WolfeNotes.com

The New York Times and local newspaper feel a Corporate Criminal’s pain – No “Three Strikes You’re Out” or Harsh Mandatory Minimum Sentences for Corporate crime
So if you meet me
Have some courtesy,
Have some sympathy, and some taste.
Use all your well-learned politesse,
Or I’ll lay your soul to waste.
~~~ Rolling Stones “Sympathy for the Devil” (1968)
http://www.angelfire.com/ri/cerat/Sympathy4Devil.html
The New York Times does a good Mick Jagger in a recent story about corporate criminal McWane, Inc.:

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The real Erin Brockovich comes to Pompton Lakes, NJ

Bill WolfeDupont Pompton Lakes facility entrance

At the invitation of local official Ed Meakem, I jumped into the Pompton Lakes fight last July, and warned residents and local officials that Dupont and DEP were working privately together and could not be trusted to protect their health or environment:
“On a Night Like This”
http://blog.nj.com/njv_bill_wolfe/2008/07/on_a_night_like_this.html
Since then, residents have organized and fought back. Wednesday night, Erin Brockovich echoed my advice to residents:
“just looking to government isn’t enough: “Agencies are absent. They are understaffed, underfunded, and often all they can do is rely on data given to them by the defendant [polluter.]”
Don’t be quiet. The community has to be united. And you have to say ‘I’m not going to take your [expletive] any more.’ They’re not going to like it. But it will take all of us to use our voices.”
Read the full story here:
Erin Brockovich takes on Pompton Lakes cause
Thursday, April 23, 2009
BY ELAINE D’AURIZIO
http://www.northjersey.com/environment/Erin_Brockovich_takes_on_Pompton_Lakes_cause.html

bill Wolfe

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Favorites from the Library of Congress Collection

[Update: my apologies that all the original photos I posted were taken down by NJ.Com and lost. If you use the title of the photo, I hope the links at Library Of Congress work. ~~~ end update]

Is there any doubt that the artists got it right and had a true vision?

Here are my favorites:

Matanuska Colonists : A couple with child
http://www.loc.gov/shop/index.php?action=cCatalog.showItem&cid=14&scid=164&iid=4005

George Biddle, the founder of the Federal Art Project (FAP) in 1935, said that because of the FAP, the Depression exerted, “a more invigorating effect on American art than any past event in the country’s history.” … For American art, it was a vital period that invigorated the entire country’s perception of what art could be and brought American art into the international forefront.
Wall Street
http://www.loc.gov/shop/index.php?action=cCatalog.showItem&cid=14&scid=427&iid=3716

FBI and the Statue of Liberty
http://www.loc.gov/shop/index.php?action=cCatalog.showItem&cid=14&scid=427&iid=3715

Farmer and Sons Walking in Face of Dust Storm
http://www.loc.gov/shop/index.php?action=cCatalog.showItem&cid=14&scid=174&iid=1298

Country Store on a Sunday Afternoon
http://www.loc.gov/shop/index.php?action=cCatalog.showItem&cid=14&scid=174&iid=4003

Eat more fish
http://www.loc.gov/shop/index.php?action=cCatalog.showItem&cid=14&scid=161&iid=3383

Smiling Girls from Utuado
http://www.loc.gov/shop/index.php?action=cCatalog.showItem&cid=14&scid=164&iid=1971

Commuters
http://www.loc.gov/shop/index.php?action=cCatalog.showItem&cid=14&scid=174&iid=3278

Railroad Women Having Lunch
http://www.loc.gov/shop/index.php?action=cCatalog.showItem&cid=14&scid=174&iid=3200

Itinerant Photographer, Columbus, Ohio
http://www.loc.gov/shop/index.php?action=cCatalog.showItem&cid=14&scid=185&iid=3988

Children in the tenement district, Brockton, Mass.
http://www.loc.gov/shop/index.php?action=cCatalog.showItem&cid=14&scid=164&iid=3992

The FAP created thousands of murals in public buildings all across the country. Artist such as Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Willem de Kooning, and Louise Nevelson, all left a moment of their creativity to posterity because of this program. As art historian Francis O’Connor said, “Something very vital indeed, something revolutionary happened to American culture during the 1930’s.”

One of the FAP’s major activities was the index of American Design. The project helped popularizing American folk art by documenting the countries “usable past” of over 20,000 photographic records of American art, painting, sculpture, handicraft and folk art.

By 1943, unemployment –the primary reason for the programs creation –dipped to the point that the program was canceled. The Library of Congress is the largest single holder of WPA posters, having over 900 in its collection.

http://www.loc.gov/shop/index.php?action=cCatalog.showItem&cid=14&scid=183&iid=3431

Bill Moyers interview asks: How do they [Wall Street] get away with it?

Bill Wolfe

Video for those that like to watch:
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/04032009/watch.html
Transcript for those that like to read:
BILL MOYERS: Welcome to the Journal.
For months now, revelations of the wholesale greed and blatant transgressions of Wall Street have reminded us that “The Best Way to Rob a Bank Is to Own One.” In fact, the man you’re about to meet wrote a book with just that title. It was based upon his experience as a tough regulator during one of the darkest chapters in our financial history: the savings and loan scandal in the late 1980s.
WILLIAM K. BLACK: These numbers as large as they are, vastly understate the problem of fraud.
BILL MOYERS: Bill Black was in New York this week for a conference at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice where scholars and journalists gathered to ask the question, “How do they get away with it?” Well, no one has asked that question more often than Bill Black.

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