Rule of Law

So we are offered a monstrosity of a Healthcare Bill. 2000+ pages. It even falls outside of standard legislative processes in order to get it passed. No one knows what's in it before the legislators vote on it. A man will decide what's in the law later, now that it is passed.

There is a Banking Reform Bill on the Hill. It's huge. 2000+ pages. The two powerful men that 'wrote' it, Dodd and Frank, don't even know what's in it, and they admit it. We'll find out what's in it later, after it is passed when some man decides what's in it.

The Banking bill is because of the mortgage crisis. You see banks don't like risk, but they do like profit. Lucky for them, the gov't took their risk away with Fannie and Freddie. If there is no consquences for risky behavior but a chance for profit, of COURSE they took that path. They called it irresponsible lending, but it isn't that. It's mercenary lending. The irresponsible part was the borrowing. Buying a $500k house while working a $25k job by fudging the application and getting a balloon mortgage to keep the payments down for the first 3 years. If the house doesn't go up in value after a balloon bursts, so? Theur credit was very bad BEFORE the loan, so what if it get's worse. Need a place to live? Stay in the $500k home even after foreclosure, you don't have to leave. And you don't have to make payments. Following the rules, getting a $100k house and a 30 year fixed rate mortgage? The advice that everyone back past your great grandparents gave you? Following the rules are suckers.

Same for legal immigrants. You filled out all that paperwork and jumped through hoops to come to this country? Sucker.

An oil drilling company has a horrible accident. It's their responsibility. It may bankrupt them and they will have to dissolve the corporation to pay the damages and obligations meted down by due process. But even as a non functioning and bankrupt entity they have much of value to sell, many hard assets that can be liquidated to meet every obligation, every claimant. And there is a process to go through to settle those claims, a procedure agreed upon and in place for all these score of decades. Unless a powerful man promises no end of extralegal harassment if the company doesn't front up a huge escrow payment. Under what authority is this demand justified? Everyone on all sides admits there is no statute for this. It's just done. One man decides with no real authority, another acquiesces because it would be even more ruinous to oppose the will of that one man.

There is a Cap and Trade bill before congress. It's suppose to put the kibosh on Anthropogenic Catastrophic Greenhouse Warming. Hogwash. A group of people 20+ years ago had a solution: Socialism! As much central planning as the American people will sit still for. And they hunted around for a problem to apply this solution to. They went for global warming as problem as good as any. Sympathy for the plight of the proletariat wasn't cutting the mustard in the problem department anymore and they needed a new angle. Well, all the foundation for this problem seems to be falling apart. It was built on top of the 'sand' of fraud, groupthink, and the grubbing for grant money from any available source. Rather than resting on what they originally claimed: the solid bedrock of science. Science welcome skeptics, as it seeks Truth, at any rate. It doesn't cast out skeptics, calling them Deniers (just like friend of Hitler! godwin...), and stitching the scarlet letter D to their garments.

A Supreme Court justice is nominated. And this nominee won't answer a direct question. No nominee has for years. A forthright and honest answer of her legal views and opinions just invites rejection. It's even named after the last nominee that was truthful with his answered. She'd be "Borked". So the nomination hearing process is just useless political kabuki theater now. No objective criteria on qualification. Her favorite color might have more weight on whether she is voted in or out. At least she can answer what her favorite color is. But there is every indication, admitted by both side of the aisle as understood,that despite what she says now she will make rulings based on her desires and feelings. She'll decide what is right in her heart and work her legal justification around her prejudicial decision no matter what the plainest language in the law says. She'll twist the means of the law to achieve a desired ends. It's a tradition since Justice Warren and even before.

We've been adding laws on top of the body of English Common Law for 234 years. It's no wonder that you can't wake in morning and commute to work without running afoul of 4 obscure felonies. Some crazy Russian woman said, "There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What's there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed nor enforced nor objectively interpreted and you create a nation of law-breakers." A man will determine if you broke anything important. Especially if he need to be done with you. He'll pick one of those many codes in the system to paste upon you. It's not like there is some body of men that can repeal extraneous crap and keep the code sensible. They are busy men with other things to attend to. Like passing more laws and raising election fund money and golfing and screwing their mistress (or mister, depending on the preference of law-making-man or law-making-woman).


But that's how the United States was set up, though. We are ruled by men. The capricious rules of men. Some elected and known, many faceless and power seeking behind-the-scenes type? How else are a people governed if not by men and man's opinion of the moment.

The Law? Plain and clear? Written in the vernacular for everyone to see? Not requiring a priest caste to figure it out for us, to trick out every invisible and magical penumbra? A body of Law out of us reg'lar folks' control? How can the Law rule men? Rule of Law? Whoever heard of such poppycock before today? Madness to contemplate.



[Can you tell I've been watching the John Adams mini-series?]