Is the SEC Covering Up Wall Street Crimes?

Kate wrote:
The Printsmith position has been staked and now the rationalization will begin. This should be entertaining to watch.

It usually is....

:pop

(Was Ben Bernanke a "founding father"? I can never remember...)

AspenValley wrote:

PrintSmith wrote: Not what I said at all, is it AV. No, what I said was that if you advocate for national government you should be prepared to accept the inevitable corruption which accompanies it since removing the corruption would render the national government you seek impracticable as a means of governance.

Hogwash. Even if I "advocated" for "national government" (what nutty blog did you pick up that term from, anyway?) the second part of your sentence is totally unsupportable and a non sequitur to boot.

Come now AV, the progressive mantra has always been that the government in DC has unlimited powers. How else could you even begin to support their ability to tell a farmer how much wheat they are entitled to grow and then on top of that tell them that they can grow no more than this even for their own consumption. How else to begin to support the premise that the DC government can compel you to purchase a commodity and participate in commerce of their choosing.

As to the rest, why that comes straight from the mouth of one of the founding fathers - none other than Alexander Hamilton himself. One of the reasons that the War for Independence was fought, if you recall the Declaration of Independence, was the corruption that so inbred in the government of Great Britain. It was this corruption that Hamilton said the removal of would render the most perfect government ever devised by man impracticable. I simply agree that you can't have central governance without a healthy dose of corruption along with it since power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

The more power is consolidated within the DC government, the more corrupt that government will become. That is what we have witnessed, is it not? Isn't that why corporations run the country regardless of which party happens to be holding power currently in DC? Isn't that why the money contributed by lobbyists and special interest groups are so damaging, because it corrupts elected officials and makes them more beholden to those with money than to the best interests of the citizens of the states and the general welfare of the union? The answer is not more regulation, it is less power being held and wielded by a single government. That is why the coordinate power arrangement contained in the Constitution as written is so important - it serves as a strong check and balance on the corruption that inevitably accompanies any consolidation of power.

AspenValley wrote:

We'll skip over the redefining of what was meant by "regulating" commerce when the Constitution was penned by the national government advocates - that has been covered extensively already. Suffice to say it didn't mean micromanaging every aspect of commerce as the modern "progressives" seem to believe.

Only you could define prosecuting (or failing to) the largest thefts and frauds in the history of the world as "micromanaging"!

:VeryScared: :VeryScared: :VeryScared:

Failing to prosecute the "largest thefts and frauds in history" is nothing more than the manifestation of the corruption that comes with a powerful central government. Regulation will not stop the corruption because that corruption is an integral and necessary component of a strong central government. Doesn't matter whether you are talking a republic, a democracy, a monarchy, a theocracy or a totalitarian state - when the central government holds the power, corruption permeates the very pores of that central government - they are inseparable - the yin and the yang. History has never once provided us with a single example of an all powerful central government which wasn't also corrupt to the core. If you believe otherwise, please cite that example so we can discuss the matter further.

As for your attempt to define the parameters of the argument into an area completely devoid of relevance to what was said, I won't participate further than to say the last statement of your post is a prime example of the tired "progressive" tactic of attempting to have someone defend something that was never said. You need a new playbook AV, the one you are using is no longer effective or relevant.

PrintSmith wrote: You need a new playbook AV, the one you are using is no longer effective or relevant.

Just because you don't like, or understand, her point doesn't mean it isn't relevant. We've come a long way since the founding fathers PrintSmith......trying to use them to judge today's government is like using their words and ideas to describe the internet. They just do not compute.

PrintSmith wrote:

AspenValley wrote:

PrintSmith wrote: Not what I said at all, is it AV. No, what I said was that if you advocate for national government you should be prepared to accept the inevitable corruption which accompanies it since removing the corruption would render the national government you seek impracticable as a means of governance.

Hogwash. Even if I "advocated" for "national government" (what nutty blog did you pick up that term from, anyway?) the second part of your sentence is totally unsupportable and a non sequitur to boot.

Come now AV, the progressive mantra has always been that the government in DC has unlimited powers. How else could you even begin to support their ability to tell a farmer how much wheat they are entitled to grow and then on top of that tell them that they can grow no more than this even for their own consumption. How else to begin to support the premise that the DC government can compel you to purchase a commodity and participate in commerce of their choosing.

As to the rest, why that comes straight from the mouth of one of the founding fathers - none other than Alexander Hamilton himself. One of the reasons that the War for Independence was fought, if you recall the Declaration of Independence, was the corruption that so inbred in the government of Great Britain. It was this corruption that Hamilton said the removal of would render the most perfect government ever devised by man impracticable. I simply agree that you can't have central governance without a healthy dose of corruption along with it since power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

The more power is consolidated within the DC government, the more corrupt that government will become. That is what we have witnessed, is it not? Isn't that why corporations run the country regardless of which party happens to be holding power currently in DC? Isn't that why the money contributed by lobbyists and special interest groups are so damaging, because it corrupts elected officials and makes them more beholden to those with money than to the best interests of the citizens of the states and the general welfare of the union? The answer is not more regulation, it is less power being held and wielded by a single government. That is why the coordinate power arrangement contained in the Constitution as written is so important - it serves as a strong check and balance on the corruption that inevitably accompanies any consolidation of power.

AspenValley wrote:

We'll skip over the redefining of what was meant by "regulating" commerce when the Constitution was penned by the national government advocates - that has been covered extensively already. Suffice to say it didn't mean micromanaging every aspect of commerce as the modern "progressives" seem to believe.

Only you could define prosecuting (or failing to) the largest thefts and frauds in the history of the world as "micromanaging"!

:VeryScared: :VeryScared: :VeryScared:

Failing to prosecute the "largest thefts and frauds in history" is nothing more than the manifestation of the corruption that comes with a powerful central government. Regulation will not stop the corruption because that corruption is an integral and necessary component of a strong central government. Doesn't matter whether you are talking a republic, a democracy, a monarchy, a theocracy or a totalitarian state - when the central government holds the power, corruption permeates the very pores of that central government - they are inseparable - the yin and the yang. History has never once provided us with a single example of an all powerful central government which wasn't also corrupt to the core. If you believe otherwise, please cite that example so we can discuss the matter further.

As for your attempt to define the parameters of the argument into an area completely devoid of relevance to what was said, I won't participate further than to say the last statement of your post is a prime example of the tired "progressive" tactic of attempting to have someone defend something that was never said. You need a new playbook AV, the one you are using is no longer effective or relevant.

I think you've got it a bit backwards as to who needs a new playbook.

You are starting to remind of the guy whose only tool was a hammer, so he started thinking that everything looked like a nail.

Not every single problem in the world is "explained" by this idea of yours that if only we (actually meaning THOSE HORRIBLE PROGRESSIVES) hadn't somehow impugned the purity of the founding father's ideals that we would somehow be living in the best of all possible worlds.

Sorry, Dr. Pangloss, but I wouldn't buy your theories on this for a nickel. Your generalizations, wrong attributions, and most of all your relentless application of that "theory" to situations that don't even have boo to do with it got tiresome a long time ago.

I can't even "hear" your arguments any longer. The minute you trot out your catch words (for the millionth time) like the Founding Fathers, the Constitution, 18%, Republic, National government, and all the rest, my eyes glaze over. Sorry.

If you could maybe, just maybe, stop responding to Every.Single.Post with the same old crap, we might be able to have a discussion. Put away the hammer. Try a wrench. Try a set of tweezers. Try a TV remote, for Pete's sake. Anything but this incessant insistence on treating every single issue as though it were a nail.