Holding the Bag
The House and Senate were rushing new regulation of the finance industry to get it ready for President Obama’s signature. The bill was touted as a comprehensive guarantee against another financial crisis, but as of this writing, nobody was even sure what it would finally contain. Elements of the 2,000 page bill was being negotiated literally in the hallways.
A panel of 43 lawmakers spent two weeks reconciling differences between a bill that passed the House in December and the Senate in May. They concluded their negotiations along party lines at a little after 5 a.m. ET in a Capitol Hill conference room marked by tension, levity and exhaustion. …
Major components of the bill, including the derivatives provisions, were negotiated in the hallway of the Dirksen Senate Office Building as the clock neared midnight. At one point, after hearing of an offer from Senate Democrats, Rep. Melissa Bean (D., Ill.) exclaimed: “Are you flipping kidding me? Are you flipping kidding me?” …
“My guess is there are three unintended consequences on every page of this bill,” Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R., Texas) said of the nearly 2,000-page bill.
It is so complex that the Democratic Chairman of the Senate Banking committee Christopher J. Dodd said “no one will know until this is actually in place how it works. But we believe we’ve done something that has been needed for a long time. It took a crisis to bring us to the point where we could actually get this job done.” Some legislators across the aisle thought it would make things worse.
“This legislation is a failure on both counts,” Sen. Judd Gregg (R-NH) said in a statement that denounced the compromise as failing to address “shoddy underwriting practices” or problems with the government-sponsored entities Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. “It will not encourage much-needed stability and confidence in our financial markets. It will not significantly reduce systemic risk in our financial sector.”
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, those government sponsored corporations whose operations were suspected of being one of the major causes of the subprime crisis were excluded from the coverage of the bill. Forbes wrote that “it left for later any restructuring of the government-related mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Time and again, Republicans tried to shift the debate to the mortgage purchasing firms, to no avail.” But while Fanny and Freddie were absent from it, lots of little bits and pieces were stewing in it. New fees and regulations for businesses as disparate as check cashers and auto dealers were in the corners of the proposal.
In a blow to Obama, the consumer protection agency would not regulate auto dealers, even though they assemble loans for millions of car buyers. Payday lenders and check cashers would be regulated, but enforcement would be left to states or the Federal Trade Commission.
To pay for the costs of the bill, negotiators agreed to assess a fee on banks with assets of more than $50 billion and hedge funds of more than $10 billion in assets to raise $19 billion over 10 years.
But the centerpiece of the bill is supposed to be a tighter regulation of banks. One of the major elements of the legislation was a proposal to force banks to divest themselves of risky trades, marking the return of the so-called “Volcker Rule”. But Joshua Brown writing in the Christian Science Monitor argues most of the restrictions were for show; that loopholes ensured it is Volcker only in name.
Wall Street wins this round. The “teeth” of the Volcker Rule have been kicked in and there are enough holes elsewhere for White & Case to exploit on behalf of their clientele til the cows come home. The Dems unanimously voted for it. Interestingly, Republicans all voted against it. They didn’t think the final version was strict enough or that it did enough to prevent Too Big To Fail. … There will be some limitation to what large banks can do on a proprietary basis, but they will still be de facto giant hedge funds, albeit hedge funds with higher capital reserve requirements.
Since the central goal of the bill was to manage risk one might ask, ‘where does the risk go?’ Public policy analysts will have to spend hours is figuring out who ultimately holds what in the 2,000 page bill. Financial risk cannot be legislated away. Like energy, once in existence risk cannot be destroyed. It can only be moved around; assumed by someone. When it assumed for a fee the risk transfer is called insurance. When it is assumed by the taxpayer the result is something like Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. Yet public or private the it remains in the system for so long as the transactions which gave rise to it are allowed. It is the distribution of risks that is affected by the bill. In that sense the spin-offs on derivatives trading mandated by Blanche Lincoln do not reduce total risk within the system. They simply prohibit banks from assuming it, assuming they do not simply reallow under other color through loopholes. Shara Tibken at the Wall Street Journal reports that that banks are expected to adapt happily now that the obligatory theatrics are over.
“The banks can get around this stuff,” Rochdale Securities analyst Dick Bove said, adding they can raise prices on the products they sell, as well as create separate entities and move them offshore. “Banks are not going to suffer here.”
He added that bank stocks are likely to rally over the next couple of weeks as people turn more positive on the sector.
“The industry has been subjected to 18 months of vilification by the press, Congress and everyone else, but that will now stop,” Bove said. “Not only will it stop, but now the government has to go out and support the industry because they said they fixed it.”
“Fix” in this context is a word with a slightly ambiguous meaning because if not even Chris Dodd can say for sure how things will work until the switch is thrown it is to some extent a matter of wait and see. But the risks remains, both inherently and because a newly redesigned complex system will give rise to behavior that nobody has seen before. Some very simple things, like a cornstarch and water behave very differently under different speeds and conditions. The financial system is far, far more complicated and can be expected to throw up a surprise. Now, with the “fix” in, either all our worries are temporarily over or the next financial crisis has just been designed.
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Smells like EU-style to me.
Wretchard:
Wisely, you write:
Financial risk cannot be legislated away. Like energy, once in existence risk cannot be destroyed. It can only be moved around; assumed by someone. When it assumed for a fee the risk transfer is called insurance. When it is assumed by the taxpayer the result is something like Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae…
Here you are of course making an explicit reference to the First Law of Thermodynamics. But I wonder whether our legislators, and the bankers and speculators who are the real power here, aren’t hoping, without quite realizing it, that a sort of Second Law is operative…
dS/T > 0
…that is, that there is a kind of entropy in risk, and that if you just spread it around, by financial means (such as derivatives) and legislated means (like Freddie and Fannie), well, with enough of that going on, the risk just sort of dissipates in a kind of innocent heat death and can’t hurt anybody.
We saw how well that worked out in the last collapse.
Jamie Irons
Just another example of how economically, morally, spiritually, ideologically, legally, and in wisdom the Democrats have become bankrupt.
The “mad ducks” don’t seem to realize that they will not be “safe” after December 2010.
It is telling that even safe district Pelosi is busy building up a legal defense fund.
How can anything good come out of a 43 person panel? Group of monkeys with a type writer?
At some point, the extent of bank regulation is so great that the banks have been nationalized in all but name.
Another “you have to pass it to see whats in it” and “if it will work bill”…Great. So “stocks will rally” because “the banks are not going to suffer” just the taxpayer and the consumer. Wonderful.
Why don’t they just pass it in pieces, no more than 100 pages at a time, and then maybe it would be comprehensible, to them, to us, to the banks.
Omitting Freddie and Fannie is a huge political mistake, even if I think and agree that the real financial sins have been elsewhere.
If it’s 2000 pages long, I’m against it on principle, but I would probably back some very severe limits on “banks” as long as they have federal backing. Bring back Glass-Steagall. And claw back $100b from Wall Street.
2,000 pages?
That’s all I need to know to render a verdict: This bill will be a disaster.
It is so complex that the Democratic Chairman of the Senate Banking committee Christopher J. Dodd said “no one will know until this is actually in place how it works. But we believe we’ve done something that has been needed for a long time. It took a crisis to bring us to the point where we could actually get this job done.” Some legislators across the aisle thought it would make things worse.
Goog God in Heaven, where have we heard that before?
Oh, right . . . .
Karl Denninger on Wednesday:
“Quantitative Easing”, “Easy Money”, “Zero down mortgages” and all the rest – it is all a scam designed to impoverish you by stripping you of every asset you have now and as much of your future earnings as they can get you to sign away.
Housing, education, consumer credit, all of it. A scam. Every bit of it. Top to bottom.
The entire intent of these “programs” has been and is an attempt to get you to spend money you don’t have and can’t acquire. The Government has built it’s entire “empire” over the last 20 years on the premise that it can continue to borrow more and more money, without any hope of ever being able to pay any of it back.
This was 3-4% of GDP, and is now 11-12% of GDP. It has been the latter now for more than two and a half years. It was mathematically impossible to continue at the former rate and obviously is impossible to continue at a rate three times the 2003-2007 borrowing pace.
We are in a Depression now and have been since 2008. A Depression is defined as a 10% contraction in GDP. But for the government borrowing 11% of GDP and spending it, GDP would have contract by at least the same amount borrowed and spent.
[snip]
At some point it is inevitable that we will run out of the ability to continue to compound debt upon debt.
This has basically been his message for several years. I don’t know enough economics to decide whether he’s right, but I’m beginning to worry.
Jamie Irons
This legislation needs to be challanged by contitutional lawyers. It intrusively puts the governement deeper into citizens lives/bank accounts and will certainly have many unintended consequences. Freddi and Fannie being untouched by this 2000 page atrocity shows how clearly the socialistas are in charge of the hen house with the intent to punish free market capitalism.The socialists will gain nearly complete control of all aspects of finance, credit and trading with government agents sniffing through almost every credit transaction. Big Brother is Watching You!
Re # 7. Josh
“Omitting Freddie and Fannie is a huge political mistake.”
It is NOT a mistake, it’s a feature.
Matresses should now be made with special compartments for cash, gold, and diamonds, and then people should hide that stuff in their walls instead.
My brother wisely points out that this approach is the Democrats’ attempt avoid scrutiny as they enact laws they would otherwise be required CONSTITIONALLY to put up to individual votes.
They already did this with the Alleged Health Care Bill, which has been shown to include scores of illegal, contradictory, unconstitutional, and merely intolerably abusive clauses, all of which were fobbed off on the public by a Democrat-dominated legislature that has absolutely abandoned any pretense of giving a crap about its constituents.
We would be just as unselfishly governed by the inmates of the correction systems of the several states.
Actually, maybe better.
Come to think of it, the Democrats have NO PROBLEM WHATSOEVER retaining and defending a sitting Democrat charged or even convicted of crimes that would send any of us peons to a few decades in prison.
Why not just “cut to the chase” and appoint a selection of residents of penitentiaries. Not those puny “guests of the county” in the pokey for a while for public drunkenness, vagrancy or generally leading an untidy life; I mean the guys who have made a commitment to planning and executing informal currency transfers.
I know it sounds like a Swiftian “tongue-in-cheek” proposal, but as more I think of it, so more I conclude that we couldn’t possibly be any worse off than we are now, with the current population of ravenous thieves and perverts running things.
There’s an excellent reason for these multi-thousand-page bills by this excruciatingly Democratic Congress. The Democrats are the party of the trial lawyers. These deliberately chaotic bills are nothing but full-employment shakedowns of the taxpayers in favor of trial lawyers.
Tar and feathers.
Jamie @ 10
It is actually quite simple.
We have a debt based economy. All new “money” is borrowed into existence. In order to pay the interest on that new money, more money must be borrowed into existence. The debt MUST grow in order to sustain this system. The key is to entice people into borrowing more to keep the system going a little longer.
If people refuse to go farther into debt the system collapses. They people must not be allowed to understand the system.
BTW – in a debt based system if you pay off your debt “money” is destroyed. This must not happen if the system is to continue.
So, Langley, that means that anyone trying to buck the system – refusing to go along with the program – is a danger to the entire community.
One thinks of times of dire shortages, disaster, famine, etc., in which hoarding was routinely punished by the authorities via execution “pour encourager les autres.”
Ya gotta love the irony of that phrase…
So we can foresee a time when someone who refuses to borrow and commit to a lifetime of mushrooming debt will be dragged through the streets to be shot by a firing squad while children throw rotten fruit and the crowd chants and swills their rotgut.
“Do it for the Children!” murmurs the friendly face on the Wall-size TV screen… “Running from your civic obligation to accept debt is the same as hoarding your individual finances!“
Is Tocque deceased?
I was incommunicado for a while during the spring, on accounta academic crunch.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/06/25/petraeus-modify-afghanistan-rules-engagement-source-says/
hmmm. wait and see.
Mad
The advertisements after the September 11th attacks DID encourage people to buy (borrow) for the good of the economy. The FED governor from Texas (Teeter SP?) said “it will be alright if we all hold hands and buy an SUV.”
Bernecky has suggested negative interest rates (taxes) on bank deposits to discourage savings and speed up the velocity of money.
These people will do anything to stay in power a little longer.
My mother’s a Rothschild and I’m here to say
That thanks to the Congress and Dems
There’s now piles of money with which I can play
And keep wife in gold and in gems
I own lots of banks and I love this new law
It quiets the mob in the streets
They think it is tough but that’s not what I saw
I’ve read it and it’s full of sweets
Sweets for the bankers and leveragers and such
We carry on much as before
With all of the stuff that once got us in dutch
But Congress now put in a floor
So nothing can harm us if we make mistake
And think it’s a bull not a bear
We lose not a cent for the Congress doth spake
We merrily dance without care
Yes Christopher Dodd is a hero to us
We’re now on the Fed gravy train
My only concern is once under the bus
What happens when it starts to rain
The production of 1,000 page plus bills, unread by the legislators, and in part unwritten at their enactment, will be remembered as the Democrats contribution to American constitutional practice. For people who were entranced in school by the legerdemain used to find regulatory power in the penumbra of the 14th Amendment or the Commerce Clause the pattern of sloppiness of construction and opportunities for administrative or judicial abuse are not a bug but a feature.
Everything is just fine now. Everyone can go back to their telly…
The problem I have always had with “system reform” is that the A-team of the financial world is pretty much never in government, almost assuredly not below the Presidential appointment level. This has a lot to do with relative compensation for the most innovative and bright, the human inclination to beat systems rather than construct them, and probably the culture of the private sector versus the culture of the government. This is not the say that the best and brightest never end up in government, the military has some astonishingly bright people but that’s because there is no real private sector competition for most military-minded folks. In the finance world, the computing power, the financial leverage and the freedom to maneuver are all in the private sector. Given those advantages, that’s where I would predict the smartest of the bunch would end up.
Unfortunately, the A-team already blew up the system. It is possible that someone prone to risk aversion, evidenced by their desire for a lifetime government job and a pension rather than the dizzying eccentricities of a life in the markets, might correct the worst gyrations of the previous financial regulation system. But it is far more likely that the B-team making the rules in Congress, for an industry they neither participate in nor grasp well enough to have anticipated the last round of exotic derivatives and credit-default system, are well below the competence necessary for the task. The international bankers who understand their own industry contributed to the 2007-8 implosion by the Basel II Accords and the favorable treatment of mortgage-backed securities. I’m sorry, but what chance does does Congress really have? Do you call a master carpenter to assist in the OR when the best team of surgeons is in over their collective head?
This FSR package is allegedly a better safety net, which is still the wrong approach. Remove the net, and pull the paddy wagon up to the front of the granite-and-glass palaces of the financial giants when somebody screws up. Either they get blown out, or they go to jail. The new system will be gamed like all past systems, because that’s what people smarter than the people who make the system do. It’s a lot harder to game federal prison, and so far nobody has been convicted for fraud in the last round of malfeasance. Fewer golden parachutes and more iron shackles is a program I can believe in.
It would be neat if the House would, you know, make a budget and do the thing the Constitution requires them to do rather than all the other things they should be doing. In ten years we’ll be right back here, cursing Chris Dodd and his 2000-page comprehensive monstrosity just like we’re doing now, only with better knowledge of the rank stupidity and favoritism included in this fetid piece of excrement. It’s clear that we are living in a post-rational world when the answer to the failure of regulation is more regulation.
This bill legalizes prostitution. The whores voted for the bill and now we know their price. Yes the NRA too.
What Darren said @ 25.
Congressional democratic legislation these days is like watching children playing with chain saws, unlikely to accomplish anything good, extremely likely to hack off limbs and kill bystanders and participants alike. And a lot of trees die in the process.
Y’know, it’s the natural scheme of things, for democrats to come in and clean up the messes republicans make, and then republicans come in and clean up the messes that the democrats make.
the problem is, that it was Bush and the republicans who broke the zillion-dollar barrier when the fincial meltdown hit on their watch (whose fault it was – everyone’s, OK?). and the democrats were ill-prepared to clean up that kind of mess, too much spending, too loosely controlled?
so now, instead of offsetting, balanced systems we have the worst of both worlds, democrats now free to spend zillions of dollars on whatever they dream up, and addressing the “loosely controlled” issue by passing 2,000 pages of legislation that puts all the “controls” at the whim of some unelected czar and a bunch of GS-11′s.
We may have to nuke this gusher to stop the flow.
Sham & Scam is the appropriate title for this bill.
Most of the bill is stuffed with exemptions such that the big banks can dance right through and conduct business as usual.
With every passing hour America is descending into Central Planning.
BTW, the Fed keeps running up the flag pole notions of massive money printing — which will be ducted towards big finance.
Crippling the finances of the middle class causes the real estate market to implode. The consequential deflation is unchecked.
Prices paid for imports are going to turn upward. Only the euro panic is hiding this pressure.
Who writes these 2,000 page monstrosities that no one seems to understand? Why do they always seem to come out to 2,000 pages?
This ramming through massive, multi-part legislation that no one, really NO ONE, understands much less read has got to spot. This is legislative malpractice in the worst form.
blert, the fed has already printed what, three trillion, in the last two years, not even counting the deficit?
where do you hear these rumors of more printing? of course the fed and treasury were hoping and expecting inflation by now, from the stimulus bills and borrowing. hasn’t happened. they *need* inflation to monetize the mortgage debts – all they need is inflation ALONG WITH LOW INTEREST RATES. they think they can do that. I’m not so sure. it will also kill anyone (like me) with too much cash in savings. and when inflation starts, since investments aren’t indexed, even if investments keep up, cashing them in will be a HUGE tax burden on zero real gains. but as you say, instead, we have net deflation, if you count real-estate.
I’ve thought for twenty years the dollar was about to tank in relation to Europe or Japan, now China. So far, I’ve been wrong every time.
Josh @ 31
The Federal Reserve Bank (Fed) does not print money.
The Office of Engraving (a part of the federal government) prints money.
The Fed creates money out of thin air and buys stuff (bonds etc.) from the federal government.
Thus “money” comes into the system and the Fed and the feds benefit as the people are left with the bill.
–the eek!onomics of wealth redistribulation is mighty conplicated!
The Democrats and Republicans, their egos out of control, their brains gerrymandered into believing they and only they can define the nations path (we are responsible for this not them!) continue to play with themselves as our “Republic” suffers.
With each passing day more and more of we citizens are hearing the voices gathering in the wilderness of the vast American landscape and their clarion calls are waking us up. They say put down our remotes, shut off the cable, toss our collective beers, and come to the town hall, your senators office, your representatives fund raiser, or the “Tea Party”.
With each passing day more of us are coming to realize it makes no difference from what political point of view or socio economic niche we currently reside in, unless we stop spending, cut back, curtail, repeal and remove vast swaths of rules. regulations, policies and procedures put in place over the last 20 year by both political parties – our days-and more importantly those of our progeny in a free, opportunity laden society will be gone.
We, the three generations standing up and on call now have placed before us through our own lack of attention to detail a clear choice as to our future wellbeing. Do we want a society devoted to equality or one devoted to opportunity, you can’t have both! A society where the individual and his responsibilities to himself and his family trump government is the one we must look to for a prosperous free and open future. If we choose responsibility first! for all of us then our rights are insured by all of us. My vote is for responsibility.
Redball “6″
Like I told ya’ll months ago. Get your money out of the banks and if you don’t want to hide it yourself, put it in a Credit Union.
They are safe…for now..
REDBALL6 Righteous words and true. Words others and myself have been shouting for months. But it seems everyone is too busy with reality TV and their own little bubble of a world to hear us.
Too bad, so sad, wish they would have listened.
Papa Ray
PhilG @ 30: why are these monstrosities 2K pages long? Simple math, my friend. 435 legislators, each needing at least 5 pages of personalized pork.
When can we pass another amendment to the Constitution that says Congress will repeal one law for each new law it passes, and no new law can be more than one page long?
R6/34; Do we want a society devoted to equality or one devoted to opportunity, you can’t have both!
That needs to be a Tea Party ‘teaching slogan’ –
“Can’t we have both?”
Yes, and we shall, but not on this earth.
Well, you know what they say in DC:
“You don’t want to watch sausage and laws being made……”
“But there’s always room for Jello.”
“And making laws in DC is like trying to nail Jello to a wall.”
Every bill removes freedom, these 2000 page behind closed doors bills take it away quickly. Soon it will be the Government exterminating the Infidels.
Government: (n) The form Satan takes in order to devour us during our short journey between the two Eternities.
Best Mark Steyn, best summary of Obasmus, to date.
Applies to this here financial issue, as well as health, as well as Afghanistan.
The greater the pressure, the smaller Obasmus gets.
BUT remember folks, it ain’t just him, it’s the Congressional democrats, and the party, and the electorate, too.
But this one is a keeper, IMHO.
–
http://www.ocregister.com/opinion/obama-255034-one-president.html
Learning the rules of an unengaged president
By MARK STEYN
2010-06-25 10:43:51
Stanley McChrystal is a liberal who voted for Obama and banned Fox News from his HQ TV. Which may at least partly explain how he became the first U.S. general to be lost in combat while giving an interview to Rolling Stone: They’ll be studying that one in war colleges around the world for decades.
…
Seventeen friendly nations with great expertise in the field have offered their own skimmers; the Dutch volunteered their “super-skimmers”: Obama turned them all down. Raising the problem, Sen. Lemieux found the president unengaged, and uninformed. “He doesn’t seem to know the situation about foreign skimmers and domestic skimmers,” reported the senator.
He doesn’t seem to know, and he doesn’t seem to care that he doesn’t know, and he doesn’t seem to care that he doesn’t care.
…
“You don’t want to watch sausage and laws being made……”
RWE:
Congress is no longer a sausage factory, but an intestinal tract. It no longer produces sausage, so we know what the new end product is, don’t we?
Langley @21
Yes. And the lackies too:
See Greg Mankiw’s argument for the negative rate and the rebutal at mises.org in 2009 (?)
We have seen the drumbeat of the seizure of the means of production by the state go on and on since January 2009. We have also seen our foreign policy functionally reversed, with our new enemies being those who have been our oldest allies, and our newest Paris Hiltonian “BFF’s” being the forces of totalitarianism, Islam, and anti-Semitism/anti-Christianity. Our economy has been deliberately trashed, with a recession that could be worked through by now being nurtured by the administration until it is on the edge of a full-blown depression. Indeed, once the elements of Taqqiya are removed from government statistics and they are quietly revised a quarter or so later to start to approach reality; we may already be there. GDP and Unemployment is especially subject to deliberate distortion, and this [Kuan Yin have mercy on us!] is officially the “Summer of Recovery” according to the regime.
There is a thread that one can follow, unless of course you are involved with the government controlled media or Academe.
It was the Democrats, who created and enshrined into law and regulatory procedure the concept that people who have no financial means to afford them under any circumstances, should be subsidized to buy their own homes. The risk was, with the oversight and approval of the Democrats in the regulatory agencies, packaged into investment instruments that were worthless but marketed worldwide by financial institutions that made up the bulk of the Democrats’ non-Union and non-Hollywood domestic donors. Goldman Sachs was a prime offender, and their personnel make up the bulk of Obama’s financial advisors.
The shortest path to getting out of economic collapse is to allow the fraud to be worked out of the economy. Our current economic policy has three legs:
a) Keep the financial bubble pumped up and keep the profits flowing to Obama’s donors at all costs out of the pockets of the taxpayer.
b) Stifle any thought of businesses expanding and hiring people by threats and actual increases in taxes and regulations on any productive efforts in the country. Simultaneously, do your best to ensure that energy and raw materials will NOT be available for any American commercial activity; both of which create an uncertainty about the future that paralyses economic activity.
Deliberately make sure that the country is constantly flooded with illegal cheap labor that crowds out any jobs that Americans could use to transition from their lost jobs to at least something with income to get them through hard times. Make sure that the illegal aliens are both functionally exempt from taxation and priority beneficiaries of government benefits at the expense of Americans to the point where government cannot afford to provide basic services for those legally here.
c) At every turn circumvent the established legal and financial process to seize private assets and convert entire industries from private endeavors operating to provide goods and services at a profit, to enterprises operating under the political control of the government; enhancing the power of the government and rewarding supporters of the regime.
There are more unaccountable “Czars” operating at this moment without any oversight by law or the Constitution than there were during the entire Romanoff Dynasty. The seizure of Chrysler and GM was done in contravention of over a century of established commercial and civil law concerning bankruptcy. Secured creditors lost everything, stockholders [owners] lost everything, and the government was able to seize those assets and take part of them and give the rest as a gift to the Unions, who in turn contribute vast sums of cash … to the regime. The power and funds of the government are then used illegally to attack those firms who are competition to government control of the market.
There is no legal or Constitutional authority for the Federal government to do any of this. This regime operates, not on the concept that the government is limited to doing only those things that the law and Constitution authorizes; but rather the concept that the government can do anything that it is not explicitly forbidden to do, and that such bans on activities can be ignored if they want to.
I am not a fan of British Petroleum/BP Corp. Contacts that I have in the oil industry, and those who are specialists in the field of offshore drilling whose work I have read are unanimous that BP is a slapdash organization that ignores safety and technical precautions as a matter of course. I have absolutely no problem with them being forced to pay for all the damages they have caused with the ongoing Macondo Field oil spill. That is up to and including the full value of all of their assets worldwide. And if criminal activity can be proved [and I think that it easily can] I have no personal problem with going William Wallace on the guilty, although Constitutionally that is unfortunately not possible.
That said, the fault does not all lie with BP. BP [a foreign corporation, incidentally] contributed more to the Obama campaign than they had ever contributed to any political campaign in their company’s history. Also, Obama’s White House Chief of Staff, Rahm Emmanual, lived for a time in free housing provided by BP.
The Macondo site was approved and drilled under the Obama administration. In Congressional testimony, the Mineral Management Services official who approved the process and permit admitted that he had not seen, demanded, or approved the mandated certified proof of the ability of BP to cut off the flow of oil in an emergency. Indeed, he testified that he had no idea that there was such a requirement in EPA/Department of the Interior regulations and that they had existed for decades.
The Macondo site, and the drilling vessel DEEPWATER HORIZON were given an award for safety and good practices by the MMS during the Obama administration. The problem is, that apparently that was awarded without benefit of the inspections of the site and its practices, or the records audit necessary to justify the award. You don’t need such details, apparently, when you have paid off the bosses of the people who are supposed to be regulating you.
Recent reports are that the first signs of severe trouble and leakage “down hole” were in February. If the Federal regulators were doing their job [remember, this whole thing was on the Democrats' watch] this could possibly have been shut down before they continued drilling through a compromised hole.
With all of that taken into account, there is still a huge problem. Buraq Hussein Obama personally extorted a $20 Billion dollar escrow account from BP, supposedly for damages. There is no doubt that this is but a drop in the bucket. The escrow account is administered by an Obama appointee, apparently not under the control of the normal Federal accounting process and Congressional oversight.
One has to ask, under what statutory or Constitutional authority does Buraq Obama have the power to a) extort $20 Billion from a private entity, and b) have his personal appointee administer it? If Congress had passed a law to that effect, or a court had so ruled; there would be no problem. Let the lawyers fight it out. But under what legal and Constitutional presidential power did he do this act? I know of no power other than under a declared state of national emergency that could allow this. And if we are being governed under emergency power decrees, without formal declaration of such; and the legal challenges that the Congress and the Courts are afforded under the statutes covering national emergencies are not being allowed …. Fiat justitia, ruat caelum.
As an additional touch of irony, Democrat Congressman Bart Stupak, Obama’s puppet on the seizure of the Health Care system, has suggested that the $20 Billion be diverted to funding that seizure. So the people of the Gulf may not get relief from BP’s acts because the money will have been stolen … by the government.
If investors and companies cannot depend on either the stability of the rule of law, or on regulations being applied fairly and equitably across all competitors; they are either not going to invest, create jobs, and create goods and services in this country; or they are going to join in the crooked system out of self preservation. In matters of the economy and business, we are now operating on a system of Baksheesh or Guanxi. What matters is who you pay off and how much, not the legal requirements.
It is not only a matter of business, although corruption, or rational fear of corruption is now endemic in any business subject to government oversight. I offer the current trial of former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich where tapes of telephone conversations were recently played where the White House was negotiating the appointment of their choice of a Senator to replace Obama, and cabinet posts sold and $15 million dollars raised by Obama supporters in the business and investment world would be given to Blagojevich.
One expects an outcome of the Blagojevich trial that mirrors one during the Democrat reign in Tammany Hall in New York; where a man was found guilty of paying a bribe to a politician, while the politician was found not guilty of receiving the bribe. In this case the White House will be found not guilty of a crime in trying to buy a Federal office, while Blagojevich will be found guilty of selling it. At least as long as this regime is in power.
We do not know if there will be elections in November. As is a constant subject of conversation here, the Democrats are acting as if they are guaranteed power in perpetuity regardless of anything called an election. Or the election may well already be rigged.
What I would like to offer is a basis for discussion of what should be done in the <50% chance that free, fair, and honest elections are held. In such a case, it seems likely that the House will change hands. It is possible, but far less likely, that the Senate will change hands. While the Institutional leadership of the Republican Party will be lusting for a return to their get-along-go-along free spending ways of pre-2006; one can hope that there would be a sufficient segment of the next Congress which is composed of Patriots. There is, by the way, no reasonable hope that a veto-proof majority will be gained. That needs to be factored in.
So let us assume that the Democrats lose the House, and are hanging on by a thread in the Senate. Senate Rules are more or less inflexible. Ah, but the House.
Each Congress organizes itself at the beginning. Each Speaker determines the rights, privileges, and powers of the Minority party; allotting numbers of Minority committee seats, staffing, offices, and especially whether they will be allowed to take part in the committee mark-ups of the bills. When Democrats are in control, Republicans are heavily restricted; and currently are not allowed to be present when bills are marked up in committee, or to offer amendments. When the Republicans took over in 1995, they offered a much larger role to the Democrats than a Minority had ever been allowed in the name of comity. Democrats were just barely junior partners in legislation. When the Democrats took over in 2007, Nancy Pelosi re-imposed the restrictions on the Minority, and even made them worse.
I. When the House of Representatives reorganizes itself upon the swearing in of the new Congress; the Republican Speaker of the House shall impose the exact same limitations on the power and function of the Democrat Minority as the Democrats are currently imposing on the Republicans; recognizing that the Democrats have offered neither comity, nor collegiality, nor equity in the conduct of the nation's business, and deserve the same treatment as they have offered. No input into marking up bills, no amendments, damned small staffs, and if possible offices somewhere in Chesapeake Bay.
II. The first bill offered and considered by the House in the new Congress should be something along the line of this:
With the exception of specific funding bills for which funds have already been appropriated and expended as of the date of the swearing in of this Congress, and with the exception of the appropriations bills for the maintenance of the structure of the United States government passed by the 111th Congress to operate the government during the fiscal year beginning October 2010, and with the exception of bills funding the operation of the United States Armed Forces; all legislation passed by the 111th Congress is hereby suspended pending review and final legislative action on possible acceptance, amendment or repeal. [Note that given the rules, that final action can be delayed until the end of the Session of Congress.]
III. The second bill, offered alongside the first, considered by the House should be along these lines:
The House shall create a Special Select Committee consisting of the Senior Members of all permanent House Committees; charged with reviewing in as timely a manner as possible all suspended legislation from the 111th Congress and recommending acceptance, repeal or amendments. Each recommendation will be forwarded to the appropriate permanent House Committee(s) for drafting and immediate action.
IV. The Republican Senate leadership will, as far as practicable, act to support the suspension and review process.
V. The leadership of the House will authorize investigations of specific criminal acts and ethical violations by government officials.
Will this cause all 9 of the Circles of Hades to break out in DC? Absolutely. Will the government controlled media have litters of kittens, rhinosceri, and hippogriffs? Absolutely. Will the White House veto everything it can? Surely. And we will not be able to over-ride. But so long as we are fighting the battle they will not be able to do worse to the country and we can push back. Will it draw the lines and put the enemy on the defensive? Best shot at it that I know of …. short of ruat caelum.
We are a functional modern Committee of Correspondence. I offer this as a proposed course of action for discussion and dissemination, including to Patriots and candidates; with the hope that there can be a significant overlap in the two groups.
Subotai Bahadur
Neil Cavuto, Fox News, “Where did you get your degree, a bakery school?”
Ron Blackwell, AFL-CIO Chief Economist, “You’re an a**hole.”
To be blogged under the title “Great Moments in Journalism.”
There seems to be a conceptual cross between money and currency.
Yes, the Bureau prints currency — the stuff in your wallet.
But, the Fed prints money — the electronic tabulations on its books.
It is the retail banks that determine how much currency they want on hand. The Fed picks it up from the Bureau and ships it over — adjusting their electronic tabulation accordingly.
———-
Obumbler is tripling down on market interference. With every distortion the national income drops. This shows up at a macro level with banks pulling back from commercial and retail lending — and the shrinkage of M3.
The national economy can pay down such private debts at about 4% per year without a mass contraction. We are seeing M3 drop at a 10% rate. This is a rate of contraction higher that of the Great Depression.
Summers & Co have the regime flooding the system with printed money and Federal largesse.
The ONLY true way out of our box is to promptly raise retirement ages. It is premature retirement — especially with public employees — that is crippling the budget.
Pension outlays are growing at a RAMPED exponential rate — a rate well above the growth of the population or the economy.
Obumbler is compounding the problem by deferring its recognition. On present trends, I expect that the public unions will defund all of their nominative constituencies in favor of themselves. This is already in Arnold’s submission to Sacramento.
At least FDR instituted a wage roll back for Federal employees on his watch.
I first tried to post this over an hour ago. I am used to sometimes it taking a few minutes for something to turn up after I hit “submit”, but I think that perhaps this time it did go awa’ w’ t’ cyber-fairies. If this turns up a second time, please bear with me, and Wretchard if you feel like taking the second copy down, please do so. If it does not turn up at all, perhaps our minders are watching.
—————————————————–
We have seen the drumbeat of the seizure of the means of production by the state go on and on since January 2009. We have also seen our foreign policy functionally reversed, with our new enemies being those who have been our oldest allies, and our newest Paris Hiltonian “BFF’s” being the forces of totalitarianism, Islam, and anti-Semitism/anti-Christianity. Our economy has been deliberately trashed, with a recession that could be worked through by now being nurtured by the administration until it is on the edge of a full-blown depression. Indeed, once the elements of Taqqiya are removed from government statistics and they are quietly revised a quarter or so later to start to approach reality; we may already be there. GDP and Unemployment is especially subject to deliberate distortion, and this [Kuan Yin have mercy on us!] is officially the “Summer of Recovery” according to the regime.
There is a thread that one can follow, unless of course you are involved with the government controlled media or Academe.
It was the Democrats, who created and enshrined into law and regulatory procedure the concept that people who have no financial means to afford them under any circumstances, should be subsidized to buy their own homes. The risk was, with the oversight and approval of the Democrats in the regulatory agencies, packaged into investment instruments that were worthless but marketed worldwide by financial institutions that made up the bulk of the Democrats’ non-Union and non-Hollywood domestic donors. Goldman Sachs was a prime offender, and their personnel make up the bulk of Obama’s financial advisors.
The shortest path to getting out of economic collapse is to allow the fraud to be worked out of the economy. Our current economic policy has three legs:
a) Keep the financial bubble pumped up and keep the profits flowing to Obama’s donors at all costs out of the pockets of the taxpayer.
b) Stifle any thought of businesses expanding and hiring people by threats and actual increases in taxes and regulations on any productive efforts in the country. Simultaneously, do your best to ensure that energy and raw materials will NOT be available for any American commercial activity; both of which create an uncertainty about the future that paralyses economic activity.
Deliberately make sure that the country is constantly flooded with illegal cheap labor that crowds out any jobs that Americans could use to transition from their lost jobs to at least something with income to get them through hard times. Make sure that the illegal aliens are both functionally exempt from taxation and priority beneficiaries of government benefits at the expense of Americans to the point where government cannot afford to provide basic services for those legally here.
c) At every turn circumvent the established legal and financial process to seize private assets and convert entire industries from private endeavors operating to provide goods and services at a profit, to enterprises operating under the political control of the government; enhancing the power of the government and rewarding supporters of the regime.
There are more unaccountable “Czars” operating at this moment without any oversight by law or the Constitution than there were during the entire Romanoff Dynasty. The seizure of Chrysler and GM was done in contravention of over a century of established commercial and civil law concerning bankruptcy. Secured creditors lost everything, stockholders [owners] lost everything, and the government was able to seize those assets and take part of them and give the rest as a gift to the Unions, who in turn contribute vast sums of cash … to the regime. The power and funds of the government are then used illegally to attack those firms who are competition to government control of the market.
There is no legal or Constitutional authority for the Federal government to do any of this. This regime operates, not on the concept that the government is limited to doing only those things that the law and Constitution authorizes; but rather the concept that the government can do anything that it is not explicitly forbidden to do, and that such bans on activities can be ignored if they want to.
I am not a fan of British Petroleum/BP Corp. Contacts that I have in the oil industry, and those who are specialists in the field of offshore drilling whose work I have read are unanimous that BP is a slapdash organization that ignores safety and technical precautions as a matter of course. I have absolutely no problem with them being forced to pay for all the damages they have caused with the ongoing Macondo Field oil spill. That is up to and including the full value of all of their assets worldwide. And if criminal activity can be proved [and I think that it easily can] I have no personal problem with going William Wallace on the guilty, although Constitutionally that is unfortunately not possible.
That said, the fault does not all lie with BP. BP [a foreign corporation, incidentally] contributed more to the Obama campaign than they had ever contributed to any political campaign in their company’s history. Also, Obama’s White House Chief of Staff, Rahm Emmanual, lived for a time in free housing provided by BP.
The Macondo site was approved and drilled under the Obama administration. In Congressional testimony, the Mineral Management Services official who approved the process and permit admitted that he had not seen, demanded, or approved the mandated certified proof of the ability of BP to cut off the flow of oil in an emergency. Indeed, he testified that he had no idea that there was such a requirement in EPA/Department of the Interior regulations and that they had existed for decades.
The Macondo site, and the drilling vessel DEEPWATER HORIZON were given an award for safety and good practices by the MMS during the Obama administration. The problem is, that apparently that was awarded without benefit of the inspections of the site and its practices, or the records audit necessary to justify the award. You don’t need such details, apparently, when you have paid off the bosses of the people who are supposed to be regulating you.
Recent reports are that the first signs of severe trouble and leakage “down hole” were in February. If the Federal regulators were doing their job [remember, this whole thing was on the Democrats' watch] this could possibly have been shut down before they continued drilling through a compromised hole.
With all of that taken into account, there is still a huge problem. Buraq Hussein Obama personally extorted a $20 Billion dollar escrow account from BP, supposedly for damages. There is no doubt that this is but a drop in the bucket. The escrow account is administered by an Obama appointee, apparently not under the control of the normal Federal accounting process and Congressional oversight.
One has to ask, under what statutory or Constitutional authority does Buraq Obama have the power to a) extort $20 Billion from a private entity, and b) have his personal appointee administer it? If Congress had passed a law to that effect, or a court had so ruled; there would be no problem. Let the lawyers fight it out. But under what legal and Constitutional presidential power did he do this act? I know of no power other than under a declared state of national emergency that could allow this. And if we are being governed under emergency power decrees, without formal declaration of such; and the legal challenges that the Congress and the Courts are afforded under the statutes covering national emergencies are not being allowed …. Fiat justitia, ruat caelum.
As an additional touch of irony, Democrat Congressman Bart Stupak, Obama’s puppet on the seizure of the Health Care system, has suggested that the $20 Billion be diverted to funding that seizure. So the people of the Gulf may not get relief from BP’s acts because the money will have been stolen … by the government.
If investors and companies cannot depend on either the stability of the rule of law, or on regulations being applied fairly and equitably across all competitors; they are either not going to invest, create jobs, and create goods and services in this country; or they are going to join in the crooked system out of self preservation. In matters of the economy and business, we are now operating on a system of Baksheesh or Guanxi. What matters is who you pay off and how much, not the legal requirements.
It is not only a matter of business, although corruption, or rational fear of corruption is now endemic in any business subject to government oversight. I offer the current trial of former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich where tapes of telephone conversations were recently played where the White House was negotiating the appointment of their choice of a Senator to replace Obama, and cabinet posts sold and $15 million dollars raised by Obama supporters in the business and investment world would be given to Blagojevich.
One expects an outcome of the Blagojevich trial that mirrors one during the Democrat reign in Tammany Hall in New York; where a man was found guilty of paying a bribe to a politician, while the politician was found not guilty of receiving the bribe. In this case the White House will be found not guilty of a crime in trying to buy a Federal office, while Blagojevich will be found guilty of selling it. At least as long as this regime is in power.
We do not know if there will be elections in November. As is a constant subject of conversation here, the Democrats are acting as if they are guaranteed power in perpetuity regardless of anything called an election. Or the election may well already be rigged.
What I would like to offer is a basis for discussion of what should be done in the <50% chance that free, fair, and honest elections are held. In such a case, it seems likely that the House will change hands. It is possible, but far less likely, that the Senate will change hands. While the Institutional leadership of the Republican Party will be lusting for a return to their get-along-go-along free spending ways of pre-2006; one can hope that there would be a sufficient segment of the next Congress which is composed of Patriots. There is, by the way, no reasonable hope that a veto-proof majority will be gained. That needs to be factored in.
So let us assume that the Democrats lose the House, and are hanging on by a thread in the Senate. Senate Rules are more or less inflexible. Ah, but the House.
Each Congress organizes itself at the beginning. Each Speaker determines the rights, privileges, and powers of the Minority party; allotting numbers of Minority committee seats, staffing, offices, and especially whether they will be allowed to take part in the committee mark-ups of the bills. When Democrats are in control, Republicans are heavily restricted; and currently are not allowed to be present when bills are marked up in committee, or to offer amendments. When the Republicans took over in 1995, they offered a much larger role to the Democrats than a Minority had ever been allowed in the name of comity. Democrats were just barely junior partners in legislation. When the Democrats took over in 2007, Nancy Pelosi re-imposed the restrictions on the Minority, and even made them worse.
I. When the House of Representatives reorganizes itself upon the swearing in of the new Congress; the Republican Speaker of the House shall impose the exact same limitations on the power and function of the Democrat Minority as the Democrats are currently imposing on the Republicans; recognizing that the Democrats have offered neither comity, nor collegiality, nor equity in the conduct of the nation's business, and deserve the same treatment as they have offered. No input into marking up bills, no amendments, damned small staffs, and if possible offices somewhere in Chesapeake Bay.
II. The first bill offered and considered by the House in the new Congress should be something along the line of this:
With the exception of specific funding bills for which funds have already been appropriated and expended as of the date of the swearing in of this Congress, and with the exception of the appropriations bills for the maintenance of the structure of the United States government passed by the 111th Congress to operate the government during the fiscal year beginning October 2010, and with the exception of bills funding the operation of the United States Armed Forces; all legislation passed by the 111th Congress is hereby suspended pending review and final legislative action on possible acceptance, amendment or repeal. [Note that given the rules, that final action can be delayed until the end of the Session of Congress.]
III. The second bill, offered alongside the first, considered by the House should be along these lines:
The House shall create a Special Select Committee consisting of the Senior Members of all permanent House Committees; charged with reviewing in as timely a manner as possible all suspended legislation from the 111th Congress and recommending acceptance, repeal or amendments. Each recommendation will be forwarded to the appropriate permanent House Committee(s) for drafting and immediate action.
IV. The Republican Senate leadership will, as far as practicable, act to support the suspension and review process.
V. The leadership of the House will authorize investigations of specific criminal acts and ethical violations by government officials.
Will this cause all 9 of the Circles of Hades to break out in DC? Absolutely. Will the government controlled media have litters of kittens, rhinosceri, and hippogriffs? Absolutely. Will the White House veto everything it can? Surely. And we will not be able to over-ride. But so long as we are fighting the battle they will not be able to do worse to the country and we can push back. Will it draw the lines and put the enemy on the defensive? Best shot at it that I know of …. short of ruat caelum.
We are a functional modern Committee of Correspondence. I offer this as a proposed course of action for discussion and dissemination, including to Patriots and candidates; with the hope that there can be a significant overlap in the two groups.
Subotai Bahadur
blert @ 45
Language is important.
The Fed creates electronic entries it calls money. These are transferred to the US government (and other entities) via the internet. (The US government prints a very small percentage of this money as FRNs) They are then transferred from these “first receivers” to entities further down the feeding chain. At every transactions point more “money” is created through increased acceptances of compound interest (debt).
I must disagree with you that cutting government pensions (something I favor) will save the system.
The creation of debt money and interest is the cause of the problem and is inherent in our current system.
What is money?
Remember when Greenspan could not answer that question?
http://www.goldensextant.com/commentary9.html#anchor252954
Here is how one might track it today.
http://trueslant.com/michaelpollaro/austrian-money-supply/
I haven’t read a word of this bill yet I can assure you it won’t accomplish any more then the half a dozen ‘reforms’ before it did. That is because the guys making and enforcing the laws are bureaucrats. Low paid bureaucrats. The guys finding loopholes make millions. So who do you think will win that one?
Meanwhile back to Deepwater Horizon (hereafter known as DWH),
The Federal government, a wholly owned and operated subsidiary of BP, refused skimmers from other OIL companies because those skimmers would have kept the OIL they skimmed up. Remember, BP is in the business of drilling holes and collecting the OIL that comes out of those holes. BP DID NOT spend billions to drill a hole, then plug it up. BP is not going to stand idle and allow some other OIL company to skimm off their OIL.
130 more days.
The problem with Rainbow Legislation, (everyone gets to throw in their favorite color and when it is finished, they all expect a pot of gold at the end of it), is that it winds up being a mirage, going nowhere, having no real beginning and no real end.
You can see it, but nobody can get their arms around it. And the pot of gold is a myth.
Worst of all, it doesn’t end up with any pretty colors…everything comes out the way all things come out of bloated committees.
Gray.
buddy larsen #40
Government: (n) The form Satan takes in order to devour us during our short journey between the two Eternities.
St. Augustine said in the City of God (the context is his discussion of the corruption of the late Roman Empire, which of course he saw firsthand) that government is one of God’s ways of punishing humans for sin.
And Ambrose Bierce, from The Devil’s Dictionary: “In our civilization, and under our republican form of government, intelligence is so highly honored that it is rewarded by exemption from the cares of office.”
We in the US seem to have traded in our Ruling Class for the Ruling Clueless. Gen. McChrystal votes for Obama? What’s with that? After Sen Obama votes for defeat in Iraq? Huh? Peggy Noonan and David Brooks endorsed him? They’re the Gaga Pundits.
Then we got all those folks who think Paul Krugman is a great economist (he won the Nobel Prize!), and who believe Al Gore — that sex crazed green toy poodle — is right on Global Warming (he won the Nobel Prize!) and, of course, supported Obama for President (before he won the Nobel Prize!). We can borrow, spend and tax our way to prosperity! Double down on the National Debt! Re-double the doubling — and no doubting!
There’s an article in the WSJ about the Business Roundtable. These Multinational CEO’s were supportive of the Democrats. When Rahm said, “You are either at the table, or on the menu!” these guys were happy to be at the table. ‘Cept they did not realize that you can be at the table and on the menu at the same time.
How to Serve U.S. Business. Good Lord, it’s a cook book! And we’s the blowfish.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704911704575327241599453032.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_MIDDLESecond
44, 45; the unions apparently just flat don’t give a flying frick at a rolling donut what the hell happens to the golden goose –or to the their own kids’ career prospects.
hdgreen @ 51: When Rahm said, “You are either at the table, or on the menu!” these guys were happy to be at the table. ‘Cept they did not realize that you can be at the table and on the menu at the same time.
’tis always thus, and they know, they know.
especially in fascist states, but always anyway, under the heading, “keep your friends close and your enemies closer”.
OK, this is the third try in between 4 and 5 hours to post this. I hit submit, and nothing is appearing on the site, even after time elapses, and logging offline and returning. I am beginning to believe that it was something I said.
——————————–
We have seen the drumbeat of the seizure of the means of production by the state go on and on since January 2009. We have also seen our foreign policy functionally reversed, with our new enemies being those who have been our oldest allies, and our newest Paris Hiltonian “BFF’s” being the forces of totalitarianism, Islam, and anti-Semitism/anti-Christianity. Our economy has been deliberately trashed, with a recession that could be worked through by now being nurtured by the administration until it is on the edge of a full-blown depression. Indeed, once the elements of Taqqiya are removed from government statistics and they are quietly revised a quarter or so later to start to approach reality; we may already be there. GDP and Unemployment is especially subject to deliberate distortion, and this [Kuan Yin have mercy on us!] is officially the “Summer of Recovery” according to the regime.
There is a thread that one can follow, unless of course you are involved with the government controlled media or Academe.
It was the Democrats, who created and enshrined into law and regulatory procedure the concept that people who have no financial means to afford them under any circumstances, should be subsidized to buy their own homes. The risk was, with the oversight and approval of the Democrats in the regulatory agencies, packaged into investment instruments that were worthless but marketed worldwide by financial institutions that made up the bulk of the Democrats’ non-Union and non-Hollywood domestic donors. Goldman Sachs was a prime offender, and their personnel make up the bulk of Obama’s financial advisors.
The shortest path to getting out of economic collapse is to allow the fraud to be worked out of the economy. Our current economic policy has three legs:
a) Keep the financial bubble pumped up and keep the profits flowing to Obama’s donors at all costs out of the pockets of the taxpayer.
b) Stifle any thought of businesses expanding and hiring people by threats and actual increases in taxes and regulations on any productive efforts in the country. Simultaneously, do your best to ensure that energy and raw materials will NOT be available for any American commercial activity; both of which create an uncertainty about the future that paralyses economic activity.
Deliberately make sure that the country is constantly flooded with illegal cheap labor that crowds out any jobs that Americans could use to transition from their lost jobs to at least something with income to get them through hard times. Make sure that the illegal aliens are both functionally exempt from taxation and priority beneficiaries of government benefits at the expense of Americans to the point where government cannot afford to provide basic services for those legally here.
c) At every turn circumvent the established legal and financial process to seize private assets and convert entire industries from private endeavors operating to provide goods and services at a profit, to enterprises operating under the political control of the government; enhancing the power of the government and rewarding supporters of the regime.
There are more unaccountable “Czars” operating at this moment without any oversight by law or the Constitution than there were during the entire Romanoff Dynasty. The seizure of Chrysler and GM was done in contravention of over a century of established commercial and civil law concerning bankruptcy. Secured creditors lost everything, stockholders [owners] lost everything, and the government was able to seize those assets and take part of them and give the rest as a gift to the Unions, who in turn contribute vast sums of cash … to the regime. The power and funds of the government are then used illegally to attack those firms who are competition to government control of the market.
There is no legal or Constitutional authority for the Federal government to do any of this. This regime operates, not on the concept that the government is limited to doing only those things that the law and Constitution authorizes; but rather the concept that the government can do anything that it is not explicitly forbidden to do, and that such bans on activities can be ignored if they want to.
I am not a fan of British Petroleum/BP Corp. Contacts that I have in the oil industry, and those who are specialists in the field of offshore drilling whose work I have read are unanimous that BP is a slapdash organization that ignores safety and technical precautions as a matter of course. I have absolutely no problem with them being forced to pay for all the damages they have caused with the ongoing Macondo Field oil spill. That is up to and including the full value of all of their assets worldwide. And if criminal activity can be proved [and I think that it easily can] I have no personal problem with going William Wallace on the guilty, although Constitutionally that is unfortunately not possible.
That said, the fault does not all lie with BP. BP [a foreign corporation, incidentally] contributed more to the Obama campaign than they had ever contributed to any political campaign in their company’s history. Also, Obama’s White House Chief of Staff, Rahm Emmanual, lived for a time in free housing provided by BP.
The Macondo site was approved and drilled under the Obama administration. In Congressional testimony, the Mineral Management Services official who approved the process and permit admitted that he had not seen, demanded, or approved the mandated certified proof of the ability of BP to cut off the flow of oil in an emergency. Indeed, he testified that he had no idea that there was such a requirement in EPA/Department of the Interior regulations and that they had existed for decades.
The Macondo site, and the drilling vessel DEEPWATER HORIZON were given an award for safety and good practices by the MMS during the Obama administration. The problem is, that apparently that was awarded without benefit of the inspections of the site and its practices, or the records audit necessary to justify the award. You don’t need such details, apparently, when you have paid off the bosses of the people who are supposed to be regulating you.
Recent reports are that the first signs of severe trouble and leakage “down hole” were in February. If the Federal regulators were doing their job [remember, this whole thing was on the Democrats' watch] this could possibly have been shut down before they continued drilling through a compromised hole.
With all of that taken into account, there is still a huge problem. Buraq Hussein Obama personally extorted a $20 Billion dollar escrow account from BP, supposedly for damages. There is no doubt that this is but a drop in the bucket. The escrow account is administered by an Obama appointee, apparently not under the control of the normal Federal accounting process and Congressional oversight.
One has to ask, under what statutory or Constitutional authority does Buraq Obama have the power to a) extort $20 Billion from a private entity, and b) have his personal appointee administer it? If Congress had passed a law to that effect, or a court had so ruled; there would be no problem. Let the lawyers fight it out. But under what legal and Constitutional presidential power did he do this act? I know of no power other than under a declared state of national emergency that could allow this. And if we are being governed under emergency power decrees, without formal declaration of such; and the legal challenges that the Congress and the Courts are afforded under the statutes covering national emergencies are not being allowed …. Fiat justitia, ruat caelum.
As an additional touch of irony, Democrat Congressman Bart Stupak, Obama’s puppet on the seizure of the Health Care system, has suggested that the $20 Billion be diverted to funding that seizure. So the people of the Gulf may not get relief from BP’s acts because the money will have been stolen … by the government.
If investors and companies cannot depend on either the stability of the rule of law, or on regulations being applied fairly and equitably across all competitors; they are either not going to invest, create jobs, and create goods and services in this country; or they are going to join in the crooked system out of self preservation. In matters of the economy and business, we are now operating on a system of Baksheesh or Guanxi. What matters is who you pay off and how much, not the legal requirements.
It is not only a matter of business, although corruption, or rational fear of corruption is now endemic in any business subject to government oversight. I offer the current trial of former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich where tapes of telephone conversations were recently played where the White House was negotiating the appointment of their choice of a Senator to replace Obama, and cabinet posts sold and $15 million dollars raised by Obama supporters in the business and investment world would be given to Blagojevich.
One expects an outcome of the Blagojevich trial that mirrors one during the Democrat reign in Tammany Hall in New York; where a man was found guilty of paying a bribe to a politician, while the politician was found not guilty of receiving the bribe. In this case the White House will be found not guilty of a crime in trying to buy a Federal office, while Blagojevich will be found guilty of selling it. At least as long as this regime is in power.
We do not know if there will be elections in November. As is a constant subject of conversation here, the Democrats are acting as if they are guaranteed power in perpetuity regardless of anything called an election. Or the election may well already be rigged.
What I would like to offer is a basis for discussion of what should be done in the <50% chance that free, fair, and honest elections are held. In such a case, it seems likely that the House will change hands. It is possible, but far less likely, that the Senate will change hands. While the Institutional leadership of the Republican Party will be lusting for a return to their get-along-go-along free spending ways of pre-2006; one can hope that there would be a sufficient segment of the next Congress which is composed of Patriots. There is, by the way, no reasonable hope that a veto-proof majority will be gained. That needs to be factored in.
So let us assume that the Democrats lose the House, and are hanging on by a thread in the Senate. Senate Rules are more or less inflexible. Ah, but the House.
Each Congress organizes itself at the beginning. Each Speaker determines the rights, privileges, and powers of the Minority party; allotting numbers of Minority committee seats, staffing, offices, and especially whether they will be allowed to take part in the committee mark-ups of the bills. When Democrats are in control, Republicans are heavily restricted; and currently are not allowed to be present when bills are marked up in committee, or to offer amendments. When the Republicans took over in 1995, they offered a much larger role to the Democrats than a Minority had ever been allowed in the name of comity. Democrats were just barely junior partners in legislation. When the Democrats took over in 2007, Nancy Pelosi re-imposed the restrictions on the Minority, and even made them worse.
I. When the House of Representatives reorganizes itself upon the swearing in of the new Congress; the Republican Speaker of the House shall impose the exact same limitations on the power and function of the Democrat Minority as the Democrats are currently imposing on the Republicans; recognizing that the Democrats have offered neither comity, nor collegiality, nor equity in the conduct of the nation's business, and deserve the same treatment as they have offered. No input into marking up bills, no amendments, damned small staffs, and if possible offices somewhere in Chesapeake Bay.
II. The first bill offered and considered by the House in the new Congress should be something along the line of this:
With the exception of specific funding bills for which funds have already been appropriated and expended as of the date of the swearing in of this Congress, and with the exception of the appropriations bills for the maintenance and operation of the structure of the United States government passed by the 111th Congress to operate the government during the fiscal year beginning October 2010, and with the exception of bills funding the operation of the United States Armed Forces; all legislation passed by the 111th Congress is hereby suspended pending review and final legislative action on possible acceptance, amendment or repeal. [Note that given the rules, that final action can be delayed until the end of the Session of Congress. Further, that it is well within the purview of the House, where all spending bills must originate, to refuse to fund any programs that they decide deserves either amendment before such funding occurs, or repeal.]
III. The second bill, offered alongside the first, considered by the House should be along these lines:
The House shall create a Special Select Committee consisting of the Senior Members of all permanent House Committees; charged with reviewing in as timely a manner as possible all suspended legislation from the 111th Congress and recommending acceptance and funding, repeal, or amendments. Each recommendation will be forwarded to the appropriate permanent House Committee(s) for drafting of appropriate legislation and immediate action.
IV. The Republican Senate leadership will, as far as practicable, act to support the suspension and review process.
V. The leadership of the House will authorize investigations of specific criminal acts and ethical violations by government officials.
Will this cause all 9 of the Circles of Hades to break out in DC? Absolutely. Will the government-controlled media have litters of kittens, rhinosceri, and hippogriffs? Absolutely. Will the White House veto everything it can? Surely. And we will not be able to over-ride. But so long as we are fighting the battle they will not be able to do worse to the country and we can push back. Will it draw the lines and put the enemy on the defensive? Best shot at it that I know of …. short of ruat caelum.
We are a functional modern Committee of Correspondence. I offer this as a proposed course of action for discussion and dissemination, including to Patriots and candidates; with the hope that there can be a significant overlap in the two groups.
Subotai Bahadur
bl @ 52: the unions apparently just flat don’t give a flying frick at a rolling donut what the hell happens to the golden goose –or to the their own kids’ career prospects.
lor’ knows Obambus doesn’t, but he has an excuse, he can’t do the math, … and wouldn’t do it if he could.
though how much can we blame him, as HD Greene was saying, Obambus has his own Nobel prize already, and Krugman is telling him, “Faster, pussycat, kill, kill!” what’s Krugman’s excuse?
hdg/51; –the major speech at the meeting of the Economic Club of Washington last week was by Verizon CEO and Business Roundtable Chairman Ivan Seidenberg –and it wasn’t just a speech, he also introduced a 54 page report compiled by TBR from member CEOs detailing the administration’s actual particulars of anti business anti prosperity anti growth anti investment anti EMPLOYment policy actions taken (committed?) so far (so far!).
Seidenberg gouped the worst harms into a group of three, then proposed a five-point recovery plan –see both lists here:
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/business-roundtable-chairman-voices-concern-about-negative-effects-of-current-government-policies-outlines-plan-for-growth-and-job-creation-2010-06-22?reflink=MW_news_stmp&utm_medium=twitter
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(Business Roundtable membership is 170 companies, with 12 million employees, generating six trillion worth of economic activity per year)
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Fred Smith of FedEx was Kudlow-interviewed the other day, mentioning that the largest world economy by far is “world trade” itself, and that USA’s usual nearly a third of that biz is declining due to the confidence issue, and that this biz is hard to recover once lost (we throw it away nonchalantly, whoever catches it hangs onto it hard). He said there’s 1.5 to 2 trillion in capex-ready cash flow sitting frozen in corporate accounts, afraid to move, and that our capex spending is down 20% over three years ago, and that a capex dollar’s trailing performance measuring jobs created and new economic activity is 9:1, and that American businesses are 200 billion down from the high in 2007.
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PACat, wow –thanks –St Augustine is a favorite –the wild and crazy youth making such a wizened and humane older philosopher –i’d feel rarified except i stole the best of it from Robert Duvall’s character in Broken Trail, where he eulogizes thusly a buried friend:
===
We’re all travellers in this world. From the sweet grass to the packing house. Birth ’til death. We travel between the eternities
===
(from here –this guy DOES like westerns)
.
“It is so complex that the Democratic Chairman of the Senate Banking committee Christopher J. Dodd said “no one will know until this is actually in place how it works.”
Law which is this complex can and will be interpreted arbitrarily in the favor of an Oligarchic Ruling Class. Arbitrary law is totalitarian law.
“A single assembly, possessed of all the powers of government, would make arbitrary laws for their own interest, execute all laws arbitrarily for their own interest, and adjudge all controversies in their own favor.” John Adams
http://www.liberty1.org/thoughts.htm
“The planning authority cannot confine itself to providing opportunities for unknown people to make whatever use of them they like. It cannot tie itself down in advance to general and formal rules (U. S. Constitution) which prevent arbitrariness. It must provide for the actual needs of people as they arise and then choose deliberately between them (choosing the proletariat over the middle class or choosing “intellectuals” over entrepreneurs)… If the law says that such a board or authority may do what it pleases, anything that a board or authority does is legal – but its actions are certainly not subject to the Rule of Law. By giving the government unlimited powers, the most arbitrary rule can be made legal, and in this way a democracy may set up the most complete despotism imaginable (Law destructive of Human Rights).“ F. A. Hayek
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2009/05/obama_hayek_central_planning_a.html
“Laws are made for men of ordinary understanding and should, therefore, be construed by the ordinary rules of common sense. Their meaning is not to be sought for in metaphysical subtleties which may make anything mean everything or nothing at pleasure.” Thomas Jefferson
http://www.marksquotes.com/Founding-Fathers/Jefferson/index5.htm
“Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add ‘within the limits of the law’ because law is often but the tyrant’s will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual.” Thomas Jefferson
http://etext.virginia.edu/jefferson/quotations/jeff0100.htm
I have been trying to post on this thread since around noon today [it is 1900 local now]. I know that I am a wordy bugger, but I have not been able to get anything to come up. Was it something I said?
Subotai Bahadur
No. It’s the spam filter. Let me unhook your comments.
bl @ 58: that’s swell, but it needs a public platform, a public voice, a presidential candidate, or at least some senatorial candidates, a Republican – or bipartisan – agenda that candidates can sign onto.
Are all these business leaders as ineffective as Hayward and Obama, that all they can do is talk? ORGANIZE! Read rules for radicals if you have to. MOVE!
/he said
Blert @ 45: “The ONLY true way out of our box is to promptly raise retirement ages.”
Yes and no.
No — We have surplus labor already. The 65 year-olds who keep working till 67 (50 year-olds who keep working to 52 in Greece) would be filling positions, creating more unemployment at the young end of the scale. Or, if the old punters get laid off and can’t find a job, they will be on unemployment/welfare from 65 to 67. Pension costs go down; welfare costs go up. Raising the retirement age is the right thing to do, but it won’t solve anything.
Yes — What Keynes was really concerned about was the lost wealth from the irreplaceable unworked hour. We have a real economy which produces things (food, fuel, iPods), and a money economy which redistributes the real value created (government, financial industry). We need more people working and producing more real goods & services. Healthy retirees are an economic waste — put them to work.
Our current labor surplus is a symptom of a deeper problem. The overhead function of government is crippling the real economy. That’s why jobs are not being created — it is the inevitable consequence of excessive regulation.
The real path forward is to cut regulation — intelligently, but remorselessly. Reindustrialize the USA, and much of Europe. Get more human beings working and creating value. Then the money economy will turn around too.
Subotai Bahadur,
Generally agree with your expectations for the new Congress. Under the ‘just to drive them crazy and maybe strike gold theory;’ why not have the new Congress as part of its first five action items form a Select Committee with full subpoena power to validate Obama’s eligibility for the office of POTUS. Everyone here knows I am not a “Birther” but I do think the Dems have earned that nightmare, and if he does have a problem? If it is a small problem, travel on a foreign passport, then he probably survives and we extract a national conversation on the definition of “Natural Born” and immigration amnesty is buried for the decade. If it a larger problem, like he claimed foreign nationality on his financial aid forms, then Joe Biden becomes President, and all Obama Judicial appointments are declared invalid. For the worst case, which I doubt, then Biden would himself be found to be a co-conspirator. In that case the POTUS would probably be the man who received the most valid electoral votes in 2008.
To be blogged under the title “Come January.”
No, Subotai, it’s not just you. I’ve had a post wiped twice and one that was suspended for several minutes.
I think that PJMedia is overloaded.
Or something. Maybe the liberals are being nasty again.
Papa Ray
josh/62; –re “just do it” –you’re right, it’s just ‘the litany’ as i posted it –i should’ve emphasized how big a change this speech and report are in context of fact that this organization has been a strong and voluble Obama-backer –this is not more complaint, this is NEW complaint. Yowza! They gwan BBQ the Golden Calf!
K @ 63: Reindustrialize the USA… Get more human beings working and creating value. Then the money economy will turn around too.
That’s it.
Not only is that it, that’s the only it.
(otoh, it ain’t that easy, first to isolate the US from the cheaper rest of the world, and second to fight off the effects of automation that also displaces much of the workforce … but even so)
Subotai Bahadur @ 44, 47, 56 etc: Message received loud and clear. No harm in reading it twice or even thrice. You have some excellent data points and even better proposals. I think the Democrats in Congress need to be schooled on the unwisdom of abusing power. Serving them a dish of their own cooking would be a start. Some may call this petty tit-for-tat. I call it the beginning of justice.
Regarding the agenda for the new Congress: damned straight. Use the blowout preventer on this gusher of crap legislation. Big high-hardness shear blades with gigantic hydraulic power behind them: snip. No. More. Spending Madness.
As systems get “richer” they get more complicated, elaborate, speciated, unstable. We are way past instability. We need to take this back to a simpler approach. Both in the scope and style of legislation (any Congressperson who finishes the term without sponsoring legislation should be given a $5MM bonus). And in the scope and ambition of government. Less is assuredly more.
Wretchard,
Thanks for liberating us. Sorry about any repeats.
#64. Lifeofthemind
A not unreasonable addition. Interestingly enough, this is all predicated on the change in control of the House. That means a new Speaker of the House. If Buraq is found to have been not legally competent [other competencies, or the lack thereof, are self-evident] to have been elected president; we are in the middle of one of the greater Sciurinae Sciurini pareunial globus pellisi in constitutional history. There are more questions than answers.
1) If Obama was not legally competent, does that disqualify his running mate also, because people vote for the ticket headed by the presidential candidate?
2) How does the presidential succession go in such a case? Do we reach backwards into the past and does that mean that all along John McCain was President? Or does the succession descend only contemporarily?
3) If Biden was not disqualified, does that mean he is President? If Biden was disqualified, does that mean the succession descends to the Speaker of the House? And in that case, which Speaker? Do we go back into the past and rule that Nancy Pelosi is President? Or, with the rejection of the Democrats implied by the results of an election that installs a new Speaker which leads to this inquiry, does that mean the new Speaker becomes President?
Each party will have multiple factions. Since the Supreme Court is a politicized body, and “Chicago Rules” have become the norm in our polity; we can anticipate violence from multiple sources and in multiple forms ranging from the intensely personally targeted to mass destruction. Think Byzantine Empire, think Medici Florence.
Think, perhaps of the Russian Смутное время, Smutnoye Vremya; the Time of Troubles. The last Tsar of the Rurik dynasty died and a “Great National Assembly” named his chief advisor Boris Gudunov [who had a hand in calling the Assembly for that purpose] as the new Tsar. Russia was in large part occupied by foreigners [Poles and Lithuanians]. There were distant claimants to the throne from the Schiusky collateral branch of the Rurikids, and there was a series of false claimants to be Ivan the Terrible’s illegitimate son Dimitri. Since Dimitri died at the age of 10, possibly at the orders of Gudunov, all the claimants were imposters. But that did not stop a series of revolts and civil wars in the names of all the parties concerned.
Interesting times, in the Chinese sense. And there is question as to the continuity of the Mandate of Heaven, also in the Chinese sense. Buraq Hussein Obama, and those who back him, stand a good chance of being judged by history of being the ones who brought an end to the American Constitutional Republic.
All that is left to us is to do our Duty, as we see it. We cannot do more, and should not wish to do less.
Subotai Bahadur
#63. Kinuachdrach
The real path forward is to cut regulation — intelligently, but remorselessly. Reindustrialize the USA, and much of Europe. Get more human beings working and creating value. Then the money economy will turn around too.
Very true. But cutting back on the regulatory state is next to impossible–its like killing the Jason character in the Friday the 13th series–he always keeps coming back to life.
What I have toyed with is the idea of introducing predators into the regulatory ecosystem. Normally I hate the idea of creating more government, but I would like nothing more than to create the Agency for Economic Justice.
All they would do is to investigate complaints by private individuals or companies that regulations passed by government agencies are irrational. If they find them to be so the agency responsible for writing that regulation shall be fined, and that shall come out of its budget. If that means they can’t pay any bonuses to their workers that year its just too bad. And the Agency for Economic Justice will be funded purely upon the fines they extract from the other government agencies. A large carnivore preying upon the large taxavores.
That is the true problem with modern government and bureaucracy: there are no predators in the ecosystem.
First, for folks having difficulty posting, especially with longer posts – try breaking it into two segments, posting each one immediately after the other.
Even if you’re a consummate slowpoke, you’ll only get maybe a single intervening post interrupting your two-parter…
Also, I find that if I click the preview button and make a minor edit, it seems to get the post “pre-embedded” or “pre-processed” so that when I click the “SUBMIT” button, the thing appears more or less instantly. Without the preview, there is often a five or ten minute delay, even for short rants.
Like this time…
Here, avec beaucoup de respect pour Subotai is an alternate view of the more distant future.
All that is needed is for us simply to acquiesce and accept the loving embrace of the Void, and quit struggling against our oppressors.
- – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – -
Our great great great grandchildren will live in an era in which much will have changed.
Just for starts, the Nobel Prize – having been devalued by promiscuous and unconsidered distribution – will be a token used to purchase a gross of condoms from the wall dispenser.
For similar reasons, an Oscar will be understood as the name of a feisty salt-water ornamental fighting fish.
People will be the ones who make laws, decision-makers, managers of the labors of the workers, highly-trained educators, computer administrators, military leaders, and doctors.
All other humans will be the workers, and they will live under the open sky, sleeping in barb-wire enclosures to protect them from the wolves and prairie dogs, eating dry meal from communal troughs, with anti-biotics mixed into to maintain health and proper body mass.
People will have names, as many as they like.
Workers will have UPC barcodes on their necks, matching chips embedded in their butts. The chips will be trackable by line-of-sight antenna systems (GPS system having long since plummeted to fiery atmospheric plasma streaks.) Workers in the service of People may be given “pet” names for the convenience and diversion of their masters, to make it easier to individuate commands for domestic activities. They may also be trained in the minor technologies, better to serve their masters. Teaching of reading, writing, certain other intellectual skills is deemed inappropriate for workers, except by special license, since this requires specially bred stock (see: companion animals, dogs-for-the-blind, etc.)
Children of People are themselves destined to become People as they achieve adult status, following extensive preparation and training. Indoctrination commences in the third trimester, via abdominal contact phone. Education proceeds in stages, with the immatures passing through a standard K-24 progression of useful dialectic and polemics/ Administered by the Barrack Hussein Obama Institutes of Progressivist Mentation, courses will guide students in examining the resolution of apparent contradictions, and stressing the value to the state of stasis, conformity, and submission. Immatures which are unsuccessful in accepting the conditioning of education may by various treatments yet be made useful as workers, especially so that their germ may be retained for the maintenance of the herds.
Unavoidably, chemical imbalances and persistent ineradicable genetic sports arise among the People, such that the generous and loving training is wasted on certain individuals. For the good of the community, immatures are trained from the earliest indoctrination to report signs of deviation among their fellows, and later, to be lovingly watchful for signals of weakness and aberrations in correct thinking among other People.
The spawn of Workers are differentiable to various useful assignments, but will always be workers. Superior phenotypes and genotypes within the caste will appear regularly within the breeding schema. Problems arising from undesirable ambition or overactive imagination among worker strains will be effectively suppressed by eugenic, aversion, and electroshock therapies.
Health of the worker population will generally be supervised by highly trained veterinary doctors. Methods will mainly address large populations, with individualized treatment only for special cases. This means the herds of workers after a sufficient number of generations will have self-culled most heritable weaknesses and undesirable traits.
Among the People, government will be a fairly relaxed and informal matter of achieving consensus by informed polling, with studies commissioned to determine optimal decisions, and the results provided at the time of the informed polling procedure. A Senate will meet in plenary session annually, more or less, to approve actions recommended and initiated by a rotating central committee of the foremost among equals. The population of People will be kept to a manageable number, by pregnancy lotteries and incentivized family planning. The interests of Whales, dolphins, Elephants, Bristlecone Pines, Sequoias, and other species will be represented by Ambassador/Proxies appointed from among the People.
Welcome to the Future, with thanks to Pelosi, Reid, Obama and friends.
If banks cannot minimize risk, they will avoid risk by not making risky loans. This is what bank are doing now. No more risky loans. The economy is dying. Congress cannot order banks to make risky loans. If they do, the bankers leave town and leave an empty building behind.
This has happened before when Kings have tried to force banks to make bad loans. For example, there were no Jews in England under Henry VIII.
We would be better off if Congress outlawed tornados and hurricanes.
the Nobel Prize – having been devalued by promiscuous and unconsidered distribution…
There’s the Nobel Prize, and the real ones. Those in physics, chemistry, medicine and economics are real. They are political, but the winners are very, very good.
The “peace prize” is administered by people in a different country, with different committees, and with very different goals. It is utter bullshit.
But please do not sully the “real” ones because the peace prize is nonsense. The real ones do mean a great deal, and reward people who have been influential in very important science and technology fields.
“I am beginning to believe that it was something I said.”
I’m inclined to think length, not content is at fault.
The internet IS NOT infinite.
Content is transferred in what are called Packets. Packets are a finite size. That is because there is an error checking routine that runs to make sure your content doesn’t get garbled. Direct feed is available. Not sure if all sites can handle them, or if it requires a plug in of some sort.
When you submit a novella as a post, you should perhaps use a word processor to write it. Something like X-Edit or word pad. The less you have in the way of mark-up (formatting) characters or hidden data bits, the better off you are.
Dear DrJ,
Economics?
Paul Krugman?
Seriously, I don’t disagree with you about mathematics, physics, chemistry, or even a Nobel Prize for Political Theory, but Economics is one of those pseudo-disciplines that presumes to quantify imponderables while sneering at any challenge of assumptions, methodologies and data gathering and assessment.
No doubt it attracts some of the finest minds, but it also attracts and provides ample cover for a bunch of charlatans.
Tcobb @ 70: predators into the regulatory ecosystem
Outstanding!
But they must have the power to demote, fine personally, and jail the bureaucrats. That’s a predator.
As a matter of fact, I’ll have to consider random meteor strikes into the regulatory ecosystem …
… or, ever read William Gibson’s Neuromancer? or for that matter, Cordwainer Smith’s stories about the Instrumentality of Mankind, and the Rediscovery of Man? All about breaking up even the pretence of perfection.
I can’t speak to Krugman’s Nobel — economics just is not my field. Yes, his columns are nonsense, but simply I cannot gauge his contribution to the economics field. They may well merit his contribution to his specialty.
I have taken a lot of grief over the years defending the Nobel Prizes because of Krugman while denigrating the peace price. Let that one go. I’ve had friends on the Nobel short list in the real areas, and they do not really quibble with those who won.
I forgot to mention that if a single packet gets lost or corrupted, the default was to deep-6 all the packets. Not sure if that is still the way it’s done.
AS far as fixing things. ONLY a constitutional Convention will work. All the fixes suggested so far have major issues as far as how Constitutional they are. Since it was ignoring the Constitution that got us in this mess in the first place, ignoring it some more WON’T get us out of the mess. 2 wrongs don’t make a right.
Besides, a Constitutional Convention basically locks the Supreme Court in a closet and doesn’t let them out until it is to late for them to screw things up. Now if we just figure out some way to keep the Lawyers at bay…..
A always have thought having Lawyers make law is like hiring Dillinger as a bank guard. Granted John knows a lot about robbing banks, but I’m not sure that is the sort of experience one wants in a bank guard.
DrJ,
I bow to your eloquent and gracious argument.
I will not begrudge Doctor Krugman his prize until I can read and discuss his theses, which probably will not come to pass in this lifetime.
69. Subotai Bahadur
Unfortunately, I don’t think the Republicans want to touch those questions with a ten-foot pole. Some Republicans, certainly. The party leadership, no way.
I’m afraid that there are far too many Republicans who would be content with being members of the permanent ruling class, with all the attendant perks and immunities, even though their party is nominally in the minority.
(Your earlier comment at #56 was worth the wait, by the way.)
Mad Fiddler…
The Economics Prize is not even issued by any Nobel Committee.
Instead, it’s issued and paid for by a bank who merely references it as being in the name of Nobel.
80. Rosinante
always have thought having Lawyers make law is like hiring Dillinger as a bank guard. Granted John knows a lot about robbing banks, but I’m not sure that is the sort of experience one wants in a bank guard.
An idea I’ve been kicking around: How about restricting lawyers to only the Judicial branch of government?
You would then have citizen-legislators in the Legislative branch, made up of carpenters, doctors, auto dealership owners, etc. writing and passing laws, with the professional lawyers in the Judicial branch serving as a check on them if they go off the rails: “No, you can’t do that.”
Meanwhile, the Executive branch would be populated by people who have, you know, actual executive experience. I can dream, can’t I?
84. rickl
My own thoughts on the subject is that we need a fourth branch of government–the house of vetoes. It would be very undemocratic. The people who comprise it would be chosen by a lottery with the pool of people who are not felons or idiots.
They could not create any laws, but they would have the power to veto any law that was otherwise passed. In essence, a jury of common citizens that would place any new laws on trial and could throw them down if they found then wanting in any respect whatsoever.
#78 Josh – I quite like the idea in some of Frank Herbert’s more obscure books. The background is an interstellar civilisation in which the apparatus of government (particularly the legislature) had become too efficient; new regulations could be drafted, discussed and enacted in an afternoon. Which had predictable results. What was come up with was the Bureau of Sabotage (BuSab) which was mandated to pour sand in the gears. Meaning that anyone part of, or employed by, government was subject to random interference only stopping short of permanent, disabling physical harm. Of course, BuSab was subject to its own interference; the accepted way of becoming BuSab director was to sabotage the existing director.
rickl – One answer to this is the slogan which has been gathering steam; “no representation without taxation”. Meaning that only people who have consistently made a net contribution to government finances over the last electoral cycle (the length depending on which election it is) get a vote. Which, of course, means that welfare recipients don’t get a vote – and neither do government employees. The latter is a feature, not a bug.
I hope Frank’s squeeze of private equity firms got negotiated out. Nearly 75% of my potential investors would no longer qualify as accredited investors if this bill passes with that provision. It would destroy the private equity markets, which is probably the point (throw Wall Street a bunch of rich customers as compensation for this regulation).
http://dev.www.washingtonexaminer.com/politics/ap/97049499.html
(begin snip)
06/24/10 11:05 AM EDT WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama is nominating John Podesta, a key political ally, to serve on the board that helps set policies and direction for the government’s national service agency, the White House announced Thursday.
Podesta, who guided Obama through the presidential transition process, is among seven people Obama picked to be on the bipartisan board of directors for the Corporation for National and Community Service.
Podesta served as President Bill Clinton’s chief of staff. He heads the Center for American Progress, a liberal public policy group that he helped create in 2003 to counteract conservative think tanks.
Steve Gunderson, a former Republican congressman now at the Arlington, Va.-based nonprofit Council on Foundations, said Podesta wasn’t too partisan to be on the board.
“In this town, politics and how government works is a part of everything, so you need some voices with that experience and knowledge and contacts to make it work,” Gunderson said. “I think he’s a professional partisan. But I don’t think he’s too partisan.”
Obama’s board member nominees include two Republicans, Marguerite Kondracke and Rick Christman. Kondracke is president and chief executive officer at America’s Promise Alliance, which was founded by former Secretary of State Colin Powell. Christman is the top executive at Employment Solutions Inc., a nonprofit organization that helps people overcome barriers to employment.
Since taking office in January 2009, Obama has made it a priority to bolster national service programs.
In April 2009, the president signed into law a $5.7 billion bill to triple the size of AmeriCorps. Both he and first lady Michelle Obama have challenged others to donate their time to causes in their neighborhoods as a way to help where government alone cannot.
John Bridgeland, former domestic policy adviser to President George W. Bush, said Podesta’s nomination sends “a powerful signal” about how important national service is to the Obama administration.
“He’s very politically savvy,” Bridgeland said of Podesta. “These issues are not always easy in the Congress.”
(end snip)
Read more at the Washington Examiner: http://dev.www.washingtonexaminer.com/politics/ap/97049499.html#ixzz0rwa1w4Xc
Looks like a bipartisan board alright –the two republicans may look like vegetables, but that’s only because they’re plants. Oh that’s not fair to say; there’s always the chance they aren’t camo.
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here’s a Bing search –busy boys, the Podesta brothers –Center for American Progress, too –very active, the Soros fronts. note the search results, all are sick over this nest of connections with the bleedin gulf in backdrop –except the top of the list, an accusation against Glenn Beck’s expose of all this, by MediaMatters –a Soros group. heck, they should be happy –Beck didn’t touch on the half of it. Why, he could bring on TV a rig hand to talk about 04/20/10, or publicize what the American Power Act actually does for Goldman Sachs, or how much of the regulation overseen by Podesta as Clinton’s chief of staff drove and hid the Crash of 08.
http://www.bing.com/search?q=podesta+soros+tony+BP+brazil+petrobras+obama&form=IE8SRC&src=IE-SearchBox
(add “American Power Act” to above terms, and switch to Google, and this fine amalgamation returns on top:)
http://www.resistnet.com/forum/topics/goldman-sachs-ties-to-obama
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(Seriously, folks, please scan the resistnet link –loads of info in the comments. This link may need to go to folks’s email circles)
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What David Horowitz’ “Discover the Networks” has to say about Americorps:
http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=7489
…and that article predates the organization as a Podesta direct action front with nearly six billion ‘free as a bird’ dollars –with which to –what else, help Obama “fundamentally transform America”.
***
Glenn Beck on ‘Discover the Networks’
Wiki on ‘Discover the Networks’
***
(t’anks fer lettin’ me rant, w)
Dr. J
Problem is, Al Gore made blatant political use of “climate science” — as have climate scientist themselves — and got a the Nobel prize for it, sans outrage from the scientific community. There was, apparently, some sort of consensus.
“When they devalued the Nobel Peace Prize, I did not have a Nobel Peace Prize, so I kept quite.” I don’t think we should keep quite.
Besides, what we really need is a Nobel Prize in Statistics. I hear they are making great advances.
Subotai Bahadur,
Strictly speaking the Electors vote separately for POTUS and VEEP. That means that we could have gotten BHO disqualified and ended up with John McCain as President and Joe Biden as VP. In order to disqualify the VP there would IMHO be a need to show that they were personally ineligible, since they are elected on a separate ballot. The Founders got a little lazy about the VP slot. For example according to the Constitution the VP gets to preside over their own Impeachment trial in the Senate.
If the new Congress does an investigation and the results are ugly we face a choice. We can push for a scrubbing from the body politic of all who benefited from the fraud or we can make a deal. The former would be John Brown’s answer, to “purge this unhappy land in blood.” Upon reflection we my prefer to offer a compromise based upon the level of culpability of residual beneficiaries of the fraud. To me that means we should be guided by Lincoln’s intended policy for Amnesty and Reconstruction of the South after the last time the Democratic Party attempted an oligarchic insurrection. If Joe Biden is guilty only of ignorance, ambition, and fellow traveling then for the good of the country I would elevate him to the Oval Office, even if the office really belongs to McCain. If he was a knowing co-conspirator, in other words if he sat in a meeting with Soros and Valerie Jarett where Obama’s eligibility was discussed, which I would be very surprised to discover, then I would impeach him and ship him over to the District Court for a criminal trial.
hdgreene,
Friends told me that the reason there is a Nobel Prize in Physics but not in Mathematics is that Alfred Nobel’s wife ran off with a mathematician. The story is to good to verify. The Economics Nobel is an “Award” and not a “Prize” because it was not included in Nobel’s will but was established later.
To be blogged under the title “Under Rocks.”
fc @ 86: Herbert’s BuSub, hmm? I don’t recall reading that. I do recall a story, but not the author, except that it *might* have been Herbert, about a courtroom. When you step into the courtroom, odds are *somebody* is going to be punished, but it might be the defendant, or the plaintiff, or the attorneys, judge, jury members, audience members …
We could use that in Congress. For every page of legislation (say 300 words, we don’t need tiny fonts or huge pages!), one legislator loses their seat, immediately. For every billion dollars in deficits, real or projected, one legislator loses their life, immediately. Not enough legislators? Sure there are, countryside is full of eager volunteers, we could purge Congress entirely three or four times a year and other than the improvement, nobody would ever notice.
Re: Deregulation
Congress will enact well over 65,000 new laws this year; many thousands of pages long. About what? Now, reading the bills is not required by the enactors. And, enforcement is unfunded, but enforced on a case-by-case basis, depending on resources available and who controls them – (the boot in-waiting). Make no mistake, any enforcement action for any Law chosen can employ the full force of the Federal Gov’t.
We have empowered the political class, in consort with the judicial class, to become a lawmaking machine that we fund. Cost-benefit analysis is no longer necessary; it’s just taxpayer money. Millions of new laws, rulings and mandates materialize at local, county, state and regional bureaucracies to comply.
Automated enslavement. Quite a task, dismantling this apparatis, when 93.775694% of the lawyers will be filing suit, no? Shakespeare’s advice may be the only answer. And reinstantiating “waterboarding” as a “best practice” – one most likely to rapidly elicit the evidence needed by prosecutors.
We used to call what’s goin on a hanging offense. If it ain’t, nothin ever will be, except for US kulaks.
LOTM,
The Economics Nobel is an “Award” and not a “Prize” because it was not included in Nobel’s will but was established later.
That’s right — Economics was added in the 1960s, I believe. The others were from his original will.
Regarding the peace prize, of course it is political and used as such. That’s what it is! So Al and the IPCC joined Arafat, Carter, and the UN (twice!). I just ignore this one, since it is all about being with the cool kidz.
Storm rider #59:
“It is so complex that the Democratic Chairman of the Senate Banking committee Christopher J. Dodd said “no one will know until this is actually in place how it works.”
Note that this is exactly what Nancy Pelosi said about the Health Care Bill. “We have to get this passed right away so that you can find out what it is.”
This not only speaks to the complexity of the legislation but to the fact that they have made the process so obtuse and the details so classified that the only way we can find out what it is is to pass it and therefore make sure it is published openly.
Geoffo: When I worked in the Pentagon and had to interpret Congresional budget language I came to realzie that if you were wealthy enough to not have to work and could spend 8 hrs a day 5 days a week doing nothing but understanding the Laws passed by Congress and regulations enacted by the bureaucrats and how they impact you – you could not do it. No way.
Tcobb @ 85: “we need a fourth branch of government–the house of vetoes.”
Great idea! The original constitutional concept of “checks & balances” has pretty much died on the vine. The Political Class are now effectively all on the same side — all believers in bigger more-intrusive government (which happens to enrich them personally). That needs to be changed, if republican government is to survive.
The problem is — how to accomplish change? (The real thing, not the hopeychangey meaningless substitute). Seeking a Constitutional Convention would be asking the Political Class to orchestrate their own defenestration. Not going to happen.
The good news is that the world is heading inevitably into the Mother of All Crises — Peak Government, when the lenders stop lending and the money runs out. Europe is already there. Obambi is isolated on the world stage — the lone bitter-ender still plantively calling for more “stimulus” spending with borrowed money. There is no reason why the coming unavoidable crisis has to end well, but it might. Unfortunately, we will likely have to embrace certain aspects of the French Revolution if the Political Class is truly to become the “ancien regime”, with their roots pulled up and salt sowed on the ground where those abominations once grew.
If moratoriums on new drilling are good for lawyers then how about a moratorium on new laws? It would be good for the rest of us.
#97
I’d settle for a moratorium on new lawyers.
Al Gore: hasbeen mentioned.
…-
“Animation of Al Gore’s Massage Encounter”
“Taiwanese news service NMA uses computer animation to re-create the allegations made against Al Gore.”
http://www.breitbart.tv/animation-of-al-gores-massage-encounter/
Al Gore, whose only meaning may be that meaninglessness can literally murder whole planets, physically resembles, more and more each passing day, his essential being: a cruel, clever pig.
#100. buddy larsen
Shame on you buddy. That’s an affront to pigs everywhere. And racist.
Tc/101; don’t get me wrong, that wasn’t aimed at piggery itself, per se, but at a certain practitioner whose gall-generated stupidity has left him bereft of the decency to cover his own ridiculous backside.
Has anybody seen this? I found it in a link at American Thinker.
This is what we’re up against, and I take them very seriously.
Purifying the World: What the New Radical Ideology Stands For
On a somewhat lighter note, Karl Denninger’s Tickerforum Turns Three.
I first found that site via a link in a comment here in March 2009. The daily Market Tickers are usually must-reads, and the Tickerforum comment section is vast indeed. For the anniversary weekend, Denninger has thrown open the forum section so that anybody* can see all of the forums and videos, some of which are normally restricted to donors.
(*Or maybe that’s anybody who registers, rather than random passersby. I’m not sure which.)
Neo-Neocon just put up a post commemorating the one-year anniversary of the death of a much-valued commenter. He was known as FredHJr over there, and Fred here.
Found this:
“When we die as martyrs” – Palestinian Children
This and other similar instances I have seen and heard only reinforces my belief that Islam has to be rooted out, caged and destroyed.
We can’t counter this perversion, this evil – in the half measured way we have been trying in the last few years. Their children grow into Islamic Radicals faster than we can counter or kill them after they grow into radical teens and adults.
Their political and religious leaders, the Mullahs, the teachers and imams need to be the first to be dealt with. By the thousands upon thousands.
What monstrous evil – this evil cult is.
Papa Ray
And where will Mr. Gordon be working, tomorrow?
–
http://www.jpost.com/International/Article.aspx?id=179570
US: Turkey must show commitment
By ASSOCIATED PRESS
26/06/2010
Top diplomat says Ankara’s actions are alienating Western nations.
WASHINGTON — The United States is warning Turkey that it is alienating US supporters and needs to demonstrate its commitment to partnership with the West.
The remarks by Philip Gordon, the Obama administration’s top diplomat on European affairs, were a rare admonishment of a crucial NATO ally.
…
Annoy #97:
Back around 1973 a “panel” of a judge and three lawyers announced that they had conducted a study and concluded that technology had made life worse.
I wanted to form a panel of three engineers and a physicist that would announce a study that had found that lawyers and judges had made life worse.
In subsequent years events have made the second study unneccessary; the conclusion is obvious to everyone without further examination.
107. Josh
Top diplomat says Ankara’s actions are alienating Western nations. … The United States is warning Turkey that it is alienating US supporters and needs to demonstrate its commitment to partnership with the West.
During their rise to power and since achieving it, for Erdogan and the AKP Turkey’s lip-service to their “partnership with the West” has been merely an exercise in taqiyyah to buy time.
“Democracy is like a bus. You ride it to where you want to go, then you get off.” – Recep Tayip Erdogan
They now believe they’ve arrived.
The finance bill to actually sort out the (real and growing) problems would be a single page or less. Something like “The packaging and resale of loans (whether secured on property or not) as tradeable securities shall be punishable by death.”
67. Josh
Spot on – industrialize. I may have been a tool of the industrialists when I was 16 working in a “Rod Products” factory, but as a 60+ guy who can still sit and run rods into a punch press…I will do that again if it means we are still free and of course, productive.
All the muchkins that “won’t do work like that” can get one more lesson from their fathers and grandfathers on the real value of work…and what it means to be free and not dependent.
fc @ 110: I dunno, I think a lot of the stuff in the bill has actually been proven necessary, and mbo/cdo are not necessarily the problem, as long as the originator must hold a significant interest. I have no idea what the bill says about that – is 10% enough? Probably. Just the bookkeeping involved is enough to cut the volume by 50%, betcha. And there’s a fair chance I’ll be doing just that in a couple of weeks, if I ever get the phone interview from Megabank they’ve been promising me for three days now.
I’m much tougher on CDS – might be legal, but only against reserves and an interest held by the originator. Even 20% reserves plus the held interest would cut volumes by 90%, I think.
I’m very leery of the “consumer protection” side of things, not that it isn’t needed, but that it’s a gong for politicians more than a boon to consumers. Oh well, such is life.
And, should bring back Glass-Steagall, move *all* this stuff away from consumer banking and taxpayer guarantees, period.
Might take several hundred pages to get it all down, depending on font size. But even then, it should be ten separate bills of 50 pages each.
“The House and Senate were rushing new regulation of the finance industry to get it ready for President Obama’s signature.”
World’s Greatest Deliberative Body, my ass, as this law undoubtedly is.
“It is so complex that the Democratic Chairman of the Senate Banking committee Christopher J. Dodd said ‘no one will know until this is actually in place how it works. But we believe we’ve done something that has been needed for a long time.’”
Something had to be done and this is something.
But at least this provided us with my quote of the week by Jeb Hensarling: “My guess is there are three unintended consequences on every page of this bill”.
“‘Fix’ in this context is a word with a slightly ambiguous meaning.”
I certainly hope that the November elections will “fix” Obama.
Mad Fiddler (#14): “We would be just as unselfishly governed by the inmates of the correction systems of the several states. Actually, maybe better.”
See the ferry scene in The Dark Knight. (Oops, that might get you wondering who the Joker is.)
Tcobb (#85): “we need a fourth branch of government–the house of vetoes. It would be very undemocratic. The people who comprise it would be chosen by a lottery with the pool of people who are not felons or idiots.”
After all, those two categories are already over-represented in the other branches. (Ba-da-bing!)
“They could not create any laws, but they would have the power to veto any law that was otherwise passed. In essence, a jury of common citizens that would place any new laws on trial and could throw them down if they found then wanting in any respect whatsoever.”
I’ve been finding many of the laws passed to indeed be quite lacking in respect.
Holding the bag….would you mean the “blivet?”
The calm and cerebral Powerline blog has this as the finish of their most recent post:
A simple way to think about the Democratic Party is, you’re the human being, they’re the tapeworm. Yet they claim a weird sort of parasite’s moral superiority over you: if you point out that they have their hand in your pocket, you’re a “smartass.” The Democratic Party needs to be torn, root and branch, from our public life.
Kopp the Custard Man
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2010/06/026620.php
“And there’s a fair chance I’ll be doing just that in a couple of weeks, if I ever get the phone interview from Megabank they’ve been promising me for three days now.” Dang Josh, why don’t we just re-name Belmont Club the Mancession Club?
@103 Rickl
‘Woe . . ., because the Devil has come down to you, having great anger, knowing he has a short period of time.’
Revelations
Not claiming Obama is the Anti-Christ, just that the Anti-Christ is probably taking notes.
Hey, what is it about Obama that attracts rats and flies?
Various people have described the guy as charismatic; but seriously, he has always looked to me like an extra in Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” video, or maybe something Boris Karloff dug up in one of his movies.
Charismatic!
They’ve got to be kidding me.
“Uh, sir, excuse me, but there’s no smoking in the custard shop.”
“So Kopp the Smartass, yous want me to lower yer taxes?”
“The World’s Greatest Deliverative Body”
SB @61: “1) If Obama was not legally competent, does that disqualify his running mate also, because people vote for the ticket headed by the presidential candidate?”
No.
I have believed for some time that, if and when the man calling himself “Barack Obama” is hanged, he will be hanged by the Constitution, it being the only remaining social force with enough popular assent to do the job.
According to said document, “people” don’t vote for a ticket. In fact, people don’t vote for jack-sh*t. State Legislatures appoint Electors for President and Vice-President of the United States, according to their own procedures. It so happens that each state has chosen to specify popular voting via a universal franchise for this purpose (an obvious error, IMO), neverthless, the circus on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November is not a Constitutional mandate.
Presuming that the chusing of all 538 Electors on November 4, 2008 was a Constitutionally valid process, those 538 US citizens were entitled to elect a President and a Vice-President, separately. They voted separately for two individuals, one of whom (Joseph Robinette Biden, born in Pennsylvania, 67 years of age, and resident in Delaware for at least the last 14 years prior to 11/4/08) is clearly eligible to his office.
Biden’s right to hold his office derives from the votes of 364 Electors for Vice President of the United States, its affirmation on January 6, 2009 by the special joint session of Congress, and his subsequent oath-taking on January 20, 2009. Should a vacancy occur, or be proven to have existed, in the Office of President of the United States, then Biden is unquestionably the legal and Constitutional successor.
Much may rest on the shoulders of the legally elected and Constitutionally qualified Vice-Presidnet of the United States in the coming months. Although doubts regarding his capability of bearing his burdens are obviously legitimate, a succession without his participation becomes much more dangerous.
Please recognize his authority to exercise his office, unless he clearly fails.
Sunday morning. For anyone with powers of concentration, here’s a catholic, evangelical discussion on FreeRepublic on the question of whether you can lose your salvation once you are saved. ie once saved, always saved?
C/121, imho
If it didn’t take
it must have been fake
***
Anonymous Says:
June 27th, 2010 at 7:26 am
Outlaw government employee unions. Dismantle 80% of the departments on this list: http://www.usa.gov/Agencies/Federal/All_Agencies/index.shtml starting with the Department of Energy, the ATF, HHS, DEA, and the Department of Education. Repeal the 17th Amendment. Limit days Congress is in session to 100 days per year. Require mandatory 10-year sunset provisions in all laws passed by Congress. Move tax day (April 15) to the first Wednesday in November, or election day to April 16; End all restrictions on campaign finance, but make public disclosure mandatory and transparent.
For starters.
((ht instapundit link on Overton Window, scroll down a bit at
http://chicagoboyz.net/archives/13837.html
***
“Throw Cloward/Piven out the Overton Window!”
Somewhere in that 2000 page Larseny bill (no pun intended) is probably a provision redefining the word “looter” by the new and less offensive term “skimmer”. This type of “skimming” won’t be turned down or forgone by the government in D.C.
Now just keep your hands where they can see them.
GP/123; yep –we’ve got ‘em right where they want us alright.
We don’t need no ferin skimmers, GP/123
OT – ht, Rufus:
Avertible Catastrophe
The Netherlands government, which owns its own ships and high-tech skimmers, gives an oil company 12 hours to demonstrate it has the spill in hand. If the company shows signs of unpreparedness, the government dispatches its own ships at the oil company’s expense. “If there’s a country that’s experienced with building dikes and managing water, it’s the Netherlands,” says Geert Visser, the Dutch consul general in Houston.
In sharp contrast to Dutch preparedness before the fact and the Dutch instinct to dive into action once an emergency becomes apparent, witness the American reaction to the Dutch offer of help. The U.S. government responded with
“Thanks but no thanks…”
The Americans, overwhelmed by the catastrophic consequences of the BP spill, finally relented and took the Dutch up on their offer —
but only partly.
Because the U.S. didn’t want Dutch ships working the Gulf, the U.S. airlifted the Dutch equipment to the Gulf and then retrofitted it to U.S. vessels.
And rather than have experienced Dutch crews immediately operate the oil-skimming equipment, to appease labour unions the U.S. postponed the clean-up operation to allow U.S. crews to be trained.
A catastrophe that could have been averted is now playing out. With oil increasingly reaching the Gulf coast, the emergency construction of sand berns to minimize the damage is imperative.
Again, the U.S. government priority is on U.S. jobs, with the Dutch asked to train American workers rather than to build the berms.
According to Floris Van Hovell, a spokesman for the Dutch embassy in Washington, Dutch dredging ships could complete the berms in Louisiana twice as fast as the U.S. companies awarded the work.
“Given the fact that there is so much oil on a daily basis coming in, you do not have that much time to protect the marshlands,”
he says, perplexed that the U.S. government could be so focussed on side issues with the entire Gulf Coast hanging in the balance.
http://www.financialsense.com/stormwatch/geo/pastanalysis/2010/0625.html
(snip)
“As the sea level rose above the Bosporan shelf, salt water diffused into the Black Sea and killed the fresh-water life it contained. The decomposed remains of this ice-age population still poison the lower levels of the stagnant Black Sea which is devoid of life below 250 feet.”
The surface area of the Black Sea is 168,495 square miles. The entire area, below 250 feet, is presently extinct. Man did not cause this extinction. Nature caused it. Compared with the relatively small area of the present oil slick, the Black Sea disaster was more 50 times worse, and the world did not come to an end. The alarmist pronouncements of recent weeks should be put into perspective. The disaster in the Gulf of Mexico is great, but it is far from the worst that our planet has suffered. This should help us to put things into perspective.
The tragedy of so much oil flowing into the Gulf of Mexico is undeniable. But we must not forget the political game that is also afoot, and the strategic implications: from this day forth, America will not drill for oil under the water; meanwhile, others will profit by doing so. Even more important, capitalism will take the blame, the oil companies will be punished, and America’s overall position will be weakened. Therefore, the event is not simply an environmental catastrophe. It is simultaneously a political event which is being exploited by existing political factions, countries and interests. The pathology of the West is not that it has allowed a spill to occur. The pathology is found in the self-lacerating tendencies of a civilization that feels so much guilt. One might ask: Who has put this guilt upon us? What is their motive?
(end snip)
Follow the money, power, and control.
Buddy, the wacko greens are using the ‘point to with alarm’ political technique.
That is where you point out something and claim it will end life as we know it and we should be afraid, very, very afraid.
Once the gullible are trembling with fear, those doing the pointing say that if we surrender our money, our freedom, our sacred honor to them they will make us safe. It never works out that way, of course. Meanwhile, the technique gets used again and again, since there was never any real danger in the first place. The gullible keep breeding and since it is a numbers technique, it gets stronger with use.
The Counter to ‘pointing with alarm’ is rational thought. Since rational thought is usually in short supply, pointers have a natural advantage.
Pointing with alarm also obscures the real issue here. That is the whole reason BP was drilling at 5,000 feet below sea level is those same wacko greens won’t allow drilling in ANWR, in shallow waters of the Continental shelf, or anywhere else that is safe. Think about that.
The wacko greens created this disaster, which they will use a grist for the propaganda mills to create more disasters.
Write your Congress critter. We need a congressional investigation into the Environmental movement. Roll back the rock and see what sort of bugs scurry for cover.
Senator Carl Levin, Senate Armed Services Committee chairman, just now, on the AP wire, called for “…a delay in starting the Kandahar Offensive,” and a “…withdrawal on the time schedule.” Alas, Poor Petraeus, we hardly knew ye.
gokart-mozart,
Concur in part, that is to say Yes and maybe. Your description of the Electoral College and Biden’s qualification for VP independent of Obama is correct. The question of who becomes President in the event that the presumptive President Elect is found ineligible is more complicated. Should the President Elect die or become incapacitated before January 20th then I believe the VP Elect gets sworn in as POTUS. My argument is that may not apply in the case of fraud because the will of the Electors, who vote for both offices in two ballots, would not be as important. In that case the only valid votes that were in fact cast for the office of POTUS were those for John McCain. Elevating Biden to the top spot could be seen as rewarding the Electors poor judgment. It is like allowing them to revote after they spoiled their ballots. Despite that I would be willing to support the elevation of Joe Biden as part of a Grand Bargain including the removal of Obama’s judicial appointments, the dismissal of all Czars and the repeal of unconstitutional laws or administrative acts. If Biden becomes President then the Senate gets to select a new VP.
I’ve heard it bandied about, most recently by Jonah Goldberg, that maybe a solution (in addition to the Constitutional Convention mentioned by Rosinate — an idea I support, though with trepidation at the kind of crap that may come from a collection of people not fully-vested in the Enlightenment) is to INCREASE the number of folks in the House of Representatives.
Just got back from Colonial Williamsburg and turns out that proportionately there were 50,000 Virginians per member of the House of Burgesses at the time of the Revolution. Were we to keep to this smaller number as the constituency of each member of the House of Representatives, we would have 8-10x as many Representatives in the House as we do now.
Obviously, this presents some logistical challenges. No significant increase in franking costs would occur, but the amount we paid each delegate would have to decrease significantly. No more pensions, just a flat contribution to a 401k, say up to 5% of salary matched to representative contributions. Staffing costs would increase, but by limiting each House member to three DC staff that should lower costs substantially. We’d need a new meeting place for them something that could seat 3500-4000 people comfortably. I suggest a local basketball/hockey arena, the House of Representatives could meet whenever the Wizards didn’t have a home game. Worse comes to worse, we move the House of Representatives into Virginia, where they can deal with all the regulations they put on everyone else but exempt themselves from. Oh, and concealed carry would be legal in VA, so it should enforce some moderation of tempers and threats.
Smaller constituencies mean that federal representation is more granular. More elections diffuses the effect of campaign spending, making corporate or union contributions far less significant — rather than reaching 100-125,000 people a representative only has to reach 15,001 to win, assuming 60% turnout. Advertising need not tie up the airwaves, it can be done door-to-door with a moderate amount of work over a period of weeks. Gerrymandering becomes far less useful, because the numbers are so small in each district. Given that the position is less-renumerative, people will not look to it as a career or path to enrichment. People seeking to buy influence will suddenly find their money goes much less farther than it did, and constituents can keep up on their representative’s cash intake much easier. Third-party (or fourth-party or fifth-party) groups will finally get their chance. The major parties will still have significant influence, but other voices will be able to be heard.
The risk of this scheme is that it may empower the employed House staff as the institutional memory and guiding force of the HOR, which will diffuse the power of elected representatives. This should be a significant focus of the elected leadership and they should take pains to be sure that agendas are not introduced over time in this manner.
More significantly, the cross-section of the country elected to representation would be far different. I’d love to see some welders and small business owners voicing the opinions of their constituents, opinions they would have learned while knocking nearly every door of their district. If “Nobel Prize” is losing its cachet due to overuse, then the idea that we are supposed to have a “Ruling Class” or that such could be established by the inducements given to representatives encouraging them to make a career of representation can be diminished by making the office far, far more common.
For those who argue that a 4000-member representative body could not function effectively, I respond that this is a feature, not a bug.
Mr. Hayek is looking down on us from somewhere and sadly thinking to himself, “I warned them about this. But they didn’t listen.”.
“Responding to a question by Congressman Ron Paul (Rep., Tex.), Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan spoke to the subject of the nation’s money in his Humphrey-Hawkins testimony on February 17, 2000:
By definition, all prices are indeed the “ratio of an exchange of a good for money.” And what we seek is what that is. Our problem is we used M-1 at one point as the proxy of money, and it turned out to be a very difficult indicator of any financial state. We then went to M-2 and had the similar problem. We have never done M-3 per se because it largely reflects the extent of expansion of the banking industry. And when in effect banks expand, in and of itself, it doesn’t tell you terribly much about what real money is.
So our problem is not that we do not believe in sound money. We do. We very much believe that, if you have a debased currency, that you will have a debased economy. The difficulty is in defining what part of our liquidity structure is truly money. We have had trouble ferreting out proxies for that for a number of years. And the standard we employed is whether it gives us a good forward indicator of the direction of finance and the economy.
Regrettably, none of those which we have been able to develop, including MZM — has done that. That does not mean that we think that money is irrelevant. It means we think our measures of money have been inadequate. And, as a consequence of that, we, as I have mentioned previously, have downgraded the use of the monetary aggregates for monetary policy purposes, until we are able to find a more stable proxy for what we believe is the underlying money in the economy.
Question by Dr. Paul: “So it’s hard to manage something you can’t define?”
Answer by Mr. Greenspan: “It is not possible to manage something you can’t define.”"
It is profound that such a luminary in the field of economics would be at a loss as to the definition of what is arguably the core of his field of expertise. Well, let us see if poor old Jim the Gasman can help the boy out. The definition of money is trust. It is that simple. All of these measurements of the velocity of money and the inventory level of money and the ability to leverage money is all based in trust. Trust between men. Men who will participate in an economy only when there is a minimum level of trust that the economy is not rigged, gamed, setup. Because man is inherently predisposed to his own welfare, when there is a lack of trust in the system there is a lack of money. Or more accurately a lack of transactions.
LOTM @130:
The 364 Electors for Vice-President of the United States who voted for Biden desired his election to that office, correct?
The only body with the authority to void the 364 votes for “Barack Obama” was the Congress of the United States, meeting in Joint Session on January 6, 2009. They did not do so.
Therefore, although his lack of eligibility could lead to his removal, it would not reverse the certification of the 364 votes, so McCain could not become President.
Democracy cannot respond to the fast, efficient tyrant lusting for power. America’s Bolivarization will complete and irreversible before the 2012 elections could, in theory, express the will of a free people. For almost a century now, the American intelligensia has opposed liberty in all its forms; their triumph is nearly complete. Has any faction been omitted Christians (like Wallis), unions, journalists, political parties, all are in the thrall of the rule by the annointed leader. Fascism is characteristic of our era, and it has won.
Undoing hope and change won’t be difficult at all.
Keep in mind that ALL the bills sent to the White house are JUST bills, NOT law. After 30 days those bills become Legislation, unless they are vetoed by POTUS. It is a false precept that POTUS has to sign a bill for it to become legislation. Once that bill becomes legislation, the legislative branch translates it into regulations, which then are added to the United States Code;
http://www.gpoaccess.gov/uscode/index.html
The GPO is charged by that code with the responsibility of publishing it. That means going through and replacing the code that has changed and adding new code (regulations). That code is then published.
After it is published, it takes affect.
Those that feel they are getting screwed by the new code ( Remember, politics is a zero sum game. For every winner there is a loser) then take it to Court. Once in Court Judges rule on the Constitutionality of the new code. If it is ruled constitutional, then that code becomes LAW, which means it is used in court cases in the future. If it is ruled unconstitutional, then the GPO takes that regulation out of the code and prints a new one.
In theory. What happens in practice is that after EVERY legislative session and EVERY Supreme Court session, the Code is re-printed. IIRC, there is a years end update at the end of the fiscal year. The GPO sends the copies of the old code to the federal records repository in Suitland, MD. I think it is still there. They might have moved it and not told me.
Anyway, changing it back to pre-OBAMA would be a matter of dragging out the pre-OBAMA code and reissuing it as the new code. Then any post-Obama changes would be made to that re-issued code.
McCain has no claim on the Oval Office. NONE, NADA, ZIp, zilch. He lost, a fact for which most Americans are dutifully grateful. Biden would be next in order. Considering that Impeachment and removal of the Usurper would lead to a civil war, Biden would be the best suited to keep that civil war to a lower level.
Anyone other then Biden would be seen as a counter coup instead of a reversal of the election of an Unconstitutional candidate. Anybody remember the Martin Luther King riots? Or the Rodney King (?) riots?
The Impeachment AND convection of Obama would make them look like an after church quilting bee.
Not so sure about the downstream effects of an illegitimate candidate being impeached. You could argue that BHO hasn’t lost on a legislative effort yet, so the real astroturfed Forces of Rage (TM) have yet to be deployed, but if there was a perceived threat you can be sure that thousands of people turning out in cities like Boston and DC would have been met by aggressive counter-protesters more interested in bashing the protesters than their message.
There is a fundamental aspect of playing fair that I think would appeal to most people. If BHO is found to be not a legal American citizen and therefore not eligible to be President I think he could be removed fairly easily and without the degree of social disruption that you suggest. He hasn’t really ingratiated himself to the African-American community in his time in office, he is no MLK. If he turned out to not be a US citizen, then I don’t think there would be a tremendous outpouring of anger at the people who removed him.
The issue would come down to the veracity and source of the evidence presented. This wouldn’t be an esoteric issue of subordination of perjury, this would be documentary evidence that either is, or is not, real. The degree of civil unrest would be a function of the effectiveness to impugn the legitimacy of the documents presented, on one side will be a short-form State of Hawaii Birth Certificate, which has held water for the media and other officials to this point. On the other might be something like a notarized xerox copy of an Indonesian passport used in the application process at Occidental or Columbia that indicates that BHO presented himself as a naturalized Indonesian citizen.
You’d have to believe that if those documents exist, someone has made it their purpose to collect and destroy them. There would have to be pretty clear and convincing evidence that BHO presented himself as other than an American citizen at some point, listing his birthplace in his own handwriting as other than Hawaii. These are exceptionally long shots, particularly given 18 months as President to get someone to find and remove those things. If the Birther allegations are true, then the scrubbing job will have to be incomplete for there to be any chance of an impeachment. Short of a miracle, there will be no smoking gun just some empty casings on which to build a case for impeachment.
Then there is the human willingness to avoid cognitive dissonance, the idea that the President is not an American by birth and that the media and everyone around the President so completely failed to recognize this fact in a lust for political power and social reform may be so difficult to digest that any evidence to the contrary will be summarily dismissed. The Big Lie becomes accepted as truth to avoid admitting to yourself that you got taken.
I don’t think there would be an immediate violent uprising. I think the confidence of many in America in the fidelity of our institutions, both governmental and journalistic, would be dealt a fatal blow. When an impostor with a good line can become your President, then what is the use of the federal government at all? Many more people will reach the same conclusion many of us have — this isn’t the America we signed up for, and is unlikely to ever be so any more. To be honest, that’s what I fear far more than violence in the streets. We’ve had violence in the streets, we haven’t had a lie this big perpetrated on us in my memory. People cede some of their their trust to the government in order to receive the societal benefits that come from being a part of a functioning society. If trust is withdrawn, the society stops working, and there can be a negative feedback loop where people disengage more and more forcefully. The harder they disengage because of lack of trust, the harder the government attempts to reassert control — which only makes the initial withdrawal of trust seem valid and encourages further withdrawal of trust. Pay taxes? Eh, not so much. At the end, all the government has is force to ensure compliance, and people begin to trust the things they know will work, like Glocks and Remington 700s. This is not a path I want to see us take.
#’s 120 & 134 gokart-mozart
#130 Lifeofthemind
#131 Darren
gokart-mozart, I am also not disagreeing in whole with your scenario. The problem is that the sets of a) the number of people who have knowledge of the Constitution, b) the number of people have respect for the Constitution, and c) the number of those people who will be in a position to act for or against any of the options; intersect at a very small number. The overwhelming number of people are going to react, support, and possibly do violence based on either their personal judgement of what will be the greatest short term gain amongst the choices, or based on what they are told by various demogogues will be their greatest short term gain. My point being that we are now in Terra Incognita, and the organic waste may meet the rotating airfoil.
Add to that the fact that the choice of whichever branch of constitutional reasoning prevails is going to be inextricably bound into the problem of how to untangle [and they would have to be untangled] every presidential signature, appointment, agreement, and act to a status quo ante perduellio.
Keep in mind that the forces of the Left are going to be fighting to defend Buraq at all costs. If they lose that battle they will be fighting to preserve every bit of damage that he and they have done. And they will be fighting amongst themselves for power, including under “Chicago Rules”. Conversely, if it is shown that Buraq Hussein Obama is found was not constitutionally the President; then the Patriot side is not going to allow any of his acts to stand.
And there is the matter, non-trivial, of what collusion did or did not exist during the campaign and afterwards to conceal a known disqualification. Similarly to current corporate law, wherein the management is held responsible for failure to exercise due diligence in preventing violations of the law and frauds; given the the argument of Obama’s background was raised during the campaign and afterwards, AND the Obama campaign made a deliberate point of trying to disqualify McCain as not being a “natural born citizen”, there is probable cause to investigate the entire Democratic Party and its auxiliaries for at least culpable deliberate failure to exercise due diligence, and possibly deliberate conspiracy to overthrow the Constitution by fraud.
Upon reflection, this is more of a Sciurinae Sciurini pareunial globus pellisi than I had envisaged. It may take a Nuremberg Tribunal, run by the winner, to sort this out. There may be similar verdicts.
Constitutional law/theory is going to be only one thread of this argument, and perhaps the weakest one. For two generations we have systematically destroyed the credibility of all of our institutions; replacing faith in their probity, honor, and loyalty to something higher [be it Duty, Honor, God, Country, or Constitution] with a fixation upon short term political ends justifying literally any means.
Case in point. Most BC-er’s are in the American Patriot camp once you take out paid trolls and foreign nationals who comment. The foreign nationals may or may not be on our side, but they do not have the same skin in the game that we do. In sorting out the conflicting claims involved in this, would you automatically accept a Supreme Court verdict that included Sotomayor and Kagan in the majority that resulted in the retention of power by the Left as reflecting Constitutional reality? Or would you assume that such a verdict would be a Leftist attempt to illegitimately seize power? Conversely, would the Left accept it if the House Select Committee on Presidential Qualifications found that there was no evidence, say, that Obama was born in this country and that the Kenyan government maintained that he was born there? You can be sure that they would be screaming that it was a racist fraud, and it would be on.
Something that I have cited a number of times in my writings is the definition of politics. Politics are the way that a society finds an acceptable and mutually agreed upon set of rules for the allocation of power and resources short of a simple exercise of deadly force; individual or en-masse. It may be parliamentary democracy, it may be the rolling of the Black Marias, it may be divine right, it may be the operation of the Material Dialectic. But the results are accepted as the equivalent of playing by the rules by all participants.
If the consensus about the rules of politics in any society breaks down, the imperative to allocate both resources and power automatically defaults to brute force until another political settlement [social contract?] is achieved.
Amerikanski Smutnoye Vremya as referenced above.
I would ask that Wretchard, who was an observer of the aftermath of the fall of Marcos and his minions, comment on the concept of such a re-establishment of a working polity.
I would agree, along with LOTM, with accepting Joe Biden’s installation; totally subject to an absolute restoration of the status quo ante perduellio. Biden is a walking, arrogant, ignorant, proof of our society’s compassion for the mentally and emotionally stunted. He is too dumb to empty his boot, if the instructions were printed on the sole. His stupidity can be born until 2012 because he is too incompetent to carry out any effective plots against the Constitution; and while incompetent, he does not personally hate this country, its people, and its Constitution the way Obama does. And as a walking billboard for the Left, it ensures their defeat in the 2012 elections.
The sticking point, though, will be the matter of the restoration. I do not think any such grand compromise is possible.
Personally, and acknowledging your Constitutional points, if we are operating in unknown territory, I think the elevation of the new Speaker of the House would give us as close a thing as we could get to someone with a current mandate. Pelosi, Reid, et. al. would be in the dock alongside Obama. McCain has no current support, and is too tied to the current mess and collaboration with those in the dock [when you reach across the aisle all the time, your hands get dirty]. Whoever the new Speaker of the House is, as the basis for our conjectures, will have been made leader of the House majority based on a nationwide election trend and the choice of those elected in that trend. Not perfect, but if the restoration status quo ante perduellio takes place, good enough until 2012.
It is getting from point A to point B that will be somewhat discommoding, regardless. And there is no guarantee that anything like a Constitutional Republic will emerge at the end. But it is a trip that we are going to have to take. The choice of route is ours, even if the final destination is unclear. And a failure to choose a route just means that the choice will be made by others who may not have our best interests in mind at all.
Darren, the reform of limiting the size of Congressional Districts has been suggested before, and I absolutely agree. We can build them a new meeting hall, much of the business could be done by teleconferencing, and I would love to create the equivalent housing to say enlisted married quarters at Fort Carson down the road as their mandatory housing while in DC. Your real home would have to be in your district.
Long ago, when the world was new, and I was first getting involved in politics [as a Democrat, before loving and wanting to protect the country became grounds for expulsion from the party] campaigns WERE door-to-door. I was in Teen Dems, and we would canvas door-to-door on behalf of candidates, stand on street corners with literature, and at shopping centers. Candidates would have open forums and town halls [something the Democrats have dropped out of fear of their constituents] and people would come and ask questions, and follow up questions. And woe betide the candidate who would not give a straight answer. Candidates usually were someone that the community had some knowledge of [and of their family for that matter, in local elections] and were not someone parachuted in by the party machinery.
The more local politics can be, the more restraints on the politicians. It used to be that my state rep. was our Speaker of the House. I was not really active in politics at the time, but I knew her address, home phone number, and home fax number. If I had something on my mind, I could call her and leave a message offering to meet her for coffee next time she was in my town [she lived in a neighboring county, but shopped in our town which is much larger than hers. I’d get a call back within a week, and we would meet over coffee in a local restaurant; where she would also find herself talking to anyone who walked in.
We agreed on most things, not everything, but I never had the feeling that I did not have a chance to make my views known and have them respected. Try that with any member of Congress, or any Federal bureaucrat. You would be talking to the Secret Service for invading their aristocratic world.
Subotai Bahadur
Break-Break
When they get all 34 of this order up and working they expect to be able to recover 128 thousand barrels of oil a day.
Costner has proven that he is more than just another movie star. My admiration and congratulations go out to him and his whole crew.
BTW in a previous account I read these machines come in various sizes, and that they are building dozens more each month. I can see these machines becoming part of our national and state preparedness plan for future oil spills.
It is a national shame – that up to this point – that the Federal government has held up the licensing and approval of this invention because the final water product exceeded their present EPA standards.
Stupid? No I don’t think that word even comes close.
Papa Ray
106. Papa Ray
re: “When we die as martyrs” – Palestinian Children
Please pardon the OT, but as an interesting datum for your collection, after I watched this video yesterday I attempted to send an email containing the link to a few of my friends. It seems to have disappeared. I tried again, this time removing any words that might possibly raise a flag such as “die”, “martyrs”, “Palestinian” and even “Children”. Just the raw URL and a note that this was something they might find interesting. No dice.
Other emails I’ve sent have gone through with no problem, and I’ve received no messages from my ISP about the ones which didn’t. As Mr. Spock might say, “fascinating…”
D/137; –but really, things have been the way you fear ever since the unprosecuted Clinton scandals –most are mostly forgotten, but they were in unending train, and should have been felt to be as subversive of the letter and spirit of law and Constitution as they were. But they were not. Instead they were forgotten as quickly as the next one came along. This was how the Democrats used the peace dividend for everything except what it could have been. The end of communism, the impossible dream, was in our grasp –so who do we send over to advise in the privatization of USSR property? Al Gore. The century’s most significant political event, the killing of “ism”, and we send Mr. Earth in the Balance, while Bill is –well.
And of course it all went to hell. Good people needed to create the new system, and they couldn’t get in –the offices had been grabbed up by reptiles with TV-good looks and manners.
In a way, it’s all Dallas’s fault. That outpost of the bloodless insurance industry, stuck out on the middle of the prairie for no good reason, parasite on good old Fort Worth, gave us the ross perot that gve us Clinton, and gave us the JFK assassination that
gave us LBJ and his crazed programs and transformation of Vietnam into agonistes. And the stupid TV series too.
gokart-mozart,
Agreed that no reasonable argument has been raised disputing Biden’s qualification for his current office and all Electoral votes that he received were properly cast and valid. If Barack Obama is removed following an impeachment by the House and conviction in a trial by the Senate then Biden should become the President. Such a procedure grants that Obama is the President and was the President as of the same time and procedure that made Biden the Vice President. That may not be true.
If Obama was never qualified to be President, a condition that was publicly disputed but not adjudicated when the Electors cast their ballots, then those votes may have been invalid and Obama may never in fact have been the legal President of the United States. There is no power that I see in the Constitution for the Congress to dispute or reject ballots that have been certified by the States and submitted for the President of the Senate to count. The abuse of the doctrine of “standing” to prevent proper verification of Obama’s status by the courts is a problem that needs some permanent Constitutional remedy to prevent any future threat to the integrity of the office of POTUS.
If you vote for a Congressman who subsequently turns out to be not qualified for the office then you do not get a “do over” and in America we do not generally vote for a list in descending order. Nor was it proper for the courts and political appointees to try to devine the intent of elderly residents of Palm Beach County who accidentally voted for Pat Buchannan in 2000, but I do think that the Democratic election officers who failed to properly instruct the voters should have been held accountable.
In the case of Obama being found to have not been a “natural born” citizen I believe that largest number of valid Electoral College ballots were cast for John McCain and he should be the President. That would still leave Joe Biden as Vice President, solicitous of the President’s health. By that I mean he should be as a matter of Constitutional theory but as I have said it might be better to bend the theory to meet necessity in a crisis and permit Biden to take the office in a deal that grants the Republicans other benefits. Think of such a deal as the obverse of the compromise of 1877 that made Rutherford B Hayes President. Sarah Palin could only become VP if Biden vacated the office, either by becoming President himself or by resignation, and she was subsequently installed iaw Amendment XXV sect. 2.
BTW, I mispoke earlier in giving the Senate exclusive power over the appointment of a replacement VP. That being the method, never actually used to break an Electoral College deadlock, under Amendment XII.
Rosinante,
You usually craft your comments more carefully. While I agree with your conclusion that it is probably best for the Republic to allow Joe Biden to become President if Obama is found to have been ineligible for the office you could have done better than reply to my position with emphatic but unreasoned refutation. If Biden was an active part of a conspiracy, which is unlikely since Obama has no more respect for or trust in the VP than General MacChrystal does, then he should be removed and rendered ineligible for any position of profit or trust. Until a Congressional Committee is formed with subpoena power we shall have no knowledge of what the level of impropriety of OBAMA’s candidacy was. It is possible that he is in fact the legal proper President. The strongest evidence to the contrary is his reckless refusal to honestly and clearly release all of his documents.
Subotai Bahadur,
You made my point about Biden in prose that rose to poetry.
To be blogged under the title “McCain-Biden?”
—–
BreakingNews
Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., has been hospitalized, doctors describe his condition as ‘seriously ill’ – NBC
The word “reform” has undergone an Orwellian transformation to mean something like “politically motivated hijacking and total screw-up.” Thus we have finance reform, health care reform, and immigration reform. The list will continue, I’m sure. My feeling leads me to paraphrase Hermann Goering’s famous non-quote*:
“Whenever I hear the word ‘reform’ I reach for my revolver.”
*He never really said it.
PR @ 139: Good on Costner, if this thing works. I haven’t any idea what the competing technologies are. But if the only problem with this is that the outflow still has 1% oil, surely some secondary process can take that down to, oh, 0.1% or something.
It would be massively dumb to not license it on that basis, given the real dynamics of a SPILL.
But there’s a lot of dumb running around loose in the world, and no filter seems to remove it.
And even if it turns out that the only technological innovation here is Costner’s name, but that is enough to get a bunch of them build, so be it. Fight dumb with dumb!
Darren,
Very few people claim that Obama is not a US citizen. The question revolves around the definition of “natural born” as a standard for the office of POTUS. That is a slippery subject that people of good will can disagree on and people of ill will can exploit. My belief is that if Obama claimed to be a foreign national after his 18th birthday to gain a monetary benefit on a financial aid form then he should be ineligible for the office of POTUS. While I might choose to see travel on a foreign passport as disqualifying I could see that others would not hold to that standard. There are people who raise the issue of his adoption in Indonesia as a minor but to me that should not be a problem. The “birther” issue is I suspect being used by the Democrats to obscure these other issues and discredit all people who question Obama’s fitness for office.
Fletcher Christian 86. “Which, of course, means that welfare recipients don’t get a vote – and neither do government employees.” Go on, you silver tongued devil.
Subotai Triplicate: A good start.
As for Obama’s Red Guard: First rock salt, then 0-0 buck.
Josh 92. “For every page of legislation (say 300 words, we don’t need tiny fonts or huge pages!), one legislator loses their seat, immediately. For every billion dollars in deficits, real or projected, one legislator loses their life, immediately.” Sounds mighty salutary.
Darren 131. Current population would make that about 6,000 US Representatives. Limit their sessions to 100 or less days a year, implement Josh 92 and you got yourself a deal.
LOTM,
I think I probably elided “not natural-born and therefore not qualified to be President” into questions of citizenship. I agree that he is American, it’s whether he was born here or claimed alternate citizenship as a legally-responsible adult is the pertinent question, as you point out.
=====================
The former legislative director of the TMA explained the Texas Legislature like this: “They meet, by statute, 140 days every two years. There has been some argument that the statute was misinterpreted, and that they should meet two DAYS every 140 YEARS.”
The people who want the flow of money in society to stop influencing the government are rarely the ones who also want to get the government to stop influencing the flow of money in society. In fact, while standing firm for the former they adamantly oppose the latter. I find this to be short-sighted at best, and disingenuous at worst. We wouldn’t have the problems we do with the government if it would stick to the jobs the Constitution assigns it and do them well. I’m sure people were griping about the government in the past, but it does seem like when the government did less it did so with a greater degree of competence.
It seems to me that competence at all levels is the resource in shortest supply. With one major exception and due to the unique culture and demands of that exception, the government displays an alarming lack of competence at the things it attempts. The military manages to exempt itself from that in large part because they have a culture designed to attempt to organize the chaos of war, it’s designed to deal with and overcome inertia and friction through duty and sacrifice. Every other part of the government seems to be designed to generate friction and inertia. I do not understand why anyone that considers themselves results-oriented would vest more authority in an institution that on a good day is adequate at their assigned tasks and most days falls well short of that high-water mark. Competence is an art lost to most of the government, the problem is that this becomes even more evident when the private sector (e.g., BP, Lehman, Bear Stearns, everyone else who got TARP money) displays their own incompetence. There is no demand for competence from the government, and if it cannot do a job well it should not do it at all. Unfortunately the trend seems to be moving the other way, with the government relying on its one big trick (printing money) to insert itself into formerly-functioning spheres of the economy where it can add little and costs a lot.
Rosinante 136. “The Impeachment AND convection of Obama” Geez, Ros, were were just going to convict him, not roast him.
148. Tamquam — depending on the damage he does before he leaves office, I might be persuaded to support Rosinate’s inadvertent suggestion.
Something to anticipate, and raise the collective spirits of the BC host and commentators:
It is January 21, 2013. An old man walks up to the Marine guard in front of the White House and says, “I’d like to see the President, Mr. Obama.”
The guard responds, “Sir, Mr. Obama is no longer the President.” The old man smiles and nods, and walks away. The same time the next day, the old man walks up to the same guard, and says, “I’d like to see the President, Mr. Obama.” The guard responds in an identical fashion, and again the old man smiles and nods, and continues down the street.
The third day, the old man walks up to the same guard and again asks to see Mr. Obama. The Marine says, “Sir, for the third time, Mr. Obama is not the President and does not live here any more. If I may ask sir, why do you keep asking?”
The old man smiles and says, “I just like to hear you say it.”
The Marine salutes and says, “See you tomorrow, sir.”
Thank you all for your eloquence -
this cartoon expresses my thoughts better than I could possibly do.
Declaration 2.0
http://www.daybydaycartoon.com/2010/06/27/#005695
A Sunday Video and a reminder how Obama’s Federal Government is going to handle our borders.
I hear several other states are working up changes in their laws similar to Arizona. Not California of course, as they have already given away most of the southern part of their state to Mexico. Then we have this:
I’m having real bad thoughts about what we will have to do to to rid ourselves of this pestilence even if the voting goes against the democrats this year.
It’s getting real worrisome.
Papa Ray
P.S. Excellent link f47, thanks and thanks for the laugh Darren.
142. Lifeofthemind
If Obama was never qualified to be President, a condition that was publicly disputed but not adjudicated when the Electors cast their ballots, then those votes may have been invalid and Obama may never in fact have been the legal President of the United States. There is no power that I see in the Constitution for the Congress to dispute or reject ballots that have been certified by the States and submitted for the President of the Senate to count.
…………………..
Democrat Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi knows that Barack Hussein Obama is not eligible for the office of president, which is why she refused to certify the following language when certifying Obama as the DNC candidate for president in 2008.
This is the normal language for certification of nomination for president and vice president, filed by the DNC only in the state of Hawaii…
This is the language filed by the DNC in the other 49 states, however…
Note that the language which certifies that Barack Hussein Obama meets all constitutional qualifications is missing in the DNC documents filed in 49 of the 50 states. The certification of constitutional qualification for the office of president was filed only in Hawaii. That text is missing in the DNC certification filings for all other states.
Whereas the RNC filed the exact same certification document, including the constitutional text for John McCain in all 50 states, Obama was technically certified in only one state, Hawaii. A mere inconvenient technicality, I’m sure…
148. Tamquam, It’s the process. POTUS is ABOVE the law. He CANNOT be arrested by any officer of the law. He has to be accused of a crime by the House of Representatives. That process is called ‘impeachment’. If impeached by a majority vote of the House, he is put on trial by the Senate. He is convicted by a 2/3rds vote of the Senate. 2 Presidents have been impeached, 1 resigned when it became obvious that he would be impeached. None have been convicted. Clinton missed by 2 votes ( I think). Johnson ( NOT LBJ) missed by 1.
I could have that backwards. I’m to lazy today to look it up.
Once impeached AND convicted, the President becomes just another citizen. At that point he can be arrested, just like any other citizen. Clinton kept on flying around in Air Force One after his impeachment. Accepting envelops full of cash and having a good ol’ time. Still does, AFAIK.
Clinton did lose his license to practice Law in Arkansas, which was no great loss to him or Arkansas.
When Congress is in session, a sitting Congress critter cannot be arrested either. That has to wait until congress goes into recess. That has been done too many times to bother listing. I think there are half a dozen former congress critters in jail now, with at least that many waiting trial. Remember ‘cold cash’ Jefferson? Him of the 90,000 in small unmarked bills in his freezer? Right under the ice cubes, next to the TV dinner? He almost beat the rap. They got him at the start of the break and he made bail and When Congress went back in session, he was there.
I think he won re-election the next cycle and would have beaten the rap on statue of limitations if he had won in ’08. He didn’t. So now he is looking at 13 years in the slammer.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_J._Jefferson
That’s nothing…
Both Obamas have dropped their law licenses…
On the way to the White House.
—–
Let’s not forget the irreplaceable Michele: her $300,000 job was stricken from the hospital budget upon her assent to the throne.
Her husband’s earmarks more than compensated the institution, of course.
There’s no crime here, move along, move along….
So, impeachment is when you put him in the (peach) pit, the convection pit?
If you think I was engaged in exaggeration about California, please read this and please don’t miss the embedded links.
“Mexican Petri Dish Located”
There are some small towns in Texas and other states mentioned also. I’m sure that this is spreading and not being reported because of the left leaning (nearly falling over) lame stream media. Plus most others do not want to be seen as a racist, trouble maker or white supremest.
Most of the time as I see it, bad news concerning illegals is not being reported except where they just can’t avoid it because of crimes or such. Even then, sometimes that fact is conveniently left out.
VDH and a very few others tried to tell us about all of this years and years ago. Until we get a Federal Government to start enforcing the laws and secure our borders this is only going to get much worse, especially since the drug cartels are setting up shop in America.
In fact I will say that if we started a full bench press today, deported millions, spent billions, even using active duty military and actually double fenced America and made the ports as foolproof and safe as possible….
It would be well over ten years before we would or could say it was not only under control but that illegal immigration was a thing of the past. Even then you would still have bad people coming in under legal immigration.
Our legal immigration is a national shame and joke at the same time.
There have been estimates that there are thousands of radical Islamics already in America that have came in illegally and legally in the last ten years. All just waiting until they are activated and given the call from their handlers and Allah.
I’m afraid that time is coming soon, but they will have to compete with the Mexicans and drug cartels for control of America.
Papa Ray
The Urban legend is that impeachment is Latin for ‘grab their ankle’. I can’t say it isn’t, since Latin went through so many changes that there is a lot of slack in just exactly what is Latin and what isn’t. It does make a nice story.
Could there possibly be any way to land the media companies that withheld info on this bunch, in a court of law? Breach of (implied) contract or something? We can’t blame the rats in DC –they’re just rats. We CAN blame the half dozen news organizations that conspired to defraud the USA and her citizens. Tort ain’t nit*ro*gly*cer*in, and that me hearties may well be the forkin depath.
Slightly OT: Drudge has a new/revised story about the “internet kill switch” legislation that Lieberman is supporting, which is going to the Senate floor. As currently conceived, he can arbitrarily shut down the internet on his own w/o Congressional approval of any sort for four months.
So all we need now is an appropriate “crisis” in the next 2-3 weeks, and wa-la shut it down until after November.
Drudge has two links to the ‘internet kill switch’ –whoich a senate panel did in fact send to the floor today. One of the links sez:
(snip)
As we have illustrated, fears surrounding cybersecurity have been hyped to mask the real agenda behind the bill, which is to strangle the runaway growth of alternative and independent media outlets which are exposing government atrocities, cover-ups and cronyism like never before.
Indeed, China uses similar rhetoric about the need to maintain “security” and combating cyber warfare by regulating the web, when in reality their entire program is focused around silencing anyone who criticizes the state.
The real agenda behind government control of the Internet has always been to strangle and suffocate independent media outlets who are now competing with and even displacing establishment press organs, with websites like the Drudge Report now attracting more traffic than many large newspapers combined. As part of this war against independent media, the FTC recently proposing a “Drudge Tax” that would force independent media organizations to pay fees that would be used to fund mainstream newspapers.
(end snip)
man alive, i’m not even finished trying to digest THIS sort of stuff, leaking out of everywhere:
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/jun/27/ex-bp-official-received-payouts-perks/
PS,
and, as much as saying the gulf disaster was a one-off with a fully understood causation:
http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2010/06/27/business-energy-af-libya-bp-oil_7723451.html
…which of course makes the moratorium –and the ‘pocket moratorium’ (shallow water re-permitting is sure to freeze as small and medium operators and their insurers begin wondering if they really want to take a chance on something bad happening to their operations too) –very clearly not a safety issue but a rank federal political/economic attack on an enemy industry in an enemy quadrant of America. The old Confederacy gwan be back ta cotton pickin’ only dis time Uncle Remus he gwan be Celtic, not African.
If the internet goes dead, it is a sure sign of either a totalitarian move to seize control of the government, or that alien life forms have landed and made a deal with Soros. Either way, you can be certain that a lot of Islamic and otherwise unfriendly sleeper cells will go active.
The consequences of the suspension of Internet activity will be massive and none of them pleasant. Consider how many services are now more or less UTTERLY dependent on the Internet.
Much voice communication we continue to refer to as “telephone” service is some form of Voice-over-Internet Protocol.
Many systems that are nominally self-sufficient (i.e., based on microwave, shortwave & line-of-sight radio nets) are connected and partially dependent on Internet connection in many localities, and more or less completely vulnerable to disruption in others:
Emergency Medical System, Fire, Police,
Hospital-to-Hospital, INTRA hospital records, appointments, announcements, billing, patient intake and discharge
Medical records archives,
Insurance claims evaluation,
public school systems (especially distribution of emergency information),
Harbor pilots, Ship-to-Shore, freight tracking, GPS,
financial information, personal banking, ATMs,
commercial transactions at all scales,
credit score transmittals,
Real Estate Listing & all queries & searches, Title & Deed Searches
Legal searches on Lexus/Nexus databases,
Medical consults,
Transmission of diagnostic imaging data from MRI, CAT, PET, & X-ray scans,
Exotic Remote medical diagnostic & therapeutic procedures,
Monitoring of Pacemakers, Intracranial Shunts, Implanted Insulin injection units
Monitoring & tracking various wildlife populations & individuals
Weather Radar, Highway traffic monitor cameras
Police mobile unit queries on auto license plates, BOLOs, driver license status, & data on restrictions, pending & final disposition of criminal charges, fingerprints, facial recognition
Public Library access, searches, holds, notification,
Academic research by students & faculty
Grocery & many other retail stores offering expanded online ordering, marketing, merchandizing, for local customers.
Control & monitoring of Water, Natural Gas, Sewerage distribution systems
Management of “Just-in-time” distribution systems – As many industries have shifted from maintaining warehouses for longterm storage of components and raw materials, they have become absolutely dependent upon being able to order and track delivery of numerous elements from suppliers that must all be ordered and shipped with precisely calculated lead times so as to arrive within a very narrow window when they are needed, to avoid disrupting the flow of the manufacturing process.
There are tens – possibly hundreds – of thousands of routine transactions that our country has at least partially committed to the internet.
Because of the Internet’s massive redundancy, it has been assumed that except in the case of some vast cataclysm the routing can get around dead nodes.
To give THIS halfwit in the Oval Office the power to shut the whole system down is IN-SANE.
I cannot conceive of any situation where the damage from a deliberate EXTERNAL attack would be worse for the country than letting Obama and his crew of dung eaters shut down the internet. We might as well each of us mix up a batch of cyanide-laced Flavorade, and just wait for him to come on the Telly and read the suicide order from his flipping Teleprompter.
Although I am no programmer, my computer graphics and interactive game production career has had me working with the internet as part of my routine for twenty-five years. I’ve had numerous conversations on the subject with some of the folks who worked on the original DARPA projects, and with the engineers, programmers, and IT people at seven Silicon Valley manufacturers, and three universities where I’ve worked during that quarter-century. There’s lots I don’t know, but I know enough to be damn sure Obama has no more business being allowed anywhere near an Internet Kill Switch than to the Nuclear Football.
This man has delusions of competence. The limit of his judgment extends no further than estimating the appropriate time to evacuate his bladder.
I think that commenting that we have to pass a law to understand what it means
should merit hanging.
- just saying, they need some focus
Okay, let’s imagine how our adversaries (external enemies, that is) will caper and chortle and then settle down to make plans when Congress gives Internet Kill Switch to President Can’t-find-his-way-out-of-an-open-toilet-stall-with-a-map-and-a-torch…
All that will be needed to get the stinking GENIUS to destroy the country is to send a flurry of feints through the net, merely enough to make it SEEM that an attack is in progress.
The Transcendant Boob will then chamber a round, place the muzzle to the nation’s temple, and pull the trigger, putting us out of his misery.
What a brilliant plan. Those idiots in Congress will be praised forever…
In the halls of those who HATE US!!!!!!
I’m badly in need of direction and inspiration. I keep thinking “Tito”.
163. Mad Fiddler
I cannot conceive of any situation where the damage from a deliberate EXTERNAL attack would be worse for the country than letting Obama and his crew of dung eaters shut down the internet. We might as well each of us mix up a batch of cyanide-laced Flavorade, and just wait for him to come on the Telly and read the suicide order from his flipping Teleprompter.
Well put.
The internet was initially conceived as a way to keep communications going in the event of a nuclear attack from a foreign enemy. Now we’re going to give our own government the power to shut it down? What’s wrong with this picture?
If Congress grants that kind of power to the President, especially this President, it would be something very close to the 1933 Enabling Act.
frankly a bit concerned, myself. it’d be too intolerable an attack on too much of the admin’s friends’ commerce. They must be expecting trouble more dire than bloggers exposing their corruptions.
http://news.techworld.com/security/3228198/obama-internet-kill-switch-plan-approved-by-us-senate/?olo=rss
[snip]
One critic said Thursday that the bill will hurt the nation’s security, not help it. Security products operate in a competitive market that works best without heavy government intervention, said Wayne Crews, vice president for policy and director of technology studies at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, an anti-regulation think tank.
“Policymakers should reject such proposals to centralize cyber security risk management,” Crews said in an e-mail. “The Internet that will evolve if government can resort to a ‘kill switch’ will be vastly different from, and inferior to, the safer one that will emerge otherwise.”
[end snip]
sounds like the proper attack line –can’t very well floor debate on the expressed fear that Obama’s crew is a dictatorship-in-waiting.
I keep telling people that God is sending us a message with the Gulf Coast oil spill. All that tar, He must want us to do something with it. If chickens suddenly get hit with a molting disease…
What a perfectly delightful idea! –always DID like that poetic-justice concept –
Star and feather, …visualize:
FLOTUS the featherdancer!
well he can pour oil all over us, he can sic on us all the govament lawyers our own treasures can buy, he can tax us naked and leave us hongry, he can wreck and ruin the work of ten generations, but he cain’t do NUTHIN’ about old Doc Watson!
(old Doc is blind, BTW –s’why he don’t eMote)
Nor this feller.
Here is something to get your mood right for today. Warning: Extreme disgusting content warning.
‘I’m Calling Their Bluff’ – Obama Goes Partisan on International Stage
Obama is way past being a disappointing, arrogant, shyster Marxist – into being a power drunk egomaniac and a danger not only to us but to the world.
Here you will see that he is almost incoherent and could be accused of being on drugs.
Ah..yes, he is high on himself.
Papa Ray
Obama bows to Stalin and The Great Patriotic War
President Obama’s equalizing the World War II with the ‘the Great Patriotic War’ was the latest in the string of weird moments where the US place in the history was downgraded to be equal to the Soviet’s:
“Those were the same hopes of another generation of Americans and Russians — the generation that stood together as allies in the Second World War —- the Great Patriotic War in which the Russian people suffered and sacrificed so much. We recently marked the 65th anniversary of our shared victory in that war, including that historic moment when American and Soviet troops came together in friendship at the Elbe River in Germany.”
A reporter who was there at that time, all those years ago, said:
“If there is a fine, splendid world in the future, it will largely be because the United States and Russia get on well together. If it is in trouble, it will be because they don’t get on well. It’s as simple as that.”
Instead of using the chance to remind the world of the critical role the USA played in the Second World War, Obama just ripped a page off the Russian textbook on history and put it in the middle of his prepared remarks at the joint press-conference with President Medvedev.
It was almost the equivalent of going to the D-Day Memorial and bowing to the newly carved Stalin bust.
PR/174; –what happened i think, to bring on that display, was that he’d been so thoroughly rebuked on his attempt to get Europe to forget austerity and spend ever more. So, what that display was about was anger, or pique, or pout, saying ”okay, you want to do it YOUR way, fine, just WATCH me”.
What he’ll do is exploit what has already been noted here and there as a split in the Tea Party between those who want or need all of their Medicare and SocSec entitlements and those who on principle are willing to let ‘em go in part or in total.
I’m in the latter –i ain’t taking it. Of course if i go bust i might come off that position. but maybe not. what i REALLY want to is to go back to 1860 and have the WWII 8th AAF flying not out of England but Austin. And the yankees have Sopwith Camels, see, or maybe Nieuport Pups. then we can make peace and not have a war, and the states can forever keep their original Constitutional agreement, and with no Morrill Tariff. Slavery we end without bloodshed –only 6% of southern familes had any slaves anyway, so with the other 94% on the internet bypassing and cutting-off that 6%’s ownership of the MSM and statehouses, we roll ‘em up easily. And the freedmen go free, not into any 9th ward of the mind inside a vast new nanny plantation.
The Grand Kleagle Robert Byrd is dead. Good Riddens I say.
The really good news is that apparently there needs to be a special election to replace him. I don’t know if there will be a temp replacement. But for the time being, one less vote for cloture.
With Byrd gone and Scott Brown flipping against the Consumer Protection Act, it looks like the Dems are two votes shy of Cloture on the CPA. All the better to help kill the “Kill Switch” too.