From John Kroger – the Oregon Attorney General

One of my highest priorities as Oregon's attorney general is to hold powerful corporations accountable when they violate our laws. The overwhelming majority of businesses in our state are good corporate citizens. They create badly needed jobs and pay billions of dollars in taxes that help pay for education, law enforcement and health care for our citizens. Unfortunately, many large multinational corporations do not have the same strong values and commitment to business ethics. They routinely violate our laws. In response, my office has aggressively pursued these corporations in court.

I took office on Jan. 5, 2009. The next day, I opened an investigation of Oppenheimer, the big Wall Street investment company, to determine whether it had committed securities fraud in connection with its management of the Oregon College Savings Plan. By March, my office had determined that Oppenheimer had, in fact, defrauded Oregon investors and sued it in Marion County Circuit Court. That lawsuit was swift and successful, recovering $20 million for Oregon investors trying to save money for their children's education.

That has not been our only big Wall Street case. Right now, we are also battling Union Bank of Switzerland, the world's largest private bank, on securities fraud charges in New York.

We have also tackled the world's largest pharmaceutical companies, which frequently engage in illegal marketing of drugs that have not received approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. This dangerous practice puts our families' health at risk and results in billions of dollars in illicit corporate profits. Over the past 18 months, my office has successfully concluded major legal cases against pharmaceutical companies like Pfizer, Bayer and Aventis, recovering roughly $17 million for Oregon taxpayers.

A third consumer protection priority is to crack down on mortgage and foreclosure fraud. This is critical because Oregon currently ranks third nationwide in foreclosures, leaving a huge number of our citizens vulnerable to unscrupulous scam artists who prey on folks who are worried about losing their home. When I became attorney general, the Oregon Department of Justice didn't have a single attorney assigned to combat mortgage and foreclosure fraud. Now, we have a special Mortgage Fraud Task Force, which has put crooked mortgage brokers in jail and banned several unprincipled California foreclosure relief companies from doing business in Oregon. We have also taken legal action against Countrywide Mortgage, the poster child of irresponsible predatory lending, twice. In our first case, we recovered $1 million and forced the company to renegotiate the home loans of almost 1,000 victims in Oregon, lowering interest rates and fees. In the second case, which is still underway, we seek to recover more than $25 million lost by Oregon retirees.

Other cases seek to protect Oregonians in their everyday lives. During the swine flu epidemic, the Kellogg's cereal company claimed, without any scientific evidence, that Rice Krispies boosted your child's immune system. We got them to stop making such claims — and to donate 500,000 boxes of cereal to food banks around the country to help feed our hungriest citizens.

This year, we launched a new consumer protection website which allows Oregonians to research thousands of companies in seconds, so consumers can protect themselves and ensure that they are doing business with principled businesses, not scoundrels. We started a new Oregon Scam Alert Network to help citizens avoid falling prey to scam artists on the Internet and over the phone. And on our consumer protection hotline, at 877-877-9392, a team of dedicated volunteer consumer protection counselors take calls from dozens of Oregonians every day, helping them avoid scams, file complaints and recover money owed to them.

Over the past 18 months, the Department of Justice has taken legal action against more than 100 companies, recovering nearly $60 million for Oregon workers, consumers and taxpayers. We've done this without spending a single taxpayer dollar. Instead, we fund all of our consumer protection activities with money recovered from companies that broke the law. This is a model of lean, cost-effective good government.

Our consumer protection and corporate accountability strategy is one of the most successful in the country. Our team is proud of our work and our success. If you need help with a consumer problem, call us. We're here for you.

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I've never lived in any state with an AG like John – nor have I ever told an AG  "you rock" / but John does ROCK!  He is a good person and an excellent AG… and – no – you can not have him for your state

A guest lecture by:

Michael H. Posner
Assistant Secretary of State,
Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor

Thursday, July 22, 2010
6:30 P.M.
(admission is free)

University of the District of Columbia
David A. Clarke School of Law
Building 38 – 2nd Floor
4200 Connecticut Avenue, NW
Washington DC 20008

(Connecticut at Van Ness St., NW; Van Ness/UDC Red Line Metro Station; parking under campus off Van Ness St.)

To register:
http://www.law.udc.edu/event/Michael_Posner

For information, please contact Karen Forman at KForman@udc.edu

About Michael Posner:

Michael H. Posner was sworn in as Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor on September 23, 2009.
Prior to joining State Department, Mr. Posner was the Executive Director and then President of Human Rights First. As its Executive Director he helped the organization earn a reputation for leadership in the areas of refugee protection, advancing a rights-based approach to national security, challenging crimes against humanity, and combating discrimination.

He has been a frequent public commentator on these and other issues, and has testified dozens of times before the U.S. Congress. In January 2006, Mr. Posner stepped down as Executive Director to become the President of Human Rights First, a position he held until his appointment as Assistant Secretary.

Mr. Posner played a key role in proposing and campaigning for the first U.S. law providing for political asylum, which became part of the Refugee Act of 1980. In 1998, he led the Human Rights First delegation to the Rome conference at which the statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC) was adopted.

Mr. Posner also has been a prominent voice in support of fair, decent, and humane working conditions in factories throughout the global supply chain. As a member of the White House Apparel Industry Partnership Task Force, he helped found the Fair Labor Association (FLA), an organization that brings together corporations, local leaders, universities, and NGOs to promote corporate accountability for working conditions in the apparel industry. He also was involved in the development of the Global Network Initiative, a multi-stakeholder initiative aimed at promoting free expression and privacy rights on the internet.

Before joining Human Rights First, Mr. Posner was a lawyer with Sonnenschein, Nath & Rosenthal in Chicago. He lectured at Yale Law School from 1981 to 1984, and again in 2009. He was a visiting lecturer at Columbia University Law School since 1984.

A member of the California Bar and the Illinois Bar, he received his J.D. from the University of California, Berkeley Law School (Boalt Hall) in 1975, and a B.A. with distinction and honors in History from the University of Michigan in 1972.

The Ninth Annual University of the District of Columbia David A. Clarke School of Law International Human & Peoples’ Rights Law Program – Human Rights on the Hill – in collaboration with the Hawaii Institute for Human Rights and the Four Freedoms Forum, will take place from May 24 – 28, 2010.

To register, please go to

http://www.law.udc.edu/event/Human_Rights_Course 

In our formative years, the course focused on reflection and education, we aim to build on this balanced foundation evolving into realization and engagement.

There is an opportunity to mobilize to realize human rights in the United States of America and our partners for peace around the planet. The course will allow participants to actively be agents of positive social change in our country and the global civil society.

The summer seminar will focus on important international human rights instruments. We will cover from ratification to realization in the lives of all Americans and citizens of the world. The seminar combines keynote addresses by international law professors as well as peace & policy makers, panel presentations by NGOs and indigenous peoples, updates on the latest developments at the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues and the newly created UN Human Rights Council including the Universal Periodic Review, documentary film premieres daily during lunch and excursions of empowerment throughout the week around Washington D.C.

The course will meet in UDC’s Building 39 on the second floor in Room 205, 4200 Connecticut Ave, NW (Van Ness/UDC Metro) and will begin each morning at 9 a.m. from Monday May 24 through Friday May 28.

The presentations will take place every 90 minutes starting at 9 a.m. throughout the day concluding at 4:30 p.m. daily. Each day at noon, there will be the sixth annual Human Rights Film Festival featuring documentary movies on fundamental freedoms.

We hope you can participate as much as possible in the five day program.

A significant aspect of this advocacy course is participating actively with the decision-makers in our democracy. Therefore, there will be educational excursions of empowerment to complement the talks.

For latest schedules please email joshuacooperhawaii@gmail.com or jfl@udc.edu.

We also want to welcome you to invite your membership to be part of the coalition aiming for ratification of treaties by the U.S. government and also to organize better monitoring of US involvement in the UN human rights mechanisms. We very much look forward to your participation in this empowering endeavor and hopeful future action to create a culture of peace and human rights.

As we are finalizing the schedule, it would be greatly appreciated if you could let us know today if you are able to speak. 

Thank you.

Maluhia Me Ka Pono,
Joshua Cooper, Coordinator
International Human and Peoples’ Rights Law Program
Register at http://www.law.udc.edu/event/Human_Rights_Course

Only 100 seats left – register NOW!

If you are going to be in D.C. on June 17th – you can attend this lecture.   But you must register…[see below]

************

Please join the School of Law Community
for the 18th Annual Joseph L. Rauh, Jr. Lecture by

Eric H. Holder, Jr, Attorney General of the United States

Introduction by Wade Henderson, President, Leadership Conference on Civil Rights and Joe Rauh Professor of Public Interest Law

Thursday, June 17th

6:00 p.m. Reception 6:30 Lecture
UDC David A. Clarke School of Law

UDC Auditorium, Building 46
4200 Connecticut Avenue, NW
Admission is Free, but Space is Limited!

Register Online:

http://www.law.udc.edu/event/RauhLecture2010

Underground Parking off Van Ness St.
Metro Red Line: Van Ness/UDC. Wheelchair accessible

                            Attention Oregonians

                      From Attorney General John Kroger
 
The Oregon Department of Justice Consumer Hotline today has received a surge of complaints about telephone calls from an entity claiming to be from the Bank of the Cascades. The caller is telling consumers that their bank records have been compromised and that they need to verify the consumer's bank account number. This is a phishing scam.
 
Never provide your bank account number over the phone or by email. No legitimate financial institution will call you and ask you for your bank account number or other sensitive financial information. The scammers are trying to trick consumers into turning over their bank account numbers to they can empty the bank account.
 
The Consumer Hotline has received more than 20 telephone calls from Central Oregon about this scam. At least one consumer fell prey to the scam and lost $515 immediately after providing their bank account number. This is a significant number of calls for such a short period of time.
 
Anyone who believes they have been approached by a scammer should contact the Oregon Department of Justice Consumer Hotline at 1-877-877-9392 or www.oregonattorneygeneral.gov.

Here is the list of the millionaire senators who voted against helping middle class, working Americans who needed COBRA extensions, unemployment benefits, etc.

They were even willing to have Federal employees furloughed.

Why?  They say it had to do with fiscal stuff – but if that were true – they would have voted against all of George Bush's ideas – and I doubt they did.

If you know of ones here who voted against Bush's deficit  increases – please let me know.

Alexander (R-TN)
Barrasso (R-WY)
Bennett (R-UT)
Bunning (R-KY)
Burr (R-NC)
Coburn (R-OK)
Corker (R-TN)
Cornyn (R-TX)
Crapo (R-ID)
DeMint (R-SC)
Ensign (R-NV)
Enzi (R-WY)
Gregg (R-NH)
Hatch (R-UT)
Johanns (R-NE)
McConnell (R-KY)
Risch (R-ID)
Sessions (R-AL)
Thune (R-SD)

These millionaires vote only for the rich and the rest of us be damned!

Please comment….thank you

Frank Rich has a great piece on our home-grown American terrorists and American terrorism.

The Axis of the Obsessed and Deranged

Yes, we have groups, our own home-grown American terrorists, who are just like the Taliban or al-qaeda – yet we ignore them or worse, give them support by not condemning them!

Who does not condemn them?  The party of NO!

Taxes are a necessity for running a government.  It's the price we pay for "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness"  and to  "establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity."

There may be other ways to finance our government but I don't think the American terrorists have any ideas except destruction of everything – and that is not a solution!

Another in a long and growing list of:

"why am I not surprised"

"health" insurance companies make 12 BILLION [yes BILLION] in profits last year…

How?

By dropping 2.7 MILLION people

http://bit.ly/bb7rMD

and – oh yeah – by RAISING premiums for subscribers!

The UDC David A. Clarke School of Law and
Jamie Raskin, Professor of Constitutional Law, American University

Present

Andrea D. Lyon  (Antioch School of Law, 1976)

Author of "Angel of Death Row: My Life as a Death Penalty Defense Lawyer"

RSVP on line at http://www.law.udc.edu/event/Angel_of_Death_Row

Andrea Lyon is Professor of Law, DePaul University, and nationally recognized death penalty expert.

Copies of Angel of Death Row: My Life As a Death Penalty Defense Lawyer will be available for purchase, and Ms. Lyon will sign books. A wine reception will precede Ms. Lyon's talk.

This trail-blazing attorney pioneered unconventional ways to defend clients against society's ultimate punishment. Nineteen times, Ms. Lyon has argued to save a convicted murderer's life, and 19 times she has succeeded.

Come to hear her answer to the perennial question, "How can you defend these people?"

Angel of Death Row: My Life as a Death Penalty Defense Lawyer is the harrowing memoir of the first woman in the United States to head a death penalty defense team.

Tuesday, February 2, 2010
6:00 p.m.
the UDC David A. Clarke School of Law
4200 Connecticut Ave. N.W.
Building 39, Room 201
Washington, DC 20008

At the Van Ness-UDC station on the Red Line.

This event is free and open to the public.

RSVP on line at: http://www.law.udc.edu/event/Angel_of_Death_Row

Published January 5 by Kaplan Publishing.

"Riveting stories" – Kirkus Reviews

"Reads like a thriller with real life-or-death consequences" – Bookselling This Week

"…timely, important, and a page-turner to the end." – Sister Helen Prejean, author of Dead Man Walking

"…must reading for anyone who wants to see how the capital punishment system really dysfunctions…" – Ronald J. Tabak, Chair, Death Penalty Committee of the American Bar Association

I love JibJab and this was supposed to go out sooner – but the best laid plans – [you know how it is]