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| 1 |
ID:
099314
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| Publication |
2010.
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| Summary/Abstract |
The politics of financial reform represent a genuine test case for American politics and its institutions. The Obama administration's proposed reforms pit common (largely unorganized) interests against well-organized and wealthy minority interests. I describe how the withering and unfolding of financial reform has occurred not through open institutional opposition but through a quieter process that I call institutional strangulation. Institutional strangulation consists of much more than the stoppage of policies by aggregation of veto points as designed in the US Constitution. In the case of financial reform, it has non-constitutional veto points, including committee politics and cultural veto points (gender and professional finance), strategies of partisan intransigence, and perhaps most significantly, the bureaucratic politics of turf and reputation. These patterns can weaken common-interest reforms, especially in the broad arena of consumer protection.
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| 2 |
ID:
093830
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| Publication |
2010.
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| Summary/Abstract |
This essay provides an overview of those incidents of torture and beheadings linked to the Mexican cartels and their mercenary and gang affiliates taking place both within Mexico and the United States. Specific forms of torture are discussed as well as the most likely victims and perpetrators. Beheadings, primarily taking place only in Mexico, are also analyzed with supporting database information provided. The occurrences of torture and beheadings tied to these cartels, both in Mexico and more recently across the border into the United States, beg the question of the context in which they are being conducted. Most cases of torture or beheading are regarded as primarily secular in nature - a terrorist tactic tied to economic or political gain. In an even more macabre twist, however, certain instances have been seen as intertwined with a group's belief system, performed in ritual fashion to fulfill religious or spiritual demands. This suggests that the emergent Mexican narcocultos that are evolving may further increase drug war violence to new levels of brutality heretofore unseen.
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