(Reuters) - A federal judge has approved HSBC Holdings Plc's (HSBA.L)(HBC.N) record $1.92 billion settlement with federal and state investigators of charges that it flouted rules designed to stop money laundering and thwart transactions with countries under U.S. sanctions.
While noting "heavy public criticism" of the settlement, which enabled HSBC to escape criminal prosecution, U.S. District Judge John Gleeson in Brooklyn, New York, called the decision to approve the accord "easy, for it accomplishes a great deal."
While noting "heavy public criticism" of the settlement, which enabled HSBC to escape criminal prosecution, U.S. District Judge John Gleeson in Brooklyn, New York, called the decision to approve the accord "easy, for it accomplishes a great deal."
Money Laundering!
Koch Brothers Flout Law Getting Richer With Secret Iran Sales
In May 2008, a unit of Koch Industries Inc., one of the world’s largest privately held companies, sent Ludmila Egorova-Farines, its newly hired compliance officer and ethics manager, to investigate the management of a subsidiary in Arles in southern France. In less than a week, she discovered that the company had paid bribes to win contracts.
“I uncovered the practices within a few days,” Egorova- Farines says. “They were not hidden at all.”
An example of some of the activities the Koch Brothers are upto (it includes causing cancer through pollutants and hiding the deaths of US Citizens from the News Media
David Koch's twin brother said the family business is "organized crime.":
The Koch Brothers are using their criminal connections for training the Tea Party to become as racist as they are while denying their racism (since 2008!). i.e. here is the Koch Brothers racism: The Kochs, Segregation, and Joseph Stalin - YouTube
1. Wisconsin Dems file complaint over ‘Koch brothers-funded scheme to suppress votes’
The Democratic Party of Wisconsin filed a complaint on Tuesday seeking to stop what it called a Koch brothers-funded scheme to suppress Democratic votes in upcoming Republican recall elections.
Politico reported that Americans for Prosperity sent absentee ballots to Democrats in two Wisconsin state Senate recall districts with instructions that could render the votes ineligible.
Ballots must be received by August 9 to be counted, but the instructions say to return the paperwork two days later, by August 11.
The conservative billionaire duo's Americans for Prosperity nonprofit has spent $700,000 on ads supporting the governor's record as the recall effort against him gains steam. Last year, they were reportedly behind Walker in his showdown with unions over the state budget.
AND...
3. Koch Brothers Behind Wisconsin Effort To Kill Public Unions
As the nation focuses on the efforts of Governor Scott Walker to take away collective bargaining rights from public employees in Wisconsin, new information is coming to light that reveals what is truly going on here.
Mother Jones is reporting that much of the funding behind the Walker for Governor campaign came from none other than uber-conservatives, the infamous Koch Brothers.
What’s more, the plan to kill the unions is right out of the Koch Brothers play book.
Koch-backed groups like Americans for Prosperity, the Cato Institute, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, and the Reason Foundation have long
taken a very antagonistic view toward public-sector unions. Several of these groups have urged the eradication of these unions. The Kochs also invited Mark Mix ,
president of the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, an anti-union outfit, to a June 2010 confab in Aspen, Colorado;
If you are reluctant to believe that this is a coordinated attack, consider this-
This afternoon, Marty Beil, executive director of the Wisconsin Public Workers Union, sent a message to the Governor’s office agreeing to the cuts to pension & welfare benefits sought by Walker in his bill. The governor’s response was “nothing doing.” He wants the whole kit and kaboodle – the end of the collective bargaining rights of the public unions.
As noted in my earlier post , this is, indeed, the first shot in the final battle to end unionism in America.
Which reminded me of this poster...
The Tea Party & Majority of Libertarians Were Co-opted By The Koch Brothers In 2009
The Koch Brothers ARE Waging War On Obama & US Citizens!
Koch Brothers 1
Worthy Of Investigation
Rick Perry?
What's happened Texas graphically illustrates the choice facing America.
On April 17 there was a horrific explosion at the West Chemical and Fertilizer plant in West, Texas, that killed 15 people, injured more than 200, destroyed or damaged 150 homes and caused at least $100 million in losses. Five days later, Texas Governor Rick Perry was in Illinois trying to lure business to Texas, praising his state's limited regulations. Is Texas America's future?
Republican conservatives have a simple economic precept: what's good for business is good for America. Conservatives believe states should provide a "business friendly" environment with low taxes and few regulations. They argue this inevitably creates jobs and builds community through the "trickle-down" theory of Reaganomics: "a rising tide lifts all boats."
Texas is the foremost practitioner of the conservative theory. This year Chief Executive Magazine voted Texas "the best state to do business in" for the ninth consecutive year, citing factors such as low taxes and sparse regulations. Texas' 6.5 percent unemployment rate is below the national average.
But the Texas economy has negative aspects that contributed to the explosion at the West Chemical and Fertilizer plant. There is no state fire code and McLennan, the county that housed the plant, also has no fire code. According to the New York Times
Texas has also had the nation's highest number of workplace fatalities -- more than 400 annually -- for much of the past decade. Fires and explosions at Texas' more than 1,300 chemical and industrial plants have cost as much in property damage as those in all the other states combined for the five years ending in May 2012.
In much of Texas zoning laws are non-existent. In 1962, when the West Chemical and Fertilizer plant originally opened, the facility was far from downtown; in recent years, a school, nursing home, and apartment complex were built nearby.
A consequence of Texas' "anything goes" attitude is not only the nation's highest number of workplace fatalities but also America's dirtiest environment. According to the Houston Chronicle Texas leads the U.S. in greenhouse gas emissions.
Texas' coal-fired power plants and oil refineries generated 294 million tons of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases in 2010, more than the next two states -- Pennsylvania and Florida -- combined.
Regrettably, many Texans lack adequate health care. The Texas Observer reports that the state ranks first in the nation for adults without health insurance.
Over the last decade, Texas added thousands of jobs in construction and energy. Unfortunately, Texas leads the nation in construction fatalities.
The Texas construction industry is characterized by dangerous working conditions, low wages, and legal violations that hurt working families and undercut honest businesses.
Furthermore, an average of 39 energy industry workers die each year.
Oil and gas field services and drilling workers were killed on the job in Texas more than those in any other profession, according to a Houston Chronicle analysis of five years of fatal accidents investigated by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.
And when Texans are injured on the job, they often have great difficulty getting their medical claims reimbursed. Texas is the only state where employers have a choice about paying worker's compensation. If the worker's employer doesn't provide coverage, the worker has to file a civil claim. But even when there is worker's compensation, the system is notoriously difficult.
Texas Governor Rick Perry roams the U.S. luring workers to Texas with the promise of good jobs, but the reality is unimpressive. Writing in the American IndependentPatrick Brendel observed the new Texas jobs are primarily low-wage jobs:
Texas has by far the largest number of employees working at or below the federal minimum wage ($7.25 per hour in 2010) compared to any state, according to a [Bureau of Labor Statistics] report. In 2010, about 550,000 Texans were working at or below minimum wage, or about 9.5 percent of all workers paid by the hour in the state.
On June 14, Governor Perry vetoed an equal pay bill.
Meanwhile, the ruined city of West, Texas, is struggling to recover. Total losses will be more than $100 million and FEMA likely will reimburse only 10 percent. The City of West has sued the owner and supplier of the West Chemical and Fertilizer Plant.
On April 22 Texas Governor Rick Perry was asked about the explosion at the West Chemical and Fertilizer Plant and contended that "more government intervention and increased spending on safety inspections would not have prevented" the West catastrophe.
What's happened in West and Texas graphically illustrates the choice facing America. We can adopt an extreme pro-business strategy and subordinate worker pay and safety; we can, in effect, tell the 99 percent, "You're on your own." Or we can adopt a strategy that puts people first; we can decide that capitalism has to be subordinate to democracy and protect the rights of all Americans.
Bob Burnett is a writer and activist in Berkeley, Calif.
Huffington Post: The Texas Fertilizer Plant Explosion Wasn't an Accident
Almost everyone in America knows the names of the two young terrorists allegedly responsible for the April 15 Boston Marathon bombings, but few can identify the owner of the fertilizer plant that exploded in West, Texas, two days later. Both are culpable of killing innocent people, but the media, along with government regulators and law enforcement agencies, poured much more time and resources into finding the two Tsarnaev brothers than they did in investigating Donald Adair. Crime in the streets (particularly by terrorists) is big news but crime in the suites rarely makes headlines.
Why isn't the American public calling for the arrest, conviction, and imprisonment of Adair, the owner of the West Fertilizer Company in West, Texas, where an explosion on April 17 killed 14 people, left 200 others with injuries (including burns, lacerations, and broken bones), flattened houses and a 50-unit apartment building, destroyed a nursing home, damaged a local school, and left a crater 93 feet by 10 feet?
The explosion was so devastating that investigators, almost two months after the incident, are unable to definitively determine the exact cause of the explosion. But it is possible that Adair -- who also owns Adair Grain (the parent company of West Fertilizer) and Adair Farms, including about 5,000 acres of cropland and grassland in the area, worth several million dollars -- consistently flouted the law and common sense safety measures that put both his employees and the surrounding community at risk.
When 84-year-old Eula Bingham, OSHA chief under President Jimmy Carter, heard the news about the West, Texas, explosion, she thought, "Oh my god a fertilizer plant." According to Bingham, "fertilizer plants are well known as the most horrible, explosive places in the world." Adair had ample opportunity to know and follow the law and certainly knew the consequences of failure.
After 9/11 companies like Adair's were required to inform the government of chemicals that could be used in terrorist attacks. West Fertilizer stored large quantities of anhydrous ammonia and ammonium nitrate, in the middle of a small town. The company failed to tell the Department of Homeland Security that it was storing 270 tons of ammonium nitrate (the same chemical that Tim McVeigh used to bomb the Oklahoma city federal building in 1995, which left 168 people dead) as required by law.
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