From the formerly Republican, now independent Presidential Candidate Gov. Buddy Roemer who, satirically, describes these two items on Twitter today, as “justice in a #Corporatocracy”…
For the record, though we hadn’t seen it previously, the above juxtaposition of these two stories first made the Internet rounds last year when some described it all as a hoax. Suzy Marinkovich of the Cornell Journal of Law & Public Policy dug in to find out if that was the case, but reported back, that nope, the above stories are indeed both very real.
Not surprised. Billionaires like the Koch brothers, Don and William Parfet, Jon Corzine, Bernie Madofff, have been ripping off people for years. They just use politicians as their weapon of choice.
Just for fun, let’s do it as seconds of prison time per dollar stolen:
CEO Allen: 0.03 seconds per dollar
Homeless man: 4,730,400 seconds per dollar
Sounds about right.
Democrats undoubtedly feel the CEO should get more like 0.3 seconds per dollar. Republicans probably think Allen’s sentence was excessive.
As if anyone doesn’t understand why people are fed up with both parties.
According to snopes:
…Neil Barofsky, who served as TARP’s special inspector general, said the Taylor Bean case was the most significant criminal prosecution to arise out of the nation’s financial crisis. The convictions of company chairman Lee Farkas and Allen represent some of the most high-profile executives in the housing and financial industries to receive prison time in the aftermath of the housing sector meltdown.
Mitigating factors in Allen’s sentencing were the fact that the fraud was already underway when he became CEO of TBW in 2003, that his crime was a non-violent one, and that Allen was one of six persons who received credit on their sentences for cooperating with investigators and testifying against Farkas, the mastermind of the fraud scheme. (Farkas himself was sentenced to thirty years in prison.)
Yeah I’m not surprised at all that the homeless black guy gets the shaft by the shamelessly crooked legal system in that southern cesspit of sleaze known as Louisiana. I bet the redneck judge convinced himself that he was doing the guy a favor by ensuring he won’t go hungry for the next 10-15 years.
And I wonder why their non-violent nature isn’t more of a mitigating factor for all those suffering in the penal system for drug related offenses.