May 3, 2010, Real terror
It seems essential to believe that furriners, especially those people (in this case, from Pakistan) must be invariably involved in nefarious plots, and hence, this "breaking news" report that the person wanted for questioning in the failed attempt to detonate a car bomb in Times Square has FOREIGN connections, As usual, we forget that whole "innocent until proven guilty" thing, and we can expect the usual suspects to draw their own conclusions, which, of course, will validate their own world view that all Mexicans illegal aliensswarthy furriners-- 'specially them Muslims-- is out to get us. I'll just say, maybe, and maybe not, Whomever is determined to be guilty of this plot after receiving full due process of law should be punished appropriately. But only after. I realize that's a radical position these days..
I will say that my own thought about this plot (which, I confess, I only heard about on the radio while driving back from finishing the Walter Childs Race of Champions/Holyoke Marathon in Massachusetts (marathon number 26 and state number 14), making me rather oblivious to what is happening in my own city), was that this had all the earmarks of domestic terrorism-- particularly because of the McVeigh style fertilizer in the car, albeit thankfully the wrong kind. But I readily admit that I have no evidence either... and I will say that as I get older, I realize that jumping to conclusions, while entirely human, is often exactly the wrong way to go, and that my own profession, that of litigation attorney, has it exactly right: one should invariably have sufficient evidence before concluding anything.
I do note that there is more than sufficient evidence that people like former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, now implicated in squelching dissent to his own deliberate and wanton causing of the housing bubble, which in turn led to our current national financial situation, in terms of shortened lives from stress and financial ruination, have, by virtue of their purely evil conduct, dwarfed anything the Times Square terrorist(s) (whomever he is or they are) would have accomplished even had the insidious plot not been (thankfully) thwarted, (We can throw in this allegation from Speaker Pelosi that the Bush Administration deliberately withheld information on the financial crisis from Congress,)
Where was I going with this? Oh yes... in terms of actual human suffering by actual Americans, the economic woes that have been brought on by Greenspan and the poohbahs in the Bush Adminstration (and we can throw in, for example, Senator Ben Nelson and his sponsor Warren Buffett, who deliberately impeded financial reform).. have proven far more detrimental to the health, welfare, and longevity of Americans than all "the terrorists" that have ever existed. And I for one am sick and tired of our predliection for punishing the pettiest of petty criminals while letting kingpins of criminality (especially if they are rich, powerful, White and wearing an expensive suit) escape all accountability,
Which is why I propose something appropriately serious: the enactment of federal law designating the kind of conduct that is sufficiently detrimental to the national economy by some significant number (pick one... a billion dollars? ten billion? a hundred billion?) as financial crimes against humanity. The punishment for such crimes would be equivalent to whatever penalty is applicable to other crimes against humanity. If the prospect of sending rich and powerful White men to lethal injection (or, my own preference, public firing squads) causes us to re-think our love affair with the death penalty, I'm o.k. with that, although, quite frankly, the firing squads (only for those proven guilty of course) would probably adjust the kind of anti-social behavior we have been seeing from Wall Street and its "public servant" vassals faster than anything else I can think of.
Did I say that out loud? This has been... "Real Terror."