Tuesday, October 14, 2008
Monday, October 13, 2008
Let's not argue the facts of this which one rationally cannot.
Obama's 95% Illusion - WSJ.com
Let's not argue the facts of this which one rationally cannot. How about the morality?
Gary, come to the light, they want to take yours, mine and his money and give it, by force to others.
Let's not argue the facts of this which one rationally cannot. How about the morality?
Gary, come to the light, they want to take yours, mine and his money and give it, by force to others.
fact not fiction from mark ?
The Court ruled 5–4 that no constitutionally valid recount could be completed by a December 12 "safe harbor" deadline. The Court asserted that "the Supreme Court of Florida has said that the legislature intended the State's electors to 'participate fully in the federal electoral process,' as provided in 3 U.S.C. § 5." The Court therefore effectively ended the election, because "the Florida Legislature intended to obtain the safe-harbor benefits of 3 U. S. C. §5.
" do you read the sentence ENDED THE ELECTION. NOT 7 TO 2. BUT 5 TO 4. this is one reason of many these blogs are not useful because people make things up. mark read the decision not your right wing sean hannity bulls---- I agree with one point that is valid tho how can 9 people read the same thing and 5 conservatives appointed by republicans vote one way and four liberals vote completly opposite, it tells me they are not voting truthfully. I have been around a few years and to get a case in front of the supeme court takes years usually but not this time it seems they stepped right in, wonder who asked them too????
" do you read the sentence ENDED THE ELECTION. NOT 7 TO 2. BUT 5 TO 4. this is one reason of many these blogs are not useful because people make things up. mark read the decision not your right wing sean hannity bulls---- I agree with one point that is valid tho how can 9 people read the same thing and 5 conservatives appointed by republicans vote one way and four liberals vote completly opposite, it tells me they are not voting truthfully. I have been around a few years and to get a case in front of the supeme court takes years usually but not this time it seems they stepped right in, wonder who asked them too????
Welfare part Deaux
The top 1% of wage earners pay as much taxes as the bottom 80%. Now "O" wants to give tax breaks to 95% of wage earners. Currently about 40% pay no income taxes, so...hum...if they get a tax cut, that means they are going to get money. That is called welfare and it also means that an even larger share of the electorate will no longer be paying for the government they receive and in fact many will be receiving "credits" otherwise called cash. Terry is this what you want? Do you mean to transfer the wealth of this country? What effect do you think this might have on the earning behavior of the top 1% ? What effect might there be on the behavior of citizens who are taken off the tax rolls?
Supply side really means letting people keep their money.
If the mortgage meltdown has taught us anything it is that government intervention has long term unintended adverse consequences.
Supply side really means letting people keep their money.
If the mortgage meltdown has taught us anything it is that government intervention has long term unintended adverse consequences.
Should Barney Frank be forced to resign?
We have all seen that it is well established that Barney was one of the biggest supporters of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Most of us also thought that this was part of his desire to engage in social engineering by making it easier to obtain a mortgage by those who could not afford one.
However it has now come out that Barney had a serious conflict of interest. Barney's live-in significant other, Herb Moses, was Fannie Mae’s assistant director for product initiatives from 1991 to 1998. During this time Barney was on the committee that had jurisdiction over government-sponsored Fannie Mae.
Barney and Moses met in 1987 and lived together in Washington, D.C., until they split up in 1998.
National Mortgage News disclosed that Moses “helped develop many of Fannie Mae’s affordable housing and home improvement lending programs.”
Why is this not more prominently covered in the main stream media?
I do not believe that anyone can argue that this is not a conflict of interest. If it was a Republican involved in this arrangement you can bet your bottom dollar that it would be all over the media.
The major nail for the coffin is that in 1994, Frank thwarted efforts by President Clinton’s Department of Housing and Urban Development to impose new regulations on Fannie Mae.
"I think the responsibility that the Democrats have may rest more in resisting any efforts by Republicans in the Congress or by me when I was president, to put some standards and tighten up a little on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac," Clinton said recently.
In 1991, the year Moses was hired by Fannie, the Boston Globe reported that Frank pushed the agency to loosen regulations on mortgages for two- and three-family homes, even though they were defaulting at twice and five times the rate of single homes, respectively.
We must also note that Chris Dodd has yet to release his mortgage papers from Countrywide Financial even though he promised to weeks ago.
Why is Waxman not conducting investigations of these two?
However it has now come out that Barney had a serious conflict of interest. Barney's live-in significant other, Herb Moses, was Fannie Mae’s assistant director for product initiatives from 1991 to 1998. During this time Barney was on the committee that had jurisdiction over government-sponsored Fannie Mae.
Barney and Moses met in 1987 and lived together in Washington, D.C., until they split up in 1998.
National Mortgage News disclosed that Moses “helped develop many of Fannie Mae’s affordable housing and home improvement lending programs.”
Why is this not more prominently covered in the main stream media?
I do not believe that anyone can argue that this is not a conflict of interest. If it was a Republican involved in this arrangement you can bet your bottom dollar that it would be all over the media.
The major nail for the coffin is that in 1994, Frank thwarted efforts by President Clinton’s Department of Housing and Urban Development to impose new regulations on Fannie Mae.
"I think the responsibility that the Democrats have may rest more in resisting any efforts by Republicans in the Congress or by me when I was president, to put some standards and tighten up a little on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac," Clinton said recently.
In 1991, the year Moses was hired by Fannie, the Boston Globe reported that Frank pushed the agency to loosen regulations on mortgages for two- and three-family homes, even though they were defaulting at twice and five times the rate of single homes, respectively.
We must also note that Chris Dodd has yet to release his mortgage papers from Countrywide Financial even though he promised to weeks ago.
Why is Waxman not conducting investigations of these two?
Bush vs Gore have we forgotten??
Editorial Observer
Has Bush v. Gore Become the Case That Must Not Be Named?
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By ADAM COHEN
Published: August 15, 2006
At a law school Supreme Court conference that I attended last fall, there was a panel on “The Rehnquist Court.” No one mentioned Bush v. Gore, the most historic case of William Rehnquist’s time as chief justice, and during the Q. and A. no one asked about it. When I asked a prominent law professor about this strange omission, he told me he had been invited to participate in another Rehnquist retrospective, and was told in advance that Bush v. Gore would not be discussed.
The ruling that stopped the Florida recount and handed the presidency to George W. Bush is disappearing down the legal world’s version of the memory hole, the slot where, in George Orwell’s “1984,” government workers disposed of politically inconvenient records. The Supreme Court has not cited it once since it was decided, and when Justice Antonin Scalia, who loves to hold forth on court precedents, was asked about it at a forum earlier this year, he snapped, “Come on, get over it.”
There is a legal argument for pushing Bush v. Gore aside. The majority opinion announced that the ruling was “limited to the present circumstances” and could not be cited as precedent. But many legal scholars insisted at the time that this assertion was itself dictum — the part of a legal opinion that is nonbinding — and illegitimate, because under the doctrine of stare decisis, courts cannot make rulings whose reasoning applies only to a single case.
Bush v. Gore’s lasting significance is being fought over right now by the Ohio-based United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, whose judges disagree not only on what it stands for, but on whether it stands for anything at all. This debate, which has been quietly under way in the courts and academia since 2000, is important both because of what it says about the legitimacy of the courts and because of what Bush v. Gore could represent today. The majority reached its antidemocratic result by reading the equal protection clause in a very pro-democratic way. If Bush v. Gore’s equal protection analysis is integrated into constitutional law, it could make future elections considerably more fair.
The heart of Bush v. Gore’s analysis was its holding that the recount was unacceptable because the standards for vote counting varied from county to county. “Having once granted the right to vote on equal terms,” the court declared, “the state may not, by later arbitrary and disparate treatment, value one person’s vote over that of another.” If this equal protection principle is taken seriously, if it was not just a pretext to put a preferred candidate in the White House, it should mean that states cannot provide some voters better voting machines, shorter lines, or more lenient standards for when their provisional ballots get counted — precisely the system that exists across the country right now.
The first major judicial test of Bush v. Gore’s legacy came in California in 2003. The N.A.A.C.P., among others, argued that it violated equal protection to make nearly half the state’s voters use old punch-card machines, which, because of problems like dimpled chads, had a significantly higher error rate than more modern machines. A liberal three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit agreed. But that decision was quickly reconsidered en banc —that is, reheard by a larger group of judges on the same court — and reversed. The new panel dispensed with Bush v. Gore in three unilluminating sentences of analysis, clearly finding the whole subject distasteful.
The dispute in the Sixth Circuit is even sharper. Ohio voters are also challenging a disparity in voting machines, arguing that it violates what the plaintiffs’ lawyer, Daniel Tokaji, an Ohio State University law professor, calls Bush v. Gore’s “broad principle of equal dignity for each voter.” Two of the three judges who heard the case ruled that Ohio’s election system was unconstitutional. But the dissenting judge protested that “we should heed the Supreme Court’s own warning and limit the reach of Bush v. Gore to the peculiar and extraordinary facts of that case.”
The state of Ohio asked for a rehearing en banc, arguing that Bush v. Gore cannot be used as precedent, and the full Sixth Circuit granted the rehearing. It is likely that the panel decision applying Bush v. Gore to elections will, like the first California decision, soon be undone.
There are several problems with trying to airbrush Bush v. Gore from the law. It undermines the courts’ legitimacy when they depart sharply from the rules of precedent, and it gives support to those who have said that Bush v. Gore was not a legal decision but a raw assertion of power.
The courts should also stand by Bush v. Gore’s equal protection analysis for the simple reason that it was right (even if the remedy of stopping the recount was not). Elections that systematically make it less likely that some voters will get to cast a vote that is counted are a denial of equal protection of the law. The conservative justices may have been able to see this unfairness only when they looked at the problem from Mr. Bush’s perspective, but it is just as true when the N.A.A.C.P. and groups like it raise the objection.
There is a final reason Bush v. Gore should survive. In deciding cases, courts should be attentive not only to the Constitution and other laws, but to whether they are acting in ways that promote an overall sense of justice. The Supreme Court’s highly partisan resolution of the 2000 election was a severe blow to American democracy, and to the court’s own standing. The courts could start to undo the damage by deciding that, rather than disappearing down the memory hole, Bush v. Gore will stand for the principle that elections need to be as fair as we can possibly make them.
Has Bush v. Gore Become the Case That Must Not Be Named?
Sign In to E-Mail This
Save
By ADAM COHEN
Published: August 15, 2006
At a law school Supreme Court conference that I attended last fall, there was a panel on “The Rehnquist Court.” No one mentioned Bush v. Gore, the most historic case of William Rehnquist’s time as chief justice, and during the Q. and A. no one asked about it. When I asked a prominent law professor about this strange omission, he told me he had been invited to participate in another Rehnquist retrospective, and was told in advance that Bush v. Gore would not be discussed.
The ruling that stopped the Florida recount and handed the presidency to George W. Bush is disappearing down the legal world’s version of the memory hole, the slot where, in George Orwell’s “1984,” government workers disposed of politically inconvenient records. The Supreme Court has not cited it once since it was decided, and when Justice Antonin Scalia, who loves to hold forth on court precedents, was asked about it at a forum earlier this year, he snapped, “Come on, get over it.”
There is a legal argument for pushing Bush v. Gore aside. The majority opinion announced that the ruling was “limited to the present circumstances” and could not be cited as precedent. But many legal scholars insisted at the time that this assertion was itself dictum — the part of a legal opinion that is nonbinding — and illegitimate, because under the doctrine of stare decisis, courts cannot make rulings whose reasoning applies only to a single case.
Bush v. Gore’s lasting significance is being fought over right now by the Ohio-based United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, whose judges disagree not only on what it stands for, but on whether it stands for anything at all. This debate, which has been quietly under way in the courts and academia since 2000, is important both because of what it says about the legitimacy of the courts and because of what Bush v. Gore could represent today. The majority reached its antidemocratic result by reading the equal protection clause in a very pro-democratic way. If Bush v. Gore’s equal protection analysis is integrated into constitutional law, it could make future elections considerably more fair.
The heart of Bush v. Gore’s analysis was its holding that the recount was unacceptable because the standards for vote counting varied from county to county. “Having once granted the right to vote on equal terms,” the court declared, “the state may not, by later arbitrary and disparate treatment, value one person’s vote over that of another.” If this equal protection principle is taken seriously, if it was not just a pretext to put a preferred candidate in the White House, it should mean that states cannot provide some voters better voting machines, shorter lines, or more lenient standards for when their provisional ballots get counted — precisely the system that exists across the country right now.
The first major judicial test of Bush v. Gore’s legacy came in California in 2003. The N.A.A.C.P., among others, argued that it violated equal protection to make nearly half the state’s voters use old punch-card machines, which, because of problems like dimpled chads, had a significantly higher error rate than more modern machines. A liberal three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit agreed. But that decision was quickly reconsidered en banc —that is, reheard by a larger group of judges on the same court — and reversed. The new panel dispensed with Bush v. Gore in three unilluminating sentences of analysis, clearly finding the whole subject distasteful.
The dispute in the Sixth Circuit is even sharper. Ohio voters are also challenging a disparity in voting machines, arguing that it violates what the plaintiffs’ lawyer, Daniel Tokaji, an Ohio State University law professor, calls Bush v. Gore’s “broad principle of equal dignity for each voter.” Two of the three judges who heard the case ruled that Ohio’s election system was unconstitutional. But the dissenting judge protested that “we should heed the Supreme Court’s own warning and limit the reach of Bush v. Gore to the peculiar and extraordinary facts of that case.”
The state of Ohio asked for a rehearing en banc, arguing that Bush v. Gore cannot be used as precedent, and the full Sixth Circuit granted the rehearing. It is likely that the panel decision applying Bush v. Gore to elections will, like the first California decision, soon be undone.
There are several problems with trying to airbrush Bush v. Gore from the law. It undermines the courts’ legitimacy when they depart sharply from the rules of precedent, and it gives support to those who have said that Bush v. Gore was not a legal decision but a raw assertion of power.
The courts should also stand by Bush v. Gore’s equal protection analysis for the simple reason that it was right (even if the remedy of stopping the recount was not). Elections that systematically make it less likely that some voters will get to cast a vote that is counted are a denial of equal protection of the law. The conservative justices may have been able to see this unfairness only when they looked at the problem from Mr. Bush’s perspective, but it is just as true when the N.A.A.C.P. and groups like it raise the objection.
There is a final reason Bush v. Gore should survive. In deciding cases, courts should be attentive not only to the Constitution and other laws, but to whether they are acting in ways that promote an overall sense of justice. The Supreme Court’s highly partisan resolution of the 2000 election was a severe blow to American democracy, and to the court’s own standing. The courts could start to undo the damage by deciding that, rather than disappearing down the memory hole, Bush v. Gore will stand for the principle that elections need to be as fair as we can possibly make them.
Sunday, October 12, 2008
Do we really disagree about judges?
My friend Terry raises judges. Do we, both sides of the political spectrum, really disagree about judges? One of the realities that this blog has taught me is that (seriously) people do not think like me. How minds can look at the same data or topic and come to such divergent conclusions is amazing. So to the point. Does the left, as described by the right, really want judges to legislate from the bench?
On another topic, McCain appears to be a historically terrible debater. This article discusses the issue.
Debate coaches: 'Lost' McCain must up game - Andy Barr - Politico.com
On another topic, McCain appears to be a historically terrible debater. This article discusses the issue.
Debate coaches: 'Lost' McCain must up game - Andy Barr - Politico.com
Jim, thanks for asking me to participate in your blog, as someone who is a liberal, I am sure to get challenged by the always RIGHT RIGHT WING. I am voting every who is in office out, and all newcomers in. I believe in term limits, simply because being a politician was not what I believe the founding fathers envisioned for serving your country. I use those simple words again " serving your country" It seems to me Judges, Senators, Congressman, are only concerned about staying in office. Yes! I said judges who are so "afraid of appearing soft on crime" they do not look at the person in front of them as a human being with family and needs. thanks terry
Christopher Buckley Gets it Right
The Palin pick alone will move many loyal Republicans to vote for Obama. Not only is she not ready for prime time, she never will be.
Saturday, October 11, 2008
The Blackstone's, finally some help for Rich
Folks, this post may take a while. We, my sainted wife and myself, were out tonight with some really nice people. Wonderful, thoughtful and very cool. We talked politics and they are on the other side. I admit to being perplexed, they have money, pay taxes, yet believe that the "O"'s 140 days were more important that SP being a governor. Wait, SP is the VP candidate, the "Obamalamadama" is trying to become the President, You know, the leader of the free world (until the Liberals put us in our proper place, you know the evil emp...no wait that was already taken to describe a bad superpower). Anyway, they have promised to add to the "blog". Rich, heroic in his attempts to be the only Liberal, Mr. balance the budget, without one iota of evidence that the Democrats give a rats ass about the budget, can only do so much (pretty much cut and pasting stuff from MSNBC), although the change the constitution idea to let Billy govern more was, for a liberal, thought provoking.
I finish with a definition: To Flame: an angry, hostile, or abusive electronic message.
Hags, where are you?
I finish with a definition: To Flame: an angry, hostile, or abusive electronic message.
Hags, where are you?
Friday, October 10, 2008
Great article on Marginal Tax Rates under each candidate's Economic Plan
Given that there are so many wealthy elites that are supporting Barry right now and given that many have also watched a lot of their retirement savings plummet in value it will be interesting to see if Barry can pass his plans if elected. Since most people do vote with their pocket book it could be interesting to see how many are now willing to see half of their income get redistributed under his plan and also live with the fact that probably 30 to 40% of their IRA, SEP or 401-K has also been lost. This link provides a great analysis of the marginal tax rates of each candidates economic proposals. http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2008/10/marginal-tax-ra.html
Wait...don't unplug the patient, we may have a pulse.
Like many I am not going to vote for McCain as much as I am going to vote againt the "O" and for S. Palin. Listening to Johnny this morning, it is apparent that he has decided to pick a fight with the "One". For the first time, he held my attention. His campaign crowds are angry that he is not talking about Conservative ideas and I still think if he plays this correctly, he could turn the electorate against Obamalamadama and his inexperience.
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