Actual Owners

Though it went public a decade ago, this article makes it seem like Goldman executives still act like it's a partnership — designed to protect the interests of the company's leaders rather than those of the shareholders who are, you know, the actual owners of the corporation. 

In some ways one can see the current banking crisis as an expression of an alarming gap between the narrow, short term interest of banker-employees and the broader, longer term interests of shareholder-owners. Theoretically, the bankers work for the shareholders, but when push comes to shove, the bankers take care of themselves and each other at the shareholder's expense. 

Deep Thought

Funny how many people interpret the Facebook header "What's on your mind?" to mean "what utterly banal thing has your kid done in the last five minutes?"

"and in some ways undermined"

Seems like those words are doing a lot of work in this article.

This was a war started by Mexico, but supported — and in some ways undermined — by the United States. The template was made in the United States, a counternarcotics strategy originally designed for Colombia....

At the same time, American drug users are fueling demand for the drugs, and American guns are supplying the firepower wielded with such ferocity by Mexico’s cartels — a reality acknowledged by Secretary of State on her trip to Mexico last week.

Transnational Justice

It's important to remember, the decision whether to investigate and perhaps bring criminal charges against members of the Bush Administration is not the province of Americans alone.

A Spanish court has taken the first steps toward opening a criminal investigation into allegations that six former high-level Bush administration officials violated international law by providing the legal framework to justify the torture of prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, an official close to the case said.

The case, against former Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales and others, was sent to the prosecutor’s office for review by Baltasar Garzón, the crusading investigative judge who ordered the arrest of the former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet. The official said that it was “highly probable” that the case would go forward and that it could lead to arrest warrants.

Bushvilles

After three decades in which many Americans and both political parties largely talked about poverty as though it were a moral failing, I wonder if broadened economic dislocation will foster greater compassion.

Good Neighbor

As Mexican cities become increasingly violent, it's long past time that the U.S. take responsibility for the harmful effects that our drug policies have on our neighbors. When Lou Dobbs talks about violence in Mexican border cities spilling over into the U.S., what he leaves out is that that violence largely is the product of American demand for drugs and the fact that those drugs are illegal.

No Questions

I missed the press conference tonight, but I read this post over at Talking Points Memo which notes that the press didn't ask Obama a single question about the bank rescue plan. 

This is mind-boggling. The rescue plan is an issue of surpassing import. It is a -- or some would say "the" -- necessary pre-condition to a return to economic stability. It involves an extraordinary amount of money. It's a terrifically complicated issue. Views on how to deal with it do not break down along familiar partisan lines. (Receivership makes the most sense to me which I'm pretty sure puts my position closer to that of Paul Krugman and Richard Shelby (!) than President Obama.) Seems like an especially important moment to ask the president to explain and defend his plan and answer his critics. And the press asks no questions. None. 

Or perhaps that's a feature not a bug. The press deals well with issues that are easy to understand, of little import, and that break down along familiar partisan lines. With this bank stuff they're in way, way over their heads.

Hey Paul Krugman

It may not catch on like that will.i.am video. But feels like it expresses the uncertainty of the moment.

Two Advils

Where the War on Drugs has taken us:

Savana Redding still remembers the clothes she had on – black stretch pants with butterfly patches and a pink T-shirt – the day school officials here forced her to strip six years ago. She was 13 and in eighth grade. An assistant principal, enforcing the school's antidrug policies, suspended her for having brought prescription strength ibuprofen pills to school. One of the pills is as strong as two Advils.

The search by two female school employees was methodical and humiliating.... Ms. Redding, an honors student, had no pills. But she had a furious mother and a lawyer, and now her case has reached the Supreme Court.

Apparently the reason the school came to suspect that Redding was carrying the dangerous drug ibuprofen was because a female friend falsely blamed Redding for giving her the drug. (As Redding put it, the friend "started being embarrassed by me because I was nerdy" so the friend decided to get Redding in trouble.) So what's a school to do? Strip search. Though as the Court of Appeals pointed out, there was no reason for the school to think that Redding had the ibuprofen "insider her undergarments, attached to her nude body, or anywhere else that a strip search would reveal."

The current Supreme Court has pretty much read the Fourth Amendment out of the Constitution. (It much prefers the Sixth and Second.) The Court also seems to lose its mind – and any pretense of constitutional principle – whenever it considers cases that involve school kids and drugs. (See e.g. Morse v. Frederick where the Court upheld a school decision to punish students who made a banner proclaiming "Bong Hits 4 Jesus" while they were at a public event off school grounds. No free speech for you, you DFHs.)

Judge Kim Wardlaw of the Circuit Court wrote about the Redding case, "It does not require a constitutional scholar to conclude that nude search of a 13-year-old child is an invasion of constitutional rights." Given the current Supreme Court, I'm afraid Judge Wardlaw may be wrong. I suspect the Supremes will rule for the school district.

I'm all for giving school officials some deference. But strip searching a 13-year-old to protect her from ibuprofen is Advil Madness.

Thank God

Another sucky blog.