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MIKE PAPANTONIO: The gap between the haves and the have-nots, it continues to grow at
an alarming rate in America. As a result, our country's creeping closer and closer to
becoming a full-blown plutocracy. Joining me to talk about that is Howard Nations. He's
the past President of the National Trial Lawyers' Association. And I just have to tell you,
one of the finest trial lawyers probably in the country. Howard, I want to, you know,
before you came on, I had a very interesting caller that was amazed at the
fact that we still have an oil industry that's willing to basically destroy the planet. They
know the truth. They understand that they're going to damage the lives of the next generation,
the generation after that. They know that they're trying to squeeze the last little
bit out of the ground any way they can. In Florida, as a matter of fact, we learn now
fracking, there's going to be a movement to frack in Florida, one of the biggest natural
aquifers in the country, one of them. And, so we have these people, and Howard it's amazing
to me when I do this show sometimes, and I've been doing, as you know, radio for a long
time. But, I still hear people that just they're surprised when I say to them, that we're dealing
sometimes with psychopaths dressed up in Armani suits. Now, I can -- I know this, because
you and I have been involved in the same cases, I've seen you taking the deposition of somebody
who looks like they might -- they talk like Mother Teresa, but they have the heart of
Hannibal Lecter and you understand that as you're taking the deposition. But, sometimes
it's so hard for the American public to believe that that's where we've gotten. You and I
just handled a case where the company calculated how many people they could kill, how many
people could they kill and still make a profit by simply paying off the people after the
case was over, by selling pharmaceuticals. I mean real, true to life calculation. What
is your take on that, before we move into this? Because this is part of the argument
about plutocracy, when you have people so rich and so wealthy and such an elite that
they just have such disdain for decency and the way we treat each other. You see that
day-to-day, and have for 40 years practicing law as one of the best trial lawyers in this
country, what's your take? HOWARD NATIONS: My take on it, Mike, is that
it's all part of the measuring stick of plutocracy. Plutocracy is measured -- everything is measured
by wealth. Everything else steps aside. You push aside all the other principles to get
to wealth. And, the plutocrats have their own Golden Rule: He who has the gold makes
the rules. And, so they will do whatever it takes and they will damage as many people
as it takes. They will harm as much of society, they will harm the planet, they will harm
the environment, they will harm the individual citizens in the interest of profit.
PAPANTONIO: Now, that's coming, just for the listeners understand, I think probably you've
been involved in some of the biggest cases in the country for 40 years in trials, where
you've confronted these people. I mean I go home sometimes and I tell my wife, and I tell
my child, I confronted raw, ugly evil today, in a deposition or in a courtroom. And, you
know, until they started coming and seeing it, it's hard to believe and it's very difficult
for the average person out there just listening to this broadcast to believe that it's gotten
that bad. But, it all does deal with the rule of law according to wealth. And, where are
we with that in the United States today? Describe the rule of wealth in the United States, number
wise.
NATIONS: Well, in the United States we have seen a major upheaval in the last 40 years.
If we look at the time frame since 1973, this is an amazing statistic. While the gross domestic
product of the country as a whole has doubled, more than doubled, since 1973, 80 percent
of the national wealth in that 40 year period has gone to the upper two percent of the population.
Sixty-five percent has gone to that upper one percent that we heard so much about. But,
when you get to the part that really matters, and this is a shocking statistic, between
2000 and 2012, the real net worth of 90 percent of Americans has declined by 25 percent. That's
just an absolutely amazing statistic. PAPANTONIO: It's incredible. I mean what's
happened, because we've had dismantling of regulations and financial activities. We've
had predatory extraction of money from the system. You go back all the way to the -- it's
too, we don't have enough time on the show to talk about the damage Ronald Reagan did.
But, Bill Clinton, I mean you know tax reform since 1990 lacks application to anybody with
wealth, more application to people who simply don't matter to the IRS. Eric Holder, prosecutions
where he says that any kind of prosecution of wealthy banks is going to cause economic
disaster. No numbers to show that. He simply says it. Aren't these things at all double
the standard between the haves and the have-nots, in a plutocracy, which is what we would expect,
isn't it? NATIONS: It is what we would expect. And,
you know the point about Eric Holder, he actually made the statement recently that when he,
as head of the Justice Department, makes a decision as to whether to bring criminal charges
against the biggest financial institutions in the world actually, that those decisions
will depend not on a question of whether they violated the law alone, but would include
the hypothetical effects on economic stability. So, he's come up with a whole new concept.
We heard a lot about too big to fail, we now have the concept from the Attorney General
of the United States that they're too big to prosecute, because if we prosecute them
it might hurt the economy. PAPANTONIO: Isn't that the very definition
of plutocracy? NATIONS: That is absolutely.
PAPANTONIO: I mean really isn't that the heart of it. Look, we have -- we're living in a
time when these very people that we won't prosecute, I don't know if you saw the Levin
Committee Hearings where they were -- you know, the Committee was about the London Whale,
who had stolen so much money from the system, and the end of the Committee meeting was just,
well ignore what happened. And, you actually had people in those hearings calling regulators
stupid to their face, because they had so much money that they had disdain for government
policy. They had disdain for the people who were even questioning them. They were above
the law of the Senators that show -- matter of act, the London Whale case, larceny, fraud
was involved, bribery was involved, only three Senators even showed up for that hearing.
NATIONS: Amazing. PAPANTONIO: Because when you really come right
down to it, we have a plutocracy that's able to ignore the EPA. They ignore the FDA. They
ignore the IRS. They ignore the rules of government contracts. And, that's what plutocracy does;
it turns the democratic process upside down on its head. Isn't that where we're living
right now, Howard? NATIONS: Well, that is where we're living.
For example, in the 2003 Medicare Bill the pharmaceutical companies had a provision put
into the 2003 Medicare Act that said that the federal government, the largest purchaser
between all the drugs that the government buys for Medicare and Medicaid, the military
and so forth, the bill actually says that the U.S. Government shall not negotiate the
price of those drugs with the pharmaceutical companies.
PAPANTONIO: Wow. NATIONS: That's absolutely astounding.
PAPANTONIO: Look, you have, I want to get your -- I want to get your take on something,
you're somebody who raised huge money for Obama. You worked for him tirelessly. You've
met with him. You've talked to him. You've been face-to-face with him. What is your take,
is there any difference in the way that Obama has reacted to plutocracy and any other president
that's come before in him just in recent decades? NATIONS: Well, I think that Bill Clinton,
with whom I talked a lot before he became president, and Obama, both went into office
with the best of intentions. I think that they went into office with the idea that we're
going to represent the best interest of the American public, the citizens, the middle
class that President Obama was talking about so much in his reelection campaign. But the
fact of the matter is, that when they get in there, and they find out who really runs
the system, this is government of the rich, by the rich, for the rich, and when they get
in, they end up putting the same people in office to run the Treasury, to run the moneyed
interest. PAPANTONIO: Well, look, just look at this
Administration surrounded by Bill, Rubin, Paulson, Geithner, or Summers, they're relying
on Erskine Bowles, of all people, to sell this fraudulent austerity argument, that we
have to cut the elderly's Social Security, and the elderly's and disabled Medicare, because
austerity is going to save us. And, then we find out that Erskine Bowles even lied to
us about that. That he actually lied to us about the statistics he was relying on, because
they were phony-ed up and we don't even learn that from corporate media, because corporate
media's part of the problem too. We learn it because you have an independent investigator
that goes and looks at the numbers and says this is all a lie. And when he calls it to
their attention, they admit, yeah, it was a lie. What? How upside down do we get before
there's just absolute just rejection of the system totally? Where -- when do we get there?
NATIONS: We should be there now. The fact of the matter is people like Erskine Bowles
are relying on quote think tank end quote studies. But, the think tanks depend on corporate
money. So, they come out with their own studies that support their proposition, their whole
austerity thing. And, then people like Bowles are appointed by the President and then they're
cited and they rely upon him. Reuben, who was appointed by President Clinton originally,
he -- PAPANTONIO: Chairman of Citibank.
NATIONS: Yeah. Became -- he left there and he oversaw the deregulation while he was Secretary
of the Treasury, he deregulated Wall Street. PAPANTONIO: While he was there to supposedly
to oversee them. Howard Nations, you know, just a great lawyer, a great patriot. I mean
a true to life patriot, has always been there for consumers. Thank you for joining me.
NATIONS: My pleasure, Mike, thanks.