The ground on which the 2010 electoral campaign will be fought just got a little clearer or murkier, as you prefer. The world turned just a little more upside down. Real Clear Politics reports that Fox News audience numbers continue to climb while Air America has declared bankruptcy. “According to Neilsen, Fox News drew an astonishing 6.2 million total viewers during primetime Tuesday night, compared to only 1.5 million for CNN and 1.1 million for MSNBC.” But it is not just the shifts within the industry that are tectonic. The whole scene has been disturbed by a Supreme Court decision.
The Supreme Court overturned “Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce, in which a 6-3 majority led by Justice Thurgood Marshall found that the public interest in fighting corruption justified such restrictions on corporate political expenditures”. By overturning Austin, the USSC materially reduced the power of the FEC over political debate and opened the gates wide to organizations other than media enterprises to enter into the fray.
The majority said that “Campaign finance regulations now impose ‘unique and complex rules’ on ’71 distinct entities.’ These entities are subject to separate rules for 33 differenttypes of political speech. The FEC has adopted 568 pages of regulations, 1,278 pages of explanations and justifications for those regulations, and 1,771 advisory opinions since 1975. … “These onerous restrictions thus function as the equivalent of prior restraint by givingthe FEC power analogous to licensing laws implemented in 16th- and 17th-century England, laws and governmental practices of the sort that the First Amendment was drawn to prohibit.” …
The minority of Justices Stevens, Ginsburg, Breyer, and Sotomayor, however, seemed to see corporate speech as a threat to democracy, and emphasized that corporations are different from people and have different rights. … The minority was particularly concerned about what it depicted as the threat of foreign owned corporations influencing American elections. “The majority never uses a multinationalbusiness corporation in its hypotheticals,” it said, warning, “it is gutting campaign finance laws across the country, as the Court does today, that will be destabilizing.”
Not that corporations haven’t been able to buy a megaphone until now. They always could, but before this they had to buy a media corporation. This was perceived as a time-hallowed exception. The Volokh Conspiracy looks at the question of whether the dissenting Justices were correct in arguing that news organizations were heretofore a special kind of corporation.
“The text and history [of the First Amendment] highlighted by our colleagues suggests why one type of corporation, those that are part of the press, might be able to claim special First Amendment status, and therefore why some kinds of ‘identity’-based distinctions might be permissible after all.
Even so non-news corporations could easily circumvent the argument by buying up an outlet. MSNBC is largely owned by GE. Fox is owned by the multinational News Corporation.
NBC Universal is owned by General Electric (80%) and Vivendi SA (20%). In December 2009, General Electric and the media conglomerate Comcast announced a buyout agreement for NBC Universal. After the pending transaction, Comcast will own 51% of NBC Universal while GE will own 49%. As a part of the deal, GE will buy out Vivendi’s 20% stake in the company. …
Rupert Murdoch, the media magnate, apart of News Corp., also owns British News of the World, The Sun, The Times, and The Sunday Times, as well as the Sky Television network, which merged with British Satellite Broadcasting to form BSkyB, and SKY Italia; in the US, he owns the Fox Networks and the New York Post. Since 2003, he also owns 34% of DirecTV Group (formerly Hughes Electronics), operator of the largest American satellite TV system, DirecTV, and Intermix Media (creators of myspace.com) since 2005.
The chastity of political speech which the dissenting justices sought to preserve may long have been lost, even under the existing rules. Corporations and multinational interests have long had a role in the shaping the news and political commentary. And it is probable that they will continue to do so into the future. Whether Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce will increase or lessen large scale influence on politics depends on whether more entrants into the fray will checkmate other behemoths or exacerbate their effect.
What it is almost certain is that the applecart has been upset; the carefully cultivated media channels upon which politicians relied have been jolted from their accustomed courses. The FEC will at a stroke have lost considerable power and the reorganization of communications under the new ground rules means that the old dowagers are likely to be tossed out by fresh new entrants into the talking head scene. The good news for those in the political communications game is that there will be a lot more money floating around in the election season. The bad news is that those who had counted on exploiting the relative monopoly of the traditional media are facing block obsolesence.
This clearly works against the administration, as the ideological split in the USSC vote would have indicated. The big loser — on the face of things — seem to be the liberal politics so heavily invested in the old system. The Scotus Blog reports that the administration will try to undo the Supreme Court decision by legislation. But Scotus Blog thinks it is doubtful there is much scope for it.
President Obama ordered his aides on Thursday “to get to work immediately with Congress” to develop “a forceful response” to the Supreme Court’s ruling in the Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission case. In a statement, the President denounced the decision, saying it “has given a green light to a new stampede of special interest money in our politics.” It was obvious, therefore, that he was interested in working with Congress to overturn the decision, or at least to narrow it significantly.
Unless he has in mind an amendment to the Constitution, however, it is most unclear at this point whether the lawmakers could do anything — or much of anything — to cut down on “special interest money” in American politics. This was a constitutional decision, laying down (essentially for the first time), a sweeping free-speech right in politics for “special interest” bodies of all types with the concept of “speech” clearly embracing spending money to influence election outcomes. If individuals have considerable freedom to express themselves politically, corporations, labor unions, and other “special interest” entities now do, too.
The old media has been under unrelentling assault from a series of technological, economic and environmental changes. Neither legislation nor subsidies are likely to save it. A much more promising strategy would be to throw the unpreservable legacy to the winds and build a wholly new system and industry consistent with the new technological and economic paradigms. Not all the King’s Men could piece Humpty Dumpty together after his fall. Maybe the best bet is encourage the geese to lay a new golden egg.
The financial crisis and international terrorism are two reminders that many late 20th century institutions are facing a fundamental challenge. We live in truly revolutionary times and perhaps none of us has any alternative except to join in the tide and see where it goes. Once upon a time screenwriters could write conviction about a settled world. Even their criticism of America was based upon the sense of immutable, chiefly Western evils. As a fictional old media executive once said in the movie Network:
Am I getting through to you, Mr Beale?
You get up on your little twenty-one inch screen and howl about America and democracy. There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and ITT and AT&T, and DuPont, Dow, Union Carbide and Exxon. Those are the nations of the world today.
Today General Motors is bankrupt, Exxon is less than a quarter of the size of the Nigerian National Petroleum Company, and CNN and MSNBC together have less than half the audience of Fox News.
Am I getting through to you Mr. Beale?
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Hang tight, things are gonna get even more interesting.
I am most definitely in favor of all this, it is long overdue. As things have evolved until now, corporate money was being spent but in ways that were beyond the ability of shareholders to control. Legalizing more direct and aboveboard expenditures at least opens the possibility that those shareholders
will assert themselves and see to it that corporate earnings finance those politicians
friendly to the free market.
But having said that much, I hasten to add
that legality in no ways guarantees astuteness. That will have to come about through trial and error. They make the errors, we suffer the trials.
The good news? Whatever comes next cannot be any more corrupt than what we have now.
Good enough for me.
Maybe counter the NEA and Hollyweird and marxist or OSI political action groups.
“The big loser — on the face of things — seem to be the liberal politics so heavily invested in the old system.”
Amen to that, the republic is alive and well. The weird thing is the administration’s response, after all, Obama got where he is on the strength of the very same special interests he’s decrying now – then again, he’s as shameless as they come and probably thinking he can salvage something from the ruins if he just keeps talking the same old line. Fat chance
Rupert Murdoch is already in Marquis de Lafayette territory, as foreign savior of the American ideal (ok, America’s bacon).
Both might be driven as much by knowledge of what evils north America could do in the wrong hands, as by ideological fervor for the Constitution, unavailable as it is to either in their native tongues of French and Strine.
This decision is indeed a game changer.
Organizations, like the Citizen Leaders Alliance (CLA) in which I’m playing a leadership role, are the future of politics. We have a clear agenda, experienced professionals, and financial resources that allow us to directly influence elections. We stand for a set of principles, a set of ideas, that are the basis for our political action.
With this SCOTUS decision, we will now compete with other groups to promote our agenda in the electoral world. We will promote candidates who support our ideals, oppose those who don’t, and hold our elected representatives responsible for their actions.
How? By going directly to the people, without the pernicious mediating influence of the MSM, the political parties, or even the candidates themselves. If there is a candidate who has voted to raise taxes, provide overly-generous pensions to the public sector, create unnecessary and burdensome regulation, or skew the legal system (either towards plaintiffs or defendents), we will now be able to go directly to their constituents and make our case.
For decades, the only people who enjoyed this privilege were those who were deemed “special” by our government, or heavily regulated so as to minimize their influence. Just think about it: the government regulated who could try to impact the political process. On the face if it, that is an absurd and dangerous notion.
Now, freed from the shackles of a bunch of self-serving and corrupting laws and regulations, people of all stripes will be able to be heard. People will band together into groups like CLA to speak their mind – and as they do, the groups themselves will link up and create electoral swarms just like the one that recently elected Scott Brown.
You may agree with CLA’s principles, or you may strongly oppose them. But we’re quite happy to compete in the marketplace of ideas.
Media and political monopolies, like all monopolies, are bad for a free people. It is good that our Supreme Court justices have seen fit to rule on the side of liberty. They have taken a large step toward restoring our democratic republic by enabling the re-emergence of the kind of political associations that were the drivers of the birth of our nation.
Let the games begin!
L3
What happens when all these Black Swans start mating?
Heh. God is good.
jeez, L3 –you made me jump up and start clapping –way to write, mon!
Really like your Rep. Jeb Hensarling’s revving up to influence this reg situation –esp locking on to Geithner like a sidewinder & holding F&F up in air and making Foggy Bottom pay attention to how ugly they are –
Anyone besides me think Ginsburg, Breyer, Souter and Sotomayor are far more of a threat to democracy than unbridled free speech? It’s no surprise they’ve taken the position they have; it’s exactly what I would expect from people who think they and their bien-pensant friends are the only ones deserving unbridled First Amendment rights.
I don’t trust any of those four any further than I can throw the building they work in. I wouldn’t shake any of their hands, either. They’re an evil lot.
One last thing: Teh Won has been hanging around with Penny Pritzker long enough to have a very good sense of chutzpah, as shown by this comment:
“the President denounced the decision, saying it “has given a green light to a new stampede of special interest money in our politics.””
Funny how that didn’t seem to bother him when “Doodad Pro” and friends were illegally contributing to his campaign and he was outspending Federally funded sad-sack McCain ten to one. Yes, he’s got his mother’s morals, all right. Whelp.
Mac, you can’t expect any different –McCain/Feingold made Soros & the Red Billionaire Revolution Club into a major world power –
Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press …
How can there be anything unclear about the meaning of “no law”?
Liberty won this round but the 5-4 decision means that we are one retirement from sinking back into the labyrinth of government regulation of political speech.
The FCC is still out there and likely to become even more aggressive now about shutting down free discourse on the internet.
We constantly hear congressmen and others complain about the influence of the so called “special interests” and corporations, and yet every regulation they enact does nothing but empower those very groups. People and groups with money and connections will always find a way to work around (or within) the restrictions, but the newcomers, the upstarts, the little people…they find that the restrictions shut them right out of the market. The tighter the restrictions, the more power they give those moneyed interests.
I’ve read a few people worry that this opens the floodgates to big money, but it opened up those gates to little money as well.
KRB
http://hotair.com/archives/2010/01/21/change-three-blue-dogs-now-support-gop-measure-to-block-epa-from-regulating-carbon-dioxide/
wow –we could almosyt expect to maybe start seeing a few resignations among the czars –verifying the quickest coup/restoration sequence since Ugg clubbed Gogg and Gogg clubbed Ugg back
I don’t see the problem with banning corporate speech and press completely. Imagine no more NY Times, Fox News, 501(c) corporations, no advertisements, no NBC or local stations. Imagine instead a free people speaking (and printing) freely using the Internet. We could call this ‘blogging.’
Notes of caution. There are two ways to view this, tactically and strategic. While it is easy to see the strategic advantages, clarity and simplicity and a reinforcing of the moral principles behind the Constitution, I am hesitant to climb on the bandwagon that says this is a tactical boon.
While it is true that the administration is making noises that would lead us to think that they agree with wretchard that “This clearly works against the administration” we should be careful not to get sucker punched. Great combines of financial power, such as GE and Disney and Goldman-Sachs are already backing the Democratic Party. This ruling could in the short term empower the oligarchs. Is it possible that the defensive bleats are intentional distractions? That is unlikely as while the inner operatives of the administration (Emanuel, Axelrod and Jarrett) may be conspiracy theorists at heart they lack the competence to act out their fantasies on more than an intermittent basis. Still it possible that the call for increased banking regulations on the same day that Goldman-Sachs reported record profits may have been less due to ironic coincidence and more a deliberate effort to distract and deflect the anger that the administration had whipped up towards less favored financial managers, such as AIG, 16 months ago.
The concern about foreign manipulation of domestic politics needs to be addressed directly and in a way that does not restrict the liberties of citizens. Congress should pass a law that all corporate entities that are over 20% foreign owned must report their extent of foreign control in every political statement directed at an American audience. If over 30% foreign owned then the identity of the nationality of the owners should be included in the statement. If over 40% foreign owned that specific targeted restrictions on political speech could be developed. Similar rules should be created based on the percentage of managers and corporate officers who are not US citizens.
Holders of non-immigrant visas should be barred from engaging in political advocacy and that warning should be posted at the Ports and attached to visas. Holders of immigrant visas, that is Permanent Residents, should be warned to identify themselves as such when engaging in political advocacy. Voting by a non-citizen in a Federal election is already grounds for removal and being permanently barred from reentry into the United States. This need to protect the integrity of the political process is a subject that reinforces the need to control the borders and remove illegal aliens who engage in political activity. We should publicly thank the Justices who raised the subject.
Prohibitions on overseas fundraising need to be given real teeth and enforced. Obama raised vast sums from the Middle-East and China in 2008.
Practically the MSM still controls the bulk of the information distribution network that people rely upon. This reduces them to the status of theater owners after the anti-trust case broke the power of the movie studies to control content. New outlets will grow, as television did 60 years ago. In the short term we can expect more infomercials from corporations and industry groups like the ads that helped defeat Hillarycare.
United Citizens vs. FEC is a momentous decision for free speech. I remember the arguments last year and the questions that were posed and the answers by Kagan was that there was nothing to prevent the federal government from banning a book, an editorial since newspapers are owned by corporations, or a Sarah Palin doll being sold for profit.
I liked the question about a book read on the Kindle since it was downloaded via satellite communication. Kagan said that could be banned also.
Corporations through PACs have been active in electioneering and the government had not badly abused their power, but did say there was nothing to prevent the abuse.
It makes me wondered if Kagan, by answering as she did whether she was trying to get just this result by being blatant there is nothing according to Austin that could not be banned.
Thus was clear repudiation that the law was in violation of free speech. Any law that said speech has to be preapproved or can only be done at certain times is a ban. The opinion was very clear. I am so glad that SCOTUS choose the constitution over their 1990 decision.
#14 LOTM I am inclined to agree. Corporations and other for-profit enterprises are value neutral. As a practical matter they act as extensions of the government in many ways; their existence is a privilege from the government and the government requires them to support and enforce certain policies in return. They definitely aren’t going to rock the boat; mostly we will just see lobbying for their own interests.
LoTM@14
(Emanuel, Axelrod and Jarrett) may be conspiracy theorists at heart – aren’t they conspirators rather than theorists?
What Obama and the Left will be seeking to do is protect the rights of shadowy unaccountable groups such as ACORN, the various tentacles of Soros, of Iran and Chavez and that ilk with attacking those who operate in the open.
If Amalgamated Widgets buys some time to express an opinion then everyone will know about it and where it came from. The mysterious maneuverings of those like John Hsu offer far more threat to democracy.
One of the more curious aspects of the Left is its ability to openly advocate the opposite of what it professes. Doublethink, doubletalk, and doublecross is the norm. Over 20 years ago a medical university finally admitted that a student that had been rejected some years before would have been accepted if he was black. They admitted him, belatedly, and this produced black protest marches outside the school. I was stunned; blacks were marching to promote discrimination in the name of equality. And today, in the name of free speech, people argue that free speech should be restricted.
This Week in Liberalism
[John J. Miller]
1. The Democrats lost Ted Kennedy’s seat, sending their health-care takeover efforts into a tailspin.
2. The Supreme Court wiped out the central feature of McCain-Feingold, in a victory for free speech.
3. Air America declared bankruptcy.
—
More Union Households in Mass. supported Brown than Coakley!
Allow me to dilate on some historical points given here bearing on “freedom of the press” I do this from an historical standpoint for if one has no idea how they got where they are then they are truly lost on finding a more fitting answer to the challenge.
It is true that Congress gave it’s ringing endorsement in the Quebec declaration of 1774 and nine of the eleven revolutionary state conventions guaranteed liberty of the press in one way or another. And yet in 1776 Congress urged the states to pass laws to prevent people from being “deceived and drawn into erroneous opinion”
By 1778 every state had done so with fines of up to 20,000 pounds (Virginia) and five years in prison for critiquing Virginias Declaration of Rights.
While this seems a bit hypocritical one must understand that the argot of the time did not have the same meaning it goes today. Operative words had different meanings from those they later took on. Freedom of speech for the most part referred not to a civil right but to a parliamentary privilege. From Queen Elisabeth, the House of Commons had reign of Elisabeth and the house of Commons had claimed for it’s members the right to speak without fear of retaliation from the Crown, a right they confirmed in the English Bill of Rights (One must be made aware here of how much influence English law had on the making of our laws). Throughout the eighteen century the colonies adopted the same position But neither Parliament nor the colonial assemblies extended the privilege to the individual.
It was John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon in Cato’s Letters who boldly first gave endorsement to free speech as being indispensible to “, Liberty. Property (here is another word used in that time with an entirely different meaning than today’s, but that for another time), true Religion (the basis of why I want islam redefined in this country as a philosophy), Arts ,Sciences. Learning, and Knowledge.
Simply printing had in different periods since the fifteenth century had been regarded as “a matter of state”
In the words of Lord Chief Justice Sir John Holt, “if people should not be called to account for possessing the people with an ill opinion of the government, no government can subsist. For it is very necessary for all governments that the people should have a good opinion of it”
The recent ruling will certainly give greater restraint to the government and once again allow the greater opportunity for the people a good opinion of it if for no other reason than corporations can now defend their shareholders against capricious taxation by supporting those who favor capitalism, ( another word that did not exist in 1775, more later) So as I hope I have shed light upon how we got to where we are. One very important thing to remember is that over time words change in meaning so it becomes a vital task to understanding just what was being discussed At the time the discussions took place. This is by no means a complete view but it is a beginning.
(Varous sources.)
The Constitution is very clear. NO law means NO law.
Giving the government the ability to pick and choose which messages can reach the public can never be a good idea.
Politicians will attack this ruling because corporations may choose to take their public policy message directly to the public rather than contribute to political campaigns. It removes a layer of influence, dependency and control from the politicians.
I hope to see another ruling eliminating all restrictions on the amount of money that any person or corporation can contribute to a political campaign.
Re: “Am I getting through to you Mr. Beale?”
I am curious if anyone else at Belmont Club thinks Glenn Beck might get called upstairs for a similar speech from his boss Rupert Murdoch if he starts asking why Americans can buy whatever they want – so long as that stuff is Made in China. Glenn better be careful if he asks whether or not there’s a deal for the Chinese to keep buying our risky debt in return for Americans being nearly forced to buy their cheapjacks – especially when Indians or Guatemalans can makes the same clothing and compete on price/shipment costs but The Fix just isn’t quite in for them like it is for our friends in Beijing going back to them generously funding Clinton’s reelection in 1996.
Of course, you are still free as an American to buy European clothing, but you will probably have to fly to Europe or pay Rodeo Drive prices to actually try it on! Ditto for European pharmaceuticals!
Re: ‘McCain/Feingold made Soros & the Red Billionaire Revolution Club into a major world power’ that and the Colored Revolutions when Soros served as a Front for certain factions in Washington. Soros money also turned previously Reagan Republican McCain into a crusader for limiting free speech – PLUS removing all traces of the Shadow aka Russian influence from the former Soviet republics in his 2008 campaign speeches.
Thank God at least some conservatives finally woke up and linked Soros’ transnationalist progressive cause activities within the U.S. to his funding of ahem certain NGOs abroad.
http://mat-rodina.blogspot.com/2010/01/ngos-agents-of-us-empire.html
They certainly won’t do that at the Wall Street Journal, Weekly Standard, or on Fox!
Link here to a rant by a Russian nationalist on why Beck loved his essay about Marxist America but doesn’t like to praise Russia’s other conservative (i.e. 13% flat tax and low corporate tax plus banning gay pride parade) policies.
http://mat-rodina.blogspot.com/2010/01/us-conservative-hypocrites.html
Or maybe he’s just annoyed that he received no royalties for Beck, American Spectator et al republishing his Pravda article last year?
Let me be clear: The President who received on-line contributions from “Doodad Pro” is now railing against corruption in campaign finances.
Forgot to Menckenize part of my contribution. so;
Hanging one scoundrel, it appears, does not deter the next. Well, what of it? The first one is at least disposed of .
In other words 5-4 is skinny , subject to mutiple challenges.
Lawyers and particularly courts love to hide behind the concept of Stare decisis et non quieta movere, ” Maintain what has been decided and do not alter that which has been established” ) …
It is tissue paper thin and simply an adoptation in order to deceive, until they see what they want.
NahnCee,
I offer you a heartfelt apology for my horribly boorish behavior toward you yesterday. It was uncalled for, uncivil, and unworthy of the contributors efforts here at BC.
It is my hope you will see fit to accept this apologee and move forward into broad sunlit uplands with Winston, me, and the W’s crewe.
Sincerly
Habu
Both communications czar (and Hugo Chavez admirer) Mark Reynolds and Rahm Imanuel have been recorded saying that the First Amendment is “over-rated”. The two comments were made months and miles and venues apart, so it IS curious they would both use that same word. Almost as if their minds were going back to a plenary coven or something.
Disingenuously waving the flag of the First Amendment, the court’s conservative majority has paved the way for corporations to use their vast treasuries to overwhelm elections and intimidate elected officials into doing their bidding.
This quote from the NYT editorial page says everything you need to know about the wisdom of the SCOTUS ruling. Doesn’t that quote describe the raison d’etre of the NYT?
Nothing like a little freedom speech (for somebody else) to get the liberals’ ass rockets fired up.
Mr X: Link here to a rant by a Russian nationalist on why Beck loved his essay about Marxist America but doesn’t like to praise Russia’s other conservative (i.e. 13% flat tax and low corporate tax plus banning gay pride parade) policies.
Flat tax and low corporate tax are Conservative causes, certainly, but banning gay pride parades would require an activist, progressive interpretation of the First Amendment as part of a “living breathing document”.
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
Look at Tammy Bruce and Larry Craig. Homosexual does not automatically mean liberal. But certainly a lot of Conservatives work to make that so, by driving homcons out of the Big Tent. And that’s a shame, because for a variety of reasons gays, especially, and to a lesser degree lesbians, tend to be well-to-do, and we would be natural allies of a political ideology that emphasized private initiative over central planning, personal freedom over bureaucratic control.
mz T, most conservatives would dislike just as much a heterosexual pride parade. for better or for worse, the pressure is powerful (tho stateside it is no longer much remarked aloud), it’s the monomaniacal focus over several years needed to raise the younguns, and it politicizes parents toward the right, or the traditional. Having to explain to the toddlers that the people in the street are parading about their bodily functions runs counter to, acts to dismantle, the hard sustained work of kiddo training in the house, where they’re being taught what and what not to do in public vs private. The mayor of Moscow is perhaps catering to parents over catering to a much smaller special interest group.
A quick run-through of the comments so far indicates to me that no one has actually read the text of the decision. And as an amateur devotee of court decisions that affect my own interests and research, I know what every lawyer knows: the devil is in the details.
Not yet posssessed myself of a preliminary copy of the decision I can only wonder about the following:
For starters, I’m wondering if the only basis of the decision was 1st Amendment free speech rights. It seems to me that had the arguments–whatever they were–before the court gone into attainder territory we might have had another angle entirely. I’m referring to the history of attainder jurisprudence (I.e., no laws can be passed that find or imply that a person or a group are somehow guilty and subject of punishment or restriction without a trial governed by judicial protections). Denying corps. the write to advertise elections presupposes precisely Thurgood Marshall’s assumption–on the basis of a quote that began this thread–that took for granted that corporations are an agency of political corruption. To make law on the assumption that certain segments of the Amreican population are apriori wrongdoers goes to the heart of what the history of attander jurisprudence says you can’t do.
Other examples equally not acted on: the “Violence Against Women” Act which is a prima facie violation of the 1st Amendment protection against bills of attainder. How so? Merely to mention a “victim” group in the context of legislation that in its details cites heterosexual males as the “perps” to be controlled by the legislation finds the latter guilty before-the-fact.
Can’t do that, people.
Coming from another direction: I’m amused by the liberal counter argument that all but explicitly asserts the following: “the American electorate is a bunch of stupid illiterates, and will vote for whomever’s campaign has the largest amount of money to buy the largest among of media exposure.”
Maybe as re: people who vote liberal, they’re right. I didn’t say that.
V/30; I didn’t say that
LOL –but Ronald reagan did: “…government can’t solve the problem, government IS the problem.”
…which one could narrow to “…progressives can’t solve the problem, progressives ARE the problem.”
Voltimond: I’m amused by the liberal counter argument that all but explicitly asserts the following: “the American electorate is a bunch of stupid illiterates, and will vote for whomever’s campaign has the largest amount of money to buy the largest among of media exposure.”
How true! Go to the NY Times web page of their editorial and read some of the comments. This is exactly what you get. While there are some reasoned comments on there, most of them are ignorant Leftie twits busily wetting their pants, as usual. Some samples.
The country is going to be run by the whim of large corporations.
I trust millions will join this call to avoid becoming a banana republic where money decides how we live and die.
The Supreme Court has turned freedom of speech into something that belongs only to those who can buy it.
We the people have been fighting more than 100 years [huh?] building the foundation for a real democracy and these individuals with the jerk of a pen decided to take away literally our right to fair elections.
This is it – the final straw has been placed upon the backs of the people and their right to determine their own fate has been negated.
And on and on it goes. Good to know that my right to determine my fate has been “negated” by this ruling. I await my brainwashing from Widgets, Inc.
Another thing about the NY Times. You notice how they always close their comments sections so quickly? I have never been able to submit a comment yet because it’s always closed by the time I get there. Free speech indeed!
“President Obama ordered his aides on Thursday “to get to work immediately with Congress” to develop “a forceful response” to the Supreme Court’s ruling in the Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission case…It was obvious, therefore, that he was interested in working with Congress to overturn the decision, or at least to narrow it significantly.”
So I am told that this is a Constitutional decision, which apparently (in theory) severely hamstrings Congress in trying to circumvent the SC’s ruling. But can anyone here explain how it does that? Barack clearly wants to goad Congress into rewriting the same law in slightly different language so that the SC’s ruling is effectively ignored. What’s to stop Congress from doing so? And if Congress can enact a new law, slightly re-worded, every time the SC overturns the old one at 10 year intervals while all the while enjoying the benefits of the re-worded law, why does that not emasculate the Constitution? (Until, of coures, a variation of the re-worded law is submitted to a liberal SC that enthusiastically endorses it, making it ‘game over’.) Barack Obama’s response to the decision verges, to my humble mind, on open contempt for the Constitution itself. Whatever happened to separation of powers? Why could he not even SAY, “The Executive branch respects the decision of the Supreme Court and will abide by it”, even if he doesn’t believe it? (I think I know the answer to this last question, but the arrogance of it all leaves me gaping anew. He’s not even paying lip-service to abiding by the law of the land.)
Hey, the SCOTUS ruled exactly the way that the ACLU amicus brief had suggested, but Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a former member of its board of directors and one of its general counsels in the 1970s, voted the opposite way.
But, just as Bill Clinton’s rich contributors put an end to the notion that “only Republicans are rich,” I fully expect many folks to be surprised to find out that all corporations aren’t conservative or Republican (think Ben & Jerry’s).
wdmff/33; if not for the second amendment enforcing circumspection, the next step from this admin would be start installing horse heads in beds.
As important as the Supreme Court decision was it is almost overshadowed by the President Obama’s proposals to get banks out of the private equity business, the main idea being to bar the banks from playing in riskier markets. The main obvious difficulty with this proposal is that unless other national environments go synchronize their move then US banks may be at a competitive disadvantage. So noises are being made about settling it within the framework of an international deal.
Obama’s initiative will garner a the support of those who believe that some return to Glass-Steagal, abolished by Clinton in 1999, is desirable. It will also play to the popular resentment of the financial industry. To some extent, this will be government trying to destroy its own monster, at least one it helped in part create.
The two problems facing the monster slayers are that it may in the short term affect the amount of credit and capital available. More importantly, it may have no effect. Given the mobility of money pathways are likely to evolve in which deposit money is effectively staked on high risk ventures. Government itself did this by encouraging the bundling of subprime mortgages and when that bombed the effects rang through the whole system.
In short, the President wants to firewall off different parts of the financial system by rebuilding some of the walls which had been torn down in the past. In order to successfully achieve this, he has to do it right. Doing it wrong will be fraught with danger. It is a gigantic task, requiring international cooperation, timing and attention to detail. And unless done correctly it may result in an expensive disaster.
Can Obama do it? Can the political system do it? My guess is that he’ll have a hard time for two reasons. First, it is a bait and switch again. He is rounding on Wall Street, which is not a bad thing in itself, but to do that he will need to enlist the help of political forces he’s already betrayed. One of the subtexts is that Wall Street may have thought they had an understanding, and now maybe they don’t. Rightly or wrongly, that the double-cross factor. Second, he will have to craft the financial regulatory overhaul carefully. It can blow up in his face. But given the cast of characters he has at Treasury it is certain some of them will be conflicted, some probably thinking past the time when the Obama administration will be over and their professional lives not yet. Obama needs a political parachute to save his plumetting Presidency, and this initiative has many positives going for it; but his capacity to execute is may be severely impaired.
My prediction? Anything can happen. It may be a big victory for Obama, an impending disaster or anything in between. But it will severely challenge the Republican response. I think more details will emerge in the days ahead and when the nuts and bolts shine through the rust, it will be clearer whether the administration’s proposal reduces risk without unduly throttling credit. Most important, we’ll see whether the risk reduction is roughly symmetrical over all actors, or whether some will be more restricted than others.
@32. peterike:
I agree!
“Another thing about the NY Times. You notice how they always close their comments sections so quickly? I have never been able to submit a comment yet because it’s always closed by the time I get there. Free speech indeed!”
And pretty soon you’ll have to pay for that privilege!
‘http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2010/01/new_york_times_set_to_mimic_ws.html‘
The question of public and private morality and freedom of expression is where the slipperiest thing to judge, intent, comes into play. Courts and administrative apparatuses are very bad a evaluating intent and we generally prefer to draw up regulations that deal with specific conduct. That is why everybody has to take off their shoes in the airport. We do not want to empower the questionably educated government clerk to make a value judgment on who should or should not have their shoes inspected. Similarly we do not want to government clerk deciding who should or should not get to uncover their bodies or cover their faces in public.
Periodically hostile groups or ideologies seek to threaten society. We must craft means of identifying such threats and frustrating their efforts without doing ourselves irreperable harm. Those who seek to do us harm will always look for other interest groups within our larger communities that they can ally or identify with. They will do this both for tactical support and for cover as it complicates efforts to isolate the alien and respond to an attack. For example Soviet Communism expended considerable resources on building an alliance with black Americans. While the physical threat from the Soviets is gone, and the threat posed by global Socialism is real but not as existential in the military sense as it was 30 years ago, the effects of the corruption of a significant portion of the American community are enduring and difficult for all of us to deal with.
My suspician is that the concerns of homosexuals regarding constraints on their ability to openly ackowledge their sexuality would meet with more active sympathy in the majority commubnity if that community felt less threatened. That community feels threatened in part by some radical homosexuals but that is not what generates the bulk of the social conservative backlash. It is true that some members of the homosexual community are dishonest when they claim that they only want to have the right to live their own lives in private, like everyone else does. Clearly for some significant portion of that community their behavior is in fact driven by an animus that motivates them to attack and deconstruct the majority culture. Whatever the source of their anger, perhaps some homosexuals are simply born with a comfortable sense of self and some others are reacting to a childhood trauma or abuse, and some may be expressing anger and guilt caused by youthful repression and denial, they are clearly seeking to attack the social structures, such as marriage, that the majority find nurturing. The dishonesty that is evident in those motivated by hostility to the majority rather than a concern for their own privacy drives the majority to wall off all homosexuals, even those who they would otherwise agree with on most issues. This is an example of classic revolutionary agitation on the part of the vanguard radicals who identify a minority community with a grievance and then isolate it and drive a wedge between it and the majority.
The more serious and immediate threat to the security of the majority society is no longer from Soviet Communism it is now from the Salafist and Khomienist branches of Islam. They compete to challenge and undermine Western Civilization. The majority in America knows that the muslim woman wearing a burqa here is not expressing her private sense of modesty and morality. She is expressing a very public challenge to public order and the liberties of the majority. The French are right about this. The dishonesty of claims to the contrary is palpable and it is that dishonesty and the hypocrisy of efforts to accommodate those who challenge and threaten due to fear that generates anger. The laws against face covering that were developed to suppress the challenge from the Ku Klux Klan were targeted restrictions on speech that worked and they should be extended and enforced. If members of other minority groups, homosexual or black or pacifist Quaker or even Libertarian, recognized the need to support the greater community in responding to genuine threats then they would find more sympathy for their local concerns.
To be blogged under the title “Free Speech, moderately priced.”
mongo,
What’s this you say about government circumcision? No way I say, now where is my 2nd Amendment response!
Life o’ @ 14 Prohibitions on overseas fundraising need to be given real teeth and enforced. Obama raised vast sums from the Middle-East and China in 2008.
Is this hearsay or documentable? I of course lean in agreement with you, that Obama’s vast “grassroots” campaign was the perfect cover for huge amounts of Soros-type money being flushed into the campaign from innumerable virtually untraceable accounts.
I’ll dig around for more info on Obama’s unprecedented fund-raising methods in the last election. Of course, like so many other things, to save ourselves the aggravation we’ll just ignore the fact that this is yet another documented lie on Obama’s behalf, that he abhorred special interest and would agree to public funding of elections.
Obama to Break Promise, Opt Out of Public Financing for General Election, June 19, 2008, ABC News Political Punch blog
In November 2007, Obama answered “Yes” to Common Cause when asked “If you are nominated for President in 2008 and your major opponents agree to forgo private funding in the general election campaign, will you participate in the presidential public financing system?”
Obama wrote: “In February 2007, I proposed a novel way to preserve the strength of the public financing system in the 2008 election. My plan requires both major party candidates to agree on a fundraising truce, return excess money from donors, and stay within the public financing system for the general election. My proposal followed announcements by some presidential candidates that they would forgo public financing so they could raise unlimited funds in the general election. The Federal Election Commission ruled the proposal legal, and Senator John McCain (R-AZ) has already pledged to accept this fundraising pledge. If I am the Democratic nominee, I will aggressively pursue an agreement with the Republican nominee to preserve a publicly financed general election.”
Not so “aggressively,” according to the McCain campaign, which argues that Obama did not discuss this or try to negotiate at all with the McCain campaign, despite writing that he would “aggressively pursue an agreement with the Republican nominee to preserve a publicly financed general election.”
The main obvious difficulty with this proposal is that unless other national environments go synchronize their move then US banks may be at a competitive disadvantage.
More than that, will it entirely bar said foreign banks from any and all US operations, including, say, buying Treasury bonds? UBS probably being the biggest conglomerate with operations in the US.
–
Regarding the primary topic, why shouldn’t money have a say in politics? I mean, it does, anyway. But if me and Bruce and Sally form a corporation to make rag dolls, and the county government wants to pass a law restricting the use of rags, should not the corporation speak for our united interests in the matter?
I always think of Larry Niven’s Ringworld and the birthright laws. Every person gets one, which you may lose for crimes. You may be awarded one for meritorious service. If you still have one, you may fight for another in the arena. Or you may buy one for “a million stars”, some reasonably large amount of money, since the knack for earning money is a survival skill.
1) Coakley: sunk
2) Air America: sunk
3) McCain-Feingold: sunk
4) Healthcare takover: sinking.
Best turnaround we have had since June of 42.
Life of the Mind…it’s not often that I sit down to write out my thoughts and find that they have been already completely expressed. You did that not once…but twice…in one thread.
Outstanding work.
wretchard,
“And unless done correctly it may result in an expensive disaster. Can Obama do it?”
You left out the third reason (which seems the most obvious to me) – the sheer incompetence this administration has shown so far. What would make you think they would be any different on this issue?
41) Spelled with a u, not an o.
Habu, concerning the doctrine of Stare Decisis: In the current decision, this was the principle that Justice Stevens based the most vehement portion of his dissent on.
Justice Roberts, in his opinion for the majority, demolished the philosophical basis of that doctrine almost completely, reducing it from now on to the level of “Something we might follow if we really don’t have any better ideas.” This is not really new, of coures: I believe it was Oliver Wendell Holmes who once wrote that “the worst reason for continuing with any law is that so it was laid down in the time of Henry IV.” Justice Roberts’ opinion is a very good read; thanks to that single opinion I don’t think Stare Decisis will ever be a significant factor in Supreme Court jurisprudence again. (and that is very significant)
Usually the Justices don’t get snippy with each other, but I believe Roberts also refers to “stare decisis” as something that Justice Stevens forgets whenever he wants to overturn a decision and something he trots out whenever he can’t think of any good reasons to hang onto something.
the times, they just get more interestin’ by the day.
cfbleachers,
Thank you.
Tony,
We had threads about Obama’s foreign money in the Club.
wretchard,
We still need a decent search feature.
OT, I like Fred Thompson, here’s his tweet.
fredthompson
You know how we could win the war in Afghanistan? Just send Obama over there to campaign for the Taliban.
Today’s Rasmussen Daily Presidential Tracking Poll has Obama at -18. He is crashing.
http://tinyurl.com/yb8afb6
Peterike #32:
“The country is going to be run by the whim of large corporations.”
Whereas TARP, the GM and Chrysler bailouts, Geithner and before him, Summers deals to help/save AIG, the Stimulus Package, and the government forced purchase of a large failed investment firm by BoA indicate that it is not now.
Wretchard #36: “In short, the President wants to firewall off different parts of the financial system by rebuilding some of the walls which had been torn down in the past.”
And of course as well have seen via the resources offered by the Belmont Club that the reason CRA and subprime mortgages were such a “success” (by the perspectives of ACORN and others) is that they were able to access a much larger reservoir of suckers,….uh, investors by means of those same mechanisms.
So Dr. Obama still wants Frankenstine, but he wants him in top hat and tails, dancing and singing “Putting on the Ritz.”
The question for us is: Pitchforks or flaming torches?
Neo:”All coporations are not conservative or republican.” Absolutely and why I urge people to vote with their dollars. I don’t buy GE products, B&J ice cream or watch certain actors.
LOTM: I agree re: homosexual militants; Do what you want, without violating rights of others. Parents DO have a right to sheild their children from vulgar acts in public. I don’t care what you do at home.
Habu: I am intrigued by your comment about Islam being a philosophy vs a religion. Can you recommend any books or discussion threads on this subject?
For those who still wish to restrict campaign expenditures for populist reasons:
Remember that associations of citizens have the same rights as individual citizens, and that corporations are persons under the law. Also, regarding non-citizens – the First Amendment protects them, too. No one loses their freedom of speech rights in this country because of citizenship. Some may not like that, but that is the law and always has been. If you want to change this, you will have to toss out the First Amendment and replace it with something else.
Also, remember that under Buckley v. Valeo (1976) money is speech. Ie, the right to spend in favor of a political candidate is the same as the right to speak in favor of a political candidate. That is now new in this decision, that has been settled law for some time now. What the Court has been doing has been to allow Congress to fiddle around with restricting political speech in the hopes that it would work and would not infringe too badly. The Court has now said it made a mistake 20 years ago and should not have let things get this far.
What the Court has said, essentially, is that if Congress is sick of the First Amendment they can try to repeal it, but quit passing laws that directly contradict it.
In his own words:
“If the First Amendment has any force,” Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote for the majority, which included the four members of its conservative wing, “it prohibits Congress from fining or jailing citizens, or associations of citizens, for simply engaging in political speech.”
The Court has finally come to the conclusion that there is no way to get around this simple principle. If we are to retain a working First Amendment, then this kind of activity may not be regulated, no matter who engages in it. Now giving money directly to a candidate can still be regulated – but speaking out independantly, no. That is once again an absolute right that cannot be infringed on.
And they, astoundingly, framed the decision in the broadest possible terms. There is nothing Congress can do to overturn this. This is truly one of the most important Supreme Court decisions of the last 50 years.
W. Said:
Because the State has grown so large and invasive, corporations will use this new freedom to protect their interests and to make sure that the risk is not spread symmetrically.
As it is now, GE or DuPont or SEIU can get an audience with the One and come away with the goods that benefit them. Billy’s Electric can’t. Those goods can disadvantage the small guy like Billy. Wasnt anything that billy could do. Billy is now no longer defenseless. He can buy an ad. Doesnt sound like much, but as Leo illustrates above, a thousand or a even a hundred Billys can fund a campaign. The campaign can change a congresscreature to another congresscreature. Eventually the Large and Invasive can (theoretically) be reduced.
But that can’t happen. Can it?
————————————
Peter Robinson at Nat’l Review Online has a conversation with Prof. Paul Rahe of Hillsdale College about Prof Rahe’s book “Soft Despotism.” I commend it to your attention. Its kind of long (30min or more. Download to your IPod and listen on a trip or commute) but has some interesting things to say about why freedom in America is resilient and why what Leo is doing with the Citizen Leader Alliance is uniquely and quintessentially American.
36. wretchard
W, you ask several questions. None have easy answers. Actually that’s good because that’s what places BC in the avant-garde and attracts the contributors it does.
I do not believe there is any quick fix or one answer. The entire world monetary system is in disarray, perched on a knifes edge. I would however take the initial step of restoring Glass–Steagall after a look at what may need some new oversight. No one can eat an entire banquet at one sitting so this mess is going to take time to digest. We have yet to even define the entire scope of the monetary problems since those who know won’t tell us, us being our Congressional Reps. That theft is occurring on a scale to embarrass Willie Sutton goes without saying.
Secondly we need some disinfectant applied to Fannie and Freddie and Goldman Sachs, barring the top people there from working in the industry or consulting for the government for a “period of time” yes, yes I know the response…”they know how things work and they have the brainpower “…..my reply is the same as General MacAuliffe’s at Bastogne … NUTS. Get Arthur Laffer on the project. Those other monkeys have screwed us enough. Since they have been toxic to our system lets provide them a few months R&R on Johnston Atoll.
Early in 2008, with the global equity markets in free fall and financial conditions rapidly deteriorating, most Americans were persuaded to accept the necessity of government bailouts of brokerage firm Bear Stearns and the Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac mortgage lenders.
But in late September, when the TARP (Troubled Asset Relief Program) was proposed. Both the near trillion dollar size of the package and the encroachment of government into free enterprise provoked intense public opposition. Polls showed that as many as 90 percent of those who contacted their representatives and senators were against the passage of TARP, but TARP was passed.
The “Land of the Free” and “The Home of the Brave” had become the “Land of the Federally Subjugated” and “The Home of the Meekly Subservient.” The socioeconomic landscape of America had been so dramatically altered that it bore little resemblance to the nation of their forefathers or even their grandfathers.
Not only was TARP foisted upon the nation, when the inspector-general in charge of overseeing the bailouts demanded to know where the money went, the US Treasury refused to tell him! “It is not possible to say that investment of TARP dollars resulted in particular loans, investments or other activities by the recipient,” said the head of the Treasury program.
Why was it “not possible”? What could be more possible? The banks were given vast amounts of taxpayer money. What did they do with it? They refused to tell the American people that gave them the money, where the money went! The arrogance, the gall, the disrespect; the flagrant “to hell with the people” attitude was more than a simple disconnect between government and the people. Wall Street had hijacked Washington.
America was not a representative government. Elected officials represented those who paid the most to buy their votes. While it was illegal to openly buy a vote for a couple of dollars, anybody’s vote could be, and was bought … but only if the price was right. Money spoke louder than any words spoken by the majority. In 2008, financial and real estate interests spent $345.4 million to buy politicians and control legislation. Washington called it “campaign financing” and “lobbying.” Anywhere else it was called “bribery.”
Prior to the “Panic of ’08,” there had been government bailouts of private enterprise (Chrysler Corp. in 1979; the 1989-1990s Savings and Loan crisis; the 1998 Long Term Capital Management rescue). Considered substantial at the time, they were not enough to undermine the economy and threaten the free enterprise system which was the nation’s cornerstone. Nor did they lead to the government holding equity stakes in the rescued firms. And the dollar amounts involved paled in comparison to the trillions confiscated from the public by the obama stick-ups.
Long before 2012, people had forgotten what the original purpose of TARP was. Secretary of the Treasury, Henry Paulson (former CEO of Goldman Sachs) baited the public and Congress into believing the money would go to help homeowners facing foreclosure and free up credit markets so small businesses could borrow. But with TARP passed and the money in hand — and having demanded and been granted full power to spend it at his discretion — Paulson switched the game. Instead, hundreds of billions went to the Treasury Czar’s banking and brokerage buddies … the perpetrators of the financial crimes.
With banks and financial firms reporting “boffo” profits thanks to the tax-payer funded wind-falls and once again showering themselves with bonuses bigger than the GDPs of many small nations, infuriated citizens held their representatives responsible for the giveaway.
But Congress copped the plea: “In retrospect, Congress felt bullied by Mr. Paulson last year. Many of them fervently believed they should not prop up the banks that had led us to this crisis — yet they were pushed by Mr. Paulson and Mr. Bernanke into passing the $700 billion TARP, which was then used to bail out those very banks.” (The New York Times, 16 July 2009.)
“Bullied”? Bullied by whom? Henry “The Don” Paulson, the Wall Street Enforcer? It was the Golden Rule in action: those with the gold ruled. And, Goldman ruled the gold.
With Paulson in control, the Goldman Sachs Gang held the keys to the national treasury. And nothing would change when the new President and new crew of political prostitutes took over. There was no denying the extent of the Goldman Gang’s infiltration and its influence in both Washington and abroad.
From Atlantic to Pacific, it was mob rule. Americans were being forced to pay “protection money,” but the money went to protect the crime families, not the American people. I wish to thank Gerry Calente for his contributions.
workout time …but before that a bit from good ole H. L M. about our own greed in this mess.
Excerpt from H. L. Mencken’s essay “What Is Going On In the World,” published in The American Mercury, March, 1933:
The psychic effect of the depression, it seems to me, is generally a good one…. It has taught people the difference between speculative values and real values. It has hastened the death of sick industries, and proved the vigor of sound ones. It has blown up the old delusion that the amount of money in the world is unlimited, and that every American is entitled to a police captain’s share of it. Best of all, it has taught millions that there is really no earthly reason why there should be two cars in every garage, and a chicken in the pot every day.
A few years back we were all leaping along after the pacemakers, and making shining fools of ourselves. Life in America had become an almost unanimous effort to keep up with the Joneses, and what the Joneses had to offer by way of example was chiefly no more than a puerile ostentation. So many luxuries became necessities that the line separating the one from the other almost vanished. People forgot altogether how to live well, and devoted themselves frantically to living gaudily.
It seems to me that the depression will be well worth its cost if it brings Americans back to their senses. Once they rediscover the massive fact that hard thrift and not gambler’s luck is the only true basis of national wealth, they will discover simultaneously that a perfectly civilized and contented life is possible without the old fuss and display.
Folks that was 1933 prior to people being able to tap out every penny of equity from their homes for meretricious trinkets, only to have Wall Street sell the world the often useless wampum as “securitized investments”
Speakeasy,
Thank you
wws,
No one loses their freedom of speech rights in this country because of citizenship.
That is an assertion. Clearly the SCOTUS are making a distinction as your quote from Justice Kennedy in the decision makes clear, my emphasis. “it prohibits Congress from fining or jailing citizens, or associations of citizens, for simply engaging in political speech.”
Non-citizens have rights, including the right to publish and to peacefully assemble to petition for the redress of grievances. They should not have the right to contribute to a political candidate at the Federal level either in cash or in kind. If they participate in the vote then they are subject to deportation and a permanent bar on reentry. It is no great stretch to me to say that engaging in electioneering on behalf of a candidate to a voter is functionally the same as attempting to enter the voting booth with that voter. This is not a call for a ban on all expressions of opinion by non-citizens. It is a call for them to barred from specific advocacy on behalf of a candidate that is directed at American voters. For example I would defend the right of a self identified Palestinian who was not a US citizen and legally present to peacefully demonstrate on behalf of their cause, as long as they did not endorse or call for the rejection of any specific candidate. Also I would defend the right of al-Jazeera reporters to deliver their partisan opinions to their overseas audience.
My measure of respect for Habu and LOTM’s respective posts comes from my need to reread them several times in order to fully absorb them.
Thanks for all that you add here, guys.
I second steeple –many good thoughts here, special thanks to LotM & habu for dragging some stuff out of the top drawer for us today –
Perestroika and Glasnost, folks. That’s all this is.
I am surprised to see so many otherwise intelligent people thrown into giddiness by this decision, seeing it as a great victory for “democracy” and “free speech” and other such highly fluidized catchwords (which apparently retain some of their old power to stir the imagination). The fact is, unless you are already an oligarch, a well-placed political official, or a high-profile media figure, this new regulatory regime will have almost no effect on your ability to influence the political process; it will still be as miniscule as it ever was.
What will happen instead is this: A few hundred people will become immensely powerful, and again within that group it will be a cadre of perhaps a dozen or so who really call all the shots. Corporations will no longer exist as carefully circumscribed entities competing for economic ends within a larger political arena, but will become themselves little ships of state – bound together by necessity, oath, and honor, like a Viking longboat. The individual and his interests will become increasingly interwoven into his particular corporation, as all his means of subsistence (i.e. his income, his health insurance, his banking and financial services, and even his consumer goods) begin to emanate from a single source, which is also its own provisional political arm. Life will become clannish but predictable, hard-fought but meaningful, smaller but closer. It is an inevitable change long in coming, but it seems that most people here do not recognize all the other things that will change in its wake.
I am at peace with this new reality; but please folks, do not for one moment believe that it is a victory for “constitutionalism,” or any other catchword you hold dear. It is a victory for power. It is simply the recognition of frank realities as over against the ideology-based politics of the twentieth century. Seen from the metahistorical perspective, this decision is but one more step down the inevitable path from decadent republican government to naked imperium, a step that every culture has to take.
And as for the Brown victory – as happy as I am about it (and recall that I predicted it with unwavering certainty when many others here were screaming “fraud”), we must remember that it has nothing to do with the man himself. It was an anti-Obama vote, plain and simple. The minute that Brown qua Brown falls off that surfboard, he will be crushed by the very wave that bore him. The Republicans/conservatives still do not have an organizing principle to rally about. And they will not get one; for that which is inevitable is also unmnetionable to them – the end of the constitutional republic. From now on it will be not ideological forms, but mastery of raw political and economic forces which carry the day. The leader of tomorrow is the doge, the village headman, the godfather of his people. He has no ideas or ambitions, he askes for nothing but the privilege of standing where the battle is thickest. He is the very opposite of today’s platform-driven politician. Perhaps not even the tea-partiers are ready to accept this new reality, but it is in the air. They must ask themeselves if they are really ready to party like it’s 1989.
Justice Roberts’ opinion is a very good read; thanks to that single opinion I don’t think Stare Decisis will ever be a significant factor in Supreme Court jurisprudence again. (and that is very significant
wws and Habu: I agree. Stare Decisis works hand-in-glove with what I consider the pernicious citing of ‘precedent’ that has led our legal system down its path to tyranny. Cutting Gordian Knots is a healthy way to wield a legal sword.
marymcl said it as well if not better than I could have.
And teresita – it is not that we are ‘homophobes’, just that most object to the “in your face-ness” of a lot of the advocacy groups.
Nice to see marymcl back here.
H@51: government bailouts of private enterprise (Chrysler Corp. in 1979; the 1989-1990s Savings and Loan crisis; the 1998 Long Term Capital Management rescue)
LTCM bailout was organized by Federal Reserve Bank of NY and funded by the major creditor banks, including Goldman, Merrill, JP Morgan, etc. Technically, it wasn’t a government bailout.
“In retrospect, Congress felt bullied by Mr. Paulson last year. Many of them fervently believed they should not prop up the banks that had led us to this crisis — yet they were pushed by Mr. Paulson and Mr. Bernanke into passing the $700 billion TARP, which was then used to bail out those very banks.” (The New York Times, 16 July 2009.)
In the context of Congressional guilt at being duped or “bullied”, I *heard* that there was some evidence that Kanjorski either lied – or was lied to – about the $500B withdrawal on Sept 17 that scared the wits out of Washington and forced precipitous action. Never confirmed the veracity of that.
From Atlantic to Pacific, it was mob rule.
Yep. Literally. It’s called a shakedown.
Matt Beck
What do you not understand about “Congress shall make no law…”
“For example I would defend the right of a self identified Palestinian who was not a US citizen and legally present to peacefully demonstrate on behalf of their cause, as long as they did not endorse or call for the rejection of any specific candidate.”
We do not have speech police in this country, not even for foreign nationals. The Constitution does not allow you, or I, or anyone to say to him “these words are allowed, but these words will send you to jail.” (excepting the clear and present danger, etc, standard) If he is allowed to say certain words in his own home, he is allowed to say them in public. And if he is allowed to say them in public, then he is also able to spend money to help him say whatever he wants to whomever he wants. He may not give money directly to a candidate, that is still restricted – but our government Does *not* *have* the *Constitutional* *Authority* to restrict what he wishes to say independantly.
The answer to speech you do not like is not to restrict that speech, but rather to allow more speech in response. That is the heart of American democracy. No other country in the world has ever tried it, and it can be frightening to contemplate. You mean we really allow people who we don’t like to air their opinions? Anyone at all? Yes, we do.
The biggest problem for your ideas is the the very simple wording at issue here:
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech…”
There is no mention of citizenship there. There is no mention of mitigating factors there. The Amendment is simple – our Government does *not* have the power to do it. It is a restriction on government power itself, not a grant of “rights” to the people. (Because the Founders believed that all people already hold those rights) That’s a shock to say as we’ve all become accustomed to the idea of unlimited power – but this reassertion of limitations on authority is one of the prime reasons I think this may be the single best decision by the Supreme Court in the last 50 years.
Not only would I allow your hypothetical palestinian to advocate in favor of any candidate he wanted to, I would maintain that no level of government in this country has the constitutional authority to restrain him from doing so, and that anyone who would attempt such a thing would be attempting to destroy my liberty just as much as his. The candidate who benefits will have to deal with his opponents running ads which say “hey, this is the guy the Palestinian likes.” In a free and democratic society, that seems to be an eminently fair trade-off. Again, the solution must always be more speech, not less. Yes, that is an assertion, and one I believe in deeply.
I’m sure you know Voltaire’s comment well enough so that it does not need repeating here.
Just heard Rush mis-explain to a caller where the terms “red state” and “blue state” come from.
Has it been forgotten already?
Do y’all BC’ers know?
I think it was the 2000 election season, … right?
Rush babbled something about “unions being blue”. Not the source of the term, at all.
Okay, there’s Belmont Threads and Newsmax articles, but we need something a bit more definitive:
Secret, Foreign Money Floods Into Obama Campaign
Federal law does not require the campaigns to identify donors who give less than $200 during the election cycle. However, it does require that campaigns calculate running totals for each donor and report them once they go beyond the $200 mark.
Surprisingly, the great majority of Obama donors never break the $200 threshold.
“Contributions that come under $200 aggregated per person are not listed,” said Bob Biersack, a spokesman for the FEC. “They don’t appear anywhere, so there’s no way of knowing who they are.”
The FEC breakdown of the Obama campaign has identified a staggering $222.7 million as coming from contributions of $200 or less. Only $39.6 million of that amount comes from donors the Obama campaign has identified.
And we need to be able to see through the fake names to see back to China and the Middle East, don’t we?
More Bogus Obama Donors Surface
Donations Made Between July and Early August
CBS News has learned that two donors to the Obama campaign that gave a total of $7,722 appear to have made their contributions under fake names that look like they were written by a mouse running across a keyboard: Dahsudhu Hdusahfd of Df, Hawaii with the following employer CZXVC/ZXVZXV and Uadhshgu Hduadh listed as living in Dhff, Florida listed their employer as DASADA/SAFASF.
CBS News did not find any records of these last names, towns or employers anywhere else. Newsweek reported two questionable Obama donors over the weekend named “Doodad Pro” and “Good Will”.
Matt B & Don R @ 56 & 57; great images –Brownian Movement and Gordian Knots –Yes! Now add Murphy’s law, stripped down to the core: “If it can, it will” –and the reciprocal “when it can no longer move, it will stop”. Thing is, this system-order cataclysm happens to a million subsystems a million times every day, and besides it’s already tomorrow on the other side of the world. And, always, the dude abides, and won’t be jumping before he just has to.
Okay enuff of that, here’s this week’s Nyquist –a peroration on Von Mises’ “The Anti-Captalist Mentality” and Schumpeter’s “Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy” –short & sweet recap of main lines.
***
BTW, at this moment, FoxBiz is carrying live an Obama speech –Oleria, Ohio –he sounds like he’s coming unhinged –petulant is not the word -and angry –and vitriolic –he’s trying to start a chant (seriously, really) “we want our money back” –directed at –the bailouts he did. man, this guy is coming unglued FAST –
***
Tony, the website collecting that $200,000,000 in $200 bursts had been deliberatly crippled to cut out the tracking function. There’s no reason for the campaign to’ve done this –and lose the ability to reconnect to proven doners, solid gold info, you’d think, right? –other than to cover up something the campaign wanted kept secret.
Josh: I always think of Larry Niven’s Ringworld and the birthright laws. Every person gets one, which you may lose for crimes. You may be awarded one for meritorious service. If you still have one, you may fight for another in the arena. Or you may buy one for “a million stars”, some reasonably large amount of money, since the knack for earning money is a survival skill.
Once you have ceded control of reproduction over to a central government (for purposes of population control or economic growth or what-have-you), it is a very small step from there to politicized eugenics. A party might be elected on a platform of denying the birthright to Jews and blacks or even political opponents. The very poor may be exploited by the very rich to sell their birthright. And look what’s happening in China. Everyone has a single birthright, and the culture favors little boys. So expectant mothers are getting an ultrasound, and if its a little girl, she gets an abortion. After decades of this, you have a surplus of millions of men with no hopes of finding a mate. And our own Whiskey will tell you that’s a recipe for radicalization and violence.
This article does a good job of analyizing the tradeoffs.
Mish: Missing the Point of Glass-Steagall
If banks make their money on commissions for lending rather than on the interest–and then they’re allowed to secularize the loans and pass them on–then they don’t have much incentive to make sure the loans are made to credit worthy borrowers.
I think that’s the nub of the problem
1.6 mm hits on google, 318k on bing, on terms [ obama website track donations ]
secularize the loans
I think that loans are securitized but maybe we should think about removing the divinity of Wall St from financial services products – and secularize the bonus packages by bringing them down to earth.
::))
Josh, it’s confusing, because if Michael Savage talks about “Red Diaper Doper Babies” people might think he means the children of conservative pro-legalization Libertarians.
RagnarD: And teresita – it is not that we are ‘homophobes’, just that most object to the “in your face-ness” of a lot of the advocacy groups.
Very often, when people object to something being “in my face” they refer to unpopular groups going ahead and making unpopular speech anyway, in the same way that marriage equality for gays and lesbians, or the right to not be dragged behind a truck and crucified to a fence in Wyoming is called “Special Rights”. But popular speech doesn’t need to be defended. Popular groups don’t need the Constitution to embrace their right to assemble. It is precisely to protect to minority from the majority that we have (and Conservatives ostensibly defend) the Bill of Rights.
Charles @ 67: They could securitize the loans and sell the CDOs, as long as they are still required to stand behind the CDO. It’s not the securitization as such that is the problem, it’s the separation of interest and risk, the supposed ability to transform one to the other. Doesn’t work. Should be illegal.
The closest you hear to this in the financial field is that the players “should be required to keep some skin in the game”. But my hope that this will be understood and properly reformed, is about nil, when we have a POTUS who I doubt could accurately make change for a dollar.
OK, in case y’all *don’t* know, the term “red state” followed from the analysis after the 2000 election in which some academics from somewhere or other made a county map of the US showing voting patterns, and they were OVERWHELMINGLY Republican. So as not to appear prejudiced, they explained that they assigned Republicans the red color.
And that’s the truth.
The Wikipedia article doesn’t even state the origin correctly, but does suggest my memory is correct and it was the 2000 election when the current conventions originated.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_states_and_blue_states
I’m not happy that we have to rely on a narrow majority on the Supreme Court to uphold the First Amendment. But I’m happy that the majority is there, and that, as in so many areas, we may be already past flood stage and watching the Obamist flood tide receding.
Thank you GWB!
Free speech cuts lots of ways. Politicians and interest groups will try to use it for their own ends, and they will often succeed, as Obama did in his campaign.
But since we don’t know which way free speech is going to cut, I’ll take free speech rather than a trimmed version. In politics you never know whether you are getting a Snark or a Boojum:
“In the midst of the word he was trying to say,
In the midst of his laughter and glee,
He had softly and suddenly vanished away,
For the Snark *was* a Boojum, you see.”
What does this mean going forward? Others can speak to that better than I but even I can see that one factor in November of this year will be reflected in this:
Obama Seen as Anti-Business by 77% of U.S. Investors
http://news.yahoo.com/s/bloomberg/20100121/pl_bloomberg/a8uii1bcrdmy
There’s going to be lots of financial support from investors, corporations and small to medium size businesses for a more business-friendly Congress in 2010 and, in 2012, a more business-friendly President.
The Republicans are going to be getting BIG donations.
The regulatory regime overturned by the Supreme Court never was unbiased. The media were given carte blanche [as it should be under the Constitution] to support anyone/thing they wanted. Since the major media are an operating branch of the DNC, that tilted the field, and it was known at the time of passage. Further, certain protected groups such as Unions were given much wider latitude than other citizens, and in kind contributions by them were overlooked. Finally, as in all things in contemporary American law, there is no equal protection under the law. If ‘ABC Klein Bottle Mfg. Corp.’ should find a way to slip a few thousand dollars to a Republican Senator; the hammer would fall if it was found out. If Microsoft or Google slipped a few million dollars directly into the DNC’s coffers via an obvious cut-out; the regulatory organs of the State would be looking the other way. And of course, suitcases of dollars from the Chinese government turning up are not worthy of even cursory investigation until well after the fact. If the Rule of Law is no longer an operating assumption; the facts on the ground change.
# 14 LoTM is well on to something. The keys are both transparency as to the source of funding, and real large and sharp teeth in practice for the punishment of illegal contributions. I like his template, as part of an explicit absolute ban on foreign contributions; i.e foreign citizens, governments, and corporations with greater than 49% foreign ownership [no matter how divided] inside our borders. The fungibility of money being such, I would want to include an absolute ban on direct contributions from outside our borders.
Mention was made upthread of the Democrats’ overseas contribution fraud. #39 Tony mentioned looking around for the details. Here is a starting point:
http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/the-obama-campaigns-credit-card-crack-up/
They deliberately and manually disabled the normal controls built into the credit card systems for verification of the legitimacy of the transfer of funds from the card. This cannot be done accidentally. You have to physically go inside each machine used and change the settings. It takes a trained technician to do so.
Given the ease with which foreign money can enter our political system across our borders; the only rational response is to absolutely ban all contributions directly from overseas. This is not an undue restriction on First Amendment rights, in that it just means that American citizens have to take a different route based on the choice being out of the country.
My son was in Budapest, Hungary during the election. I had to go to the county clerk’s office and obtain and mail to him the paper work so he could send a notarized request for an absentee ballot. It took some trans-Atlantic mailing, but he got his ballot and voted. The process was longer than walking down to the polling place if he had been at home, but it preserved the sanctity and security of the ballot given he was not able to come in person [I note that in my state, we have to show picture ID to vote at the polls.]. Similarly, if he had wanted to contribute, he should have been able to contact his local bank, where he had an already existing account, and have it send the funds from his own account along with the required identifying information, to whichever candidate, or mail a check on that account.
That puts the legal chain of evidence into our country where it can be investigated, and places the contribution into the same chain as all other contributions by check, draft, etc. If a campaign acts to disable any of the security controls on contributions, or conceal or falsify any of the required information, and it is detected; the contribution so affected plus a penalty should be forfeit immediately and placed in escrow pending criminal investigation. Making it painful for a campaign to cheat, means they will have an incentive [which they do not have now] to obey the law.
The Democrats used technology to commit election fraud, and the enforcers of the law seemingly deliberately do not use contemporary technology to catch fraud. There is no reason that the lists of contributors [with all required identifying data] should not be in the hands of the FEC within 24 hours of being processed by the campaign, instead of being delivered quarterly as is the case now. The last quarter’s data is not received until long after the election.
The exact same technology already used to verify commercial transactions and payments as a matter of course every day, should be available to be used by the FEC to verify the legality of transactions to campaigns, instantly. Further, the non-financial details [no credit card numbers, no checking account numbers, no SSN's, etc.] should be publicly available online for the use of the voters, the opposition party or [I have to suppress a chuckle here, because the idea is at the fringe of reality] perhaps the press could be doing a little real investigating and reporting. If 90% of Congressman Joe Blow [incumbent party- state of Corruption]‘s contributions come from the management of Dewey, Cheatum, and Howe Corp.; that is legal, but the voters should know it. If they choose to re-elect him, fine so long as they know the truth. Similarly if his contributions come from NAMBLA, Air America [now happily defunct], or the DNC itself.
Will that happen? Probably not. The last thing in the world that either major party, or their patrons, want is an honest electoral system. But such is within reach, subject to one caveat. The party in power has an overwhelming incentive to selectively enforce laws for its own benefit. The Rule of Law is largely dead at the Federal level. Leaving aside the casting aside of commercial law since January 2009; I offer the failure to investigate the Democrat’s credit card fraud, the dropping of charges against the armed and uniformed New Black Panther Party members who were intimidating voters outside the polling place AFTER they had pled guilty, the failure to prosecute the assailants of Kenneth Gladney who was beaten by DNC/SEIU thugs [and the beating was video-ed with the assailants identified] outside a Congressional Town Hall, and the fact that Democrat vote fraud is now part of the expected background noise in any election. In Democrat states, there are always a goodly number of precincts that deliver more Democrat votes than there are men, women, children, and household pets combined.
The only thing that has an unlikely chance of limiting the corruption in the enforcement of the law is for a series of drastic events to take place pour encourager les autres ["Admiral Byng, please pick up the white courtesy phone."].
Two related concepts, if I may. First, Buraq Hussein has called for Congress to overturn the Supreme Court decision. As was noted, it will be difficult to write a statute that gets around a specific Constitutional ruling. Not impossible, even for this group of lop-eared duds that is pleased to call itself Congress, but difficult. But do they need to really try?
With this cabal of TWANLOC in charge, #33 WillDoMathForFood’s formulation is accurate. Let us say that Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi draw up the God, Mother, and Apple Pie Campaign Finance Reform Act of 2010 that gives the Attorney General or his designee authority to pre-emptively ban any campaign expenditure he deems against the national interest. There are enough RINO’s about, that a filibuster is far from guaranteed. So it passes and is signed.
Even if the Courts decide that it might be an idea to consult the Constitution when formulating their rulings; the first line of defense for TWANLOC would be to assert that no one who files suit has standing to file so the case has to be thrown out. This has worked consistently in questions of elections for the last few years. Neither citizens, nor candidates, nor the parties have been able to consistently file to get the Federal Courts to enforce election laws, if it discommodes the Democrats. Making the questionable assumption that a Federal judge decides to take the case, and rules the act unconstitutional, there are appeals to the Circuit Courts, and then to the Supreme Court, each of which may decline to take the case. If the case is taken, there are delays, discovery, continuances. It took 8 years to get this aspect of McCain-Feingold in front of the Supreme Court.
How much would you bet that a ruling against such an act would be in place before November of this year? And that was deliberately an extreme case. If they pretend to give some lip service to the First Amendment, the case becomes even murkier. And they then control the elections, functionally for good.
The second point is that this has been a bad week for the enemy. They lost an election in Massachusetts [Miribile Dictu] that broke their ability to automatically break a filibuster. The Supreme Court, by one vote, broke their absolute stranglehold on free speech. Air America has gone belly up. And MSNBC went full-on Moonbat on Tuesday night, and their new owners may not approve of throwing more money at them as they tunnel to get their ratings below the basement.
I am NOT saying that it is time to let up on them in any way. Nothing is more encouraging in time of war than the sight of the backs of the enemy. However, we must be prepared to see some real drastic enemy action in response. Health Care may be forced through by some middle of the night perversion of the rules. Since Buraq has moved to attacking the financial sector [It needs reform, but this group even if they wanted to improve the economy is incompetent. And there is no evidence that they want things to get better.] as soon as Brown won; who knows what strangeness he will come up with. One thing to watch is that today Barney Frank called for the abolishment of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, and their replacement by a new entity. Given that he and the other Democrat leadership have made political and financial fortunes from both, I would be really leery of anything that they set up as the new and improved versions. Since there seems to be a possibility that the double dip in the recession is about to kick in, there are a number of Presidential Emergency Powers that can be invoked. And once that road is taken …..
Be ready for something drastic, stupid, and probably tyrannical. All he knows is doubling down.
Subotai Bahadur
Okay, here are some more “respectable” sources:
WSJ blogs: Obama Camp Routed Out Illegal Donations from Palestinians
WaPo: Obama Accepting Untraceable Donations
Contributions Reviewed After Deposits
The Obama team’s disclosures came in response to questions from The Washington Post about the case of Mary T. Biskup, a retired insurance manager from Manchester, Mo., who turned up on Obama’s FEC reports as having donated $174,800 to the campaign. Contributors are limited to giving $2,300 for the general election.
Biskup, who had scores of Obama contributions attributed to her, said in an interview that she never donated to the candidate. “That’s an error,” she said. Moreover, she added, her credit card was never billed for the donations, meaning someone appropriated her name and made the contributions with another card.
Hmmm, not getting anywhere so far. Nothing but clues and rumors.
Baby, baby, please don’t leave me
Once sung by the Supremes
Is now Obama’s plaintive cry
Just one more crash of dreams
By 5 to 4 the Court has ruled
That speech indeed is free
That henceforth folks can hear the truth
Without the FCC
Deciding just who gets the right
To speak his piece of mind
That heretofore was slanted toward
The leftmost they could find
No wonder ‘Bama’s all shook up
Like Elvis it’s all gone
The Court declared the media is
No longer Hussein’s pawn
RagnarD: And teresita – it is not that we are ‘homophobes’, just that most object to the “in your face-ness” of a lot of the advocacy groups.
Teresita: or the right to not be dragged behind a truck and crucified to a fence in Wyoming is called “Special Rights”.
RagnarD and Teresita, my two cents on this issue:
The problem, to me, is the business of people defining themselves by what they do with their naughty parts. That would be a subsegment of the gay and lesbian “community” (scare quotes are deliberate here), and appears to be what RagnarD is calling “in your face-ness.”
Keep in mind that this subset have gone after, harrassed, and stalked Prop 8 supporters in California, and want to be able to intimidate them in the follow-on court case by having the proceedings televised (the fact that there even is a court case flies in the face of the notion of “Consent of the Governed,” and it’s ironic that California is referendum-crazy precisely because of progressivism).
As for the two horrendous instances of “persecution” you chose, Teresita, they are very poor examples. There are other better and more appropriate ones you could have chosen to make your case.
The James Byrd case was settled by three Texas juries: two of them almost completely white and male, and both of which returned guilty verdicts with recommendations for the death penalty. I believe this vindicates white southerners completely and thoroughly.
The Matthew Shepard case may not have been about homophobia at all, but more in the nature of a drug-buy dispute. The good state of Wyoming demonstrated that they didn’t need no stinkin’ “Hate Crime Statutes,” and treated the case as the brutal murder that it was, and also chose capital punishment. What would a hate statute have done in this case, enable Wyoming to execute the perpetrators twice each?
…somewhere between bench pressing and a real desire for a chocolate crème pie I soldier onward toward the inevitable myocardial infarction.
I mentioned earlier that for us to understand our foundations we must understand what our Founders were saying. So I have chosen five words for consideration.
In the eighteenth century the state of political discourse was in flux. Liberty and property were particularly cloudy, in extremis. Other words we take for granted , such as society, in the sense of an abstract whole, had first been used in the seventeenth century but to mean a narrow, specially constituted association of people with an identity different from that of the whole.
The concept of an “economy” as an entity having a life of it’s own was barely limned. The word capitalism had not yet been minted. But virtually every American believed that property and liberty were both “natural” and “civil rights” but we saw during the Constitutional Convention that delegates had different understandings of all five of the words: liberty, property, society, capitalist and capitalism. Kinda makes for a real hash. We could easily throw in the word republicanism without making any historical miscalculation or misstatement.
We see much the same today as the Marxist Left Democrats have attempted to use words and phrases such as economic democracy as a substitute for the Marxist creed of from each according to his abilities to each according to their needs … thus a graduated income tax and a huge government three card monte/Ponzi scheme.
A wonderful example of the prostitution of our language began decades ago with Tom Hayden’s “Campaign for Economic Democracy” . However his association with SDS and Marxism made the Democratic Party nervous. Enter Derek Sheaer, coauthor of “Economic Democracy ” who sold this idea to the Dem party leadership.
…and I quote
Socialism has a bad name in America, and no amount of wishful thinking on the part of the left is going to change that in our lifetime ..the words Economic Democracy are an adequate and effective replacement
A memo went out from Democratic National Headquarters the next day to use the new phrase and overnight every Democrat was using it ……thus they were intentionally adopting Marxism cloaked in a softer phrase, a phrase the useful idiots could get behind….and they did (pg 37 Destroying Democracy 1985.
So we must understand the argot of the times to make sense of the present if we are to be effective in preserving our freedom. The argot of 1776 and that of today.
Federal hate crime laws imply that not all of the fifty states will prosecute the underlying crime. If this is not true, then the Federal law is just one more form of tyranny over the states.
wws,
The Constitution is not a suicide pact. Libertarians constantly insist on protection for extreme and irrational cases. In so doing they erode the reasonable standard that protects the rights we all need. The First Amendment protects citizens, the passage in the decision you cited makes that clear. Non-citizens are here under sufferance. Subject to due process they can be removed from the country. They do not have the right to vote in a Federal election and Congress can regulate their participation in the political market. Intervention by a foreign Prince in another nations internal politics is a hostile act and foreign nationals who are potentially de jure agents of a foreign interest may not engage in hostile acts. They may not keep and bear arms either. Your assertions are simply not proof. When you have some more meaningful proof then we may take this up again. Until then we are engaged in hand waving and I see ne benefit in that.
Teresita,
There is a difference between unpopular speech and hostile speech directed to threaten or harm something of value to others. If members of the homosexual community were more forthright about confronting those who are only calling for the right to enter into a marriage contract not in order to attain the same status as held by the majority but in order to attack the institution itself then their arguments would be met with more sympathy. Unfortunately the loudest voices are those engaged in heterophobia and while you may defend their right to speak you can not insist that others listen to them.
For all of us who engage in political activity it is often true that we know that the person who has shown up to ostensibly support our cause is acting for their own purposes. Often those include agendas that will offend many of those we wish to reach with the campaigns message. While campaigning for McCain or at a Tea Party rally I soon got to recognize the people who were just itching to start screaming about Castro or abortion, with no consideration of the interests of the candidate. Those in the homosexual community who are advancing their own agenda of liberation from patriarchal heterosexual capitalist white civilization are rightly perceived as threatening. They hurt the causes of those who they purport to speak for. When people equate arguments for legal rights to inheritance and hospital visitation or power of attorney decision making with the Safe Schools Czar campaigning for pederasty then the prior argument loses.
It is no more the responsibility of members of the majority to pick winners and assure members of the sexual minority that we know that the hostile voices do not speak for them then it is for us to tell Moslems that we know that al-Qeada does not speak for them and they really do not believe in passages in the Hadith and Koran that appear threatening. It is hard for any community to confront the fringe that generates friction, especially when they had confronted earlier injustices. When it happens that is a sign of maturity and bodes well for future progress.
Tony,
Thank you, well done.
My earlier effort to link to “Dueling Banjos” to note the mutual praise of myself and Habu vanished into the ether. On Youtube there is a version that *shudder* is done with a flute and sousaphone.
How about a musical dittty for our victory this week??? sound on..pump up da jam (no did he really say that/)
http://tinyurl.com/23y3vd
#30 Volt #32 Pete
Precisely. The biggest difference between Liberals and Conservatives is that Liberals think Americans are stupid and super-malleable. Notice how that is always their fall-back position when suffering a blow (like the MA election results or Air America closing. ‘Well those people are just stupid.’) Leaving the bog-swamps of the left I remember consciously feeling and thinking, “good, now I don’t have to think people are stupid anymore.” I never really did because one side of my family was rural working class, not formally educated but possessed of native smarts and drive. I hated all the leftist condescension heaped upon the working class I overheard in college. I hated it and I took it personally; it probably kept me from being a certified leftist cuckoo. You never hear conservatives saying about Liberals: they’re stupid (lots of other things though)!
Try this thought experiment: Conservatives can understand Liberals but Liberals cannot understand Conservatives…why?
marriage equality for gays and lesbians is a canard. There are 10,000 years of human history to parse and no-where, no-how, no-time did any society ever treat same sex relationships as the equivalent of marriage. The Spartans certainly tolerated homosexual acts, if not encouraged them, but even in that society, where men lived together from age 6 – 50 there was never so much as a whisper about even the concept of gay marriage – and for the Ancient Greeks there was absolutely no topic that was out of bounds. Spartan men were expected to marry and have children and any that did not were excluded from civil society.
The formal arrangement for marriage and child rearing is the single most important societal institution. Trying to create a right that changes the boundaries of marriage based entirely on behavior that every society on earth has seen as aberrant does not make any sense. The concept is absurd and history has rightly treated it as such.
We have to draw a line between “unpopular speech” that may offend adults but which should be protected and “hostile speech” that causes or threatens damage to others. My argument is that attacking the institution of marriage is an assault and that those who do so under the cover of advocating it for others are dishonest and hurt those who ally with them. Those who direct their attention towards children, like the “Safe Schools Czar,” are rightly seen as threatening. Members of the homosexual community do themselves a favor if they loudly and publicly reject such people.
What worries me the most here is that concern over these other issues impedes our ability to respond effectively to a clear and present danger. It never occurred to Noel Coward or thousands of others that their private sexuality was more important than the strength of the majority community and its success in defeating a totalitarian threat. It is unfortunate now that the loudest and most selfish voices in many of our minority communities, especially among prominent homosexuals in the arts and media, are focused on attacking our community and blocking efforts to effectively detect, deter and destroy genuine threats to all of us.
LOTM:
An earlier thread on the Protection Principal
pretty much hashed that issue out.
Beyond whiskey’s sparkling repartee, that is a prime example of why I get withdrawal pains if I miss BC for more than a day.
O/T
Rasmussen has Obama approval underwater by 18 points. with 43% Strongly Disapproving.
This is bad. If the trend continues, legitimacy can become an issue. Also remember the chronic distaste for Congress.
Disapproval leads to disrespect leads to contempt leads to ….? Nothing good.
“The minority of Justices Stevens, Ginsburg, Breyer, and Sotomayor, however, seemed to see corporate speech as a threat to democracy, and emphasized that corporations are different from people and have different rights.”
What is the freedom of speech and peacable assembly if not the freedom to speak as both an individual and as a member of a group?
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.” First Amendment, U.S. Constitution
http://topics.law.cornell.edu/constitution/billofrights#amendmenti
Same sex marriage would meet almost no resistance from tradition if it would just re-label. “Marriage” has a definition, and the definition is ”male + female”. to many folks, it is the sacred center point of their lives, the point of departure into the world of duty and self-control, and to take the word away from them is a ”taking” and does harm.
Still, if there was no way around the labeling problem, these folks would just have to suck it up and live with it.
However, there is a major flaw –a casuistry –in the the same-sex marriage position, in that if advocates hold that ”it’s just a word, so why the big deal?” –then why –if it’s just a word and no big deal –why jam it down the throats of the very large population to whom it’s NOT just a word and IS a big deal?
Why not just re-label –as long as the rights and privileges are similar either way, as they seem to be –tho i could be wrong on some details. But to make the majority quit a reserved label that’s as old as the human race –to those who see it that way –is a pretty aggressive entry into individual private space.
Again, especially since the work-around is so easy (“Marriage 2″?), the rejection of the work-around implies a hidden agenda –which could only be the overturning of the traditional society that those who do not want it overturned have a perfect right to lawfully oppose.
The larger problem is the solving of a claimed victimhood by victimizing the alleged perpetrators –who may not agree that they have victimized the claimant, in any other way than by the defendant’s mere existence. In the progressive era this is done routinely, and it’s a testament to the majority’s commitment to the rule of law –a commitment that aggressive minority initiatives would do well to ponder, as it didn’t just rise out of nowhere but has been hard-won over long ages, and ought to be seen as having value to all.
“The minority of Justices Stevens, Ginsburg, Breyer, and Sotomayor, however, seemed to see corporate speech as a threat to democracy…”
“Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them… with the lie always one leap ahead of the truth.” George Orwell – 1984
1. Freedom of Speech is essential for democratic Constitutional Republics.
2. Freedom of Speech is a threat to democratic Constitutional Republics.
“If the freedom of speech is taken away then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter.” George Washington
wws, Billy can get thousands of supporters if he joins the UE, or some other union or forms his own association in his city. The question is or maybe just the observation is that in the future are we all going to have to be members of local or state or federal gangs, associations or unions to get justice or fair play?
But what if he doesn’t want to? I guess then he is restricted to how much money he can spend to get the attention that he needs. The Billys I know don’t have much extra left after payroll and expenses.
LOTM good work at deconstruction where even I can understand the issues and I appreciate your contribution. Yes, I had to read it three times before my ol’ brain cells could coalesce it all.
Habu, excellent as always, you are indeed a first rate contributor. With you I usually only have to read twice.
If you would, I would like you and others here to read this link and tell me what your suspicions are, as that is all anyone has at this point. This nefarious and mystery deed needs to be investigated. It should have already been, but it seems no one wants to touch it.
Maybe some don’t want us to know.
Papa Ray
The First Amendment according to Justices Stevens, Ginsburg, Breyer, and Sotomayor:
Ben Franklin cranks out political pamphlets in his basement and walks around the East End of Philadelphia distributing them. Ben Franklin’s pamphleteering is protected by the First Amendment.
A couple of Ben Franklin’s drinking buddies put up some cash and form a stock company to expand distribution into the West End. Ben Franklin gets arrested and tossed in jail for distributing one pamphlet.
Two points. First, doesn’t this open the possibility of a revival for the traditional news media, as solvent businesses, through a flood of suddenly-legal political advertising? I’m thinking full-page (or one-minute) ads for and against cap-and-trade or card check by business groups and unions — each ad provoking another one in a long cycle of debate. Perhaps some unintended consequences that will prove beneficial for parties who might initially oppose the ruling.
Second, not all corporations are huge or multi-national. Didn’t the very fact that so many groups swept up in the previous restrictions were relatively small, i.e., advocacy groups that happened to have a corporate structure, help to illuminate how oppressive the laws had become? They weren’t just muzzling Exxon, but small groups of people who had banded together and raised some money.
If I have to pay $100,000 to press a button that gives me $1,000,000 I will do it.
The reason that there is so much money in politics is because of that button.
It is the power that has been taken on by government (against the will of the founders) that attracts campaign finance money (bribes).
Any law to keep money out of politics will immediately spawn several work-a-rounds.
To solve the problem get rid of the button. Repeal the laws that give the government power.
(i know – easier said than done)
Habu – 79
“From each according to his abilities (creative and laboring, tax-paying entrepreneurs and middle class), to each according to his needs (non-laboring, tax-eating government intellectuals and proletariat class).” Karl Marx
Karl Marx lied when he said “workers of the world unite.” In reality the non-workers of the world (government intellectuals and proletariat class) have united, and Barak Obama is their Marxist leader.
http://www.anu.edu.au/polsci/marx/classics/manifesto.html
“Until then we are engaged in hand waving and I see ne benefit in that.”
True to an extent; but the Supreme Court is now on my side, not yours.
“Non-citizens are here under sufferance.”
To claim that fundamental human rights guaranteed by the constitution do not apply equally to citizens and non-citizens is the height of absurdity. No legal authority supports that conclusion. That is not hand-waving; that is a legal fact.
“We have to draw a line between “unpopular speech” that may offend adults but which should be protected and “hostile speech” that causes or threatens damage to others.”
That is exactly the logic which is causing Geert Wilders to be prosecuted for the crime of insulting Muslims. Once you allow the precedent of allowing “hostile” speech to be restricted, then you unleash the totalitarian madness which will lead to the destruction of all free speech, such as is happening in Europe today. Sooner or later your enemies will get ahold of the power of government and will use it to define *your* speech as hostile – this is why all restrictions must be most vigourously opposed.
If you allow restrictions you will allow yourself one day to be charged with Blasphemy by an offended group, as Geert Wilders is being charged today. That way lies madness.
True Freedom is a frightening thing to live with; but a society which can not handle freedom does not deserve it.
Papa Ray wrote: “But what if he doesn’t want to? I guess then he is restricted to how much money he can spend to get the attention that he needs. The Billys I know don’t have much extra left after payroll and expenses.”
Recall that while our constitution guarantees us equality of opportunity, it does not guarantee us equality of outcome.
And with regard to the organizations you refer to, I think today they are called “political parties.” Yes, in a democracy such as ours you are probably always going to have to participate in something like that to have a significant impact, the independant-fueled Scott Brown election notwithstanding.
Billy’s Electric is a small corporation with 20 shareholders. Does good on a level playing field, and can afford to spend a potful of money on advertising. Now he can speak out against the outlawing of incandescent bulbs where he makes his money. He’s not interested in a union or any other permanent entanglement. Just ordinary light bulbs.
Mongo: However, there is a major flaw –a casuistry –in the the same-sex marriage position, in that if advocates hold that ”it’s just a word, so why the big deal?” –then why –if it’s just a word and no big deal –why jam it down the throats of the very large population to whom it’s NOT just a word and IS a big deal?
It is true that religions such as Catholicism treat matrimony as a sacrament of God, but when your priest or rabbi or pastor or justice of the peace marries you, he says, “By the power invested in me by the State of Washington, I now pronounce you man and wife.”
That means marriage in our society is a function of the state. You may have a religious ceremony as an “overlay”, but the legal heart of marriage remains a state-recognized lifetime contract between two adults which requires special legal procedures to abrogate.
Another function of the state is education. And it is true that some parents may home school or send their children to St. Philomena’s, but they are at a disadvantage when they do so because not only must they pay for their own children to be educated outside of the state system, they are still mandated to pay for everyone else’s children to be educated inside the state system. But at any point they may stop sending their children to their private school “overlay” and enroll them in the socialized education that we have in America.
Gay and lesbian citizens are required to pay taxes and serve on juries to support the state, but only a handful of states will permit two men or two women to enter into the same state-controlled legal contract that a man and a woman may enter into. This has the effect of rendering gay and lesbian couples as second-class citizens with only a subset of the full rights that a heterosexual couple has.
Peter Boston: marriage equality for gays and lesbians is a canard. There are 10,000 years of human history to parse and no-where, no-how, no-time did any society ever treat same sex relationships as the equivalent of marriage.
Once you turned marriage over to the government as a state function rather than a sacrament controlled by Canon Law, you made marriage subject to political scrutiny in regards to its fair application. It is as though marriage was a private plot of land that was sold to the state to become a public square. Efforts to adorn that public square with a cross or menorah run up against the prohibition of the state establishing a religion.
Outside of the religious argment, an appeal to historical tradition is often made to classify marriage equality as an attempt to secure “special rights”, but it has also been a historical tradition, as late as 1967 (and even last year with one judge in the south) that interracial couples were denied the right to get married.
“Non-citizens are here under sufferance.”
To claim that fundamental human rights guaranteed by the constitution do not apply equally to citizens and non-citizens is the height of absurdity. No legal authority supports that conclusion. That is not hand-waving; that is a legal fact.
Rather it is that IF they are here they may not be denied fundamental legal rights, but there is no right at all for non-citizens to enter the country to begin with and the Congress may make whatever laws they wish for allowing legal entry into the country, no matter how absurd or “unfair” such laws may be.
And insofar as free speech is concerned, the general key is this:
(1) You can advocate anything, no matter how vile, if it is phrased as “I think the law/Constitution should be changed to [examples: re-institute slavery, kill all the gays, institute Sharia law in the US, whatever], its protected.
(2) Urging others to break existing laws can get you into a lot of trouble, unless:
(3) If the law you’re urging others to break really is unconstitutional, you may get vindicated down the line. But beware, you may beat the rap but you won’t beat the ride along that far and perilous journey. And before you undertake it, be very, very, sure that the highest Court that can consider the issue will agree with you. And you have no assurance (none whatsoever) that the controversy will ever get to that level.
L3@#5–
Just learned of your CLA. Great timing! Last week, I met a lady who could use your help. If you don’t already know, she is opposing the wretched and shameless Sheila Jackson Lee in District 18. Her name is Brenda Page @ PageforCongress.com
I met her last week at a Tea Party Rally and was impressed with her brief speech, enthusiasm, and energy level. She lives in the Heights and knows what she’s up against. But the wind could be at her back in the current political climate. I wish we could get a “swarm” of support going for this lady. I’d like to see SJL land hard in the D.C. street on her ample backside.
It’s God’s work you are doing. Gracias,
Senor.
Mz T –guess it’s a matter of time and persuasion –no citizens should suffer discrimination. I have a dispute with the state, too, and i wonder if it’s similar to yours. I’ve spent a fortune on traffic tickets –it’s my adult ADD, I zone out and forget to not roar past the highway patrol over the posted limit, and once in awhile i do not note them trying to pull me over in what they consider a timely manner. I’ve actually lost my license a time or two forgetting to pay tickets and finding out i have arrest warrants out, and then there’s a few squabbles with judges and such. And I can’t help it –i’m mentally ill –i know, cuz at the behest of the family women i took the D-whatchacallit test at a stop-smoking shrink’s and he said i was off the charts ADD and the smoking was a coping behavior of jabber jabber sort. I’m otherwise just fine, even fairly high-functioning when i can quit daydreaming — but i do have this one thing that causes the state to treat me in a fashion i consider wrong. I think the licensing ought to reflect my lack of accidents and any known harm done. but, no, no such luck. it’s just an injustice i have to bear until society at large comes ’round to my wants. BTW the shrink started me on nicotine gum but i never could keep it lit so i sorta trailed off on the program. Ok that was an attempt at humor but the whole comment is not flip –it’s a serious, well- my attempt at a serious, response to yours.
Buddy
“Rupert Murdoch is already in Marquis de Lafayette territory, as foreign savior of the American ideal (ok, America’s bacon).
Both might be driven as much by knowledge of what evils north America could do in the wrong hands, as by ideological fervor for the Constitution, unavailable as it is to either in their native tongues of French and Strine”
uh could you re-formulate it in a comprehensible version for me
MC, delighted to help.
Rupert Murdoch is Australian, or “Strine” –which is a sort of joke (now that i think about it maybe just to the Texas ear, which is accustomed to the wide-mouth lateral-extension known as the ‘texas twang’) on the Australian way of saying “Australian”, which sounds like “Strine”.
So around Austin, Australians are ‘Strines’ –and they get a laugh out of it, deliberately speaking Strine so thickly that it really does get comical.
Anyhoo, you do know, Murdoch owns FoxNews, which stands alone in the TV news world unsworn to the perpetuation of the Democratic party alternate reality sometimes known as Plan 9 from Outer Space.
So, like the Marquis de Lafayette, he is “saving our bacon” (the idiomatic phrase related to frontier campfire cookery, where the shiskebab is prone to falling in the fire, needing someone to reach in there and pull it out –to ‘save the bacon’.
The native tongue/Constitution comment was just that the grand magisterial phrasing of the document cannot sound the same in translation –which of course applies to the French and also, but only jokingly, to the speakers of ‘Strine’, which is of course a form of English, some say.
That part was me needling Wretchard, as he is a Strine –and also a Harvard man, both conditions requiring a bit of good-natured needling.
“Needling” is ‘joking with a smile’, very light humor, no one takes insult.
The only other possible confusion i can see,is ”evils in the wrong hands”, which is a frank statement and has no second meaning. the north american continent is part of Oceania and would make Eurasia and/or Eastasia miserable if taken by either against the other.
Ne satisfait que vous?
#91 Papa Ray
The electronic run on the banks was real as described. The question of who the perpetrators are is being concealed. That pretty much sums up the data we have. Mind you, that does not prevent extrapolations of the data, with the caveat that they are extrapolations on a really small amount of data points and subject to immediate modifications when more data is available.
1) We can make a reasonable assumption that the government of the United States knows who withdrew the funds. They have access to who owned the accounts, and even if there was some sort of conspiracy, by now they know who is likely behind it.
2) Whoever did it, by their nature is heavily capitalized. There are limited sources of that much capital, especially invested in the US.
3) Both the Bush Administration and the Obama Administration knows who it is [given the date of occurrence] and each for its own reasons decided to keep the information secret. Those reasons may have the same result [secrecy] but may come from different motivations.
4) We can make a reasonable assumption that whoever did this is an enemy of the United States.
5) One judges enemies by what their capabilities are, rather than trying to figure out there intentions. If you allow for all capabilities, you can cover an error if your evaluation of their intentions is mistaken. If you let your faith in your evaluation of their intentions cause you to ignore capabilities; if you are wrong you are well and truly scrod. The only data points we have are the date and time, that they have access to our banking system in money market accounts, and they had at least $550 billion in play.
6) $550 billion sets a floor. We do not know what the maximum capitalization they had is, but it is once again a reasonable assumption that the US did not react at the exact moment when they pulled their very last capital out. That means there was more in our money markets. A question is, how much?
7) Operating on a pure SWAG, which I wish there was more data to refine, let us assume that it was at least twice the amount withdrawn, for a minimum total of $1.1 Trillion. It could be more. What they did succeed in pulling out before we stopped them was not enough to destroy us, but we must assume that it is highly probable that destruction was their goal and they capitalized accordingly.
9) When judging capabilities and to refine a list of suspects, the data point to work with is the ability to move at least $1.1 Trillion singly or in combination. Keep in mind that these are dollar holdings, so that is the basis to work with.
10) A list that may be incomplete, but with the limited data available all that I can come up with speaking ex cathedra from my navel:
China
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
Iran, with the help perhaps of other enemies of the United States in combination [see the Ummah as prime suspects]
Russia, with the help of other enemies of the United States [Include Iran above]
George Soros singly, or in combination with any or all of the above and possibly in conjunction with allied political forces in this country.
11) If a humble scribe like myself could come up with this list in a matter of minutes; I am pretty sure that all the high priced help we have operating black and in the clear could come up with it and more in a matter of a couple of weeks. We have spooks. We have all those people in the Treasury monitoring the world economy. And if I was running ANY of the major brokerage houses, here or in other countries; by the [insert crude statement of choice] I would be beating on my accounting galley slaves doubletime to find out what had happened and to figure out how to protect my company from the effects of another attack. And I am pretty sure that if any one of the major brokerage houses had figured it out, the information would have been scarfed up by some flavor of spook.
Further, with even this as hints, once again, forensic accounting would know which of the above, singly or in competition, would have done this. Moving that much money around leaves traces and effects. In addition the removal of whatever part of the funds that were stranded in the US should have an effect on the economy(s) they are being sequestered from. Even if we did not know who pulled the money out [and we almost surely do as the money had to be transferred somewhere] the loss of over half a Trillion dollars has got to have an effect …. unless the funds are totally government held and in fact do not enter the internal economy. Hmm.
12) The reasons for a refusal to name the culprit(s) could be:
a. fear of further attack [China does have us economically by the short and curlies, with a downhill pull] (both Bush and Obama),
b. fear of being forced by public opinion to react if the word gets out; keeping in mind that China, Russia, and soon Iran also are nuclear powers with regional and world ambitions in conflict with our national interests (both Bush and Obama),
c. agreement with the attackers and motivations coincident, parallel, or subservient to those of the attackers (Obama).
Please, add any others reasons or conjectures that you can come up with, for I do not even pretend to being omniscient. I am not a Lightworker, or a Messiah.
You pays your money and takes your choice. Or rather, we ARE paying our money now, and choose it or not, we are going through the fire.
A brave man struggling in a storms of fate,
And greatly falling, in a falling State.
While ***Buraq*** gives his little senate laws,
What bosom beats not in his country’s cause?
With apologies to Alexander Pope and ***Cato***.
Subotai Bahadur
Buddy, merci, c’est comme si un Quebequois voudrait commenter sur nos politiciens
“in conjunction with allied political forces in this country”
Yep, that’s the interesting part.
Not surprised that foreign enemies have been planning a financial attack, hell, they’ve been planning a missile attack for years and years.
But the fact that they penetrated our system as well, politically/legislatively, and timed the financial destructive impact of these treasonous political activities with a financial “run on the banks” attack means we will need all of RWE’s “Washington light poles” to hang the traitors.
The rest, the unhung, the ones running loose, well, we train pretty good detectives/police/investigators/snipers/deer hunters in this country.
If these “financial gurus” that have made such a mess of it on Wall Street want a job, and wish to stay out of prison themselves, then track down every last cent! The Cayman islands, or where ever else the crooks hide with the cash, the Marines can handle that job!
Stevens is a liberal after all. The rules must be obeyed without exception when they lead to results liberals desire, and ignored without consideration in other circumstances.
But, as far as Stare Decisis goes, well, it is a bad thing for courts to constantly flip-flop on the meaning of a law when the law itself has not been changed, but that shouldn’t preclude a court from recognizing and correcting a prior mistake, especially when the correction loosens restrictions. Tightening them is much the same as an ex post facto law – no, we didn’t pass a law retroactively making that illegal, we just reinterpreted an existing law so… pony up guilty boy.
The real problems here are twofold. First, the USSC has been too willing to dabble in politics. A plain reading of the 1st Ammendment should have resulting in Campaing finance restriction being thrown out at first blush in Austin. It’s nice that a court with different politics overturned that ruling, but it’s distressing that the meaning of the law will change with the composition of the court. Second, Congress passed, and Bush signed, a law that was plainly contrary to the Constitution. It’s hard to preserve a system of government when all three branches are, apparently, ignorant of the rules they are supposed to operate under. We might as well all show up once a year at the federal courthouse and spin a wheel to see whether we owe taxes, receive subsidies, or go to prison. Then we could dispense with Congress, the courts, and the entire justice system (including all lawyers). It would be a phenominal savings, and lead to about the same results.
I am glad of this ruling, but in the same way I’m glad to learn the chest pains are from indigestion and not a heart attack.
—the right to not be dragged behind a truck and crucified to a fence in Wyoming is called “Special Rights”—
I can understand this myth being used on many other ‘knucklehead’ sites. I object to it being used here. The poor young man was killed as a result of drug dealings….
As for gay marriage. I have relatives that have had a life together as gay partners. I am sure they did the necessary legal things to protect assets and rights. They never needed to disrespect my marriage or to call their relationship a marriage. Not sure why this is a problem for a very militant few when the foundation of society is so clearly marriage and family.
These facts are: 1) Shepard was HIV-positive and apparently very upset and depressed about it. 2) Shepherd was a frequent user of crystal meth, and was part of a Laramie bar-and-nightlife community that was involved in meth use. 3) Shepard knew his killer, Aaron McKinney, through this drug connection before the night of the murder, and the two had been seen socializing together. 4) McKinney was an active bisexual with a history of engaging in sex with men (something he denies during the 20/20 show, but several other people insist it’s true). 5) And most important, McKinney and Russell Henderson did not kill Matthew Shepard because he was gay; instead, their attempt to rob him went terribly wrong when McKinney flew into a meth-fueled rage and beat Shepard so severely that he died.
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20070105121638AAgqHmI
“If it wasn’t Shepard, they would have found another easy target. What it came down to really is drugs and money and two punks that were out looking for it,” Fritzen said.
http://abcnews.go.com/2020/story?id=277685&page=3
I’m copying a comment I found on another blog because it is so good and mirrors my own thoughts completely.
“The Supreme Court scheduled a special session just to announce this decision (unheard of), and the decision itself is a ground-shaker.
There is a greater message here, and it directed at the marxists in the white house. That message is a full tilt boogie reminder that there is a third branch of government, and it WILL defend the Constitution.
Anyone who thinks this was just a shot across the bow by the Supremes at the Obama administration fails to appreciate the significance of this decision. It was NOT such a shot. In the language the Court uses to communicate, they just took out the entire Obama fleet with a tactical nuke and simultaneously sent a radio message that said “Bring it!”"
Subotai Bahadur & AWM Thanks for your thoughts. I hope others here if not replying directly, will give it some thought or pass on the concern and their thoughts to those who have an ear into the financial sector.
Surprisingly SB, your conjectures are not much different than my old gang of Vets. We suspect that it is wide ranging and has a U.S. inside connection. We have tried to get more facts about it but the goggle almost acts like it never happened or if it did, it was not that important. Five hundred billion and if they had not stopped the withdrawal it could as you said been double that or more, and nobody knows nothing. Really. What is to stop it from happening again? Has the guilty parties been paid off? Threatened? Or is it so corrupt and powerful that the U.S. Government doesn’t want to start a war over it as you speculated? Have special safeguards been implimited so it won’t or can’t happen again? Was this the signal to start a cascade of other financial events?
Did the stopping of the massive transfer of money delay or derail a planned event or events?
Like you said, it is over my pay grade and defiantly out of my bailiwick. Maybe a Historian in a future time will discover the secret.
On another note, today I was at the local library and noted a guy checking out a book. The title jumped out at me;
Obamanomics: How Barack Obama Is Bankrupting You and Enriching His Wall Street Friends, Corporate Lobbyists, and Union Bosses
I asked if there was another but the library had only that copy so I am on the waiting list for it.
Which reminded me that I had suggested to anton giving his neighbor a book. If he likes to read for content and not a story as such I would recommend James Madison: Writings: Writings 1772-1836
It is a collection (not all of course, as he wrote thousands) of his writings, letters and speeches.
The Library of America’s series of writings by America’s Founders, including Washington, Jefferson, Hamilton and many others besides this book of James Madison’s writings is something any one who likes to read orignial content will love.
If he is not that deep or doesn’t have the patience for this you could recommend The U.S. Constitution: And Fascinating Facts About It. This little book is what I have spent hours reading to my Grandkids and have bought them all their own copies. Every American should own this little book.
Well, tis late and these old bones need some rest.
Papa Ray
Papa Ray, i have a goodly amount of information piled up that will throw a little light into that dark corner. Here’s as good a place as any to start. I’ll comb around and try to find another three or four that are comprehensive enough, and contain links enough, to be worth your while — check out the sources for your own edification.
There’s two small companies, The Markit Group, and Penson Financial, that you could light into via search, and cover the same ground without any selection bias (from me or anyone else) whatsoever –look into them anbd you’ll see what i mean –these are deep keys –beyond selection bias.
As other posters have pointed out, this decision appears to be good on the surface but could have unwanted side-effects. It will take years to see what the net effect will be. I will write more later.
papa Ray, this is just one article –but the data is verifiable –this piece just puts it together clearly –below quoted is the ‘conclusion’
http://www.marketrap.com/article/view_article/91172/did-the-markit-group-a-black-box-company-partially-owned-by-goldman-sachs-and-jp-morgan-devastate-markets
(snip)
Conclusion: Ten years ago, there was no such thing as a credit default swap. Six years ago, a very small number of investors traded credit default swaps as hedges against the long-shot possibility of corporate defaults. Nobody looked to credit default swaps as reliable indicators of corporate well-being.
Then, suddenly, there were over $60 trillion in credit default swaps outstanding. That is, over the course of a few years, somebody had made over $60 trillion (many times the gross domestic product) in long shot bets that borrowers would default on their debt. As this derivative risk marbled through the system, the trading in credit default swaps was completely opaque. Nobody knew who bought them, who sold them, or at what price.
But starting in 2001, we knew the “prices” of CDSs. We knew the “prices” because two Canadians, a developer of Bulgarian real estate, and four mysterious hedge funds had founded a small, black-box company in London. That company, the Markit Group, achieved near-monopolistic power to publicize the “prices” through its magic process of aggregating quotation information provided by 22 hedge funds and broker-dealers who could well have been betting on the downstream effects of sudden price changes.
These “prices” were not prices in any meaningful sense of the term. But, suddenly, these “prices” became perhaps the single most important indicator of corporate well-being. Assuming that those four hedge funds and the 22 “contributors” (or hedge funds affiliated with them) bet against public companies, it seems more than possible that short-sellers got to run the craps table, call the dice, and place bets, all at the same time.
So perhaps it is not surprising that a lot of long-shot rolls paid off quite nicely.
(close quote)
Henry Hu, the director of the Securities and Exchange Commission’s division of risk, has said that it has been nearly impossible for the SEC to conduct investigations into any matter concerning credit default swaps because the commission does not have access to any data on the trading of CDSs.
Markit Group was co-founded by Rony Grushka, Lance Uggla, and Kevin Gould. Prior to founding Markit Group, Mr. Grushka’s main line of business was investing in Bulgarian property developments. He recently resigned from the board of Orchid Developments Group, an Israeli-invested company based in Sophia, Bulgaria. Messrs. Uggla and Gould formerly worked for Toronto-Dominion Bank in Canada.
The bolded phrase, that situation is the direct result of the Commodity Futures Modernization Act –designed by a Clinton Treasury official who is now Obama’s head regulator and signed by Bill Clinton in his last year, yr 2000. Markit began supplying the meltdown data in 2001.
Those three guys –wow –what a vertical ascent! –from so-so careers in Bulgaria and Canada, to pricers of the underground of the global shadow banking system, in the blink of an eye. what a story for woodward & bernstein to dig into! They could start with the DOJ file, which i’ll betcha has gotten full of crickets lately.
It is foolish to vilify bankers. Their job is to maximize return on investment legally, in a word of two, “socially acceptable greed.” This benefits them, their investors, and our society. We benefit by having money around for new projects. We do not benefit having money stagnate in a cave with Beowulf’s dragon.
Bankers if they are any good will push the limits. Their performance is always being graded against that of other bankers. If one banker is successfully bundling subprime mortgages, and it is not illegal, and in fact dubious mortgages are promoted by law, then the others are going to rush to participate in the unsound practice, too. The bankers are benefitting their investors up to the very point when the bubble bursts. Prior to that point their investors and large portions of society loved them.
Separating commercial and investment banks seems like the best answer. Vilifying bankers for pushing the limits of a legal return on investment is nonsense. The alternative is demanding that bankers be in tune with the thoughts of the politicians in ascendancy at some unknown point in the future. Their job is to deal in the here and now and get results.
Laws and regulation change from time to time, but in no way as quickly and as fecklessly as political whims.
Tony@76
I’m worried about how this is being reported. Your two cites don’t delve into the hacks very deeply.
I’ve been intimately involved in the technicalities of remotely-originated credit/debit transactions since 1987. Makes me question how this could be done.
The skillset to disengage the built-in security protocols enough to spoof the authentication process is rare. To disable the security features inherent in the process, given the transaction volume necessary to reach near $900M at < $200 per contributor in illicit contributions is supposed to be really, realy hard. Like foolproof, no? These folks were very good.
Whichever processor(s) was involved, it now is shown to be easily-fooled, or corruptible. These are the same processors doing $10 of millions per minute of YOUR online transactions.
It’s a matter of microseconds, when the police are only months or years away. Forensics = financial bodybags. The money is still offshore, even if we now know exactly how successful they’ve been at their looting, so far.
Fascinating. I’m thrilled to see brilliant and experienced minds coming up with the back story and facts that support the conjecture I first made several years ago; i.e. (if I remember correctly) “Would it be possible for one person or country to try to overthrow the government of the United States by running Wall Street and bankrupting some of our large companies?” At that point I was thinking Bear Stearns and Lehmann, but not Enron.
And yes, not only is it possible but probable, and it appears that not only was that, indeed, what happened but that it could happen again.
The second part of my conjecture was to wonder if those same sources of money that are trying to overthrow the United States might have funneled money into the Obama campaign in an attempt to purchase him his Presidency. It appears that that is indeed what happened, however, Obama either became unpurchased once he was sworn in and is not obeying orders any more, or he’s so unbelievably incompetent he can’t even follow orders given by his masters to accomplish whatever they want accmplished.
For example, I would think that one thing such overseas MoneyPeople might want would be the overturn of the American election system, and therefore we have things like ACORN and the new Black Panthers and zombie voters. But given the Massachusetts results last week, the AMerican electoral system remains strong and very active, and there’s not a damned thing Obama or the overseas Money Creature can do about it.
I continue to think, too, that the other two people (besides Bush and Obama) who know what’s behind all of these mysteries are Bill and Hillary, and that watching what they do and say might be instructive. As a private citizen, could Bill, for example, be subpoena’d by Congress to give testimony, or would laws about husbands not being forced to testify against wives save him?
I just can’t figure out why, given what we already know, neither Bush or Obama have chosen to come forward with the whole story. Surely protecting China’s modesty or Saudi Arabia’s honor can’t be the whole story. It’s like all the conspiracy theories about UFO’s and the government not telling us about them because they don’t want to cause a panic. Yeah. Right. So the money run on Wall Street was caused by UFO’s.
I just wonder why we’re not -thru our intrepid press corps –asking some obvious questions of our elected officials.
“… the other two people (besides Bush and Obama) who know what’s behind all of these mysteries are Bill and Hillary …”
Dick Cheney is the one guy that can probably put it all together.
Thanks for the info mongo and the rest of you. One of our guys running google searches says that Markit has bought at least two other financial type companies in the last couple of years and is affiliated with several more, including the ones who are deeply involved with ….guess who? George Soros.
If I had my druthers I would take a couple of Markit’s founders and Georgie and give them personal demonstrations of waterboarding, until they understood it very well. In my dreams of course.
I continue to hope that someone reading BC that is either in the position or knows someone in the position to figure this out enough to get a Congressional or FBI investigation on this matter. But if my thinking is right, too many people have either been bought or threatened to get very far in any kind of investigation.
Papa Ray
#121 Papa Ray
I continue to hope that someone reading BC that is either in the position or knows someone in the position to figure this out enough to get a Congressional or FBI investigation on this matter.
I rather suspect that there is about as much hope of that happening in our polity as it currently exists; as there is of me winning the jackpot of a dozen state lotteries in any one given month. The final truth, if it is ever revealed, will only come after a long period of what my ancestors referred to as “interesting times”.
“Forensic” is an interesting word, with a number of meanings in a number of fields. I suspect that any truth revealed is going to involve using all aspects in a number of fields.
Subotai Bahadur
Subotai is right –a bit of forensic how-to for those interested:
http://www.deepcapture.com/category/4-the-crime-naked-shorts-other-insincere-ious/
(open opening paragraphs)
I will explain to you a financial crime that is occurring on Wall Street. It will not be difficult to understand. In fact, the crime’s simplicity will probably amaze you.
From three years of experience explaining this crime to many people, however, I know that there are two hurdles people face in understanding it. The first seems big but is, in fact, easy to surmount. The second is small, but is the one that trips people up. I have an easy way to get you over both hurdles, but to do so, I will ask you, esteemed reader, to make two promises to me. If you keep these promises you will overcome both hurdles.
Hurdle #1: Because it is a financial crime, people who are not too conversant with financial issues may shrink from technical-sounding jargon. The way over that hurdle is this:
1) I will start by giving a super-simplified explanation that any high school kid could follow. It will be accurate, but only metaphorically accurate.
2) Then I will give an explanation that is literally accurate, but is still somewhat simplified, and uses just a little jargon.
3) Next I will give an explanation that is literally accurate, and includes technical jargon.
4) Last, I will provide links to numerous articles, news reports, interviews, and explanations that have appeared in academic papers and the financial media, for those who want to bury themselves in the technical details.
In sum, I will start with simplified explanation, then move through the explanation again and again, getting more accurate with each pass, but also, more technical.
Promise #1: Please make the first promise to yourself that you will not plough through this material until it defeats you. Instead, start by reading the first, metaphorical explanation and, if you understand to your own satisfaction, stop. If you are not sure you understand or remain unconvinced, read through the second, literal-but-simple explanation. If you get it then, stop. If you still are not sure you get it or remain unconvinced, read on through the fuller literal explanation, etc. etc. That is, promise that you will not wade through this material until it leaves you defeated and unconvinced. Instead, just read as far as you need to before you feel you get it, then feel free to bail out.
Hurdle #2: I have discovered that, given the right explanation, anyone can understand this crime. The second hurdle, however, is that when people start to understand it, their minds react as follows: “No way. No way. There’s no way that could be happening in our country. No way.”
Promise #2: Please make a second promise to yourself. That is, when you reach the point where your mind is reacting this way, you’ll go back and read Promise #1.
(close opening paragraphs, read more @ link)
108. JMH: Dubya also -promised- during his campaign that he would -not- sign Campaign Finance Reform and then he did.
At the risk of sounding like a simpleton, I say you should be able to say or endorse anything you want. But you should also have to live with the consequences resulting from your saying, including the ostracism of people upset or offended by what you said. The proscription in the Constitution is against government, not me or other individuals (or groups of individuals).
This is not to say that I can, with impunity, punch someone in the mouth for advocating something I abhor. But I think the consequences part gets ignored in the arguments over freedom of speech. And that, to me, is the crux of the matter.
Just my two cents.
Does this SCOTUS decision mean that we are kinda sorta safe from a simple murder-by-fiat of “conservative talk radio” by the FCC??????
Is it no longer allowed for the bully in the White House to stifle dissent by invoking the ironically-mis-named “Fairness Doctrine???”
MF/126; the Dems have an awful lot to lose from a real fairness doctrine. Just think –balance throughout the entire State media ? MSNBC to NYT to NPR and points between?
#126 Mad Fiddler and #128 Mongo
May I suggest that the sense of relief be withheld for a while. First, the “Fairness Doctrine” as we have had decades of practical examples to observe, means that any conservative expressions will be subject to legal threats regarding “lack of balance” and stations will simply stop allowing any conservative views to be aired. We have seen that happen. You end up with a scope of discussion that has David Gergen, who has never approved of anything to the right of Hillary Clinton when she was in First Lady Moonbat mode; being the “conservative” balance against 3-5 members of the Politburo. So if it reimposed, the Fairness Doctrine will be anything but fair. And there will be no appeal to the spirit or letter of the law.
Second, if they reimpose it, the effects will be immediate. As noted above, it took 8 years to get an appeal of the McCain-Feingold “Political Speech for TWANLOC and No One Else” in front of the Supreme Court; that was without new standard tactic of automatically defining anyone who files the action as not having standing to file, and if it does get before the Court it depends on how loud the “Wise Latina” can scream, and the state of Anthony Kennedy’s hemmorhoids on the day of argument.
Never assume that this regime will follow the Law, Justice, or the Constitution. We may believe in such, but they do not; and our inability to accept that difference gives them tactical, operational, and strategic advantages.
Subotai Bahadur
i agree, Subotai –it will have to be killed in the crib –by tea-party type action. note that we are already indoctrinated to expect an agency coup rather than a congressional debate. Dunno what the current status of the debate is –the czar charged with moving it forward –Mark Reynolds –has been sorta low profile ever since GlennBeck’s staff dug up that videotape of his effusive bragging on Hugo Chavez’s media handling –and proceeded to blowtorch the admin with it.
***
Here’s an excellent roundup of First Amendment doings, by Bruce Kesler @ Maggie’s Farm:
http://maggiesfarm.anotherdotcom.com/index.php?url=archives/13447-Obama-BS-Vs.-Free-Speech.html&serendipitycsuccess=true
I found a piece which makes the point I was trying to make in this thread but did it much more clearly.
Under the language of this decision, foreign corporations can now spend money in American elections. And it is probably now unconstitutional to restrict foreign nationals from spending money personally.
Now most probably won’t like that outcome, and maybe the Court would be open to new laws that restrict this to some extent. But it will be difficult to craft a constitutional exception.
“The ruling affirms that corporations, like individuals, have a free-speech right to spend unlimited amounts from their general treasuries on ad campaigns that support or oppose political candidates. It’s true that foreign nationals are currently prohibited by law from making independent expenditures in U.S. elections. But that prohibition has little teeth. According to experts, it doesn’t apply to foreign-owned corporations that incorporate in the U.S., or have U.S. subsidiaries — meaning most foreign multinationals likely aren’t covered. So there’s “essentially no difference” between domestic and foreign corporations in terms of their ability to pump money into U.S. elections, says Lisa Gilbert of U.S. PIRG — a view backed by several other advocates of increased regulation.
And even if the definition of a foreign corporation were interpreted more broadly, the logic of the ruling suggests the ban may now be unconstitutional anyway. In ruling for the majority, Justice Kennedy wrote that the court’s decision did not address the issue of foreign actors — implying that the ban would remain in place. But as Justice Stevens pointed out in his dissent, the vision of free speech that the court has embraced — and the notion that corporations should be treated as individuals — could make it very difficult to support singling out foreign corporations for special restrictions. “The sweeping freedom of speech rhetoric would have applicability to foreigners,” says Edward Foley, an election-law expert at Ohio State University, who thinks the court has sent “mixed signals” on the question.”
http://tinyurl.com/yelx8g5
wws,
Thank you. Not saying I am convinced at this point but you have definitely given me something to study. At first glance it does look like serious legislators should stop playing tail chasing games for Obama and instead spend their time going over this and plugging any holes in the dike.
o/t but a keeper –for the charts –
http://nooilforpacifists.blogspot.com/2010/01/charts-of-day_25.html