From Chris Bowers:
“To me, as a political activist, the lesson [of the AIG bonuses saga] is that we should be generating as much anger as possible, all the time, because it is about the only thing that appears to make politicians in D.C. responsible to our concerns.”
Some people, like Rep. Emanuel Cleaver of Missouri are feeling regretful over voting for the AIG clawback legislation. Cleaver actually said, “I joined the cowards,” by voting for it. Bowers is explicitly celebrating this specific fact. Whipping up anger forced a man to succumb to populist pressure and, in his own estimation, cast a cowardly vote. By turning our political enemies into cowards, however temporarily, we can get them to support our policies when they would not otherwise do so.
In one sense, this is Politics101. How do you get the other party and recalcitrant members of your own to vote your way? You put fear into them. Maybe they feel dirty about capitulating, but what do you care? I’m with Chris on this in this narrow sense.
But this opens up areas for discussion. Here’s one. If you are a member of Congress, should you refuse to vote for any bill that you think is unconstitutional? Is that part of your oath? Or, let’s say that you know that either a) the bill will never pass the other house (or that it will be vetoed), or b) that the Supreme Court will surely strike it down. Is it okay under circumstances where you know the bill will not become law (or will be quickly invalidated as law) to vote for an unconstitutional bill?
Here’s the congressional oath:
I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.
Can you be said to be supporting the Constitution if you vote for a bill you believe to be unconstitutional? So, that’s one question and let’s move on. Suppose you’ve determined that there is nothing inconsistent with your oath in voting for an unconstitutional bill you are certain will not become or be sustained as law. What would be the purpose for voting for it, then?
The obvious answer is to send a message. You send a warning shot across the bow to someone or some group of people. You tell them that you don’t like what they’re doing and that you’ll come after them if they keep doing it. In the case of the AIG bonuses, the bill will never become law but it did incentivize people to give the money back voluntarily. So, the people that voted for the bill accomplished something they probably could not have accomplished legally, and they did it through an act of intimidation.
We can debate the morality of Congress behaving this way, but we can also debate the utility. They did accomplish something…they saved the taxpayers a couple hundred million dollars. And they sent a message to other companies and to each other, as politicians.
Yet, Chris doesn’t really contemplate that the bill might be bad law. He seems to think it might actually pass through the Senate and be signed into law. And he doesn’t seem to have any qualms about that. That’s the point where he completely loses me. It’s one thing to say that whipping up all this populist anger saved the taxpayers money and that there was no other way to accomplish that goal. I might agree with him on that. It’s another to say that bills of attainder should be passed by Congress and signed into law by the president.
And, as long as we’re on the subject, it isn’t necessary for a law to be unconstitutional for it to be poor policy. A Congress that governs out of fear can make very poor decisions (see AUMF-Iraq). Consider this. When Bowers says “…we should be generating as much anger as possible, all the time…” he could be saying that “Congress should be governing out of fear, all the time,” because that would be the effect and purpose of Bowers’s strategy. In fact, I can see Karl Rove, back in 2002, in the inner councils of the government, saying “we should be generating as much fear as possible, all the time.”
One thing should be obvious. Whether your goal is to entice anger or fear, if that is your goal, reasoned debate is going to be thrown out the window. You will not find me going along with any such plan.
My understanding or memory may be mistaken but I believe that there is a Supreme Court decision of some years ago that pretty much determined that the constitution as it applies to bills of attainder is limited to criminal law. You assert that the bill is clearly unconstitutional but I don’t believe that this is settled law as you assert. Also, the high court has historically been reluctant to intervene and go against Congress in matters similar to this in the past. It is more likely that the bill would die in the end simply because Obama would veto it.
In the bigger picture it is also clear to many of us that it is not just the financial system that is broken but that the government itself is broken and largely co-opted by big business and wealthy elites. You go with the tools you have, so I at least share Chris Bower’s and other’s viewpoint. I found this post today at A Tiny Revolution apropos. Sorry if it does not come out as a link as I do not seem to know how to do that here. http://www.tinyrevolution.com/mt/archives/002904.html Contrast and compare the French to us.
Obama needs to get behind the people on this or he will be left behind and we will have unfortunately missed an historic opportunity to create real change while people are still open to it. It seems to me an obsessiveness about keeping up appearances in the name of law and order is self defeating considering that those entrenched in power themselves have little real regard for the law.
Here is Jeffrey Sachs today spelling out how the looting program of Talf is structured. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeffrey-sachs/will-geithner-and-summers_b_177982.html
But not too worry, this kind of galactic level thievery is actually legal and perfectly respectable in all the right circles.
This is galactically stupid.
It’s okay to whip up anger but not to govern in fear? There’s a transactional event going on. The public becomes furious and the Congress reacts out of fear.
Our Bill of Rights is designed to deal with this problem. If we had allowed politicians to succumb to populist pressure, we would have none, or nearly none, of those rights left. Put the fourth and fifth amendments to a vote after 9/11. Put the first amendment to a vote over a Nazi march. There are real dangers when once you decide to govern through the threat of transitory populist anger.
Not everyone thinks submissiveness is a good way to run a democracy. It seems to me that your viewpoint in practice is for angry citizens to just stfu and do what they are told. It is a good thing when Congress is afraid of the people. It is a good thing when the wealthy and powerful know that there may be a day of reckoning. You place a lot of faith in working within the existing framework but we have little reason to believe that it actually will work to promote more than cosmetic change. Obama is, of course far superior to Bush but he does not show any real courage to confront the permanent establishment. Even on important civil liberty issues the administration is perpetuating Bush era policies, which is very disturbing to me. I btw do not believe you are galactically stupid as you accuse me of being, you are however clearly unwilling or afraid of confronting the class war issues that are being played out. Apparently only one side is allowed to wage a vicious war for decades against ordinary citizens. When anyone stands up to protest you appear like a cop on the beat at the 7-11 ready to rap knuckles or knock heads. Also, I believe you are still wrong on the constitutionality issue with the tax law. You may oppose such laws as bad policy – but they may still be good and useful politics. Let the bankers go Galt. No one will miss them.
I didn’t call you galactically stupid.
And, please, don’t mix apples and oranges.
It’s perfectly fine for people to be angry when anger is justified. It’s okay to point out injustices and rally people to petition their government to redress them.
What’s dubious is to make it a policy to whip up anger “all the time” without respect for the facts or the Constitution.
I hope you can see the difference.
Ok. I still think it is good politics. And I am not afraid of a little anger and some real protest. This is a good time for political leaders to feel the heat of the people. I just read today of Harry Reid whining about liberal groups placing negative ads against some conservative dems and saying it is not helpful and should stop. Ridiculous. What part of being a democracy does the Senate leader not understand. We are too passive, too obedient, too patient and the powerful take advantage of this every. damn. time.
Agreed. It worked like the abortion tricks the Pukes used to play on the Democrats – splitting the Republican caucus and making them offend either their populist conservative/religious-nut supporters or their corporate masters.
Boo:
Maybe I am just too cynical but Congress(and sometimes the President) almost always govern out of fear. Fear that the corporations and elites they whore themselves out to won’t like them anymore.
Booman Tribune ~ Quote of the Day
there’s absolutely nothing transitory about it. you really think people are just going to go back to their regular programming after we plugged just a few leaks with paltry billions, with trillions of defaults coming down the pike, and russia and china muttering about a new world currency?
it’s been building for decades, (globally), this time it feels final.
about time…
Also, I believe you’ve mistaken a Bill of Attainder for an ex post facto law.
Link
Check out this post at Angry Bear that discusses the tax issue and some of the policy/political implications. There are a couple of other posts and links on the subject there that I will try to find.
http://angrybear.blogspot.com/2009/03/good-copbad-cop-or-tit-for-tat.html
Nothing there indicates that taking away bonus-giving privileges from corporations who receive tax money constitutes a punitive act against a particular or easily ascerntainable group of persons.
The bill targets a practice, not people, one could easily argue.
the bill targets 90% of someone’s income. That’s not a practice, like smoking. It’s someone’s paycheck.
And it was legal for over 20 years in the 40s and 50s, as we’ve discussed before. That’s not targeting people. That’s targeting wealth.
Lisa.
It was not legal in the 1950’s to pass a law to take people’s money back from them after they had it. It was legal to set a tax rate and enforce it. Not make shit up and apply it to last year. You know better than to make that argument.
Jeffrey Sachs should apologize for destroying the lives of millions of people in the old soviet bloc and go away. His argument is the same silly argument that Krugman made, based on bogus statistics and insane investment strategies (just as a minor point: investors do not risk money to break even, they hope for actual profits).
I’m impressed that NAFTA Krugman and “Shock Treatment” Sachs are being advanced as the People’s Experts in this situation. Wonder of wonders.
No one ever goes away, until the very end. Geithner by the way has also come under fire for mishandling things when at the IMF- http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2009/03/former-australian-prime-minister.html )and he is still very much with us. I still believe that taking refuge in the raw numbers or the spread is avoiding the real problem – leaving management in charge and empowered to continue looting.
“Can you be said to be supporting the Constitution if you vote for a bill you believe to be unconstitutional?”
Let’s break this down: (a) voting for a bill. But of course a bill is not law until it passes both houses and is signed by the president. There are votes where Rep. X’s vote will substantively contribute to this scenario, but very often this is not the case. And when it is not, Rep. X usually knows that.
(b) believe to be unconstitutional. Of course a bill may have provisions that are clearly unconstitutional. But more often than not, a feature may merely be alleged to be unconstitutional. For example, in the present case of the tax clawback. There are various theories that it is against due process or that it is a sort of bill of attainder. But these are only arguments. It’s not clear that the bill is unconstitutional, only that opposing counsel could argue before the supreme court that it was. So really Rep. X might believe, at the worst, that it could be accused of being unconstitutional.
Of course the trouble with this argument is that it works for just about anything. Even the Bush memos, which would nullify the constitution, and which were never intended to have any congressional oversight, had some kind of constitutional figleaf based on the executive as commander-in-chief.
On the other hand, arguing against existing law as unconstitutional is what supreme court lawyers do for a living.
However, the substance of the Bush memos is in such glaring contradiction to the U.S constitution that no constitutional scholar would have any difficulty in recognizing the “constitutionality” claimed by John Yoo and others as a bare and totally unconvincing formality.
The example of Rep. X above, in connection with a bill like the 90% tax clawback or something of that kind, is, in good faith, far more doubtful, and I don’t think it would be fair to accuse anyone who voted for such a bill as intentionally violating the constitution even if its passage were certain, which it very much is not.
Despite all the mind games, I don’t even think the main problem with the bill is in its form at all, but rather, in its applicability to the problem it was meant to address. It has recently been claimed that all or nearly all the bonuses were supposed to go to people who had nothing to do with the AIG credit swaps, that all those people had already left. If this is true then there is a considerable disconnect between the public anger and the issue of the bonuses. I believe that NYAG Cuomo is investigating the matter.
Finally, there are much more obvious ways in which senators and congressmen may violate the constitution in the conduct of their office, than in drawing up or voting on bills. After all, isn’t there a valid presumption, if the bill has even been brought to a vote, that it is constitutional?
You are right to try to disentangle some of these issues.
On one, let’s do this.
You could think the bill was unconstitutional but vote for it because you knew it would not pass, or because you were so certain of its unconstitutionality that you felt comfortable that it would not become a settled law.
Here, consistency with you oath lies with the accuracy of your certitude and with the belief that the Supreme Court can’t rule an unconstitutional law as constitutional…so you’re protected.
Or, you could think the bill might be unconstitutional and vote for it because you think its up to the courts to decide.
I think its a Bill of Attainder. I wouldn’t have voted for it for that reason alone.
There now seems to be a stampede to condemn the bill as frenetic as the one to pass it. I have my doubts that it’s a bill of attainder or even ex post facto, because even though it was suggested by a particular situation, insane bonuses are typical in all the big financial companies now receiving TARP funds; therefore the principle applies to all of them. I see the bill more as a supplement to the TARP legislation (which was obviously “ex post facto” to the credit swaps and bond downgradings that brought about the need for them) rather than an out-of-the-blue punishment of a specific group of people. In fact, we now know that the issue of the bonuses was raised during the drafting of the bailout legislation, and what transpired between treasury officials and Senator Dodd has been widely considered somewhere between a fiasco and a scandal, so it seems justified to correct it.
As I said before, the bill seems to have been poorly worded in being aimed too widely at “an employee or former employee of a covered TARP recipient…” It should have been further stipulated, “whose activities as employe contributed substantively to the situation in which the TARP recipient found itself in need of TARP funds,” or something along those lines. But that’s a different issue.
I would strongly argue this is NOT a bill of attainder at all. There are a lot of precedents for taxes which target specific practices in order to encourage or discourage them.
And what if you think the bill IS constitutional? That you do not doesn’t make it so.
no one questions your right to vote for any bill that you think is constitutional, even if you are wrong.
Exactly. Out here in CA more than a few of our populist ballot propositions are overturned by our State Supreme Court. (Covered well in todays’ SacBee).
I take the Constitution seriously, and think that our representatives have an obligation to oppose a bill they think is unconstitutional, just as the president has an obligation to veto it. The fact that the judiciary is there as a last resort does not obviate that obligation.
On the other hand, that is not to say that, as a crass politician, I couldn’t be persuaded to overlook a constitutional infirmity in the interest of some greater good. But that’s not the way it’s supposed to be.
As for the AIG bonuses, I doubt that the proposed law actually would be considered a bill of attainder, because the reports I’ve read suggest that, even though it was clearly prompted by AIG specifically, the language of the law is broad enough to apply to many, thereby avoiding the status of a bill of attainder. Really, all that is required here is some careful drafting, which presumably occurred.
It would seem that politicians are often, if not always, acting out of fear: fear of losing support (or $) and/or pissing off a particular group/lobby. (Ultimately translating into the fear of not getting reelected.) In this case the potentially pissed off group was far larger and the stakes higher, but the nature of the motivation was a familiar one. It does serve as a clear illustration of the power in public perception. One, as here, is loathe to go against it.
“Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.”
According to Yoda, it really depends on who you wish to make suffer and whether you think you can control that in the end.
and, frankly, that’s ok too. although tiresome.
Boo, neither your nor Chris Matthews is a lawyer, and neither of you should state as fact that the bill would be a bill of attainder. There’s a lot of reason to suspect it would NOT be considered such by the supreme court.
When you do that, you’re no better than others you decry for stretching the truth past what can be supported.
You can say in your opinion that’s what it is, but it’s nowhere near a fact that courts would view it as such, and you do the blogosphere a disservice by assuming to know something as fact that has not been proven, and cannot be proven until it in fact IS brought before the court.
There are all kinds of arguments to show that the bill confiscating bonuses is not targeting individuals, but a practice.
Actually, it is almost definitely a bill of attainder.
The court would not rule this as a ex post facto law because they have previously allowed the government to retroactively tax if the tax is to redress a mistake or oversight in the original law and if it is done promptly, and if the retroactivity is limited. But they would treat this is a bill of attainder for the exact same reasons that they ruled you cannot confiscate the paychecks of communists without trial.
It’s not hard to parse the precedent here.
Some quotes from Lawrence Tribe snipped from an article at the WSJ.
http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2009/03/18/would-an-aig-bonus-tax-pass-constitutional-muster-a-tribe-calls-
yes/
Tribe
“I do think Congress (and the Executive Branch) could avoid serious Bill of Attainder problems by passing a sufficiently broad law … rather than targeting a closed class of named executives even though the prohibition against Bills of Attainder, unlike that against Ex Post Facto laws, potentially reaches civil as well as criminal penalties.”
“The Ex Post Facto Clause applies exclusively to criminal punishment and poses no difficulty here. And the fact that the measure contemplated would operate retroactively as well as prospectively doesn’t distinguish it from any number of tax and other financial measures that the Supreme Court has upheld over the claim that fundamental fairness precludes retroactively undoing contractual obligations.”
“The Contract Impairment Clause applies exclusively to state legislation and has no federal counterpart that would pose any difficulty in this setting.”
On the issue of procedural due process — generally speaking, on whether a person is given adequate access to the legal system and its procedures — Tribe said this also isn’t a problem.
“There’s no suggestion that people would be targeted for payback obligations without notice and a fair opportunity to be heard on questions such as mistaken identity, so procedural due process would be satisfied.”
“And, as to substantive due process, the only relevant requirement would be that the challenged measure be rationally calculated to achieve a legitimate government purpose, something nobody could deny in this instance.”
“Tax measures [generally speaking] are simply not vulnerable to challenge under the Takings Clause. . . The point of the Takings Clause is to require compensation for the fair market value of private property validly confiscated for the public’s benefit, not to prevent the exaction of a tax that Congress is within its constitutional authority to impose.”
That’s interesting — the lawyers I know all say that this thing is a bill of attainder and as such should be shot down. (I actually like the bill as it nicely wedged the House GOP caucus straight down the middle: Half voted for it, half didn’t.)
The court will rule based on the arguments presented. You present a one-sided argument. I’m saying (and Quickwood is showing) there is another side, and you can’t know for sure which way the courts would rule.
I also note that you are serving the elite by this argument, not the masses.
Actually, Lisa, every single lawyer I know — including two who are much farther left than you, in all probability — has immediately screamed “BILL OF ATTAINDER!” upon seeing this legislation. I tried to tell them that it probably wasn’t going to survive the Senate anyway, and that it was a handy wedge with which to split the GOP House Caucus (half of whose members voted for the bill), but that cut no ice with them.
I’m sure they’d be interested to hear that defending the Constitution makes them elitists.
Jack Balkin of Yale.
I disagree with every statement they made on the Bill of Attainder except for the part on retroactive and prospective, and I don’t think that alone is enough to save it.
It doesn’t matter at all in the least that the bill doesn’t name specific individuals. If it did, there wouldn’t even be any debate. The point is that it is easy to ascertain every single individual who will be impacted by this legislation. They could do it in an afternoon.
He says it is not aimed at particular companies or individuals, but it is. Clearly so. Even the plain language of the bill makes it clear that it is aimed at specific companies (those that received TARP money) and specific people (those that work there, made over $250,000, and received a bonus). That is no less specific that ‘members of the Communist Party’. In fact, it is much more specific. Then he says the tax is for a regulatory purpose, not a punitive purpose. That’s arguable in court, but it’s basically a sad joke of an argument (though the courts will consider it).
Based on precedent, I think it is not hard to see how the case would go.
I of course defer to your legal expertise 🙂
Seriously, there is a debate and you are welcome to join it. I was simply linking to a few well respected lawyers to show that not all lawyers agree on this issue. That’s why I gave Dorf too. I was too busy watching teevee to go find the others.
Tribe said it was fine. Then Tribe came out and said he changed his mind and it wouldn’t work (amazingly enough this re-examination of the issue just happened to occur after the administration turned out to be cool to the idea). A perfect example of being able to argue it both ways.
In fact, here’s Tribe’s general analysis. Then later he came back and said this wouldn’t work. But he didn’t say you couldn’t do it he said that it would come down to a question of intent and that there was enough on the congressional record with respect to this bill to prove the bad intent.
Hah!
He’s acting like a first-year law student.
He didn’t need to hear Grassley spout off to know the intent.
As I said, you can argue plausibly that it isn’t punitive, but any one who accepts that argument just wants to rule that way regardless of the evidence.
It meets all the requirements without much of a hurdle at all.
If I were a judge though, despite knowing it’s no ex post facto, its retroactivity would still be decisive. That’s what ultimately tips the balance from a tax adjustment to a punitive law.
As I said, you can argue plausibly that it isn’t punitive, but any one who accepts that argument just wants to rule that way regardless of the evidence.
Of course. It’s a great American legal tradition – figure out what result you want and then figure out how to get there.
Although I don’t know why you disparage Tribe – he’s giving you the result you want. Never disparage the lawyer who can give you the result.
It’s not what I want. It’s what I think is plainly the case.
oh, and you have to prove intent, not just know it.
Grassley might provide excellent evidence to prove intent.
good point. But it doesn’t turn on Grassley.
You could would go through the entire congressional record to find examples that prove the punitive intent.
Of course, Justice Thomas doesn’t believe in looking at the congressional record in constitutional cases. You’d better hope he isn’t the deciding vote.
you think Clarence Thomas is predisposed to confiscate rich people’s money retroactively at a 90% rate just because Congress had a tizzy fit?
Clarence Thomas is the most consistent justice on the court, he looks at the text of the constitution and doesn’t believe extraneous materials are appropriate if the text is clear.
Of course he also may find that all precedent on this issue was decided erroneously because it looked at something other than text.
Nice snark, and appropriately cutting.
But I think that the most sympathetic people on the court would be the moderate/left bloc.
Roberts, Alito, Scalia, and Thomas usually find ways to let rich people keep their money.
Business interests were very dissatisfied with Thomas on the recent FDA preemption case. I think he does sympathize with business interests but he doesn’t let that get in the way of his incredibly narrow reading of the constitution. Scalia famously once distanced his views from Thomas’ views, “I am an originalist, but I am not a nut.”
The others – yes. I believe they will find a way to rule in favor of business even if it means twisting their own judicial philosophy.
If Clarence Thomas has to decide whether the intent is punitive without reference to any evidence of intent, he is going to side with rich people. That’s my take.
Clarence Thomas could respond that the word intent is not in the constitution so why are you worrying about it? Does the legislation fit the words of the constitution – that’s what he’d ask.
although this is actually a bad example for Thomas since the constitution doesn’t define the Bill of Attainder and he’d have to go back to what it was understood it to be originally. So, yes, he would look for intent.
yeah, he ultimately has to determine what a Bill of Attainder is because the Constitution doesn’t say.
Heck as long as I’m providing linky goodness, here’s Jonathan Adler responding to Paul Sracic who says it won’t work.
It’s terrible policy in my opinion. But I don’t think it’s clear it wouldn’t work.
Not that it matters, the senate won’t pass it.
Again.
Remember that the plaintiffs have to make the argument that a situation in January when the bonuses were approved and had nothing to do with the bailout was somehow suspect enough to justify the retroactive confiscation of that property after it was allowed to be awarded once the bailout was in effect. That’s double retroactivity. And, then, they have to prove that the purpose was not punitive AND served a legitimate governmental goal.
I think you have to admit, the deck is stacked against saying this was not a Bill of Attainder.
I think I’ve proved with all these links that I don’t have to admit that.
who would you bet on?
Actually I would bet that the court would uphold the law.
Because if it is really going to be passed I assume the majority in the senate will pepper the record with reasons why it isn’t aimed at a specific case and why there is a proper governmental purpose.
But it really doesn’t matter because it isn’t going to pass. Which is right. It’s terrible tax policy.
You cheated, but you’re right. I think the bill could be made constitutional with some tinkering. The Senate could probably pull it off. But if the court ruled on the House version I think it would be 9-0.
cheated!
splutter, splutter …
Just assuming the best facts for my case 🙂
you are also cheating me by holding back on your legal opinion, which I value.
So, I have a question.
I said, initially, that I accepted the argument that the law was prospective and retroactive. But I’m not so sure. I’d have to read the language so if it nominally does that. But the Dodd Bill made these bonuses illegal after a certain date. So, the only people potentially effected by the clawback are effected retroactively, no?
I can’t give my legal opinion because I haven’t read all the law on this and I’m not sufficiently informed to render an opinion. And I don’t really feel like doing that. And besides my firm’s opinion committee would frown on it.
As I understand the bill (which I haven’t read either) it sets up different categories and if you fall into them after a certain date you are affected. The fact that the date occurs prior to the passage of the law affects people who received bonuses before the law passed but anyone who receives bonuses after the law passes would be affected too.
Right.
It’s possible that the contract signing date falls before Dodd’s date but the money still hasn’t been paid out. That makes it prospective. Okay. So it does technically meet that requirement.
We used to run around closing transactions in the 1980’s based on rumors that the tax laws were going to change (usually well informed rumors). The legislation was often going to be retroactive to the date it was introduced. So everyone would try to close their transactions before the bills were introduced to make sure they knew what their tax treatment was going to be.
In this case the date is not the date of introduction but the beginning of the year. So the bonuses were paid after that date, but were paid before the legislation was introduced. I don’t actually know if that matters. But I’ve wondered about that.
Dorf at Cornell differentiates between conventional reading of the Nixon case and the spirit of the clause. So it’s unclear what the Supremes would do.
“Can you be said to be supporting the Constitution if you vote for a bill you believe to be unconstitutional?”
Absolutely. It’s not the congress critters job to decide what is constitutional or not, it is the job of the supreme court. You can’t know so you are free to vote your conscience or your fear.
That’s actually incorrect. Congress has a great deal of latitude in determining what they believe to be constitutional. For example, the SC insisted that it was unconstitutional to override the sanctity of contracts with labor legislation and only when Congress insisted and FDR threatened to add additional members to the court did the SC learn better.
Right, but it was the SCOTUS that changed its mind. That it did so at coercion is immaterial, the changes could not take place until the Four Horsemen were exorcised.
and politicians and pundits like yourself who are so selfrighteous about populism aren’t already acting out of fear of losing their walstreet donors?
I don’t believe it.
Isn’t this a circular argument? If anyone who disagrees with you is just make up excuses to satisfy their Wall Street Sponsors, what’s the point of arguing with them?
Exactly. I know lawyers who would make most of the commenters here look downright fascistic, and they all are saying that this is a bill of attainder.
So “selfrighteous” is the new synoym for “having a clue as to what one’s talking about”?
I guess you dlcers knew what you were talking about when you told us to shut up about the Iraq war too.
I think this is another example of the Bowers & company’s loss of perspective. I also find their “efforts” embarrassing and hurtful.