Beth Jacobson was a Wells Fargo loan officer who blew the whistle on the bank’s predatory, racist loan-fraud in the runup to the 2008 financial crisis, which tanked the world’s economy and nearly wiped out Wells Fargo (they were rescued with a $36B taxpayer-funded bailout).
Eight years later, Wells Fargo has fired 5,300 employees for participating in a scam that involved opening 2,000,000 fake accounts in its customers’ names, stealing their money and crashing their credit-ratings – the gave the exec who oversaw this a $125M taxpayer-subsidized bonus, and CEO John Stumpf, who took home $200M in bonuses based on profits from the fraud, will keep the money and his job, but the whistleblowers who reported the fraud starting in 2011 were all illegally fired.
Jacobson describes how Stumpf – now CEO, then a top exec – was complicit in the fraud that helped precipitate the crash and the worst recession since the Great Depression. She pins blame for the loan-fraud on the bank’s aggressive sales targets – the same thing that caused the current fraud, suggesting that the bank hasn’t learned a fucking thing since 2008, except that it can get away with crime, every time.
I saw this first-hand. It’s all fucking true. People who called the ethics line were fired if they could be identified. We treated calling in to report stuff as if our reports were the crime.
Although voting is considered the civic duty of every citizen, in the U.S., there’s no law requiring anyone to actually carry out that duty. It’s really less a “civic duty” and more a “civic suggestion, you know, if you feel like it; no presh.” Americans have the right to vote, but many choose not to exercise that particular right. Only 60 percent of eligible voters voted in the 2012 presidential elections, which means that nearly half of the country stayed home on the day they were supposed to choose the leader of the free world. To combat voter apathy, in more than 30 countries, it’s compulsory for all eligible citizens to vote. In those countries, deciding to stay home and play Overwatch instead of participating in democracy means you fucked up as a citizen – and you will pay the price. Punishments range from fines to prison sentences, and that’s before they start getting creative.
In Belgium, missing four consecutive voting opportunities will lead to the loss of your right to vote for the next 10 years. In case that sounds like a reward, it also means your job prospects go way down, as the civil service won’t even look at your resume. Refusing to be democratic can also hurt your wallet in Bolivia, where failure to show your “I Voted” card at the bank can prevent you from accessing the money you already worked for. And if you refuse to vote in Italy, good luck finding a daycare center willing to take your kids while you’re off not voting.
If you ever feel bad about taking a longer time than someone else to accomplish the same things, just remember that during the 1912 Stockholm Olympics Japanese marathon runner Shizo Kanakuri passed out in a garden party along the marathon route and, instead of notifying race officials of his inability to finish the race, he went back to Japan without telling anyone and was considered a missing person by the Swedish authorities for 50 years.
He didn’t finish the race until 1967 when a Swedish television station offered to help him complete the run, and he finished with a final time of 54 years, 8 months, 6 days, 5 hours, 32 minutes and 20.379 seconds.
Anakin - the last dragon lord from an ancient royal bloodline. His parents were killed when he was still a child and he doesn’t even remember who they were. So he doesn’t know about his abilities.
Obi Wan - knight + dragon slayer + Anakin’s teacher.
Neither of them knew who or what Anakin was and what kind of power he possessed. But at one point the truth became clear.
You know whats annoying? That it’s normal to know everything there is to know about football and know every players name and know the scores and dress up for games etc but god forbid someone knows all the actors of lord of the rings names and dresses up as a character for comic con, thats just SAD.
