Madoff, for instance, moved from Wall Street into a cell where he belongs, refuting the above headline. His regulators, however, weren't even charged with anything AFAIK. That despite their inaction for many years being either criminal negligence or the result of being bribed.
(From http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-01-07/jpmorgan-pa... - "The government regulators, led by the Securities and Exchange Commission, also didn't catch Bernie Madoff, even though they were his regulators and that was literally their job. And while yes JPMorgan ignored some red flags, so did the SEC. Like, the many many credible letters they got to the effect of "Bernie Madoff is a big ol' Ponzi scheme." Should the SEC be paying an even bigger penalty than $1.7 billion?")
There's no real incentive for regulators to regulate if you think about it. If you DO regulate you're less likely to have exit jobs to Wall Street. If you DON'T regulate and things go well, everything will be good and you'll go through the revolving door to work for big banks and big bucks. If you DON'T regulate and everything goes very badly (you know like a financial meltdown) it's "not your fault."
Are they paid enough for that increase in risk? I don't know what they make, but other government positions are already underpaid compared to their private sector equivalents. Making them come with a risk of jail time for failing ones job too badly will only result in even less qualified people filling those positions.
A regulatory agency that serves a liberal (or at least pro-regulation) administration failing to catch a crook is indeed bad at its job, and yes people should probably get fired.
A regulatory agency that serves an anti-regulation administration (and in particular Bush's SEC) failing to catch a crook, is doing exactly what the American people voted for it to do, which is nothing at all.
You can't win an election on the platform that someone's job shouldn't exist, he shouldn't have the tools to do it, and we shouldn't be paying his salary, then suddenly turn around and want to throw him in jail for not doing that effectively enough.
What's the basis for sending regulators to jail? Will you send cops to prison when crimes happen, because they failed to prevent them? This is somewhat of a pre-cog/ Minority Report dilemma. I think law makes a reasonable distinction between crimes of commission and crimes of omission. Proving motive and intent are important parts of the judicial process. Madoff intended to defraud.
You can prevent a person with malicious intent from causing further damage by imprisoning them. You 'deter' people who commit crimes of omission by keeping them away from whatever they proved incompetent at (debar lawyers, de-license doctors and regulators, fire engineers, etc.)
Mortgage loan offices aren't quite "Wall Streeters." These are people in your local communities and they are defrauding the people loaning the money, who are wall street people. So not like Gordon Gecko or Leo in Wolf of Wallstreet. But the guy in the illfitted suit who pesters you about mortgages when you in line to deposit a check.
I make this point because these people aren't super rich wall street people above the law. And plenty more than one were caught and jailed for it, I've found 4 examples on the first page of my bing search. Stewart is saying only one bank exec went to jail, but bank execs weren't the ones doing this mortgage fraud.
Some "Wall Street" banks do sell mortgages directly and would employ these mortgage offices, but a lot banks don't like Goldman Sachs, the former Lehman Bros.
The question is whether big commercial banks were complicit in the fraud of their lower level employees. You'd need to find an email or someone willing to testify that the banks knew that the loan offices in podunk were encouraging fraud. That is an extremely tough case to prove without solid evidence.
Also, this kind of document fraud was only a minor part of the financial collapse. The big mistake, which Stewart briefly touched on, was that the rating agencies massive fucked up. The financial risk model they used didn't work.
The big financial institutions were demonstrably complicit in the fraud of the underwriters and loan officers. There are emails, and plenty of people willing to testify. The problem is that the SEC and DOJ never pursued those investigations.
A while back, Frontline did their own investigation on this very topic, and interviewed multiple underwriters and loan officers who said that the higher ups on Wall Street were literally directing everyone to not abide by their own standards.
Lanny Breuer from the DOJ was interviewed in this documentary, and his attempt to explain why the DOJ did not pursue any charges on executives was so laughable, and the evidence presented from Frontline's cursory investigation was so damning, that Mr. Breuer resigned days after the program was aired. After not prosecuting any banking executives, he then of course went on through the revolving door to make $4M/year by taking a position at a corporate law/lobbying firm that defends financial institutions.
This is NOT a "tough case" - the solid evidence is there. This is a case of a captured regulatory system.
Also, to say that ratings agencies simply "fucked up" is disingenuous. They were totally and knowingly complicit as well. The way the system was set up, the more they gave good ratings to crap, the more money they made. That's not just a "fuck up".
To the main point of the rant, aside from the regulatory capture, the difference between teachers and Wall Street is that Wall Street is very good at setting up a system where there's plausible deniability for executives, massive lobbying efforts to garner political influence, and if needed, gigantic legal teams to fight for every inch.
Yeah, I was suspicious of the claim that only one mortgage banker went to jail, and for 12 months only. In fact, Lee Farkas is serving a 30 year sentence for mortgage fraud, effectively a life sentence at his age.
Also, this kind of document fraud was only a minor part of the financial collapse. The big mistake, which Stewart briefly touched on, was that the rating agencies massive fucked up.
Well, no, those are two sides of the same coin.
On the one hand you have people giving out dubious loans and reselling them while claiming that if you mix the shit up the right way it turns into gold.
On the other hand you have ratings agencies who bought into the nonsense.
The two were 100% complicit and, I think, equally to blame.
Jon Stewart's thesis is that teachers are punished for crimes and "Wall Street" is not.
In this segment he singularly cites the actions of loan officers soliciting incorrect information comparing their actions to teachers falsifying test results.
First of all, loan officers are hardly "Wall Street" fat cats. They are low level employees who are paid an average of $50,000 [1] and do not work for "Wall Street" firms like investment banks.
Secondly, loan officers operate throughout the United States rather than actually on Wall Street or in Manhattan and, as a group, are subject to the jurisdiction of the federal government, 50 states, and 3,144 counties each with independent prosecutors (elected state's attorneys, district attorneys, etc.).
If none of the thousands of entities who could have brought cases have done so, either there is conspiracy vaster than any other or there are not credible cases to bring.
This is perhaps the biggest failure in the aftermath of the 2008 financial collapse. There should have been many more criminal prosecutions on Wall Street. It didn't help that the Secretary of the Treasury at the time came from Goldman Sachs.
Criminal convictions of CEOs are useful. They're very effective in changing CEO behavior. Sending a few low-level drug dealers to jail for a year does little to change drug dealer behavior in the neighborhood. Sending a few Fortune 500 CEOs to jail for a year tends to result in substantial CEO behavior modification. There was a famous example of this in 1961, when executives of GE, Westinghouse, and Allis-Chalmers were found guilty of price-fixing and sent to jail. That changed corporate anti-trust behavior for a generation.
Yes, if they actually committed a crime and there is evidence to prove it beyond a reasonable doubt.
A drug dealer who gives all his money to feed the poor is morally good but legally a criminal. A CEO who lays off a chunk of his company to upgrade his yacht is a slimeball but not a criminal.
Being morally repugnant is not the same as being a criminal. The urge to ignore the letter of the law and obey the will of the mob turns us into a nation of men instead of a nation of laws.
People should not be punished soley to 'make an example' or for large-scale 'behavior modification'. Punishment should only be doled out for actual wrongdoings and only proportional to that individual's actions.
The first is the one that is populated by the wealthy and the elite; some people you've heard of, and a lot you've not. They're former Presidents and senators, important political donors, lobbyists, and a cloud of related individuals that orbit trust funds and old money. This America features well-groomed lawns, catered luncheons, executive offices, first-class health care, golden parachutes and custom transportation.
The second is where the rest of us live. It features waiting both in lines and on telephones, meals grabbed on the fly, taxation, potential observation and harassment by Federal or local security agencies, wildly varying health care, and advertisements on everything.
It's important to note that there are significant overlaps here, especially in daily life habits. What this boils down to is income inequality and the different lifestyles that result.
This could be taken to mean that society (correctly, in my opinion) considers the work of schoolteachers to be more crucial for the future of our society than the work of "Wall Streeters." With a more important role in society comes higher responsibility and just possibly greater accountability.
The Answer Sheet opinion blog, from which this post commenting on a Jon Stewart Daily Show is kindly submitted for our discussion, basically has a theme of decrying any public policy that makes schoolteachers accountable for actually teaching something to the learners in their care. That's a defensible policy position, I suppose, if you think that employment in the public school system is a jobs program for graduates of teacher-training programs. But I think it is also a defensible policy position to agree that spending money on schools is good, good for society in general, but especially so if the schools actually help learners learn. If learners are not learning well in school, and similarly disadvantaged learners in other schools are learning better, let's learn from the schools that are doing better how they are succeeding, and emulate their practices. That doesn't sound very radical to me.
Right now in the United States, the school-to-school variance in learning results of pupils is not very large, not even particularly large between poor and rich neighborhoods (by international comparisons).[1] But the teacher-to-teacher variance in teaching effectiveness within any one school is quite large, and one of the best things schools could do to become more effective rapidly is simply to hire the best available teachers, and let the lowest few percent of teachers (by teacher effectiveness) seek other occupations more suited to their abilities.[2] Other measures to improve teacher quality will also be helpful for schools and the learners in their care.[3] Teachers who cheat on tests used in part to gauge the effectiveness of teachers cheat all of society out of having better teachers.
Because it's easy to understand why cheating on tests is wrong, and easy to explain to a jury what people did that was wrong. Try to explain LIBOR manipulation to a jury and explain why it's wrong.
I wanted to say "but that's why they get a jury of their peers, people that know what means!" but then I remembered not only would that not happen, but even if it did, those same peers would likely have a tribe mentality and seek to protect their own.
Plus if you give enough money to the right people you never even get indicted so there you dont have to get involved with juries and mess stuff like that.
Politically connected & Rich people do not go to Jail for White-collar crimes. Think about the revolving door between Wall street and the Obama/Bush/Clinton administrations.
Would you put your "buddy" in Jail if it meant that the political contributions would dry up and your opponent is going to get a war chest to fight you? Of course not!
But an educator? These people cheated to keep their jobs and get (minor) pay raises - by definition they cannot fight back so the full weight of the Criminal Justice system (Racketeering Laws - typically used against Mafia figures) was used to toss some of them in Jail for upto 20 years!
Let's face it - the American Criminal justice system basically preys on those least able to protect themselves from its abuses.
You don't have to go any farther then the fact that Navinder Sarao might go to jail for 20 years, but Jon Corzine, the CEO of the brokerage Sarao used, continues to walk free as one of the must successful failures ever.
I think prosecutors would rather fine the banks tens of billions of dollars rather than throw people into jail.
For instance, the JPM $13 billion settlement (summarized):
- $2 billion to the Justice Department, which will then deposit the money into a fund at the United States Treasury.
- $7 billion, will flow to a range of government authorities, some more obscure than others
- JPMorgan agreed to make a “lump sum payment” of $4 billion “payable to Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, divided between them,”
- The National Credit Union Administration, the federal agency that regulates credit unions, said it would collect a $1.4 billion share of the $7 billion pie “for losses incurred by corporate credit unions as a result of the purchases of the faulty securities.”
- $515 million goes to FDIC
- $613 million to NY Attorney General (expand homeowner assistance programs)
Apathetic, but true. In the case of teachers versus bankers, it's more about the institutions than the individuals, and the protections that come with working for those institutions.
OTOH, the teachers who got a jail sentence are the ones who didn't take a deal, even after being found guilty. Not really about money more than principles.
I was thinking that when watching a doco about western tourists to Thailand who get caught with small amounts of a drug on them. They get shaken down by the local police for a few thousand dollars, up to whatever they can afford. Those who can't pay get put in jail for a while. Not sure if it was bribery or what, but it seemed accepted by everyone involved.
There is a huge cultural problem and the teachers and MBS scandals are just the tip of the iceberg.
When it is acceptable that results count no matter what the means.
When it is acceptable that results are measured by a single number.
When conflicts of interest are ignored by regulators
Then you get:
- inflated grades
- inflated assessments of property values
but also:
- inflated arrests by policeman chasing quotas instead of helping citizens (in other parts of the world police are reluctant to arrest people due to dislike of paperwork)
- inflated claims by prosecutors turning a blind eye to weak evidence (in other parts of the world prosecutors don't fear for their own job)
- inflated money printing
- inflated tech stock valuations
- prolonged ignorance of default risks
- HFT
Markets work but there is such a thing as externalized costs. Regulators have a duty to monitor and step in when the line is overstepped. If they don't the benefits accrue to the powerful who cheat and the cost are born by the powerless.
It is a good thing that the "regulator" stepped in and stopped the teachers grade inflation.
However the way the regulator did this here is another example of single minded black and white thinking. Just because the grade inflation problem is bad it does not mean one can fix it with a single blow of a heavy hammer. Fear of rare random enforcement actions will only intimidate the people but won't stop further crimes.
Hard real life problems need well planned, consistently implemented and balanced measures.
If we really cared to prevent "financial crises" like the one under discussion, we wouldn't be wringing our hands about whom to imprison. Instead, when firms went bust, we'd leave them that way. When all the money is gone, shareholder lawsuits will punish corrupt and incompetent executives more than prosecutors ever dreamed.
EDIT: for those who've forgotten what actually happened, Taibbi has a good primer:
I would hope that adults entrusted with the care of our children and betraying that trust would be punished much more severely than wall streeters engaged in some sort of shenanigans.
Stewart's comparisons remind me of Eddie Izzard's riff on mass murderers. Small numbers of crimes, committed by a small number of people: easy to grasp and easy to prosecute; large numbers of crimes committed systemically: the mind boggles; medals more likely than punishment.
What's up is it's national news when a black person gets shot by a white cop, and when it's a white person taking the bullet the story stays on the local crime blotter.
[+] [-] _yosefk|11 years ago|reply
Madoff, for instance, moved from Wall Street into a cell where he belongs, refuting the above headline. His regulators, however, weren't even charged with anything AFAIK. That despite their inaction for many years being either criminal negligence or the result of being bribed.
(From http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-01-07/jpmorgan-pa... - "The government regulators, led by the Securities and Exchange Commission, also didn't catch Bernie Madoff, even though they were his regulators and that was literally their job. And while yes JPMorgan ignored some red flags, so did the SEC. Like, the many many credible letters they got to the effect of "Bernie Madoff is a big ol' Ponzi scheme." Should the SEC be paying an even bigger penalty than $1.7 billion?")
[+] [-] kenj0418|11 years ago|reply
Nor should they unless they were colluding with him or accepting bribes.
The punishment for just being bad at your job should be getting fired, not jail. Of course, I doubt many lost their job either.
[+] [-] neonbat|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Lawtonfogle|11 years ago|reply
Are they paid enough for that increase in risk? I don't know what they make, but other government positions are already underpaid compared to their private sector equivalents. Making them come with a risk of jail time for failing ones job too badly will only result in even less qualified people filling those positions.
[+] [-] cylinder|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] superuser2|11 years ago|reply
A regulatory agency that serves a liberal (or at least pro-regulation) administration failing to catch a crook is indeed bad at its job, and yes people should probably get fired.
A regulatory agency that serves an anti-regulation administration (and in particular Bush's SEC) failing to catch a crook, is doing exactly what the American people voted for it to do, which is nothing at all.
You can't win an election on the platform that someone's job shouldn't exist, he shouldn't have the tools to do it, and we shouldn't be paying his salary, then suddenly turn around and want to throw him in jail for not doing that effectively enough.
[+] [-] shas3|11 years ago|reply
You can prevent a person with malicious intent from causing further damage by imprisoning them. You 'deter' people who commit crimes of omission by keeping them away from whatever they proved incompetent at (debar lawyers, de-license doctors and regulators, fire engineers, etc.)
[+] [-] perfunctory|11 years ago|reply
Clever way to divert a discussion.
[+] [-] danmaz74|11 years ago|reply
Not true. They go to jail when they're caught getting corrupted by those they should regulate, which unfortunately happens often enough.
[+] [-] guelo|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rhino369|11 years ago|reply
I make this point because these people aren't super rich wall street people above the law. And plenty more than one were caught and jailed for it, I've found 4 examples on the first page of my bing search. Stewart is saying only one bank exec went to jail, but bank execs weren't the ones doing this mortgage fraud.
Some "Wall Street" banks do sell mortgages directly and would employ these mortgage offices, but a lot banks don't like Goldman Sachs, the former Lehman Bros.
The question is whether big commercial banks were complicit in the fraud of their lower level employees. You'd need to find an email or someone willing to testify that the banks knew that the loan offices in podunk were encouraging fraud. That is an extremely tough case to prove without solid evidence.
Also, this kind of document fraud was only a minor part of the financial collapse. The big mistake, which Stewart briefly touched on, was that the rating agencies massive fucked up. The financial risk model they used didn't work.
[+] [-] ConfuciusSay|11 years ago|reply
A while back, Frontline did their own investigation on this very topic, and interviewed multiple underwriters and loan officers who said that the higher ups on Wall Street were literally directing everyone to not abide by their own standards.
You can watch the entire documentary here: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/untouchables/
Lanny Breuer from the DOJ was interviewed in this documentary, and his attempt to explain why the DOJ did not pursue any charges on executives was so laughable, and the evidence presented from Frontline's cursory investigation was so damning, that Mr. Breuer resigned days after the program was aired. After not prosecuting any banking executives, he then of course went on through the revolving door to make $4M/year by taking a position at a corporate law/lobbying firm that defends financial institutions.
This is NOT a "tough case" - the solid evidence is there. This is a case of a captured regulatory system.
Also, to say that ratings agencies simply "fucked up" is disingenuous. They were totally and knowingly complicit as well. The way the system was set up, the more they gave good ratings to crap, the more money they made. That's not just a "fuck up".
To the main point of the rant, aside from the regulatory capture, the difference between teachers and Wall Street is that Wall Street is very good at setting up a system where there's plausible deniability for executives, massive lobbying efforts to garner political influence, and if needed, gigantic legal teams to fight for every inch.
[+] [-] pcwalton|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zzalpha|11 years ago|reply
Well, no, those are two sides of the same coin.
On the one hand you have people giving out dubious loans and reselling them while claiming that if you mix the shit up the right way it turns into gold.
On the other hand you have ratings agencies who bought into the nonsense.
The two were 100% complicit and, I think, equally to blame.
[+] [-] falsestprophet|11 years ago|reply
In this segment he singularly cites the actions of loan officers soliciting incorrect information comparing their actions to teachers falsifying test results.
First of all, loan officers are hardly "Wall Street" fat cats. They are low level employees who are paid an average of $50,000 [1] and do not work for "Wall Street" firms like investment banks.
Secondly, loan officers operate throughout the United States rather than actually on Wall Street or in Manhattan and, as a group, are subject to the jurisdiction of the federal government, 50 states, and 3,144 counties each with independent prosecutors (elected state's attorneys, district attorneys, etc.).
If none of the thousands of entities who could have brought cases have done so, either there is conspiracy vaster than any other or there are not credible cases to bring.
[1] http://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/loan-officer-salary-SRCH_K...
[+] [-] Animats|11 years ago|reply
Criminal convictions of CEOs are useful. They're very effective in changing CEO behavior. Sending a few low-level drug dealers to jail for a year does little to change drug dealer behavior in the neighborhood. Sending a few Fortune 500 CEOs to jail for a year tends to result in substantial CEO behavior modification. There was a famous example of this in 1961, when executives of GE, Westinghouse, and Allis-Chalmers were found guilty of price-fixing and sent to jail. That changed corporate anti-trust behavior for a generation.
[+] [-] crazy1van|11 years ago|reply
Yes, if they actually committed a crime and there is evidence to prove it beyond a reasonable doubt.
A drug dealer who gives all his money to feed the poor is morally good but legally a criminal. A CEO who lays off a chunk of his company to upgrade his yacht is a slimeball but not a criminal.
Being morally repugnant is not the same as being a criminal. The urge to ignore the letter of the law and obey the will of the mob turns us into a nation of men instead of a nation of laws.
[+] [-] jsprogrammer|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] MrZongle2|11 years ago|reply
The first is the one that is populated by the wealthy and the elite; some people you've heard of, and a lot you've not. They're former Presidents and senators, important political donors, lobbyists, and a cloud of related individuals that orbit trust funds and old money. This America features well-groomed lawns, catered luncheons, executive offices, first-class health care, golden parachutes and custom transportation.
The second is where the rest of us live. It features waiting both in lines and on telephones, meals grabbed on the fly, taxation, potential observation and harassment by Federal or local security agencies, wildly varying health care, and advertisements on everything.
[+] [-] atom-morgan|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vinay427|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tokenadult|11 years ago|reply
The Answer Sheet opinion blog, from which this post commenting on a Jon Stewart Daily Show is kindly submitted for our discussion, basically has a theme of decrying any public policy that makes schoolteachers accountable for actually teaching something to the learners in their care. That's a defensible policy position, I suppose, if you think that employment in the public school system is a jobs program for graduates of teacher-training programs. But I think it is also a defensible policy position to agree that spending money on schools is good, good for society in general, but especially so if the schools actually help learners learn. If learners are not learning well in school, and similarly disadvantaged learners in other schools are learning better, let's learn from the schools that are doing better how they are succeeding, and emulate their practices. That doesn't sound very radical to me.
Right now in the United States, the school-to-school variance in learning results of pupils is not very large, not even particularly large between poor and rich neighborhoods (by international comparisons).[1] But the teacher-to-teacher variance in teaching effectiveness within any one school is quite large, and one of the best things schools could do to become more effective rapidly is simply to hire the best available teachers, and let the lowest few percent of teachers (by teacher effectiveness) seek other occupations more suited to their abilities.[2] Other measures to improve teacher quality will also be helpful for schools and the learners in their care.[3] Teachers who cheat on tests used in part to gauge the effectiveness of teachers cheat all of society out of having better teachers.
[1] http://educationnext.org/when-the-best-is-mediocre/
[2] http://hanushek.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/publication...
http://hanushek.stanford.edu/publications/valuing-teachers-h...
[3] http://hanushek.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/publication...
[+] [-] rayiner|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wavefunction|11 years ago|reply
The more accurate answer is that rich and connected people are rarely held to account for their heinous crimes against the rest of us.
[+] [-] claytonjy|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 2close4comfort|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kaa2102|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] grej|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wppick|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] robot22|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Zigurd|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mjgoins|11 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] suprgeek|11 years ago|reply
Would you put your "buddy" in Jail if it meant that the political contributions would dry up and your opponent is going to get a war chest to fight you? Of course not!
But an educator? These people cheated to keep their jobs and get (minor) pay raises - by definition they cannot fight back so the full weight of the Criminal Justice system (Racketeering Laws - typically used against Mafia figures) was used to toss some of them in Jail for upto 20 years!
Let's face it - the American Criminal justice system basically preys on those least able to protect themselves from its abuses.
[+] [-] 15step|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bko|11 years ago|reply
For instance, the JPM $13 billion settlement (summarized):
- $2 billion to the Justice Department, which will then deposit the money into a fund at the United States Treasury.
- $7 billion, will flow to a range of government authorities, some more obscure than others
- JPMorgan agreed to make a “lump sum payment” of $4 billion “payable to Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, divided between them,”
- The National Credit Union Administration, the federal agency that regulates credit unions, said it would collect a $1.4 billion share of the $7 billion pie “for losses incurred by corporate credit unions as a result of the purchases of the faulty securities.”
- $515 million goes to FDIC
- $613 million to NY Attorney General (expand homeowner assistance programs)
etc, etc, etc...
[0] http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2013/11/20/where-does-jpmorgans-...
[+] [-] 2close4comfort|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jodah|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] smackfu|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] damian2000|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] heisenbit|11 years ago|reply
When it is acceptable that results count no matter what the means. When it is acceptable that results are measured by a single number. When conflicts of interest are ignored by regulators
Then you get:
but also: Markets work but there is such a thing as externalized costs. Regulators have a duty to monitor and step in when the line is overstepped. If they don't the benefits accrue to the powerful who cheat and the cost are born by the powerless.It is a good thing that the "regulator" stepped in and stopped the teachers grade inflation.
However the way the regulator did this here is another example of single minded black and white thinking. Just because the grade inflation problem is bad it does not mean one can fix it with a single blow of a heavy hammer. Fear of rare random enforcement actions will only intimidate the people but won't stop further crimes.
Hard real life problems need well planned, consistently implemented and balanced measures.
[+] [-] jessaustin|11 years ago|reply
EDIT: for those who've forgotten what actually happened, Taibbi has a good primer:
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/secret-and-lies-of...
[+] [-] tomohawk|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] scelerat|11 years ago|reply
Izzard (NSFW): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bk_pHZmn5QM
[+] [-] jrockway|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] crimsonalucard|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tzs|11 years ago|reply
Here are a few.
http://wreg.com/2014/11/25/salt-lake-cop-cleared-in-shooting...
http://wreg.com/2015/04/22/family-of-unarmed-white-man-kille...
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/nov/27/white-teen-g...
In fact, more white people than black people are shot by police in the US. The rate for blacks getting shot is higher, but not the number.
[+] [-] tsotha|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] goldfeld|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xmlblog|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] brohoolio|11 years ago|reply