Bring Back the Stocks

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?

Comments

[LuckyBlessed]

On Bill Moyers last week a couple of pundits said something similar happened during FDR's administration. One corporate cry baby after another was brought before Congress and the hearings were put on radio.

[rmc53x]

the Neoconservatives deserve to be publically shamed.

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

[rmc53x]

Not that the Stocks aren’t a good place for the sleazeballs, but Paul Begala is confusing the Stocks, which hold only the ankles, with the Pillory, which is the one that holds the hands and neck. And let's not forget the Dunking Stool. See: http://members.tripod.com/lylesj/trade/colondays.html

These Colonial punishments are appropriate as these Super-Rich Elite Private Sector Bluebloods are the modern day practitioners of the Mayflower Puritan Work Ethic.

[geowizerd]

Right off the top of my head (and in this order):

Karl Rove
Dick Cheney
George Bush
Bernard Madoff
Donald Rumsfeld
Paul Wolfowicz
Rove again!

[Wake-up]

I'm afraid the current Administration would consider this torture...

[gorgonopsid]

A good hard bare-bottomed spanking would be my preferred punishment, internationally televised of course, prior to the tarring and feathering, with a boiling oil aperitif served as a refresher. I have often fantasized about such punishments meted out to the arrogant and entitled evildoer. I think, however, that even with those deterrents in place the rich would find a way of buying their way out of it, possibly by hiring surrogates to take their punishment.

[hopefull2008]

I'd settle for auditors, the SEC,credit rating agencies and boards of directors doing the jobs they are being paid to do and the laws that are currently on the books being enforced.

[Rapid Ray]

We could always run them up a flagpole and see who salutes them....

[TommyMcCarthy]

Thanks to Mr. Begala for letting us fantasize for a few minutes.

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

[entropygal]

Remember that John McCain talked about the risk of having the biggest transfer of wealth in history. He was right, but it is occurring now. It has been going straight to the top ultrarich; not the direction he talked about...less than $5 million and you are not rich per McCain. What percent of the population is this?

[jbd]

This should happen which of course ensures that it won't.

[vernbvb]

The first persons I want to see in stocks are former President Bush, VP Cheney and Karl Rove. Sush and Rove because they were involved in another of our country's greatest financial failer- the S&L scandal, then the Enron Scandal. Cheney because he was behind the erroneous Weapons of Mass Destruction report and because he is behind the misappropriation of millions, perhaps billions of dollars in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. The no bid contracts were a useful tool and could easily have been used to funnel monies to foreign banks by way of contractors. The lack of oversight is no excuse not to be able to account for every single American dollar sent abroad. While former President Bush may not have been totally aware of everything that was going on, he is certainly responsible for every single war crime and he has to take some responsibility for the tanking of our economy.

Yep. Send them to the stockades immediately.

[Bushwillresign]

That's the problem, someone finds out that there is 28 zillion dollars missing, but there are no records. Oh well. Let's move on forward, and not look back. C'mon Obama, it's time to set the record straight about who is allowed to rip off America.

[cuch]

I think a more appropriate form of punishment, say for people in the media , who were propagandists for the Iraq war. And they still keep telling our brave men and women to die there, when they know it was a lie. They should prove there support, by spending a few months there. I would put them in the lead hummer in a convoy.

[MysticalPippin]

Cuch.
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.

[entropygal]

I agree. Madoff has been called an evil genius. I think that they got it half right. He is evil, but an evil idiot. Get rid of the genius part first. That is the most important part; it is key.

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!

[katmeyster]

Did you ever see the Dave Chapelle show where the drug dealer was treated like royalty (asked to come down to the police station at his convenience) and the white collar criminal was treated like a drug dealer? Pure genius. Personally I think Bush, Cheney, Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld, Gonzalez, the bankers, the deregulators, and all the culpable ones should be in prison already -- the Constitution calls for it and so do I as a citizen. The law is the law (my shout out to those who want illegal aliens in jail but not any REAL criminals).