Governor Bentley Is Gone, But Corruption Continues Unabated In #ALpolitics

Jefferson County Officials May Walk Free

Republican Alabama Governor Robert Bentley (foreground, RIGHT), and Attorney General Luther Strange. Both men were re-elected to their positions in 2010.

By Donald V. Watkins
©Copyrighted and Published (via Facebook) on April 30, 2017
Used with permission

Marshall County District Attorney Steve Marshall, 52, was appointed Alabama Attorney General by Republican Governor Robert Bentley to fulfill Luther Strange’s unexpired term.

Former Alabama Governor Robert Bentley made two major gubernatorial appointments before resigning in disgrace earlier this month. First, Bentley appointed Luther Strange to the U.S. Senate seat vacated by Jeff Sessions. This appointment was designed to quash an ongoing criminal investigation by the Special Prosecutions Division of the Attorney General’s office into ethics violations and public corruption activities committed by Bentley and his lover, Rebekah Caldwell Mason. Strange, who traded his power to indict Bentley and Mason on felony charges in exchange for a senate seat, is now sinking in the pre-election polls as he heads into an August special primary election.

Republican Alabama Governor Robert Bentley & Communications Director cum-Political Advisor/paramour Rebekah Caldwell Mason

Next, Bentley appointed Marshall County District Attorney Steve Marshall to replace Luther Strange as Attorney General. Marshall is a 52-year old “good old boy” who was thrilled with the appointment. Bentley picked Marshall because he was generally regarded as the weakest district attorney in Alabama. Plus, Marshall had zero experience in public corruption cases. Bentley wanted to make sure that the new attorney general did not have the experience, courage, or motivation to come after him for his felony crimes.

Former United States Attorney Alice Martin was also Deputy Attorney General for the Department of Examiners of Public Accounts in the Alabama Attorney General’s office in 2013.

Marshall’s first act of business was to sack Alice Martin, the well-credentialed Chief Deputy Attorney General under Luther Strange. Martin was the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Alabama under President George W. Bush from 2001 to 2009. As s federal prosecutor, she amassed a record number of public corruption convictions for public officials and vendors who bribed them. Her record in this regard is unmatched in Alabama history.

Matt Hart, seen here at Republican Speaker of the House Mike Hubbard’s trial, leads the Special Prosecutions Division in the Alabama Attorney General’s Office.

Marshall’s second act of business was to gut the authority and power vested in Matt Hart, the chief of the Special Prosecutions Division. Matt Hart and Alice Martin investigated former Alabama House Speaker Mike Hubbard. Their investigation resulted in criminal charges against Hubbard. Last July, Hubbard was convicted of 12 counts of ethics violations and was ousted from office. Alabamians who championed ethical government celebrated Hubbard’s conviction. Bentley was enraged by it.

Republican U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions (LEFT), with Republican U.S. Senator from Alabama Luther Strange. Strange was State Attorney General, and was appointed by Governor Bentley to fulfill the remainder of Sessions’ Senate term.

Bentley’s selection of Marshall has paid off for him. It netted the former governor a “sweetheart” plea deal that

Advertisements

“Too Big To Fail” Banks Get Bailout, Gave Customers The Shaft

Chalk One Up for the Working Man

By Donald V. Watkins
©Copyrighted and Published (via Facebook) on December 18, 2016
Used with permission

On Thursday, I tried a case for a close friend on mine in the Jefferson County, Alabama District Court in Bessemer, Alabama. My friend is a hard working Bessemer resident and family man whose world was turned upside down when Citibank sold his credit card account to San Diego-based junk debt buyer, Midland Funding, LLC. He is one of millions of bank credit card customers each year whose accounts are bundled in loan pools and then sold to junk debt buyers without the customer’s knowledge.

Midland Funding is one of several mega junk debt buyers in America. This group of financial sharks buys unsecured bank debt for pennies on a dollar and then strong arms debtors who miss one or more of their monthly payments. Midland is part of a multi-billion industry of shady financial predators.

In my friend’s case, Citibank sold his account to Midland Funding. The balance on the account was $6,800. My friend paid his credit card monthly on a regular basis, but had an unexpected hiccup in his monthly cash flow a couple of years after he opened the account. As a result he failed to make a couple of his payments on time. When this occurred Citibank sold my friend’s account to Midland, and Midland eventually sued my friend. This is how my friend became my client.

Remember, Citibank had a similar hiccup during the Great Recession of 2008. The bank requested and received a total of $181.6 billion in federal bailout assistance to keep from collapsing. In fact, Citibank led the banking industry’s “welfare queens” by receiving more financial bailout assistance than any big bank in the U.S.

Citibank’s “Thank You” to the taxpayers like my client, whose tax dollars made the financial bailout possible for these big banks, was the low-down act of selling his credit card account to a shark like Midland Funding. The big banks were quick to take taxpayer-sponsored financial assistance, but slow to give taxpayers similar financial assistance in return.

[Editor’s Note: Alamerica Bank, which is

Alabama Man Tweets Jokes about Killing the POTUS, finds out it’s NOT a joke. What an idiot.

From our “Yes, Some Folks are Really that Stupid” files comes this recent item.

Oh well… folks in Alabama aren’t known for being the sharpest knives in the block, anyway.

—

Birmingham man charged after tweeting threats to kill President Barack Obama

Published: Sunday, September 23, 2012, 3:57 PM     Updated: Monday, September 24, 2012, 10:06 AM

By Kent Faulk — The Birmingham News

BIRMINGHAM, Alabama — A Birmingham man was arrested and charged with posting messages on Twitter threatening the life of President Barack Obama.

Jarvis M. Britton, 25, of Birmingham, was charged late Friday with making a threat against the president, according to court documents. The complaint against Britton was filed by the U.S. Secret Service in U.S. District Court in Birmingham.

Britton was arrested after having made three threatening comments aimed at the president in June and then again on Thursday, according to an affidavit filed by Phillip G. Holley, special agent with the U.S. Secret Service in Birmingham.

Holley stated he had received a report from an anonymous citizen on June 30 that Britton was using his computer to make threats against the president.

The agent stated he interviewed Britton on July 2 and determined that Britton had tweeted two messages on June 28 and one on June 29 that talked about killing the president.

According to Holley’s affidavit, Britton’s June 28 tweet stated

It’s still true: Alabamians are “largely poor, uneducated, and easy to command.”

One must understand the audience to whom Mr. Archibald writes his Birmingham News OpEds.

They’re the same ones who found hometown favorite criminal Richard Scrushy – monikered as “America’s First Oblivious CEO” – “Not Guilty” of violating the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, who to date, remains the solitary individual ever charged with its violation. Alice Martin, then Federal Prosecutor for the Northern District of Alabama, who failed to obtain a guilty verdict in the case, could have moved the trial to New York City – home of Wall Street – or “in Washington, D.C., or in New York City where pecuniary intricacies are understood,” but rather chose Birmingham, Alabama as the trial venue. John C. Coffee, professor of securities law at Columbia Law School, accurately said of the case, that “much of the information was over their heads” and jurors were “sick of trying to understand evidence that was beyond them.”

This remark – right, or wrong (but mostly right) – remains true for Alabama:
Citizens in the state are “largely poor, uneducated, and easy to command.”

In context of course, historically, one should recognize