“Too big to fail has become too big for trial”

Susie Madrak has been following new-elected US Senator Elizabeth Warren’s performance at the first meeting of the Senate Banking Committee and says she proved her worth by putting regulators on the spot about why they go aggressively after powerless defendants while allowing big banks to make deals with them by paying fines that are just included as the cost of doing business and do nothing to deter future wrongdoing. [Read more…]

Academics behaving badly

Academics tend to be respected because of their reputations for having expert knowledge and some level of objectivity. As a result they are often sought as endorsers for various positions. I have written many times before of the danger that exists when that esteem is abused. This danger seems to be most present in the field of economics and medicine, not coincidentally because there is a lot of money at stake there. [Read more…]

An insider’s view of how the bailout fix happened

Neil Barofsky was a career federal prosecutor who was appointed by George W. Bush at the end of 2008 as the Special Inspector General overseeing the Troubled Asset Relief Program (SIGTARP) that was a major part of the bailout program following the financial collapse, and he continued in that role under president Obama until he resigned in March 2011. [Read more…]

Differential treatment of churches and other nonprofits

For nonbelievers like me, one of the most irritating aspects of the US tax system is the tax-exemption given to churches under the section of the code known as 501(c)(3) that is meant to provide tax relief for organizations that improve the general welfare. This topic has been discussed before in the context of whether churches that overtly take political stands should continue to receive that benefit and I concluded that it was unlikely that the IRS or the courts would eliminate it. [Read more…]

Boy scouts to accept gays?

News reports are emerging that the Boy Scouts are seriously considering lifting the ban on gay members and scout leaders and that the decision might come very soon.

The Boy Scouts of America, one of the nation’s largest private youth organizations, is actively considering an end to its decades-long policy of banning gay scouts or scout leaders, according to scouting officials and outsiders familiar with internal discussions.
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The new policy, now under discussion, would eliminate the ban from the national organization’s rules, leaving local sponsoring organizations free to decide for themselves whether to admit gay scouts.
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The discussion of a potential change in policy is nearing its final stages, according to outside scouting supporters. If approved, the change could be announced as early as next week, after the BSA’s national board holds a regularly scheduled meeting.

This reversal, coming just seven months after the national body affirmed its ban on gay members, demonstrates the remarkable rapidity with which acceptance of equal rights for the LGBT community is advancing. The Boy Scouts have been getting a public relations hammering and losing donors because of their reactionary stand of excluding gays and seem to have realized that any group that depends on membership of young people cannot have such a policy and survive because young people are way ahead of the old guard in acceptance of diversity.

As I wrote earlier, it is usually the case that in such reversals by large organizations, they usually edge slowly towards doing the right thing by taking incremental steps. The Boy Scout policy change, if confirmed, will not positively welcome gays into the group but simply drops the national banning policy, allowing local troops to make their own decisions. So in the short term one could expect some affiliates to accept gays and others not.

But such minimal steps tend to create their own problems. For example, what happens to a gay scout whose family moves from an area with an accepting troop to one that bans them? What would happen if a gay scout leader rises in the hierarchy to a position overseeing a local affiliate that excludes gays? The proposed change, while it is to be welcomed, will cause all manner of internal contradictions.

It is only a matter of time (I give it five years at the most) before the national group shifts to a more affirmative position, requiring that all affiliates not exclude gays.

TV Review: The Untouchables

Last night I watched the Frontline documentary The Untouchables that I wrote about yesterday that explored the question of why, more than four years after the financial debacle involving widespread mortgage fraud, not a single high-level Wall Street executive has faced criminal prosecution. All that has happened is a bunch of very low-level people being charged and a series of civil prosecutions resulting in plea bargains in which some banks have paid fines that seem large but are puny compared to the scale of the fraud, and which the bank executives can simply write off as the cost of doing business while they continue to enrich themselves with high salaries and bonuses. The program covers some of the same ground as that excellent 2010 documentary Inside Job that I reviewed here [Read more…]

More on the unequal justice system

I have been highlighting the unequal treatment meted out by the Obama administration’s justice department, where extremely harsh treatment is given to low-level criminals and whistleblowers and hackers while those who commit massive damage to the financial system that cause immense hardship t many, and even acknowledge major wrongdoing, are given slaps on the wrist. It is telling that as yet, not a single high-level official in the financial sector has gone to jail, or even faced the threat of jail, for their actions. [Read more…]