The inherent danger of complex laws and regulations

We often hear big businesses complaining about regulations, but if those regulations are complex enough, they turn into giant opportunities for big business. All you need is a smart team of lawyers in order to drive a big truck through a tiny loophole or exemption, as explained by Kevin Drum of Mother Jones:

[N]o one should take too seriously Republican complaints about burdensome regulations strangling the economy. The truth is that most reformers prefer fairly simple rules. In the tax world, they'd prefer to simply tax all income. In the environmental world, they'd prefer to set firm limits for pollutants. In the financial world, they'd prefer blunt rules that cut off risky activity at its knees.

But businesses don't like simple rules, because simple rules are hard to evade. So they lobby endlessly for exemptions both big and small. This is why we end up with tax subsidies for bow-and-arrow makers. It's why we end up with environmental rules that treat a hundred different industries a hundred different ways. It's why financial regulators don't enact simple leverage rules or place firm asset caps on firm size. Those would be hard to get around and might genuinely eat into bank profits. Complex rules, conversely, are the meat and drink of $500-per-hour lawyers and whiz kid engineers. If the rules are complicated enough, smart lawyers can always find ways around them. And American corporations employ lots of smart lawyers.

In an earlier post, I had cited this quote: "One can make money only if there is real risk based on actual uncertainty, and without uncertainty there is no risk.' To the extent that we have simple and understandable rules, it is harder to hide unfair business practices. There is great value to uncertainty--to unwieldy and vague legislation--to those who have teams of savvy lawyers and accountants whose job it is to navigate and circumvent the purported intent of the legislation. That's because most of us don't have the time, attention, energy or political clout to rein in those who create these legislative monstrosities. We're too busy working 8 or more hours per day at the office, then trying to be good parents, trying to fix the house or car, and maybe relaxing for an hour or two per night. How many of us are interested or able of plowing through 2,000 page legislative packages or regulations in our "free time," or trying to make sense of complex court decisions that also struggle with these legislative morasses? As Kevin Drum writes:

We could probably cut the size of agency regulations by 10 times if we wanted to. But business don't want to. Sure, they'd prefer no regulation at all, but they know that's not in the cards. So in public they bemoan complexity, but in private they fight endlessly for more of it. To their lawyers, every single extra page is an extra opportunity to make more money.

It makes one think that we need a law to outlaw complex laws.  We need a law that all laws should be written in plain English and that they must be understandable by high school graduates.  Those who insist that they need something that is not reasonably understandable should be presumed to benefit a special interest and presumed to be opposed to the public good.  Complex laws are huge red flags, regardless of the title of the law or the way politicians assure us that these laws will benefit the public. Indigestibly complex laws almost always signal that ordinary Americans are getting screwed.

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Terrorist = a Muslim who commits violence

Glenn Greenwald points out that Americans are commonly persuaded and controlled through the use of vague terms. One example is the word "terrorism," which tends to be applied only where the person committing violence is a Muslim and not when non-Muslims commit comparable acts. A "militant" has come to mean any person who dies when an American weapon explodes. "Class warfare" and "Civil liberties" are other commonly used vague terms that are actually used as "tools for misleading political arguments." Another such vague term is "rule of law," which originally referred to the idea that "we are all equally bound to a common set of rules, regardless of power position, or prestige." It originally meant that "nobody is above the law or below the law." Citing the work of Thomas Carruthers, Greenwald noted that the biggest challenge is to prevent elites from living above the rule of law. The founding fathers, who personally "loved inequality," agreed that a central requirement for the new country is that everyone would comport with the law; without this requirement, they agreed that the country would not be "legitimate and just." Greenwald explained that with regard to "rule of law," things aren't working out so well in modern day America. The biggest problem is that "we no longer believe in the principle itself." With regard to journalists (see below), they now tend to be situated as insiders rather than outsider watchdogs who, in less dysfunctional times, embraced the motto: "Afflict the powerful, comfort the powerless." Greenwald has been out and about, promoting his new book, With Liberty and Justice for Some. For many additional videos of his talks, see here.

Continue ReadingTerrorist = a Muslim who commits violence

Who is the U.S. killing with its drones?

What would you think about someone who started shooting a gun from the top of the Empire State Building in order to kill "bad people" walking on the sidewalks below? Assume that he could tell very little, if anything, about the people he was killing.  Also assume that when we asked him to justify how he knew he was shooting "bad people" he asked us to trust him and questioned our loyalty to the United States to the extent we doubted him.  Now consider America's largely indiscriminate killings using its huge fleet of drones.  Glenn Greenwald puts it in perspective:

After I linked to [a New York Times] Op-Ed yesterday on Twitter — by writing that “every American who cheers for drone strikes should confront the victims of their aggression” — I was predictably deluged with responses justifying Obama’s drone attacks on the ground that they are necessary to kill The Terrorists. Reading the responses, I could clearly discern the mentality driving them: I have never heard of 99% of the people my government kills with drones, nor have I ever seen any evidence about them, but I am sure they are Terrorists. That is the drone mentality in both senses of the word; it’s that combination of pure ignorance and blind faith in government authorities that you will inevitably hear from anyone defending President Obama’s militarism . . . .  As it turns out, it isn’t only the President’s drone-cheering supporters who have no idea who is being killed by the program they support; neither does the CIA itself. A Wall Street Journal article yesterday described internal dissension in the administration to Obama’s broad standards for when drone strikes are permitted, and noted that the “bulk” of the drone attacks — the bulk of them – “target groups of men believed to be militants associated with terrorist groups, but whose identities aren’t always known.” As Spencer Ackerman put it: “The CIA is now killing people without knowing who they are, on suspicion of association with terrorist groups.”

Take a look at Greenwald's article to get a feel for what it is like for innocent families to live in terror of attack by drones. I wrote on this topic recently, actually twice, and I find it profoundly disturbing that this sort of sky-adjudication and killing is being done in my name by our large staff of predator pilots. The way we are fighting our ongoing drone "war" appears incompatible with a genuine attempt to seek lasting peace.  We don't have any confidence that we are killing people who threaten the United States. Shame on us.

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A list of evidence justifying the #Occupy movement

Consider the joy shown by Americans celebrating the Fourth of July. If the Fourth is such a happy time, shouldn’t we now be equally furious that the government has been rigged to ignore the needs and wants of the People? Over the past few years, I've heard dozens of educated middle class Americans admit that Congress has ben bought―federal corruption at the highest levels is now accepted as unquestionable truth. More recently, I’ve run into more than a few people who have become frustrated with the Occupy movement. For instance, last week I heard this from an acquaintance, who was speaking of the protesters:

Acquaintance: “They should get a job.  What the hell are they expecting to accomplish out there?”

Me:  Isn’t it a huge problem that all three branches of our federal government make decisions to accommodate large corporations, often ignoring the needs of ordinary citizens? Isn’t that worth protesting.

Acquaintance: “Still, the protesters are stupid.”

Me: What is your solution?   Ordinary people are barred from participating in a government that is supposedly to be run by ordinary people. Further, the news media is largely under the control of these same interests―they are too often serving as stenographers for the corporations that pull the strings of the federal Government. [Fourth of July flag photo]

Acquaintance: [Silence].

Along the same lines, here’s an excerpt from an email I recently received from a DI reader:

About your note regarding ways to support the Occupy movement... yes, you are right to encourage people to talk about what is going on, but don't you think that it is time for those who are actually doing the "occupying" to go home and do their homework.  It seems pretty apparent that it is mostly the late teen to early 20 year olds that are involved and that they don't seem to have any really intelligent, well thought out ideas or goals.  The media and general public are already bored with the story, and the whole thing will have been an exercise in futility unless they move on in a dignified way.  Their goal should be to have an effect on the 2012 election which is a full year away.  They should go home and get organized and become better informed in order to form a voting block that will further their agenda (that is if they can come to a consensus as to what that agenda is).

In short, this reader wants the Occupiers to return home to do the same thing that millions of people have been doing for the past decade, i.e., doing nothing likely to invoke change. [More . . . ]

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Red Cross seeking donations

I'm in Chicago for a consumer law conference. While walking to the conference site a young woman approached me on the sidewalk, asking me to donate to the Red Cross. I told her that I'm not interested, because too much of the money I would donate would go to over-paid executives. She quickly responded that the head of the Red Cross only makes a bit more than $600,000. I told her that this was outrageous. She asked, "So you would never give to a charity where the person in charge makes $600,000?" I said, "Never." The Red Cross is not alone in paying huge salaries to its executives.   Here is a list of the salaries of some of the executive salaries of some of the biggest charities in the United States.   Many of these charity leaders earn less than $200,000. I know a lot of teachers who work every bit as hard as any executive, yet they are paid a pittance compared to $600,000. I know many people who believe in a cause enough to work untold hours for the cause for no pay at all. It seems to me that charities ought to work harder to find leaders who believe in the cause enough that they will do it for outrageous salaries. For comparison, the salary of members of Congress is $174,000 per year. A justice on the United States Supreme Court earns $223,000 per year. Ralph Nader lives off of $25,000 per year.  The average chief executive (charity and non-charity) in the United States earns less than $300,000/year.

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