Putting Out Fires, Starting New Ones

The failure of government regulators to anticipate the financial crisis and their continued failure to deal with its fall-out has been a noted flashpoint for partisans on both sides of the aisle. The dominant narrative assumes that most observers were content to stand idly by and reap the benefits of corporate largesse while the “getting was good”. It’s true, some saw the signs and did their best to sound the alarm, but in the great tradition of American politics, these Cassandras went unheeded. And if the developments of the last year and a half are any indication, we’re no closer to fixing the problem than we were at the start of the crisis, because as of yet our leaders have been unwilling to make the hard decisions required of them. In the meantime, we suffer from record levels of unemployment, saddled by mounting debt, and with little hope that the culprits will actually be held accountable. All this begs the question, what lessons if any have we learned from this crisis? Former Governor Eliot Spitzer does just that in this month’s issue of the Review, in his piece for the New Democracy Forum, “The Rules.” Read the rest of this entry »

Welcome to Pottersville

“Something is rotten in the state of banking.” Alright, that isn’t quite how the Bard put it, but you take my point. Our nation’s ongoing financial crisis – just shy of a year in the making – is far from over. Indeed, with unemployment and budget deficits at record highs (the ‘worst since the Great Depression’, as the official administration line goes) it seems like we’ve just skimmed the surface and Americans are madder than they’ve ever been – a point about which congressional Democrats, with eyes fixed on 2010, are rightfully nervous. But even as populist anger has surged in the months since the first bank bailouts, there is scarcely a consensus about how lawmakers ought to proceed – that is, to curtail the excesses of the banking industry and its ability to send shockwaves through the larger economy. Of course, there are some (particularly on the right) who would take issue with the problem, stated as such, but as the evidence mounts it’s becoming harder to ignore the implications – that, as Dean Baker concludes in his recent piece, “The Big Bank Theory”, the complicity of the banking industry is incontrovertible and regulation is not merely prudent, but necessary.

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Terror Trials in New York – a Crucible for the Criminal Justice System

In a highly anticipated news conference on Friday, November 13th, Attorney General Eric Holder announced that Khalid Shaikh Mohammed – 9/11 mastermind – along with four of his co-conspirators, would be tried in a federal courtroom in Manhattan, mere blocks from Ground Zero and nearly eight years after the deaths of his some 3,000 victims. Although a recent Marist poll of native New Yorkers puts approval for the venue at 45%, with disapproval at 41%, the announcement has drawn fire from both sides of the isle, with Republican leadership accusing the President and AG Holder of playing into the hands of “liberal special interest groups” at the expense of the American people, unnecessarily placing them in harm’s way while potentially exonerating the defendants, as well as critics on the left who lament the continued use of ‘modified’ military commissions for an additional five detainees. The caucus’ more conservative members, like Senator Jim Webb (D-WV), fear the trials will invite untoward disclosure of privileged information. Despite assurances from Holder that the administration will have sufficient authority to keep state secrets classified, critics remain unconvinced. Read the rest of this entry »

‘Getting Tough’, All Over Again

In spite of what you’ve heard before, there isn’t any one ‘third rail’ in politics. If social security reform is the partisan lighting rod du jour, then immigration reform is a close second. Moreover, if Tom Barry’s piece in the November issue of the Review is any indication, it may well be gaining. Writing about a little-known area of law he calls ‘criminal-immigration’ whereby immigrants – legal and otherwise, convicted of non-violent crimes and possessing legal family members in the US – are sentenced to jail time in so-called ‘public-private prisons’ before their inevitable deportation. Part of a ‘get tough on crime’ mantra coming out of the Bush administration – and one the Obama White House has been reluctant to modify in the midst of an already thorny healthcare battle – these newly rebranded ‘criminal-aliens’ face sentences lasting anywhere from a few days to several years before deportation, thus effectively punishing offenders twice for the same crime. So much for the Fifth Amendment. Read the rest of this entry »