Richard “Dickie” Scruggs, the legendary trial lawyer who made Big Business tremble every time he set foot in court, pleaded guilty Friday to conspiring to bribe a judge - a case that will send him to prison and could spell the end of his storied legal career.
Prosecutors are asking for five years behind bars for the 61-year-old Scruggs, a multimillionaire who combined a shrewd legal mind and the aw-shucks charm of a Southern country lawyer to extract billion-dollar settlements from the tobacco and asbestos industries, among others.
The giant of the plaintiffs’ bar could lose his license to practice law.
From Trent Lott’s Wiki entry (Scrugg’s brother-in-law):
On November 29, 2007, The New York Times noted that Lott’s brother-in-law, Richard Scruggs, was indicted on charges of offering a $50,000 bribe to a Mississippi state judge in a fee dispute. Scruggs represented Lott and Rep. Gene Taylor in settlements with State Farm after the insurer refused to pay claims for the loss of their Mississippi homes in Hurricane Katrina. Lott and Taylor had pushed through federal legislation to investigate claims handling of State Farm and other insurers after Hurricane Katrina, a potential conflict of interest.
Rednecks: you will never be privy to this type of insider “benefit” in life. Being able to strong-arm with threats of investigation and suit. When you have a brother-in-law with the type of clout Scruggs had (truly a phenomenal attorney many claim), the connects that the US Senate has, and the ability to push judges with bribes and various threats, it must be obvious that we don’t equate.
I find it much more than coincidental that Lott left office when he did… screwing the Mississippi constituents as he always did.
I can’t help but believe that what the neocons have done is take this matter of “Us and Them” to near catastrophic ends.
“Us And Them”
Us and Them
And after all we’re only ordinary men
We may have differences with those that have been deemed lesser than us by the religious right and our neocon leadership (with complicit Congress and Courts). They can use the rhetoric to divide us from Muslims (or just name the “enemy”), but when it comes down to the very basics in life and what we care the most for, we are all just “ordinary men”.
Me, and you
God only knows it’s not what we would choose to do
In the very core of our being, we don’t want to kill each other. Of course there are maniacs on both sides… some strap bomb belts to their waists and others send missiles and “smart bombs”. But “patriotism” and “love for country” is played on… taking advantage of our love for America. Religion and hatred intermix and brainwash people into wild beliefs of the afterlife, all-the-while playing upon their devastation they have experienced by what America has done. We fuel this never-ending conflict, when “God knows it’s not what we would choose to do.
Forward he cried from the rear
and the front rank died
How easy for the “Young Republicans”, the keyboard commandos, and those war hawks (Bush, Cheney, Libby and most other neocon criminals) who leaddirect our brave brothers and sisters into harm’s way and death… while the cheerleaders are safe and sound WAAYY back in the rear (all the way in America and having never served in combat).
And the General sat, as the lines on the map
moved from side to side
Definitive of how Bush sits in his office (while not on vacation at the ranch) giving directions as if he has some clue… viewing his soldiers as mere cannon fodder (”lines on the map”) doing as they are told (for no sound reason), in total obedience.
Black and Blue
And who knows which is which and who is who
We fight till we are bruised and scarred, leaving a wake of death, agony, and ruin too confusing and chaotic to understand or comprehend.
Up and Down
And in the end it’s only round and round and round
We never learn from history. It is repeated over and over again (Roman Empire, the Greeks, etc) No matter how good the “Good Times” are or how bad the “Bad Times ” are… no matter how many wars waged or benevolent aid and compassion given, all civilizations once on top have always fallen (and yes, this could happen to America).
Haven’t you heard it’s a battle of words
the poster bearer cried
Idealism forces one to venture out to the world… trying to resolve the problems with logic and understanding.
Listen son, said the man with the gun
There’s room for you inside
But the American Pride, the militaristic bravado swoons him… making himself believe that “they” are evil and he is “good”. Big Military plays off their brainwashing of youth and although logic tells them different, the mass hypnosis grabs him and he submits and joins. He has no money. He has no education. They know it and entice him with power, travel, prestige.
Down and Out
It can’t be helped but there’s a lot of it about
Son, there is death and destruction everywhere. We are Americans and we KNOW what is best and should control who lives and who dies. This IS our way of life now. Get over it. Join the team. America Number One! The Rest of the world sucks. Hoo-Yaa
With, without
And who’ll deny that’s what the fightings all about
GREED. What you have or what you don’t have. But who denies what this war in Iraq is about (except for most of the criminals who started it or cheer-led it on)? Most Americans know that this war has NOTHING, whatsoever, to do with ANY of the claims Bush and his criminal cabal told us about during the run-up to war. It is about us taking their shit.
Get out of the way, it’s a busy day
And I’ve got things on my mind
Our Vacationer-in-Chief, any ReTHUGlican (or any war-mongering politician), any chicken-hawk, any pro-war citizen who has never seen the line of duty and continuing to support it while being totally devoid of the horror of war, have no worries or concerns in their minds about the matter. In many ways they want to bury it… way back on the back sections of the paper. Or would rather hear about Brittany or American Idol. Meantime my friends and compatriots are dying.
For want of the price of tea and a slice
The old man died
How shallow and menial the reason for their deaths. Sure, the price of oil is going up… I bet more than any one of us can begin to imagine. We should be doing something to completely wean ourselves off of the black heroin, but as long as the criminals are allowed to lead America (both parties are complicit f the guilt) and make their win falls, we will continue to allow our fellow Americans to be killed… needlessly.
While New York Governor Eliot Spitzer was paying an ‘escort’ $4,300 in a hotel room in Washington, just down the road, George Bush’s new Federal Reserve Board Chairman, Ben Bernanke, was secretly handing over $200 billion in a tryst with mortgage bank industry speculators.
Both acts were wanton, wicked and lewd. But there’s a BIG difference. The Governor was using his own checkbook. Bush’s man Bernanke was using ours.
This week, Bernanke’s Fed, for the first time in its history, loaned a selected coterie of banks one-fifth of a trillion dollars to guarantee these banks’ mortgage-backed junk bonds. The deluge of public loot was an eye-popping windfall to the very banking predators who have brought two million families to the brink of foreclosure.
Up until Wednesday, there was one single, lonely politician who stood in the way of this creepy little assignation at the bankers’ bordello: Eliot Spitzer.
Who are they kidding? Spitzer’s lynching and the bankers’ enriching are intimately tied.
How? Follow the money.
The press has swallowed Wall Street’s line that millions of US families are about to lose their homes because they bought homes they couldn’t afford or took loans too big for their wallets. Ba-LON-ey. That’s blaming the victim.
Here’s what happened. Since the Bush regime came to power, a new species of loan became the norm, the ‘sub-prime’ mortgage and it’s variants including loans with teeny “introductory” interest rates. From out of nowhere, a company called ‘Countrywide’ became America’s top mortgage lender, accounting for one in five home loans, a large chuck of these ‘sub-prime.’
Here’s how it worked: The Grinning Family, with US average household income, gets a $200,000 mortgage at 4% for two years. Their $955 a month payment is 25% of their income. No problem. Their banker promises them a new mortgage, again at the cheap rate, in two years. But in two years, the promise ain’t worth a can of spam and the Grinnings are told to scram - because their house is now worth less than the mortgage. Now, the mortgage hits 9% or $1,609 plus fees to recover the “discount” they had for two years. Suddenly, payments equal 42% to 50% of pre-tax income. Grinnings move into their Toyota.
Now, what kind of American is ‘sub-prime.’ Guess. No peeking. Here’s a hint: 73% of HIGH INCOME Black and Hispanic borrowers were given sub-prime loans versus 17% of similar-income Whites. Dark-skinned borrowers aren’t stupid – they had no choice. They were ‘steered’ as it’s Read the rest of this entry »
No, I’m not talking about your fatass husband (hey, I resemble that remark)…
I imagine our military’s endeavor in the Middle East as such a dead, big, non-fulfilling (for either party) stab into stupidity. In our case, we killed the whale on purpose and now are humping the hell out of it.
America’s leadership is officially a bunch of sick, whale necrophiliacs.
