What is Kerry's position on White Collar Crime?

[The Backlash Cometh]

The terrorist have now taken center stage in the criminal justice arena and we haven't heard a peep about drug traffickers in this campaign -- a subject which was once a strong platform for presidential debates. Of course, Afghanistan has one of the main crop fields for opium so you kill two birds with one stone if you get the upper hand in that country's domestic affairs.

But there's still one very ugly nasty out there that no one is talking about. Our economy has taken a self-inflicted wound because of white collar criminal activity. The welfare of the middle class has received a near fatal blow because of unethical practices in the stock and bond industry and even though you occasionally hear about S.E.C. indictments, who really has served time except for poor Martha Stewart?

What is Kerry going to do to restore integrity back into our financial institutions? No one believes that private institutions can self-regulate themselves. The only real response is government regulation, but that will only work if the RIGHT PEOPLE ARE APPOINTED. And here is my advice to Kerry. Be very, very careful about your choices in your appointments into regulatory positions. The Republicans made terrible mistakes by appointing people who had no understanding of public duty. Clinton made terrible mistakes by appointing Republicans who were more intent in targeting him, than in protecting the country. It takes a very special person of the highest character to work a low paying public service job and you don't find that kind of individual in the private sector any more. The level of self-sacrifice required for those jobs is far higher than what you find in the private sector. So these jobs should not be political appointments.

My suggestion is to search the campuses for professors who are top in their field. We need people who understand the present failure of the free market world, and those who understand that government is there to restore stability & trust and not to help create chaos for a few connected individuals to profit.

That's my suggestion. Does anybody have Kerry on record on this subject, and will he have the fortitude to apply the law equally to all who have broken it, regardless of party affiliation?

[AngryAmish]

1. I think he is against it

[maine_raptor]

5. Well I for one am glad to hear that

would hate to think he was for it. :eyes:

[Lord_StarFyre]

2. Well, we can at least be certain

...He's out to remove the BFEE Criminals from our White House...

[trotsky]

3. He led the investigation into the BCCI corruption.

I think we can safely say he's no friend of white collar criminals.

[The Backlash Cometh]

6. Very interesting.

I had no idea.

[trotsky]

8. Here's a great article about it:

http://www.alternet.org/election04/19608/

[The Backlash Cometh]

9. Damn. After reading that I've concluded that the well-being of

our country requires that Kerry wins. It is just incredible to me that his accomplishments in fighting white collar crime (and thus, those who also threaten to destabilize our country) has been all but buried. No wonder Bush-Cheney fear him.

[TaleWgnDg]

4. After John F. Kerry returned from Vietnam, he went to law

school, from law school he took a job in a local County District Attorney's Office as a state prosecutor in Massachusetts. If you want to check John F. Kerry's "record on white collar crime," then a good guess would be to check his record as a prosecutor regarding those cases. Any of those cases that are published have his name on them if he appeared as the trial prosecutor.

edited to add: As a U.S. Senator, Kerry did extensive Senate investigation of Iran-Contra . . . that, too, has a paper trail.

[The Backlash Cometh]

7. It's promising.

But what I find very sad is that the media hasn't locked into this aspect of his background and understood why the U.S. needs someone with a strong legal background to get us back on the correct path. It's like they've convinced the public that stability is a bad thing.