Bad boys, watchcha gonna do?

I can't even watch it (the TV show "Cops"), turns my recently filled stomach. It takes the combined effort of four vehicles and at least twice that many cops to bust a 5 foot-something crackhead for selling the police some rock. This is our tax dollars at work.

Actually, they're local: so if you don't live in whatever state they were filming in, it's not your money. Though, soon enough, it will be.

Unfortunately, one of the big winners of Obama's plan to save the world--besides the bankers and financiers--will undoubtedly be law enforcement. Now, while part of it will go to the more agreeable functions of law enforcement, part (the bigger part) will be squandered on ineffectual and morally corrupt drug laws.

Actually, law enforcement, here the lack of, is almost as much to blame as the Wall St., if not a willing accomplice. Of course, the blame for this lies within the Bush Years, when the amount of FBI agents that dealt with the financial system was cut to a 1/5 of it's size, according to Glenn Greenwald. Oh, that, and the more than implicit understanding that the people in charge didn't even believe in the enforcement of regulation in the first place.

Speaking of the lack of regulation, Greenwald seems to me the one of the most outspoken (more than Krugman even) critics of the Obama administration. And you know what, I'm starting to agree with them.

It's beginning to feel like a bait&switch. People voted for change, yet it seems like every position, at least those having to deal with the economy, are the same old guys, with the same old ideological lineage. Geitner and Summers to Greenspan and Bernake, and Rubin and on back to Milton Friedman.

(laugh it up, smart guys)

But you don't have to take my word for it! (Line from an old TV show, "You Can't Do That On Television," sorry.)

Check out Greenwald's blog on the link above. He covers all of this, plus he just released a paper on drug decriminalization for the Cato Institute.

Taking it to the air-waves, again.

The lines below are from another comment posted to WNYC, this time to The Brian Lehrer Show, my fave. They were asking submissions for an Economic Villains Final Four or sorts. This was my recommendation, that oddly no one else mentioned:

Oh, c'mon. Uncle Milty (Milton Friedman) gave all these people an ethos, ethics (or lack thereof), and an excuse for indulging in their more base instinct.

We all became complicit in valuing the "creation of wealth" and making rock-stars out of bankers and financiers.

Then today, Brian was talking about street art/graffiti of late concerning the financial crisis. (Btw: We need a good name for this thing, financial/economic/banking crisis/mess/meltdown, etc. But, usually, I think, these things get named after the fact. Did they call it the Depression during the Depression? WWI used to be called The War to End All Wars, until it wasn't. That would've been pretty cynical to call it WWI before WWII had happened.)

Though I didn't get on myself, what I told the screener did get passed on to Lehrer to mention: since it hadn't been mentioned yet, Shepard Fairey, now of Obama Hope poster fame, has been doing political, and specifically ills of capitalist/consumerism, street art for years--and better than most. So, you're welcome, Shepard. God knows you need the press.

Also posted this pic. Had posted it here, already, but what the hell: you probably didn't see it the first time, slacker.