MISSOURI – Freedom is a daily endeavor dependent on the people, and it requires, at times, a call to action to ensure that justice is served--this is one of those times.
Over the last few years we have seen a pattern of communication develop most prominently in the way of “Disasters” that are really not disasters. They are, however, opportunities for all Americans to consider the accuracy of the information they receive by the mainstream media: newspapers, network news, cable opinions, and in particular, the information available over the Internet.
My attempt to draw a link between my employment discrimination case, Riley v. US Bancorp by and through employees including but not limited to Richard K. Davis, Chairman, President and CEO US Bancorp and our “economic and ecological disasters” is a challenge. The facts, however, are important enough to try.
In August 2009 the United States Eastern District Court of Missouri by and through the Honorable E. Richard Webber, attorneys and partners, including but not limited to Thompson Coburn, LLP and Greensfelder, Hemker and Gale, PC dismissed my employment discrimination case in violation of due process and equal protection of the laws.
My case and all the events over the last few years should shine the light on the dangers of arbitration and alternative dispute resolution (ADR) in lieu of litigation. The People’s Court becomes a private enterprise of entities: public, private, unions, (non-persons).
Alexander Hamilton, John Jay and James Madison wrote a series of eighty-five letters written and published in various New York newspapers between 1787 and 1788. (The Federalist, Gideon Edition, No. 1 – No. 85, Liberty Fund 2001) More widely known as "The Federalist Papers".
The authors addressed the same issues that we see today because they are human issues.
Throughout history we can link our economic woes to tyranny and oppression. A true republic of the people, for the people and by the people requires a shared common goal:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain [inalienable] rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”
The only common document or set of values and principles shared by all in a Judeo-Christian society was the Ten Commandments. Our republic requires agreed upon rules shared by all citizens in which to judge opinions against the facts in support or in opposition of these rules. The rules are not recognized simply because they are written down, but primarily because they provide a basis of understanding of our duty toward one another with respect to persons and property.
Hamilton stated in his introduction, “It will be equally forgotten, that the vigor of government is essential to the security of liberty; that, in the contemplation of a sound an well informed judgment, their interests can never be separated.” (Fed. No.1)
Ideally we should not require our courts to decide every disagreement of opinion; rather, we reasonably believe that opinions, rightly ordered, will manifest ethical and, therefore, legal outcomes.
Unfortunately, we have a pattern of maintaining opinions by refusing to acknowledge reasonable evidence that proves some opinions flawed. For example, facts are selected to support opinions rather than to allow the facts to form opinions.
“[T]he accumulation of power, Madison argues, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.” (No. 47)
We have seen the extremes of tyranny: holocausts, genocides, lynchings and the like. Despite our anti-discrimination laws, however, we have many covert discriminatory practices still in place. Discrimination can only be maintained through employment practices because our livelihoods depend on it.
The role of government is to implement laws to protect the rights of individuals from those who would usurp them. Then, individuals are to be reasonably confident in exercising their rights in our courts, not just for personal relief but also for the good of society.
Madison clarified, “But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, either external nor internal controls on government would be necessary.” (No.51)
He continued, “In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself. A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions.”
We are a nation of laws not of man because men and women are not angels. Yet, throughout our history despite the alleged increased educational level of Americans, tyranny and oppression has remained the primary control on our society.
The network and cable news stations re-aired the “experiment” originally conducted in the 1950s to show how otherwise reasonable people would obey instructions from one in authority to apply electric shock to fellow human beings. NBC’s Dateline duplicated the experiment with similar results. More than fifty years did not improve the outcome.
Before the stock market plummeted and while I was becoming an attorney by way of Google, it was reported in that the “uptick rule” was eliminated under the watch of Rep. Barney Frank, House Financial Services Committee Chairman along with Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd that prompted the TARP bailout.
A USA Today,
Emily Chasen-Reuters reported, “The so-called "uptick rule" or "tick test" was implemented in the 1930s after the stock market crash to ensure short sellers were not alone in causing a stock price to fall. But regulators at the Securities and Exchange Commission revoked the rule in July, suggesting it modestly hurt liquidity and did not appear necessary to prevent the manipulation of a stock price.”
A short sale is generally the sale of a stock you do not own (or that you will borrow for delivery). Short sellers believe the price of the stock will fall, or are seeking to hedge against potential price volatility in securities that they own as defined by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
It was the SEC who claimed they “dropped the ball” on several fronts. First, the derivatives securities failure along with a number of Bank CEOs and the Federal Reserve Chairman who claimed, “They never saw it coming!” Then they failed to act on the tips regarding the Madoff and Stanford securities violations.
An act of congress was not needed to eliminate the “uptick rule” but it was needed to reinstate it by an amendment to the SEC Act of 1939 on October 13, 2009, about the same time the market began to recover. The congressional hearings did not find any unlawful violations.
The auxiliary precautions or checks and balances are essentially non-existent not only at the federal and state level of government but also across and among industries as evidenced by our banking, oil and legal industries.
Shortly after the April 20 explosion, President Obama issued a moratorium on all oil production and fishing despite the science and the history of previous oil spills and its impact on the fishing industry.
Deep Water Horizon rig is owned and operated by Transocean (NYSE: RIG) and leased by BP (NYSE: BP-plc). The 11 workers killed in the explosion were not BP employees rather nine workers were employed by Transocean and two were employed by M-I SWACO, a drilling fluids provider, and the blowout preventer was built by Cameron International Corp (NYSE: CAM) as reported by Brett Clanton and Monica Hatcher, Houston Chronicle, April 29.
Yahoo Finance historical pricing reveals interesting results: On April 19 RIG stock closed at $88.29 a share. Their stock closed higher after the explosion on April 20 until the April 26 close of $88.00. BP stock closed at $59.48 on the 19th and closed higher until the 26th at $57.91, while CAM stock continued to rise from the 19th at 44.83 to 47.10 on April 26 despite the reports that the blowout preventer failed and allegedly continues today by some reports.
As of July 21, 2010, BP stock closed at $36.19 (-$23.29) since the April 19 close; RIG closed at $47.75 (-$40.55) and CAM closed at $36,97 (-7.86). Oil industry stock prices remained relatively stable even with a moratorium.
Loren Steffy-Houston Chronicle reported Exxon Moble (NYSE: EOX), ConocoPhillips (COP), Chevron (CVX) and Shell (Royal Dutch Shell-plc) (RDS-B) announced a $1 billion fund for responding to deep-water oil spills in the Gulf of Mexico, separate from the BP $20 billion fund.
All industry stocks rose consecutively from April 20 through April 26 before prices began to fall. The free market elements are rendered void, namely, public opinion and, in particular, employee opinions. Industry and governments control the markets.
The cause of the explosion is still unknown. The science and history suggested reasonable evidence to allow the oil to dissipate naturally through normal activities like boating and fishing.
The most telling facts came forth more than 60 days after the explosion. Fox News Shepard Smith (Day 78 of the oil spill) interviewed Russell Chianelli Galveston, TX lead scientist to respond after the Exxon Valdez Spill in 1989.
Chianelli suggested a novel idea; “You need to look at a previous spill, which is Ixtoc in 1979 which actually took them ten months to drill the relief wells”. “Less than two percent of the oil ever reached the beaches anywhere in Mexico or Texas—so that’s history” Chianelli stated.
Chianelli’s statements and the history of Ixtoc would certainly support a course of action contrary to the one that has played out over the last four months. Yet, no other news source including Fox News disseminated this information broadly, rather the media continues to focus on appointee, Admiral Thad Allen’s initiatives and the individuals allegedly hired to scoop tar balls into plastic bags that even the environmentalist did not see as a problem.
Chianelli also stated, “Petroleum is natural in the sea something like 2 million to 12 million tons each years. Valdez was 40,000 tons.” Chianelli did not disclose the amount of oil leaked over ten months it took to stop the Ixtoc leak. According to most reports, approximately 60,000 barrels of oil leaked daily from the Transocean or BP spill. That converts to 688,000 tons according to BP’s conversion metric as of the first week of August 2010, so in any given year millions of tons of oil is present.
Thirty years or more, we should have credible evidence of the impact oil leaks play in our food chain and our environment. It should shine the light on how so many entities: government, oil, environmental, legal and the media cooperated in one message of a dire ecological disaster despite the science and history to the contrary. Otherwise, we have consumed tainted seafood for decades.
The Tenth (X) Amendment states, “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”
The news reports on Katrina focused, and still focus, on the failure of the federal government rather than the failure of the State of Louisianna to maintain their levees. The evidence supports that many of the same mistakes were made with the oil spill. Ken Feinberg was also appointed to disperse the funds for the Katrina Disaster.
Madison’s warning of the necessity of auxiliary precautions can only work when all citizens understand and share a common goal and each individual shares in the responsibility according to their level of culpability. This is the dilemma as Madison described: we voluntarily support our laws that govern us as citizens; and in the next place, industries and in particular individual companies are obliged to control itself by and through employees and all stakeholders.
Mr. Feinberg stated in an article printed in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch on June 20, “If you go to court, you’re rolling the dice. Your lawyer will get 40 percent, you’ll wait five years and there’s no guarantee you’ll succeed.”
Arbitration or ADR is only legitimate when both parties have reasonable knowledge of the true violations of the law and the actual damages to the aggrieved parties: Where the individual interests of every individual act as the sentinel over the public good. Private settlements have allowed discriminatory employment practices to continue and only benefit entities, not its citizens.
The only way to eliminate any monster is to turn on the lights.
Crony capitalism, socialism and communism seek only to remove personal responsibility for life choices rather than to promote legitimate opportunities for individuals to direct their own lives within the framework of our Constitution. Capitalism without agreed upon principles and values and meaningful laws will revert back to its counterfeit.
The Fourteenth (XIV) Amendment states in pertinent part, “No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”
The laws do not discriminate, people do. Our Federal Agency, Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s (EEOC) statistics support that any appearance of improvements in Civil Right are just that, an appearance.
My personal experience within our legal system more fully supports the grim reality that our legal system has supported efforts to maintain discriminatory employment practices primarily through alternatives to jury trials.
I was employed five years and held three positions primarily in Compliance, Risk Management and was abruptly terminated in November 2007 from Minneapolis based U.S. Bancorp (NYSE: USB), with $281 billion in assets as of December 31, 2009, the parent company of U.S. Bank National Association and its subsidiaries; the 5th largest commercial bank in the United States.
More than six “Plaintiff” attorneys in St. Louis denied my requests for legal representation despite various documents that reasonably supported legitimate claims of wrongful termination due to discrimination.
On February 8, 2008 I filed my claims in the United States Eastern District Court of Missouri along with the right to sue letters from Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) on January 14, 2008 and from Missouri Commission on Human Rights (MCHR) on January 28, 2008.
Without legal counsel, the original court documents state, “I believe I was discriminated against due to sex, female, in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of1964, as amended, and due to age, 47, in violation of the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA) of 1967, as amended and in retaliation of complaints.”
The conduct complained of involved: “termination of employment, failure to promote, terms and conditions of employment differ from those of similar employees, retaliation, harassment and violations of U.S. Bank’s Code of Ethics and Business Conduct. And, the acts may still be being committed by the defendant.”
A third amended complaint was filed on September 26, 2008 to detail all violations including those outside the workplace along with the support documentation. The complaint was denied despite the courts knowledge that the violations continued.
Three requests for legal representation were denied until October 2008 after U.S. Bank N.A. began foreclosure proceedings on my home despite the pending wrongful termination claims against their own company, which the judge did not stop.
The judge appointed two separate attorneys to perform different tasks and both abruptly withdrew upon completion of their respective tasks. The evidence established the necessary requirements or prima facie; however, the burden on the Defendant to provide legitimate business reasons for their actions failed. The judge, nevertheless, granted summary judgment on behalf of US Bancorp and dismissed all claims in August 2009.
My attempt to find an attorney to appeal the judge’s decision was equally thwarted. Missouri Senator McCaskill responded to my request for review and advised me by letter that it was a judicial issue and referred me back to the attorney referral services. Senator Bond did not respond to my email. Both Senators are attorneys, and yet neither one saw their responsibility as a check on our judicial system.
Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) statistics support a legitimate argument that the interests of government and business are not the interests of its citizens in accordance with our laws.
EEOC tracked results from 1997 to 2009. Approximately 80,000 Receipts (complaints) were reported annually from 1997 through 2007. The receipts jumped to 95,000 in 2008 and 93,000 in 2009 during the economic disaster. Reasonable Cause claims have steadily fallen since 2006 to approximately 3,900 claims annually, 4.9% of total receipts.
Better awareness of discrimination is not evident. Receipt of claims would logically decrease and reasonable cause claims would increase over time before both began to decrease. The statistics do not track litigation results as they claim. Specifically, they do not track monetary benefits obtained through litigation; nor do they track the number of claims dismissed or claims successfully litigated.
Two hundred and thirty four years ago America was known as the great experiment: A common goal that recognized the inalienable rights of individuals to become who they were created to be in cooperation with one another.
The days of experimentation are over; it is time for meaningful actions.
Our Founders were hardly perfect, most notably evidenced by the slave trade that continued for one hundred years due to the economic livelihood of slave owners and the overall economy that supported it. Now forty-six years after Title VII, employment discrimination is still the primary control on our economy. The incentives to discriminate must be removed in the private and public sector if we are to see any real solutions going forward.
In conjunction with all of the events beginning in 2007 to present, I ask all Americans to unite:
Call To Action: (Print a copy for friends and neighbors not on-line). Forward this article to all contacts, colleagues and to your employer in support of justice now and going forward.
Wednesday, August 18, 2010 marks the end of the “American Experiment”.
All industry boycott-Nationwide by and through American citizens in support of our common goal.
US Bancorp and the United States Eastern District Court of Missouri by and through citizen employees and partners must be held to account for the claims against them.
A commitment from H.A. Walther, President of the Missouri Bar Association and/or Stephen N. Zack, President of the American Bar Association in accordance with their Oath of Office to ensure justice is served.
Our republic is dependent on the people and “the vigor of government is essential to the security of liberty; that, in the contemplation of a sound an well informed judgment, [our] interests can never be separated.”
Bio: Eileen Riley is an ordinary citizen committed to our common goal of life and liberty and the pursuit of happiness now and for the next generation.
