Thursday, March 19, 2009

Assortment

1) Conservative Monique has a fascinating discussion with her liberal brother.

2) Richard McEnroe says the IRS is getting lonely and would appreciate some more mail.

3) Hal G.P. Colebatch explains why Australia recovered faster from the Great Depression than the U.S. did (by the way, this can’t possibly be the same Colebatch that I made fun of in one of my old Detective Paco stories; any Australian readers know of another one who might have been my target? Just curious.)

4) A thought occurred to Betsy that also occurred to me: would a law imposing confiscatory taxation on AIG bonuses represent a bill of attainder? Any lawyers want to opine?

5) Well-known shrinking violet Andrea Harris has a few mild criticisms of CNN’s absurd Jack Cafferty (who apparently loves Obama as only a mother could).

6) Blue Crab Boulevard brings us the welcome news that the Preshizzle has backed off of at least one obnoxious scheme.

14 comments:

TimT said...

There's a Peter Colebatch who writes for The Age, maybe it was him?

Anonymous said...

An interesting point is made in the comments at Betsy's Page re the Bill of Attainder question: the bill will be written NOT to pass the Constitutional test.

Do you think those crooks in the House are this smart?

Retread

Anonymous said...

You might be interested in a book by Amity Shlaes called The Forgotten Man. She argues that FDR's brain trust delayed recovery through their misguided policies. It makes very pertinent reading these days.

Retread

richard mcenroe said...

retread -- That notorious right wing cabal the UCLA School of Economics came to the same conclusion...

Anonymous said...

Richard, I didn't know that. It makes it harder to understand why The Won is adopting the policies he is. Assuming his goal really is economic recovery, that is. Personally I think it's a power grab, but he claims otherwise.

Reread

Mercurius Aulicus said...

Mr Paco,

Here is a link that you might enjoy:

http://baracksteleprompter.blogspot.com/

Paco said...

TimT: I believe that might be the fellow. I'm going to see if I can dig up the old story (as I recall, in my story, I had Tim Blair and Andrew Bolt do a drive-by shooting with super-soaker squirt guns, for some reason).

MCM: Thank you, sir; I updated an earlier post with that link. Obama's bizarre experiences with teleprompters are hilarious - especially the latest episode where he wound up thanking himself for something.

Mercurius Aulicus said...

Sorry I must have missed it in my reader.

kc said...

BarryO...sorry, I mean President BarryO has, in my opinion, no intention of reviving the economy. Power-grab is my bet...chaos and uproar are the tools.

And I keep HOPING I'm wrong. But he & his administration and his Congress haven't proven me wrong once, so far.

Anonymous said...

I think they are trying to get around the Bill of Attainder aspect by grouping them with All others receiving a distribution after 12-31-2008.

There is another aspect to this, and it has its place right beside the Bill of Attainder in Section 9 of Article 1. Why isn't this a defacto ex post facto law? Madison spoke against these twins in Federalist 44 and Hamilton in Federalist 84 had this to say: "The creation of crimes after the commission of the fact, or, in other words,the subjecting of men to punishment for things which, when they were done,were breaches of no law, and the practice of arbitrary imprisonments, have been, in all ages, the favorite and most formidable instruments of tyranny."
Just subsitute confiscation of property for imprisonment.

This isn't a Congress, it's a lynch mob.

kc said...

Right you are, yojimbo. Where it might be understandable to try to tax the crap out of EVERY bonus in a targeted group from now on, it's unethical - wrong in SO many ways - to "create the crime" after the fact and then make it retroactive.

Not that this bunch of politicians has any problem with that.

RebeccaH said...

RE Prezdent Won's plan to make wounded veterans pay for their own treatment, my response to BCB, was this:

"Two months in, the Obama administration has built a reputation for backing off controversial proposals, and then weasel-sneaking them in by the back door. I don't believe this issue is dead yet."

And I don't.

Paco said...

Rebecca: Oh, absolutely. He'll be back with something similar but less transparent, you can count on it.

richard mcenroe said...

Obama unveils new food stamp!