Not Guilty- Not Interesting

Here's a story that wasn't interesting enough to get as much media coverage as Lady Gaga's egg:

"The U.S. Justice Department has ended a criminal investigation of former Countrywide Financial Corp. Chief Executive Officer Angelo Mozilo and won’t bring charges, a person familiar with the investigation said."

Mozillo's greed and deceit played a key part in causing the greatest financial collapse since the Great Depression and robbed Americans of trillions of dollars of accumulated wealth.  But he won't be tried for anything.  And you know why he won't be tried?  Because he's not guilty of breaking any laws!

And the courts are right- he's not!

In a (sort of) related story:

"Los Angeles City Attorney Carmen Trutanich is taking a hard line approach against protesters, wanting jail time for dozens of people arrested during recent political demonstrations."

Yes, jail time for protesters who showed up in such numbers that they spilled off the sidewalks onto the street, blocking traffic, but no penalty at all for a man who helped destroy our economy.  And you know why? Because they broke the law and he didn't.

Now comes the question of why what Mozillo did wasn't illegal.  Well,can you think back far enough to remember Saint Ronnie?  Yes, that would be the same President Ronald Reagan that somehow saved the whole country from...something or other, and consequently became the greatest God in the Conservative pantheon.  Well, Saint Ronnie invented something called "deregulation."  Now what was deregulation all about?

We've all encountered things in our lives that are too complicated for us to understand- quantum physics, for example, or how the NBA continues to allow the Clippers to exist.  Curiously, in the political world, there are also many things that are apparently too simple to understand, and deregulation is one of them.  In truth, deregulation consists of nothing more than taking previously illegal behavior and making it legal.  And that's exactly what Reagan did.  You might as well talk of "deregulating" burglary. 

Well, those laws that Reagan did away with weren't enacted for the fun of it.  They were needed to protect us all, and we have now paid the price for standing by while Reagan deliberately created a business climate where honest people could not compete with crooks.  That is all deregulation was ever about, and it is why it is the greatest fraud ever perpetrated on the American public.  It is the reason that we have had two massive real estate-related collapses in the thirty years since Reagan took office, it is the reason why we have an airline industry constantly teetering on the edge of mass bankruptcy, it is the reason that Wall Street insiders were able to rob us all blind without penalty, it is a big part of the reason that we have the most disfunctional medical care system in the industrialized world...it is the reason that our country is on the verge of becoming a third world dictatorship.

It is the essence of Conservatism: the notion that it is the right of the rich to plunder the country's wealth, and it is the duty of the rest of us to pay the cost.  That's what our country is about today, and if it continues, and the United States falls, no one will be more to blame than the holy Saint Ronald Reagan.

Comments

Dave Dubya said…
Yup. Everything the Nazis did was made legal, by the Nazis, after seizing power.

Republicans have learned their dark lessons well.
Green Eagle said…
A lesson that apparently consists in not dressing up in uniforms while they carry out their evil deeds.
BB-Idaho said…
Ah Reagan..he did that too?
Here I thought he was the inventer of 'Lower the taxes and raise spending'
economics...

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