The Downside of Social Justice

First, read this fawning profile from Time Magazine:

"Spitzer has spent a career pushing the law as a tool for social change. A passionate and partisan Democrat, he has brought cases against a long line of tough adversaries--organized crime, gun manufacturers, air polluters, Korean grocers who don't pay minimum wage. His efforts have not always succeeded. Yet he has consistently used laws in novel ways to address wrongs that were in plain view but seemed intractable to others. And, as was the case with Merrill, his endeavors have been about pursuing a path of justice even before the precise nature of a case is clear. "He's the real deal," says Alan Dershowitz, a Harvard Law School professor who hired Spitzer, in his second year at the school, as a research assistant in the 1980s to help on the Claus von Bulow defense. "He has a creative and innovative mind, and he always wants to do what's right."

I liked "...a long line of tough adversaries-...Korean grocers who don't pay minimum wage..." Who did they think they were dealing with? I wonder if a hundred or so Koreans with green cards lost their jobs...

The whole article is here:

http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,1003960,00.html

First he went after the mutual funds. I don't much care about that. There is so much greed and avarice on Wall Street that I took little notice of Spitzer. Then he went after the insurance industry promising that the stock holders would be the real winners.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120450480053306409.html?mod=todays_us_opinion

A mere ten days ago the Wall Street Journal was still sweeping up the mess. AIG stockholders lost over 40% of their value whereas Marsh & McLennan stockholders lost over 50% of the value of their stock. If I were a stockholder I'd sue Spitzer.

Are you thinking that the stockholders are fat cats? Mutual funds? Maybe but mostly they're retired teachers. They're young couples looking for some value. They're union pension funds. They're regular folks like you and me. This is social justice? Smells more like last week's cabbage.

A hooker that smelled like last week's cabbage only went for 3500 dollars, but Spitzer still wasn't interested.

Sorry, couldn't resist. I think that one is fair to wonder how much overzealousness on the part of prosecutors (see Nifong) is perhaps a compensation for, or a symptom of, one's own moral/legal/ethical failings.

It is classic class warfare. The progressive purveyor of social justice chasing the fatcats on Wall Street. The people who get hurt may have blue hair and wear tennis shoes to the weekly bingo games.