Word: michaell
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Recently, few have felt the sting of RICO as much as the denizens of Wall Street. Federal prosecutors have used the law to go after big names like former junk-bond maestro Michael Milken, who is expected to be tried early next year on charges involving securities fraud. Two weeks ago, several executives of Princeton/Newport Partners were convicted for their roles in illegal stock-trading schemes. Two days later, the Justice Department indicted 46 traders at the Chicago Board of Trade and the Mercantile Exchange, 18 of them on RICO charges. And just last week the law was used...
...penalties. Equally troubling to RICO targets is the law's ability to seize temporarily the assets of an accused before a trial begins -- even funds that would be used to pay a defense attorney. "Suddenly, there are a lot of born-again civil libertarians on Wall Street," says Michael Waldman, legislative director for Public Citizen Congress Watch...
Although civil RICO lawsuits total less than half of a percent of the federal civil caseload, the statute's civil provisions draw some of the heaviest fire. "The imaginations of prosecutors in drafting RICO indictments are at least restrained by the Justice Department," explains University of Texas law professor Michael Tigar, "but the imaginations of plaintiffs' lawyers are not similarly restrained." What encourages the creativity, says critics, is the possibility of obtaining treble damages and the enormous leverage of labeling an opponent a "racketeer." The result has been a widening array of civil RICO lawsuits, from common commercial litigation...
...some shrewd tactics. Conservationists often select an irresistible, oversize crowd pleaser -- pandas are perfect, but snow leopards and black rhinos work fine -- and lead a campaign to preserve the creature's habitat. "There is a utility in the concern for the giant panda," says the National Zoo's director Michael Robinson. "Pandas are relatively stupid and uninteresting animals. But they happen to be photogenic and appealing, and they help focus people's attention." Big animals need big swatches of habitat, and so in the process a lot of less sexy species are protected too. To save the African elephant requires...
Based on a real-life incident, Brian De Palma's Casualties of War, starring Sean Penn and Michael J. Fox, performs a gritty diagnostic test on the national conscience...