The International House of Bacon

The end of Eliot Spitzer’s career comes to a close about 11 years too late. While many are wondering what might have been, I’m quite excited to see the end of what has been a really horrible time from a human being who should have never gotten as close to any position of authority as he did, let alone attorney general or governor. His Judge Dredd (”I AM the law!”), cavalier attitude toward those he was supposed to protect is something that should be villified, not praised.

The lives he actively harmed were in the thousands, the amount of money lost by both corporations and individuals in the tens of billions. Alan Reynolds, who writes for Cato’s blog, shared a speech regarding Spitzer’s tactics yesterday (an absolute must read if you care even a bit about government power and overreach), and it’s eye-opening - a 1921 law in the New York state books, the Martin Act, allows for the sort of cavalier attitude that Spitzer brought to the office by giving the AG of New York unprecedented, overbearing power to question companies for any reason without counsel, using the press to posit theories that companies cannot realistically defend by law, and then extort settlements from these companies as stock prices plummet and ruin the lives of many involved. You don’t have to take Reynolds’s (or my) word for it - take a look at the record in areas such as the Marsh & McClellan suit or the Dick Grasso harassment, and then tell me with a straight face that Spitzer was doing his job ethically, and doing it well.

Thomas Sowell ultimately said it best, as he’s prone to do: “What Eliot Spitzer did was not out of character. It was completely in character for someone with the hubris that comes with the ability to misuse his power to make or break innocent people.” That Spitzer got nailed by an unjust law (prostitution) via unjust means (the monitoring of financial transactions of an arbitrary amount that presumes guilt as opposed to innocence) is a shame, until you consider exactly how many times he used the same types (if not exactly the same) unjust laws to ruin the lives of countless people. That’s what ultimately makes it different than the Vitters or Craigs of the world - they, too, are hypocrites, but at least Vitter wasn’t prosecuting the same prostitutes he was meeting, nor was Craig arresting homosexuals in the next stall over.

Good riddance, and New York should take the opportunity now to right a wrong. Those companies can’t get their money back, and perhaps some of them don’t deserve it. But to step up to the plate and weaken the power of the attorney general is an absolute must - if they don’t, it won’t be a question of if another Spitzer will roll around, but when.

More good articles on Spitzenfreude: Reason on why Spitzer’s hypocrisy is worse than you think, The Wall Street Journal on the press enabling Spitzer’s reign of terror (and QandO has more on this), and the betrayal of human rights groups.