US House Limits Constituent Emails 581
Plechazunga passes along this note from The Hill: "The House is limiting e-mails from the public to prevent its websites from crashing due to the enormous amount of mail being submitted on the financial bailout bill. As a result, some constituents may get a 'try back at a later time' response if they use the House website to e-mail their lawmakers about the bill defeated in the House on Monday in a 205-228 vote."
You can always do what I did on the broadcast flag (Score:2, Interesting)
Back when they were pursuing the Broadcast Flag unfunded mandate, I had my objection hand delivered for a fee by http://www.congress.org/ [congress.org]
I got a nice letter back explaining why I was all wrong and the broadcast flag was the greatest thing since sliced peaches, but at least they got my letter.
Re:Think they read them anyway? (Score:2, Interesting)
Well, the Treasury/Fed *has been* the defacto 4th branch of government since the passing of the Federal Reserve Act early 1900s.
This bailout was just *another* power grab by the Executive branch. I say, to hell with the bailout and the power it is trying to put into the Treasury's hands.
Re:Yeah... (Score:2, Interesting)
Shrug. That's a problem with any investment. Look at all the people who bought into oil thinking that would never go back down.
In this I think the public perception of action is the primary need...As with most financial crises, this one is mostly driven by panicking investors.
Re:How lobbying works (Score:4, Interesting)
I've been looking at it this way:
1. Banks screw over gullible subprime buyers with shit mortgages that they know can't be paid back.
2. Banks screw over other banks by selling those shit mortgages to them.
3. The top shareholders who know the true value of these shit mortgages get out while they're ahead and walk away billions of dollars richer because they know someone's going to notice this eventually.
4. The banks that stayed thought they could keep duping people indefinitely but were finally left with all these shit mortgages and their businesses begin to crumble.
5. The economy tanks as it notices that banks are failing because of the shit mortgages.
6. The banks tell the government, "Hey guys, we need round about $700 billion to stay alive or else your economy is going tank further. Nevermind that it was our fault, just fix it for us, mkay"
Now, here's what I take away from that:
If we do nothing, some more banks fail and the economy continues to dive and the average citizen takes a financial hit until the market bounces back, which it will eventually.
If we hand over a $700 billion check to the banks, they continue to operate and the economy *might* bounce back a little quicker. But--and here's the rub--that $700 billion comes from taxpayers like you and me. So we still take a hit. And who does this $700 billion go to? Rich Wall Street types so they can continue doing their business and keeping the profits in the end.
I don't know about you, but as an average citizen, I feel like I've gotten screwed either way. The latter way twice. Since I have a good mortgage and a good job at a privately-held company that's doing great, I would much rather see the country take a little bit more of an economic hit than reward a bunch of rich bastards for first screwing over poor would-be homeowners and then the world's economy.
Re:Dear Constituent (a letter from your government (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Dear Constituent (a letter from your government (Score:3, Interesting)
It seems to have escaped most peoples notice that Asian banks are not participating in the current financial meltdown extravaganza and there is a reason for that.
The US banks have been behaving very very badly and have already been bailed out a couple of times in the past.
The "bubbles" you've had in the last two decades were the results of government bailouts designed to stave of a recession, and they worked. Sort of.
The problem is, if you keep bailing out these numbnuts they will just continue carrying on as before and you will continue having to bail them out and each rescue will be more flamboyantly extravagant than the last.
At some point you will HAVE to take your medicine and let things collapse. Economics is cyclical, you have periods of growth and periods of stagnation. You can't change that, no matter how much you might want to. The US government has been postponing the down cycle for years but all they have done is ensure that when the down cycle inevitably happens it will be a monster one.
If they get bailed out again this time, the next time will be even worse.
Re:Yeah... (Score:3, Interesting)
And you think this should be the government's job?
Re:I have never been more proud to be a republican (Score:4, Interesting)
thank goodness you said that. I keep wondering why conservatives vote for Republicans. Republicans aren't conservative! They never have been! Reagan grew the government three times as fast as Clinton! Bush is the most spendy President we've ever had (literally)! How far back do you have to go to find a Republican who was actually a fiscal conservative? There certainly hasn't been one in the last fifty years. If you're conservative, then for the love of all that is holy please start voting for conservatives, instead of Republicans!
Re:Dear Constituent (a letter from your government (Score:3, Interesting)
Hah! Yes, it was! It was when I wrote to tell her how boneheaded the Patriot Act was!
At least Boxer was good enough to respond with "I am sorry you disagree, but here's why I support it".
Re:I have never been more proud to be a republican (Score:5, Interesting)
Wake up sleepy head! It's a credit crunch.
The well of easy short term credit has dried up. Financial institutions are currently experiencing a rather nasty bought of collective hysteria and as a result are grasping too tightly to what money they still have. They're not loaning any money to one another because they're afraid they and all their buddies are going to go belly up like Lehman Brothers in the very near future. They all need they all need every penny they have to pay off the loans they already took out from each other, because now they wont lend to each other because they're all afraid they'll all go under.
Confused? That's because you think that modern financiers are either rational or competent at what they do. They are neither.
It doesn't matter what the bill was about. The purpose of the bill was to act as a placebo for hysterical traders who literally have no idea what is happening and who cannot be relied upon to either calm down or trade rationally. I don't mean collectively speaking. I mean on an individual basis. That bill was a mass Valium prescription for a mass of people who are a danger to themselves and society. Taking it away was like dosing a crazy person with amphetamines, putting them in room 101, then giving them explosives and a loaded shotgun. Predictably, the traders and money men completely lost the run of themselves, and had a good old fashioned Panic Attack.
This is not getting resolved by market forces. This is not going to correct itself. This cannot be left to the whims of Wall St, unless you think its a good idea to leave the world's financial systems in the hands of people with the mentality, reasoning and emotional state of a crashing meth junkie. Wait as long as you like, there's nobody home.
No. This is going to require some good old fashioned Government Intervention. There's that taboo word. I'll say it again to drag Slashdot even further into disrepute. This Crisis Needs Government Intervention . You can deny this fact while you wait for your local junkies to start scrubbing the pavements out of civic responsibility, or you can wake up to reality and help clean up the mess that your mistaken opinions helped create.
Re:The government can fix that. (Score:2, Interesting)
Bah, I've heard this before, and it's all bullshit. CRA loans were but a fraction of the total number of subprime loans that were given out. It's a fact. Look it up. No, wait, I'll do it [prospect.org]:
Meanwhile, the "racist" rules you're referencing were simply this: if you give a loan to person A with qualifications X, then if black person B shows up with qualifications X, you have to give them the same loan. That's it, that's all. If you have any evidence to the contrary, I'd love to see it.
Re:Yeah... (Score:2, Interesting)
It won't be paid back - just look at our current debt to see the truth of that. When both candidates were cornered with the question: "What we ill you differently to offset this cost", BOTH of them hemmed and hawed and committed to changing /nothing/.
All this crap about protecting 'taxpayer investment' is window dressing. We're proposing to print money to solve the crisis - but everyone is so focused on /how/ it's getting spent, nobody is looking at where it's /really/ coming from.
Re:I emailed a member of congress once... (Score:3, Interesting)
I e-mailed my state senator about a year ago regarding the tech tax that the state had just passed. I got a follow up call from the senator himself the following day on my cell phone. What was particularly notable was that the day of the follow up was Thanksgiving. They definitely care when they're contacted, especially about hot-button issues.
Re:Dear Constituent (a letter from your government (Score:4, Interesting)
I sent Feinstein and Boxer letters a few years ago about copyright litigation. I got an email from Boxer's office that said "Thanks for your interest!." I got a personal, well reasoned response from Feinstein. She and I have written back and forth once a month ever since, sometimes with her emailing just to ask what I think about related legislation. For all I know it could be one of her staffers, but every email shows a lot of thought and is signed with her name.
Re:Dear Constituent (a letter from your government (Score:4, Interesting)
Not that regulations helped this time around since they were neutered by the Republicans
I keep hearing people say this, but I've never seen anyone point to any specific deregulation. Please enlighten me.
It seems to me that this whole mess was largely caused by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, government sponsored enterprises. http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/2008/09/distorting-history.html [blogspot.com]
Re:Dear Constituent (a letter from your government (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Yeah... (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't know about our government, but IF 1% of the 250M Americans decided to write an e-mail over the last week (which means 2.5 million e-mails over 5 days or 500,000 e-mails per day or 21,000 e-mails per hour which should be about 1 Mbyte/minute) then I would be able to handle the load with 1 or 2 Postfix servers and of course a large enough storage. Heck, I'm currently processing about 1000 connections per hour for an organization (100 IMAP connections, website etc. included) on a 4 year old PowerMac G5 including amavis, clamav and spamassassin and the load is generally about 0.10.
Of course there would be congestion and the solution should already be scaled adequatly to support the 500-somewhat congress critters but that amount of traffic is nothing to write home about, much less a press report.
Roy Blunt does that a lot (Score:3, Interesting)
so does Kit Bond when he bothers to respond to me. Claire McCaskill has only done that to me once IIRC, but it was on the FISA bill, so she can drown in diarrhea.
Re:Yay! Mod points for wishful thinking over law! (Score:3, Interesting)
Like I said, this statement is unequivocally false.
One can make an argument that it's not. It's really no different from from the analysis you gave, except for your faulty assumption that the 10th Amendment has strong teeth. The Constitution grants the government several powers to pass laws (removing some rights from you) and the Bill of Rights takes several powers away from the government (granting some rights to you). What it says nothing about is left alone, presumably to the states.
The 10th Amendment has long been viewed as little more than an affirmation of the obvious and not a hard limit of restraint. Beyond the limits I've mentioned on compelling action from the states, it's toothless. That changed for a while with the Usery decision but was revoked by Garcia. O'Connor's decision in the aforementioned New York v. United States is the law on the 10th Amendment currently, and I've already explained how little it restrains Congress.
And despite your stunning ability to look up cases on the internet, the Congress still has to give lip service to a grant of authority before it passes a law. Usually it's the Commerce Clause, which after Wickard v. Filburn is ridiculously broad, but the Rhenquist court did manage to reign it in just a little bit. So no, Congress can't just go off willy nilly and do whatever it wants.
Maybe. Gonzales v. Raich 545 U.S. 1 (2005) blows most of Morrison out of the water by resurrecting the rational basis test and severely muddying the waters on what is and isn't economic activity. While Congress still applies the fig leaf of "that affects interstate commerce" to the legislation it passes, what exactly is interstate commerce is once again very broad. It's hard to reconcile Raich with Lopez in my opinion, given the government's argument in the latter case.
(I'm frankly surprised you know much about what the Rehnquist court decided though, given how wrong your 10th Amendment analysis is. I was providing links because I figured (based on 2/3 of your post) that you were talking out your rear end. I again recommend reading a Con Law textbook.)
And I stand by my analysis of the New Deal. Everybody knew it was unconstitutional. They just decided it was so extraordinarily important that they were going to do it anyway.
I assume you're referring to West Coast Hotel Co. v. Parish (1937). The only reason anyone would've considered the New Deal unconstitutional was because of Lochner, widely considered today to have been one of the most awful and ill-conceived Supreme Court verdicts of all time. Yes, the court was under pressure due to Roosevelt's threat to pack the court, but the writing was already on the wall with Nebbia v. New York, 3 years earlier, and even in striking down some New Deal legislation in United States v. Butler, the court upheld a relatively broad interpretation of the Spending Clause and General Welfare Clause. By the time Wickard v. Filburn was decided, the landscape had changed.
Honestly, the argument "they knew it wasn't Constitutional" presumes two things:
1) There is an inherent, natural law concept of constitutionality that objectively lies outside of the decisions of the Supreme Court.
2) That the Supreme Court chose to ignore that objective standard and place a politically motivated substitute that has no moral authority behind it.
Neither of these are the case. Constitutional is what the body reviewing constitutionality says it is. I may not like Scalia's grotesque reading out of the Constitution of the 2nd Amendment's militia requirement in District of Columbia v. Heller this year (making a mockery of his own touted philosophy of originalism), but that is the law of the land. That is what is constitutional, and all the whining in the world doesn't change that.
(And frankly, if you're honestly arguing that we should roll back our notion of Constitutionality to the pre-New Deal, Lochner era, I think you're a loon.)
Re:Dear Constituent (a letter from your government (Score:3, Interesting)
This act was also known as the Gramm Leach Bliley act [ftc.gov]. It was written by a Republican controlled congress and signed into law by President Bill Clinton.
You may have heard of one of the sponsors, Phil Gramm [wikipedia.org]. He is the Gramm in Gramm Leach Bliley... He also wrote John McCain's economic policy and was John McCain's presidential campaign co-chair and his most senior economic advisor, until he made a gaffe on the campaign trail and said "You've heard of mental depression; this is a mental recession," and "We have sort of become a nation of whiners, you just hear this constant whining, complaining about a loss of competitiveness, America in decline." Whoops. I guess McCain had to let him go after he said that on national television.
I love it how the right-wing media is trying to spin this that "it's all Clinton's fault" when we have a law passed by a Republican controlled congress, written by McCain's senior economic advisor. I know you guys like to try and stretch the facts about everything, but the people are starting to get sick of all of the lies and deceit.
Let's face it, deregulation has failed our economy and our nation. Voting for John McCain would be putting the fox in charge of the hen house.