If you or I bounced a check for groceries at the Wal-Mart, they would have the local prosecutor throw our butts in jail. Now, if you were a wealthy corporate executive and stole hundreds of thousands of dollars then claimed to be feeling too poorly to go to a minimum security federal country club, well, then you'd probably just have to stay in your mansion for a couple of years.
The United States Attorney must have been surprised to learn that Tom Coughlin was out and about, feeling perky enough to attend the Hunting Heritage Superfund Banquet last Saturday night at the Quail Unlimited barn in Bentonville -- where alcohol flowed freely in "dry" Benton County, where a designer camouflage suit from San Francisco-area clothier Foxy Huntress went for $2,500, and where firearms were auctioned in the presence of a felon. The banquet organizer said Coughlin was there doing "community service," and one of his admirers added that "all that stuff about his federal case is a bunch of crap.”
Benton County's own Congressman John Boozman (R-Pinnacle Gated Community) today voted to give the giant telecommunications corporations retroactive legal immunity for participating in warrantless wiretapping and violating the privacy rights of their customers. The House of Representatives, with the support of Arkansas's Democratic Congressmen Berry, Snyder, and Ross, passed the amendment 213-197 denying retroactive immunity. Boozman was alone in shilling for the big corporations at the expense of the average citizen this afternoon, just before he voted to adjourn for a 17-day vacation.
Fitzgerald was right, the rich are different from you and me.
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