Justice Dep't Gives Corporate Fraud a Pass

This report of legalized bribes to the Justice Department was a pretty disconcerting piece of news to wake up to this morning. Why are we allowing corporate fraud to be accepted with a slap on the wrist, which admit it-- $65 million to American Express is, but drug offenders and other individual misdemeanors are sent to jail in record numbers.

Of course the article's first example- in which Monsanto bribed the Indonesian government to accept its GMO cotton seeds into the country, part of the increasing corporatization and privatization of global agriculture--was particularly disturbing to me. But the overall ubiquity of these financial non-criminal "solutions" to fraud and corruption is astounding.

Perhaps as news of increasing financial bailouts and fraudulent mortgage lenders continues, these issues will begin to surface and produce reactions. The solution? Even the "outside monitor" for the Monsanto case agrees- the Justice Department needs to actually do its job and "'insist on a guilty plea' rather than offering a deal."

Commemorating 40 yrs since MLK

Forty-years ago today, Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. was murdered, on Erev Pesach, which this year falls on April 19th.

• In "Portraits of History," the Atlanta Journal-Constitution has collected stories of several people who knew MLK about that time.
• Jspot, the community blog of Jewish Funds for Justice, has put together a site honoring MLK's memory with several reflections on his life and death.
  
• And finally, here is Rabbi Arthur Waskow's personal account of his experiences that day.
  

One year to the date before his death, 41 years ago, the Rev. gave this speech at Riverside Church in NY. Forty years later, there is still so much of his dream left to be fulfilled.