Law & Justice: July 2008 Archives
Not only were our political masters getting favorable interest rates from Countrywide, but the mortgage giant they were supposed to be regulating also made it a practice to waive the "junk" fees they stick to the rest of us.
According to Feinberg and company documents, V.I.P.’s nearly always received better deals than those available to most borrowers. Countrywide often waived up to two points and eliminated fees amounting to hundreds of dollars for underwriting, processing, and document preparation. Internal company emails often referred to these fees as “junk” or “garbage.” If interest rates fell while a V.I.P. loan was pending, Countrywide provided a free float-down to the lower rate, eschewing its usual charge of half a point. Some V.I.P.’s who bought or refinanced investment properties were given the lower interest rate reserved for primary residences. Because Mozilo informally preapproved his F.O.A.’s, many of them barely bothered to document their assets and enjoyed exceptions to normal procedures or shortcuts around them.
If you're a homeowner and that doesn't make your blood boil, you may already be in a cool homicidal rage. There's no way that this special treatment isn't bribery of the most pernicious kind, and every, every "friend of Angelo" of either party who participated should be thrown in prison. Pleading ignorance doesn't keep us peasants out of jail, and the people who make the laws should be held to at least as high a standard.
(HT: Instapundit.)
Pilot Patrick Smith mocks the Transportation Security Administration. As he points out, everyone who flies knows he's right, but none of the interested parties will stick their necks out to fix the problem.
At this point, the Transportation Security Administration's policies in general are wrong on so many levels that it's hard to get one's arms around them. My apologies to those who've tired of my harping on this subject in column after column, but here again are the bullet points:* Sharp, potentially dangerous objects can be fashioned from virtually anything, including no shortage of materials found on board any jetliner -- to say nothing of the fact that a copycat takeover in the style of Sept. 11 would be almost impossible for terrorists to pull off, regardless of what weapons they possess. Yet we insist on wasting huge amounts of time digging through people's belongings, looking for what are effectively benign items.
* Almost as senseless are the liquids and gels restrictions. Experts have pointed out the futility of these measures, yet they remain in place. (Still more from TSA's you-can't-make-this-up list of airport contraband: gel shoe inserts.)
* TSA's approach is fundamentally flawed in that it treats everybody -- from employees to passengers, old and young, domestic and foreign -- as a potential threat. We are all suspects. Together with a preposterous zero-tolerance approach to weapons, be they real or perceived, this has created a colossal apparatus that strives for the impossible.
I can't disagree that some level of screening will always be important. Explosives and firearms, for instance, need to be kept off airplanes. But the existing rules are so heavy-handed, absolute and illogical as to be ultimately unenforceable.
You would think, nearly seven years after the terror attacks of Sept. 11, that TSA would have gotten its act together. Not just tactically, but functionally. Take a look at the typical checkpoint. There are people yelling, bags falling, trash bins overflowing with water bottles. There's nowhere to stand, nowhere to move. It's a jury-rigged circus. ...
Except there is no fuss. Serious protest has been all but nil. The airlines, biggest losers in all of this, remain strangely quiet. More and more people are choosing not to fly, and checkpoint hassles are one of the reasons. Yet the industry appears to have little concern while an out-of-control agency delays and aggravates its customers.
Any public officeholder or official who complains or attempts to change the broken system will be pilloried when there's another successful terrorist attack against an airliner. The facade of security isn't worth the cost, and more people need to stand up and say so.
I read stories like this one from the UK about a women using mild force to protect a war memorial from disruptive "youths" and I wonder if adults should be given a presumption of justification for stand-alone instances of violence against kids.
Julie Lake, 50, believed the 15-year-old was one of a number of youths who had damaged the remembrance garden in her village dedicated to those killed fighting for Britain.But Mrs Lake was arrested after giving a boy, whom she believed to be the ringleader, a talking-to and a 'cuff round the ear'.
She tackled him after she saw at least one youth riding a BMX bike through freshly-laid flower beds.
Magistrates heard that when she grabbed his shirt collar, he said: 'That's assault'.
Mrs Lake claimed she was performing a 'moral obligation' following months of anti-social behaviour and vandalism at the memorial.
But weeks later she was arrested and yesterday was convicted of assault, criminal damage and a public order offence at North Avon Magistrates Court in Yate, near Bristol.
I don't think that repeated patterns of violence against children by an adult should be tolerated of course, but I do think that kids should be scared of adults, and especially of strangers. Children and teenagers should be afraid to act disruptively and abusively in public, and if it takes a "cuff round the ear" to make it so, I'm fine with that.
I'm not exactly sure how the law should be crafted, but the case against Mrs. Lake should have been laughed out of court and the "youths" should have been punished (further). The new law would need to punish domestic child abuse, but shouldn't prevent adults from keeping strange kids in line in public places.
She told how the gang surrounded her, pushed her and shouted: 'You can't touch us, we're 15, we can do what the f*** we like.'When the 15-year-old, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was questioned in court about the war memorial, he replied: ''It means nothing to me, I guess it's for some people who died in the war.'
If the system weren't so stacked in their favor, I don't think it would take long for kids to realize that they'd better shut up and keep a low profile around adults. I doubt much actual force would need to be used if the threat of force were once again widespread.
(HT: Rachel Lucas.)
The Reconquista continues, now on Catalina Island:
AVALON, Calif. - It seems even 22 miles of open ocean might not be keeping gangs off Catalina Island, a mist-shrouded outpost of Los Angeles County best known for its Hollywood history and crystal-clear harbors.Deputies on the isle say a fledgling gang called the Brown Pride Locos has gotten a foothold among the beaches, coves and tourist shops. A stabbing, burglaries and graffiti are being blamed on the gang, and deputies last month surprised teenagers practicing moves with knives on a dark bluff above Avalon's crescent-shaped bay.
A swift crackdown has netted at least six arrests and led to a pair of police raids — but it has also caused an uproar in the tiny community, where residents leave their doors unlocked and putt around in golf carts.
