Big Pharm,
and coordinated for the cigarette industry
Drug Policy Organizations Weigh in on Holder
http://reason.com/blog/show/130189.html
1964+ Cigarette Industry Legal Coordination
http://freedomofmedicineanddiet.blogspot.com/2008/08/cig-ind-legal-coordination_27.html
Congressman J.H. Covington:
A Name Appearing in the Formulation of U.S. Food & Drug Laws
http://freedomofmedicineanddiet.blogspot.com/2008/08/congressman-jh-covington-name-appearing_9159.html
D.P.F. Washington, D.C. Legal Connection: Covington & Burling
http://freedomofmedicineanddiet.blogspot.com/2008/03/drug-policy-foundation-legal-connection.html
D.P.F. Was Advised By Covington & Burling Food and Drug (and Insurance) Lawyer
http://freedomofmedicineanddiet.blogspot.com/2008/03/drug-policy-foundation-advised-by-c.html
Eric Holder's bio at the Covington & Burling website:
http://www.cov.com/eholder/From the last of his three publications listed, Holder apparently has some background with the pharmaceutical industry.Mr. Holder is a litigation partner who handles, among other matters, complex civil and criminal cases, domestic and international advisory matters and internal corporate investigations.
During his professional career, Mr. Holder has held a number of significant positions in government. Upon graduating from Columbia Law School, he moved to Washington, DC and joined the Department of Justice as part of the Attorney General's Honors Program. He was assigned to the newly formed Public Integrity Section in 1976 and was tasked to investigate and prosecute official corruption on the local, state and federal levels. While at the Public Integrity Section, Mr. Holder participated in a number of prosecutions and appeals involving such defendants as the Treasurer of the state of Florida, the Ambassador to the Dominican Republic, a local judge in Philadelphia, an Assistant United States Attorney in New York City, agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and a "capo" in an organized crime family in Pennsylvania.
In 1988, Mr. Holder was nominated by President Reagan to become an Associate Judge of the Superior Court of the District of Columbia. He was confirmed by the Senate and his investiture occurred in October of that year. Over the next five years, Judge Holder presided over hundreds of civil and criminal trials and matters. Many of the trials involved homicides and other crimes of violence.
In 1993, President Clinton nominated Mr. Holder to become the United States Attorney for the District of Columbia. He was confirmed later that year and served as the head of the largest United States Attorneys office in the nation for nearly four years. He was the first black person to serve in that position. As U.S. Attorney, Mr. Holder created a Domestic Violence Unit to more effectively handle those types of tragic cases, implemented a community prosecution project to work hand in hand with residents and local government agencies in order to make neighborhoods safer, supported a renewed enforcement emphasis on hate crimes so that criminal acts of intolerance would be severely punished, developed a comprehensive strategy to improve the manner in which agencies handled cases involving the abuse of children, launched a community outreach program to reconnect the U.S. Attorney's office with the citizens it serves, revitalized the Victim/Witness Assistance Program to better serve those individuals who were directly affected by crime and developed "Operation Ceasefire," an initiative designed to reduce violent crime by getting guns out of the hands of criminals.
In 1997, President Clinton appointed Mr. Holder to serve as Deputy Attorney General, the number two position in the United States Department of Justice. He became the first African-American to serve as Deputy Attorney General. Mr. Holder briefly served under President Bush as Acting Attorney General pending the confirmation of Attorney General John Ashcroft.
As Deputy Attorney General, Mr. Holder supervised all of the Department's litigating, enforcement, and administrative components in both civil and criminal matters. Under his guidance, the Department developed and issued its guidelines on the criminal prosecution of corporations (the so called "Holder Memorandum") and issued guidelines on the use of the False Claims Act in civil health care matters. A task force he created also developed the existing regulation concerning the appointment of special counsels to investigate allegations involving high-level federal officials. He began the Department's Children Exposed to Violence Initiative and made Department priorities enforcement efforts in health care fraud, computer crimes and software piracy. Mr. Holder successfully worked to fund and expand nationwide the concept of community prosecution which seeks to connect more directly prosecutors with the citizens they serve. At the request of the President, Mr. Holder began and directed Lawyers for One America a multi-agency, public/private partnership designed to diversify the legal profession and to increase the amount of pro bono work done by the nation's attorneys. As Deputy Attorney General Mr. Holder was at that time the highest-ranking black person in law enforcement in the history of the United States.
Mr. Holder's community activities include service on a number of philanthropic boards including, Columbia University, the Meyer Foundation, Save the Children, and his long time membership in the organization Concerned Black Men, a group that seeks to help the youth of the District of Columbia with problems ranging from teenage pregnancy to sub-par academic achievement. He has received numerous awards and honorary degrees and is featured in The Best Lawyers in America 2007. Mr. Holder was profiled in the June 2008 issue of The American Lawyer and was recognized as one of "The Most 50 Influential Minority Lawyers in America" by The National Law Journal. He has also been identified by Legal Times as one of the "Greatest Washington Lawyers of the Past 30 Years."
He has also served on the board of MCI prior to and during its merger with Verizon. Mr. Holder was a member of the U.S. Sentencing Commission Ad Hoc Advisory Group that examined, and made recommendations to revise, the organizational sentencing guidelines and was Chairman of Eastman Kodak's External Diversity Advisory Panel.
Mr. Holder was born in New York City. He attended public schools there, graduating from Stuyvesant High School where he earned a Regents Scholarship. He attended Columbia College, majored in American History, and graduated in 1973. Mr. Holder then attended Columbia Law School from which he graduated in 1976. While in law school, he clerked at the N.A.A.C.P. Legal Defense Fund and the Department of Justice's Criminal Division. Mr. Holder lives in Washington, DC with his wife, Dr. Sharon Malone, an obstetrician, and their three children.Publications and Speeches
- "The Impact of the McNulty Memorandum," Client Conference Call Transcript (12/22/2006), Co-Author
- "Congressional Oversight and Investigations in the 110th Congress," Covington E-Alert (11/16/2006), Co-Author
- "The Feds Increasing Focus on the Pharmaceutical Industry," Update Magazine 2001, Issue 6 with permission from FDLI (11/30/2001), Co-Author
Practices
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– –
– Industries
Education
- Columbia Law School, J.D., 1976
- Columbia College, 1973
Perhaps this has something to do with his past advocacy of criminally depriving people of their god-given liberties for possessing or dealing in Marijuana?
Obama Sells Out America's Youth and Defenders of Civil Liberties
with Eric Holder
Wednesday, 26 November 2008
by Richard Searcy
Corporate media focus on Eric Holder's role in the effort to pardon billionaire fugitive Marc Rich: basically, a wealthy man's game. But the author reminds us that, as a U.S. Justice Department official for Washington, DC, Holder was "an extreme drug warrior who believes that harsher and longer sentences should be enacted for minor crimes such as marijuana use and prostitution." Barack Obama's choice for U.S. Attorney General is "bad news for America's youth."
Obama Sells Out America's Youth and Defenders of Civil Liberties with Eric Holder
by Richard Searcy
"Holder is an extreme drug warrior."Living to see the first African-American elected as President of the United States was supposed to feel a lot better. But, it's hard to get excited about Barack Obama, who seems to have never met an issue he can't take both sides on, and who has elevated "selling out" to an art form. Obama is the Magna Cum Laude, Zen master, and Oracle of All Sell Out Knowledge. He has once again affirmed his exalted position as the King of Masquerade when he chose Eric Holder to be his Attorney General and sold out American youth, particularly black youth.
Holder, yet another ex-Clintonite, was Clinton's Deputy Attorney General and US Attorney General for the Washington DC area. He is an extreme drug warrior who believes that harsher and longer sentences should be enacted for minor crimes such as marijuana use and prostitution. This, in spite of the mounting evidence that the "war on drugs" is a failure and has amounted to nothing more than a war on black people, which also appears to be it's original intent. He wants harsher sentencing for marijuana, which will impact American youth more than any other demographic, and it will specifically impact African-American youth, who are already targeted to be shuffled off to America's new plantations, US prisons.
Perhaps this was Clinton's, now Obama's plan for getting more Black men employed by major corporations, because once inside of prison, many get hired by some of America's top corporations. Of course, they're only paid about 25 cents an hour and they have no benefits. But at least they have a job, something that cannot be said for an increasing number of Americans who are not part of this "affirmative action" program. Some American companies are actually closing up shop, laying off workers, and re-opening in a prison to take advantage of this bonanza of prisoner/slaves. Funny, but America's new slaves look an awful lot like the old ones."Some American companies are actually closing up shop, laying off workers, and re-opening in a prison."You are aware that slavery is still legal in America, aren't you? If you aren't, be assured that American corporations are.
Holder was part of the Clinton Justice Department that enacted harsh and racially biased laws that exploded America into becoming the greatest prison nation in human history and Bill Clinton into becoming the greatest incarceration president in American history. Clinton ran away from signing legislation that would have addressed the injustice of crack and power cocaine laws. America has more prisoners than all the totalitarian nations we like to look down our noses at. America locks up more prisoners than China, which has 4 times our population.I wonder how much it costs to be the greatest prison nation in human history?
In 1996, as U.S. Attorney in Washington, D.C, Holder petitioned the City Council to enact mandatory minimum sentencing laws and to make marijuana sale offenses a felony, even for first time offenders. He said he wanted to "Nip it in the bud." He wanted to turn a misdemeanor into a five-year prison sentence. Holder said in an interview that he is considering not only prosecuting more marijuana cases but also asking the D.C. Council to enact stiffer penalties for the sale and use of marijuana. His policies achieved none of its stated goals.
Obama supporters, particularly the youth, who stood in hours-long lines to vote for him thinking him a fresh approach to politics and society have been sold out. If you thought Obama once saying that our prisons are too full with first time offenders or that our prisons are too full of young people was a good reason to support him, you've been sold out."Holder was part of the team that developed strategies for the re-authorization of the Patriot Act in 2005."However, Holder's appointment, which will fly through confirmation by the lemming-like Democratic Congress, is not only bad news for America's youth, it's bad news for those who thought Obama was about protecting civil liberties in this country and reversing the atrocities of the Bush Administration. If you didn't get a clue when Obama reversed himself on FISA and the Patriot Act, Eric Holder is your next clue. Holder was part of the team that developed strategies for the re-authorization of the Patriot Act in 2005, and had this to say about opponents of it: "We're dealing with a different world now. Everybody should remember those pictures that we saw on September the 11th. The World Trade Centers aflame, the pictures of the Pentagon, and any time some petty bureaucrat decides that his or her little piece of turf is being invaded, get rid of that person. Those are the kinds of things we have to do." Get rid of those who oppose it. I voted for someone, although not "petty" by any means, Cynthia McKinney, who certainly opposed it, and the system got rid of her just as he said.
Holder was also involved in Clinton's pardoning of Mark Rich, and as a corporate lawyer in private practice after leaving the Clinton team, played a key role in negotiating an agreement with the Justice Department that got Chiquita Brands International executives off the hook for paying protection money to right-wing death squads in Colombia.
Of course many African-Americans will be dancing to the beat of seeing the first black Attorney General and never notice the words they're dancing to. But those who stand against the attack on civil liberties that emanated from the Bush Administration, and America's youth, Black, White, Hispanic, and Asian college students, who rallied to Obama's side, have now joined the antiwar crowd and those looking for genuine change as pawns in the mindfuck called "Change We Can Believe In."
Everybody's dancing .. but the election is over, and it's time to listen to the words.
Richard Searcy can be contacted at searcy21@juno.com.
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