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Rewarding law breaking.

Kanstantine said:
Most of our ancestors came here in a time where there pretty much was no such thing as an "illegal immigrant".

You show up at Ellis Island, welcome to America.

Now we've added all sorts of rules and regulations that no one had to deal with until 1928.
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Mine came through Ellis island I've seen the page.
 
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Kanstantine said:
I agree that there should be consequences for coming here and or staying here illegally.

They should pay a fine. They should pay back taxes. They should be required to learn English.

They should go to the back of the line for naturalization applications.
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The back of the line is not in the us it's the country you came from.
 
It's just caustic humor.

During the great housing bubble, some bankers were richly rewarded for gaming the system and losing. There was even hope in 2008 that Obama might do something about this but he got right into bed with the same crew. So, some of us view this as the banks robbing us.

Hope that made sense.

YoungConserv said:
How is owning a bank a crime ?
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specklebang said:
It's just caustic humor.

During the great housing bubble, some bankers were richly rewarded for gaming the system and losing. There was even hope in 2008 that Obama might do something about this but he got right into bed with the same crew. So, some of us view this as the banks robbing us.

Hope that made sense.
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Which was caused by the government incentivizing banks to make bad loans and punishing those that didn't
 
YoungConserv said:
What laws have they broken and been able to keep it?
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What happens when Wall Street breaks the law? Not much - CNN.com

The New York Times recently investigated the ways the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) deals with companies who have violated anti-fraud laws. Very often, the settlement that follows contains a promise not to break the law again, which the Times noted is odd because the company, "after all, was merely promising not to do something that the law already forbids." Often the same corporations violate the law again -- and make the same promise again and again.

The Times found 51 cases over the past 15 years in which 19 Wall Street firms broke anti-fraud laws they had promised not to break. These firms include Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America. When faced with these multiple violations, the SEC simply reaches another settlement and extracts another promise, rather than bring a contempt charge in court.
Furthermore, these settlements do not even require the companies to admit to the charges brought against them. Instead, there is a provision that lets them "neither admit nor deny" the violations, which makes them less vulnerable to investor lawsuits
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Prosecuting Wall Street, pt. 1 - 60 Minutes - CBS News

Steve Kroft: Do you believe that there are people at Countrywide who belong behind bars?

Eileen Foster: Yes.

Kroft: Do you want to give me their names?

Foster: No.

Kroft: Would you give their names to a grand jury if you were asked?

Foster: Yes.

But Eileen Foster has never been asked - and never spoken to the Justice Department - even though she was Countrywide's executive vice president in charge of fraud investigations. At the height of the housing bubble, Countrywide Financial was the largest mortgage lender in the country and the loans it made were among the worst, a third ending up in foreclosure or default, many because of mortgage fraud.

It was Foster's job to monitor and investigate allegations of fraud against Countrywide employees and make sure they were reported to the board of directors and the Treasury Department.

Kroft: How much fraud was there at Countrywide?

Foster: From what I saw, the types of things I saw, it was-- it appeared systemic. It, it wasn't just one individual or two or three individuals, it was branches of individuals, it was regions of individuals.

Kroft: What you seem to be saying was it was just a way of doing business?

Foster: Yes.

In 2007, Foster sent a team to the Boston area to search several branch offices of Countrywide's subprime division - the division that lent to borrowers with poor credit. The investigators rummaged through the office's recycling bins and found evidence that Countrywide loan officers were forging and manipulating borrowers' income and asset statements to help them get loans they weren't qualified for and couldn't afford.

Foster: All of the-- the recycle bins, whenever we looked through those they were full of, you know, signatures that had been cut off of one document and put onto another and then photocopied, you know, or faxed and then the-- you know, the creation thrown-- thrown in the recycle bin.



Kroft: And the incentive for the people at Countrywide to do that was what?

Foster: The loan officers received bonuses, commissions. They were compensated regardless of the quality of the loan. There's no incentive for quality. The incentive was to fund the loan. And that's-- that's gonna drive that type of behavior.

Kroft: They were committing a crime?

Foster: Yes.

After Foster's investigation, Countrywide closed six of its eight branches in the Boston region and 44 out of 60 employees were fired or quit.

Kroft: Do you think that this was just the Boston office?

Foster: No. No, I know it wasn't just the Boston office. What was going on in Boston was also going on in Chicago, and Miami, and Detroit, and Las Vegas and, you know-- Phoenix and in all of the big markets all over Florida.

After the Boston investigation, Foster says Countrywide's subprime division began systematically concealing evidence of fraud from her in violation of company policy, and Countrywide's internal financial controls system. Someone high up in the top levels of management - she won't say who - told employees to circumvent her office and instead report suspicious activity to the personnel department, which Foster says routinely punished other whistleblowers and protected Countrywide's highest earning loan officers.

Foster: I came to find out that there were-- that there was many, many, many reports of fraud as I had suspected. And those were never-- they were never reported through my group, never reported to the board, never reported to the government while I was there.

Kroft: And you believe this was intentional?

Foster: Yes. Yes, absolutely.

Foster, with the support of her boss, took the information up the corporate chain of command and to the audit department, which confirmed many of her suspicions, but no action was taken. In late 2008, with Countrywide sinking under the weight of its bad loans, it merged with Bank of America. Foster was promoted and not long afterwards was asked to speak with government regulators to discuss Countrywide's fraud reports. But she was fired before the meeting could take place.

Kroft: What would you have told 'em?

Foster: I would have told 'em exactly-- exactly what I've told you.

Kroft: Did you have any discussions with anybody at Countrywide or Bank of America about what you should say to the federal regulators when they came?

Foster: I got a call from an individual who, you know, suggested how-- how I should handle the questions that would be coming from the regulators, made some suggestions that downplayed the severity of the situation.

Kroft: They wanted you to spin it and you said you wouldn't?

Foster: Uh-huh (affirm).

Kroft: And the next day you were terminated?

Foster: Uh-huh (affirm).

Kroft: I mean, it seems like somebody at Countrywide or Bank of America did not want you to talk to federal regulators.

Foster: No, that was part of it, no, they absolutely did not.

Kroft: Do you feel like you were a victim of criminal activity?

Foster: It's a crime to retaliate against someone for making reports of mail fraud, bank fraud, wire fraud, mortgage fraud, things that would harm stockholders and investors. And that's what I did and that's why I was terminated.

Kroft: Were you offered a settlement?

Foster: They asked me to sign a 14-page document that basically would buy my silence in exchange for a large amount of money.

Kroft: But you didn't sign it?

Foster: No.

Kroft: Why not?

Foster: How many people can they-- can they buy off? They just pay for it. They commit the crime and they buy their way out of it. And just do it over and over and over again. I wanted them to have some sleepless nights thinkin' about what they would say to a federal investigator and worry about being exposed and being held accountable for committing a crime.

Eileen Foster spent three years trying to clear her name. This fall she finally won a federal whistleblower complaint against Bank of America for wrongful termination and was awarded nearly a million dollars in back pay and benefits.

All of this raises several questions. Why has the Justice Department failed to go after mortgage fraud inside Countrywide? There has not been a single prosecution. Even more puzzling is the Justice Department's reluctance to employ one of its most powerful legal weapons against Countrywide's top executives. It's called the Sarbanes Oxley Act of 2002.

It was overwhelmingly passed by Congress and signed by President Bush following the last big round of corporate scandals involving Enron, Tyco and Worldcom. It was supposed to restore confidence in American corporations and financial markets.

The Sarbanes Oxley Act imposed strict rules for corporate governance, requiring chief executive officers and chief financial officers to certify under oath that their financial statements are accurate and that they have established an effective set of internal controls to insure that all relevant information reaches investors. Knowingly signing a false statement is a criminal offense punishable with up to five years in prison.

Frank Partnoy is a highly regarded securities lawyer, a professor at the University of San Diego Law School and an expert on Sarbanes Oxley.

Frank Partnoy: The idea was to have a criminal statute in place that would make CEOs and CFOs think twice, think three times before they signed their names attesting to the accuracy of financial statements or the viability of internal controls.

Kroft: And this law has not been used at all in the financial crisis.

Partnoy: It hasn't been used to go after Wall Street. It hasn't been used for these kinds of cases at all.

Kroft: Why not?

Partnoy: I don't know. I don't have a good answer to that question. I hope that it will be used. I think there clearly are instances where CEOs and CFOs-- signed financial statements that said there were adequate controls and there weren't adequate controls. But I can't explain why it hasn't been used yet.

We told Partnoy about Eileen Foster's allegations of widespread mortgage fraud at Countrywide and efforts to prevent the information from reaching her, the federal government and the board of directors in violation of the company's internal controls.

Kroft: I mean, that's a deliberate circumvention, right?

Partnoy: It certainly sounds like it. And it certainly sounds like a good place to start a criminal investigation. Usually when the federal government hears about facts like this, they would start an investigation and they would try to move up the organization to try to figure out whether this information got up to senior officers, and why it wasn't disclosed to the public.

In fact, according to a civil suit filed by the Securities and Exchange Commission, Countrywide's chief executive officer, Angelo Mozilo, knew as early as 2006 that a significant percentage of its subprime borrowers were engaged in mortgage fraud and that it hid this and other negative information about the quality of its loans from investors.

When the case was settled out of court a year ago October, the SEC's director of enforcement, Robert Khuzami, called Mozilo "a corporate executive who deliberately disregarded his duty to investors by concealing what he saw from inside the executive suite -- a looming disaster in which Countrywide was buckling under the weight of increasing risky mortgage underwriting, mounting defaults and delinquencies, and a deteriorating business model."

Mozilo, who admitted no wrongdoing, accepted a lifetime ban from ever serving as an officer or director of a publicly traded company, and agreed to pay a record $22 million fine, less than five percent of the compensation he received between 2000 and 2008.
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Banksters break Federal laws, pay a small fine, and make a profit.
 
YoungConserv said:
Where else do we let the criminal keep the goal of their law breaking? If 11 million people robbed a bank would we throw up our hands and say there are to many to inforce the law and make a path to pardon that allowed them to keep the money? No! Then why are we doing this with imigration.
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Exactly, makes no sense.
 
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mak2 said:
The business owners who hired and pay these people are the real criminals. Arrest them.
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Yes, arrest them also, along with the 20 million illegals who are co-accomplices in the multiple thefts of millions of Americans' jobs and other resources belonging to Americans and the entire American citizenry.
 
Bankers broke the law, so let's all illegals break the law.

Sound logic, friends.
 
actually the illegals are a net profit for US. if the American Buisness owners would not hire them, they would not be here. It is that simple. The buisness owners that hire them at a lower wage just for profit aer the real criminals.
Ontologuy said:
Yes, arrest them also, along with the 20 million illegals who are co-accomplices in the multiple thefts of millions of Americans' jobs and other resources belonging to Americans and the entire American citizenry.
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MaggieD said:
There is a back story we don't understand regards immigration reform. It's easy as pie to send these people walking home, yet we don't do it. The big question is "Why?" This is a nonpartisan issue -- Republicans want immigration reform as well. They aren't against it. They'd tweak it, but they're not against it. Again I ask the big question: Why? What don't we know? What don't we understand? (I should put this answer in the Conspiracy Forum. Ha!)
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Simply put, the conservatives most certainly know what the liberal Dems know, that 20 million former illegals becoming citizens would vote for their champion who pushed hard for their citizenship, the party of the worker, which 98+% of the illegals are workers, and that party is the liberals' Democrat Party. Thus conservatives, being Republicans, are against this amnesty and legalization bill for that aspect of it.

And, since business owners/management is the darling of the Republican Party, Republicans have been reticent to do anything that would increase wage-scales and crackdown completely on the hiring of wage-slave illegals, so they've delayed doing anything either way for that reason.

But though "immigration reform" (read: amnesty and legalization of 20 million illegals) would result in an increase in cheap labor wage-scales from $2.00 and 3.00 per hour to minimum wage, the mystery here is that it will also cause a lowering of wage-scales across the board from the other direction, from above minimum wage, toward minimum wage, so since that would benefit business owners/management some conservatives are in favor of amnesty and legalization.

The problem is that the great majority of American citizens oppose amnesty and legalization of illegals, as it is the great majority of Americans who have suffered from the trespassing and American resource (jobs, classrooms, living space, road space, trauma centers, etc.) thieving of the illegals, as most Americans are also workers, and making 20 million illegals citizens would cause wage scales to plummet, maybe to even depression-causing levels, but most certainly to the detriment of the economic livelihoods of scores of millions of Americans.

And, of course, there is the solid centrist foundation of liberty and justice for all American citizens we pledge in our allegiance as citizens every day, and that strong American ethic conflicts with pardoning 20 million trespassing theives and letting these criminals keep their ill-gotten gains at the injustice expense of so many of our fellow Americans, our neighbors, our friends, our family members we love.

This liberty and justice for all foundation is far from dead, though liberal Dem leaders behave as if it was for the sake of their power-play agenda.

Because conservatives are more likely to identify witht this centrist foundation pledge than "disaffected" liberals, they are ethically convicted on the matter.

Thus the conservatives suffer some conflict of interest, a conflict of conscience as well, that the liberals in their Multi-Cultural Internationalist ideology don't suffer.
 
Why are people opposed to Amnesty?

Ted Kennedy1986 said:
“This amnesty will give citizenship to only 1.1 to 1.3 million illegal aliens. We will secure the borders henceforth. We will never again bring forward another amnesty bill like this.
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mak2 said:
actually the illegals are a net profit for US. if the American Buisness owners would not hire them, they would not be here. It is that simple. The buisness owners that hire them at a lower wage just for profit aer the real criminals.
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The illegals are indeed a wage-slave profit for unscrupulous business owners who hire them.

The illegals are nevertheless trespassing thieves who came to America illegally for that purpose alone.

Though the illegals benefit unscrupulous business owners, when the entire picture is viewed, the illegals are greatly hurting the American economy, a major factor in the almost non-existent income and savings recovery of scores of millions of Americans not even close to returning to pre-Great Recession levels.
 
YoungConserv said:
And in fine with enforcing the law that's all I'm asking for.
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What? You asked "Where else do we let the criminal keep the goal of their law breaking?" Banksters are allowed to make and keep a profit off of breaking the law. The goal of banksters is to make money.
 
The Hispanic population that votes tends toward the democrats, but the Hispanic population votes at a much low rate than white and blacks in the last two elections. It is not something that should be considered either way in deciding whether or not to grant amnesty or otherwise change the immigration system.
 
mak2 said:
actually the illegals are a net profit for US. if the American Buisness owners would not hire them, they would not be here. It is that simple. The buisness owners that hire them at a lower wage just for profit aer the real criminals.
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Maybe a profit to those buisness but not to the us when you count in the cost of the programs they use
 
Ontologuy said:
The illegals are indeed a wage-slave profit for unscrupulous business owners who hire them.

The illegals are nevertheless trespassing thieves who came to America illegally for that purpose alone.

Though the illegals benefit unscrupulous business owners, when the entire picture is viewed, the illegals are greatly hurting the American economy, a major factor in the almost non-existent income and savings recovery of scores of millions of Americans not even close to returning to pre-Great Recession levels.
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Then lets help them break the chains and start over far away from this terrible country.
 
mak2 said:
What programs? Illegals get no benefits.
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Sure they do they get free education, emergency care and some comit fraud and get foodstamps and other assistance programs.
 
JackFrost said:
What? You asked "Where else do we let the criminal keep the goal of their law breaking?" Banksters are allowed to make and keep a profit off of breaking the law. The goal of banksters is to make money.
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Right and I say inforce the law on them both!
 
Fraud is illegal, so you cannot call that a program. Emergency care is only to stabilize and send home. If they do go to school that is not a federal program. The illegal pay into our system, keep downward pressure on wages and get almost nothing back. The real criminals here are the buisness owners. The illegals are merely pawns trying to feed their families. THey are a net profit for the US.
YoungConserv said:
Sure they do they get free education, emergency care and some comit fraud and get foodstamps and other assistance programs.
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mak2 said:
Fraud is illegal, so you cannot call that a program. Emergency care is only to stabilize and send home. If they do go to school that is not a federal program. The illegal pay into our system, keep downward pressure on wages and get almost nothing back. The real criminals here are the buisness owners. The illegals are merely pawns trying to feed their families. THey are a net profit for the US.
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they don't pay into our programs and the ones that doody of the time only do because they are using fake ssn's. I'm from Texas I actually volunteer down near the border and see the emende poverty down there and you ask any of them once they trust you how they survive its off these programs. Also why are you shocked that someone who breaks imigration law would commit fraud?
 
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