As President Obama ushers in a new era of good feeling, allow me this potentially discordant note. As we finally and belatedly stop torturing people, can we please start humiliating sleazeballs?
Bring back stocks. Not the equities that are tanking on Wall Street; the ancient English punishment wherein a criminal's head and hands where placed through a piece of wood, immobilizing them.
Bringing back stocks might restore a commodity that's in even shorter supply than hope: Shame. Let me be clear. I'm not suggesting we put terrorists in stocks. They need to be in prison. But what about those who shamelessly and shamefully ripped off our country, bankrupted our economy and tarnished our national identity? They need to be shamed.
Here's my proposal: An evildoer, when found guilty of fraud, market manipulation or other crimes like lying about weapons of mass destruction, illegally spying on Americans or outing a covert CIA agent, would be placed in the stocks.
Can't you see some Wall Street dirtbag immobilized in Battery Park with a sign explaining that he manipulated derivatives and caused millions of cops and firefighters and teachers to lose their pensions? Given the ingenuity of the free market, someone might even open a rotten tomato stand nearby.
Or here in Washington, the people whose arrogance and incompetence have weakened America and caused so many American troops to fight and kill and bleed and die should, at a minimum, be paraded before the public they betrayed. We could set up stocks in Lafayette Park, across from the White House. Of course, we'd make them wheelchair accessible.
Wussies and wimps would call it cruel and unusual punishment. But stocks were in use when the 8th Amendment was added to the Constitution in 1791. So the Reagan-Bush majority on the Supreme Court, being originalists and textualists, might well uphold stocks. Justice Scalia certainly would. He's already said so. In an April, 2008 interview, NPR's Nina Totenberg asked Scalia if stocks would be permitted under the 8th Amendment, since they were in use in 1791. "I would say that may be very stupid," he told Totenberg, "but it's not unconstitutional, if indeed it was a punishment that was at that time accepted."
Amen, Justice Scalia. Now please pass the tomatoes.
And now, HuffPosters, it's your turn. Who would you like to see in stocks and why?
Put them all in the Stocks, the Pillory and don’t forget the Dunking Stool.
Who are the Neocons?
Anyone who signed this document in 1997:
http://www.newamericancentury.org/statementofprinciples.htm
And this one in 2000:
http://www.newamericancentury.org/RebuildingAmericasDefenses.pdf
And anyone who has ever belonged to the American Enterprise Institute, the architects of the “War on Terror”
Plus their apologist and crony in the pundit circuit, David Brooks who in 2004 claimed that anyone who believed that there was even such a thing as a Neoconservative, lived in a reality that had become “unhinged”.
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=940CE0D81231F935A35752C0A9629C8B63&sec=&spon=&pagewanted
These Colonial punishments are appropriate as these Super-Rich Elite Private Sector Bluebloods are the modern day practitioners of the Mayflower Puritan Work Ethic.
Karl Rove
Dick Cheney
George Bush
Bernard Madoff
Donald Rumsfeld
Paul Wolfowicz
Rove again!
It DOES remind me though, ..........I've been trying to find out exactly WHEN the Securities Exchange Comission was closed.
All this and exactly ZERO enforcement actions?
I'm not a conspiracy buff but there ARE things that make ya' say "Hmmm".
Guess Maddoff was the only crook huh?
Okay! okay! ......I know........drink your kool-aid....back to sleep
tm
Yep. Send them to the stockades immediately.
Where are earth did you get that idea? Propagandists FOR the war? SERIOUSLY?? Do you really think the media has that kind of powerful influence - to send thousands of troops over to Iraq to die? While I agree they are manipulative in no way was this war THEIR idea let alone within their influence to do. They didn't send ANY troops to Iraq. It was our president and his oil hoarding cronies who made that happen. They are the ones who lied - they are the ones who forced the young men & women of this nation into battle again and again.
If anything, I think the media showed their distaste and abhorrence of this war. It is one of the few things I agree with when it comes to the media's "present manipulations"!! SERIOUSLY man get a grip cause that kind of thinking is going to bring you nothing but trouble in life if it already hasn't.
These corporate heads want to make you believe that they are smart; so much smarter than you. It's not true. They want to create fear and intimidation, so that, even when they are committing horrific crimes, they must some how be treated lightly.
When AIG etal begged for money, they quickly spent it to continue their lavish lifestyles. They are collectively bullies and until our culture changes, nothing will change. Wake up America and get rid of your bottom feeding bloodsuckers....Ha, Ha!