NYPD Police BrutalityFollow

I suspect that is the case for every testimony.

You fox, you!

I'm glad to know what they want as well. Most of what I've seen describes them as a mixed group with a variety of different demands. As for an IMO:

1) I don't understand this enough to form an opinion.
2) If someone broke the law there should be consequences, I suppose there's no argument there.
3) I'm not happy with the way we do elections here either, but I'm not sure this is how to fix it.
4) Closing loopholes is 'good' the specifics are much harder. Also it's funny to hear a liberal group want to bring back the 50s...
5) The SEC certainly isn't popular these days eh? I'm pretty lukewarm on how you can better monitor large amounts of money without corruption, but am open to hearing ideas.
6) Less lobbyists certainly sounds good, but I fear the rats will just find another path onto the boat.
7) I'm not sure where else these people would work, it's not necessarily easy to change jobs; but yeah conflict of interest is bad.
8) I don't understand this enough to form an opinion.

I suppose like a lot of grass roots stuff there's a lot of nice idealism, and a shortage of specifics. I guess those things get worked out over time though.

Edited, Oct 4th 2011 10:56am by someproteinguy

Ahhhh i see... complicated.



I'd rate you up, but you know...

Hey, they remind me a lot of something else...


It's like large groups of angry people rely on short, idealistic (and vague) messages to express the broad variety of their grievances!

Now that the customary mocking of the Tea Party is done, mind doing a point-by-point of your disagreement with each of those eight? I'm actually curious why you don't like them. I'm assuming you don't, but it's quite possible you just wanted to mock the protesters as I did the Tea Party. Fair enough.

Broadly defined bullet points are one thing. The issue is what's behind those points and whether they are realistic, effective, and legal/constitutional. Even from a subjective point of view you can at least respect someone doing that. The points in this case are so naive and foolish as to be laughable.



Sure:


1. THIS REINSTATES MANY PROVISIONS OF THE GLASS-STEAGALL ACT.

This one's at least potentially doable and subjectively reasonable. The problem is that while many economists do agree that the financial reform of 1999 was largely responsible for the housing bubble and subsequent collapse, it wasn't the repealing of Glass-Steagall that was the culprit. What they're proposing is like someone passing a bill that prevents child molesters from teaching at school *and* requires dumping poison into the water supply, then when people get sick from the poisoned water, insisting on removing the restriction for child molesters to teach at school.

Regardless of what other factors were present in that reform act in 1999 which may need to be changed (and that's an argument all by itself), the part that repealed the Glass-Steagall Act was necessary to allow US banking systems to compete with foreign banks. Reinstating that law would cause massive economic problems. If you want, I'll explain them to you.


2. USE CONGRESSIONAL AUTHORITY AND OVERSIGHT TO ENSURE APPROPRIATE FEDERAL AGENCIES FULLY INVESTIGATE AND PROSECUTE THE WALL STREET CRIMINALS

This one's just ridiculous. If laws were "clearly broken", then there's already recourse to fill charges, sue, etc. This one's based on some people claiming that the actions of others are illegal and other ignorant people following that up with a call to investigate and charge those evil bankers with crimes. I know that it's become increasingly popular for liberal pundits and their screaming supporters to label anything they dislike as "illegal" (The "illegal war in Iraq anyone?), that doesn't actually make those things violations of the law.

3. CONGRESS ENACT LEGISLATION TO PROTECT OUR DEMOCRACY BY REVERSING THE EFFECTS OF THE CITIZENS UNITED SUPREME COURT DECISION

Yeah. That constitution thing doesn't really matter at all. I also love that the point just talks about how bad the ruling was, but not what exactly to do about it. And what would you have to do about it? You'd have to amend the 1st amendment of the constitution to specifically restrict free speech as it pertains to political support. The ramifications of that are dire and long reaching.

Someone just didn't even begin the process of thinking this one through. Actually, a whole lot of people failed at this. Oh. And while they don't use the phrase "Fairness Doctrine", that's also what this one calls for. Also problematic from a 1st amendment perspective.

4. CONGRESS PASS THE BUFFETT RULE ON FAIR TAXATION SO THE RICH AND CORPORATIONS PAY THEIR FAIR SHARE & CLOSE CORPORATE TAX LOOP HOLES AND ENACT A PROHIBITION ON HIDING FUNDS OFF SHORE.

This one is self-moronifying (is that a word)? What is the "Buffet Rule" anyway? They're calling for some vague thing that makes rich people "pay their fair share". Let's ignore the fact that if you actually made rich people pay the same percentage of their earnings in taxes as their secretaries, most of them would pay less taxes and not more (Buffet is an extreme exception). There's also the issue that Buffet's taxes are capital gains which he then compared to his secretary's personal income taxes, yet they complain about GE not paying any corporate income taxes.

And that's before getting into the fact that the reason GE didn't pay any income taxes in 2010 was because they received massive amounts of tax credits from the Obama administration for all of their "green energy" products (in the very Stimulus Bill which the GOP opposed I might add). I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that the same idiots cheering for raising taxes on "the rich" also cheer when Obama tells him he's going to pass a bill to create more "green jobs". F'ing idiots.

5. CONGRESS COMPLETELY REVAMP THE SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION

While I don't disagree that the SEC has some conflict of interest issues, this one's just plain naive. They're calling for increasing funding to hire a large staff of "proven professionals", while criticizing that the current staff are "Wall St. insiders". Um... What criteria do they propose we use to find all these "proven professionals" to work at the SEC? Unless they're arguing for proven professionalism in areas other than the stock market (which is entirely possible I suppose), then how do you get people who haven't worked in Wall Street?

It's like no one even bothered to engage their brains on this. Had this point actually talked about maybe some regulations or practices designed to minimize the potential for corrupt decision making, they'd at least be on the right track. But this just comes off as spend more money on more of the same and hope that things will get better. It's an abrogation of responsibility to take this approach in my opinion and smacks of "I know something is wrong, I don't know what exactly, but someone told me that if we give them a bunch more money it'll be better". That's just a stupid way of doing things.

6. CONGRESS PASS SPECIFIC AND EFFECTIVE LAWS LIMITING THE INFLUENCE OF LOBBYISTS AND ELIMINATING THE PRACTICE OF LOBBYISTS WRITING LEGISLATION THAT ENDS UP ON THE FLOOR OF CONGRESS.

How do you "limit the influence of lobbyists"? Who decides which lobbyists have too much influence? How much influence is too much? Hell. What makes someone a lobbyist? There's just this really apparent lack of clue as to how the 1st amendment applies to political speech present in several of these points. I suspect that there's no detail on this one precisely because it sounds good as a bullet point if you don't think about it too much, but it's impossible to actually write how you'd approach this without getting yourself into massive amounts of incredibly selective trouble, and potentially the creation of government agencies which would effectively control political speech in ways no sane person should desire.

7. CONGRESS PASSING "Revolving Door Legislation" LEGISLATION ELIMINATING THE ABILITY OF FORMER GOVERNMENT REGULATORS GOING TO WORK FOR CORPORATIONS THAT THEY ONCE REGULATED.

Trying to eliminate conflicts of interest is a reasonable idea. Passing a law restricting future employment may not be the best way to do it. Oddly, this one is by far the most reasonable of all of the proposals, but it's still problematic and doesn't really eliminate the problem. I'd much prefer that we had greater oversight on conflicts as a whole (which they also propose and is also quite reasonable).

It would be nice if they'd get off the assumption that corporations are the only ones who benefit from this though. I didn't bring this up in the point about the campaign donations, but the same rules that apply to corporations should apply to unions as well (and all organizations, whether profit or non-profit). It's kinda hard to take someone's claims that they want to make things "fair" when they constantly make exceptions for organizations politically aligned with their "side".

8. ELIMINATE "PERSONHOOD" LEGAL STATUS FOR CORPORATIONS.


Constitutional issues aside, I'm not sure what they're really going for here. And I'm betting that they don't either. They just assume it's anti-corporation so it must be good. Personhood status does not protect the corporation from being sued for its actions (and they make great big targets btw). It also does not prevent the people making decisions from being subject to criminal charges for their actions.

I suspect many people don't understand that there is no such thing as an "owner" of a corporation (not a traditional corporation for which this legal status applies anyway). I also suspect that many people don't understand that being treated as a person under the law isn't some special benefit. It's a recognition that since a corporation isn't owned by a single person or even a small number of people, it should be treated as a separate entity. Otherwise, every single investor in a corporation could be sued for anything the corporation does. But absent that, the corporation couldn't be sued separately. It's a plus/minus really and not something to get worked up about.




There. That good enough?

Edited, Oct 4th 2011 6:05pm by gbaji

Of course I see why they'd want to do it. It would allow the government to deny equal protection to corporations. It's a whole topic by itself, but my point here is that those calling for it in this case do so because it's a "corporation" that is treated as a person under the law. But the same rulings apply to every organization made up of a group of people. So unions, corporations, non-profits, the local VFW, and the very groups who are marching in the protests on Wall Street right now. All of them are protected from the law treating them unfairly and without due process.


I doubt seriously that those supporting that position realize that it's not just about corporations. They're just repeating "corporations==bad!" and not really thinking the issue through (or even starting to think about it at all).



They were not illegal. They also were not the same as what we think of as corporations today either. Corporations back then were generally organizations operating under a special charter from the government which gave them special authority in some area. They were really far more like privately licensed monopolies which the government handed out. About the only things similar today to those style of corporations would be broadcast corporations. They're handed exclusive license to some set of bandwidth for purpose of providing communication and in return are required to comply with certain regulations and government uses of their operation.


And they weren't illegal. They were just not issued by the federal government. Not the same thing. And again, they were not remotely similar to modern corporations like the ones that these protesters are complaining about.

Oh. And just because it's funny as hell (and ironic as hell in this context):



Because they want to eliminate corporate income taxes, maybe? Think about it. The same group of people arguing that they need to change the laws to prevent corporations like GE from paying zero income tax is also arguing to eliminate the personhood status which makes it possible to tax corporate income in the first place. Like I said: Ironic as hell. And it's one of several indications that the folks who came up with this list have no freaking clue what they're talking about.




Edited, Oct 4th 2011 7:16pm by gbaji

Except to the extent that they are personally invested in the corporation. And if they are "corporate leaders" (what do you think that means?) they must be significant investors in said corporation. What it also does is protect the average working stiff who buys shares of stock from being sued for everything that a corporation owes because he's a part owner as well. The asset protection aspect of a corporation benefits the non-rich far more than the rich btw. Absent that legal condition, the most common route to wealth for working and middle class people would be closed (or at least a hell of a lot riskier).

The protection of assets outside the corporation is only one aspect of this too. The bigger aspect is that of taxation (as I mentioned). If the corporation can't be treated as a person then it cannot be taxed separately. Each individual investor would have to be taxed. Um... Of course we do tax dividends on shares in corporations already, so the net effect is a "free tax" on business which would not otherwise have existed.

Another aspect is due process. If a corporation cannot be treated as a person, then it puts any contracts it holds in question (which goes both ways). It also become subject to arbitrary legal changes which we would not apply to a person. You and I are protected from the government passing a law which targets us individually. The government can't pass a law that says: "The state may seize all of Iddigory's assets and give them to gbaji". If corporations are not treated as people and protected similarly, then the government could pass a law saying that all the assets of one corporation can be seized and given to another (imagine what this would do to lobbying?!), or taken by the government itself.

So the government can't take your property from you without due process *unless* that property comes in the form of assets owned by a corporation purchased with the value of the stock you own. Of course, if all the assets are taken, the stock becomes worth zero, doesn't it? That effectively allows the government to seize your property without due process *unless* we treat property held by a corporation the same as that held by a person.


There are a whole number of very very very good reasons to treat corporations as persons under the law. There are pretty much zero not to. It's pure rhetoric. A bunch of ignorant people who've been convinced that it's some kind of travesty of the law rant about how corporations aren't people (no one said they were btw), all the while having no freaking clue what they're actually talking about or the ramifications if they were to actually succeed in what they claim to want to do.


Can you give me a single concrete reason why corporate personhood is bad? And not some vague "corporate leaders can do bad things without paying for it" BS. A real reason. Give me an example.

Edited, Oct 4th 2011 7:17pm by gbaji

That's about as reliable as gbaji's "its obvious", given your stance on this. Keeping quiet may have been better.

NYTimes articles were announcing that they had released a list of their demands early last week. If you look back at articles linked here, I'm sure you'd see the references.

Good to know. I've heard that they have been holding councils to organize the protest lately--I imagine that these demands are from that.