U.S. Attorney-General Designate Holder's Law Firm & "The Superior Bank Scandal"

U.S. Attorney-General Designate and Columbia University Trustee Eric Holder became a law partner in the Washington, D.C. law firm of Covington & Burling after serving as a Deputy Attorney General in the Democratic Clinton Administration until 2001. (See the following link: http://www.cov.com/eholder/ )

But as the Covington & Burling web site at http://www.cov.com/practice/white_collar_and_investigations/financial_insitutions_investigations/notes, Holder's law firm "represented Coast-to-Coast Financial Corporation in government inquiries and civil litigation regarding the failure of its subsidiary, Superior Bank, fsb, the largest bank failure in recent years."

Coincidentally, the 2008 Obama presidential campaign's national finance Chair, Penny Pritzker, sat on the board of the Coast-to-Coast Financial Corporation whose special corporate interests U.S. Attorney-General Designate Holder's law firm represented before U.S. government regulators and in federal court.

As the Feb. 6, 2002 Office of Inspector General's report noted:

"Superior was orginally established in 1988 when the Pritzker and Dworman interests acquired Lyons Savings Bank...The corporate structure consisted of Superior being wholly-owned by Coast-to-Coast Financial Corporation (CCFC), the holding company, with the Pritzker and Dworman interests each owning 50 percent of the holding company..."

Yet the Office of Inspector General's Feb. 6, 2002 report also observed:

"Oftentimes the line between poor business judgment and fraud and abuse is difficult to draw. Nevertheless, based on our review of the failure of Superior Bank it appears that some of the decisions made by Superior management rise to the level of insider abuse...

"As early as 1996, Superior submitted Thrift Financial Reports that were inaccurate...

"Questionable management practices were evident at Superior for many years...

"...Examiners discovered that during the fourth calendar quarter of 2000 Superior sold loans at fixed prices to Coast-to-Coast Financial Corporation. This transaction violates various federal regulations by selling assets to an affiliate at a price less than fair market value..."

Bank Failures And Presidential Transitions

During periods of U.S. Establishment presidential transitions in the past, U.S. commercial banks have sometimes failed. Presidential Transitions by Laurin Henry described what happened after the 1932 presidential election:

“In the final months of President Hoover’s term, the nation reached the bottom of the depression. Financial panic swept the country and paralyzed most of the banking system…

“In January 1933…a new wave of closings began. Failures led to runs and more failures. As fear spread, people stopped putting money in banks…

“In early February 1933, the situation became acute in Michigan, where about 200 banks had failed in the previous month. Two of the largest institutions in Detroit were in serious trouble…On February 14 the governor of Michigan declared a `banking holiday’…The Michigan closing shocked the business world, and panic ensued elsewhere, leading to more closings. By March 2, banking holidays had been declared in several more states…But as the reports of the day’s banking transactions began to come in during the afternoon, it became clear that the downward slide was out of control. The big New York and Chicago banks were about at the end of their rope.”

(Downtown 11/18/92)

Repressing Journalists In Africa Historically

Since events in much of Africa usually haven’t gotten much Big Media coverage, historically, many people in the U.S.A. may not be too familiar with the way some African journalists were treated in the 1990s by some governments in Africa. But in an article titled “The Press Versus The Law In Africa,” which appeared in the May 1993 issue of its Censorship News publication, the London-based Article 19 human rights organization reported the following:

“As the world marks Press Freedom Day on May 3, governments throughout Africa continue to employ direct repression to censor their independent critics…Janvier Africa, a Rwandese journalist, has been detained since September 1992, apparently for identifying security officials responsible for political killings. Another journalist, Stration Byabagambe, was murdered by a para-military death squad in October 1992.

“In March 1993 more than 30 security agents invaded the offices of a Nigerian magazine, The News, and seized 30,000 copies which were due for sale the following day…Earlier the same month security officials closed down the Kaduna-based newspaper, The Reporter, and detained its editor, Mallam Hayatu…

“A journalist in Siera Leone, Roy Stevens, the former editor of The Chronicle, has been detained without charge since July 1992…

“Since presidential elections in September 1992, eleven independent publications in Cameroon have been suspended…

“Thirteen journalists currently face charges of sedition in Kenya. They include Pius Nyamora, editor of Society magazine, which has been repeatedly seized, Njehu Gatabaki, editor of Finance, who was held for 23 days in February 1993, and two editors of The Watchman charged in February with inciting `hate, contempt and dissatisfaction’ towards the President. On April 8, 1993 a group of more than 20 men identifying themselves as police raided the offices of Finance, armed with pistols, swords, knives, whips, axes, chisels and ropes. They seriously injured the computer operator, destroyed the computer and stole documents and cash.

“On April 15, 1993, members of the Togolese presidential escort raided the printing planat of the independent newspaper, La Tribune des Democrates, beating one of the printers who was later taken away by the police. Earlier the same day members of the presidential escort had stopped the paper’s main distributor from collecting his copies and abducted five vendors. In February, opposition journalist Leopold Ayiui was shot by unidentified assailants and went into a coma…

“…In Angola, South Africa, Liberaia, Somalia, Chad and elsewhere journalists continue to operate under the most extreme conditions of physical danger.”

(Downtown 6/23/93)

Next: Bank Failures And Presidential Transitions

Secrecy And The U.S. Super-Rich

Many super-rich individuals are careful to keep a low-profile in the United States. As The Founding Fortunes book noted:

“Many wealthy individuals have chosen to lead lives of deliberate obscurity. They attempt to conceal their family ties and the extent of their wealth from everyone except other family members, close friends, and a few trusted business associates. With only a few exceptions, most of the members of the richest families in America are entirely unknown to the public at large…The scholar and the layman alike are often misled by news accounts that fail to disclose the true extent of inheritance within wealthy families…The major cause of such journalistic omissions is the financial secrecy maintained by almost all corporate rich families…Very little is known with certainty about most corporate rich families or their fortunes. The reason of course, is that the members of these families want all the advantages of being rich without any of the disadvantages of being famous. As a rule, the members of wealthy capitalist families refuse to divulge even the most rudimentary details of their wealth. In order to maintain their anonymity, the members of corporate rich families typically refuse to disclose even basic biographical information about themselves. Many of the richest Americans are not listed in Who’s Who In America, simply because they refuse to provide the editors of this directory with any biographical information. Some of the wealthiest families in America have achieved almost complete anonymity, despite the fact that they exercise enormous power.”

(Downtown 3/17/93)

Next: Repressing Journalists In Africa Historically

Big Media Racism In UK Historically

Historically, U.S. magazines like Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, Vogue, Mademoiselle, Details, TV Guide, New Republic, Harper’s Bazaar and The National Review have been staffed with British editors—often in preference to African-American journalists. Yet institutional racism in the British media world apparently was, historically, quite extensive. As Daily Racism: The press and black people in Britain by Paul Gordon and David Rosenberg observed during the 1980s:

“Black people are under-represented in the media industry as a whole and in print journalism in particular. A survey conducted by the Black Media Workers Association (BMWA) in 1983 found that black workers comprised only 0.7 percent of the total media workforce and the proportion of black workers working full-time on newspapers and magazines stood at less than 0.2 percent (Black people make up 4.5 percent of the total labour force in Britain.) It also found that there are several large cities with substantial black populations which had no black workers on local newspapers. From these statistics the BMWA argued that the predominantly white character of the media industry reinforced a white perspective in newspapers and they questioned whether the media in general could reflect the concerns of all sectors of society and black minorities in particular…”

The same book also stated:

“…Press racism is found not only in its printed product but at the level of recruitment and employment in the industry. There is a need for the media industry as a whole to eliminate and confront its own institutionalized racism and become, in its composition, more reflective of the society in which it operates, particularly in relation to racial minorities…”

(Downtown 1/5/94)

Next: Secrecy And The U.S. Super-Rich

Heterosexism & The UK Media Historically

In an essay titled “Sexual Stereotyping In The Media,” which appeared in the 1986 book Bending Reality: The State Of The Media, Anna Durell and Andrew Lumsden offered the following criticism of the UK Big Media’s historic heterosexism:

“The `deluded children’ in charge of the bulk of the UK’s media know so little of the culture, history, or present lives of gay people (or if they do know, being lesbian or gay themselves, learn on the way up the career ladder to keep their mouths shut) that their `homosexuality’ (topic on an agenda) is rarely recognizable to me as my `homosexuality’ (experience).

“…Some steps can be taken to tease out what is exceptional about the gay condition in the media. We have been put to a very particular servitude, `we’ lesbian and gay people, not lesbian and gay media employees, though the bulk of the latter are forcibly enslaved to passing as straight. We aren’t regarded as existing in our own right. If we were, there would be `out’ reviewers, critics, interviewers and `name’ reporters scattered across quality and popular media alike in rough proportion to the numbers of us in media employment. We are subject matter, but are not, with the very rarest exceptions, permitted to be principals, writing or broadcasting in our real sexual persona. Journalistic objectivity is defined as the declared or taken-as read heterosexual experience…”

(Downtown 3/17/93)

Next: Big Media Racism In UK Historically

`Time' Magazine's `March of Time' Link In Great Depression--Part 3

[Note: It was recently revealed that the Time-Warner Media Monopoly’s Time Inc. magazine subsidiary is expected to soon lay off 600 of its employees, representing more than 6 percent of its work force.]

Another March of Time newsreel disliked by anti-Establishment newspaper critics was the 1941 film short “Labor and Defense.” In its Feb. 8, 1941 issue, the U.S. Communist Party’s Daily Worker printed a review by David Platt, titled “Labor Is Target In Current Release of March of Time. Debs Is Slandered; Pegler and Hillman Are Glamorized.” According to the Daily Worker reviewer, The March of Time was “the most direct expression in the movies of the needs and demands of the big industrialists” and it was “therefore necessary to pay the strictest attention to what this organ of Wall Street has to say.” The Daily Worker film critic characterized the “Labor and Defense” film newsreel as “a dangerous anti-labor film whose chief purpose is to break up the labor movement.”

Despite such criticism of the political content of Time Inc.'s newsreel division by anti-Establishment writers, in 1937 a special Oscar was given to former Time Inc. Vice-Chairman Roy Larsen at the Academy Awards ceremony by Shirley Temple, in recognition of The March of Time’s “revolutionizing the newsreel.”

But according to The March of Time, 1935-1951, a researcher for the Time Inc. media conglomerate’s newsreel production in the 1930s, Mary Losey, described March of Time’s filmmaker, Louis de Rochemont, as “the first and, I think, most magnificent example of male chauvinist that I ever came across. I think he disliked women more than he disliked men, but he preferred men who kowtowed to him, and he was very destructive.” As The March of Time, 1935-1951 noted:

“In Louis’s shop, it was always the men who made Time march. There were women on the payroll, of course, but with a couple exceptions, none of them occupied decision-making positions in those days. Almost all of the researchers (called `checkers’) were women.”

The institutional sexism within Time Inc’s March of Time division reflected “the inferior position of women in all Time divisions” where “in those days only men occupied positions of responsibility and authority in the corporation,” according to the same book.

Other than Roy Larsen and Louis de Rochemont, most employees of Time Inc.’s March of Time division in the 1930s “received pitiful salaries” and “this was especially the case with editorial workers in the cutting room, upon whose effectiveness and skill The March of Time depended,” according to The March of Time, 1935-1951. Workers in the cutting room were required by Larsen and Rochemont to work “two weekends and every evening overtime for two weeks out of every four—without extra pay,” according to the same book.

(Downtown 1/29/92)