OLEAN -- About a year ago, I wrote enthusiastically in this space of a campus visit with state Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, noted he seemed to be the only prosecutor with enough guts to take on Wall Street, and opined he might make a good governor some fine day.
More than one reader scoffed. I was informed he was too young, too bald, too short, too ambitious, too hard-assed, too mean, too intense, or too inexperienced in politics. Others said he would never run for governor -- that he wanted to be a prosecutor-for-life like his mentor Robert Morgenthau. A few mentioned he had bitten off more than he could chew, and that big-time Republicans and corporate fat cats would pull enough strings to make him obscure by this juncture in state history. Well, nyyyaaaah, nyyyaaahh, nyaaaaaah.
In case it has escaped your attention, Eliot Spitzer has quietly announced for the governor's race in 2006 -- stating, as he put it, "I want to fix what's broken."
Prediction right up front: If Gov. George Pataki foolishly decides to run for yet another term, Eliot Spitzer will skin him alive.
Spitzer is the real thing. He does what Morgenthau advised him to do: "Surround yourself with good people. Follow the facts wherever they lead. Pursue justice without fear or favor. And the rest will take care of itself."
This sounds like a simple and winning formula. But hardly anyone involved with government pays it any heed these days. There's plenty of fear involved -- and tons of favors. When most politicians follow the facts "wherever they lead" they bump into money and power. They either back off or arrange a face-saving deal which triggers future clout or "tickets" -- return favors owed.
Spitzer seems different to me -- one of those once-in-a-generation guys in government who gives jot nor tittle for the clubby back-patting and oily supplication endemic to those who have it made. He's very creative in his thinking.
When they told him he had no jurisdiction to prosecute big out-of-state utilities whose emissions were dumping acid rain on New York state and the Adirondacks, he did so anyway -- successfully filing lawsuits against the power companies under the federal Clean Air Act.
When the federal Securities and Exchange Commission assured him Wall Street was being kept on a tight leash, he took a closer look and found that was far from the truth. Wall Street was getting away with investment murder. The research arms of big investment banks and money mover firms were touting stocks to the rest of us gullible suckers that they didn't believe had a chance in hell of making anyone money. They did this to court lucrative underwriting and other business from the firms in question. Spitzer subpoenaed their internal e-mails. They were revealing. The fervent buy recommendations attached to some stock issues -- "analysts" confessed to other stock tout buddies -- was like "putting lipstick on a pig." Spitzer went after the biggest and most prestigious offender he could find, Merrill Lynch, and exacted a huge settlement that has loosened many of the sleazy ties between so-called "researchers" and investment banking.
A hardass? You bet.
When Spitzer discovered there were two sets of playing rules in the mutual fund business -- secret trading standards that hurt the small individual investor -- he tried for reasonable reform of the unfair practices but came under enormous pressure from the pin-stripers and their lawyers and lobbyists. Select clients like institutional and corporate investors were being allowed by the mutual fund companies to file late trades after the markets had closed to you and me. It was like letting the big shots bet on the horses after the race was run. It cost the little guy millions, and was at first denied, but Spitzer proved it in court. It led to hundreds of millions in fines and a significant reduction of the egregious practice.
Now he's taking on the commercial insurance business, in which he discovered "contingent commissions" were being offered as an incentive for insurance brokers to recommend more costly insurance to their clients -- a pretty obvious conflict of interest that leads to bid-rigging.
The above instances are especially important in an era when President Bush wants to drastically alter Social Security and the retirement system as we know it, and to place prime responsibility for deciding where to put retirement money in the hands of the common American worker. That means investment in the private market, where Spitzer has deftly proved that many sharks swim. If the Bush plan goes through, it will mean trillions of dollars for Wall Street. Somebody better be looking out for the little guy.
It's pretty clear by now that Congress and the federal agencies have been captured by the corporate interests. Spitzer and his take-no-prisoners approach is the first evidence I've seen that someone knows how to fight this death-lock on fair play and the American tradition of equality.
His strategy is brilliant and hits the robber barons where it hurts. Spitzer's favorite approach is to slap a big company with a lawsuit concerning some illegal and unfair practice, then watch the stock price of that offending firm tumble on the news. This tends to screw up lucrative stock options and bonuses for the corporate bigwigs. The only sane way out is to stop the bleeding by settling with Spitzer. Conservative politicians and corporate leaders holler unfair, unfair. They have no beef. They invented these rules in the first place.
About two months ago, Spitzer's visage was reproduced as a pull-on Halloween mask. The instructions read: "All you have to do is put on this mask and walk into a brokerage house during business hours. Then just watch people flee in horror." Pretty funny. But don't be surprised to see these resurface in 2006 during the gubernatorial election campaign.
If he wants to win votes where I live, Spitzer should look into what I believe to be obvious price-fixing on gasoline. With the exception of pumps run by the Seneca Nation, the per-gallon cost of gasoline is exactly the same -- beyond the decimal point, even. If gas costs $1.93 per gallon in Buffalo, or $1.73 in the Midwest, it will cost $2.07 and nine-tenths of a cent here. The brand doesn't matter. Exxon, Mobil, Sunoco, Citgo -- all the same. When motorists write letters to the local newspaper complaining, they get a reply that there's a scarcity of wholesalers or something. So what? Why can't the retailer make money by starting one of those price wars we used to see on every corner? If there's only one wholesaler and all the gas is coming out of the same storage tank and the same tank truck, why have we been told for decades by the gas companies that it matters what brand you buy? If you go on the Internet, you see this is a complaint all over the nation -- no matter what the per-gallon cost in each region. I smell a rat. I think we're being gouged.
And don't write me e-mails noting it's hypocritical to criticize the war in Iraq while complaining about the price of automobile fuel. The real problem was exacerbated when the current crop of geniuses in Washington began giving tax breaks for people who purchased those giant SUVs and other popular gas hogs. That's right out of the 1950s, when the saying "What's good for General Motors is good for the USA" even made it into some show tune lyrics. It ain't necessarily so. Some disincentives to buy these huge 9-miles-per-gallon machines, which are sucking the national fuel supply dry, would make more sense.
Speaking of Iraq, last week's column on amputee soldiers being billed by the military for travel to receive medical treatment touched a collective nerve, and triggered numerous e-mails describing other federal policy blunders and administrative atrocities.
One common complaint is that National Guard and armed forces Reserve troops rotated home from Iraq-engendered duty are getting the shaft when they try to get their old private sector jobs back -- which they are entitled to by law.
In order to exercise their re-employment rights, returning troops must:
The returning armed forces member must be restored to the same position, or one of like seniority, status and pay, unless the employer's circumstances have so changed to make it "impossible or unreasonable" to do so.
Apparently some employers are using this last loophole to deny re-employment for the same military heroes they brag about in press releases and for whom they place big yellow ribbon stickers on their cars.
Previous layoffs, changed financial conditions, storm damage, loss of sales, rocketing raw materials prices, bottom line blues, unanticipated overhead, reduced revenues -- all can be used as an excuse against putting a veteran back to work when the employer has the weasel words "impossible or unreasonable" to play with.
If you just got out of the National Guard or Reserves, and this crew job is happening to you, the number to call in New York state is 212-416-8700.
Can you guess whose number that is?
Riiight. Eliot Spitzer's.
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | Dec. 21 2004 |