Reason Morning Links: Riots, Regulations, and Real ID

Jesse Walker | June 15, 2009

• The Obama administration proposes new financial regulations.

• The Iranian government detains over a hundred opposition leaders as post-election protests rock the country. Meanwhile, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has reversed himself and ordered a probe of election fraud allegations.

• Janet Napolitano calls for replacing Real ID with "Pass ID."

• The battle over the pending war funding vote.

• The literary class takes over a newspaper for a day.

Comments

Richard Hoste|6.15.09 @ 8:46AM|#

The Obama administration proposes new financial regulations.

What else is new?

HBD Books-The Coming Chinese Superstate

F Delano R|6.15.09 @ 8:57AM|#

[P]rivacy advocates warned [Real ID cards] would create a de facto national ID.

Pish posh. Next you'll tell me they're afraid social security numbers will be used for more than assigning social security.

|6.15.09 @ 9:22AM|#

The literary class takes over a newspaper for a day.

I like this idea.

A sports piece written in the mode of Burroughs could be great.

Xeones|6.15.09 @ 9:33AM|#

I'm torn on the Haaretz thing. From the examples given, at least, it looks like the "articles" ended up being utterly masturbatory and barely informative at best. Then again, it's hard to say how that's any different from, say, the New York Times. I suppose i agree with Art.

It's hilarious that Dick Hoste's nearly substanceless comment is only half as long as the link he's pluggin'.

¢|6.15.09 @ 10:00AM|#

A sports piece written in the mode of Burroughs could be great.

"The Los Champion bench and block four went on a ship shot free to Ariza Lake and won defeated. Offensive and led they hit from the second field and Turkoglu range. No one and two head Lee block history. Kobe 5 10 Kobe."

|6.15.09 @ 10:34AM|#

Let the Creative Writing MFAs take over the editorial pages. They have the necessary experience in writing short, incoherent and pointless pieces on deadline while hungover.

Naga Sadow|6.15.09 @ 10:38AM|#

SugarFree should be the excutive editor.

|6.15.09 @ 10:40AM|#

I like Death in the Afternoon, which is basically a sports piece by Hemingway.

Xeones|6.15.09 @ 10:43AM|#

And, of course, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas was originally supposed to be a report on a motorcycle race.

Hit'n'Run: Where We Have All Been Touched By Greatness (In the Bad Place)

P.S. In case anyone replies to this, their responses will almost assuredly be ad homs delivered through sockpuppets, thereby conceding my points and showing the cowardly, childish, anti-intellectual nature of libertarians.

PantsFan|6.15.09 @ 10:47AM|#

Art-P.O.G. | June 15, 2009, 9:22am | #

The literary class takes over a newspaper for a day.
I like this idea.

A sports piece written in the mode of Burroughs could be great.

Yesterday morning Micheal Enright read the celebrity gossip on the Sunday Edition. It was a hoot.

|6.15.09 @ 10:51AM|#

SugarFree should be the excutive editor.

Keep it up and you'll get to be the second person this month I've beaten with a cane.

|6.15.09 @ 10:53AM|#

Financial pages...

stocks plummet again today
overseas markets react
time to eat your kids

T|6.15.09 @ 10:55AM|#

Keep it up and you'll get to be the second person this month I've beaten with a cane.

That's not impressive. What we want to know is how many people have beaten you? And how much did that cost you, anyway?

Naga Sadow|6.15.09 @ 10:58AM|#

Yeah . . . and what would be the going rate? Can I argue it down price wise? A cane beating in one locale can mean something completely different in another locale.

|6.15.09 @ 11:07AM|#

Typical libertarians... trying to put a price tag on something as simple and beautiful as me beating Naga to a bloody pulp on the roof of a downtown parking garage with a cane.

CANE BEATINGS UP 250% IN METRO AREA, POLICE BAFFLED, EXCITED

Some Guy|6.15.09 @ 11:23AM|#

I actually had a pre-2004 NJ driver's license. The one that most of the hijackers had. It was truly a joke, and when I went to a bar back home and was asked, "Is this fake?" I said "Yes, but that's how NJ gives them to you." It was literally a photocopy of a section of your application with a picture laminated onto it.

alan|6.15.09 @ 11:29AM|#

Keep it up and you'll get to be the second person this month I've beaten with a cane.

Already the fifteenthish. Slow month?

|6.15.09 @ 11:40AM|#

That is why, this week -- at the president's direction, and after months of consultation with Congress, regulators, business and consumer groups, academics and experts -- the administration will put forward a plan to modernize financial regulation and supervision. The goal is to create a more stable regulatory regime that is flexible and effective; that is able to secure the benefits of financial innovation while guarding the system against its own excess.

Thank God the "Right People"™ are in charge now. After heroically rescuing us from the "Greatest Economic Crisis Since the Great Depression"© Obama's handpicked economic savants are now going to ensure that recessions are a thing of the past.

I'll sleep better tonight, that's for sure.

|6.15.09 @ 11:43AM|#

High inflation? Long-term recession? Is there nothing this administration can't do for us?

|6.15.09 @ 11:46AM|#

Keep it up and you'll get to be the second person this month I've beaten with a cane.

When NutraSweet says "cane", he's referring to his cane, if you know what I mean. You might want to rethink a "beating"*.

* rape

BakedPenguin|6.15.09 @ 11:48AM|#

J sub D, how'd your date with Meg go?

Old Bull Lee|6.15.09 @ 11:51AM|#

the wide receiver hung by his neck from the goalposts, white jizzum shooting onto the blood-smeared helmet of the defensive end...the referees open their pants to reveal stiff pulsating cocks...

"PERSONAL FOUL MOTHERFUCKER"

they go to the instant replay "see folks when you splice in the tape of their touchdown with the other team's interception you can see there is no actual scoring...the fans have been lied to...the Nova Mob are only interested in their merchandise sales and advertising revenue..."

the game ended with the smooth boys of the oppposing teams stripping off their uniforms...the home team continued stripping off their flesh revealing their true insectoid form...greased up the visiting teams asses real nice...give them their fucking highlights

|6.15.09 @ 12:03PM|#

Err, Old Bull, you might want to, umm, check those meds.

|6.15.09 @ 12:07PM|#

J sub D, how'd your date with Meg go?

She's not the most attractive woman in the world, but her affinity for rough anal kinda made up for it.*

Congratulations to the Stanley Cup Champion Pittsburg Penguins.

* I keed, I keed.

Old Bull Lee|6.15.09 @ 12:10PM|#

R C Dean - I was riffing on Art-P.O.G.'s post. No meds necessary.

freeforall232|6.15.09 @ 12:26PM|#

FTA on "Pass ID" - "The rebranding effort follows months of talks with the National Governors Association and poses political risk for Obama as well as Napolitano, a former NGA chairwoman who wants to soothe strained relations with the states without appearing to retreat on a recommendation by the 9/11 Commission."

Who do these people serve, the states or the 9/11 Commission?!?

|6.15.09 @ 1:23PM|#

I won't even consider this national ID as a legitimate anything unless they make presenting one a requirement for voting.

|6.15.09 @ 3:04PM|#

Old Bull Lee,

That was awesome

Old Bull Lee|6.15.09 @ 4:27PM|#

Thanks, Art!

|6.15.09 @ 5:04PM|#

How did you guys miss this beaut of an article when it came out?

http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB124276441945635993-lMyQjAxMDI5NDEyNTcxNjU0Wj.html

...Mr. Marks's nonprofit organization, Neighborhood Assistance Corp. of America, has emerged as one of the loudest scourges of the banking industry in the post-bubble economy. It salts its Web site with photos of executives it accuses of standing in the way of helping homeowners -- emblazoning "Predator" across their photos, picturing their homes and sometimes including home phone numbers. In February, NACA, as it's called, protested at the home of a mortgage investor by scattering furniture on his lawn, to give him a taste of what it feels like to be evicted.

View Full Image
Housing Advocate Bruce Marks of the Neighborhood Assistance Corp. of America at a 'Save the Dream' event he organized in Columbia, S.C., in March to help troubled homeowners get their mortgage payments reduced.
Andy McMillan for The Wall Street Journal

Housing Advocate Bruce Marks of the Neighborhood Assistance Corp. of America at a 'Save the Dream' event he organized in Columbia, S.C., in March to help troubled homeowners get their mortgage payments reduced.

In the 1990s, Mr. Marks leaked details of a banker's divorce to the press and organized a protest at the school of another banker's child. He says he would use such tactics again. "We have to terrorize these bankers," Mr. Marks says...

...Mr. Marks grew up in affluent Scarsdale, N.Y., and Greenwich, Conn. He says a childhood stuttering problem gave him sympathy for underdogs, which evolved into a career as an activist. He studied business to "know the enemy," earning an M.B.A. and working briefly for the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. A later job for a labor union stirred his interest in reviving poor neighborhoods and helping people afford homes.

In 1988 he launched NACA. It soon began arranging loans for Boston-area banks that were eager to show they were serving poor neighborhoods, in compliance with the 1977 Community Reinvestment Act.

The organization has been allocated $34.5 million from a new federal program to counsel distressed mortgage borrowers, to be paid to groups such as NACA little by little as they provide counseling. NACA's slice is nearly 10% of the program's funds; the rest goes to more than 100 other nonprofits and state agencies. Besides these grants, most income to cover NACA's roughly $40 million annual budget comes from the fees lenders pay it for arranging new mortgages, typically $2,500 per loan.

Another NACA event is the "predator's tour." In February, it sent hundreds of protesters to the homes of bankers and investors in posh New York suburbs such as Rye, N.Y., and Greenwich. One stop was the home of William Frey of Greenwich Financial Services, a broker-dealer specializing in mortgage-backed securities. He was a target because he resisted some aspects of a settlement that called for modifying loans....

BakedPenguin|6.15.09 @ 5:26PM|#

J sub D, I'm impressed, largely because I probably would not have had to class to give congrats to the Red Wings except in a grudging manner.

Of course, the fact that they've won a few times these past few years may have something to do with that.