Good morning BT.

Did you notice the word above the headline of the story on Palin? “Obituaries”

you know, letterman honored the union strike and leno didn’t, how does leno score obama before letterman?

me not happy

The Anchor Baby blocks Tbogg.

bwaa-HAHA

Obama talks cute, but he’s kinda slow on moving to real solutions and he’s good at weasleing out of his positions like stopping the war in Irag he never voted for.

His economic advisors show he’s in the tank to Goldman Sachs and the other big banks on Wall Street.

Banks need capital… liquidity? How about paying workers so that they earnings deposited in banks provide the liquidity? They already blew the cash they had x 100 on schemes to make shareholders rich.

I didn’t know that.

It will be interesting to watch how much political capital Obama will expend once EFCA gets into the legislative process.

O’Donnell: “I really didn’t expect it to be that easy to take (Cantor) down on this.”

Oh, please. It was Eric fucking Cantor, fer chrissakes.

The general public may believe that the anti-war prez is going to wind the wars down but there are lots of folks who aren’t satisfied. Among them:

War Resisters League

United for Peace and Justice

The World Can’t Wait

American Friends Service Committee

Folks won’t forget about the wars if we don’t let them.

James Haas wants his neighbors left alone.
HAHA

According to the story, HIS NEIGHBORS ARE HIS PROBLEM.

Morning all,
Seems O’Donnell wants the ten o’clock gig @ MSNBC

Rob Lorei, News Director of WMNF Tampa, also hosts a weekly teevee show called Florida This Week on Friday nights. Tonight his only guest will be, wait for it, Keith O, who I guess is down here for spring training. KO also did a promo for the radio station that will air during the station’s fund raising marathon starting next week. For me, not as exciting as when Amy Goodman was here and did it live from the station while she was on a book tour a couple years ago. Hanging out and talking with Amy for a couple hours is something I don’t think any of us will forget.

Any lawyers on the thread?

Jayt on the last thread said that it was constitutional to change civil laws after the fact, but not criminal laws. Is that accurate? That means that if a stop sign is added at a corner, and there is a film record of all the drivers who drove thru that intersection before the sign was put up, they could all be fined in retrospect? (Not that it would happen, but it would be constitutional?) Seems strange to me.

I vote “No.”
They can do a helluva lot better than O’Donnell

Not a lawyer but traffic violations are misdemeaners

My vote goes to either Michael Parenti or Tariq Ali. *g*

They will find a way to do a helluva lot worse.

Does that mean they are criminal?

What would be an example of a govt legal case against a citizen that is civil, not criminal? Anything other than income taxes?

We have no right to go after pedophile priests who 25 years ago raped children. And we have no right to impose a 90% tax on the thieves & crooks at AIG who plummeted the company even though we own 80% of the company!

Pedophile priests should not be held accountable for their acts especially if 7 years has gone by. Nor should we retroactively go after company bonuses in a company we own.

We got our (CO) single payer bill out of committee Wednesday now it is on to appropriations then on to the full legislature

Pedophile priests have rights too! How dare we go after them when their crime against children happened 25 years ago! They’ve repented since then. AIG is feeling bad too especially knowing they’ve stolen the retirement accounts of America’s grandchildren. Starving & raping children is okay! No punishment needed!

*boxing the air*

Okay, going to work. I’m sure you’re all glad. LOL

Palin will take money that, in addition to providing jobs, will line the pockets of construction company pooh bahs but won’t take money that provides services to the most vulnerable of the population. She follows the ideology of Guilliani to a T. Run off the poor to make more room for the rich.

Now Kay, opposing mircotargeted tax legislation is not a vote for pedophilia.

I would say that it’s always good policy to trust jayt. heh.

I’m referring specifically to the prohibition against ex post facto laws, and that prohibition is in fact that it is unconstitutional to charge a person with a crime if, at the time of the action at issue, the behavior was not designated as criminal.

e.g. say I’m smoking a cigarette while walking down a public sidewalk and a police officer sees me doing it. Nothing illegal there. But a few months later, the state legislature passes a law prohibiting smoking while on a public sidewalk. Officer remembers “hey – I saw that asshole jayt doing that a while back – I’m gonna arrest him”

won’t work (not that I can deny the asshole part)

She hates that education stuff.

Off to swim in the great capitalist cesspool. Was glad to hear Robert Scheer call it a cesspool yesterday on DN!.

Be good to yourselves, and all other living things.

Namaste

If you don’t like the statute of limitations, change them before the fact, not after the fact. Nation of laws & all that.

Man, does it ever show. *g* I’ve got tigers smarter than her.

So what’s an example of a civil action the govt can take against a citizen?

what comes most immediately to mind is IRS regulations.

ever heard of retroactive immunity?

I’ll repeat my warning that Ds have set a precedent (as IANAL, I’ll refrain from guessing whether the bonus thing will withstand SCOTUS), the Rs will try the same thing in spades. Remember “Clinton did it”?

Maybe the fear will get their butts in gear and push them to start doing business with the “intent” of the law.

Maybe as a group, they will walk over to the FBI and hand over all the evidence as to what is going on and then restore some faith.

Here’s Parenti when I knew him.

Check my link above.

Only thing’s changed is less hair and it’s gray.

I ran into him years later in the water in Negril, he couldn’t believe I remembered him.

Right. I’m looking for another example.

But using the IRS one, supposing that congress decided that the top max income tax rate on those earning over $500 million per year should have been 90% for the past decade. Is it constitutional for congress to change the law now, dig out the old tax returns and collect?

Eminent Domain

fwiw, while the legislation is not *necessarily* unconstitutional, I don’t think it stands up in court. lots of other ways to take it apart.

Don’t think its symmetrical between prosecuting after the fact for something that was not against the law at the time, vs. forgiving a guilt for some specific reason.

So everyone is hammering away that the “lawsuit’ rationale was bullshit when it really isn’t?

I would argue that it isn’t – but I’d lose. They do that shit (on variously smaller scales) all the time. And charge penalties and interest.

And the courts have upheld this. But even the IRS cannot *criminalize* the actions it has later determined to have led to a taxable event.

I think the taxing bonus bill is just grandstanding. I have my doubts it will get through the Senate. I’d much rather see legislation re-regulating the shit out of the financial sector.

Colour me gone.

Can’t think how to make an analogy out of eminent domain. The law has been on the books for a long time, and the legal issues seem to involve interpreting what the public interest is.

I am into this subject much beyond my abilities. My understanding of first principles is clearly inadequate. Guess I’ll sit back & watch how it plays out.

oh good
Obama Family to Plant Organic Garden at White House
Christy’s up

Interesting. I was unaware of that.

not sure if I understand the question, but if someone goes to court over having their bonus seized, or taxed into non-existence, I’d be betting with the plaintiffs.

From teh bottom of the prior thread:

eCahn, I don’t think the tax incraese on the bonuses is a “big no-no.”

Sorry for being unclear. I thought everyone was jumping up and down at the idea that they left the bonuses in because they thought they would get sued if they didn’t?

lemme check this out

they would get sued if they didn’t leave them in. And they’re gonna get sued if they now take them out – via one method or another. Any action other than loud bitching is going to result in litigation.

I’m thinking that the cost of the litigation might well actually exceed the amount of any recovery – but hey – it’s politics first, last, and foremost, right?

equal protection, bills of attainder, breach of contract, tortious interference with the performance of a contract……

vs.

Public Policy.

I’m doubling down on my bet.

NationsBank of Texas, N.A. v. U.S., 269 F.3d 1332 (Fed. Cir. 2001)

regards estate taxes. distiguishable on that ground? I doubt it.

NationsBank of Texas N.A. v. United States, 269 F.3d 1332 (Fed. Cir. 2001), held that this increase did not violate the separation of powers doctrine or the Apportionment Clause, was not a prohibited criminal ex post facto law, was not a taking under the Fifth Amendment, did not violate due process, and was not contrary to equal protection principles.

Retroactive increase in estate tax deemed not unconstitutional.

makes sense to me. plaintiff arguing equal protection as to a law applicable to the citizenry as a whole is a different argument than one being made by a small group of AIG employees.

gotta run for now. we’ll take it up later?

I’m usually in sympathy with your positions, but pedophilia was illegal 25 years ago. Prosecution of priests recently found to have been pedophiles wouldn’t involve an ex post facto law, or passage of a law making someone guilty of a crime that wasn’t a crime at the time they committed the act.

BT, you missed Paul Krugman’s blog post upon his return from “Yurp”, where in he sums up the Obama team’s performance on this financial mess in two pithy sentences:

This was bad analysis, bad policy, and terrible politics. This administration, elected on the promise of change, has already managed, in an astonishingly short time, to create the impression that it’s owned by the wheeler-dealers. And that leaves it with no ability to counter crude populism.

Are you referring to the AIG bonus tax? Seems they always change the tax laws that relate to things that tax year all the time.

In addition, I don’t think that this can be related to the 11th Amendment as my nearby Republican Representative Dan Lundgren has suggested. He argues that the law is affecting a “class”…that the Executives at AIG are being targetted for their success.

Sorry, doesn’t wash. All sorts of “classes” of people are targetted by laws. We have a progressive income tax on the wealthy that supposedly is designed to ameliorate the regressive taxes on the poor. There are laws that target people who like loud music, who carouse at night, who like to drink beer or wines, etc. Certain groups are given preference in immigration. Bail is offerede for some people and not others…based on the “class characteristics” they exhibit.

Why shouldn’t the wealthier executives at firms that were bailed out by tax-payer money, thus saving their jobs that they themselves put at risk through their greed, be expected not to benefit financially by going on the public dole?

To say that they are “Constitutionally” a special “protected” class seems a bit absurd. Rich executives at bailed-out firms need “protection”? Sounds like Danny has been drinkin’ a bit too much of that Michelle Bachmann gin!

Article I, section 10, clause 1 of the Constitution provides that “no state shall pass any ex post facto law”; Article I, section 9, clause 3 imposes the same limitations on the federal government. However SCOTUS very quickly determined that these clauses only prohibit laws with retroactive effect in criminal matters and aren’t applicable to civil matters. Retroactive laws in the civil area may be limited if they violate Contract or Due Process Clauses of the Constitution. The ban on ex post facto laws acts exclusively as a restraint on legislative action and is not applicable to changes in the law made by judicial decision.

I think that the tax laws generally apply to income generated THAT year. For example, even though someone may have generated income for the last ten years and they die, the recipient through inheritance can’t argue that he should only be liable for taxes on the last year the income was generated. OR that the tax rates may have been lower in the past and why should he be charged at the current rate “because if my father had died in a previous year, when I was making less” the taxes would be lower.

If the transfer occurred THAT year it changes the tax code for THAT year.

But isn’t this a law that will be applicable to any employee (or executive) that received government bail-out money. It is not restricted to AIG, although that is where the first instance of the abuses appeared.

I’m thinking that the cost of the litigation might well actually exceed the amount of any recovery – but hey – it’s politics first, last, and foremost, right?

But that’s true in many legal situations…in fact the cost of “litigation and jail” almost always exceeds the financial benefits. The argument is deterrant and justice.

Are Executives at Bailed Out Banks a Constitutionally “special protected class”? Could you spell these issues out in a bit more detail rather than simply spouting them off.

Are you saying that no civil law can be applied that deals with a pre-existing situation that requires remediation?

That a law that simply affects one group more than others is UnConstitutional?

I used pedophile priests to make my point. Another good example would be if the IRS sends a refund check to us in the amount of $1557.00 when it was supposed to be, $155.70, we can’t keep the money and if we do, the IRS has a right to go after us.

AIG made a huge mistake in rewarding these crooked employees with huge sums of money and since we Americans are the 80% owner of the company, we can demand these payments back or tax these bonuses to get it back. I see nothing illegal about us doing so.

We have Statute of Limitations for a reason. Some would argue that it’s not right for us today to go after pedophile priests who committed crimes against children 25-30, but we do. And why do we allow it? Outrage by the citizens which warrants it. Americans are outraged by AIG and these FRIVOLOUS bonuses (that’s how Americans view them anyway) as as the 80% stakeholder in the company, we can take back what we paid out. Unless AIG wants to return the rest of the money we gave them, then they have no recourse as far as I’m concerned.

If it’s found out today we did not pay our taxes 10 years ago, the IRS can go after us. They can sue us, attach our wages, and make our life a living hell. I think we should do the same thing to the AIG thieves.