You can’t say much for the video in this clip, but the sound is great, and if the person who posted this to youtube is to be believed, this performance took place in October 2008. His voice is still superb, unlike some of the geezers who are still out there.
Just got back from Drinking Liberally and definitely not up to writing anything.
Instead, I invite you to watch this clip from the Daily Show. It’s must viewing.
There’s an old saw in the legal biz: Hard cases make bad law. If that’s true, then the Supreme Court is about to make bad law.
In 2002 a West Virginia jury awarded $50 million dollars in damages to a coal plant operator that it found was fraudulently forced into bankruptcy by a company owned by one Don Blankenship. Blankeship took an appeal to the West Virginia Supreme Court. By a bizarre coincidence, at the same time that he took his appeal Mr. Blankenship took an interest in electoral politics. Specifically, he became outraged, simply outraged, at a judicial decision of the elected West Virginia chief justice (who just happened to have a judicial philosophy that made it unlikely he would rule for Blankenship), and proceeded to spend $3 million dollars to run a slime campaign against him. It worked, and his successor and the hitherto little know beneficiary of all that largess, cast the deciding vote that reversed the judgment. That successor, one Brent Benjamin, ignored requests that he recuse himself due to what some (well, actually, almost everyone) might say is at least the appearance of a conflict of interest.
The Supreme Court must decide if the plaintiff was denied due process as a result of Benjamin’s failure to recuse himself.
There is no easy answer for the court. If it rules in favor of the plaintiff then, among other things, it, or the lower federal courts, will have to intrude into the operation of the state courts, essentially policing elected judges. If it rules in favor of Blankenship, it will be green-lighting the buying and selling of judges. The problem is real. Until relatively recently, the big money did not go into judicial campaigns. That’s changed, and corporations are now sinking big money into judicial campaigns, often following Blankenship’s playbook of sliming sitting judges for rulings in emotional cases having nothing to do with the corporate interests they are actually trying to advance.
So even I feel a bit sorry for the court on this one. The obvious solution is to get rid of elected judges, but that’s not a realistic option for the Court. The truly troubling thing about this case is that certain of the Supreme Court justices are not troubled by it at all, a fact indicative of a degree of moral blindness one would rather not see in a Supreme Court judge:
[Plaintiff’s counsel Theodore] Olson says that an ordinary person may begin to doubt the neutrality of a judge if, oh, say, “that judge has just been put on the bench during the pendency of the trial of the case by his opponent’s contribution of $3 million …” Scalia says Olson has it all wrong. When people contribute millions of their own dollars to judicial-election campaigns, it’s because “they want me to be a good judge … and I’m showing my gratitude by being a good judge.” That’s the only expectation they have.
Of course, this is the guy who has no problem going duck hunting with a guy one day, and then ruling in his favor the next. Still, it’s hard to believe that even Scalia would utter such sentiments with a straight face. It’s one thing to feel that staying out of the fray is the lesser of two evils, it’s quite another to fail to see the evil.
As always, it will probably be up to Justice Kennedy to decide this case. It’s unfortunate that our “swing justice” appears to have little to recommend him, other than the fact that he is not quite so crazy as his four right wing friends on the court. This case cries out for a wise old man, and Kennedy can claim only one of those adjectives.
By the way, yes it is indeed Ted Olson, ex-Clinton prosecutor, representing the plaintiff. From a purely emotional view of the case, he’s on the right side this time.
Drinking Liberally AgendaThursday, March 5, 20096:30 PMBulkeley House111 Bank StreetNew London, CT6:30 to 7:00 PMIn depth discussion of the Obama Budget, with particular emphasis on stimulative effect of tax cuts vs. spending on anything you can think ofORDrinking, Eating, and Mindless Chatter7:00 to 7:30 PMTextual analysis of the recently released Office of Legal Counsel Opinions featuring a Round Table Discussion by the lawyers attendingORDrinking, Eating, and Mindless Chatter7:30 PM to 8:00 PMHealth Care: Single Payer or Private/Public Competition: An Economic AnalysisORDrinking, Eating and Mindless Chatter8:00 PM to ClosingStrategies for Expanding the Democratic Majority in Washington and HartfordORDrinking, Eating and Mindless Chatter
So many choices. We need your input. Don’t miss it.
Firedoglake is sounding the alarm about the “New Democrats”, many of whom are still taking their marching orders from the banks who have brought us to the brink, if not into the vortex, of disaster. In this case, the chief villain is Congresswoman Ellen Tauscher, a former Wall Street investment banker who is carrying water for her old industry (and is being well paid in campaign donations for it) by opposing bankruptcy reform, particularly the Obama administration’s proposal that consumers be allowed to cramdown their mortgages.
This hits a bit close to home because, according to Firedoglake, one of the “New Democrats” is John Larson, whose district is one of those hardest hit by the wave of foreclosures. It’s difficult to see why anyone would carry water for the banks in this climate, but a guy like Larson doesn’t have to worry about re-election, and the issue is just arcane enough to make it hard for people to understand. In addition, it’s easy to blame the victims whenever you are discussing bankruptcy.
You may be asking: What’s a “cramdown”?
Broadly speaking, there are two kinds of debt in bankruptcy, secured and unsecured. A debt is secured if the creditor has a contractual right to seize the debtor’s property in order to get repayment. When you buy a car, the creditor can repossess it if you don’t pay, because the loan you took out is secured by the car. As we all know, if you don’t pay your mortgage the bank can foreclose and sell your home to get its money.
Unsecured debt is secured only by your word. If you don’t pay, the creditor can sue you, and then pursue whatever legal avenues are available to collect its money.
In a bankruptcy, security interests are honored. If you are a secured creditor you have the right to get the secured property and sell it if you aren’t being paid. Unsecured creditors often get nothing, or next to nothing, from a bankrupt. Their debts are often “discharged”, another word for wiped away.
Issues arise, however, when the value of the property that is subject to the security interest is less than the amount of the debt. For instance, if I owe $150,000.00 on my mortgage, and my house is only worth $100,000.00, for all practical purposes the bank with a mortgage is secured to the amount of $100,000.00, while the balance is unsecured. A cramdown lets the debtor take advantage of that reality, by allowing him or her to treat only the $100,000.00 as secured debt. The bankruptcy judge can impose terms on the bank, requiring it to accept a payment plan that pays it the $100,000.00, while treating the remaining $50,000.00 as unsecured debt. That would mean, in most cases, that the $50,000.00 debt would be discharged, and the debtor could keep their house by paying only $100,000.00, the amount it is worth.
Cramdowns are already allowed for automobiles and vacation homes, among other things. But Congress, displaying the wisdom only lobbyists dollars can bestow, barred the procedure in the case of primary residences. Given our current economic situation, it makes good sense to allow cramdowns for primary residences. But, operating on the assumption that only they should get free money, the banks oppose it, and so do the New Democrats.
Bear in mind that if done properly, a cramdown preserves one hundred percent of the protection the banks have a right to expect. Were they to actually foreclose on the property, they would get what the court allows in the cramdown, less the often high cost of the foreclosure. Given the current situation, legalizing cramdowns would quite possibly be in the bank’s best interests, because it would maximize their return on these mortgages, at the least cost to them. By stemming the tide of foreclosures the cramdowns would also have the effect of stabilizing property values at a higher level than they would fall to if the same houses went into foreclosure.
It’s mystifying that Larson would be against this common sense measure. The fact that, at present, one debtor can save a vacation home, while another cannot save the only home s/he has, speaks volumes about the current, punitive, class based animus in the bankruptcy code. The “reforms” that were passed a few years ago took dead aim at the working and middle class and scored a direct hit. The current crisis is a golden opportunity to undo the harm done by the Republicans (assisted by a number of Democrats) a few years ago.
According to the Day’s headline writer (we can’t blame the reporter for this) an Open-Space Bill [has taken] Groton By Surprise. The text of the article tells a bit different story. We townsfolk are in fact going about our business in as placid a state as the impending Depression permits, unfazed by the Open Space Bill to which the article refers. In fact, it appears that “Groton”, so far as the bill is concerned, boils down to one person, Town Councilor Heather Bond (it may or may not be a coincidence that Wright beat Bond in the election that sent Wright to the statehouse), who professes to be shocked at a bill proposed by State Representative Elissa Wright:
When voters approve municipal funds to purchase open space, measures should be taken to protect that land permanently, state Rep. Elissa Wright, D-Groton, said.
Wright has proposed a bill that would do just that, saying that such town open-space purchases should fall along the same lines as purchases that use state funds – a permanent conservation easement is placed on the land.
But her bill has frustrated several Groton Town Council members who were unaware that their representative had proposed it and believe it has the potential to tie towns’ hands in future uses of such property.
Other than Bond, none of the “frustrated” Town Councilors are identified. The claim made in the article that somehow the bill was represented as having been proposed at the council’s instigation is poorly supported.
This brouhaha does illuminate a couple of odd things about our Town Council. First, and I can attest this from personal experience, is the idea that somehow our state representative is personally answerable to the Town Council. That is manifestly not the case.
More troubling is the idea that the town is free to, in essence, defraud its own citizens by getting their okay to buy land for a stated purpose-in this case open space, and then turn around and use it for another purpose without getting their okay. The council considers it an affront that their hands should be tied. Years ago they were all set to hand one of the properties purchased as open space to a for-profit minor league baseball team. Had that happened we would now, like Norwich, be looking forward to an empty baseball stadium after years of handing tax breaks and concessions to the team. It didn’t happen only because the piece involved was the one piece (the Copp property) purchased for open space purposes that did, in fact, have restrictive language in the deed.
Those events took place prior to my time on the council. When I became a member of that august body, I was somewhat surprised at the degree to which they resented the legal strictures on their ability to do whatever they wanted with the Copp property. They perceived it as an affront, despite the fact that the town had acquired that particular piece for a below market price precisely because it came with the legal restrictions required by the former owner.
The other properties have no legal restrictions, but the fact is the folks who paid (the taxpayers) agreed to do so on the express representation that the land was being purchased as open space. In the world of private actors, when one induces someone to part with their money based on a representation of fact, and then one acts in a manner inconsistent with that representation, it is called fraud, or, at the very least, breach of contract. Why the town council feels it is appropriate for it to retain the ability to dedicate that land to other uses, at their sole whim and without further taxpayer input, has always mystified me.
I hope Representative Wright’s bill becomes law. She is asking nothing more than that towns abide by the representations they make to their own taxpayers. That’s not really asking that much.
Number One on the Big-D for an ungodly number of weeks in a row. When a Man Loves a Woman.
Last week the New York Post ran a scurrilous and racist cartoon. In the face of overwhelming public revulsion-it apologized. It was a classic blame the victim apology, implying as it did that anyone who said they were offended was not truly offended, and that in any event, the problem was with millions who saw the cartoon as racist, not with the isolated individuals who did not:
It was meant to mock an ineptly written federal stimulus bill.
Period.
But it has been taken as something else – as a depiction of President Obama, as a thinly veiled expression of racism.
This most certainly was not its intent; to those who were offended by the image, we apologize.
However, there are some in the media and in public life who have had differences with The Post in the past – and they see the incident as an opportunity for payback.
To them, no apology is due.
I.e, this apology is only operative for those who did not complain.
This sort of apology has risen to a high art form recently. I wrote a while back about a Catholic Bishop whose excommunication the pope recently lifted. The man has denied the holocaust, although he’s admitted that several hundred thousand Jews were killed, but not six million. The pope, who unconvincingly claimed he didn’t know about the man’s views, demanded that he “unequivocally and publicly renounce his claims that there were no gas chambers and that fewer than 300,000 Jews died in the Nazi death camps”.
It will be interesting to see if the Pope is satisfied with his apology. The man is not a Jesuit, but his apology is definitely Jesuitical:
In a statement published by the Zenit news agency on Thursday, Bishop Williamson said, “I can truthfully say that I regret having made such remarks, and that if I had known beforehand the full harm and hurt to which they would give rise, especially to the church, but also to survivors and relatives of victims of injustice under the Third Reich, I would not have made them.”
He added, “To all souls that took honest scandal from what I said, before God I apologize.”
He’s sorry if you were honestly offended by his remarks. He’s sorry people felt hurt. He’s sorry for the harm it caused the church and Holocaust survivors and relatives. If he had only known the harm he’d cause, he never would have said it. But he’s not backing down one inch from the substance of what he said. And as an extra little twist to the victims of the Holocaust, he’s more sorry for any harm he did to the pope than to them. So much for an unequivocal and public renunciation of his views. So much for an acknowledgment that he did anything wrong.
This is becoming a high art form. One can imagine Hitler’s apology: I’m sorry if you were offended by the fact that I killed six million Jews, along with causing a war that caused untold misery for countless others. If I had known how it would all turn out, I probably would have done things differently.
UPDATE: As a commenter notes, the Church has so far refused to accepted Williamson’s statement as adequate. Maybe some good will come out of all of this.
On a more bizarre note, guess who Williamson consulted to check the historical record:
Bishop Williamson has said in recent weeks that he needs more time to study Holocaust documentation. David Irving, a historian who served 13 months in prison in Austria for Holocaust denial, said in a telephone interview on Friday that Bishop Williamson had contacted him asking for assistance in assessing the Holocaust. Mr. Irving said the bishop had written him through an intermediary, saying: “At the heart of this whole uproar is the objective truth about what happened in Auschwitz and other concentration camps. I must conform my mind to the truth.”
…
Mr. Irving said he believed the outrage with the Vatican for trying to rehabilitate Bishop Williamson was orchestrated by Israel to distract the international community from the recent war in Gaza.
Mr. Irving said he responded to Bishop Williamson’s request for assistance by sending him a two-page memorandum advising the bishop “to accept that there were organized mass killings from the spring of 1942 to October 1943” in three sites run by Hitler’s deputy, Heinrich Himmler: Treblinka, Sobibor and Belzec.
Going to David Irving, a notorious Holocaust denier, for advice about the Holocaust is a little like going to Pat Robertson for an unbiased critique of evolution. Anyone interested might want to read the judgment handed down against Irving by a British court, which you can read here.
Check this out at My Left Nutmeg. I’m with one of the commenters. This looks more like supplication than a mutual embrace. God, Lieberman is a toad.