By: Bharani Padmanabhan – October, 2014
We are busy everyday displaying our high principles and our utmost concern for the country. This mainly takes the form of vitriol on Facebook and supporting shooting dead poor deserters hoping for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. In the 1800’s the same approach returned runaway slaves to the South. In the 1900’s the same approach betrayed Jews hiding in the barn after escaping a death march. Heinrich Böll even wrote a Nobel-winning book about a deserter – The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum.
The folks actually destroying this country naturally are delighted by these acts of misdirection because it allows them to bleed us dry with no risk of attention. Our exclusive captivation with poor deserters and other powerless individuals is a great gift on top of the lucre we are already allowing them to loot.
Happily there are still some folks who know that there are greater perils to this country than a few poor deserters trying to leave. These are the few who, at far greater risk to themselves than postings on Facebook, take on the task of saving the country and her wealth even when the Government fails, or worse, refuses to do it.
These few folks know and care that when billions get looted from us all, the people are left to fight each other over scraps. Unlike most, these few ask everyday where our money is going. After all, Americans are the most productive people on earth, they work more hours per week than any other, they take far fewer vacations than any other, they get fewer benefits in return than Europeans and yet they are now told there is no money for anything. It remains mind-boggling how few stop and ask, hey, wait a minute, where is all our money going? Why do we need to fight for scraps when we have worked harder than anyone else on the planet? This is the question we should ask upon awakening every morning.
Of the few who ask, even fewer do something about it. Those few are the people who sacrifice their careers for the good of the country, following Solzhenitsyn’s observation – ‘To stand up for truth is nothing. For truth, you must sit in jail.’ And they do it with the blessing of the Lincoln Law, passed by Congress in the time of Abraham Lincoln.
The principles of this law are ancient. Society has always had an interest in safeguarding the public’s common wealth. Every single one thus has the equal right and responsibility to help save the common wealth, which also underlies public record and open meeting laws. An incentive was created to reinforce this – giving one-third of whatever was saved to the person who raised the alarm. This incentive, now 1000 years old, was put into the Lincoln Law by John Howard, one of the first Senators from the then-new Republican Party.
Which is how we regularly hear news reports about whistleblowers being awarded millions of dollars for privately prosecuting a scam after having lived on nothing for years. In most cases now, it is the ONLY way to hold criminals accountable because the Government has been captured wholesale by the criminals and tip-toes around them.
By 2008, everyone knew that people in high finance had betrayed this country and demanded that they be brought to justice. The Obama Administration refused, lying that sending bankers to prison would hurt jobs. It was evident that the government protected rich criminals, unlike two previous Bush Administrations which sent scores of bankers to prison and collapsed Arthur Anderson over Enron.
Here is Hillary Clinton last week with Lloyd Blankfein of Goldman Sachs – https://twitter.com/GS10KWomen/status/514571055051317248/photo/1
This past week we have had the privilege of hearing with our own ears secret tape recordings from within the NY Federal Reserve. All of us should hear the tape recordings for ourselves –
http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/536/the-secret-recordings-of-carmen-segarra
They reveal how spineless our government regulators are now. So spineless, that they were afraid to even say that Goldman Sachs does not have a Conflicts of Interest Policy.
You and I would think it is not such a big deal to say that given everything else Goldman has done. The Fed begs to differ. Because the government cannot bring itself to say anything bad about Goldman Sachs at all, the bank that Matt Taibbi described as a ‘vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming it’s blood funnel into anything that smells like money.’
An honest public servant, Carmen Segarra, insisted on stating that Goldman does not have a Conflicts of Interest Policy and got fired for it. To encourage the others, to stick to posting on Facebook.
Bharani Padmanabhan MD PhD is a neurologist and specialises in Multiple Sclerosis in the Boston area. scleroplex@gmail.com