In most cases, I don't even know what such a requirement would accomplish.

Also, as Rudy and John Eastman prove, in the political arena, it's possible to find a lawyer who will give you advice that is contrary to the advice you would get from the vast majority of lawyers.

Cuepee,

I am sympathetic to what I think is really bothering you, which is that it is harder to prove intent for many white collar crimes than it is to prove intent for something liked armed robbery.

Isn't that what I'm doing when this, is with the vid or link?

Follow me lozen, follow. Ignore the sparkly yarn and follow.


Pre election 2020 election Biden is not running but Pelosi is.

Do you think you would be in here screaming about Hunter or Pelosi's husband?

Do you not UNDERSTAND how right derp media is manipulating you if you think Pelosi's husband is a legit issue that deserves all that scrutiny but ONLY if she is running and they tell you so?

Monty likes to point out, amongst other things, how right derp media whips up a frenzy amongst derps stupid none issues that cost the GOP elections. Do you see zero merit in that comment by Monty? Do you think every issue you bring here and right derp media is spouting, is some serious, very real issue that needed to be addressed and taken seriously?

Ok so you are back to a position that 'if they improve it' that means it was not deliberately written to insulate to begin with, or some such.

I think the logic you are presenting there is very flawed. For instance, if we were in politics we could advocate for a very biased law giving us maximum protection and get it. Subsequently due to citizen outrage oro other, another law could be passed that does tighten it a bit but leaves the original sin flaw still in place.


You see to be saying if part 2 is present (improvement) then Part 1 (the deliberate protection) was not there.

That would be graded a failure in connecting logic as those two things MIGHT be as you say but could also be as I say.


And the point we argued before was whether the State required 'intent' and 'knowledge' before they would prosecute and as Preet says in the video those things are absolutely key and as such i was correct.

See what you stepped in, Rococo? A giant pile of bullshit and gibberish.

I am guessing that is why you do not support it.

I prior thought you practiced corporate law but obviously not, if you do not understood what the requirements accomplish in terms of ensuring Corporate Directors do a level of required diligence including consulting with experts or people who have specialized knowledge in the key areas they are addressing.

So if the Corporation wants to make its first big land purchase, the Board would consult with various experts in land acquisition (brokers, lawyers, etc) to INFORM their view before deciding whether they will support the corporation going in that direction or not.

If the Corporation wanted to do a sizeable expansion into a conflict zone country the Board would seek advice from experts in that region (maybe gov't officials, lawyers, etc) before deciding to support that move or not.


You seem to not connecting how requiring being 'advised FIRST' leads to better outcomes and how that would ALSO benefit a top Office holder who has all the same and even more access to good advice.

How it benefits Board members and shareholders is it ensures the Board Members are speaking to people who should be able to advise them on all matters of Legal Liability, general Liability as well as opinions as to whether this is good or bad plan.

To your direct question of 'you not being able to see how top Office holders would benefit if they had advice on such important issues from 'legal' and 'matter' experts, as REQUIRED instead of being able to say 'i did not seek any advice', 'no one ever told me I could not do that', 'I did not know it was illegal', "I had no intent', I think it is clear that if you are REQURIED to get such advice the ability to hide behind those reasons diminishes greatly. Hard to say 'I did not know it was illegal... I did not know I was not supposed to do it and it was against the law', if the person you sought advice from told you just that.




Now again the reply to the above is not to say 'the person could seek advice from bad actors deliberately' as then you can just go after him on that crime. You are more protected from 'crimes of ignorance' , 'lack of knowledge or intent', and the Trump types are not protected by just getting advice from bad actors.

Perhaps to some extent. But the people who commit white collar crime can be socioeconomically close to the the people who make laws and the people who prosecute crime. I genuinely think this contributes to a systematic under-appreciation of how serious white collar crime is.

I mean, we have actual cases of people literally being poisoned to death and condemned to slow agonizing deaths due to people hiding reports, lying in contracts and cozying up to officials, and even then criminal penalty is often off the table and this is seen as normal (or a even necessity, due to legal technicalities for business entities).

If a person ran around the street with a barrel of poison that threatened people's lives and health, we'd throw the book at them, if they survived the arrest. If there somehow was a technical loophole that meant the person got off scot-free, it would be fixed.

White collar crime is also often seen as something that is very complex and hugely complicated subject. While I'm sure it can be (like most forms of crime), I also know from reading up on various cases that you often find the same traits you see in crime in general: Stupidity, ignorance and naivety.

No that is only part and the smaller part of it.

What bothers me is what I explain above which is how Directors are held to a higher standard to protect the money of the Corporate owners.


Those who invest in companies do not want Directors to get a pass by being able to pull a Trump, if they bankrupt the company.


So, for instance if a Director of a company is found to be in violation of his Fiduciary Duty and the company goes bankrupt he can and will face liability.

Trump and top other gov't officials BEST defense, if they intent to do things they know break the law, is to NEVER ask his WH lawyer or any other person who could give him the proper legal advice and then to claim they 'did not know the law' and thus 'could not form intent to break it' as they had no 'mens rea'.


that defense goes away for Trump and top office holders if you REQUIRE them, like a Board Director to ALWAYS seek out that expert advice FIRST. I mean, you can still claim you did not know the law and thus could not form mens rea, but when the lawyer shows notes he explained the law to you, you are more likely to lose and be held to account.

Just as Board members are when they have documented advice they disregard and bad outcomes follow.

Yes. Sometimes you do, others you do not.

And the board has no rules on it, so the only thing people are doing is telling you what their preference is and if your preference is for the way you do it, tell them to all pound salt.

Maybe tell them about the Carlin Meme and how their opinion on this matter means no more than yours and in fact less, when it comes to informing how you will post.

Good points all.

Some of which I have touched upon.

I want anyone who wants to, to play a thought game.

Think about the world as 2008/9 is blowing up and Obama is taking the POTUS reigns. Why would a POTUS like Obama opt for zero bad actor scalps (Ok they got that one muslim low level guy) when historically such massive blowouts and destructions of wealth required some scalps (think Arthur Anderson and Enron). The Obama gov't is being forced to carry a massive load of crap and financial consequence none of which is their making. They could arguably benefit a lot by throwing their supporters red meat in the form of a bunch of Wall Street big wig, convictions.


So why decide to 'look forward and not back' and thus lets mass criminality go not only unpunished but many of those execs who escaped the prosecution then got bonuses paid out with tax payer money?

How does that happen?

Ok, the thought experiment.

Imagine SDNY tearing thru Wall Street in that moment, with so much indictment ammo in hand and as per their requirement for cooperation deals anyone from Wall Street given a deal MUST disclose ANY and ALL criminality they have been involved in, in any and all firms. NOt just the Mortgage Fraud stuff. ALL STUFF.

You can image, like a house of domino's falling that an ever expanding circle of indictments would form. As one thing is detailed and pursued it leads to 2 more. And so on and so on.


2008/9 would have had so many top banking exec's, and lower level staffers so clearly in the cross hairs for indictment that the trickly up would be immense.

These would be a ton of people (friends, family, ex business partners, etc) of most of those on Capital Hill, if not one or two degrees removed.


Just as Politicians really do not want to see other Politicians investigated and arrested generally, based on partisan pushes to do so (you see GOP outrage now about the House Committee preparing to recommend Trump for indictment and the incoming House promising to do the same to Biden,), Elites would prefer not to start locking up other Elites who generally do not scare them as much as a petty thief.

The petty thief who steal a small amount of money they want locked up. The white collar criminal who steals millions, they want to be scared by the threat of prosecution, but they also want prosecution to be so difficult he is likely to be offered a financial deal (a rake on what he stole) to get away with it. The elite feel far more comfortable knowing that white collar thief is out than the petty thief.

You are guessing incorrectly. Corporate lawyer in the United States refers to lawyers who do the legal work on mergers, securities offerings, corporate restructurings, etc. I was not a corporate lawyer in that sense.

If you are asking whether I litigated on behalf of, and against corporations, the answer of course is yes. Almost exclusively. I am extremely familiar with how corporate boards work, including the corporate boards of large public companies. I am extremely familiar with the push and pull between management, corporate boards, outside auditors, etc. I am extremely familiar with the obligations of corporate boards when presented with a viable acquisition proposal, potential wrongdoing by management, potential misstatement of financial results, etc. I am extremely familiar with the relationship between directors and officers on the one hand, and D&O insurers on the other.

There seems to be a perception in this thread that I am defending the status quo with respect to the prosecution of white collar crime. I'm not sure where that perception comes from, but it is wrong. I believe that white collar crime is punished less severely than other crimes of dishonesty involving smaller amounts of money. On balance, I believe that it is a failure of our current system. There are many reasons why that discrepancy exists. Prosecutorial discretion often favors the wealthy. White collar defendants usually have more money to hire top shelf lawyers than common burglars do. White collars crimes are more labor intensive to prosecute, and often carry greater risk of acquittal (in part because of the resources available to white collar defendants). There are many other factors. I don't think differences in mens rea requirements in criminal statutes is a significant factor at all.

I am positive that I read more internal documents from Wall Street banks and mortgage lenders relating to the 2007/2008 financial crisis than anyone else in this thread, probably by a factor of 10 and perhaps by a factor of 100. There was a ton of greed. There was a ton of dgaf, more than enough to support billions and billions of dollars of civil liability. But I saw very, very few documents that I thought could form the basis of a successful criminal prosecution. Just my opinion. But it is a very well informed opinion.

As a point of comparison, I also read a **** ton of Enron documents. I was not at all surprised that many Enron executives went to prison.

I don't think you are defending that status quo, I'm merely discussing the subject because I found it interesting. I have probably missed out the specific debate on mens rea.

Kewl.

This!

Cuepee gonna Cuepee.

The good news is, since Rococo is the adult in the conversation, he will probably not further engage Cliff Clavin on this topic.

That's a good one, Coopster! I bet you're the class clown in homeroom!

Oops! I was wrong. (Never a surprise.)

In the first Op-Ed piece I ever wrote (in late summer of 1992), I meticulously explained to the gentle readers why President Bush would defeat Bill Clinton in November of that year.

Some things never change.

wrong

it is weird then that you cannot see how requiring some form of duty to be informed could help both high office holders and provide additional evidence to prosecutors, if an high office official commits a criminal act where he is going to use his lack of knowledge and intent as a defense.

I can tell you with certainty that the imposed 'Duty to seek Advice' makes it much harder for Board Members to get away with illegality or Negligence by arguing on a basis of 'not knowing' and thus 'not having any ability to form intent'. If you took away that law that required that Duty, and board members could say 'I have no knowledge in that area so I just made my best guess but had no bad intent', that would make prosecution or piercing the corporate veil very much harder.

That you give zero credit to the idea of requiring High Office Holders, to have any 'Duty to know or seek advice' as an additional and key tool to Trump type prosecutions is bizarre to me.

I respect that.

I can also provide to you many of the most senior lawyers and legal professionals in the US who similarly saying they have looked at the entire situation and find it egregious that numerous prosecutions were not brought. There is a ton of outrage commentary from that time period from top legal minds.

Carey Dunne and Mark Pomerantz can quit in protest seeing abundant evidence to indict Trump and go to trial and Alvin Bragg can look at same and see no evidence to go to trial.

Merrick Garland can dither and wring his hands for years over whether to bring any indictments against high office holders, whereas Jack Smith or a Mueller type, would almost certainly have been charging the offenses as they came up, along the road.

What some people are now referring to 'Prosecutorial Courage' others could refer to as 'zealousness' or 'foolishness' if they fail.

A case could absolutely have been brought against the Credit Rating Agencies, in the same way one was brought against Arthur Anderson, for signing off on fraudulent statements without doing the minimum of diligence.

There is no denying that if one guy, Dr. Michael Burry, sitting solely at a computer and the ONLY diligence he did was to actually READ the disclosures and such disclosures were so shocking and obvious to him he was willing to put his entire hedge fund not only on the line but petition the Wall Street banks to make unique and novel structures so he could do so, that a Prosecutor could argue to a jury that the Rating Agencies failed to do even the most basic of REQUIRED diligence and thus need to be convicted of 'X'.

Whether or not the jury would side with them and convict the Rating Agency is something we can only guess but I would think in that time of high outrage, the likelihood was high.

I know based on us discussing this prior you do not even see a path to charging the Rating Agency(s) and i think you were suggesting you would not even classify them as being negligent. But I am reaching back to a discussion so please clarify if I am wrong on any of that.

To be fair steamraise, Rococo's statement is far more applicable to shortstaker, who i just put on ignore, were his posts in this thread make no attempt to engage in any of the discussions, the rest of us are and are just empty flamebait meant solely to generate escalation and back and forth conflict over zero substance.

Your posts with the summaries would not get infracted on other boards for empty posting. (shortstaker's) would.

fyp?

https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/rache...fact%20checks.


https://www.politifact.com/factcheck...=rachel-maddow

Rachel seems to lie alot