[Mb-civic] The Criminal Element

[Mha Atma Khalsa]

BILL BENNETT, BOB BENNETT AND THE CRIMINAL ELEMENT
By Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman

Bill Bennett and Bob Bennett are brothers.

Bill Bennett is the social conservative pundit.

Bob Bennett is the white-collar criminal defense
lawyer.

Bob Bennett is the lawyer for New York Times' reporter
Judith Miller.

As you might recall -- and how could you forget? --
Bill Bennett took to
the airwaves a couple of weeks ago espoused that "you
could abort every
black baby in this country, and your crime rate would
go down." He then
quickly added, "That would be an impossible,
ridiculous, and morally
reprehensible thing to do, but your crime rate would
go down."

Of course, Bill Bennett was talking about street
crime.

If he were to address the issue of white collar and
corporate crime -- the
kind that his brother Bob defends every day for a very
nice living -- then
he might have said something like -- "you could abort
every white male
destined to go to Harvard Business School, and your
crime rate would go
down."

Now that would be impolite.

But the reality is that crimes committed by the
powerful -- both in
government and in corporations -- inflicts far more
damage on society than
all crime committed by the powerless.

Let's take the crimes of Harvard Business School
graduate George Bush.

The President's cronies are being investigated for
leaking classified
information to various reporters, including to Judith
Miller.

(By the way, we agree with Patrick Buchanan who was on
MSNBC's Hardball
Show last night and observed that Bush and Cheney's
real success in the
whole Judith Miller/Valerie Plame episode was turning
"the New York Times,
the newspaper of record in this country, into a
propaganda organ for the
war party.")

Why not an investigation for war crimes?

In the words of former Supreme Court Justice and
Nuremberg prosecutor
Robert Jackson -- whom newly confirmed Chief Justice
John Roberts says he
"admires" -- the supreme international crime is the
war of aggression.

And guess who are the architects of the most recent
war of aggression?

George Bush and Dick Cheney and their associates.

With an assist from Congress -- including Presidential
hopefuls John
Kerry and Hillary Clinton -- which for voted to
authorize the war.

Do you see any of the architects of the illegal war in
Iraq on trial for
mass murder?

Why not?

If putting Saddam on trial for mass killing is a good
thing, then
putting the architects of the most recent war of
aggression is a good
thing too.

(And by mass killing we mean approaching 2,000 young
Americans and tens of
thousands of Iraqis in an unjustifiable war of
aggression.)

Despite the wave of crime by the powerful that has
swept over the
country in recent years -- and inflicted far more
damage on society that
all street crime combined -- when people with the
institutional megaphones
like Bill Bennett use the word "crime," they mean
street crime.

(When Bob Bennett talks about crime, he invariably
means white-collar and
corporate crime -- but that's because his clients are
paying him big bucks
to clear their names.)

As a result, this bias has been hard wired into our
brains.

Here's a quick test.

We will write down a word.

And you tell us the first image that comes to your
mind.

Ready?

Looter.

Okay, and the first image to come to your mind?

Do you conjure up a black kid in New Orleans wading
through the waters
with DVDs stuffed in his pockets?

Why not Conrad Black, also known as Lord Black of
Crossharbour?

Lord Black is under investigation along with his
associates -- by the same
Patrick Fitzgerald who is investigating the Bush leak
affair -- of looting
$400 million from Hollinger International, the
esteemed publisher of the
Chicago Sun-Times and the Jerusalem Post, among myriad
other publications.

A special 513-report on the looting at Hollinger,
issued by Richard
Breeden, former chair of the Securities and Exchange
Commission, called
Black's management team at Hollinger a corporate
kleptocracy.

That would be a bureaucracy of kleptomaniacs. (Credit
for the looter
imagery goes to Joe Loughran, a Republican
white-collar crime pundit we
interviewed recently.)

So the image of a looter is that of the black kid with
some DVDs stuffed
into his coat pocket.

And not of Lord Black of Crossharbour?

And the image of the war criminal is that of Saddam
Hussein.

And not George Bush?

And Bill Bennett says that if we aborted all of the
black kids, the
crime rate would go down?


Russell Mokhiber is editor of the Washington,
D.C.-based Corporate Crime
Reporter, <http://www.corporatecrimereporter.com>.
Robert Weissman is
editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Multinational
Monitor,
http://www.multinationalmonitor.org, and on the
steering committee of the
Center for Corporate Policy. Mokhiber and Weissman are
co-authors of On
the Rampage: Corporate Predators and the Destruction
of Democracy (Monroe,
Maine: Common Courage Press).

(c) Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman

This article is posted at:
<http://lists.essential.org/pipermail/corp-focus/2005/000216.html>





	
		
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