If we don't make the exception, courts will continue to favor the police who are their buddies over their opponents' genuine right to presumption of innocence.

But I would settle for having it simply say that the presumption of the civilian's innocence trumps the presumption of the cop's innocence, even when it is the cop who is on trial.

Accusation can be made by anyone about anything - even without foundation. Only a court decision weighs the appropriate facts to determine if conviction is in order. Setting special privilege for the accuser (which then puts the accused at a disadvantage) is an idea with dire repercussions IMO and I simply can't agree with you. What I could agree with is a harsher penalty for abrogation given the higher level of trust and power, absolutely.

I guess I didn't write the first part clearly enough -- what I meant about presumption of innocence is that police or other officials accused of exceeding or misusing their powers should be excluded from the BENEFIT of presumption of innocence, as a condition of being granted powers.

While the idea is nice, this is the reality that AR pointed out: that once tyranny descends, its almost impossible to get rid of because the very people who could have provided the very checks and balances necessary are now colluding with those in power.

I would point out, however, that removing the presumption of innocence is a bad idea in any case. It must always be that the prosecution must prove a case against a defendant or the police state will reign. In the case of a legal defense, few people have the resources of training necessary to mount a case to prove themselves innocent - let alone the current and more reasonable standard of reasonable doubt.

Yes, banking is over-regulated, but that can happen because of two things: centralized control via the Federal Reserve and a fiat standard. Eliminate either one of those conditions and the entire market changes dramatically. I am in favor of the elimination of central banks and endorse the competition of smaller, regional banks, but I don't see either of those happening without a total economic collapse. :(

You require strict scrutiny for all constitutional violations (meaning they have to have an important purpose and do the minimum necessary to serve that purpose). Then you take away the presumption of innocence when law enforcers go beyond that minimum necessary.

As for banking, it's already over-regulated, but the rules do little to protect anyone but the big shots. To make them accountable, I would require that all banks either re-form as limited partnerships (so some responsible person's own life savings are exposed to lawsuit for their misconduct) or mutualize and become credit unions (making them depositor-owned). This would set the stage for getting rid of central banks.

Yup. They've seen this in the Ukraine when Russia took over (the first time): people starved by the millions because those given the land didn't know how to farm it and those who did didn't want to because their production went to someone else. We also saw the same thing in South Africa during the retaliation for Apartheid.

thats profound actually.

term2 the only failures are those who desire to run everything. eventually as I see it they who wish to run everything will have no one to run since we will all be sitting on our butts with nothing to do. that I see as the end game.

the government of the usa is now in the status of a 3rd world country.
my suspicion is that all started with the assassination of kennedy and the number of unexplained deaths has increased. maybe this fellow did not jump but was thrown out of the window, was anyone there to try and stop him, of course not. welcome to the new and improved America!

I think greater accountability for policy throughout government would be a good thing. But here's one of the real questions posed by AR: how do you rule those who make the rules?

I would like to see all the politicians who were the root cause of the crash go to jail.

Someone's list, not sure if it is Hillary's or not. I suspect more the globalists and their schemes to take over the world economy - to which ends politicians are mere pawns and individual bankers are either willing participants or dead weight to be thrown overboard - likely this individual.

Add another to Hillary's list????

This is totally without proof, BUT I even am feeling under potential attack by the government (and society in general actually) in its desire to "hold people accountable" for pretty much anything that goes wrong. The witch hunt to pin any failure on "someone" is very depressing to me. There are so many laws and regulations that its pretty much impossible to know if one is "next" in a witch hunt.

I would think that anyone in banking is a huge witch hunt target, and the fear of long term imprisonment for some regulatory violation would be very stressful for bankers- and could make a banker just want to end it all.

Me dino is skeptical about some of the article's "suicides" and the motives behind actual ones.
Number one, lots of depressed people commit suicide every day, especially when it involves pills.
I'm suddenly thinking about Marilyn Monroe. Was that a suicide or something else due to her involvement with JFK? Her death was ruled a suicide but there will also be that lingering doubt.
Number two, how the hell do you repeatedly shoot yourself with a nail gun? Murders can be arranged to look like suicides and I'm sure plenty of well-arranged snuffs are ruled as self-inflicted.
When a lot of money is involved, corrupt greedy people can be motivated to commit murder for the purposes of further enrichment, staying out of jail or both.
Just ask the Clintons. No, don't. A "jumper" almost always looks like a suicide.

Exactly what I was about to propose: these bankers are very much afraid that a new international law-enforcement task force will finally catch up to them and subject them to arrest, trial, fines, and imprisonment--things they thought they could visit upon others while avoiding for themselves.

I'm still waiting to see most of the bankers and politicians responsible for the 2008 crash go on trial for fraud. Maybe this trend reflects fears that justice is finally coming for them. In which case -- good!

Banking stopped being an honorable job when so-called NSF fees (and fraud schemes to generate more of them, unearned) became the main profit center of every bank in the US.

+1 for any Dilbert reference!

No doubt about that. Obama relied completely on "Hope and Change" - which I think is swinging too hard in the other direction. I think you need a healthy mix of hope as a vision statement and reason to make sure the vision is still realistic. Otherwise you get too much marketing hype and no deliverable product! :) (see Dilbert)

Hope is indeed a powerful force, as is change. Reminds me of President Zero.

To me, it is much less about reason, which is choice and consequence than hope or faith in the future. From a standpoint of faith or hope, the outlook is always "but it will get better". It is this mentality that allows people to survive bleak odds and overcome them. It isn't a rational or strictly reason-based outlook, but the results it produces lead me to conclude that hope is a powerful force.

The number of suicides in Atlas Shrugged was one of the more striking aspects of the book, and none of the suicides seemed unreasonable. It was a reasonable response to a completely unreasonable world.

Suicide is usually the result of complete hopelessness or assistance. From the sound of this, the first seems less and less likely, as it also goes against one's innate desire for self-preservation...

It is intriguing. I remember reading about this a while ago. Thought it had stopped. Stressful jobs but it would seem many of these folks could have done something else. Why suicide?