Running down bicyclists is no big deal - if you are rich

[simonov]

http://www.vaildaily.com/article/201011 ... ofile=1062

EAGLE, Colorado — A financial manager for wealthy clients will not face felony charges for a hit-and-run because it could jeopardize his job, prosecutors said Thursday.

Martin Joel Erzinger, 52, faces two misdemeanor traffic charges stemming from a July 3 incident when he allegedly hit bicyclist Dr. Steven Milo from behind then sped away, according to court documents.

"Martin Joel Erzinger, a financial manager for wealthy clients will not face felony charges for a hit-and-run because it could jeopardize his job, prosecutors said Thursday. Erzinger, an Arrowhead homeowner, is a director in private wealth management at Morgan Stanley Smith Barney in Denver. His biography on Worth.com states that Erzinger is “dedicated to ultra high net worth individuals, their families and foundations.”

"Milo was bicycling eastbound on Highway 6 just east of Miller Ranch Road, when Erzinger allegedly hit him with the black 2010 Mercedes Benz sedan he was driving. Erzinger fled the scene and was arrested later, police say."

Milo wrote, “Mr. Erzinger struck me, fled and left me for dead on the highway,” Milo wrote. “Neither his financial prominence nor my financial situation should be factors in your prosecution of this case.”

Prosecutor responded, “Felony convictions have some pretty serious job implications for someone in Mr. Erzinger's profession, and that entered into it.”

[Ze Hiker]

are you shitting me?!

[obie]

This has to be challenged. Completly absurd explanation from prosecutor. The DA must be crooked and has a history...or he's just begging for trouble here.

Does the prosecutor work in Bell by any chance?

[Bill]

Seems to me a felony conviction would affect most if not all of our careers. Lame excuse. That guy made a choice when he left the scene, he needs to pay the price. What message does that send as a precedent? If a felony conviction affects your job we don't prosecute? So much for blind justice!

[EManBevHills]

What an absurd miscarriage of justice.
The DA ought to lose his job over this!

[simonov]

Seems to me a felony conviction would affect most if not all of our careers.

Well, sure, but not all of use are hedge fund managers with Wall Street connections.

Remember, we spent about a trillion dollars as a nation ensuring none of these people were held accountable for the global financial meltdown they caused, and to ensure they all held onto their summer homes in the Hamptons.

Given the state of American society today, and our priorities as a nation, it is only reasonable that elites are treated much better than the rest of us by the justice system. I suppose, of course, it has always been so, but the difference today is a county prosecutor can publicly admit it.

[Bill]

Seems to me a felony conviction would affect most if not all of our careers.

Well, sure, but not all of use are hedge fund managers with Wall Street connections.

Remember, we spent about a trillion dollars as a nation ensuring none of these people were held accountable for the global financial meltdown they caused, and to ensure they all held onto their summer homes in the Hamptons.

Given the state of American society today, and our priorities as a nation, it is only reasonable that elites are treated much better than the rest of us by the justice system. I suppose, of course, it has always been so, but the difference today is a county prosecutor can publicly admit it.

I am no defender of Wall Street Bail-outs, or those who acted irresponsibly or unethically but, this is different. This is a clear case of the DA not enforcing the law based solely on the persons station in life. In the case of TARP which I think you are referring to, a case could be made that the money prevented large instituions that we the little guys depend on for our livelyhoods. (401k, stocks, life savings etc.) I think there is a problem with our society's priorities when some people will use the financial mess to simply not pay their bills like you and I do only to gain some advantage or lower payment. Bankruptcy was only meant to be a stop gap measure in case of medical or similar disaster, not an excuse to break a promise or agreement. That in my opinion is the greater tragedy, not taking responsibility for ones own commitments.

[simonov]

In the case of TARP which I think you are referring to, a case could be made that the money prevented large instituions that we the little guys depend on for our livelyhoods. (401k, stocks, life savings etc.)

Was there? Fine. Then the government could have protected all of us by nationalizing the banks. The craven shareholders get nothing; the stupid bondholders get nothing.

Or the US government could have followed the advice it gives to every third would nation that has a banking crisis of its own and shut down the bad banks, wiping out the shareholders and most of the bondholders and making the counterparties whole, putting the economy on a sound financial footing as quickly as possible.

Good advice for third world countries; bad advice for Murray down at the club. After all, he's promised you a lucrative job once you leave government "service."

Read this:



As I said, the difference today is a county prosecutor will openly admit the elites are treated differently, just as banks used their TARP money to give themselves massive bonuses without even trying to hide it. What, after all, are we going to do about it?

That these people, looters and criminals on a massive scale, have convinced so many Americans that plundering the entire US economy is not nearly as grave a sin as some hapless Joe walking out on his mortgage, is an even more obvious symptom of this once-promising nation's slide into naked oligarchy.

And not only that, -- but wait, look everyone, Bristol Palin is on Dancing With the Stars!

[Tim]

I agree with simonov. TARP was and still is a scam. Taxpayers got blackmailed out of trillions of dollars. TRILLIONS!! It's mind boggling what they got away with. It's the biggest theft in human history and people have no idea. There was outright fraud but none of this makes the news or gets investigated like during the S&L crisis. It's like the biggest financial calamity in history just went down but we just throw a few trillion at it and just continue with our lives like nothing happened. No one cares about the root cause because the iPhone 4 or Droid X is out!!

[AlanK]

From today's Vail Daily

Vail Valley Voices: DA explains controversial plea bargain

Mark Hurlbert
Vail, CO, Colorado

Over the weekend, I have received over 1,000 e-mails from all over the country regarding the Martin Joel Erzinger case.

Because of that I feel the need to explain why I am offering the plea bargain proposed in the Erzinger case. Either through the bent of the Vail Daily article or my own inartful comments, I feel that the reason for the plea bargain was not properly conveyed.

First, let me say that from the start I feel for Dr. Steven Milo and sincerely hope that he has a complete and speedy recovery from his injuries. So why did I offer two misdemeanors on such a serious case?

Despite what is implied in the Vail Daily, Dr. Milo never asked me to plea Mr. Erzinger to a felony. Dr. Milo asked that I plead Mr. Erzinger to a felony deferred judgment and sentence.

What this means is that Mr. Erzinger would plead to a felony leaving the scene of an accident, and the judgment would be set aside.

In either two or four years, as long as Mr. Erzinger met certain conditions, the case would drop off his record and he would be allowed to seal this case. Since there was no alcohol or drugs involved, the only conditions I could legally ask for were that he pay restitution and stay out of trouble.

Given that he had a clean history, Mr. Erzinger would essentially have been able to write a check, and the case would then be dismissed. On top of that, while Dr. Milo was still probably recovering from his injuries, Mr. Erzinger would be able to say that he had no criminal history and even deny that anything had happened. That is not something I could stomach.

I therefore offered that Mr. Erzinger plead guilty to leaving the scene of an accident and careless driving causing serious bodily injury.

This means that for the rest of his life, Mr. Erzinger will have on his record that he carelessly drove, caused another human being serious bodily injury and left the scene. He will lose his driver's license, face potential jail time as determined by the judge and still have to pay restitution, which as I said in the Vail Daily is important to us but not an overriding objective in the plea.

Obviously there is a benefit to Mr. Erzinger on taking the misdemeanors -- he keeps his job.

If he were to plead to the deferred charge, he may or may not lose his job. But either way, as mentioned above, in a couple of years he would be able to tell any prospective employer that he had no criminal history.

There has been much made about Mr. Erzinger's wealth. That is of no concern to me other than as it pertains to restitution to Dr. Milo. I have not asked Mr. Erzinger for any money either to myself or to the District Attorney's Office, and he has not offered. Both of us understand that that would be highly illegal.

Finally, I appreciate the constructive comments I have received. And even if I have not responded, I have read every single one of them.

If after reading this, you still feel that I am wrong for the plea bargain, I take full responsibility and welcome any constructive comments.

But be forewarned that there is not much I can change at this point. I made the plea offer months ago, and the defense has accepted. This means that even if I wanted to change the plea offer, I could not.

The only person that can reject it at this point is the judge. Again, I welcome any constructive comments in this case.

Mark Hurlbert is the district attorney of the 5th Judicial District. The case referred to above was an alleged hit-and-run accident in July involving motorist Martin Joel Erzinger and bicyclist Dr. Steven Milo that resulted in serious injuries Milo is still recovering from.

[AlanK]

From Anout.com

How Much Did the Bank Bailout Cost?

By Tom Murse, About.com Contributing Writer

Oct 7 2010

The bank bailout of 2008, officially called the Troubled Asset Relief Program, was an attempt by the federal government to prevent a meltdown of some of the largest financial institutions in the United States in 2008 and early 2009.

The Congressional Budget Office initially projected that the bank bailout would cost taxpayers $350 billion or more, money used to buy "troubled assets" and equity from major financial institutions.

But two years after President George W. Bush signed the bank bailout into law, the U.S. Treasury said the financial impact on taxpayers would be far less severe than originally thought.

"We now have recovered most of the investments we made in the banks," the Treasury's Office of Financial Stability wrote in October 2010.

"Taxpayers will likely earn a profit on the investments the government made in banks and AIG, with TARP losses limited to investments in the automobile industry and housing programs. And we have already returned hundreds of billions of unused authority to the taxpayer to help reduce our debt and future budget deficits.

"Because of the success of the program, TARP will likely cost a fraction of this amount," the agency reported.

The total cost of the bank bailout?

The Treasury estimated taxpayers would be out $51 billion -- or only $29 billion when interest is repaid to the government by the once-troubled insurance giant American Insurance Group.

Specifically, losses from the bank bailout are expected to be $17 billion in investments in General Motors, Chrysler and the auto finance companies, and $46 billion in the Home Affordable Modification Program, a mortgage modification program.

[Bill]

I totally agree. It was a mistake. I think the idea was to prevent total collapse. I think when the government interferes and trys to pick winners and losers we all end up losing. No doubt some of these financial institutions that took government bailouts and then paid huge bonuses deserved public scrutiny. However having the banks be taken over by the government won't work either. I'm no expert, but when is the last time the government ran anything efficiently. The more they interfere the worse it's going to get.

[Tim]

Haha, I've seen those numbers about TARP. What a bunch of baloney. I don't even believe the Treasury. They've already changed their accounting methods one time to hide several billion dollars in losses to the AIG bailout. And how about their response to Bloomberg's FOIA request to identify $301 billion of securities owned by Citigroup Inc.

More than 20 months later, after saying at least five times that a response was imminent, Treasury officials responded with 560 pages of printed-out e-mails -- none of which Pittman requested. They were so heavily redacted that most of what’s left are everyday messages such as “Did you just try to call me?” and “Monday will be a busy day!”

None of the documents answers Pittman’s request for “records sufficient to show the names of the relevant securities” or the dates and terms of the guarantees. Even so, the U.S. government considers the collection of e-mails a partial response to an official request under the federal Freedom of Information Act, or FOIA.

The true cost of the bailouts isn't just TARP. It's on the order of trillions in backdoor bailouts, asset guarantees, low-interest-rate loans, free money and other benefits handed out to the Money Trust. Here's a list:

http://motherjones.com/politics/2009/12 ... ze-bailout
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid= ... =worldwide

More importantly, by the government making loans and guarantees to huge banks like Goldman Sachs and Citigroup at well below the market price it allowed these banks to survive and prosper. If the market had been allowed to work, the shareholders of these banks would been wiped out, their top executives would be walking the unemployment lines, and many of their creditors would have been forced to accept less than 100 cents on the dollar for their debt. This would mean that they would not have claim to trillions of dollars of the economy's wealth which they now have.

Even more importantly, the bailout created a moral hazard that will bite us in the ass even harder in the future. We're saying you can do this stuff and get away with it.

I think the total collapse thing was a scare. Of course the bankers are going to say that to blackmail us. We should have just let those big banks go down, liquidate and send the remains back to the FDIC. There are plenty of little to medium sized banks who didn't play this 30:1 leverage game, who didn't take unreasonable risk and who deserve to take the place of those rotten big banks. These bad decisions now will ruin us in the long term.

[Bill]

Haha, I've seen those numbers about TARP. What a bunch of baloney. I don't even believe the Treasury. They've already changed their accounting methods one time to hide several billion dollars in losses to the AIG bailout. And how about their response to Bloomberg's FOIA request to identify $301 billion of securities owned by Citigroup Inc.

More than 20 months later, after saying at least five times that a response was imminent, Treasury officials responded with 560 pages of printed-out e-mails -- none of which Pittman requested. They were so heavily redacted that most of what’s left are everyday messages such as “Did you just try to call me?” and “Monday will be a busy day!”

None of the documents answers Pittman’s request for “records sufficient to show the names of the relevant securities” or the dates and terms of the guarantees. Even so, the U.S. government considers the collection of e-mails a partial response to an official request under the federal Freedom of Information Act, or FOIA.

Even more importantly, the bailout created a moral hazard that will bite us in the ass even harder in the future. We're saying you can do this stuff and get away with it.

You nailed it there. The true folly of the whole TARP fiasco is the change of attitude and sense of responsibility of both the lender, and the borrower.
Sorry to drag this out into the weeds.
Looks like prosecution of the hit and run driver was not as we may have thought.
As Roseanne Rosannadana would say, "Never mind".

[obie]

Will we see some names attached to the bank failures...or more of same?


http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-f ... 6749.story

[norma r]

From today's Vail Daily

Vail Valley Voices: DA explains controversial plea bargain

Mark Hurlbert
Vail, CO, Colorado

Over the weekend, I have received over 1,000 e-mails from all over the country regarding the Martin Joel Erzinger case.

Because of that I feel the need to explain why I am offering the plea bargain proposed in the Erzinger case. Either through the bent of the Vail Daily article or my own inartful comments, I feel that the reason for the plea bargain was not properly conveyed.

First, let me say that from the start I feel for Dr. Steven Milo and sincerely hope that he has a complete and speedy recovery from his injuries. So why did I offer two misdemeanors on such a serious case?

Despite what is implied in the Vail Daily, Dr. Milo never asked me to plea Mr. Erzinger to a felony. Dr. Milo asked that I plead Mr. Erzinger to a felony deferred judgment and sentence.

What this means is that Mr. Erzinger would plead to a felony leaving the scene of an accident, and the judgment would be set aside.

In either two or four years, as long as Mr. Erzinger met certain conditions, the case would drop off his record and he would be allowed to seal this case. Since there was no alcohol or drugs involved, the only conditions I could legally ask for were that he pay restitution and stay out of trouble.

Given that he had a clean history, Mr. Erzinger would essentially have been able to write a check, and the case would then be dismissed. On top of that, while Dr. Milo was still probably recovering from his injuries, Mr. Erzinger would be able to say that he had no criminal history and even deny that anything had happened. That is not something I could stomach.

I therefore offered that Mr. Erzinger plead guilty to leaving the scene of an accident and careless driving causing serious bodily injury.

This means that for the rest of his life, Mr. Erzinger will have on his record that he carelessly drove, caused another human being serious bodily injury and left the scene. He will lose his driver's license, face potential jail time as determined by the judge and still have to pay restitution, which as I said in the Vail Daily is important to us but not an overriding objective in the plea.

Obviously there is a benefit to Mr. Erzinger on taking the misdemeanors -- he keeps his job.

If he were to plead to the deferred charge, he may or may not lose his job. But either way, as mentioned above, in a couple of years he would be able to tell any prospective employer that he had no criminal history.

There has been much made about Mr. Erzinger's wealth. That is of no concern to me other than as it pertains to restitution to Dr. Milo. I have not asked Mr. Erzinger for any money either to myself or to the District Attorney's Office, and he has not offered. Both of us understand that that would be highly illegal.

Finally, I appreciate the constructive comments I have received. And even if I have not responded, I have read every single one of them.

If after reading this, you still feel that I am wrong for the plea bargain, I take full responsibility and welcome any constructive comments.

But be forewarned that there is not much I can change at this point. I made the plea offer months ago, and the defense has accepted. This means that even if I wanted to change the plea offer, I could not.

The only person that can reject it at this point is the judge. Again, I welcome any constructive comments in this case.

Mark Hurlbert is the district attorney of the 5th Judicial District. The case referred to above was an alleged hit-and-run accident in July involving motorist Martin Joel Erzinger and bicyclist Dr. Steven Milo that resulted in serious injuries Milo is still recovering from.

So where was this guy Hurlbert when Tina, Steve, Fern and Miguel needed a lawyer for the DWA frivolous suit?

[simonov]

That these people, looters and criminals on a massive scale, have convinced so many Americans that plundering the entire US economy is not nearly as grave a sin as some hapless Joe walking out on his mortgage, is an even more obvious symptom of this once-promising nation's slide into naked oligarchy.

Matt Taibbi just published a hair-raising article about the massive scale of the looting.

Throughout the mounting catastrophe, however, many Americans have been slow to comprehend the true nature of the mortgage disaster. They seemed to have grasped just two things about the crisis: One, a lot of people are getting their houses foreclosed on. Two, some of the banks doing the foreclosing seem to have misplaced their paperwork.

For most people, the former bit about homeowners not paying their damn bills is the important part, while the latter, about the sudden and strange inability of the world's biggest and wealthiest banks to keep proper records, is incidental. Just a little office sloppiness, and who cares? Those deadbeat homeowners still owe the money, right? "They had it coming to them," is how a bartender at the Jacksonville airport put it to me.

But in reality, it's the unpaid bills that are incidental and the lost paperwork that matters. It turns out that underneath that little iceberg tip of exposed evidence lies a fraud so gigantic that it literally cannot be contemplated by our leaders, for fear of admitting that our entire financial system is corrupted to its core — with our great banks and even our government coffers backed not by real wealth but by vast landfills of deceptively generated and essentially worthless mortgage-backed assets.

. . .

What's sad is that most Americans who have an opinion about the foreclosure crisis don't give a shit about all the fraud involved. They don't care that these mortgages wouldn't have been available in the first place if the banks hadn't found a way to sell oregano as weed to pension funds and insurance companies. They don't care that the Countrywides of the world pushed borrowers who qualified for safer fixed-­income loans into far more dangerous adjustable-rate loans, because their brokers got bigger commissions for doing so. They don't care that in the rush to produce loans, people were sold houses that turned out to have flood damage or worse, and they certainly don't care that people were sold houses with inflated appraisals, which left them almost immediately underwater once housing prices started falling.

The way the banks tell it, it doesn't matter if they defrauded homeowners and investors and taxpayers alike to get these loans. All that matters is that a bunch of deadbeats aren't paying their fucking bills. "If you didn't pay your mortgage, you shouldn't be in your house — period," is how Walter Todd, portfolio manager at Greenwood Capital Associates, puts it. "People are getting upset about something that's just procedural."

[RichardK]

Mark Hurlbert is the district attorney of the 5th Judicial District.

Mark Hurlburt was the DA who prosecuted Kobe Bryant. He's such a sharp lawyer that he didn't notice his witness had zero credibility until a few days before the trial.

[AlanK]

Mark Hurlbert is the district attorney of the 5th Judicial District.

Mark Hurlburt was the DA who prosecuted Kobe Bryant. He's such a sharp lawyer that he didn't notice his witness had zero credibility until a few days before the trial.

Actually, that "witness" was the accuser. There was no trail. The charges were dropped when she reached an agreement with Bryant that he would publicly apologize and she would not testify against him. The civil suit that she had filed earlier went forward until the two sides settled out of court. It would be fascinating to know the terms of that settlement, which were never made public. In the end, neither the accuser nor Kobe seemed to have much credibility.

[RichardK]

Actually, that "witness" was the accuser. There was no trail. The charges were dropped when she reached an agreement with Bryant that he would publicly apologize and she would not testify against him. The civil suit that she had filed earlier went forward until the two sides settled out of court. It would be fascinating to know the terms of that settlement, which were never made public. In the end, neither the accuser nor Kobe seemed to have much credibility.

Just before the trial was to start, Hurlbert took the woman to an empty courtroom in another county and conducted a mock cross-examination. She changed her story on several points contradicting sworn statements. Hurlbert realized that she would be destroyed on the witness stand and that he had no case. That's why the criminal charges were dropped. It had nothing to do with the civil case. Hurlbert was criticized for not figuring this out earlier. Kobe settled the civil case, I think, for two reasons: 1. The standard of proof in civil court is lower than criminal court. and 2. He had the money to pay her off and get on with his life.

[AlanK]

Actually, that "witness" was the accuser. There was no trail. The charges were dropped when she reached an agreement with Bryant that he would publicly apologize and she would not testify against him. The civil suit that she had filed earlier went forward until the two sides settled out of court. It would be fascinating to know the terms of that settlement, which were never made public. In the end, neither the accuser nor Kobe seemed to have much credibility.

Just before the trial was to start, Hurlbert took the woman to an empty courtroom in another county and conducted a mock cross-examination. She changed her story on several points contradicting sworn statements. Hurlbert realized that she would be destroyed on the witness stand and that he had no case. That's why the criminal charges were dropped. It had nothing to do with the civil case. Hurlbert was criticized for not figuring this out earlier. Kobe settled the civil case, I think, for two reasons: 1. The standard of proof in civil court is lower than criminal court. and 2. He had the money to pay her off and get on with his life.

Kobe's public apology closed with:

I issue this statement today fully aware that while one part of this case ends today, another remains. I understand that the civil case against me will go forward. That part of this case will be decided by and between the parties directly involved in the incident and will no longer be a financial or emotional drain on the citizens of the state of Colorado.

That had to be part of an agreement to drop the criminal charges. Otherwise, there is no way his lawyer would have put up with such a statement with the civil case still pending. But I have no argument with the statement that Hurlbert figured out that the accuser was not credible.

[Layne Cantrell]

This has to be challenged. Completly absurd explanation from prosecutor. The DA must be crooked and has a history...or he's just begging for trouble here.

Does the prosecutor work in Bell by any chance?

I thought the same thing and when I read that it was the same guy who tried to hang Kobe Bryant to make a name for himself I nearly lost it. This guy is crooked as hell.

[jeffd]

Updates on the hit and run... "new car smell" may have intoxicated driver, sleep apnea is main defense. Seriously?

http://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/26 ... etail.html

[AlanK]

Updates on the hit and run... "new car smell" may have intoxicated driver, sleep apnea is main defense. Seriously?

http://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/26 ... etail.html

You can't make up stuff like this.

If the guy has sleep apnea as severe as he is claiming, his being behind the wheel of a car seems like criminal negligence.

[Zach]

This is bullshit! Hit and RUN!!! WTF does that have to do with sleep apnea or ANYTHING else.

[simonov]

If the guy has sleep apnea as severe as he is claiming, his being behind the wheel of a car seems like criminal negligence.

We aren't talking about some Mexican kid on a joy ride here. This, sir, is a Wall Street Fund Manager. Such people never engage in criminal negligence, and when they do, it's only for our own good.

I can only hope and, yes, pray, that his share this years record Wall Street bonuses can in some small way mitigate the trauma he must be experiencing in being dragged ignominiously through a legal system that was clearly designed to process the riff-raff of society (that would be you and me), not important and privileged Wall Street Fund Managers.

[AlanK]

If the guy has sleep apnea as severe as he is claiming, his being behind the wheel of a car seems like criminal negligence.

We aren't talking about some Mexican kid on a joy ride here. This, sir, is a Wall Street Fund Manager. Such people never engage in criminal negligence, and when they do, it's only for our own good.

Perhaps his defense should be "I only did to the guy with my car what I did to the entire US economy with my job."

[obie]

Good article:

http://velonews.competitor.com/2010/12/ ... ail_153394