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New York Officials Weaponize Regulatory Power Against the NRA
In a politicized environment, getting on the wrong side of regulators can be dangerous. Don't be surprised if banks and insurers cave
Do you need another demonstration of how dangerous regulatory power can be when it's weaponized by politicians? Look no further than New York Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo's recent directive to financial regulators. Cuomo wants them to pressure private companies to break ties with the National Rifle Association (NRA). The "or else" is just a hair from being overt.
"I am directing the Department of Financial Services to urge insurers and bankers statewide to determine whether any relationship they may have with the NRA or similar organizations sends the wrong message to their clients and their communities who often look to them for guidance and support," the governor wrote in a statement.
The Department of Financial Services, which regulates the banking and insurance industries in New York, followed up with guidance letters to insurance companies and banks.
observed of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The federal tax agency remained a handy bludgeon for politicians from that day through the present, including its recent deployment against Tea Party groups.
Usually, such abuses are at least thinly veiled, because they're widely acknowledged to be wrong. But this isn't really the case in places like New York, where everything is politicized and much business requires an "expediter, an imprecise term that is used to describe the men and women whose workdays are spent queuing up at the Manhattan branch of the New York City Department of Buildings to file the documents and pull the permits that allow construction projects—your kitchen renovation and the high-rise next door—to go forward," as the New York Times put it in 2014. Expediters often bribe officials to speed up the process—or to just get anything done. Attorney John Chambers, who expedites gun permits in New York City, was recently convicted of bribing an NYPD sergeant.
This is the business and political culture in which Donald Trump grew up and which molded his Rodney Dangerfield-in-Back to School view of the world. But with the money they wielded, Trump and company used a higher level of middlemen, including mayors, such as Abe Beame, and governors, such as Hugh Carey, to get permission for their projects and to block competitors.
Not much has changed since then, as business hopefuls continue delivering bribes to current Mayor Bill de Blasio and Governor Cuomo in hopes of getting their projects green-lighted (the officials themselves remain seemingly immune to prosecution for receiving bribes—probably because they make the laws). In such an environment, it's natural that officials see granting or withholding permission to do pretty much anything as a natural perk of the job. And what's more natural than for them to make continued permission to do business conditional on isolating political enemies?
More at...
New York Officials Weaponize Regulatory Power Against the NRA
In a politicized environment, getting on the wrong side of regulators can be dangerous. Don't be surprised if banks and insurers cave
Do you need another demonstration of how dangerous regulatory power can be when it's weaponized by politicians? Look no further than New York Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo's recent directive to financial regulators. Cuomo wants them to pressure private companies to break ties with the National Rifle Association (NRA). The "or else" is just a hair from being overt.
"I am directing the Department of Financial Services to urge insurers and bankers statewide to determine whether any relationship they may have with the NRA or similar organizations sends the wrong message to their clients and their communities who often look to them for guidance and support," the governor wrote in a statement.
The Department of Financial Services, which regulates the banking and insurance industries in New York, followed up with guidance letters to insurance companies and banks.
observed of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The federal tax agency remained a handy bludgeon for politicians from that day through the present, including its recent deployment against Tea Party groups.
Usually, such abuses are at least thinly veiled, because they're widely acknowledged to be wrong. But this isn't really the case in places like New York, where everything is politicized and much business requires an "expediter, an imprecise term that is used to describe the men and women whose workdays are spent queuing up at the Manhattan branch of the New York City Department of Buildings to file the documents and pull the permits that allow construction projects—your kitchen renovation and the high-rise next door—to go forward," as the New York Times put it in 2014. Expediters often bribe officials to speed up the process—or to just get anything done. Attorney John Chambers, who expedites gun permits in New York City, was recently convicted of bribing an NYPD sergeant.
This is the business and political culture in which Donald Trump grew up and which molded his Rodney Dangerfield-in-Back to School view of the world. But with the money they wielded, Trump and company used a higher level of middlemen, including mayors, such as Abe Beame, and governors, such as Hugh Carey, to get permission for their projects and to block competitors.
Not much has changed since then, as business hopefuls continue delivering bribes to current Mayor Bill de Blasio and Governor Cuomo in hopes of getting their projects green-lighted (the officials themselves remain seemingly immune to prosecution for receiving bribes—probably because they make the laws). In such an environment, it's natural that officials see granting or withholding permission to do pretty much anything as a natural perk of the job. And what's more natural than for them to make continued permission to do business conditional on isolating political enemies?
More at...
New York Officials Weaponize Regulatory Power Against the NRA
