Maureen Dowd has appointed herself the one who should tell President Obama, Secretary Vilsack and the White House Staff how to hire and deal with black people to avoid racial embarrassment in the wake of the Shirley Sherrod fiasco. You see, Obama and Jarett aren’t black enough to know this, but Dowd has talked to black enough Rep. Clyburn and Rep. Lewis and her verdict is final. The West Wing is too damn white. That’s why Shirley Sherrod was fired according to Dowd. Forgive me for not accepting the world according to Dowd’s anecdotal wisdom, some facts get in the way.

First: Sherrod was ignored by her employer. Sherrod found out about the Breitbart smear from a belligerent e-mailer before the scandal erupted on 24 hour news. She alerted her HR office to the existence of this smear as she was being harassed by an e-mailer. This should have immediately alerted the USDA that they needed to get original information and debrief Sherrod on the issue as well as make sure she wasn’t at risk of being put into any immediate or future danger.

Second: Sherrod was afforded no due process. USDA Secretary Vilsack and his deputy Cheryl Cook skipped through protocol and afforded Sherrod no chance to defend or explain herself. They first told Sherrod she would be on administrative leave, then no more than 30 minutes later they demanded she resign. The trigger? Earlier in the day Fox News began smoking the race bait crack Breitbart supplied them, and they wanted her to resign before Glenn Beck got his turn at the pipe. They didn’t ask her to explain fully during the phone calls, they didn’t interview her or seek to procure the full video.

Third and most importantly: Vilsack and the White House accepted Andrew Breitbart propaganda as journalism. The majority black NAACP even fell for the same bait when they could have easily contacted the Coffee County chapter of their own organization to get the skinny on Shirley Sherrod before issuing their statement condemning her seemingly obvious racism against white farmers. Dowd may agree with Clyburn’s summation that some more of the folks in the White House and the USDA would have prevented the Sherrod fiasco, but how would they fix the lack of blackness of the NAACP? (The same NAACP which condemned Sherrod faster than the USDA terminated her employment).

The faux ACORN scandal flourished under the same type of group think rush to judgement based on a Breitbart lie. By Clyburn and Lewis’ logic, readily accepted by Dowd, 172 of their Democratic colleagues didn’t have enough black  (or black enough) aides to consult when they voted aye to defund ACORN based on Breitbart’s earlier falsified propoganda. By extension, shouldn’t the congressmen be arguing for more of their Democratic colleagues in the House of Representatives to hire some staff that is black enough and/or poor enough before they attempt to shame the West Wing for their insufficient blackness?

It wasn’t personal knowledge of Sherrod (as Rep. Lewis intimates) or black people in general (as Clyburn opines) that stymied the NAACP, the West Wing and the USDA. Sherrod’s wrongful termination and condemnation (as well as the bogus ACORN scandal) shows that the leadership inside our institutions of political and social power are still learning to competently distill reporting, factual analysis, propaganda, primary sources delivered through modern media. That is a huge problem for the Obama Administration, the US Congress and the NAACP.

It isn’t because Obama and Jarrett aren’t black enough people to care about the rest of us black enough people or haven’t employed black enough people in the West Wing. It’s because the administration they constructed wasn’t patient and media savvy enough to deal with serious and ultimately scurrilous accusations against one of their own appointees.

Knowing that the Exxon Valdez Settlement took 20 years for the claimants to be awarded $507.5m (plus interest from the judgement of 1996) of the original $5b dollar figure, from a layman’s point of view, I am actually content with the Goldman Sachs $550m settlement with the SEC. We avoided years of appeals and legal wrangling. Many folks, and many liberals are not happy with this. Over at the Big Picture, Barry Riholtz points out that the SEC attorneys opted to settle because doing the prudent thing is well…the law.

FT’s Alphaville says I am cranky. Jeff Matthews says I am wrong. Michelle Leder points out the settlement is a pittance relative to GS’ cash.

Here’s a news flash: All of that is irrelevant. We are a nation of laws, and that is what guides SEC prosecutions, negotiations, and settlements. Sure, I may be cranky (only fellow curmudgeon Alan Abelson agrees with me), but what I truly am is astonished at some of the uninformed commentary pinging about inter-tubes about this subject.

Spin isn’t fact, opinions aren’t laws, and having an opinion is not the same as being informed.

One might hope that various folks discussing these issues have a passing familiarity with Securities law, but apparently not. Let’s see if we can edumacate some folks who are unfamiliar with the 1933 and 1934 Security acts.

…

Based upon the evidentiary information the SEC had — emails, phone calls, sworn statements, etc. — the “Fabulous Fab” told Abacus buyers that John Paulson was long the Abacus CDO when he was in fact short it; Further, Fab omitted to mention that a short seller helped to construct the synthetic CDO that he was betting against.

That factual description is a clear violation of Rule 10b-5.

There are some folks who have argued that yes, Fab made untrue statements and omitted others — but they were not material. That is a very good, very lawyerly argument — but it is one that would be a stone cold loser in front of any jury.

Bottom line: IMO, this was a no brainer case based on these facts and the law. Unless you can show Fab never said those things, it is case closed.

THAT is why Goldman settled.

via Its the Law, Bitches! | The Big Picture.

Also, Riholtz continues and makes a great point regarding some folks anger that Goldman still walks away with tons of profits and that the fines are not enough to wipe the bums out. (emphasis his):

Penalties should be proportionate to infractions: Consider the transgression at hand: Fab lied in the sale of structured products, and his firm Goldman Sachs failed to adequately supervise him in these transactions. In the grand scheme of things, this was actually a minor transgression. Sure, it was sleazy, but it was not a billion dollar violation; It sure as hell was not an Arthur Anderson type massive firm-wide fraud deserving of the death penalty — as some of the angrier posts have demanded.

As much as many people want to blame the entire economic meltdown on the vampire squid, they deserve only a modest amount of blame. Worse still, this was not their most egregious offense.

It may be tough to swallow, but we can’t wipe out  the banksters with one, “you can’t handle the truth” civil trial moment.

When it was Obama, he came to Philadelphia and was given a chance to explain. I think we would expect the administration he built and now leads to afford its appointees the same luxury.