Sam Purtill, The reason to focus on this is to ensure that we...

The reason to focus on this is to ensure that we ask the appropriate question: Why did the government fail to use the power it had? Maybe the answer is that the ideology of the moment simply ran counter to the aggressive intervention that was called for, and we have now learned a costly but valuable lesson. That would be fine. Maybe the answer is that the wrong people were in charge of the agencies, and in the new administration the right people are in place. That would be wonderful. But we should not fool ourselves into believing that the government didn’t have this power in the first place.

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—	Eliot Spitzer on Obama’s proposed regulations