track" procedure for voting on the proposed agreement. This procedure would limit the congressional role and debate over an agreement already negotiated and signed by the executive branch, which the Congress would have to vote up or down without amendments.
Most Americans couldn't tell you what "fast track" means, but if they knew what it entails they would certainly be against it. As one of the country's leading trade law experts and probably the foremost authority on Fast Track, Lori Wallach of Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch, put it:
[Fast track] authorized executive-branch officials to set US policy on non-tariff, and indeed not-trade, issues in the context of 'trade' negotiations.
This means that fast track, which first began under Nixon in 1974, was not only a usurpation of the US Congress' constitutional authority "to regulate commerce with foreign nations".
It also gave the executive branch – which is generally much less accountable to public pressure than the Congress – a means of negating and pre-empting important legislation by our elected representatives. Laws to protect the environment, food safety, consumers (from monopoly pricing), and other public interest concerns can now be traded away in "trade" negotiations. And US law must be made to conform to the treaty.
How ironic that this massive transfer of power to special-interests such as giant pharmaceutical or financial corporations has been sold to the press as a means of holding "special interest" groups – who might oppose tariff reductions that harm them but are good for everyone else – in check.
But the TPP and its promoters are full to the brim with ironies. It is quite amazing that a treaty like the TPP can still be promoted as a "free trade" agreement when its most economically important provisions are the exact opposite of "free trade" – the expansion of protectionism.
Exhibit A was released by WikiLeaks last week: the latest draft of the "intellectual property" chapter of the agreement, one of 24 (out of 29) chapters that do not have to do with trade. This chapter has provisions that will make it easier for pharmaceutical companies to get patents, including in developing countries; have these patents for more years; and extend the ability of these companies to limit access to the scientific data that is necessary for other researchers to develop new medicines. And the United States is even pushing for provisions that would allow surgical procedures to be patented – provisions that may be currently against US law.
All of these measures will help raise the price of medicines and health care, which will strain public health systems and price some people out of the market for important medicines. It is interesting to see how much worse the TPP is than the WTO's Trips (Trade-Related Aspects of International Property Rights). This, too, was a massive rip-off of consumers and patients throughout the world, but after years of struggle by health advocates and public interest groups, some of its worst features were attenuated, and further consolidation of pharmaceutical companies' interests were blocked.
In case you were wondering why we had to get this information from WikiLeaks, it's because the draft negotiating texts are kept secret from the public. Even members of the US Congress and their staff have extremely limited access. Thus the much-maligned WikiLeaks has once again proven how valuable and justified are their efforts to bring transparency to important policy-making that is done in the darkness – whether it is "collateral murder", or other forms of life-threatening unaccountability.
One part of the TPP that shows why negotiators want to minimize public awareness of the agreement consists of provisions giving corporations the right – as is the case under the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta) – to directly sue governments for regulations that infringe upon their profits or potential profits. This, too, is much worse than the WTO, where a corporation has to convince its government to file a case against another government. These private enforcement actions – which if won collect from the defendant government – are judged by special tribunals outside of either country's judicial system, without the kinds of due process or openness that exists, for example, in the US legal system. A currently infamous example is the action by Lone Pine Resources, a Delaware-incorporated company, against the government of Quebec for its moratorium on fracking.
Perhaps less known than its other failings, the TPP doesn't even offer any economic gains for the majority of Americans who are being asked to sacrifice their constitutional rights. The gains from increased trade turn out to be so small that they are equivalent to a rounding error in the measurement of our GDP. The study most touted by proponents of the agreement, published by the Peterson Institute of International Economics, shows a cumulative increase of 0.13% of GDP by 2025. This would be trivial in any case; but the worse news is that, taking into account some of the unequalizing effects of the agreement – these treaties tend to redistribute income upwards – a Centre for Economic and Policy Research study showed that most Americans will actually lose because of the TPP.
US corporate interests are, rather obviously in this case, driving the agenda of the TPP. The agreement is in many ways a "plan B" after the last 12 years of WTO negotiations have stagnated – in large part due to considerable, well-organized public resistance in dozens of countries – and failed to achieve many of the goals of its corporate architects. But other branches of the US government have geostrategic goals as well. The world's would-be rulers also hope to separate the "bad kids" from the "good kids" among developing countries. It is no coincidence that in Latin America, the negotiating partners are Mexico, Chile, and Peru, and none of the leftist governments that now prevail in most of the region. And of course, a main goal of the agreement is to try and "isolate" China.
The Obama administration will no doubt appeal to some members of Congress on the basis of this neocolonial world view. But for Americans who are learning about the agreement, it is clear that the real "us against them" is not America against the more independent nations of the developing world, but TPP countries' citizens against a corporate swindle being negotiated behind their backs.
'Jamie Raskin, a Senior Fellow at People for the American Way Foundation, is a professor of constitutional law at American University and a member of the State Senate in Maryland. He was an original sponsor and floor leader of the state’s marriage equality legislation upheld by the voters at the polls in November'.
I want to use this last post as a segue into talk about the importance of the public sector. As I pointed out, The People for the American Way led by a Clinton Wall Street global corporate tribunal rule group of people IS RIDICULOUS. There is no American Way under Trans Pacific Trade Pact and Global Corporate Tribunals. The FED and Wall Street are the face of this global corporate tribunal policy and the face of systemic fraud and corruption and total disregard of the US Constitution. So, Jamie Raskin as a Maryland Assembly pol posing as a progressive Democrat from Montgomery County-----IS A GREAT BIG PHONY! Think about the people and organizations that pretend he is a progressive and don't listen to them.
Clinton neo-liberals like Raskin have been busy for a few decades privatizing all that is public allowing massive corporate fraud which is why the Washington Beltway counties like Montgomery are the wealthiest in the nation.
NONE OF THIS IS IN THE DEMOCRATIC PLATFORM FOR GOODNESS SAKE.
Below you see the institutions coming out for the Raskins-----The Maryland Consumer Rights Coalition for example are people all connected to making sure all of this Clinton neo-liberalism-----THE NEW AMERICA UNDER TRANS PACIFIC TRADE PACT-----is protected all while sounding progressive.
Everyone living in Maryland knows Maryland has not had consumer protection or public justice EVER. Maryland is completely corporate, has systemic corporate fraud and government corruption taking tens of billions of dollars from Maryland and Baltimore City coffers every year all because----the Maryland Assembly and Baltimore City have dismantled all oversight and accountability in the public sector----it has defunded and dismantled all avenues of public justice by dismantling the Maryland State Attorney and City State's Attorney office.
MARYLAND IS THE OPPOSITE OF CONSUMER PROTECTION, RULE OF LAW, AND PUBLIC JUSTICE SO NO ONE IN GOVERNMENT LEADERSHIP IS PROGRESSIVE ESPECIALLY A FEDERAL RESERVE APPOINTMENT.
All of the institutions praising Sarah Raskin as progressive are led by Clinton Wall Street global corporate neo-liberals.
If REAL progressive liberals controlled the Maryland Democratic Party-----these leaders WOULD NOT BE ENDORSING THESE PEOPLE! Just because Sarah is a woman does not make her a progressive or a civil rights feminist----she is a Hillary corporate rule and wealth.
Maryland was ground zero for the subprime mortgage frauds and is worst in the nation for fraud and corruption which means THERE IS NO OFFICE OF THE COMMISSIONER OF FINANCIAL REGULATION
'The Office of the Commissioner of Financial Regulation is the primary regulator for financial institutions chartered in Maryland, including State-chartered banks, credit unions, and trust companies; and State-licensed financial entities including, consumer finance companies, mortgage lenders, mortgage brokers, mortgage servicers, mortgage loan originators, credit reporting agencies, consumer debt collection agencies, debt management companies, check cashers, credit services businesses, and money transmitters. The Commissioner is represented in legal matters by the Office of the Attorney General'.
Sarah Bloom Raskin
Sarah Bloom Raskin is married to Jamin B. Raskin and is the daughter-in-law of Institute for Policy Studies founder Marcus Raskin.
Education Sarah Bloom Raskin is a 1986 graduate of Harvard Law School. She graduated from Amherst College in 1983, magna cum laude in Economics, and Phi Beta Kappa. She is a recipient of the James R. Nelson Award in Economics.[1]
Family Congressman Chris Van Hollen with Jamie and Sarah Raskin on the campaign trail in 2006 Sarah's husband Jamie Raskin is a Professor of Law at American Unversity and a Maryland State Senator. With Jamie she has had three children, Hannah Grace Raskin (born July 13, 1992), Thomas Bloom Raskin (born January 30, 1995), and Tabitha Claire Raskin, (born January 31, 1997).[2]
Career Sarah Bloom Raskin was appointed on August 28, 2007 as Maryland's Commissioner of Financial Regulation. Prior to her appointment, Ms. Raskin accumulated extensive experience in the financial industry from a range of perspectives in policy, regulatory and legal roles. Immediately prior to joining the Office of Financial Regulation, Mrs. Raskin served as Managing Director at Promontory Financial Group. Mrs. Raskin was also Banking Counsel to the Senate Banking Committee (the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs) and has worked at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and the Joint Economic Committee of Congress.[1]
Raskin was an associate, Mayer Brown, 1986-88 and also associate, of Washington DC law firm Arnold & Porter, 1988-93[3]
Service Commissioner
Raskin is on the board of directors of the Conference of State Bank Supervisors, and serves as the Chair of the Federal Legislation Committee. She also was named as Chair of the Regulatory Restructuring Task Force, a group of state banking commissioners who are developing principles for evaluating regulatory restructuring proposals and Chair of the Consumer Financial Products Agency Task Force. She has recently testified before the United States Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Development on the topic of financial literacy; before the House Financial Services Committee on the topic of mortgage fraud; before the Congressional Oversight Panel on the topic of regulatory restructuring and before the Joint Economic Committee of Congress on the topic of predatory lending. She was also appointed to the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council. Sarah Bloom Raskin is the recipient of the 2009 Maryland Consumer Rights Coalition Consumer Advocate of the Year Award.[1]
New America Foundation (from left) Sarah Bloom Raskin, Jonathan Mintz and Ellen Seidman On Feb. 16, 2010, Raskin spoke alongside Commissioner of the New York City Department of Consumer Affairs, Jonathan Mintz; Legislative Director of the Consumer Federation of America, Travis Plunkett; Senior Policy Counsel for Center for Responsible Lending, Julia Gordon; Ellen Seidman, Senior Research Fellow at the New America Foundation; Staff Writer for the The American Prospect, Tim Fernholz; Director, Asset Building Program at the New America Foundation, Reid Cramer at an event in Washington, D.C., hosted by the New America Foundation on Consumer Financial Protection, entitled Is the Debate on the Right Track?[4]
Federal Reserve spot On Thursday April 29, 2010, Maryland’s top financial regulator was nominated by President Barack Obama, with Janet Yellen and Peter Diamond to serve on the Federal Reserve Board of Governors.
Sarah Bloom Raskin, Maryland’s commissioner of financial regulation, was tapped by Obama to fill one of three vacancies on the seven-member board that sets federal monetary policy.
The nomination is subject to Senate approval.[5]
Tough regulator? According to Jay Hancock of the Baltimore Sun;[6]
Her record suggests that Sarah Bloom Raskin, whom President Obama nominated to sit on the Federal Reserve's Board of Governors, will not be a passive regulator... here are Raskin's words from her acceptance speech last fall of an award from the Maryland Consumer Rights Coalition... "The chickens have come home to roost; these are our problems and they are not disappearing on their own... And in this it is necessary to move forward, in the midst of the devastation brought upon us through a combination of greed, weak regulation, and weak enforcement. We need courage..." Relative "progressive" According to socialist Robert Kuttner of The American Prospect;[7]
Obama has also just appointed three relative progressives to the Federal Reserve, including Sarah Bloom Raskin of Maryland, widely considered the best of the state financial regulators. There is not a single businessman or banker in the lot. Socialist economist, Lawrence Mishel of the Economic Policy Institute was also pleased with the appointments;[8]
"I think these are all great choices, and ones that will move Fed policy in the needed direction -- responsive to the needs of middle-class and working families." Raskin is committed to a vision for education which strengthens the education system as a force for a progressive society. In early June 2008, the alumni of Amherst College (from which she graduated in 1983), elected her to a six-year term on the college’s Board of Trustees, effective from July 1, 2008. At the time she made the following statement:
"To me, Amherst is fundamentally and surpassingly important, and I want to help make it an ever stronger force for social progress and enlightenment. I am honored beyond words to serve my fellow alumni in this capacity."[9] Awards
- Denis J. Murphy Consumer Advocate of the Year - presented on Sept. 24, 2009 at Maryland Consumer Rights Coalition meeting.
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See how knowing public policy at the national level and the goals of political philosophy tell you who the posers are? We can reverse all of these policies and recover all the massive corporate frauds with simple Rule of Law, Equal Protection, and enforcement of anti-trust laws.
WE NEED A STRONG PUBLIC SECTOR TO DO THIS----SEE WHY THESE POLS ARE DISMANTLING ALL THAT IS PUBLIC AND MOVING TO A GLOBAL MARKET CONTROL OF AMERICA?
Below you see an incidence I brought forward months ago-----Brian Frosh-----Raskin's tag team protector of Maryland's massive corporate fraud and government corruption----are made to look like they are doing something progressive while leaving out the ability of the public to seek justice from crime. Maryland is worst in the nation for fraud and corruption because the Maryland Attorney General and State's Attorneys do not pursue it. Yet, this law is allowed to be toted as progressive. The defunding of these public justice offices at state and local level has Maryland's public justice completely gone. This is why all of Maryland's Bar Association works for global corporate policy and not US Constitutional rights of citizens. There is Baltimore City's Rosenberg pretending to support a fight against fraud in Baltimore City -----the most fraudulent and corrupt in the nation. When local pundits, media, and organizations allow this posing while not educating that these pols are killing us with fraud and corruption----IGNORE THESE PEOPLE AND INSTITUTIONS----THEY ARE WORKING FOR GLOBAL CORPORATIONS AND SYSTEMIC FRAUD.
MarylandReporter.com- Attorney General Brian Frosh moved to broaden Maryland’s fight against fraud on Thursday, backing legislation that would include false claims against private ...
Sen. Jamin B. ‘Jamie’ Raskin, who chairs the Senate Executive Nominations Committee, says the influence of money threatens to corrupt judicial elections.- Lawmakers renew fight for Maryland False Claims Act AG Frosh calls measure his top priority
- By: Steve Lash Daily Record Legal Affairs Writer February 5, 2015
Lawmakers from both sides of the aisle reintroduced a bill on Thursday to permit employees of all government contractors to bring whistleblower actions when their company overcharges or otherwise defrauds the state or locality.
Attorney General Brian E. Frosh called the passage of the Maryland False Claims Act his “top legislative priority” for this General Assembly session.
“What this [proposed] law does, in effect, is incentivize integrity,” Frosh said in a statement. “When the government is being cheated, it often remains in the dark. Employees often have the most detailed knowledge about what is going on, and this new law would help bring that information to light, for everyone’s benefit.”
The proposed law would enable whistleblowers to collect attorney’s fees and up to 25 percent of the state’s recovery through that litigation. The bill would also permit the state to recover triple damages and prohibit companies from retaliating against the whistleblowers.
Sens. Jamin B. “Jamie” Raskin, D-Montgomery, and Michael J. Hough, R-Frederick and Carroll, are Senate cosponsors of the measure. Del. Samuel I. “Sandy” Rosenberg, D-Baltimore City, is sponsoring the bill in the House of Delegates.
Raskin said Frosh offered his “passionate” support for the legislation when the two men met in the senator’s office on the morning of Jan. 14, the first day of the General Assembly session. Frosh had also backed the bill while chair of the Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee, a position the Montgomery County Democrat relinquished in running for attorney general last year.
Similar legislation has failed in recent years in the face of strong opposition from the business community, which argued the measure would spur frivolous lawsuits.
Currently, whistleblower lawsuits are allowed only against health care institutions and providers under the 2010 False Health Claims Act. Under that law, Maryland has recovered $56 million over the past two years from Medicaid-related cases initiated by whistleblowers and others, according to the attorney general’s office.
Md. False Claims Act needs qui tam provision
By Julie Grohovsky
The current federal False Claims Act has been hugely successful in fighting fraud against the federal government. One key to its success is that it allows private individuals, known as qui tam relators, and their lawyers to file a lawsuit on behalf of the federal government against alleged fraudsters. These qui tam relators are often industry insiders who witness fraud first hand. In most cases, the government would likely never discover the fraud without the help of these brave individuals.
The proposed Maryland law, like the federal False Claims Act, allows qui tam relators to file suit, but unlike the federal law, it does not allow the qui tam relator to prosecute the case on her own if the government does not choose to intervene.
By way of background, the federal False Claims Act requires a qui tam relator to file her lawsuit under seal, and that suit remains under seal for 60 days or longer while the government investigates and determines whether it wants to intervene. If the government intervenes, it assumes primary responsibility for prosecuting the case, although the qui tam relator remains an important part of that investigation.
In the federal system, when prosecutors decline to intervene in a False Claims Act case, they allow private qui tam relators to pursue the fraudsters on their own. When this happens, the federal prosecutors continue to monitor the progress of the investigation and trial preparation and may intervene in the case at a later time in order to settle or try it. Regardless of whether the government eventually intervenes or allows the private qui tam relator to take the case to trial, if the qui tam relator is successful, the government gets the lion's share of the money recovered (between 70 percent and 85 percent). What this means is that the federal False Claims Act allows the federal government to harness the power of the private qui tam relator and her lawyers to fight fraud in cases where the government lacks the time and/or resources to do so.
Maryland's proposed law lacks this provision and would not allow private qui tam relators to go forward in cases where the government did not intervene, thus forgoing the resources of the private qui tam relators and their attorneys in recovering money stolen from the state and forgoing the recovery of perhaps millions of dollars stolen from its treasury.
So why does Maryland's proposed law lack this important provision? No doubt, fears of trial lawyers run amok may be one reason. Those fears, however, are unfounded. Like the federal False Claims Act, the Maryland False Claims Act could include provisions to prevent qui tam relators from going forward when the government, for example, shows that certain actions by the relator will interfere with an ongoing civil or criminal investigation or where important national security issues are implicated. Additionally, Maryland, like the federal government, could ensure that regardless of the stage of the pending litigation, the government is always free to step in and dismiss, settle or pursue the case. Likewise, as in the federal system, the cost of litigation and the heightened scrutiny placed on fraud cases by judges will also help to deter frivolous or vexatious suits in Maryland.
By allowing private qui tam relators to go forward under the watchful eye of Maryland state prosecutors, the state would be able to expand its prosecutorial resources and recover more money stolen from its taxpayers. It will also encourage more individuals who witness fraud to come forward with their evidence, and it will bring Maryland in line with the federal government and the governments of a number of other states who have qui tam provisions that mirror the federal law. Without such an expansion of the current proposed law, Maryland risks leaving millions of hard earned taxpayer dollars in the pockets of thieves.
Julie Grohovsky is a former federal prosecutor and a partner in the law firm of Wu, Grohovsky & Whipple, where her clients include qui tam relators. Her email is jgrohovsky@dcwhitecollar.com.
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Baltimore City pols have passed laws that keep Baltimore City citizens completely unable to access public justice and even the Constitutional right to legal aid is circumvented by sending government funding for legal aid to private lawyers---pro-bono rather than having a public justice office handle this. There is no arm or funding of the Baltimore City State's Attorney for white collar crime and civil rights justice.....and the Maryland Attorney General's Office only PROTECTS government officials taken to court for corruption---it does not protect the Maryland citizens seeking justice from government employees committing this corruption. This is why all of Maryland's lawyers are tied to the fraud and not seeking justice.
If you are rebuilding Rule of Law and Equal Protection------THESE JUSTICE AGENCIES MUST BE FUNDED AND FULLY STAFFED WITH PUBLIC EMPOYEES THAT SUPPORT THESE INVESTIGATIONS AND PROSECUTIONS------THIS MUST BE WHAT ANY CANDIDATE RUNNING FOR OFFICE SHOUTS-----NOT JUST AT ELECTION TIME----BUT OVER TIME!
Look at Barbara Mikulski-----Senate Appropriations Committee from Baltimore City----Appropriations and a district known nationally as the most corrupt and criminal do not go together unless you are Nancy Pelosi from Baltimore. Mikulski is the pol that allows such a level of injustice and allows all avenues of justice be dismantled and defunded----and then pretends to fight for all of this when the news hits the national media.
IT IS ALL PROGRESSIVE POSING AND MIKULSKI WORKS FOR A VERY NEO-CONSERVATIVE JOHNS HOPKINS----SHE IS NOT PROGRESSIVE AND NOT A DEMOCRAT
Democrats do not allow systemic corporate fraud and corruption suck the wealth out of labor and justice.
Mikulski Stresses Criminal Justice, Law Enforcement Reforms and Resources at Hearing on DOJ Budget
Release Date: Thursday, May 07, 2015 WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, U.S. Senator Barbara A. Mikulski (D-Md.), Vice Chairwoman of the Senate Appropriations Committee and of the Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies (CJS) Subcommittee, attended a CJS hearing to review the fiscal year 2016 budget request for the Department of Justice (DOJ).
The following are Vice Chairwoman Mikulski’s remarks, as prepared for delivery: “I’m glad to be here with Chairman Shelby and happy Loretta Lynch was finally confirmed as the United States Attorney General. “Attorney General Lynch, you’ve had an eventful two weeks in office. This is your first hearing since being confirmed and I look forward to your testimony on the 2016 budget. I am eager to hear from you about ongoing efforts at the many Justice Department agencies. “First off, I want to thank you Attorney General Lynch for your professional and intensive interaction with the Maryland delegation and with the leadership of Baltimore – our mayor, our law enforcement officers, our community leaders and our faith leaders. “You and your team have been on the ground, including Vanita Gupta who leads the Civil Rights Division, Ron Davis who is the Director of the COPS Office and your Community Relations Service staff. On Tuesday, we were in Baltimore together listening to the faith community, meeting with local officials and getting the facts. “Today I will not ask questions about the Freddie Gray investigation. Charges have been filed against the six officers and the legal process is unfolding. We should let justice be served with due process for Freddie Gray and his family, and due process for the officers and their families. “However, Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake has requested you conduct a pattern and practices investigation, examining the entire Baltimore Police Department’s procedures and their impact on the civil rights of Baltimore’s citizens. Today, Senator Cardin and I will be sending a letter supporting the request for a pattern and practices investigation. I look forward to your response. “In many cities throughout the country, including my own city of Baltimore, the trust between community and police is broken. We must do all we can to restore that trust. We need criminal justice reform undertaken with the fierce urgency of now. “I intend to ask: what resources you need? And, what does need to be reformed? We need targeted reforms that protect the rights of communities, while also protecting the rights of officers who do difficult jobs and deserve our respect. “As appropriators, we put money in the federal checkbook to fund the Justice Department. Last year, this Committee put $2.3 billion into the federal checkbook for grant programs and targeted resources that help police and local governments make their communities safer and more secure. These programs range from tackling the rape kit backlog to training judges handling child abuse cases. Let’s look at a few examples of what Justice Department grant funds buy: “Mayors have told us they need help getting enough cops on the beat, so we put $180 million in funding to hire 1,000 new officers. “Police departments told us they need better equipment and training, so we put $375 million into Byrne-JAG grants, which helped 1,500 local police departments buy officer radios, computers for squad cars, police car dash cameras and other equipment and training, including body cameras. In fact, this Committee provided $20 million to purchase body cameras in 2015, and the request includes another $30 million for 2016. “Communities and non-profits want help keeping our young people on the straight and narrow. The Omnibus included $252 million for juvenile justice programs, such as delinquency prevention and youth mentoring. Are we getting our money’s worth? Are we doing enough prevention and intervention? “Those are just some of the resources we provide to help communities. But resources aren’t enough. We’ve also heard calls for criminal justice reform from faith based organizations, community leaders and national civil rights organizations. “There are three to consider here today, and I’d like to hear your reaction during this hearing or following it in writing. “First, tie grant funding to training. I just discussed some of the important grants for state and local law enforcement. In order to get those grant funds, should DOJ require training on racial and ethnic bias and use of force? What national standards should we require departments to meet? Are those standards developed and in use? “Second, examine extensive use of body-worn cameras. Some see recording encounters between police and the community as deterrence against improper use of force, others see it as protection. But I have questions: what policies need to be in place to meet privacy concerns, technology concerns and fiscal concerns? Should we be funding body cameras? What will we learn from pilot programs funded in 2015? We put in $20 million for body camera demonstrations, but in Baltimore alone it would take $9 million to put a camera on every officer. Are body cameras a needed reform, or just a quick fix solution? “Third, the examination of broken windows policy, which now appears to have resulted in a broken trust with the community. Initially, it appeared to be a success – crime rates were lower and even community leaders seemed satisfied with it. The idea was to stop youth from doing minor crimes to prevent them from escalating to major crimes. But what happened was an obsession with statistics. Performance became measured on how many people you stopped, not how many problems were solved. “According to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), in 2012, there were more than 120,000 police stops in Baltimore. People were stopped for broken windows offenses, but we never fixed the broken windows. We never addressed the vacant houses, lack of jobs or truancy issue. What are your plans and strategies to examine broken windows policy to make sure police strategies don’t contribute to lack of trust within communities? “Last week, on that horrible night – it’s true a couple hundred kids caused a significant disturbance, but it’s also true that more than 85,000 of Baltimore’s kids went home and did what they were supposed to. “Baltimore is a great city of over 610,000 law abiding people who respect the law and want the law to respect them. They are ready to help do their part. They don’t want quick fixes or money thrown at them or see the effort gone as soon as the TV cameras are gone. They want relentless follow through on what needs to be done long term to fix the broken windows and bring about systemic change. I look forward to hearing your ideas.”
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While Barbara Mikulski and the rest of these Clinton neo-liberals and Bush neo-cons allow tens of trillions of dollars in corporate fraud and spend several years installing policies that build global corporate power and wealth----and global corporate tribunal and court rule----AND MARYLAND LEADS IN THIS----ALL WITH A GOAL OF THIRD WORLD POVERTY AND NO RIGHTS AS CITIZENS-----we do not believe these pols------this money is simply being used to build a military policing and spying/surveillance state.
The article below is long and this is just a piece of it----but it shows how after the Reagan/Clinton neo-liberal economic policies growing global corporations and deregulation and dismantling of Federal agencies and oversight----ALL WITH THE GOAL OF ALLOWING WIDESPREAD CORPORATE FRAUD TO MAXIMIZE PROFITS----Congress and statehouses started to move funding for public justice from white collar crime and government corruption to street crime ----THIS IS WHY TODAY BOTH US JUSTICE AGENCIES AND STATE JUSTICE AGENCIES ARE COMPLETELY FOCUSED ON STREET CRIME.
What happens when you end Welfare at the same time you expand US corporations overseas knowing unemployment and poverty will soar? YOU GROW STREET CRIME AND DISMANTLE WHITE COLLAR CORPORATE FRAUD AND GOVERNMENT CORRUPTION AGENCIES.
This is the first step to rebuilding Rule of Law and Equal Protection and we cannot move forward with pols that ignore fraud and corruption and make everyone afraid of street crime using this as an excuse for a militarized policing and surveillance society.
PEOPLE IN UNDERSERVED COMMUNITIES HAVE VIOLENCE BECAUSE THEY HAVE NO JOBS.....THEY HAVE NO JOBS BECAUSE GLOBAL MARKETS AND GLOBAL CORPORATIONS TOOK THEM AWAY AND GIVE CORPORATIONS POWER TO STAGNATE THE US ECONOMY WITH THE HELP OF THE FEDERAL RESERVE!
If WE THE PEOPLE keep allowing these global corporate pols to drive impoverishment and crashing economies while using street crime as a reason to install a police state-----
AN INJUSTICE FOR ONE BECOMES INJUSTICE FOR ALL! WHETHER DEMOCRAT OR REPUBLICAN RICH/MIDDLE/WORKING CLASS!
As you see below all justice funding is being sent out in block grants and as with Bush and Obama these block grants are now being sent to private non-profit groups and not government coffers and all of the public justice funding is paying for public defenders for zero tolerance and stop and frisk arrests-----for drug enforcement-----for militarized police training and swat teams. Baltimore City has a growth industry in corporate non-profits now focused on street crime and juveniles and none working to end massive corporate fraud and government corruption.
We have billions of dollars stolen in Baltimore City by Baltimore Development and those development corporations-----while Baltimore media tells us the poor is the problem.
Show Me the Money”: The Connection Between Federal Funding and Support for Law Enforcement in Illinois
Christine Martin, Assistant Professor, Department of Criminology, Law, and Justice, University of Illinois at ChicagoThe current adverse financial climate in the United States has reached crisis proportions. As with all other institutions across the nation, this financial crisis has had an effect on the criminal justice system. One indication of this impact was President Bush’s 2008 decisions concerning the portion of federal funding allocated to fight crime nationwide. In January 2008, Congress cut funding for the Byrne Justice Assistance Grant (hereafter, the ADAA grant), which funded local and state drug enforcement efforts. In 2008, this fund was cut by two-thirds, from $520 million to $170 million. The Bush Administration argued that the program should end because crime was down and that the money was needed elsewhere (Martin, 2008).A local law enforcement agent’s comments show the immediate impact of this decision. A statewide drug enforcement coordinator for the Illinois State Police said, “[The cut in funds] couldn’t have come at a worse time. . . . After all the success we’ve started to have, this could set the Midwest back a good 20 years in our fight against this drug [Methamphetamine]” (Martin, 2008). An even more recent example of how the current economic crisis affects local criminal justice efforts can be found in President Obama’s American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA). This act was signed into law on February 17, 2009. The act was heralded as “an extraordinary response to a crisis unlike any since the Great Depression” (see U.S. Department of Justice, 2011). The component of this act that is germane to this investigation is the $2.7 billion provided to the Office of Justice Programs (OJP) from which much of the federal funding comes that support local and statewide law enforcement efforts in the criminal justice community.In this article, I look at how much funding Illinois received from the federal government in support of its criminal justice efforts. I specifically focus on law enforcement efforts in police and sheriffs’ departments, which is where the system begins. I analyze federal funding trends with the goal of determining how the nation’s economic situation has impacted support for law enforcement efforts. Local and state criminal justice agencies throughout the nation rely on these funds to help fight and manage crime. I track federal funds awarded to the Illinois Criminal Justice Information Authority (the Authority), which the governor of Illinois has designated as a State Administering Agency. I track federal funds awarded to the Authority to support law enforcement efforts over an 18-year period between federal fiscal years (FFYs) 1992 and 2009.
160 Law Enforcement Executive Forum • 2011 • 11(3)
Federally Funded Programs and SAAs
One way that federal funds are distributed at local and state levels to fight crime is through federal grant funds. Federal grants are transfers of money from the federal government to specific state agencies, referred to as SAAs (State Administering Agencies). SAAs are responsible for dispersing federal funds to support specific criminal justice activities and programs. Each state’s SAA is responsible for applying for, receiving, establishing priorities for, allocating, and disbursing grant funds to eligible local and state agencies (Olson, 1991; see also the overview of the state and federal grants unit on the Authority’s website: www.icjia.state.il.us/public). SAAs are also responsible for assuring that agencies that receive funds comply with state and federal regulations. For this article, I collected data from the Authority, Illinois’s SAA. As an SAA, the Authority is responsible for disbursing federal grant funds in Illinois. This article tracks funding received from the OJP and managed by the Authority. The Authority began operating in 1983 and functions under statutory mandate (see the Illinois Criminal Justice Information Act, Public Act 82-1039, eff. January 1, 1983). One of the Authority’s mandated duties is the administration of federal funds to fight crime and to assist victims (Illinois Criminal Justice Information Authority [ICJIA], 1986). The Authority started dispersing federal funds in 1985 after Governor Thompson selected it to administer funds from two new federal programs: (1) the Justice Assistance Act (JAA) and (2) the Victims of Crime Act (VOCA) programs—both of which were created under the Comprehensive Crime Control Act of 1984. The JAA provided money for fighting crime and improving the administration of justice, and the VOCA provided money for programs to assist and compensate victims of crime (ICJIA, 1986, p. 26). The Authority formed and staffed a special unit called the Office of Federal Assistance Programs, which later became known as the Federal and State Grants Unit (FSGU), to perform the duties associated with managing federal funds. Amounts of federal funding dispersed through the Authority to fight crime and assist victims in Illinois have waxed and waned over time. However, analyzing trends in the amounts of the awards distributed from federal funds over time should show how current financial conditions have impacted this support. I begin my analysis with a brief description of federal funds awarded to and disbursed by the Authority for law enforcement efforts between FFYs 1992 and 2009.
“Show Me the Money”: A Historical Account of the Flow of Federal Funds for Law Enforcement in Illinois
Federal funding has been awarded to the State of Illinois and other states across the nation for a variety of criminal justice efforts. In addition to supporting law enforcement efforts, money has been spent to fund programs to fight drug abuse and juvenile delinquency, to manage and defend the public from offenders, to provide help to addicted offenders, to improve technology, and to assist crime victims.
Table 1 lists all federally funded grant programs managed by the Authority between 1992 and 2009.
Law Enforcement Executive Forum • 2011 • 11(3) 161
Table 1. Federal Grant Programs Administered by the Authority, FFYs 1992-2009
Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1996 (Byrne Formula Grant Program
)Congressionally Mandated AwardsJuvenile Accountability Block Grant
Justice Assistance Grants Program Justice Information Technology Integration Implementation Subgrant
Local Law Enforcement Block Grant
National Criminal History Improvement Program
National Forensic Sciences Improvement Act
National Sex Offender Registry Program
President Elect Security Assistance Reimbursement
Project Safe Neighborhoods Residential Substance Abuse Treatment for State Prisoners Program
State Justice Statistics Grant
State Identification Systems
Violence Against Women Formula Grants
Victims of Crime Act
Violent Offender Incarceration and Truth-in-Sentencing Incentive Grant
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The reason Maryland's Jamie and Sarah Raskin and Brian Frosh------why Maryland's Mikulsi and other Congressional pols are ignoring all of the US Constitutional rights of citizens and not saying a word about THE VISIGOTH LOOTING OF OUR TREASURIES AT ALL LEVELS OF GOVERNMENT-----is because Clinton neo-liberals and Bush neo-cons are working under what they think is a NEW AMERICA-------under Trans Pacific Trade Pact-----the 21st Century Economy under global corporate tribunal and court rule!
Today I speak of the need to rebuild and have a strong public sector as regards Rule of Law and Equal Protection of all citizens to the legal system in America-----THE PUBLIC SECTOR IS A MUST!
Who supports the privatization of all that is public every election by supporting Clinton neo-liberals? Labor union leaders, justice organization leaders, church leaders----ALL THE DEMOCRATIC BASE OF LABOR AND JUSTICE----WHICH IS 80% OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY FOLKS----STOP ALLOWING CLINTON NEO-LIBERALS TO CONTROL THE PEOPLE'S DEMOCRATIC PARTY---ENGAGE AND BE THE CANDIDATES IN ALL PRIMARIES AGAINST CLINTON NEO-LIBERALS!
Keep in mind that these little snippets written on TPP do not reveal what will be the worst of conditions----and TPP is the mission for all of Clinton neo-liberal and Bush neo-con policy these few decades----Obama's terms were completely about TPP installation. A dismantled public justice system was needed to allow for the installation of TPP----and rebuilding Rule of Law will get rid of it. ANTI-TRUST LAWS WILL KILL GLOBAL CORPORATIONS COMING TO AMERICA!
The Trans-Pacific Partnership treaty is the complete opposite of 'free trade'
Mark Weisbrot Tuesday 19 November 2013 10.49 EST The Guardian
The TPP would strip our constitutional rights, while offering no gains for the majority of Americans. It's a win for corporations
The proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement among 12 governments, touted as one of the largest "free trade" agreements in US history, is running into difficulties as the public learns more about it. Last week 151 Democrats and 23 Republicans (pdf) in the House of Representatives signed letters to the US chief negotiators expressing opposition to a "fast track" procedure for voting on the proposed agreement. This procedure would limit the congressional role and debate over an agreement already negotiated and signed by the executive branch, which the Congress would have to vote up or down without amendments.
Most Americans couldn't tell you what "fast track" means, but if they knew what it entails they would certainly be against it. As one of the country's leading trade law experts and probably the foremost authority on Fast Track, Lori Wallach of Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch, put it:
[Fast track] authorized executive-branch officials to set US policy on non-tariff, and indeed not-trade, issues in the context of 'trade' negotiations.
This means that fast track, which first began under Nixon in 1974, was not only a usurpation of the US Congress' constitutional authority "to regulate commerce with foreign nations".
It also gave the executive branch – which is generally much less accountable to public pressure than the Congress – a means of negating and pre-empting important legislation by our elected representatives. Laws to protect the environment, food safety, consumers (from monopoly pricing), and other public interest concerns can now be traded away in "trade" negotiations. And US law must be made to conform to the treaty.
How ironic that this massive transfer of power to special-interests such as giant pharmaceutical or financial corporations has been sold to the press as a means of holding "special interest" groups – who might oppose tariff reductions that harm them but are good for everyone else – in check.
But the TPP and its promoters are full to the brim with ironies. It is quite amazing that a treaty like the TPP can still be promoted as a "free trade" agreement when its most economically important provisions are the exact opposite of "free trade" – the expansion of protectionism.
Exhibit A was released by WikiLeaks last week: the latest draft of the "intellectual property" chapter of the agreement, one of 24 (out of 29) chapters that do not have to do with trade. This chapter has provisions that will make it easier for pharmaceutical companies to get patents, including in developing countries; have these patents for more years; and extend the ability of these companies to limit access to the scientific data that is necessary for other researchers to develop new medicines. And the United States is even pushing for provisions that would allow surgical procedures to be patented – provisions that may be currently against US law.
All of these measures will help raise the price of medicines and health care, which will strain public health systems and price some people out of the market for important medicines. It is interesting to see how much worse the TPP is than the WTO's Trips (Trade-Related Aspects of International Property Rights). This, too, was a massive rip-off of consumers and patients throughout the world, but after years of struggle by health advocates and public interest groups, some of its worst features were attenuated, and further consolidation of pharmaceutical companies' interests were blocked.
In case you were wondering why we had to get this information from WikiLeaks, it's because the draft negotiating texts are kept secret from the public. Even members of the US Congress and their staff have extremely limited access. Thus the much-maligned WikiLeaks has once again proven how valuable and justified are their efforts to bring transparency to important policy-making that is done in the darkness – whether it is "collateral murder", or other forms of life-threatening unaccountability.
One part of the TPP that shows why negotiators want to minimize public awareness of the agreement consists of provisions giving corporations the right – as is the case under the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta) – to directly sue governments for regulations that infringe upon their profits or potential profits. This, too, is much worse than the WTO, where a corporation has to convince its government to file a case against another government. These private enforcement actions – which if won collect from the defendant government – are judged by special tribunals outside of either country's judicial system, without the kinds of due process or openness that exists, for example, in the US legal system. A currently infamous example is the action by Lone Pine Resources, a Delaware-incorporated company, against the government of Quebec for its moratorium on fracking.
Perhaps less known than its other failings, the TPP doesn't even offer any economic gains for the majority of Americans who are being asked to sacrifice their constitutional rights. The gains from increased trade turn out to be so small that they are equivalent to a rounding error in the measurement of our GDP. The study most touted by proponents of the agreement, published by the Peterson Institute of International Economics, shows a cumulative increase of 0.13% of GDP by 2025. This would be trivial in any case; but the worse news is that, taking into account some of the unequalizing effects of the agreement – these treaties tend to redistribute income upwards – a Centre for Economic and Policy Research study showed that most Americans will actually lose because of the TPP.
US corporate interests are, rather obviously in this case, driving the agenda of the TPP. The agreement is in many ways a "plan B" after the last 12 years of WTO negotiations have stagnated – in large part due to considerable, well-organized public resistance in dozens of countries – and failed to achieve many of the goals of its corporate architects. But other branches of the US government have geostrategic goals as well. The world's would-be rulers also hope to separate the "bad kids" from the "good kids" among developing countries. It is no coincidence that in Latin America, the negotiating partners are Mexico, Chile, and Peru, and none of the leftist governments that now prevail in most of the region. And of course, a main goal of the agreement is to try and "isolate" China.
The Obama administration will no doubt appeal to some members of Congress on the basis of this neocolonial world view. But for Americans who are learning about the agreement, it is clear that the real "us against them" is not America against the more independent nations of the developing world, but TPP countries' citizens against a corporate swindle being negotiated behind their backs.
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