I am continually impressed with Warren. If only more of the politicians in this country were as interested in serving the public interest as she is.
As to Warren's letter, she has spent her entire career in academics and has never worked as a lawyer. She does not know the amount of resources required to participate in a lawsuit and trial. As lawyers, we are constantly encouraged to settle cases to resolve issues rather than spend the time and expense going to trial. We should not be encouraging the government to sue people and take them to trial when they are willing to settle. To take a case to a show trial in order to make an public example of the defendant is bad policy more fitting of a dictatorship.
Source please.
I read this: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2012/09/27/th...
But there is a lot more nuance to the story than your simple one liner. For example, it doesn't look like anyone at Harvard knew about her claimed NA heritage before giving her tenure. If you have heard different then please share.
So, she publicized herself as a minority. Gets tenure with the employer touting her minority status. Then, she stops calling herself a minority. I think that's pretty convincing she used her false minority status in order to get the job, ie affirmative action.
Doesn't seem to be true: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/post/everyt...
http://legalinsurrection.com/2012/09/cherokee-genealogist-to...
In any event, I find it more troubling that Warren does not understand the purpose of a trial, which explains the shocked responses from the government officials.
Warren's dead right. The finance guys all know they'll almost never get prosecuted.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2012/dec/11/hsbc-bank-us-...
[1] http://dissenter.firedoglake.com/2012/12/16/hsbc-executives-...
The fact that she has spent her entire career in academics does not mean she is unaware of the costs and benefits of going to trial. But, even if your invalid premise was correct, that's the entire point of the letter. She is asking for an analysis of the costs and benefits of going to trial.
> As lawyers, we are constantly encouraged to settle cases to resolve issues rather than spend the time and expense going to trial. We should not be encouraging the government to sue people and take them to trial when they are willing to settle.
This blanket statement is ridiculous. We're talking about stakes that are higher than you (or anyone) can count. If banks do not have the proper incentives they could easily wreak havoc on the world economy. A few billion dollar settlement does not provide the proper incentives for organizations worth 100s of billions of dollars.
>To take a case to a show trial in order to make an public example of the defendant is bad policy more fitting of a dictatorship.
Warren is a member of the legislative branch not the executive branch, which balances the power of the executive branch. Moreover, she is not trying to subvert any sort of due process. She is merely asking questions. This is contrary to the very nature of a dictatorship.
On your second point, going for the most efficient outcome isn't necessarily the best one for the american people.
As for the financial penalties, the directly culpable individuals do not pay them. Nor, in the long run for such "too big to fail" institutions, do the shareholders.
The customers pay them. Especially when you have companies in an oligarchical, if not monopolistic, position. Penalties become a cost of business that gets passed on.
In several of these penalties of very large institutions, people have "crunched the numbers" and found that, at most, the penalty represents a quarter or two's profit.
Measure that against the years of outsized profit gained during and often in good part due to the abuse being penalized, and "cost of doing business" is all the further put in context.
As an individual, when you go to jail, it doesn't as much matter what your assets are. While you're in jail, you don't get to enjoy them. (This is not entirely true, and we also have now the example of Skilling (Enron) essentially spending his way out of prison. But, he still suffered some direct, personal hardship.)
As a corporation, such costs are spread over a large institution and number of people, and individuals may face little or no hardship. Even those senior executives who "resign", "take the fall", or are booted out often continue to receive millions in compensation, on top of what they've already squirreled away.
(Lower level members can and are screwed over -- "sacrifices" to the good of the institution that has chosen to excise them.)
I think respect for such senior executives among the larger population these days is really largely a matter of envy. An envy often driven in turn by one's fear for one's own increasingly precarious financial and physical circumstances. Respect for such people as "leaders" continues to decline.
Look at the bottom basement approval ratings for members of Congress. People have figured out that those people do not play by the same rules -- do not exist in the same legal and financial world, as the normal population does.
We in the U.S. expostulate that we are a "nation founded on laws". When the application of those laws becomes selective and overtly subject to finance -- justice, or its absence, "for sale" -- you weaken that very foundation.
(As a complementary point, arguments can be made that efforts to define and apply the law more universally have strengthened the country. For example, the suffrage and civil rights movements.)
P.S. I'll add that Warren, and Sheila Baer, and a few others are actually responsible for forcing through some of the few real and at least somewhat effective consumer (i.e. "normal person") protections in the mess of activity that constitute's the U.S.'s "financial bailout" efforts.
Finally, as to the politics, that whole "Native American" thing is a red herring -- emblematic of much bigger liars (as compared to their claims rather than facts) who make strident declamations to divert attention from their own atrocious behavior.