The People Vs. Greed, Stealing America--Joseph W. Cotchett, Lawyer and Author

Not too long ago, I had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Joseph W. Cotchett, a partner at Cotchett, Pitre & McCarthy, based out of Burlingame California. A former marine, Mr. Cotchett received an engineering degree from California Polytechnic State University and a Juris Doctor from the University of California, Hastings College of Law. Over twenty five years ago, Mr. Cotchett wrote a book, The Ethics Gap, about the decline of ethics in the professions. After prodding from his network he finally realized that a follow up was long since overdue. So last year he wrote The People Vs. Greed, Stealing America.

The People Vs. Greed is broken down into eleven chapters. Each chapter basically takes on a particular profession or part of it and exposes a lot of the issues that have plagued that particular profession throughout the years but which in our times in most cases seems to be snowballing and getting even bigger. There are chapters on health care, Wall Street, politics as in the effect of Citizens United, politics as in the public coffers, climate change, chemicals in the food industry, big pharmaceutical companies and the prices they charge for drugs, big oil, the military-industrial complex, technology and lastly his very own profession, lawyers.
Most of the stories are probably familiar to people who stay informed. Such stories include:

• descriptions of how doctors defraud medicare and medical to the tunes of millions of dollars per year
• the Savings and Loan fiasco which Mr. Cotchett and his firm personally brought to trial
• Citizens United,
• Small and big Madoff’s
• unconscionable pharmaceutical price hikes like the recent case of Daraprim that went from $13.50 per pill to $750 per pill overnight
• Oxycontin and addiction
• Monsanto and Roundup
• Big oil and wars and the likes of Halliburton

But some stories may be less well known. Stories like:

• The US Chamber of Commerce offering political cover for sale
• Large pension plans being scammed
• Big oil vs. the electric car not in the sense of a court case but actions done to delay the development of the electric car market
• The growing epidemic of celiac disease, gluten intolerance, being associated with the chemical glyphosate found in Roundup
• The new canaries in the coal mine, children even in utero, on the front lines of exposure to chemicals and genetically engineered crops.

My favorite chapter, however, has to be the last chapter. Having eviscerated most large professions out there and yet tried to be fair to those who do practice them ethically with statements such as:

“Most doctors are reputable and trustworthy, practicing with the utmost integrity, with patient care at the forefront.”

Mr. Cotchett takes on his own profession. As he puts it:

“You only have to read the previous chapters to understand that most frauds and scams would not be possible without the assistance of lawyers. It takes a lot of high priced attorneys to keep Wall Street running, to make Big Pharma deals, to counsel how to get around regulations, to advise how to move money offshore, and to help corporations skirt laws.”

According to Mr. Cotchett, 2015 was a banner year for crimes by lawyers. The stories grabbed headlines in New York, Dallas, Houston, Boston and Las Vegas among other places. Given that this book was written in 2016 maybe 2016 was even worse.

I strongly recommend this book. It takes a lot of small pieces of what is going on in the United States today and puts them all together into a bigger picture that all citizens need to understand is fundamentally changing the country. Read a chapter a day or read it all at once but read it!

To buy it now:
https://www.amazon.com/People-Greed-Continued-Professions-Government/dp/0997561408/ref=sr_1_1