Sept. 3 Open Thread: Democrats Went Soft on Financial Crime, So We Have a Financial Criminal as President
Given how permissive Democrats have been about white-collar Wall Street crime, punishing no bankers for their law-breaking around the Great Recession, how can they ever convince Republicans in Congress that Trump should be punished for money laundering? Marshall Auerback argues that they can’t, and that Democratic indifference to those crimes laid the groundwork for the Age of Trump.
The White House has announced it will withhold 100,000 pages of documents relating to Brett Kavanaugh’s work in the Bush White House, leading Democrats to demand to know what they’re hiding. My own objection is briefer: Partisan hatchet men shouldn’t be rewarded with a job on what’s supposed to be an impartial body.
Of course, the Supreme Court hasn’t operated that way in a long time, which leads some to wonder, does SCOTUS even serve a legitimate purpose if we know going in how every case will be decided?
The New Yorker looks into the the beclowning of Rudy Giuliani, which leads me to wonder how Americans could so easily see through “America’s mayor” when he ran for president, but fall for a phony like Trump.
A labor story for Labor Day: American unions are looking to Europe for ideas on how to revive unionism in the U.S.
Delaware has its own overdevelopment problems, but they’re tiny compared to the situation in Houston, where the city is allowing development on land that should be used to retain water. A sobering look at what happens when development interests get a seat at the table.
Life at the beach is even worse on Florida’s west coast, where the red tide that’s been raging for 10 months shows no sign of abating. The cause, naturally, is nitrogen in the water from fertilizer runoff. As Delaware’s waters warm along with the rest of the world’s — the Gulf of Maine’s water temperature is 69 degrees, 11 higher than normal — development-drunk Sussex Republicans should take heed.
I consider the supreme court a failed institution, it’s handed the nation an assortment of bad decisions that have plagued the nation for most of it’s history. Even worse we get to live with monsters like Scalia until they kick off. As for “development interests” it would seem they own not just a seat, but the whole table in Delaware. They get what they want and we get to pay for it. Every stinking time.
This is actually an issue that can be helped at the local level; however it’s something that’s beyond the bailiwick of our state officials. Our state is a leading authority on corporate governance and operations but due to backbending logic from recent DE court decisions, and inaction from DE legislators, corporations and financial actor ne’er-do-wells are more willing to risk ignoble practices because of the high burden on plaintiffs to show wrongdoing.
Wrong threat? Wait, were’s the troll. Had a great reply!
“I consider myself more of a bilious bitcher, but I take your point. Good catch.”
The justice department did not prosecute banking/financial criminals because under Bush, they hugely scaled back the Justice Dept. division responsible for criminal prosecution in favor of rather lame fines for the offender institutions. That is what Obama inherited with the collapse; there was not enough time to rebuild that division in the midst of the financial collapse.