Arnie’s first guest today is Bob Hennelly of Chief-Leader to discuss homelessness’ impact on public libraries. Then, we reach out to Graham Steele of Stanford University, and contributor to prospect.org on “the-day-one-agenda” for Wall Street.
In part One, Referencing the film The Public, 2018, and the book The Librarian’s Guide to Homelessness, and Hennelly’s article As the Welfare State Decays at salon.com, Bob takes us through the ways that librarians, police, EMT’s and other public servants are by default the providers of last resort, in support of the homeless. Many of the homeless are also mentally ill, in part due to the lack of followup funding and support after the de-institutionalizing movement of recent decades. Libraries in some ways are the sanctuary of last resort in our culture.
In part Two, we look at The American Prospect’s “Day-One-Agenda” in which they look at executive actions (as distinct from “executive orders”) that could be taken by the next president, all derived from existing authority in specific statutes. Graham Steele, director of the Corporations and Society Initiative at Stanford Graduate School of Business, and a former counsel for the Senate Banking Committee, writes in prospect.org about overhauling wall street, using existing regulatory bodies and processes, in ways that President Obama could have but did not do. Banks used to respond, for instance, to a mortgage application with, “Maybe, but not yet. Come back with your 20% down payment.”, but now banks have come up with financial “products” to sell, and have turned into extractive and predatory financial behemoths. They discuss how investment decisions are a reflection of our values, how the response to the climate crisis is tied in with Wall Street. The rules about executives’ personal liability for the company’s financial behavior put in place following the Enron debacle have not been enforced. In government, personnel is policy, and the current occupants of boards and agencies will continue to impact the regulatory efforts, or not, of the government for some time to come.
