Stockman fraud trial puts Enron in the shade

[BeatleBoot]

http://www.thefirstpost.co.uk/45273,features,reaganomics-and-the-credit-crunch-are-in-the-dock-at-david-a-stockman-trial

The date has been set for what will surely be one of America's trials of the decade. Last week, a New York judge ruled that on May 4, 2009 - more than two years after he was indicted - David A. Stockman will go to trial on charges of fraudulent accounting and of misleading banks and shareholders.

Along with former colleagues who are now co-defendants, Stockman will be accused of overseeing the ruination of Collins and Aikman Corp - a Detroit-based supplier of components to the automotive industry which was founded in 1891 and supported 15,000 jobs worldwide. The sum total of the defendants' alleged malfeasance is $1.35bn.

That is a breathtaking figure even by the standards of Enron and Conrad Black. But David Stockman's trial will be uniquely fascinating because, in many ways, he is an even more emblematic figure of our age than Enron's Kenneth Lay or Hollinger's Lord Black of Crossharbour.

The greedy yuppie culture of the 1980s, the credit-fuelled property boom of the last 10 years and, especially, the neo-conservative 'trickle-down' economic ambitions of a succession of Republican presidents, have all been embodied in this slight, earnest, dome-headed figure with his big, harvest mouse eyes and even bigger spectacles. Now, by the most acute paradox, as he stands awaiting trial, Stockman has become the living incarnation of the credit crunch and the impending crash of the Western world's economy.

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[The Velveteen Ocelot]

1. I guess David Stockman's karma just ran over his dogma.

So I am enjoying another little frisson of Schadenfreude.

[BeatleBoot]

2. Here's another...enjoy

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/columnists/article4693271.ece

Adviser David Stockman's alibi doesn’t add up

[gratuitous]

3. Wouldn't it be loverly?

David Stockman, broke and behind bars. He's belonged there for more than a quarter century, but he will get justice in the end.

[defendandprotect]

4. This is Reagan's David Stockman ... who rejoiced .....

that Reagan spending left no room for domestic programs!!???????????

[Octafish]

5. The one and the same.

As Budget Director, the greasy rat paved the way for the looting of the Treasury and penuring of the Middle Class.

Then, he was a traitor.

Now, he's just corrupt.

[defendandprotect]

6. And those olde days might have given us some warning--???

Congress -- bought and paid for --

[Octafish]

7. It got worse -- and still zip!

From the day...

THE RISE OF THE NATIONAL SECURITY STATE: FEMA and the NSC

by Diana Reynolds
CAIB 33 Covert Action Information Bulletin, #33 (Winter 1990).

CIVIL SECURITY PLANNING

Since WWII, the U.S. government has had contingency plans in preparation for a large scale disaster or attack. However, during the last twenty-five years--beginning with civil unrest at the height of the Vietnam War--the government's plans have increasingly on focused ways of controlling political dissent.

On October 30, 1969 President Richard Nixon issued Executive Order 11490, "Assigning Emergency Preparedness Functions to Federal Departments and Agencies," which consolidated some 21 operative Executive Orders and two Defense Mobilization Orders
issued between 1951 and 1966 on a variety of emergency preparedness matters.

In 1976 President Gerald Ford ordered the Federal Emergency Preparedness Agency (FEPA) to develop plans to establish government control of the mechanisms of productions and distribution of energy sources, wages and salaries, credit and the flow of money in American financial institutions in any (heretofore undefined) "national emergency." This Executive Order (EO 11921) also indicated that, when a state of emergency is declared by the President, Congress could not review the matter for a period of six months.

Even arch-conservative activist Howard J. Ruff was quick to point out that, since the enactment of EO 11490, "The only thing standing between us and a dictatorship is the good character of the President and the lack of a crisis severe enough that the
public would stand still for it."

While Ruff thought a national emergency might be used to destroy the free markets in the U.S. and take away the C.B. radios and guns of Americans, he was alarmed for more rational and obvious reasons. In an editorial, the paper repeated Ruff's warning:

"Executive Order No. 11490 is real, and only the lack of a crisis big enough, a president willing enough, and a public aroused enough to permit it to be invoked, separates us from a possible dictatorship, brought about under current law, waiting to be implemented in the event of circumstances which can be construed as a `national emergency.'"

President Carter evidently did not share this concern and, in 1977, he signed Executive Order 12148 which created the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to replace the Federal Emergency Preparedness Agency. This Presidential Directive mandated an interface between the Department of Defense (DOD) and FEMA for civil defense planning and funding.

When Ronald Reagan came to power he gave FEMA vastly expanded executive emergency powers and appointed retired National Guard General Louis O. Giuffrida as his "emergency czar." Giuffrida's creation of contingency emergency plans to round up "militant negroes" while he was at the Naval War College caught the attention of then-Governor of California Reagan and his executive secretary Edwin Meese III.

As Governor, Reagan called on Giuffrida to design Operation Cable Splicer. Cable Splicer I, II and III were martial law plans to legitimize the arrest and detention of anti-Vietnam war activists and other political dissidents.

CONTINUED...

http://www.skepticfiles.org/socialis/fema_law.htm

We are in a big hole in a dim cave.
The internets are helping us climb out by burrowing sideways on Tuesdays.
The traitors are afraid we'd do that.

[defendandprotect]

8. Frightening... all of this has to be Un-Constitutional ---

Which, I guess, is why Ollie North was working on overturning that for

Reagan/Repugs --

[specimenfred1984]

9. The architect of "Reagan-nomics" is a fraud and criminal

That kind of goes without saying.