Laissez Isn't Fair - by Mark Green c/o Huffington Post

[applegrove]

Laissez Isn't Fair
by Mark Green
at Huffington Post

"The FBI released statistics this week highlighting the most significant increase in violent crime in the United States since 1993. Murder rates jumped 4.8 percent over the last 5 years, with robberies also showing some dramatic gains in communities large and small. "Another feather in the cap of the Bush administration," as Joe Sudbay of AMERICAblog.com put it.


But where's the FBI category on economic crime? Where's the data not on street crime but "suite crime"? Doesn't exist.

It should because Bush & Co. are philosophically and authentically uneager to crack down on their corporate cash base. Apparently when they told president-elect Bush that he had to take a constitutional oath "to faithfully execute the laws," he took it literally. So as president he's tried to kill off the consumer laws, labor laws, environmental laws, securities laws -- because the first MBA president hears far more from complaining regulated businesses than consumer victims of white-collar crime.

The recent prosecution and conviction of Enron dons Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling are exceptional, but who knows what the outcome would have been if scandalous newspaper headlines hadn't forced the trial to proceed towards a swift, and just, conclusion. Far more often, prosecutors have real barriers -- of funding, of judges coming from white shoe law firms, of a corporate structure where "those who call the shots don't bear the risks" of getting caught according to one criminologist -- which prevent them from investigating and prosecuting a lot of economic illegality. Apologists for this brand of criminality try to explain away its existence by noting that the public cares more about the "quality of life" crimes discussed in the FBI report. The Wall Street Journal has editorialized that "it isn't very helpful to suggest that white collar crime is a more serious threat to the social order than predatory street crime, which inspires fear across the board." True, being held at gunpoint worries soccer moms and urban professionals more than, say, milk price-fixing.

..... Snip"

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mark-green/laissez-isnt-fair_b_22881.html

[unpossibles]

1. I agree. My freeper mother-in-law is completely afraid of everything

she locked me out of my house when I went outside to get something out of the shed for less than a minute - she couldn't stand to leave the door unlocked, even though I was out there (as was the dog). We went out to eat the other night, and she got up to go to the bathroom and told the rest of us (4 people) to "watch her purse."

She's seriously paranoid about the Mexicans, and since I live in a very mixed neighborhood, she's convinced that we're just asking to be mugged. granted, crime does happen, and there are some real rough spots in my neighborhood, but...

My point is, she still votes for these people who rob her blind - both financially and of her Constitutional Rights - but doesn't see it on FOX, so she doesn't worry about it. I love her, but she drives me nuts. She's convinced that everyone in my neighborhood is out to steal something (generally, the crime we have is from teenagers, and is usually minor) from us, even things like the cheap plastic chairs on my porch...

sigh.

EDIT:
great article, btw.

[applegrove]

2. Any form of crime is awful. Awful. Awful. But just because you dress

it up in a suit doesn't mean it doesn't cost society just as much. Perhaps individuals loose less when they loose their savings.. rather than their lives. Somehow the snakes running around in suits are considered not as scary. Snakes are snakes! Put them with a knapsack, put them in a suit, put them in a church, put them on the street... predators are predators.

But really - the cost of having really bad health care is up there in terms of loss.

[Warpy]

3. Yeah, my pop hoped I'd take my inheritance and move out

of this inner city neighborhood with all the brown, black and Asian folks in it. Then I told him the latest crime stats, that this is the SAFEST part of the city. Never mind that the brown, black and Asian folks are neighbors I know and like and that we all watch out for each other.

Another study said that people who watch crime shows, especially true crime like "Cops" and "America's Most Wanted" are more likely to overestimate their chances of being crime victims.

There is nothing we can do about our parents. They are who they are and it's our job to cope with them just the way they are. Nobody said we couldn't junk the stuff that didn't fit OUR lives, though.