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Showing Original Post only (View all)I sure as hell won't miss the Holder Doctrine [View all]
I just hope it goes away, but I doubt it will.
A story I've told on DU before, but it's so striking that it's worth another turn: A few months ago I met up with an old friend who's reasonably high up in the DOJ. Since we were drinking, and I don't know when to shut my mouth even while sober, I asked him what was up with tons of bank execs getting jailed in the S&L meltdown a couple of decades ago, but none getting jailed from the far-larger bank meltdown in 2008.
To summarize what he told me:
- The banks likely committed serious crimes.
- But only the people at the top committed crimes. The lower-level folks likely did little that was illegal in itself, only when one puts the parts together is it illegal.
- Remember Enron? Prosecuting Enron's top brass destroyed it, and destroyed Arthur Andersen. Lots of innocent people lost jobs. This was an important lesson for really, really smart people.
- It would be bad for the innocent people at banks to lose their jobs.
- Ergo, hands off the execs. It's only to help the little people, you see.
(I responded with many naughty words, of course.)
It seems to me that Holder, like everyone in the Obama administration, always has some ludicrous excuse for why helping the wealthiest is really helping the 99%. Call it the Holder Doctrine, if you will.
"Hey! We're just helpin' you little folks! If you want justice for revenge on the shrewd businessmen, you're just begrudging their success!"
We need to cut government jobs to create jobs. We need to make 82% of the Bush tax cuts permanent to create jobs. We need free trade agreements so that even-more cheap imports from outsourced jobs will create more jobs. We need to double H1B visas to create jobs.
Oh, brother.
Meanwhile, jobs aren't coming back. And they won't, until the people running our country cut the crap and start working for us. We need to make this clear to our fellow Americans, and we must come together to make it happen, or what's left of the American Dream will take one more short swirl and gurgle inexorably to the sewer.