[corp-focus] Bill Bennett, Bob Bennett and the Criminal Element

[robert weissman]

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

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