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US House Limits Constituent Emails
Plechazunga passes along this note from The Hill: "The House is limiting e-mails from the public to prevent its websites from crashing due to the enormous amount of mail being submitted on the financial bailout bill. As a result, some constituents may get a 'try back at a later time' response if they use the House website to e-mail their lawmakers about the bill defeated in the House on Monday in a 205-228 vote."
Dear Constituent,
We know you are a human being, or at least you believe that matters to us, but sadly, our mailboxes are too small and cannot possibly handle the number of emails you people wish to send. We lose them anyway and we never read them so why bother. Also, when we built the mailboxes, we only anticipated hearing from 0.001% of our constituents, not this whopping 1.02% contact ratio we're experiencing!
We have assessed the situation and believe that you fall under one of the following categories:
1. You are whining about something that we did to hurt your feelings.
2. You want us to do something.
3. You have a complaint.
Here are some generic responses to help you cope:
Category #1: (You are whining about something that hurt your feelings.)
Sorry. Vote for me in 2008!
Category #2: (You want us to do something.)
We are already doing everything we can. KTHXBYE. Vote for me in 2008!
Category #3: (You have a complaint.)
GTFO. Canada is that way -------> Vote for me in 2008!
Therefore, while we will gladly take your taxes from you, we have some bad news. We can't hear you. La la la la la la la la what? can't hear you! la la la la la...
No no... that's all you have to say.
Besides, we'll do whatever we want to anyway.
Vote for me in 2008!
Kind Regards,
Your Douchebag Government
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
Please shut up, we do not want to hear from you on important matters.
We know what's best, so just get over yourselves.
Signed
House of Representatives
Subject says it all!
then I have this week. And by republican i mean REAL republican, not a neo-con like in recent years. Regardless of the fact that some house republicans were going to vote for it, it was enough in the end that an individual's ego made them stick to their principles.
Website Hosting
This is just good system administration happening. The systems can't handle the load so the admins have programmed the mailservers to drop a percentage down /dev/null until the load drops back to manageble levels.
My mail server (and almost certainly yours) has many such throttles built in, It will stop accepting mail if the load average is too great, if available mail spool is too low, etc.
Democrat delenda est
I would like to take this chance to encourage everyone to support groups working towards open government, from Black Box Voting to Verified Voting, and everything in between.
The government is supposed to work for us; until we limit how often lobbyists talk to them, what right do they have to limit how much we talk to them?
Just because you don't like the truth, does not make it false.
Given that they're all probably receiving thousands of e-mails asking them to reject the bailout, I doubt they're really doing much with them. I'd actually be surprised even you get the standard form-letter reply if they're so overwhelmed.
But I think the overall message is clear. It's not a cacophony, it's thousands of people singing the same message: reject the bailout or we'll reject you in a few weeks!
Ultimately, they're doing the worst possible thing right now, which is preserving the hope of a bailout. This leads to a further credit freeze, because banks won't sell their troubled assets at the (very low) market price because there's still the possibility that they'll be getting a much better price from Uncle Sam.
If you want to free up credit again, we really need one of the presidential candidates to stand up and say, "There will be no bailout." That will force banks to start doing transactions again. Some might go under, but that's OK. We just need to end this idea that a bailout might happen, because right now that uncertainty is what is preventing people from liquidating their assets.
--
Hey code monkey... learn electronics! Powerful microcontroller kits for the digital generation.
The phone number for each member of the House and Senate is posted on their respective web pages. A phone call is so much more personal. I've got my Senators and Representative programmed into my cell phone.
Especially if they're stupid enough to try to run the constituent email through the same mailserver (probably a MS Exchange box) that they use for their "business" email (ie, who's having lunch where, and which lobby is paying for it).
They could each get a gmail account. Google will keep their servers up...
The way my laptop is oriented, the direction is right on.
I don't know about how email lobbying works, but I've been involved in lobbying campaigns before. When you call a representative's office, you tell them you're for or against the bill in question and say which way you want them to vote on it. The operator say "OK, I'll let him know." They then count the number of people calling in on either side of the issue, and pass that info on to the representative. Of course you can't send bribes by phone, so whether or not this is effective is open to debate.
I think it's interesting that what is normally a dry subject is generating so much public interest. I'm glad to see the American public sitting up and taking notice of important things for a change instead of just vegetating in front of reality TV and celebrity gossip while politicians try to take money out of the public's pockets to cover their own failure to properly regulate the finance industry. Maybe there's hope for American democracy yet.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
Ha! The US government has been slashdotted by its' own subjects. Sounds like it's time to write a script that will continuously submit an email until it's accepted (or forever, you know whatever).
I judt got a nre Kinesis keybiartf so please excusr ant egregiou typos.
This is why when the goverment asks us for 700 billion to bail them out, we must tell them to "COME BACK LATER". Like waaaaaaaaaaay later.
Besides do you really think they read the majority of mail they get?
"Ahh! Arrogance and stupidity in the same package, how efficient of you!" --Londo Molari
You mean fiscal conservative don't you?
Are you Canadian by any chance ? I am in Canada and if I follow that arrow for a really long time I'll end up right back where I am.
How freakin' cool is that ? As you said, spot on!
I got a follow up phone call 8 months later. Dare I say I was stunned! I know it was 8 months later, and the person who called me worked for some vendor trying to clear the backlog of emails, but it's nice to know they didn't just delete it.
Pardon me, I am somewhat new to Slashdot... Is it the norm here for pro-Republican to be insta tagged as Trolling? Last I checked the URL it was news.slashdot.org and not obama.slashdot.org or democrats.slashdot.org or for that matter republicans.shasdot.org... People are entitled to their opinions one way or the other. I am not looking for a fight or to hurt anyones feelings - cant we all just behave like grownups and display our allegiances without fear of punitive tagging?
But here goes: I have to say a big thank you to the house republicans. They did the right thing, which this time was the conservative thing by voting against the stupid bailout.
Now the the real issue
System engineers are working to resolve this issue and we appreciate your patience.
So what are they doing to fix this exactly? Hoping everyone looses interest so they don't have to increase their capacity? I dunno if thats gonna work - people seem pretty pissed (I am one of those people by the way).
Prediction: The real iPhone killer is going to be sex robots from Japan. Think about it.
Libertarians smoke pot.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
Back when they were pursuing the Broadcast Flag unfunded mandate, I had my objection hand delivered for a fee by http://www.congress.org/
I got a nice letter back explaining why I was all wrong and the broadcast flag was the greatest thing since sliced peaches, but at least they got my letter.
"MIT betrayed all of its basic principles."
I once sent my senator a letter that said, paraphrased:
I got a response that said, paraphrased:
The cake is a pie
Bush proposed it. I don't know if it is fair to say that Republicans tried to push it through, when by percentages they have been the ones most opposed to it.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
A bank "going under" does not take all the depositors' money with it. If bankrupt, the bank is given time to reorganize and recover intact. If sold or taken over, assets, which include bank accounts, investments, and deposits, are sold to another company which will maintain the customers. There is also FDIC and other regulations in place to ensure you'll get your money back unless you did something stupid.
The days of "sorry, no money, we're closed" are gone (unless we suffer a vast & total meltdown of our economy, which is still far off).
Can we get a "-1 Wrong" moderation option?
That fact escaped you, or are you going to be like the rest of the herd, ignore history as recent as last week, and pretend this was a Democratic proposal?
Speaker Pelosi gave a rousing speech in favor of this monstrosity; President Bush did so, as well. Guess which party has clean hands in all of this?
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
F@#$, that's my problem. No wonder the Canada I found looks a lot like Mexico.
GTFO. Canada is that way ------->
Dude, you must be lost - that's the way to Mexico.
Prediction: The real iPhone killer is going to be sex robots from Japan. Think about it.
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
That's the first I've heard of it. Could someone explain what's this is all about, please?
Everything I needed to know about life, I learnt from Blake's Seven
Agreed. I consider myself a Goldwater republican, but it's gotten to the point where people ask my affiliation, I mumble something about being a Libertarian and change the subject.
Good on the House Republicans...
... and I bet I could get the government some infrastructure that can handle the load
---- "Logoff! That cookie shit makes me nervous!" - A. Soprano
Not all of us do.
Republicans want into your bedroom. Democrats want into your wallet. Libertarians want neither.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
I've been involved both in lobbying and in a Congressional (House) office (as an unpaid intern). Constituent contacts really do matter: a significant fraction of the staff's time is spent reading and distilling these letters for the Congress(wo)man. On this issue, the letters are nearly universally against the rescue package, which is the only reason Congress went against the opinions of the vast majority of economists (my favorite is Paul Krugman) to vote down this bill. If you think your voice doesn't matter to your Congressman, you're crazy, even though (s)he won't always agree.
I know this is hard to believe, but direct bribes don't work. Organizing large numbers of constituents to call/email a Congressman does often work, largely because it demonstrates that you could also organize voters to challenge the Congressman at the ballot box. (That kind of organization takes money, so if anyone wants to consider that a bribe, fine; I consider it democracy.) However, an office will get tens or hundreds of copies of the same form letter from large numbers of constituents; those identical letters count less (though not hugely less) than personally written letters or phone calls.
(As of 4 years ago, when I interned in DC, phone calls, emails, faxes, and snail-mail letters count equally, but snail-mail letters take multiple weeks to get to the DC office because of anthrax-related security. Letters from in-state but out-of-district are read but carry less weight than contacts from constituents and are unlikely to get a response; letters from out-of-state or without a name and mailing address go straight to the recycling bin.)
That's a bit of an exaggeration. My congressman was saying on Meet the Press last Sunday that he was getting flooded with calls to his office by his constituents and that they fell into two categories (talking about the bailout plan):
"No"
and
"Hell no"
To be fair, he did vote against it. Personally I think that's the wrong vote to make since something drastic needs to be done. But he can truthfully claim that he was doing what the people he represents want.
To be fair, he did vote against it. Personally I think that's the wrong vote to make since something drastic needs to be done.
This reminds me of a slashdot sig I once saw:
The government: Something must be done, this is something, it must be done.
I will agree that something needs to be done. I don't think that the deal they had was it though.
Prediction: The real iPhone killer is going to be sex robots from Japan. Think about it.
Guess which party has clean hands in all of this?
Mine! Woo hoo, Green Party!!
I live ze unknown. I love ze unknown. I am ze unknown.
I must agree. Conservatives and frightened Democrats prevented a massive take-over by the political class.
Folks, it's a credit bubble. It's not the first and it won't be the last. There are no innocents; individuals have been racking up debt with large, adjustable, flex-pay, no money down liar loan mortgages, second mortgages, equity credit lines and third mortgages. They've been voting for members of both parties to make it happen; the left does it to buy 'low income' votes and the right does it for their Lehman buddies.
Credit bubbles pop. At some point the accumulated crap must be flushed. That doesn't mean we must turn our Government into the investor of last resort. That's exactly how Fannie and Freddy got us here.
Some fraction of all debt is presently considered 'toxic.' 30 seconds after that $700 billion gets legislated into existence the fraction of 'toxic' debt will multiply; the banks will be happy to invent as much 'toxic' debt as your Government thinks it can get away with buying.
Screw that. I'm not under and mountain of debt and I'm not afraid of those of you who put yourselves under one. Life is too short to live in fear of morons.
Lurking at the bottom of the gravity well, getting old
You're not a Republican. You're a fiscal conservative as am I. While there are some like us in the Republican party, certainly more than there are in the Democrat party, we're still a minority voice within the party. So much so that I don't consider myself a Republican anymore. There are very few Republicans like Tom Coburn in the Senate and Ron Paul and Jeff Flake in the House that are truly fiscal conservative today and were truly fiscal conservatives during their years in the majority. Most of the party just plays it lip service when it suits them.
If there wasn't all of this public outrage at the bailout and if this wasn't right before Congressional elections I'm afraid you wouldn't see as many Republicans stand up for fiscal sanity. Where was this new found love for fiscal discipline during the Bush years when Republicans had control of the White House and had majorities in both Houses of Congress? They allowed the size of government, the size of the deficit, the size of the total national debt, the size of entitlement programs, and the size of future unfunded liabilities to grow at a rate not seen since Lyndon Johnson's Great Society Programs of the 60's. That is the exact opposite of fiscal discipline. That's fiscal insanity. Especially when you consider that Social Security and Medicare are basically both ponzi schemes that only work if the working population stays larger than the population of retirees and we already know that isn't the case with the baby boomers.
If the Republicans were in the majority now in Congress I question whether the majority of the party would be against this bailout. After all, if a serious economic downturn occurs people tend to blame the party in the majority and even though the public may blame Republicans for this mess right now if things still look bad a year or two from now and Democrats are still in the majority you can be sure the voters will begin to revolt. It benefits Republicans to oppose this measure because they are in the minority and won't be held accountable for the economy if it's still bad and Democrats remain in control a year or two from now. They can afford the courage of their convictions because it won't hurt them politically. I highly doubt if they'd be so willing to do the same if they were in the majority and were worried about the political impact of an extended downturn.
I'm firmly opposed to this plan but I understand that not passing it means tougher times in the short and possibly medium term in order to have a better fiscal and economic position in the long term. Adding another 700 billion in debt on top of the 11 trillion we're already in debt is fiscal insanity when you consider the looming bankruptcy of Social Security and Medicare. In order to be healthier in the long term we can't keep adding to the debt, we must start reducing it and that means no bailouts and it also means cutting spending. Not reducing the rate of growth, but cutting spending to free up the funds to begin paying down the debt. It may even mean reverting back to the tax brackets that existed in the 90's. None of these are popular, but they are necessary, and I highly doubt Republicans would have the will to advocate for any of them if they were in the majority and we're primarily concerned with short term conditions so they could remain in power rather than worry about medium and long term conditions.
I have a new policy when it comes to voting for Senators and my Congressman. I'll always vote for a true fiscal conservative but if neither candidate in the race is a fiscal conservative then I'll vote against the incumbent, whatever party he or she may belong to.
Is it the norm here for pro-Republican to be insta tagged as Trolling?
I guess not. Grandparent is back up to (Score:5, Insightful) as I post this. I guess the "And by republican i mean REAL republican, not a neo-con like in recent years" identified teknopurge as a Republican from Ron Paul's wing of the party, not Bush/McCain's gang of neo-con-men.
We've got a list-in-progress of politicians pages here on our wiki ... other links (and formatting cleanup) greatly appreciated.
jon
I'd settle for a regulation saying businesses may not enter into financial negotiations they do not, at that time, have sufficient verifiable assets to support.
You might still take a hit if housing prices drop a few percent and lenders who made reasonable lending decisions find themselves stretched, but you would be unlikely to see the kind of major players failing that we have seen recently.
Perhaps more to the point, you wouldn't get the sort of silly leveraging that has been going unchecked in the financial services industry for years, where no-one could really keep the promises they were making. That is how you get companies "too big to fail", which then need government intervention that is completely unjustifiable in a sane world, because while the mega-businesses deserve to fail and their investors deserve to lose out, the collateral damage to the innocent bystanders in the rest of the economy is nasty.
There are all these clever analyses flying around about what went wrong and how to fix it, but it seems to me that the basic problem has simply been allowing businesses to make promises they cannot keep.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
Amendment X.
There is something unclear about this? POWERS NOT DELEGATED, the key phrase. All that is not permitted explicitly is EXPLICITLY forbidden. There MAY be arguments as to the extent of the power of Congress which could be made with regards to commerce and regulating the money, but they are at best weak arguments. The point is, your analysis is simply wrong and not only directly contravened by the 10th amendment, but also discussed at length by the authors in the Federalist Papers (in all fairness Hamilton made some arguments similar to yours, but it is a dangerous position to take).
What if Congress decides that 'the common welfare' would be served by having the FBI throw you in a pit for 30 years? Is that OK because 'hey, it is good for everyone else, and they can do whatever they think is good'. Sorry, not in my United States.
"Malo periculosam, libertatem quam quietam servitutem." -- Jefferson
Never should've taken that left turn at Albuquerque...
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Was it from Diane Feinstein? She is notorious for doing that.
It seems to have escaped most peoples notice that Asian banks are not participating in the current financial meltdown extravaganza and there is a reason for that.
The US banks have been behaving very very badly and have already been bailed out a couple of times in the past.
The "bubbles" you've had in the last two decades were the results of government bailouts designed to stave of a recession, and they worked. Sort of.
The problem is, if you keep bailing out these numbnuts they will just continue carrying on as before and you will continue having to bail them out and each rescue will be more flamboyantly extravagant than the last.
At some point you will HAVE to take your medicine and let things collapse. Economics is cyclical, you have periods of growth and periods of stagnation. You can't change that, no matter how much you might want to. The US government has been postponing the down cycle for years but all they have done is ensure that when the down cycle inevitably happens it will be a monster one.
If they get bailed out again this time, the next time will be even worse.
"You can't fight in here, this is the war room!"
Regulation might help here, but sadly, regulation also got us into this mess. Regulations to create "affordable housing" strongly incented lenders to give loans to people who couldn't qualify for Fannia Mae criteria, and congresscritters (Barney Frank, I'm looking at you) called "make it illegal for the bank to write a mortgage unless certain criteria are met" racist.
In a time and place where the congress is calling holding people to reasonable credit standards racist, the banks were under a lot of regulatory pressure to offer these weak loans (which of course lead to house prices doubling - yay for affordable housing that I can't afford). Of course, plenty of banks are doing just fine right now, so the regs can't have been that bad, but it's worth remembering that the problem with regulation is it hurts a lot more when market forces correct bad ideas.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
thank goodness you said that. I keep wondering why conservatives vote for Republicans. Republicans aren't conservative! They never have been! Reagan grew the government three times as fast as Clinton! Bush is the most spendy President we've ever had (literally)! How far back do you have to go to find a Republican who was actually a fiscal conservative? There certainly hasn't been one in the last fifty years. If you're conservative, then for the love of all that is holy please start voting for conservatives, instead of Republicans!
Do the polar bears and moose wear sombreros?
Hah! Yes, it was! It was when I wrote to tell her how boneheaded the Patriot Act was!
At least Boxer was good enough to respond with "I am sorry you disagree, but here's why I support it".
The cake is a pie
The worst thing is that the US has been telling other countries to "take their medicine" and learn to swallow their own economic crisises without goverment intervention.
It is no wonder that people in Brasil, Argentina and Mexico are now calling the bluff on US hipocrisy.
No sig for the moment.
Wake up sleepy head! It's a credit crunch.
The well of easy short term credit has dried up. Financial institutions are currently experiencing a rather nasty bought of collective hysteria and as a result are grasping too tightly to what money they still have. They're not loaning any money to one another because they're afraid they and all their buddies are going to go belly up like Lehman Brothers in the very near future. They all need they all need every penny they have to pay off the loans they already took out from each other, because now they wont lend to each other because they're all afraid they'll all go under.
Confused? That's because you think that modern financiers are either rational or competent at what they do. They are neither.
It doesn't matter what the bill was about. The purpose of the bill was to act as a placebo for hysterical traders who literally have no idea what is happening and who cannot be relied upon to either calm down or trade rationally. I don't mean collectively speaking. I mean on an individual basis. That bill was a mass Valium prescription for a mass of people who are a danger to themselves and society. Taking it away was like dosing a crazy person with amphetamines, putting them in room 101, then giving them explosives and a loaded shotgun. Predictably, the traders and money men completely lost the run of themselves, and had a good old fashioned Panic Attack.
This is not getting resolved by market forces. This is not going to correct itself. This cannot be left to the whims of Wall St, unless you think its a good idea to leave the world's financial systems in the hands of people with the mentality, reasoning and emotional state of a crashing meth junkie. Wait as long as you like, there's nobody home.
No. This is going to require some good old fashioned Government Intervention. There's that taboo word. I'll say it again to drag Slashdot even further into disrepute. This Crisis Needs Government Intervention . You can deny this fact while you wait for your local junkies to start scrubbing the pavements out of civic responsibility, or you can wake up to reality and help clean up the mess that your mistaken opinions helped create.
May the Maths Be with you!
Close. It's actually "Get on the plane, or we'll take you to Toronto where you'll be forced to watch the Leafs."
No wonder so many picked Guantanamo.
That would cause fairly large problems actually.
In 2004 the SEC removed the "Fixed Leverage Rule" for a handful of investment banks. That rule stated that they had to have 10% of their holdings in liquid assets...A safety net basically. You know what banks those were? Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, Lehman Brothers, and Bear Stearns.
That was pretty fucking stupid of the SEC, eh? Those jokers put that extra 10% into the market, and at the first downturn, they fucking crashed because they had no assets.
But then look what happened. The traditional banks jumped on the assets. Bank of America, Citigroup, Mitsubishi Financial--all traditional banks with large chunks of liquid assets--they jumped in and bought assets cheap, and they're going to reap HUGE gains from their foresight, and, indirectly from a very sensible piece of regulation.
You can't expect a bank to have 100% of what it needs on hand. It just doesn't work that way. 10% is plenty, and the proof of that is how well the traditional banks are weathering this.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
Good grief, I am aware that banks around the world have been affected by this problem, albeit mostly indirectly.
Banks all around the world lend each other lots of money all the time. The sub-prime problem is so huge that often these banks have been hit by holding loans that are two or more levels higher than the underlying sub-prime credit they can be traced to.
So, Bank A has a whole lot of poor loans based on the ridiculous idea that home prices will forever rise and that if their loser "ninja" customers default on their loans (which they will) they can swoop in and sell the house at a profit anyway. This is a great, if somewhat morally bereft plan until the prices of houses stop rocketing up.
But Bank A needs the cash to provide these loans so they turn to Bank B.
Bank B also sells access to this credit in the form of investments to other banks or firms who are not even aware that the investment they have is ultimately underwritten by Bank A and based on inherently bad loans.
Eventually the housing market collapses and Bank A follows and the flow on goes right out to the fringes.
Any falls on Asian banks pale into nothingness when compared to the US banking sector. Their falls are in sympathy with what is happening in the US, not as a result of their own bad practices.
If the banking and trading sectors weren't generally operated by 30 something whiz-kids who have no memory of past economics downturns then they wouldn't have fallen for the sucker idea that markets go constantly up in order to service their bottomless greed.
I say let them fall. The whole damn lot of them. Then we'll at least have a few more years before the next generation of whiz-kids come along to make the same mistakes again.
"You can't fight in here, this is the war room!"
They do. Usually they shut down the bank on Friday night, and you have the money in a new bank account on Monday morning.
In the case of WaMu, they shut it down on Thursday night, and you had the money in a Chase account on Friday morning.
In the case of Wachovia, it was shut down on Monday morning, and you got your new account with Citi that very same morning.
In England, Bradford & Bingley was shut down on Sunday night, and the money was sitting in Abbey National ready to withdraw on Monday morning.
"This Crisis Needs Government Intervention."
I don't think that is a given. We probably could go with either:
A. A huge government intervention
B. No government intervention
I favor B. I think it will be fine if all the businesses and individuals that did stupid, risky things end in total ruin. That's what you get and deserve when you taken excessive and misguided risks in a free market. I think the bailout plan proposed by the Bush administration is mostly designed to bail out their fat cat Republican constituency before Bush and Paulson are kicked out the door. That is why they wanted $700 billion NOW, with no oversight, so they could blow it all bailing out their friends before Obama gets in the white house, and the orgy of cronyism and leeching off the government the last 8 years is over, or at least it switches to a Democratic orgy. It looks a lot like the bailout was a last orgy of wealth redistribution to the wealthy and as is typical for the Bush administration they used fear mongering to try to shove it through Congress without anyone questioning. Its cool it did get questioned and I hope Congress holds their ground though I doubt they will.
It might actually be good if American business and American people can't get business loans, credit cards, mortgages or home equity loans. I saw earlier today that the "average" American is carrying a $10,000 balance on their credit card. That is insane. I have a $0 dollar balance on my credit cards and so do a lot of others so that probably means the credit junkies are carrying $20,000 on their credit cards probably at a steep interest rate. In the last 10 years or so the savings rate by the average person in China has risen from like 30% to something like 45%. During the same period the average savings rate for an American has plunged to 0%. We don't save everything. The little we do save is canceled out by staggering debt burden.
The U.S. desperately needs to go cold turkey from their credit addiction, business, individual and government. Seizing of the credit markets is a sure way to make it happen. I'm really glad I no longer get 3 credit card offers in the mail every week. That was insane.
A complete freeze in our credit markets may actually start compelling American people and businesses to live within their means, as in don't spend money you don't have. If you want to buy something work for it first.... gasp. It may hammer the housing and auto industries.... tough.
The silver lining in the housing crash is home prices in the U.S. were astronomically inflated. If they crash 30-50% that will just bring them down to a sane level. It totally needs to happen, its not a bad thing. Sure its going to hammer people's net worth but if your net worth came from riding a housing bubble then it was a sham in the first place. The same can be said for the stock market. There is no law that says your stocks have to always go up/ If you've invested in the stock market for a while you made a lot of money, tough luck that you've lost 20% this year. Deal with it, stop whining and stop expecting the government to FORCE the stock market to always go up. Real markets don't do that. They should only go up when your businesses are really profitable and productive. Most American companies really aren't.
Bottom line is most Americans were engaging in a giant Ponzi scheme the last few years, a lot of you made a lot of money on it. It crashed. Ponzi schemes always do. If you were taking out huge home equity loans, flipping houses, etc. its time to take your medicine for doing something foolish.
Meanwhile we need to learn to make things again, we need to learn skills that have real economic value on the global stage. We need to rebuild our infrastructure and break our dependence on imported oil. Seriously, you aren't entitled to money for nothing and chicks for free no matter what the song says. The rest of the world is eating your lunch and unless you get off your butts and do something worthwhile you a
@de_machina
I sent Feinstein and Boxer letters a few years ago about copyright litigation. I got an email from Boxer's office that said "Thanks for your interest!." I got a personal, well reasoned response from Feinstein. She and I have written back and forth once a month ever since, sometimes with her emailing just to ask what I think about related legislation. For all I know it could be one of her staffers, but every email shows a lot of thought and is signed with her name.
"I zero-index my hamsters" - Willtor (147206)
Not that regulations helped this time around since they were neutered by the Republicans
I keep hearing people say this, but I've never seen anyone point to any specific deregulation. Please enlighten me.
It seems to me that this whole mess was largely caused by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, government sponsored enterprises. http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/2008/09/distorting-history.html
If you had super powers, would you use them for good, or for awesome?
Unfortunately, your understanding of the constitution is fundamentally flawed. It has a few things that it explicitly tells the federal government it can do, and the 10th amendment says, "If we didn't explicitly say you can do it, it's none of your business."
As pointed out by the above poster, the federal government *was* explicitly told that this is something they can do. The articles of the Constitution that he actual cited (as opposed to your general parapharsing) are known as the Taxing and Spending Clause and the General Welfare Clause in Constitutional Law. There is absolutely nothing in the bailout plan that was unconstitutional. Unwise or unfair, maybe, but not unconstitutional.
Furthermore, the 10th Amendment is generally considered to have little judicially enforceable restraint on Congress. Pretty much the only thing barred by the 10th Amendment currently is commanding the states to enact legislation or to enforce federal legislation (though the government is free to give incentives to do so with money spent under the Spending Clause). (See New York v. United States (1992).)
Everything else you've posted is just whining about the Supreme Court not interpreting the Constitution the way you wished they would. Well, too bad! The Constitution is what the body invested with the power to interpret it says that it is. (See Marbury v. Madison.)
In other words, when it comes to Constitutional Law: "Lurk moar, n00b."
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Please see Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
Oddly enough, when I look up that Bill, I find it was approved by both Parties (90 votes for in the Senate, 343 in the House), and signed by a Democratic President (Clinton was President in 1999, remember?).
If it was an evil Republican plot to rob the dear people, then why did the "Defenders of All That is Good and Right" (aka the Democrats) approve it? Remember, most of them voted in favour of this also.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
so does Kit Bond when he bothers to respond to me. Claire McCaskill has only done that to me once IIRC, but it was on the FISA bill, so she can drown in diarrhea.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
Canada on the other hand has no business being a nice place to live. It's cold for much of the year, and in some places it's dark for almost half of it.
I'm pretty sure, on average, it's dark half the time everywhere.
JADBP
Just as an aside - was it an executive order, or did both sides vote on this? If the latter, what was the breakdown (for vs against) for each side?
Blame Clinton all you like, but it's likely that both sides supported this, and the intervening Bush presidency did nothing to re-introduce those laws.
On this one, both sides are to blame, but your economy has been further stressed by massive war spending which certainly hasn't helped.
Like I said, this statement is unequivocally false.
One can make an argument that it's not. It's really no different from from the analysis you gave, except for your faulty assumption that the 10th Amendment has strong teeth. The Constitution grants the government several powers to pass laws (removing some rights from you) and the Bill of Rights takes several powers away from the government (granting some rights to you). What it says nothing about is left alone, presumably to the states.
The 10th Amendment has long been viewed as little more than an affirmation of the obvious and not a hard limit of restraint. Beyond the limits I've mentioned on compelling action from the states, it's toothless. That changed for a while with the Usery decision but was revoked by Garcia. O'Connor's decision in the aforementioned New York v. United States is the law on the 10th Amendment currently, and I've already explained how little it restrains Congress.
And despite your stunning ability to look up cases on the internet, the Congress still has to give lip service to a grant of authority before it passes a law. Usually it's the Commerce Clause, which after Wickard v. Filburn is ridiculously broad, but the Rhenquist court did manage to reign it in just a little bit. So no, Congress can't just go off willy nilly and do whatever it wants.
Maybe. Gonzales v. Raich 545 U.S. 1 (2005) blows most of Morrison out of the water by resurrecting the rational basis test and severely muddying the waters on what is and isn't economic activity. While Congress still applies the fig leaf of "that affects interstate commerce" to the legislation it passes, what exactly is interstate commerce is once again very broad. It's hard to reconcile Raich with Lopez in my opinion, given the government's argument in the latter case.
(I'm frankly surprised you know much about what the Rehnquist court decided though, given how wrong your 10th Amendment analysis is. I was providing links because I figured (based on 2/3 of your post) that you were talking out your rear end. I again recommend reading a Con Law textbook.)
And I stand by my analysis of the New Deal. Everybody knew it was unconstitutional. They just decided it was so extraordinarily important that they were going to do it anyway.
I assume you're referring to West Coast Hotel Co. v. Parish (1937). The only reason anyone would've considered the New Deal unconstitutional was because of Lochner, widely considered today to have been one of the most awful and ill-conceived Supreme Court verdicts of all time. Yes, the court was under pressure due to Roosevelt's threat to pack the court, but the writing was already on the wall with Nebbia v. New York, 3 years earlier, and even in striking down some New Deal legislation in United States v. Butler, the court upheld a relatively broad interpretation of the Spending Clause and General Welfare Clause. By the time Wickard v. Filburn was decided, the landscape had changed.
Honestly, the argument "they knew it wasn't Constitutional" presumes two things:
1) There is an inherent, natural law concept of constitutionality that objectively lies outside of the decisions of the Supreme Court.
2) That the Supreme Court chose to ignore that objective standard and place a politically motivated substitute that has no moral authority behind it.
Neither of these are the case. Constitutional is what the body reviewing constitutionality says it is. I may not like Scalia's grotesque reading out of the Constitution of the 2nd Amendment's militia requirement in District of Columbia v. Heller this year (making a mockery of his own touted philosophy of originalism), but that is the law of the land. That is what is constitutional, and all the whining in the world doesn't change that.
(And frankly, if you're honestly arguing that we should roll back our notion of Constitutionality to the pre-New Deal, Lochner era, I think you're a loon.)
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
This act was also known as the Gramm Leach Bliley act. It was written by a Republican controlled congress and signed into law by President Bill Clinton.
You may have heard of one of the sponsors, Phil Gramm. He is the Gramm in Gramm Leach Bliley... He also wrote John McCain's economic policy and was John McCain's presidential campaign co-chair and his most senior economic advisor, until he made a gaffe on the campaign trail and said "You've heard of mental depression; this is a mental recession," and "We have sort of become a nation of whiners, you just hear this constant whining, complaining about a loss of competitiveness, America in decline." Whoops. I guess McCain had to let him go after he said that on national television.
I love it how the right-wing media is trying to spin this that "it's all Clinton's fault" when we have a law passed by a Republican controlled congress, written by McCain's senior economic advisor. I know you guys like to try and stretch the facts about everything, but the people are starting to get sick of all of the lies and deceit.
Let's face it, deregulation has failed our economy and our nation. Voting for John McCain would be putting the fox in charge of the hen house.
"When the president does it, that means it's not illegal." - Richard M. Nixon
Okay, congratulations, you've proved you have free Westlaw access, which means you're a student (but shame on your for not having Blue Book-correct cites; I hope you're not on Law Review), and so you deserve a little more respect that J. Random Slashdotter who thinks he knows the law. But you still have yet to refute my original point, which is that the 10th Amendment does not "just leave the rest alone." It says "the rest doesn't belong to the Federal government." Sure, you've shown that you favor a more expansive Commerce Clause than I do, but that's orthogonal to my point, which is that the 10th Amendment does, in fact, say something about it ("strong" teeth is your phrase, not mine). You're talking about matters of degree, which are up for reasonable debate. But like I pointed out, the fact that probably 9 out of 10 people in the U.S. don't even know there is such a thing as a 10th amendment is a pretty good indication to me that we've screwed it up. In any case, all constitutional theorists agree that the states have some powers reserved to them (if you can dig up a single remotely credible scholar who says otherwise, I'd like to see it; even Ginsburg will occasionally defer to the autonomy of the states).
Now, setting aside my original point (which I think I may have mentioned you failed to address in your eagerness to unleash your KeyCite prowess), you raise some interesting philosophical points. Is there such a thing as "constitutional in the abstract?" Or is the Supreme Court always right because they go last? Is three generations of imbeciles enough because the Chief said so in Buck v. Bell? Or is it possible he's wrong, even if four guys in black robes agree with him? (Remember, Buck v. Bell hasn't been reversed, so eugenic sterilization is still constitutional). And what was that case with the separated parents and some random guy knockin' up mom, but the estranged husband was the father (it has nothing to do with the conversation, but it was kind of amusing in an embarassing Jerry Springer kind of way). Perhaps you and I just disagree about this on a fundamental level. I can certainly grant you that it's the law of the land, and I'm not saying toss out Marbury v. Madison. But Carnival Cruise Lines is the law of the land too, and that was kind of dumb (I'm sure you remember this case; it can't have been very long since you took Civ Pro) (and I'm even a fairly strong freedom of contract proponent). But then, I am also a loon, as you say. I'm not even entirely sure I agree with the vague "Correlative Rights" doctrine of Crandall v. Nevada. Even for a results-oriented decision, it seemed sort of unnecessary to make stuff up when they could have disposed of the case on Congress's plenary authority over interstate commerce. And don't get me started on the contortions we've had to do with privileges and/or immunities to avoid complete incorporation.
So I've got this loony theory that maybe the federal government should just do the stuff we told it to do in the Constitution, and then we should pretty much leave the states alone to govern themselves so the local people can have some control over their own communities, unless they want to do something in violation of the constitution (because, you know, privileges, immunity, the first eight amendments, Rep. Bingham and all that jazz). It's actually a pretty radical theory, especially if you're taking Con Law from the Ghost of William Brennan, as you apparently are. And really, I'm the first loon to think of it, except a couple of nobodies like Hugo Black and Oliver Wendell Holmes, and (really, if you break it down) John Marshall. And Scalia and Thomas to an extent. And we'll see about Alito.
So bottom line, there is a 10th amendment, you haven't proved otherwise, we disagree on a bunch of stuff that reasonable people can disagree on, you don't get full cites from me because some of us have to pay for Westlaw access, William Brennan is dead, and Hugo Black pwns a11 u SUXORZ!
Today's Sesame Street was brought to you by the number e.
Okay, congratulations, you've proved you have free Westlaw access, which means you're a student (but shame on your for not having Blue Book-correct cites; I hope you're not on Law Review), and so you deserve a little more respect that J. Random Slashdotter who thinks he knows the law.
Damnation. You're a practicing attorney, aren't you? Alright, I've got to be a little more humble and back up my arguments a little more forcefully. (And I'm not following formal style because this is just an informal internet geek fight. I'll add some links for people who don't have access to services like Westlaw.)
It says "the rest doesn't belong to the Federal government." Sure, you've shown that you favor a more expansive Commerce Clause than I do, but that's orthogonal to my point, which is that the 10th Amendment does, in fact, say something about it ("strong" teeth is your phrase, not mine). You're talking about matters of degree, which are up for reasonable debate. [...] In any case, all constitutional theorists agree that the states have some powers reserved to them (if you can dig up a single remotely credible scholar who says otherwise, I'd like to see it; even Ginsburg will occasionally defer to the autonomy of the states).
I'd agree on the last point. New York v. United States 488 U.S. 1041 (1992) makes clear that Congress can't compel state action through promises of penalties. (See Part B(1) of the majority opinion). The rest of the opinion provides good support for the notion that even if you can't use the stick, you can use the carrot.
For Commerce Clause purposes, Garcia v. San Antonio Metropolitan Transit Authority , 469 U.S. 528 (1985) threw the Tenth Amendment out the window. The court rejected the standard introduced National League of Cities v. Usery, 426 U.S. 833 (1976) which required courts to examine whether a law passed by Congress interfered with "areas of traditional governmental functions."
"Our examination of this 'function' standard applied in these and other cases over the last eight years now persuades us that the attempt to draw the boundaries of state regulatory immunity in terms of "traditional governmental function" is not only unworkable but is also inconsistent with established principles of federalism and, indeed, with those very federalism principles on which National League of Cities purported to rest. That case, accordingly, is overruled."
Garcia at 531.
The problem following Garcia is that they never replaced the Usery standard with anything new! Blackmum explicitly refused to do so: "These cases do not require us to identify or define what affirmative limits the constitutional structure might impose on federal action affecting the States under the Commerce Clause" (Garcia at 556). No case following it has ruled that an exercise of Commerce Clause power violated the Tenth Amendment. Looking back to what preceded Usery, all we have is post-Lochner caselaw that treats the 10th Amendment as a mere truism.
For example, take the following frequently cited quote from United States v. Darby Lumber Co. , 312 U.S. 100 (1941) (which overturned prior precedent that gave effect to the 10th Amendment):
"The amendment states but a truism that all is retained which has not been surrendered. There is nothing in the history of its adoption to suggest that it was more than declaratory of the relationship between the national and state governments as it had been established by the Constitution before the amendment or that its purpose was other than to allay
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Please, find out how laws are made.
The president can only veto a bill, he/she does not make laws. A good president respects the democratic process and only vetoes a bill when there is extremely good reason to do so. It's only president Bush who has distorted the procedure with signing statements.
It's sad when a foreigner has to point out how your political system works.
I'm sorry if I haven't offended anyone
If you assume that Congress has UNLIMITED AUTHORITY, then why do we have a Constitution at all? The Constitution is a compact between the people, of the comity of the people, WITH EACH OTHER which vests certain defined and limited portions of the absolute sovereignty of the people in a Congress, etc. That power is clearly and explicitly limited. What part of 'reserved to the people' is not clear here?
When Congress assumes for itself powers not vested in it they are overthrowing the authority of the people. MY ancestors stood literally in the face of British cannon fire in order to guarantee EVERYONE the protection of those rights. Now, does anyone doubt that it does us dishonor if we fail to respect that? I WILL NOT yield those rights, not to Congress nor to anyone else. And if fools insist on giving them away, then I will withdraw my permission for those people to use those rights, and there is NO LIMIT to my right to do so, nor to the just means which I may avail myself of in that cause.
http://www.constitution.org/fed/federa00.htm
"Malo periculosam, libertatem quam quietam servitutem." -- Jefferson
I want some of whatever it is that you're smoking. The Repubs have been in control of both houses from 1994 up to 2006. It was only in 2006 that the Dems got the slimmest of majority in congress, and even still it is not a veto proof majority so they can't really do much except go along with Bush... I wish they would stand up to him a little more.
I would say that when you have the author of one of the worst finance bills in the history of our country that also writes the economic policy for a potential future President, that is a big deal . These guys are crooks, liars, and have been giving special perks to their cronies for decades now. We're just starting to see the real downside emerge.
"When the president does it, that means it's not illegal." - Richard M. Nixon
We (as represented by Andrew Carnegie) tried that already; the result was what we call the Great Depression. The problem is that it is not just (or even primarily) the "Republican fat cats" who "did stupid, risky things" who will suffer. Most have them have stupidly and riskily amassed large fortunes in safe assets like US treasuries. The people who will suffer most are everybody else - i.e. you. If the government waits to act until its constituency figures this out (because tens of millions of them are out of work), the resulting depression will be much worse than it need have been.
"The good reader is a rarer swan than the good writer."
Theoretically yes. However, the president can also make signing statements that can dramatically effect how the law is interpreted and this president has used that power more than any other.
The president also makes executive orders which can be quite powerful. Guam became a part of the US via an executive order for example.
As for making laws, in modern history the initial budget proposals start in the executive wing and then are passed to their party's congressional leaders to revise before putting them to a vote. That's why we call the tax cuts 'Bush' tax cuts because they were proposed by his administration.