Resolved: Federal government bailouts of 3
BAILOUTS UNDERMINE DEMOCRACY
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- BAILOUTS ARE UNCONSTITUTIONAL
BAILOUTS UNDERMINE DEMOCRACY1. CAPITALIST INTERESTS CANNABALIZED DEMOCRACY DURING THE BAILOUT PROCEEDINGS David Sirota, a Fellow at the Campaign for America's Future and a board member of the Progressive States Network, October 4, 2008. “The Bailout: How Capitalism Killed Democracy,” AlterNet, By the time the fight hit Congress' upper chamber, senatorial morticians were embalming democracy's corpse. Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., permitted consideration of just one alternative, and he rigged parliamentary procedure to guarantee its defeat. Yet, if capitalism took democracy's life through a perverse legislative process, then it robbed its grave with the bailout bill's substance. 2. THE BAILOUT WAS UNDEMOCRATIC AND BETRAYED AMERICAN HOMEOWNERS William John Cox is a retired supervising prosecutor for the State Bar of California, October 3, 2008. “Betrayed by the Bailout: The Death of Democracy,” Global Research, Accessed 12-10-2008, At least six million homeowners will probably default on their mortgages this year and next, and millions more will have their equity wiped out by declining property values. More than 770,000 homes have been seized by lenders since 2007, and 91,000 families were just kicked out of their homes in August. These American homeowners were betrayed by their elected representatives! 3. BAILOUTS FOSTER GOVERNMENT DEPENDENCE AT THE EXPENSE OF DEMOCRATIC FREEDOM Gary Wood, Staff Writer, November 29, 2008. “No Bailout Plan for We the People,” Nolan Chart, In 1788 James Madison gave a speech at the Virginia Convention in which he said, "I believe there are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations." A year earlier Jefferson provided us with these words we should listen to. "Dependence begets subservience and venality, suffocates the germ of virtue, and prepares fit tools for the designs of ambition." Our government will not provide a plan to bailout 'We the People' because that is our responsibility. 4. THE BAILOUT REMOVED ALL DEMOCRATIC CONSTRAINTS ON THE MARKET David Sirota, a Fellow at the Campaign for America's Future and a board member of the Progressive States Network, October 4, 2008. “The Bailout: How Capitalism Killed Democracy,” AlterNet, We now face market forces uninhibited by democratic governance -- Chinese dictators and Saudi princes can move trillions of dollars without so much as a press release. This bailout, marketed as a speed enhancer, is an aggressive attempt to discard democracy's checks and balances and pantomime that kind of autocracy. While our political culture still required a public sales job (thus, the fearmongering), the bill's czarism aims to permanently euthanize democracy in the name of improving our capitalism's global agility. In that sense, this week's spousal killing wasn't random. It was the beginning of a systematic assault on our Constitution and a radical departure from Franklin Roosevelt's original covenant -- a dangerous "new deal" we must say "no deal" to. 5. CORPORATE WELFARE IS INCOMPATIBLE WITH DEMOCRACY Ralph Nader, JD from Harvard Law, 2000. “Cutting Corporate Welfare,” THIRD WORLD TRAVELER, Accessed 12-10-2008, An examination of corporate welfare is, therefore, at one important level, an examination of the state of our political democracy. Unfortunately, the burgeoning corporate welfare state does not speak well for the state of democratic affairs. The following examples, discussed in more detail later in this pamphlet, illustrate how political payoffs-what former Member of Congress Cecil Heftel, D-Hawaii, calls "legalized bribery"-distort decision-making so that the public commonwealth is corporatized to enrich the already-rich. BAILOUTS ARE UNCONSTITUTIONAL1. THE BAILOUT WAS UNCONSTITUTIONAL ON SEPARATION OF POWERS GROUNDS Hans Bader, Counsel for Special Projects at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, September 25, 2008. “Bailout Bill Is Unconstitutional Delegation,” OpenMarket.org, Accessed 12-10-2008, Constitutional experts have concluded that that the $700 billion bailout bill is an unconstitutional delegation of power, in violation of constitutional separation-of-powers safeguards. I earlier reached the same conclusion in pronouncing the bill “dangerous, inflationary, unnecessary, and unconstitutional.” One of the experts calling its constitutionality into question is Civil Rights Commissioner and Heritage Foundation scholar Todd Gaziano, a separation-of-powers expert who, as a Justice Department lawyer in the Clinton and Bush administrations, “developed the argument adopted by the Supreme Court in Weiss v. United States, 510 U.S. 163 (1993) to uphold the constitutionality of judges detailed to hear cases in the military court system.” Gaziano and Andrew Grossman argue that the bill is likely unconstitutional because it lacks meaningful standards and bars judicial review.
Robert Morpheal, Staff Writer, December 10, 2008. “Constitutional Challenge to Corporate Bailouts,” Democratic Underground, Accessed 12-11-2008, Even more so what happens when one class, or category, of corporation is favored by government in a manner that is potentially or actually prejudicial to the interests of other classes, categories, of business entity, and of individuals as legal entities? We are contending here that there ultimately has to be a constitutional and more fundamental answer. The issue must necessarily be considered in light of the original intent of the constitution and its framers, not in the subsequent light of common usage, even considering the special role of common legal usage, as we are not dealing with a case law based definition at the root of the issue, but rather something much more fundamental. 3. CORPORATIONS ARE NOT ENTITLED TO BAILOUTS UNDER THE DOCTRINE OF ORIGINAL INTENT Robert Morpheal, Staff Writer, December 10, 2008. “Constitutional Challenge to Corporate Bailouts,” Democratic Underground, Accessed 12-11-2008, We must remember that subsequent actions by government and the courts can result in corruption of original constitutional meaning and intent. Is the large corporation, as a class of legal entities, entitled to gain from government in a manner and in a way that can be proven to discriminate against another class of legal entities? Ultimately that question would need to be decided on the basis of which group of legal entities takes precedence in terms of the constitution and its original intent. 4. CORPORATE WELFARISM IS UNCONSTITUTIONAL AND ABUSES GOVERNMENT AUTHORITY Stephen Slivinski, Director of Budget Studies at the Cato Institute, May 14, 2007. “The Corporate Welfare State: How the Federal Government Subsidizes U.S. Businesses,” CATO POLICY ANALYSIS No. 592, Direct corporate subsidies fall outside the limited enumerated functions of the federal government. Nowhere in the Constitution is Congress granted the authority to spend funds to directly subsidize industry, or to enter into joint ventures with automobile companies, or to guarantee loans to favored business owners. Yet, since the New Deal, by applying very expansive readings of the General Welfare Clause, the Supreme Court has allowed Congress to redistribute wealth from taxpayers to favored business interests. Some spending that benefits businesses, such as infrastructure spending and the funding of courts to enforce contracts, also benefits the population as a whole. But those are expenditures that benefit all companies and citizens generally and are usually not geared to a specific activity or industry. The programs of the corporate welfare state, on the other hand, do not fit this definition. Download 343.42 Kb. Share with your friends:
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