The first targets are easy; they are those who fraudulently conceal or misrepresent the truth. They should spend time in jail, and if current law doesn't provide for the appropriate return of properties acquired by dishonesty, this is the right season to enact such laws so that ex post facto limitations don't continue to get in the way. The public doesn't get the right kind of satisfaction when dealing with an executive who realizes $50 million by cheating the investors, is sent to jail for three years, and comes out owning $50 million plus interest. Less lawyers' fees, to be sure.
In the '70s, when there was political wrangling over welfare cheating, Irving Kristol came out with an aphorism worth contemplating. If federal money is there to be had, people will have it. If you have to pretend that you'd otherwise be hungry, you pretend you'd otherwise be hungry. If you have to pretend you'd otherwise have no place to sleep, you pretend that otherwise you would have no place to sleep -- never mind that dear old Mom has been feeding and sheltering you.
If the law permits reprehensible behavior, people will engage in reprehensible behavior, unless other sanctions come in. Aristotle said that true virtue is placed "at an equal distance between the opposite vices." He told us that self-indulgence was infantile, childish. Children "live at the beck and call of appetite, and it is in them that the desire for what is pleasant is strongest."
Tens of millions of dollars are a source of great pleasure, and inhibitions to self-gratification are not dominant in the Playboy age. What has correctly enraged the public is the wantonness of some who engage in industry. How, in the absence of positive law, are they to be checked? There is the factor of indecency, an aversion to which (the quote is Charles Darwin) "is so valuable an aid to chastity, a modern virtue, appertaining exclusively to civilized life."
For all that the senators closeted with Mr. White were engaging from time to time in demagogic raillery, they were certainly appealing to the factor of decency.