Later On

Of course, it’s not the Federal government—Wall Street pretty much owns the Federal government now. It’s New York state and Attorney General Eric Schneiderman. Glenn Greenwald expresses sincere praise in this column, well worth reading. The concluding two paragraphs are worth noting:

Further evidence of Schneiderman’s unwillingness to allow the law to be exploited as a corrupted instrument for corporatism is found in his threats to sue the federal government with “aggressive legal action” over its failure to conduct legally mandated environment impact studies for proposed drilling in the Delaware River Basin (which provides 50% of New York’s drinking water).  Those threats predictably prompted objections from “oil and gas industry representatives” accustomed to lawless subservience from government officials: especially from the regulatory agencies mandated to compel industry compliance with the law yet which are typically run by former industry officials who do the opposite (as epitomized by theBP official chosen by the Obama administration as a top regulator overseeing land and minerals management).

An Attorney General who simultaneously works for more lenient laws for ordinary Americans committing trivial drug offenses while demanding serious accountability for the nation’s most powerful factions is a rare and noble aberration indeed:  one who seems openly hostile to the two-tiered justice system that operates to protect lawbreaking political and financial elites while punishing the powerless.  Of course, the last politician who tried to impose meaningful accountability on Wall Street was New York Attorney General and Governor Eliot Spitzer, whose career was abruptly destroyed by a still-very-strange-and-difficult-to-understand massive federal law enforcement effort into his prostitution-hiring activities.  AsJay Ackroyd said of Schneiderman yesterday in response to my praise of his actions:  “He’d best have no skeletons. None.”  It is worth keeping a watchful eye on Schneiderman’s investigative efforts and doing everything possible to provide what will undoubtedly be much-needed support if, as appears to be the case, he is serious about taking on these pernicious factions and impeding the conspiring by the political class to protect their benefactors/owners.